9
THE SEASON OF small rains had come to Kigali, settling the dust and bringing short and sudden showers that the dry red soil drank thirstily. But the rain had done little to improve the water shortage in the city, and for the past hour or so the taps in Angel’s apartment had failed to yield as much as a drop. Fortunately the Tungarazas kept a yellow plastic jerry-can in the kitchen which was always full of water so that tea could still be made under such circumstances.
Angel and Thérèse now sat sipping their tea in the shade of the compound’s yard as they waited for the results of the baking lesson to cool. Thérèse examined the notes that she had been making on a sheet of paper.
“So, if a four-egg cake needs two cups of flour and a cup each of sugar and Blue Band, can we say that for each and every egg there must be half a cup of flour and a quarter of a cup each of sugar and Blue Band?”
“Exactly, Thérèse. And half a teaspoon of baking powder. You mustn’t forget the baking powder, because without it the cake will not rise. When I came to your house to test your oven, that mixture that I brought with me had only two eggs and one cup of flour. That was a very small cake, but it’s wasteful to make a big cake in an oven that might not work.”
“I was so happy that it worked!” declared Thérèse. “I remember as we waited for that cake to bake, I was afraid that it would come out in one of the ways that you had warned me, that it would burn on one side or rise higher on one side than the other. But it came out just perfect and eh, I was relieved.”
Angel had met Thérèse during one of her visits to the centre in Biryogo where Odile worked. Thérèse had sought her out as she sat chatting to a woman who lay on a mat on the floor of the small hospice area at the back of the centre.
“Madame,” Thérèse had said, “I believe you are the lady of the cakes.”
“Yes, I am. My name is Angel.”
“I am Thérèse.” They shook hands. “Nurse Odile told me that you were here.”
Angel glanced at the woman lying on the mat; she was now drifting towards sleep. “Please sit with us, Thérèse. I don’t want to leave this lady alone.”
Thérèse lowered herself to the ground, sitting opposite Angel with her legs stretched out in front of her. Unwittingly, she blocked from Angel’s view the mother and baby who had unsettled her like a hundred startled frogs leaping into a still pond. For a moment—just a brief moment—the mother and her desperately ill little one had looked like Vinas and her third baby, the one who was late after only a few months.
Angel smiled with relief at the woman who now offered those hundred frogs the opportunity to climb back on to dry land and to settle there, allowing the water in the pond to be still again. “Tell me about yourself, Thérèse, and tell me why you have come to talk to the lady of the cakes.”
Thérèse smiled back. Something about her reminded Angel of her granddaughter Grace: she was tall and slight, but with an air of strength.
“I am sick, Angel, but I am well. I’m lucky that the centre has chosen me to receive the medication. I have two young daughters and I must remain well to look after them until they grow big.” Angel found herself having to concentrate: Thérèse spoke with the rapid fire of an AK-47. “My husband is late and also my youngest child, a boy, but my girls are well; they are not sick. It’s my responsibility to earn money to feed us all and to send my girls to school. If they can complete their schooling, then one day they’ll be able to live in a better part of Kigali than Biryogo.”
Angel took advantage of a brief silence as Thérèse paused to reload. “That is a good dream for your girls. How are you earning money, Thérèse?”
“That has been a problem because I don’t have a job. But, Angel, I have an oven! It belonged to my husband’s mother and it came to me after she was late and I never used it because it needed a tank of gas and that is too expensive. We were using the oven as a cupboard, but then I heard about you and I got the idea that maybe I can use it to bake some cakes and sell them.”
“That is a very good idea!”
“Yes. I’ve been buying boxes of tomatoes at the market and then selling them in small bags on the street, and from that I’ve managed to save money. Now I have enough to buy a tank of gas, and I’ve cleaned the oven and it’s ready to use for baking cakes.”
“Eh, you’ve worked hard.”
“Yes. But I don’t know how to bake cakes.”
“Eh?”
“No. So I’m asking you, Angel, will you teach me how?” Angel had explained to Thérèse that it was not every oven that could bake a cake: some were too slow, some became too hot and some became hotter on one side than the other. First they would have to test Thérèse’s oven, and if it was a good oven for cakes, then Angel would be very happy to teach her. The following week Angel had visited Thérèse, taking with her a small baking tin—already greased and floured—and a plastic container that had once held Blue Band margarine, in which the mixed ingredients for a two-egg cake were sealed.
The gas oven had stood gleaming in the corner of the cramped one-room home, with the tank of gas standing next to it. Angel could see at once that the oven was tilting slightly backwards on the uneven surface of the bare soil on which it stood. She had sent Thérèse’s daughters to ask around amongst the neighbours for the loan of a bottle of Fanta, and when the girls had returned, she had laid the bottle on its side on the top of the oven. Together with Thérèse, she had pushed bits of cardboard under the two back feet of the oven until the girls, standing on a crate to see, had declared that the bubble of air was now in the middle of the bright orange liquid in the bottle. The oven was now level.
Anxiously, they had waited for the oven to heat up to number three on the dial, and then they had put the cake inside and waited anxiously again while it baked. Angel had found herself regretting that she had brought the batter from home already mixed: perhaps Thérèse’s girls would have enjoyed—as Vinas always had—scraping their small fingers around the sides of the mixing bowl and licking them clean. Neighbours had joined them in their vigil. When Angel had at last declared the cake done and withdrawn it from the oven to reveal an evenly browned, level surface, the neighbours had erupted in applause and Thérèse had shed a few tears. Somehow, that two-egg cake had stretched far enough to allow every onlooker a taste.
Now the time had arrived for Thérèse to learn how to bake her own cakes, and her first efforts were cooling in Angel’s apartment as the two women sat in the yard drinking their tea.
Angel was about to speak when Prosper came down the stairs into the yard, stamping his feet down hard on each step and muttering to himself angrily. Ignoring Angel’s greeting, he marched to the door of his office, unlocked it and went inside, slamming it shut behind him.
“Eh! Why is that man angry?” asked Thérèse.
“I don’t know,” replied Angel. “Maybe he went to drink Primus at the bar nearby and he found it closed.”
“Eh, my husband was like that,” said Thérèse. “When there was no beer in his belly, it was like two armies were fighting each other inside his head.”
“Eh, and with others it’s the beer itself that invites those armies into their heads and then lines them up against each other.”
Both women shook their heads and tutted for a while, then Angel said, “When we’ve finished our tea, I’ll teach you how to make two kinds of icing, one with Blue Band and one with water.” She shifted slightly on her kanga to move her bare feet out of the encroaching sunlight. “It’s enough to know how to make those two kinds. There are other kinds, but they’re expensive because they need chocolate or eggs.”
“No, I don’t want to know about expensive icing. I’m not going to be a person who makes expensive cakes, and I don’t think that I’ll take orders for beautiful colours and shapes like in your photo album. I think I’ll mostly make cupcakes, because those will be easy to sell on the street, and then I can make a big cake when there’s a big event like soccer or basketball, and I can sell slices there.”
“That’s a good plan.”
“I think I’ll make more money from cakes than from tomatoes.”
“That is true,” agreed Angel. “There are many tomatoes in Kigali, and anybody can sell a tomato. A tomato is not a special thing. But a cake is a very special thing.”
“Very special,” agreed Thérèse. “It is only a person who has an oven who can bake a cake.”
Smiling, they drank their tea quietly for a few moments as Angel prepared herself to raise a subject that, when she allowed herself to focus on it, troubled her deeply.
“Tell me, Thérèse, may I ask you a personal question?”
“Of course, Angel.”
“Is your mother still alive?”
“My mother? No, unfortunately she’s late.”
“And did you … Did you ever tell her that you were sick?”
Thérèse took a sip of her tea before answering. “Yes, I did. It was only when my baby boy died that they advised me to have the test. I was shocked when they told me I was positive—”
Angel interrupted. “Odile told me that that is the way, the time, that many mothers discover that they’re positive. When a baby is late.”
“It’s true, Angel.”
“And, Thérèse, how was it when you told your mother?”
“Eh, it’s a very hard thing to tell a mother! And I regret so much that I told mine. It upset her too much. Truly, Angel, I think it was my news that made her late so soon.”
“Eh?”
“It shocked her too much, and I think she preferred to die before she had to watch me die. We didn’t know then about the medication. If I could go back in time and untell her, she could be alive today and not worrying about me being sick—because I’m well.”
“That is not an easy thought for you to have, Thérèse. I’m sorry.” Angel swallowed a sip of tea. “Now … say you met a girl who was sick. Would you advise her not to tell her mother?”
“Eh! That is a very difficult question to answer. Each and every case is different, and only the girl herself will know what to do.” She drained her mug. “Although, in my case I thought I knew what to do but I did the wrong thing. I wish I hadn’t told the truth, Angel. A lie would have been so much kinder to my mother. Sometimes a lie can hold more love in its heart than the truth.”
Angel was contemplating this when a shout began in the street, distant at first and then brought nearer by voices closer to the compound: “Amazi! Water.”
“Eh, the water has come back,” said Angel, scrambling to her feet. “Let us wash the mixing bowls so that we can make the icing.”
LATER, as they had arranged, Angel and Thérèse knocked on the door of Jenna’s apartment. It was exactly eleven-thirty.
“Perfect timing, Angel,” said Jenna, opening the door. “We’ve just finished today’s lesson.”
“That’s good,” said Angel. “Jenna, this is Thérèse, my student.”
“Delighted to meet you, Thérèse,” said Jenna in French, shaking Thérèse’s hand. “Let me introduce you to my students. That’s Leocadie, and next to her is Agathe, and on the other side of the table there’s Eugenia and Inés.”
Thérèse worked her way around the table, greeting the women in Kinyarwanda and shaking each of them by the hand.
“Good morning, ladies,” said Angel in English. “I’m sorry that I don’t know French, and if I speak Swahili then Jenna and Agathe will not understand me, and if I speak the small bit of Kinyarwanda that I know, Jenna won’t understand me. So I’m going to speak in English and Jenna will repeat after me in French.”
As Jenna translated, Angel put down the plate that she had been holding.
“Ladies, you are honoured to be the first people in Kigali to taste cakes baked by our sister Thérèse.” As Jenna translated, everyone looked at Thérèse, who beamed and dipped her head. “It’s a new business for her; a new way of supporting her two girls. Our job today is to taste these cakes and to help Thérèse with our opinions and advice.”
Nestled together on the plate were a number of cupcakes: half of them decorated with pale yellow butter icing—made with margarine—and half with white glacé icing. Not wanting to spoil her first cakes in any way, Thérèse had been too nervous to add colour to her own icing, but she had observed and taken notes as Angel had coloured the icing for her own batch of cupcakes. She had been amazed by the number of colours it was possible to make from just three: red, blue and yellow.
Jenna and her students applied themselves earnestly to their task. The cakes were unanimously declared to be extremely delicious, and there was discussion about which type of icing would be more popular. Finally, agreement was reached that, while some adults might prefer the glacé icing, children would probably prefer the butter icing—and that Thérèse could probably charge more for a cake with butter icing on it because it made the cake look a bit bigger.
“Eh, that is very good advice,” said Thérèse. “Thank you. Now I’m going to ask my teacher to try one of my cakes, and then I’m going to eat one myself.”
Silently, six pairs of eyes watched Angel as she peeled away the paper case and took a bite. She chewed slowly, savouring her mouthful, then swallowed.
“Thérèse,” she said, with a serious and solemn expression befitting a teacher, “this is a very fine cake indeed.”
Five pairs of eyes swung towards Jenna, who mimicked Angel’s expression as she translated. The women erupted into laughter and applause, and finally Thérèse felt that she could relax and eat a cake herself. As she took her first mouthful, a broad grin spread across her face.
“Okay, ladies,” said Jenna, clapping her hands together with an air of authority, “time to go. You all need to get back to your jobs, and I need to make this place look like you were never here before my husband even thinks about coming home for lunch.”
“Eh, Inés,” said Angel as the women walked down the stairs, “I think you should fetch Prosper from his office before you go and open up the bar. I think he wanted to have a beer there earlier when you were closed for your lesson.”
“Eh, that Prosper!” said Inés, shaking her head. “I’ve told him many times that the bar is shut from half-past ten to half-past eleven on weekdays now.”
“I’m sure that he doesn’t want to accept that,” said Eugenia. “When there’s something that a man wants, it is now that he wants that something. Waiting is something that is very difficult for a man to do.”
Angel thought of Eugenia being sent to get condoms for the Egyptian.
“Eh, men?” said Leocadie, shaking her head. “Uh-uh.” “Men? Uh-uh-uh,” agreed Inés.
“And my shop was shut, too,” said Leocadie. “Prosper couldn’t buy beer there, either.”
“Exactly,” said Angel. “Now he’s sitting inside his office with the door shut, and you know there’s no window there, and no light. He’s sitting in the dark.”
The women laughed. They had reached ground level now.
“Okay,” said Inés with a sigh. “I’ll go and get him.” She headed towards the stairs leading down into the yard.
“Eh, and make sure he takes his Bible with him,” Angel called after her, still laughing. “Ask him to show you the verses that talk about the virtue of patience.”
EARLY that afternoon, just after Titi had finished washing up after lunch and had settled for her afternoon nap, Angel received a surprise visitor.
“Gasana! Welcome!” she said, ushering the translator into the apartment. “Children, you remember Mr Gasana, who works with Baba? We went to Cyangugu with him.”
Gasana stretched across the coffee table around which the children sat on the floor, and on which their homework books vied for space, shaking each of the children by the hand.
“I can’t stay long, Mrs T; the driver has just dropped me here while he goes for fuel, and then he’s taking me to a meeting. But I need to discuss some business with you very quickly.”
“Then let us sit at my work table,” said Angel, indicating an upright wooden chair next to the table and sitting on another herself. “Do you want to make changes to your order?”
“In a way, Mrs T. I know from your Cake Order Form that I signed that it’s not possible for my deposit to be refunded, so I’m not actually cancelling my order. But I was wondering, Mrs T, could I postpone it?”
Angel considered this. “So you want to change the delivery date?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure yet what date I’ll need the cake.”
“But is it not for the first meeting of your new book club? Are the people not able to come?”
“Eh, Mrs T, it’s me who is unable to come! The others are still very excited. Everybody has managed to read Things Fall Apart, even though we have only one copy, and we’re all ready to discuss it. But I’ve just received news that my brother in Byumba is late.”
“Eh, Gasana! I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Mrs T. So now I’ll have to go and arrange for burial, and of course I can’t be here for the book club this weekend. I’ve spoken to some of the others, and they say they don’t want to have the meeting without me because the club was my idea, and it’s my book.”
“Of course.”
“And I don’t know yet when everybody will be free again, so I can’t set the date yet.”
“No, I understand. You can just tell me when you’re going to be ready for the cake. I’m sure it will be soon.”
“I hope so,” said Gasana, but he shook his head. “Eh, Mrs T, I’m obliged to inherit my brother’s wife and his four children. Obviously we cannot all fit in my small house. I don’t know how I’m going to afford to have a wife and children. Marriage was not in my immediate three-year plan.”
“That is very difficult,” Angel sympathised. “It was not in our immediate three-year plan to raise five more children, but circumstances arose that made us have to change our plan.”
Gasana glanced at the children. “I understand your situation, because Dr T has told me, more specifically about your son. And to tell the truth, Mrs T, I think my brother was sick, and that is why he’s late. Now I don’t know about his wife and the children. I don’t know if they’re well.”
“Let us pray, Gasana,” said Angel. “I hope you won’t think that I’m being too direct if I suggest to you that you should … be careful?” This advice surprised Angel herself: before getting to know Odile and spending time at the centre, she would have considered such a subject too delicate even to think about, let alone to mention openly.
Gasana laughed. “No, you’re not too direct, Mrs T! In fact, nobody is direct like Dr Rejoice, and she’s already given me a lecture and a big handful of Prudence! She’s one of the people who’ll be in the book club. Eh, Mrs T, are you sure I can’t persuade you to change your mind and join the club? All the books we’ll read will be in English.”
“Thank you, Gasana, but I told you before that I’m not an educated somebody; I’m not somebody to read books. But you know, I’m going to make an exception in your case and return your deposit to you, because I haven’t used it yet to buy ingredients.” Angel reached into her brassiere and removed some banknotes. “I’m sure you’ll need this money for the funeral.”
“Mrs T, I’m very grateful to you.” Gasana accepted the money that Angel counted out and handed to him. “Thank you for understanding my situation.” He glanced at his watch. “Where is that driver now? I must be at the Ministry of Justice by half-past two!”
“The Ministry of Justice! That sounds important. What are you doing there?”
“Earning money for KIST as usual!” Gasana replied. “Eh, your husband is very good at hiring out my services! There’s a big report there that needs translating from French to English. I don’t know many details yet; this is the first meeting about it.”
“Actually, I needed a translator myself, today,” said Angel. “I’m picking up bits of Kinyarwanda okay, but French is very hard for me. I wish I had my late daughter’s language skills. Eh! Already as a child she knew Swahili and English on top of Haya, our home language in Bukoba, and then she learned some German from her father. Pius had to know it for his studies. I know if she was here she’d be picking up French like that.” Angel clicked her thumb and middle finger together rapidly several times.
“French is a difficult language just to pick up, Mrs T. You should take some lessons. We teach it at KIST in the evenings, you know? And we also teach English. Our president has said that everybody should become bilingual.”
“Yes, I know. But, Gasana, is everybody here not already bilingual?”
“Mrs T?”
“Well, I’ve looked in the children’s dictionary, and it says there that bilingual means you can speak two languages. People here can already speak two languages at least: Kinyarwanda and French, or Kinyarwanda and Swahili, or some other two. But when your president talks about bilingual, he means only English and French—Wazungu languages. Does he mean to say that our own African languages are not languages?”
“Eh, Mrs T! Now you’re speaking like somebody who reads books! Really, you should join our book club! Or at least come to our university to learn French.”
Angel smiled. “I can’t attend evening classes, Gasana. Evenings are a time for me to be with my family; and I can’t spend our money on private lessons during the day.”
A loud and insistent hooting started up outside the compound.
“Eh! That’s the driver!” declared Gasana, and he jumped up from his chair, shook Angel by the hand, thanked her again and shouted goodbyes to the children as he hurtled out of the apartment.
Angel looked at her watch. It was almost half-past two; she had half an hour to supervise the children’s homework before Mrs Mukherjee would arrive with her sons Rajesh and Kamal, and their nanny Miremba.
At five to three, she sent Grace and Faith up to Safiya’s apartment to continue with their homework, and woke Titi from her afternoon nap. At exactly three o’clock the Mukherjees arrived, and Angel suggested that Titi and Miremba should take all the boys down to the yard with their soccer ball so that she and Mama-Rajesh could talk business.
“Yard is safe, no?” asked Mrs Mukherjee, a thin, nervous woman who was constantly wringing her bony hands together.
“Completely safe,” assured Angel. “The children play there every day.”
“Not too much of germs?”
This was difficult. Angel knew from Dr Rejoice that there were germs everywhere, so of course there must be germs in the yard. But Dr Rejoice had also told her that it was wrong to protect children from all germs. That was the fashion in Europe now, and many Wazungu were becoming sick because they had never learnt how to fight germs when they were small. But Angel did not think it would be useful to try to explain that to Mrs Mukherjee.
“No germs,” she assured her.
The boys and their carers were dispatched to the yard and Mrs Mukherjee stationed herself at the window to watch them while Angel made tea. She was barely able to coax her guest away from the window when she brought the tea and cupcakes to the coffee table, and it was with a great show of reluctance that the woman sat down opposite her. Angel tried to distract her from the imminent deaths of her boys in the yard.
“These cakes look beautiful with your outfit,” she said. She had deliberately picked out the cakes from the morning’s colour-mixing lesson that would complement the deep purple of her guest’s salwar kameez. She eyed the design of the outfit now: surely the long dress over the trousers—with slits where it passed over both thighs—would enable a woman to get into and out of a big vehicle elegantly? It looked very fashionable on Mrs Mukherjee’s thin body: would it work over her own expanding hips?
Mrs Mukherjee gave the plate of cakes a cursory glance. “Mrs Tungaraza, did you read New Vision?”
“Call me Angel, please, Mrs Mukherjee. I do read it sometimes.” Once or twice a week Pius would bring a copy of the Ugandan newspaper home.
“Ebola!” declared Mrs Mukherjee, leaning forward across the coffee table with an air of conspiracy. Then she sat back in her chair and said again, this time almost defiantly, “Ebola!”
Angel was not quite sure what to make of this. “Has Ebola come to Kigali?”
“No!” Mrs Mukherjee’s bony hands flew to the sides of her head for a moment. “No! If Ebola is coming to Kigali then we are booking tickets to Delhi. Immediately!” Her right hand added emphasis to this final word by executing a chopping motion into the palm of her left. She shook her head vehemently.
“Where exactly is this Ebola, Mrs Mukherjee?”
“Uganda!” Mrs Mukherjee raised both her arms in an exaggerated gesture. “Right next door to Rwanda! Ebola is killing in two weeks. Two weeks, Mrs Tungaraza!”
“Angel, please. Let us not be formal.”
“Two weeks. Blood is coming from the eyes, the ears, the nose. Finished!” The chopping motion came again.
“But I think we’re safe here in Kigali.” Angel removed her glasses and began to clean them with the corner of her kanga.
Mrs Mukherjee shook her head. “Ugandans are here! In Kigali! Working with our husbands! Dr Binaisa. Mr Luwandi …”
“But Ebola is not a disease specifically of Ugandans, Mrs Mukherjee.” Angel’s rubbing of her lenses became more insistent.
“Ugandan children are at school with our children. My boys will stay home until the Ebola is finished. I told my husband. I told that it is a Himalayan blunder to send our boys to school when the Ebola is next door. He agrees to my decision.”
Angel had met Mr Mukherjee, who lectured in Information Technology. He was the exact opposite of his wife: big and broad with a quick sense of humour and sensible ideas. He would definitely have disagreed with his wife on this issue, but he probably understood that there was nothing to be gained from saying so. Angel saw the wisdom in this.
“You are very wise, Mrs Mukherjee,” she conceded. “I’ll discuss it with my husband tonight, and perhaps we’ll keep our children at home, too.”
The lie was rewarding: for the first time since her arrival, Angel suddenly had her guest’s full attention. The two women smiled at each other as Angel replaced her glasses.
“Do try your tea, Mrs Mukherjee. I’ve heard that it’s similar to a tea that is made in India.”
Mrs Mukherjee took a sip. “Oh, yes, cardamom. In India we are putting cardamom and lemon in green tea.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit your country,” Angel lied.
“It is a very beautiful country,” beamed Mrs Mukherjee.
“And your country has delicious food, very spicy. In my country, especially along the coast, the cooking is still influenced by the people who came from India to build the railway many years ago.”
Mrs Mukherjee slapped both her hands on her thighs and declared, “I cook for you one day.”
“That will be wonderful. Thank you. But I’ve cooked for you today. Please have a cake.”
Mrs Mukherjee chose a cupcake with lilac icing, peeled away its paper cup and took a bite. Angel savoured the secret that—that very morning—a woman with HIV had stirred that cake mixture to get a feel for the correct consistency. To reveal that secret to Mrs Mukherjee would surely be to send her into a frenzy of panic and ticket-booking.
“Very tasty. Obviously you will bake the cake for my husband’s cousin-brother, no?” “Oh, is he visiting here?”
“Yes. He was in Butare, at the National University. Two-years contract is finishing in three months, but he was deciding to return back early.”
“So he’s on his way back home?”
“For the short visit. Now is time for me and my husband to go home, too. I told my husband no more contract.”
“How long have you been here, Mrs Mukherjee?”
“Almost three years. Three years! I told my husband if he is renewing contract I am taking the boys home to Delhi. Too much of germs are here.” Mrs Mukherjee finished her cupcake.
“Are there no germs in Delhi?”
“The Ebola is not there.” Mrs Mukherjee shook her head vehemently. “And no AIDS.”
Angel resisted the urge to polish her glasses again. Without saying a word, she picked up the plate of cupcakes and held them out to her guest, who took one iced in crimson and peeled away its paper case before continuing.
“And the servants in Delhi are better.”
“Are you not happy with Miremba?”
“She isn’t knowing good English. Now the boys are speaking bad English. But what to do?” Mrs Mukherjee raised both her arms into the air again. “Rwandans are not speaking much of English.”
Mrs Mukherjee was clearly unaware that the reason why Miremba spoke English at all was that she had been raised in Uganda, the country where Ebola was even now killing people in two weeks. Angel must remember to warn Miremba never to reveal this fact to her employers. It was time to move the conversation on.
“So, Mrs Mukherjee, tell me about the cake that you want to order for your husband’s … er … cousin-brother, is it? Will you be having a party to say farewell to him?”
“Yes. Most of the Indian community here will come.”
“And this cousin-brother’s family? Have they been here with him in Butare?”
“No, no. The family is at home in India. He married after already coming here. His parents found a nice girl for him. He went home for marriage and immediately he impregnated his wife. Very successful honeymoon. Very successful. Now he’s going to meet his son at home.”
“Eh, that is something nice for him to look forward to!”
“Yes. Obviously he will try to impregnate again before going for his new job in England.”
“So his family will not go with him to England?”
“No.”
“Does his wife not mind being left alone to raise his children?”
“No, no. His wife is with the parents. She married well, an educated man. No complaints.”
“And you also married an educated man, Mrs Mukherjee. But you came here with him.”
“The boys are older. If they are babies, no. The wife cannot accompany the husband with babies. Better to stay home with the parents.”
Better for the husband, certainly, thought Angel. It was very convenient for him simply to be away for that whole period of sleepless nights and soiling. Angel had herself not accompanied her husband when he went to Germany for his studies, though the children were no longer babies then. When Pius had first gone to do his Master’s degree, Joseph had been eight and Vinas six. After his Master’s, Pius had been awarded another scholarship to do a PhD, so when he finally came home, his children were already fourteen and twelve. Of course, he had come home once a year during that time, and once a year Angel had been able to visit him there, leaving Joseph and Vinas in the care of her parents.
Angel had often wondered about the effect on the children of their father’s long absence. It had certainly made it easier, she felt, for both of them to choose to live far away from their parents: Joseph in Mwanza, where he had an important job as the manager of a factory that manufactured packaging for Lake Victoria’s fishing industry; and Vinas in Arusha, where she taught English. It had probably also influenced Vinas’s love for Winston: it was not unknown for girls who missed their fathers to marry men who were older. And perhaps, Angel acknowledged, her own absences during her annual visits to Pius in Germany had helped to prepare the ground for the distance that had come between her and Vinas.
“And what was your husband’s cousin-brother doing at the National University, Mrs Mukherjee?”
“Also computer, just like my husband. All men in my husband’s family are doing computer.”
“I believe India is an expert country for that.”
“Yes. Now Rwanda is wanting to become the expert country, too. The government of Britain is helping for that—but the power here is on-off, on-off, not like in India. No power outages in India.”
“I have an idea, Mrs Mukherjee. Because most of the Indian community will attend this farewell party, and because India is an expert country in computers and your husband’s cousin-brother is himself an expert in computers, perhaps the cake should look like a computer keyboard?”
Mrs Mukherjee thought about this idea while Angel looked for a page in her photo album.
“I have never made a keyboard cake before, so it will be unique for your husband’s cousin-brother. But here are some other cakes that I’ve made to look like things. This one here is a dump truck, and this one’s a cell-phone, and here’s a micro phone, and an aeroplane. I’ve also made one that looks like a pile of 5,000-franc notes, but that photo is not yet printed.”
Mrs Mukherjee examined the photos carefully. “Computer keyboard,” she said. Then she looked at Angel and said, “Good idea, Mrs Tungaraza. The cake will be computer keyboard.”
“Good!” declared Angel, and for the next few minutes they busied themselves with the Cake Order Form. Angel began by quoting an exorbitant price, knowing that Mrs Mukherjee would insist on negotiating it down. The final price was only slightly lower than what she had hoped to get away with, and since it was substantially lower than the price she had originally quoted to Mrs Mukherjee, both women were happy with the deal. They sat back to finish their tea.
“Tell me, Mrs Mukherjee,” began Angel. “I’m busy organising bride-price for Leocadie who works in the shop in our street. By the way, I’ll be coming to each and every family in the street about that soon. But for now I’m very interested to ask about bride-price in your country. I’ve heard that in India it’s the girl’s parents who must pay bride-price to the boy’s parents.”
“Yes. Dowry. My parents were giving to my husband’s parents the fridge, the freezer, the motor-car. All new; nothing second-hand. Also jewels; many, many jewels. My husband is an educated man, so there were many gifts.”
“Eh! Here it is different. The boy’s parents must give bride-price to the girl’s parents. Pius’s parents gave my parents eight cows. Eight! But they would have taken six. Pius was already close to getting his degree when we married, and he was going to become a teacher. In those days there were not very many boys from Bukoba who were getting degrees at Makerere University in Uganda.” Angel stopped speaking suddenly and looked anxiously at her guest. “Of course, there was no Ebola in Uganda then, Mrs Mukherjee. My parents knew that it was a good marriage for me.”
“Good marriage,” agreed Mrs Mukherjee. “The girl in the shop is not yet married?”
“Leocadie? No. But she’ll marry soon.”
“What about the baby?”
“It’s the father of the baby that she’ll marry.”
Mrs Mukherjee shook her head and raised both her arms in the air. “Baby before marriage is bringing shame to the family!” she declared. “In India, there is no marriage for girls with babies. Those girls are no good.”
“But sometimes a man wants to be sure that a girl is fertile and can deliver a healthy baby. He doesn’t want to find out after he’s already paid bride-price and married a girl that she cannot deliver. And if a girl has already delivered a healthy baby to a man, then her family can negotiate for more cows.”
Mrs Mukherjee shook her head. “No. No good.”
Angel recognised that it was going to be difficult to persuade Mrs Mukherjee to contribute any money to the wedding of Leocadie and Modeste. She would have to try her luck with Mr Mukherjee.
Getting up and walking towards the window, she said, “Shall we call the boys up for some cake?”
AS the Tungarazas ate their supper that night, Angel surprised everyone by declaring that she had decided that she wanted to learn some French.
“Why?” asked Pius. “We can manage fine here with Swahili and English.”
“But when I’m with somebody who doesn’t know Swahili or English, then we can’t talk. Like Agathe from the hairdresser’s. All we can do is smile and nod at each other and then somebody else must be there for us to talk to each other through that person. And today at Jenna’s, everybody there knew French except me.”
The passage of a forkful of steamed matoke from Pius’s plate to his mouth was interrupted long enough for him to say, “But Jenna could translate for you.”
“Yes. But there won’t always be someone there to translate for me. I can’t take such a person with me wherever I go.”
“I hope you don’t want to go for evening classes,” said Pius.
“No, of course not.”
“And a private teacher during the day would be expensive.”
“Yes, I know.”
“We can teach you, Mama,” said Faith. “We’re learning French at school. You can look at our books and we can explain everything to you.”
“Eh, that is a very good idea, Faith, thank you.”
It was exactly what Faith’s mother would have said, and although Angel would have preferred for Vinas herself to be there saying it, it was exactly what she had hoped to hear.