The Past Ahead: A Novel

CHAPTER NINE

N I N E 153. Getting up at last, recovered from his blackout, Niko had the odd sensation that the air had changed; it entered his nostrils with greater difficulty and blocked his lungs like a gooey liquid. Besides being heavy, the air seemed noisier to him. A combination of songs, speeches, cries, explosions, and prayers filled his ears. All the stages of his dream, nightmare or delirium, were piling up inside his head: the old woman, the young girl, the scattering of his body, the goat, the story of the clouds, the cave and the crows, the tree of life. Then there was the pain in his head as well, and the fatigue that weighed each part of his body down to the point where he had the impression it was a leaden skeleton that kept him upright. 154. As he chases away his drowsiness with yawns and stretches, he hears cries and then sees Hyacinthe running past the workshop. She throws him a panic-stricken look but doesn’t stop. A group of men is in pursuit, machetes and clubs in hand. Without thinking about what he’s doing, Niko drops a jar, and the noise catches the attention of the group that stops and now heads in his direction. “Let her run,” one of the men lashes out, visibly out of breath. “She won’t get very far in any case. If we don’t find her later others will take care of it.” Niko pretends he hasn’t seen them and gathers up the pieces of the jar. “Is that Niko the joker or am I dreaming?” the man goes on. “They’re looking for you everywhere, Niko the Monkey.” “Why were you hiding?” another voice continues. THE PAST AHEAD 79 “You can answer at least, you idiot. Such insolence!” yells the one who appears to be the leader, pointing his weapon at him. “He’s mute,” corrects one of the men, whom Niko thinks he’s seen before, maybe at school. Alphonse, he remembers. At the same time, as if the tree of life in his dream had taken the place of his brain, he sees the leaf again, whose dates had been missing: “Alphonse Munyejabo, scientific studies, merchant, married to Isabelle Uwimana, no children , killer, life imprisonment.” “Why are you hiding?” “Does anyone know this man?” the leader barks. No one responds, not even Alphonse. Why are the others whom he recognizes pretending never to have seen him before? How can they be looking for him without knowing who he is? Someone whispers something in the leader’s ear. “Come with us!” they shout at him. 155. He hears them talking about him. The leader, who apparently is not from the region, asks whether he is really mute. They all confirm it. “As mute as a grave, and always has been,” corroborates Alphonse , who seems to have found his memory again. “Fine. And is he with us or not? If not, we don’t need to drag him along. We’ll make him a head shorter right here and that’ll be that.” “His father is with us, but his mother, who’s been dead a long time, was a barbarian,” Alphonse continues. “I wouldn’t be so sure about his father, because he did remarry another mole. Is a brother who marries a mole, even when life gives him another chance to correct his choice, still one of us?” “Certainly not,” the leader cuts in. “Besides, we’ll go find him, and his son will have to cut him down himself if he wants to be one of us. That’ll be the sign of his goodwill. Otherwise we’ll kill them both.” 156. The wasteland where he’d spent so much time playing when he was small is a place of unusual and unsettling bustle. He wonders where all these people could be coming from. As he comes closer he notes that the swarm isn’t as chaotic as it seems. People chained together like him are sitting in the middle of the field. 80 GILBERT GATORE Mutilated corpses are piled up in the back. Men carrying all kinds of weapons are circulating around and between these two groups. Most of them carry machetes, but some also have clubs, lances, bows, sickles, pitchforks, and scissors—anything that can be used to strike, stab, or slash. Some of the men, generally...