Gil
Courtemanche, without his direct experience and
observation of daily life in Kigali, the Rwandan
capital, would most likely never have found the
ideational inspiration to attempt the groundbreaking
novel that would win him many prizes. The all too
rushed early assessments by some reviewers pressed
to meet deadlines, failed to stand in the way of
the book's critical acclaim. 'Readable' seemed to
be the extent of some of their imaginations. It
was that for sure, translated into at least 14 languages
and a bestseller worldwide. Its 258 pages breathe,
sometimes heavily because of the central place given
to sex in the narrative. Each breathe is a tense
affair. The reader is instantly aware that there
is only one place this can lead to. And whatever
its form the conclusion can only ever come to the
rasping sound of a death rattle. There is a need
to finish the book but also an apprehension. Happy
endings don't grow from ground littered by the seeds
of genocide.
Fear,
hope, despair, love, revenge, sensuality and hatred
are the emotions and sensations that converge on
the ‘maelstrom’ in which the author lost
so many Rwandan friends. A Sunday at the Pool
in Kigali is a deceptive title in its almost
soothing appeal. Sundays and pools feed the imagination
with visions of lazing and lolling. Add the Rwandan
heat and the scene could easily be set for a novel
steeped in lethargy. But Kigali in 1994 was anything
but lethargic. Large sections of society were being
organised for the purpose of butchering their neighbours,
urged on by the police, government, church pastors,
and the malice-laden tones of Valerie Bemeriki and
her high society colleagues on Radio Hate. 'The
work has only begun. This time it mustn't stop before
we are finished. We must eradicate the enemy. A
little music and we''ll be back with the latest
news.' The call was heeded and the death was dished
out in liberal quantities - doctors turned on their
patients, teachers their pupils, pastors their flock.
As
the killing machine – the poor, lacking the
technology of the gas chamber or the B52, kill with
the machete, Courtemanche reminds his readers -
drank freely from the blood of its victims on every
hill and in every street, the water content of the
pool in the Hotel des Mille-Collines depleted as
those who sought refuge there gulped it down to
ward off death from thirst. A point was reached
when the pool, like the society that hosted it,
was drained. Kigali, as observed through the eyes
of Courtemanche, under the stifling heat of a debilitating
Rwandan sun, blends water and blood as both ebb
away in equal measure to the ebbing humanity of
a society in the grip of man made terror.
Much
of Courtemanche’s novel is set around the edges
of the pool at the Hotel des Mille-Collines before
the point of pool draining and mass murder was reached.
Its status as a refuge for the many desperates seeking
to avoid the swing of the machete propelled the
Hotel to world recognition. European decadence lazed
there – whether in the form of French paratroopers
or consular staff. The great and the good of Rwandan
society took their place beside the refreshing water.
Both mingled with the prostitutes who had made the
grade and who on occasion were murdered, 'falling'
from one of the balconies, having provoked the ire
of one of their powerful and protected clients.
Trying to extract from the police any information
about a murdered and disappeared prostitute was
a futile exercise for Bernard Valcourt, a Canadian
writer, through whom much of the narrative runs.
Determination held him in the country. He loves
Gentille. They marry, having already adopted a child
whose parents and two siblings had been slashed
to death by Hutu militia. Gentille is a Hutu but
nature gave her the features of a Tutsi. Her account
is frequently doubted at roadchecks, her identity
card dismissed as counterfeit. Her destiny in a
land where doubt means death drives the reader on
to discover her fate.
Sex
clings to Courtemanche's narrative. It is forever
accompanied by the spectre of AIDS. Women are casually
penetrated by the flesh of their lovers and just
as quickly by the scythe of the grim reaper. Butchers
and butchered are pulled together in a macabre dance
of death. It did not discriminate between Hutu and
Tutsi. Fatalism held court – ‘dying was
simply one of the things you did one day ... look,
for people who’re going to be dead soon, we’re
not doing too badly.' Elsewhere, in a switch to
paradox, AIDS lubricates the journey to the happy
death of a disc jockey ravished by the disease.
Giving into it, surrounded by friends and carressed
by a hooker, was an end much preferred to that delivered
by the machete. The setting brought a touch of Camus
to Kigali.
Rwandan
men hated the condom, most refusing to wear it.
Sometimes white women were seduced and purposefully
infected with the disease. Revenge of the Africans
on the Europeans -'giving white women back an illness
that had been inflicted on black men.' Each infected
woman, in the mind of the disease depositor, was
viewed with as little pity as the German soldier
in the crosshairs of a Soviet sniping rifle at Stalingrad.
It had its own logic. Fees introduced for higher
education to meet the demands of the structural
adjustment programmes of the Western powers forced
young women into prostitution. In Valcourt's words,
‘this new supply of fresh pussy on the market
caused the AIDS propagation rate to skyrocket.’
When the diplomat Lamarre protests in defence of
the IMF, Valcourt dismisses him: 'a structural adjustment
hospital is a place where one pays for one’s
death.'
In
this novel there was no paying to die; death came
gratis. Courtemanche manages to narrate his tale
as if he wrote while perched on a poolside tree.
In the middle of it but above. There was no other
way to tell this story. It is a book to be read
by a pool on a hot summer Sunday. Enjoy while you
read, for you may not enjoy what you read.
