The Apex Book of World SF 2 (8 page)

 

Osati stood on a
makeshift podium of six upturned crates. He shouted loudly and his arm gestures
punctuated his every word. "Too long we have been pushed down," he yelled.
There was a chorus of assent. Some listened to him as they shopped but most of
the people stood still and listened closely. "Because of history we have stayed
quiet. Over and over we are reminded of what our fathers did to their fathers
as an excuse. They forget what their fathers did to ours. But why should I
expect anything to be fair. That is childish of me. After all, there have been
no free elections in twelve years. After all, the high positions of the
government are all occupied by Hutus. After all, when there is a drought their
families get relief while ours have to struggle.

"We have not always
been weak and subjugated. We once had influence and Tutsi children could walk
with pride. Our children…"

Osati continued on
the theme of children for a few minutes and then ended by promising that a new
future for Burundi could be shaped. There was clapping and chanting when he
finished. Katulo had to admit Osati's words were stirring. Osati walked through
the crowd shaking hands. People looked at him with the reverence they would
give a prophet.

When Osati saw
Katulo he smiled. "I would not have expected to see you here. You've never come
to see me speak before."

"I didn't want to encourage
you."

"You've finally
given up hope that I'll give it all up and decide to be a healer?"

"Maybe."

"How is Chama?"

"He's recovering.
Not conscious yet."

"I must apologise to
you," there was a fervour in Osati's voice. "When I brought Chama to you, I was
tired and angry. I did not treat you with respect."

"I understand."

"I have been angry
with you for a long time. At the wedding, when you did the Waking, I realised
part of me resented that you never could teach me that skill."

"I pushed you too
hard."

"You were right when
you said the wedding should go on," Osati admitted. "We needed that beauty in
this time of struggle."

Katulo felt bothered
by Osati's use of the word "struggle". His former apprentice fancied himself as
a hero, leading Burundi boldly to a Third Revolution. "There are some things
that I also have to admit you are right about," Katulo conceded. "There have
been no elections, and the government is mostly Hutu. You are right that
changes are needed, but this is not the right way."

"What way do you
think this is?"

"Violence."

"Did you hear me say
one word about violence?"

"You were throwing
stones in the city."

"We hurt nobody.
Chama is the one lying in your clinic."

"I went to see
Minister Kalé."

"And what did he
say?" Osati's voice was rich with contempt.

"He will get the
boys who attacked you to apologise publicly, if you apologise publicly for the
vandalism."

Osati laughed
raucously.

"It would just be to
calm things down."

"Things don't need
to be calmed down. I can't believe you expected me to agree to this. Maybe if
they are put on trial."

"Maybe later."

"Go away, Katulo.
Stick to tending patients in your clinic."

Osati started to
turn away.

"If you had only
been alive during the massacres."

Osati whirled,
filled with rage. "It always comes back to that with you old people. Oh, oh,
our terrible past. Oh, the lives lost in the massacres. It's the past. What? We
should be docile and let ourselves be ground under the boot of the Hutus
because of a memory? "

"You can't know how
bad it was. When I was fourteen I followed my father and some men to a school…"

"I mourn for all the
dead but I am not dead. These people here are not dead. Right now, right here,
we are being oppressed." A woman standing nearby clapped her hands at Osati's
words. Osati turned and delivered her all his attention.

Katulo leant heavily
on his walking stick.
What did I expect when I came here? That he would
agree? No. I knew this is what would happen, but I had to try anyway.
Katulo walked away from the market slowly. His body felt more exhausted than it
had in a long time.

8

When Katulo walked
into the clinic, he knew with just one look at Chama. He walked forwards and
pressed a finger against his pulse. It was as he had feared. Chama was dead.

 

How could it have happened?
He had been recovering, but Katulo knew as he thought this that nothing was
certain after a wound like Chama's. A sudden seizure or a spasm could change
everything.
If I had only been here,
he cursed himself.
Why did I
have to go to that bloody market? Maybe I could have…

The thoughts faded
away and Katulo let go of his walking staff. He crumpled to the floor. His eyes
were focused on Chama's corpse. He knew what he was meant to do next. Contact
the family, tell them what had happened, say those empty words of condolence,
and then…what? Osati would find out. The rage of the villagers would be at a
peak. And then…what? Suddenly, he was fourteen years old again, standing in
the corridor of the primary school. He felt dizzy. He wished he could hide somewhere
no-one could find him. If only he could disappear with Chama's body and if
no-one knew, if it had never happened, if he went into a dark cave far away, if
no-one ever found out, if he never told anyone, if maybe…

The door opened. "…I
thought I heard you. I didn't know where you…" Eyo saw Katulo on the floor.
He crouched beside him. "Are you all right? Did you fall?"

Katulo spoke slowly.
"Go to the home of Chama's family. You must tell them…"

Eyo looked at the
corpse. "When… How?"

"Go."

Eyo grabbed hold of
Katulo's arms and tried to pull him up.

"Just go." He said
the words harshly.

The wind blew the
door shut after Eyo had left.

Katulo sat there for
a long time. His only movement was the rise and fall of his chest. Inhale.
Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. His mind was only partly in the clinic. The rest
drifted into the past as it did when he was performing a Waking. His muscles
sagged, pulling down his bones with their weight. Sweat made his clothes stick
to him. His head span. An hour passed.

The door flew open.
Chama ran in. He was gasping. "You have to come." He saw Katulo was still on
the ground and his face filled with shock. He repeated himself. "You have to
come. Osati was at Chama's father's house. When he found out, he started
shouting and people came to listen. Then… They are going to Bujumbura."

Katulo was still not
responding.

"Chama's father. He
opened the police station. He gave them guns."

Katulo looked up
now.

"They said they will
take Chama's killers by force."

Katulo could see it
as clearly as if it had already happened. There would be shouting and
screaming. The police would be called. The mob would be angry, scared, and
carrying guns. The police would be nervous, angry, and carry guns. Someone
would shoot first. It wouldn't matter which side. There would be a death, Hutu
or Tutsi. And that would just be the beginning. It would begin in Bujumbura and
spread to the rest of the country. Rage, beatings, killings, accusations,
running, hiding, homes being burnt down…things that people swore would never
happen again. And he could do nothing.

"You have to come,"
Eyo said for a third time. "Please."

And what can I do?
Eyo was looking at him with so much hope. Eyo, who symbolised his own hopes to pass on the skill
of Waking. "I will come," he said at last. His skills as a healer would be
needed.

He got up. "How long
ago did they go?"

"I ran here. They
were on the way to the police station."

"We won't be able to
catch them but if we hurry we will arrive in Bujumbura just after them."

Katulo wished there
was a car they could take but the only car in the village had no gasoline.
Burundi's petrol reserves had run dry over a decade ago. Katulo accepted Eyo's
help to stand up. He and Eyo collected up his medical supplies and stuffed them
into a leather bag. Katulo went to his house and packed the extra bandages he
kept underneath a closet. Beside the boxes of medicines, he saw a machete. He
used it occasionally to garden behind his house. It made him think of Chama's
wound, the catalyst for the violence that was sure to happen later. He picked
up the machete and stuffed it into the bag.

9

Osati and four
hundred and seventeen men and women from Azamé village were shouting in
Bujumbura's streets by the time Katulo and Eyo arrived. They were demanding the
killers of Chama be brought in front of them. Twenty of them were carrying guns
and the rest had rakes, machetes, spades and broom handles. Osati was standing
on top of a cart shouting, "We want them. Bring them out."

 

There were hundreds
of other people there, too. "Go away, you Tutsi scum," Katulo heard someone
shout. There was a group of Bujumbura citizens facing the villagers. Many of
them were also carrying makeshift weapons. Osati tried to make his way through
the entropy. His walking stick was knocked from under him. He started to fall
but Eyo caught him and the wooden staff. They continued through.

A shrill whistle
sounded. It announced the arrival of a third group. The police. They were
wearing riot gear and holding up batons. A few were holding up guns. One of
them spoke through a megaphone. "Go home, go home now."

The presence of the
police added more volatility to the already tense masses. Unease rippled
through the mob. Eyo shouted something but Katulo could not hear him through
the din. Katulo saw a woman whose son he had treated for tonsillitis, crouch.
She had two sons, a six-year-old and a ten-year-old. When she stood up, she was
holding a stone. She flung it and it struck the side of a face. In response, a
wooden pole rose and was brought down on the head of a Tutsi villager. Beside
the man the pole had struck stood a man with a gun. He pointed it. The trigger
was squeezed. The bullet tore through the shoulder of the man holding the pole.

Katulo reached into
his medical bag. He had wished it would not be necessary but this was only the
beginning of the bloodshed. Soon, people would begin to die. There was only one
thing Katulo could do. His hand was trembling. He grabbed the hilt of the
machete and he pulled it out. He opened himself to the land. He felt the
streets around him and reached into them. He pulled out the past. In his mind,
he was fourteen years old again, out of breath and desperately afraid his
father was dead. He was sprinting down that school corridor again, with every
step getting closer to those terrible sounds: shrieks and gurgles and wails. At
the end of the corridor, opposite a sign that said "EMERGENCY EXIT", there was
a half-open door. Katulo looked in and he saw a pile of bodies. They were tiny,
frail children's bodies stacked up like bricks of flesh and bone. The children
who were still alive were standing in a line and clutching each other. Katulo
saw his father and the other men walking down the line. He saw his father push
a uniform-clad six-year-old Hutu to the floor and swing his machete. He did not
slash her only once. He lifted it again and then brought it down over and over
again. Hacking.

The revulsion and
confusion Katulo had felt returned to him. He had run away. He had hidden in
the forest, wept alone, and then returned home before nightfall. He did not
mention what he had seen. When he saw his father again, he hugged him and
pretended he had not been there. He had never mentioned that day. He had
decided never to let that memory control him but now he had to let it. It
suffused him. But the memory was not enough. Katulo had never killed so the
land could not Wake unless…

His fingers tensed
against the machete's hilt and with an abrupt swipe he brought the blade down
against Eyo's neck. He saw shock in Eyo's eyes for a split-second and then the
blade crushed his apprentice's throat. Blood sprayed and dripped down the blade
onto his clenched fingers.

All around Katulo,
people gasped. Suddenly, smoky figures had appeared in their midst. Most
Wakings called a few. Forty or fifty spirits was the most Katulo had seen at a
Waking. But the streets of Bujumbura were deeply scarred. Wounds that had been
closed and ignored for seven decades ripped open. Screams deafened Katulo and
all around, echoes of viciousness were reanimated. Hundreds of spectral men
appeared in the streets strangling each other, lashing bare backs with vine
whips, stabbing, shooting and rejoicing. Near one wall, a vague figure lifted a
baby and smashed its head against the wall. On the floor in front of some Azamé
villagers, a man in a soldier's uniform raped a woman with the sharp end of a
kitchen knife. The living watched with horror.

The Waking was not
restricted to the streets. Throughout Bujumbura men and women saw
monstrosities. In a bar, laughing patrons were choked into silence when six
figures materialised in front of them. Five of them stood around a single man
and were beating him mercilessly. In one house, a couple's conversation was
interrupted by the appearance of a man kneeling on the floor with his face in a
mound of dung. Behind him, another man was laughing and pressing a gun against
his temple. There was a loud bang and the kneeling man died.

There was blood, so
much blood. The living could smell it so strongly they could taste it. They
felt the rage and desperate lust for revenge consuming the awakened spirits.
Some of the living ran to escape the horrors they were witnessing, but in every
street they ran into there was more. Old pain and old death celebrated at being
rekindled. Forgotten cruelty ran rampant.