A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali Read Online Free PDF

and a crazy bet his father had made a long, long time ago had put him on that course. He was neither lazy nor stupid. People complimented him on his humour and admired his instinct for trade, and certain Tutsis of rank readily took him into their confidence.
    If the doctor who had written this book was right— and who could doubt it?—Kawa and his parents and grandparents and children were neither Hutu nor Tutsi. Unless some ancestor had been mistaken and, throughout all these seasons past, they had been Tutsis without knowing it. If they really were Hutus, on the other hand, they were deformed, bastards of some kind, and their future held only obstacles and disappointments. Kawa asked Célestin to pray to his new god, and for good measure invoked his own, Imana. One can never be too careful. Neither seemed to have a solution for his dilemma. He would have to consult the ancestors, even though the practice, kuragura , had been forbidden by the bishops and burgomasters.
    Kawa did not sleep a wink all night. Ten times at least he rose and went to walk in the banana grove, hoping for a sign from the sky or a sudden inspiration that would spare him from having to go and consult his distant cousin, one of the most venerated umumpfumu 5 of the Kibeho district. In vain. The stars were deaf that night, the sky blind and silent.
    His cousin’s name was Nyamaravago, in honour of the queen mother who at her baptism later had taken the name Radegonde. She had been practising divination since the death of her husband, he too a diviner, who had transmitted to her all the secrets of interpreting saliva, and pats of butter dissolving in boiling water. The too easy and unreliable sacrifice of chickens they left to lesser diviners.
    He set out long before the first ray of sunshine lit up the eucalyptus trees. He had brought his finest cow as a gift for his cousin to make sure she would be favourably disposed. When he arrived at her house the sun was already announcing the end of the day. A dozen or more worried, ill or wounded people were patiently waiting, sitting in the shade of the rugo hedge surrounding the big round hut decorated with abstract motifs. The urgency of his case, or perhaps the ties of blood, or even more the cow which uttered a piercing moo of fatigue on arrival, ensured that Kawa waited only a few minutes.
    Without speaking, but his eyes brimming with questions, he took his place on the mat woven with a black arrowhead design. Nyamaravago, seated facing him, had not even raised her head when he entered. She was humming almost inaudibly, her eyes closed, breathing slowly. A serving girl presented him with a large bowl of water. He washed his hands and face. He was offered banana beer, which he drank slowly, and then rinsed his mouth with water. He closed his eyes and prepared himself to listen.
    His cousin spoke of the rains which had fallen very heavily, and of the buzzards which were more and more numerous, meaning that people were throwing away a lot of food, then of her husband who had visited her three nights before. She enquired after Kawa’s stomach, which had been ill and which she had treated several months before. Yes, the cramps had disappeared as soon as he had returned home to his hill. An oil lamp, a gift from a rich patient, was lit. The cousins talked for at least an hour. Five minutes of words followed by meditative silences. At last, she who communed with the spirits invited him to state the reason for his visit, the more important, it would seem, for the fineness and fatness of the cow. Kawa had not come for himself but for his children and the children of his children. He feared that great misfortunes would fall upon them and that all his descendants were cursed. And if he was in such despair, it was because a big book written by a White diviner confirmed his anxieties.
    “It seems we are not what we are, nor what we appear to be,” he concluded, “and the future of my children will be bearable only