8
ANGEL FELT THE perspiration collect into a droplet and begin to trickle slowly downwards from her temple, but she was unable to move either of her arms to extract a tissue from her brassiere. Her left arm was pinned to her side by a very old man who was sitting half on her lap and half beside her, while her right arm was immobilised by the thigh and left buttock of the young man who stood next to her, bending right over her. Her eldest grandson pressed himself on to her lap, snivel-ling miserably. Really, this was not a convenient time for the Change to be asserting itself.
Unable to see ahead clearly, she hoped that it was safe to assume that she would not be the only passenger wanting to alight from the minibus-taxi at her stop, which should be coming up very soon. She was right: two or three other passengers began to hand their fares forward to the conductor who stood over her, signalling their intention to disembark at the next stop. She clutched the money for their fares in her right hand, but recognised that she would be unable to give it to the conductor without either squeezing her fist up between the metal of the minibus’s door and the man’s buttocks or pushing it up in front of him between Benedict’s back and the man’s private parts. She decided to risk neither.
As the driver brought the taxi to a halt, the conductor skilfully slid the door open with his right hand behind his back and stepped out backwards. Angel handed him her money and he assisted her by lifting the child from her lap and placing him on the ground so that she could step out herself, clearing a space through which others could disembark and new passengers could board. The taxi drove off, and Angel led Benedict to the shade of a flamboyant tree, where she delved into her brassiere for a tissue with which to dab at her face and another for Benedict to use to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.
It was still early; they had had the first appointment of the day, and they would be home before half-past nine. She took the boy by the hand and they set off together towards their compound that lay at the far end of the dirt road. As they walked, she did her best to comfort him.
“You were very brave, Benedict. Nobody likes to go to the dentist, but you were strong like a big boy, a teenager. Mama was very proud of you.”
Benedict attempted a smile.
“Now, I know that when we get home you won’t be able to eat because your mouth is still hurting, but you can drink. Would you like Mama to make you some tea, or shall we stop at Leocadie’s shop and buy you a soda?”
“Fanta, please, Mama!” Benedict declared emphatically.
Of course, the dentist had just lectured Angel on the advisability of cutting down on the amount of sugar in her children’s diet. He had even specifically mentioned sodas and cakes as being very bad for a child’s teeth. But this dentist came from an island somewhere far away in the Pacific Ocean, and he had the strange idea of being a Christian but worshipping on a Saturday instead of a Sunday—just like Prosper. Angel knew that it was very unfair to judge an entire congregation by the regrettable behaviour of one of its members, but Prosper was the only Adventist she knew personally, so it was difficult for her to be objective. If she could become acquainted with some others who were more sensible than Prosper, she might be able to convince herself that this dentist’s advice should be taken seriously; but until somebody could persuade her that his advice was indeed good, it was better simply to ignore it. She would try to remember to ask Dr Rejoice about it.
They walked past a high yellow wall over which deep red bougainvillea blossoms spilled. Behind the wall, invisible from the road, sprawled the big white house that was shared by the families of two of Pius’s Indian colleagues, where the boys went to play with their school friends Rajesh and Kamal. Miremba, the Indian boys’ young Ugandan-Rwandan nanny, had become a close friend of Titi’s, and the two girls had gone into town together this morning.
As Angel and Benedict neared Leocadie’s shop, its owner stepped out of it, and saw them approaching.
“Mama-Grace!” she called, giving a wave and a big smile. Really, she was so much happier now that the business with Modeste’s other girlfriend had been settled. Apparently the girl had decided to go with her baby and stay with her aunt near Gisenyi, right up in the north of the country.
“Benedict, why are you not at school today?” she asked, when Angel and the boy reached her shop. “Are you sick?”
“I went to the dentist,” replied Benedict, opening his mouth wide to show Leocadie the hole where a tooth had been extracted.
“Eh!” said Leocadie. “You’re a brave boy. Was he brave, Mama-Grace?”
“Very,” assured Angel. “He had to miss a day of school because those dentists don’t work on Saturdays. He’d like a Fanta citron now to help him to feel better, but all our empties are in the apartment.”
“No problem, Mama-Grace, you can take a Fanta now and I’ll remember that you owe me one empty.”
“Thank you, Leocadie. Now tell me, have you and Modeste started to make plans for your wedding?”
“Not yet,” said Leocadie, stepping into the shop and reaching into the fridge for a Fanta. As she opened its door, the fridge cast just enough light into the dim interior of the container for Angel to make out the still form of Beckham, lying asleep on the lowest shelf between the bags of sugar and the rolls of pink toilet paper. “But what plans will we make, Mama-Grace? We have no family, so there’ll be no negotiations about bride-price. And we can’t have a wedding party because we don’t have money.”
Angel suddenly felt very sad for this girl, whose only happiness was that her fiancé had chosen her above another girl who had had his baby, too. And, Angel noticed, Leocadie had now reached the stage of disowning her relatives—incarcerated and in exile—as family. Perhaps Angel was partly to blame for that, because she had given Leocadie an honest account of her meeting with the girl’s mother in jail in Cyangugu: her mother was simply no longer there. Then Angel thought about her own daughter, and about the silence, the distance, that had grown between them.
Had Vinas ever felt that her mother, like Leocadie’s, was simply no longer there?
Suppressing the startling urge to sob, Angel heard herself speaking before she even knew what it was that she was going to say.
“Leocadie, it is not true that you have no family, because I’m going to be your mother for this wedding.” “Mama-Grace?”
“I’ll help you to plan everything, and of course I’ll make your wedding cake for the reception.”
“Eh, Mama-Grace!” Leocadie’s eyes began to fill with tears. “But we cannot afford …”
“Nonsense! God will help us to find a way. You leave everything to me. Now, take my hundred francs for Benedict’s Fanta so that I can take him home and put him to bed. He needs to rest after all his fright and pain.”
Leocadie reached for the note that Angel handed her. “Thank you, Mama-Grace. You’re a very good mother.” Then she began to sob. “I’m very happy that you’ll be my mother for my wedding.”
“Don’t cry, Leocadie, you’ll wake up Beckham, and then he’ll cry.” Angel did not add that she might join them.
After saying their goodbyes, Angel and Benedict walked the last few metres along the road, past the big green Dumpster that had at last been emptied of the neighbourhood’s rubbish, towards the corner where their compound lay. They could see Gaspard and Modeste standing there with two men who had apparently paused for a chat on their way up the hill. Each of the men carried a wire cage, the larger of which held a large grey parrot and the smaller of which held a small monkey. There must be a market for such creatures—many could be seen for sale on street corners—but Angel found it hard to understand why anyone would want to share their home with an animal that needed to be fed but contributed nothing in return. A chicken or a cow was a useful animal; but a parrot? A monkey? Uh-uh.
Benedict, on the other hand, was fascinated by the small grey monkey whose button eyes gazed absently from the black of its face through the bars constraining it. He squatted down beside the cage, which the man had now put down on the ground, and said hello to the creature. Something in the boy’s voice—perhaps the kindness of his tone—awoke the monkey from its stillness, and with its eyes never leaving Benedict’s, it took hold of the bars with both hands and flung its body around violently within its prison, all the while screeching like a terrified child. Letting go of the bars, it flung itself against the side of the cage and toppled it over sideways, screeching all the more loudly and appallingly. This unleashed an echoing wail in Benedict, clearly distressed at having triggered such wretchedness in the creature, and as the man bent to right the cage, Angel scooped the boy up in her arms and carried him inside.
A while later, after Benedict had been calmed and had finally drifted off to sleep tucked up in his bed, and after Angel had changed out of her smart, tight clothes and settled down to review what she was going to say that afternoon to the Girls Who Mean Business, a soft, continuous knocking began at the door. Recognising it as Modeste’s knock, and knowing that it was futile to call for him to come in because he did not feel it was his place to do so, Angel went to the door and opened it.
“Madame,” said Modeste, “here is a customer for your cakes.”
Next to him stood a soldier, an earnest-looking young man dressed in camouflage uniform and khaki Wellington boots with a semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. The thick welt of an ugly scar snaked its way down from below his left ear and across to somewhere under the right lapel of his uniform.
Angel thanked Modeste as he left, and then turned her attention to the soldier. “Unasema Kiswahili?” “Ndiyo, Bibi. Yes, I speak Swahili.”
“Good. I’m sorry that I cannot yet speak Kinyarwanda to you.”
“Hakuna matata, Bibi. No problem.” He flashed a smile of chocolate-coloured teeth at Angel.
“Bwana, you are very welcome in my house, but I’m afraid that your gun is not welcome here. My husband and I do not allow guns to come inside.”
“Hakuna matata, Bibi.” The young man removed his weapon from his shoulder and leaned it up against the wall outside the door to Angel’s apartment, clearly intending to leave it there. Angel felt a stab of panic.
“That is not a safe place for a gun to rest, Bwana. There are children who live in this compound. One of them could pick it up and then there could be a terrible accident.”
The soldier glanced at the gun. “You’re right, Bibi. Let me leave it with your security guard outside.” He ran out with the gun to give it to Modeste and then came back and sat down opposite Angel in her living room.
“Allow me to introduce myself, Bibi. I am Calixte Munyaneza, a captain in the army.”
“I’m happy to meet you, Captain Calixte. Please call me Angel; I’m not comfortable with Bibi or Madame.”
“Sawa, Angel. I’ve come to you because they tell me that you’re somebody who makes cakes for special occasions.”
“That is true, Captain Calixte. Do you have a special occasion coming up?”
The soldier nodded. “I’m taking a fiancée.”
Angel clapped her hands together and beamed. “An engagement! That is indeed a special occasion! I’ll make tea for us and you can tell me all about it. Meanwhile, you can look at my photos of some other cakes that I’ve made.”
Angel prepared two mugs of sweet, spicy tea and put a few cupcakes—iced in red and dark shades of green and grey—on to a plate. She carried them on a tray into the living room, where she found the soldier examining her photo album studiously.
“Do you see any cakes that you like?” she asked, placing the tray on the coffee table.
Captain Calixte looked uncertain. “I think that you’ll need to advise me on the kind of cake to order, Angel. I’m not certain what my fiancée will like best.”
“I’m always happy to advise my customers,” assured Angel. “But before we settle with our tea, come and look here on my work table. I’d like to show you my most recent cake. There’s no picture of it in my album yet.”
On the table sat an extended oblong cake decorated in a way that made it immediately recognisable—though its design had been simplified and modified—as an enormous version of the Rwandan 5,000-franc note. Against a pale pink background, the words Banque Nationale du Rwanda ran across the top edge of the cake in capital letters that were dark green at the top and red at the bottom; to the right of these words was the large figure 5000, also green at the top and red at the bottom. Running across the bottom edge of the surface of the cake was a red stripe with a green stripe immediately above it, and outlined in pale pink above the two stripes, with the colours showing through, were the words cinq mille francs, and again the number 5000. Those letters and numbers had been very difficult for Angel to write with her icing syringe; next time Ken Akimoto went home to Washington, she would send a note to June requesting a white Gateau Graffito pen.
Captain Calixte looked at the cake in wonder. He reached into a pocket and removed a 5,000-franc note so that he could compare it to the cake.
Angel pointed at his note. Going up the left-hand side of the original banknote were three dark grey triangles decorated with leaves over which the figure 5000 appeared in pale pink, and a drawing of a black-and-white bird sitting on a stick. “This part was too difficult and there were too many details,” she explained. “I made it simpler: just one grey triangle with 5000 written over it in pink.”
“That is very good. I can see that you’ve taken away some of the details, but still when we look at it we know that it is this banknote.”
“And these dancers here,” said Angel, pointing to the picture in the central area of the soldier’s banknote. “That was going to be much too complicated. I couldn’t copy that.” In the picture on the note, seven male dancers performed in traditional costume: leopard-skin skirts, straps of beads worn crossed over the chest and long, flowing straw-coloured headdresses that looked like blond Mzungu hair. In front of them were four female dancers in sleeveless T-shirts and knee-length wrapper skirts, a string of beads around each forehead and strings of bells or seed-pods around their ankles.
The Captain shook his head. “No, this picture is too complicated for your cake, I can see that. But what is this that you’ve written instead?”
“Well, I’ve taken these words from the note here, Payables à vue, and I’ve added aux Girls Who Mean Business. That is the name of a club that I will address this afternoon. They’re all girls who plan to run their own businesses when they’ve finished their schooling. Now, if you look down the sides of the cake here, all the way around I’ve put thin red stripes to indicate that this is actually a large pile of money.”
“Eh, that is clever. So this cake is saying that those girls will make a lot of money from their businesses.”
“Exactly.”
Angel had initially thought of making an American dollar cake rather than a franc cake, but when she had looked carefully at a $100 note from Pius’s wallet, she had seen that it was very boring: cream with grey and only a little bit of green, and a big picture of an ugly old Mzungu man. That was not something that was going to inspire these girls; and in any case it was very possible that none of them had ever seen a $100 note, and so they might not be able to recognise immediately what the dollar cake was saying. No, the Rwandan money was a much better choice; it would speak to them in a language that they knew.
The two sat down and sipped their tea. Angel watched as her guest’s chocolate-coloured teeth bit into a chocolate cupcake; she could almost hear the Adventist dentist’s gasp.
“Captain Calixte,” she said, “this is my first time to talk to a soldier in the Rwandan army, and if I am to advise you on your engagement cake it will help me to know something about you. Would you tell me about your fiancée and something about your life as a soldier?”
Calixte swallowed his mouthful of cake and then washed it down with a large sip of tea. “My life as a soldier,” he said slowly, turning his head and gazing towards the window. He was quiet for so long that Angel wondered if she should not perhaps say something to summon his mind back from wherever it had wandered. At last he turned back to her, and, leaning forward, looked her squarely in the eye. “Can I speak freely with you, Angel?”
“Of course you can,” she assured him. “You are my customer. I’ll never repeat what you say to me because I know how a professional somebody is supposed to behave.”
“That is good. And also you are Mnyamahanga, a foreigner, so it’s safe for me to talk to you. It’s only that I was taken by surprise to think about my life as a soldier. Of course, I’ve often thought about being a soldier, but I’ve never thought of that as my life. It was not the life that I wanted.” Again his gaze shifted towards the light of the window.
Angel waited a few moments before she prompted him. “So, is it better that I ask you about being a soldier?”
Angel’s guest turned back to her and—to her relief—laughed. “You can ask it either way, because whether I like it or not, being a soldier and my life as a soldier are in fact one and the same thing. Until so far, anyway.”
“Tell me about it, then.”
“Sawa. Before my life as a soldier, there was my life as a schoolboy. I lived near Ruhengeri with my father; we were alone because my mother and my sisters did not survive the genocide. I was not a very good student, but I dreamed of becoming a teacher one day in a vocational school. I was very good with my hands: woodwork and carpentry. My father taught me. One day I was walking home from school with three other boys, and some soldiers stopped next to us in a truck. They asked if we could direct them to some or other place that was some distance away, and they said they’d pay us if we went with them to show them exactly where it was. Of course my friends and I agreed to go with them, and we climbed into the back of the truck. There were many soldiers there. But it soon became clear that they were not interested in finding the place that they had asked us about, and they drove with us for many, many kilometres, refusing to let us out. It began to get dark and one of my friends began to panic, and he started to insist that we be let go; but still they refused. Then at last when the night was completely black, they pulled off the road. My friend who was panicking pushed at some of them and climbed down from the truck, cursing them. They laughed at him, and then they shot him dead.”
“Eh!” Angel spilled some of her tea on to her kanga but did not notice. “Dead?” She thought of her son Joseph, dead in his house from a robber’s bullet.
“Dead. Then they laughed some more and told us they would shoot us too if we gave them any trouble. Late that night we arrived at a place and we were taken to some tents to sleep. There were other boys there, and they told us they had also been taken. We were going to be trained as soldiers, they said. And so that was the end of my life as a schoolboy and the beginning of my life as a soldier.”
“That is a very bad story,” said Angel, shaking her head. “Was it not possible to run away?”
“We knew that if we tried to run we would be shot. We saw it happen to others. We were dependent on the soldiers for food and we had no idea where we were or what would become of anybody who actually managed to escape. So eventually we stopped thinking about escaping and we concentrated on becoming good soldiers. We thought that once they trusted us with guns then we could get away. But somehow, by the time they gave us guns, we had lost the will to get away. We had become soldiers.” Calixte shrugged, unable to explain.
“It’s not my first time to hear a story like that,” said Angel. “I know it’s not an impossible thing to happen; it has happened in other countries.”
“They took me to fight in Congo, close to Kisangani. I was there for a very long time. Eh! The things we did and saw there!” He shook his head. “I cannot speak of those things. My heart had already been empty for a long time, and the only way for me to continue day after day was to make my mind empty, too. There are months, years even, that I could not remember now, even if I wanted to.” He drank some tea and finished his cupcake. “So that is my life as a soldier.”
Angel was silent for a while before she asked, “And what about your father?”
“I never saw him again. Some time ago I had the opportunity to go to Ruhengeri, but I found that he was already late. I don’t know if he ever searched for me. I don’t know what he thought that day when I didn’t come home from school.”
“Eh, that is very sad,” said Angel.
Calixte shook his head. “Things are sad only when you allow yourself to feel them.”
“And you don’t allow yourself to feel them?” “I told you: my heart is empty.”
Angel tried to lighten the mood, which had become uncomfortably heavy. She smiled hopefully. “But you are in love, Captain Calixte! You’re getting engaged! How can your heart be empty?”
He shook his head again, laughing in a hollow way. “I’m not in love, Angel. There is no love in my heart. I told you: it is empty.”
“But if your heart is empty, then why are you marrying?”
“That is simple: because my mind is no longer empty.”
“Captain Calixte, you are confusing me now,” said Angel, removing her glasses and holding them in her lap. “What is it that is now in your mind?”
He took a sip of tea. “A plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes, a plan. A way out. I don’t want to be a soldier, Angel; it was never what I wanted. I want to be demobilised, but that is not what I want; many soldiers have been demobilised, and there is nothing for them to do. I never completed my schooling, so what would I do outside the army? There is nothing. So I’m going to marry a Mzungu, and she will take me with her to her home country. That will be my escape.”
Angel thought about this for a moment. “And in your plan, what is it that you will do when you are with your Mzungu in her home country?”
Again he laughed. “Why will I need to do anything? I won’t need a job.”
“So your fiancée is rich?”
“All Wazungu are rich.”
Angel began to rub gently at her glasses with the edge of her kanga. Captain Calixte was right: the Wazungu in Kigali were certainly paid extremely well by their international organisations. In addition to their pay, some even received an extra hundred dollars a day to compensate them for having to live in a country that they said was dangerous; most Rwandans did not earn that much in a month. But did the girl who was going to marry this soldier know that it was only her money and her passport that he wanted? That she was only useful to him for his plan?
“Have you proposed yet, Captain Calixte? Has she in fact agreed to be your fiancée?”
“Not yet. But of course she’ll agree. It will be impossible for her to say no to me.”
Angel’s mind leaped to the soldier’s semi-automatic rifle. Surely he would not force the girl at gunpoint? The rubbing of her glasses became somewhat frantic as a disturbing thought entered her mind: the soldier sitting in her living room might be quite mad. It was not impossible for war to push a man over the edge. But if he planned to force this girl to marry him, then why was he ordering a cake to celebrate their engagement? The idea of the cake made Angel feel a little easier.
“Why will it be impossible for her to say no to you, Captain?”
“Because I’ve studied Wazungu women carefully,” he replied. “I’ve noticed three things about them: number one, they like beautiful things; number two, they like events to be well planned; and number three, they’re concerned about their safety.”
Angel thought for a moment, pausing in her rubbing. “Actually, I cannot disagree with any of those things.”
“So when I ask her to marry me, first I’ll give her this beautiful thing.” He reached inside his collar at the back and removed a long string that had been hanging around his neck, concealed inside his uniform. Suspended from the string by a knot was a small bundle of dirty brown fabric. He undid the knot and extracted from the piece of fabric a small, glittering diamond.
“Eh!” Replacing her glasses, Angel took the diamond and examined it carefully. “This is indeed a beautiful thing, Captain Calixte. And Wazungu women do like to get a diamond when they get engaged; it’s their tradition.” She handed the diamond back. “But are you a rich somebody yourself that you can afford this diamond?”
Calixte laughed as he wrapped the diamond in the fabric again, knotted it back on to the string and repositioned it around his neck. “You don’t need money to get a diamond in Congo, Angel. All you need is quick fingers—or a gun. Do you think the soldiers are there only to fight?”
Calixte sat back and drained his tea. Angel did not offer him more.
“Okay, so you have this beautiful diamond. Now how will you show her that you are good at planning?”
“That’s where the cake comes in. We’ll be able to have an engagement party the minute she says yes.”
Angel cleared her throat before speaking. “But do you not think that maybe she would like to plan the party ahead of time and invite her friends?”
“She can phone them.”
“I see. But then … will the party not be … unplanned?”
“No, it will be planned, because I’ve planned the cake. Wazungu cannot have a party without a cake.”
Angel did not try to press the point; to do so could be to persuade him not to order the cake that he had come to order. “And so how will you deal with the third matter, the matter of her security? Will she feel that she’s safe simply because you are a soldier?”
“Not at all. I’ll show her my certificate.” He reached into his trouser pocket and brought out a piece of paper, which he unfolded and handed to Angel. It was a photocopy of some kind of official document in Kinyarwanda and French, with an official-looking stamp in the lower right-hand corner.
“What is this certificate?” she asked. “What does it say?”
“It says that I have tested negative for HIV.”
Angel looked for any words that she might recognise. Sure enough, there were the letters VIH—the French for HIV—and a French word that looked very like the English word negative. On a dotted line across the middle of the document, the name Calixte Munyaneza Ntagahera had been typed. It was definitely Calixte’s certificate. But was this man she was talking to definitely Calixte? A person had to be so careful in such matters, because it was very easy for somebody to pretend to be negative with a borrowed certificate. That was one of the dangers that Angel had learned from Odile. Then she noticed the date on the official stamp.
“Captain Calixte, this test was done almost two years ago.”
“So?”
“So is it not possible that this result is … well … old? Will your girlfriend not want to see a certificate that is new?” “Why would she want that?”
Angel felt exasperated. Was this man ignorant as well as mad? “How long has your girlfriend known you, Captain Calixte? Does she trust you?”
“She doesn’t know me yet, Angel, but I’m sure that she’ll trust me when I present myself to her with my diamond and my certificate and my cake.”
Angel looked at him and blinked a few times, saying nothing. Then she cleared her throat and said, “I’m confused, Captain Calixte. Are you telling me that you and your fiancée-to-be have not actually met?”
“No.”
“No, that is not what you are saying, or no, you have not actually met?”
“We have not met. But I’m planning to introduce myself to her as soon as my cake is ready.”
Angel took off her glasses and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. “So you’re planning to introduce yourself to her, show her your certificate, ask her to marry you, give her the diamond and have her phone her friends immediately to come and eat the cake that you’ve brought to celebrate your engagement.”
“Yes. We can marry here or in her country; that is of no importance to me. But what is essential is that she will take me with her when her time here is finished. That is how I will escape. That is my plan.”
Angel had still not opened her eyes. She desperately wanted a cup of milky, spicy tea with a large amount of sugar in it, but if she made one for herself she would be obliged to make one for her guest as well—and her guest was in all probability somebody who belonged in the psychiatric hospital at Ndera. She did not want him to stay in her apartment any longer than necessary.
“Right,” she said, opening her eyes and putting her glasses back on. “So let us make sure that your cake is a very fine one. Now, you don’t know this girl, so you don’t know what kind of cake she would like. We’ll have to choose something—”
Calixte interrupted. “But you know the girl, Angel. I’ve seen you talking to her on the street, outside the church of Saint Michael. You can advise me on what she would like.”
Angel was not sure that she could take any more, but she had to ask the question.
“Who is she?”
When Calixte gave her the name, she sighed deeply and dropped her head into her hands.
FOR her talk to the Girls Who Mean Business, Angel wore the same dress that she had worn to the function at the Tanzanian Embassy; it made her look smart and professional, and it had the added advantage of being sufficiently loose to ease her ascent to, and descent from, the front seat of Ken Akimoto’s Pajero, which had been reserved in advance for the trip to Sophie’s school.
Carefully balancing the board bearing the money-cake on her lap, Angel told Bosco about the man who had visited her earlier that day.
“Eh, Auntie! I think you did not feel safe with that soldier in your house. Did you think he was going to shoot you when you refused to make his cake?”
“No, of course not; his gun was outside with Modeste. But he made me feel very uncomfortable. I think he’s not right in his head.”
“Why, Auntie?”
“Why? Bosco, have you not listened to my story? How can you ask me why I think he’s mad? Eh, Bosco! Please go more slowly on these corners, otherwise my cake will be spoiled.”
“Sorry, Auntie, it’s only that I want you to arrive at the school on time. I promise that I won’t let your cake be spoiled. It’s very, very beautiful.”
“Thank you, Bosco.”
“Of course I listened to your story, Auntie. It was the story of a boy who was forced to become a soldier and to do terrible things. Now he wants to escape from that into a better life. What is mad about that, Auntie?”
Angel thought about it. Bosco’s summary made Captain Calixte sound perfectly sane. “But he really expected her to agree to marry him!”
“Auntie, do you think he’s the only man here who would like to marry that girl? Even Mr Akimoto likes her; it’s only that he already has a wife in America. I would ask her to marry me myself; it’s only that I don’t love her.”
“Of course I’m not saying anything bad about her; I’m sure there are many men who would like to propose marriage to her. But this soldier had gone as far as planning everything.”
“So when a man plans to do something that other men only dream of doing, then that man is mad?”
The conversation was not going well for Angel. “You’re confusing me, Bosco,” she said, and then was quiet for a while.
Eventually Bosco said, “Auntie knows that there are many girls here who want to marry Wazungu so that they can have a better life somewhere else. And girls like that are not just here; they’re in Uganda, too.”
“You’re right, Bosco. In Tanzania, too.”
“Are those girls mad, Auntie?”
“Eh, Bosco! I can see that you want me to say no, those girls are not mad. And then you’re going to ask why do I say a man is mad when he wants the same thing.”
Bosco laughed. “Exactly, Auntie.”
Angel found herself smiling. “You know, Bosco, I think that maybe you’ve been giving too many lifts to Sophie and Catherine. I can see that they’ve taught you not to accept one idea for girls and another for boys.”
“It isn’t Sophie and Catherine who have taught me that, Auntie.” Bosco grinned broadly.
“Ah,” said Angel. “Alice.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
“When am I going to meet this Alice, Bosco? You keep telling me I’ll meet her soon.”
“Very, very soon, Auntie.” Bosco drew to a halt where another dirt road crossed the one they were on, and checked directions to the school with a man who was pushing a bicycle with a heavy basket of potatoes strapped behind its seat. They turned left.
“Anyway,” said Angel, “I’m glad that the soldier came to see me today, because his visit gave me another idea for my talk this afternoon. You know, Bosco, I’ve never before refused to make a cake. Okay, once or twice I’ve had to say no because somebody has asked me too late, like they ask me at lunch-time and they want the cake that afternoon. But I’ve never before refused. And I’ve never before even thought that one day I might get an order that I would refuse. So it’s good that it happened today, because now I can talk to the girls about my personal experience of ethics.”
Pius spoke often about ethics, and would occasionally try to stimulate discussions on the subject with the children.
“Let us say,” he would say over supper, “that the Tanzanian national soccer team needs a sponsor because they cannot afford to travel to play in the Africa Cup. Now, let us say that the makers of Safari beer offer to sponsor our national team. Is it right for the national team to accept that sponsorship?”
The boys would say yes, and then Faith, seeing her grandfather’s reaction to the answer yes, would say no.
Grace would have a reason. “No. Because if the players drink the Safari, they won’t be able to play well and they’ll lose.”
Titi would have a more general answer. “Beer is not a good thing, Uncle.”
“They should not accept,” Pius would explain, “because those of our players who are Muslim will not agree to play for a team that is paid for by alcohol. It would not be ethical for them to be part of that team. And so to accept that sponsorship would be to exclude players of a certain religion. And that in itself would not be ethical.”
The children and Titi would look at Pius with big eyes.
Angel would change the subject.
But today Angel was grateful for those discussions because they had helped her to know what to do this morning. Obviously she must warn her friend about Captain Calixte; it would be wrong not to. But Captain Calixte was her customer, so she was obliged to be professional and to keep her conversation with him confidential; therefore it would not be right to tell her friend. Clearly, she could not have the girl as a friend and the soldier as a customer. But if she did not accept the soldier as a customer—if she refused to make a cake for him—it was possible that he could persuade other people not to do business with her. And if she did accept him as a customer, he might send a lot of business her way from his friends in the army. So which was more important: friendship or business? That was going to be a good question to discuss with the Girls Who Mean Business.
At the school gates, two girls in smart school uniform were waiting to welcome Angel and to lead her to the classroom where the club was meeting and where Sophie was waiting for her. Angel tried to insist that Bosco should go home because without the cake to carry it would be fine for her to travel home in a minibus-taxi, but Bosco was vehement about waiting there for her.
The talk went very well indeed: the girls were excited and interested, and there was not a single problem with language that could not be overcome. Some were grateful to discover that Angel had a business and a family, as they had imagined that they were going to have to choose one over the other. And Angel’s story about ethics—she made sure that they recognised that she was not naming the soldier or anyone he spoke about as that would not be ethical even though he had not become her customer—sparked a lively debate. The cake, of course, was a tremendous success.
At the end of the talk, the president of the club stood up and gave a short speech, thanking Angel in particular for her practical tips which were so welcome after Professor Pillay’s theoretical analysis, and Angel was presented with a gift: a small picture-frame woven from strips of banana-fibre. The applause warmed Angel’s heart, more than making up for her difficult morning.
Leaving Sophie to gather up her books and lock the classroom, Angel walked to the Pajero carrying the now empty cake-board at her side, with her photo album tucked under her arm, and holding in her other hand the slice of cake that she had saved for Bosco. He was not in the vehicle. She looked around and saw him sitting in the shade of a tree, talking to a girl in school uniform. Leaving the cake-board leaning against the Pajero and the photo album on the vehicle’s roof, she made her way towards the tree.
Seeing her heading towards him, Bosco scrambled to his feet, brushing down his trousers to rid them of any leaves or dirt that they may have picked up.
“Hello, Auntie. Did it go well?”
“Very! Eh, I’ve enjoyed myself this afternoon!”
Bosco indicated the girl, who had picked herself up and dusted herself down much more delicately than he had. “Auntie, please meet my friend Alice.”
“Eh! Alice!” said Angel, shaking the girl by the hand. “I’m happy to meet you.”
“I’m happy to meet you, too, Auntie.” The girl spoke to her in English. “I’m sorry that my Swahili is not good, but I have a good English teacher.”
“Miss Sophie is your teacher?”
“Yes, Auntie. We are very lucky to have an English teacher who has come to us from far away in England.”
“Very lucky,” agreed Angel. “Bosco has been telling me for a long time that he will introduce you to me soon.”
Bosco grinned. “This afternoon I told you it would be very, very soon, Auntie.”
“That is true, Bosco. So, Alice, I believe you are the friend of Odile’s brother’s wife’s sister?”
“Yes, Auntie. My friend is here at this school with me, and it is her older sister who is married to Odile’s brother Emmanuel.” The girl’s pretty smile transformed her rather plain face.
“And are you not a Girl Who Means Business?”
Alice laughed. “No, Auntie, I am a girl who will study at university.”
“That is very good. Eh, Bosco, I saved a piece of cake for you, but now I see that I should have saved two pieces.”
“No problem, Auntie,” said Bosco, taking the piece of cake that was wrapped in a paper napkin and giving it to Alice. “I’ve tasted Auntie’s cakes before, but now it is Alice’s turn.”
“Oh, thank you, Bosco. Thank you, Auntie. I will not share this with my friend because she has already had a piece; she is a Girl Who Means Business. I will hear from her everything that you said, Auntie.”
“That is good.” From the corner of her eye, Angel saw Sophie walking towards the Pajero to get a lift back to the compound with her and Bosco. She shook Alice by the hand again and told Bosco to take his time saying goodbye to Alice as she wanted to hear Sophie’s opinion of her talk. Bosco gave her the keys to the vehicle.
As soon as the two women were settled inside the Pajero, Angel turned around to face Sophie and said, “That friend that I did not name when we were talking about the ethical question of that soldier that I did not name?”
“Mm?”
“Sophie, that friend is you.”