The Interlude #WattysShorts

Chapter 5

The next day, during breakfast, my mother told me that we were going to visit her childhood friend who lived far away. Aunt Alice and her daughter were still enjoying it as slowly as yesterday. My mother dressed me and we set off. It was a difficult climb.

We left behind the hills dressed in red and green and went over rocks. Nothing grew there except a handful of shrubs and a few grasses struggling to find a place in the sun. It was noon. My mother suggested that I walked, tapping my foot to scare away the snakes that were coming out of the rocks at that hour to keep warm. I became frightened. For a while, I had been lamenting dragging behind her but with this revelation I joined her.

Upstairs we reached a flat rock where two houses were perched. One was made of baked bricks and the other of stones painted white and black. My mother's friend was called Colette. They hugged each other tenderly before Colette introduced us to her fiancé, Charles. Both of them were small and thin and were always purring. After eating, Charles was escorted home by his sweetheart and my mother.

My mother gave me some recommendations. Colette's mother, who was considered a witch, lived in the stone house. Under no circumstances should I talk to her, look her in the eye or accept anything from her. 

And if I saw her cat, I should recite a prayer to ward off the spell. Colette left me her rosary which she used to ward off her mother's spells. They left, locking me in the house. To kill time, I counted the stones painted white and then those painted black. As I began to fall asleep, a door, they opened startled me. I stood at the window. The witch was coming out of her house.

Dark skin, almost blue, she was as tall as her daughter was little. Her gestures were full of grace, elegance and an incredible delicacy. She swept the courtyard. Her broom was light and airy, no sound came out of it.

 What a contrast with my aunt! A black cat appeared out of nowhere and jumped on the branch of a shrub. The woman sat on a stool and leaned against the wall to smoke a pipe. She was different from the witches in my school book, all stunted, with crooked noses and long dirty nails. The woman I discovered before me was of a rare beauty and impeccably clean.

After a short while she went back to her house and mist formed on the windows. Was she cooking her potions? My mother and Colette returned. When they saw the black cat, they rushed towards me to see if I had recited the prayer. Completely bewitched by the witch, I had forgotten the cat. So I nodded in order to have peace. We left Colette and my mother advised me not to tell my cousin where we spent the day. Colette's mother had been banished from the village after the spontaneous death of a child. She had been suspected because she was the village healer. My mother sighed and concluded:

"In any case, in the countryside, all healers are half witch doctors, half charlatans. In spite of everything, people still come to see her in secret. Otherwise, how else would she live in this desert?"

That evening, we went out with Aunt Alice's family to the village bar, which had more of a greasy spoon than a bar. I was sitting in a corner with my cousin Christine who asked me a thousand and one questions about the city. I was describing our huge house surrounded by high walls, I was talking to her about the running water that we pay for every month, electricity and television, a lamp that lights itself, a talking box... All this was magic or witchcraft to her. She took me for a fool and a liar. 

Her sarcastic smile annoyed me that I preferred to keep quiet. We returned home under a white moon that cast a milky light. Christine's parents were staggering, bawling drunk with happiness. My mother applauded every time one of them stumbled. She was grey and euphoric. We arrived home as best we could. They stayed in the living room, danced and clowning around like children. My cousin and I went to sleep.

On the day of our return, we were going to travel with Christine. Her parents had decided that she had to live in the city to get a better education and come back to them as rich as her aunt. While they were giving the blessing to their daughter, I caught my mother in the living room repeating incantations chanted by the Nyumbakumi. Shells were scattered on the table around an earthen pot. My mother's eyes were closed while the Nyumbakumi spoke in a voice from beyond the grave, staring into the void. After they sang, he took from the pot three piles of wooden sticks tied together and said to my mother:

 "These pieces of wood must stay upright in your bag. If they fall, you will die."

My mother agreed and slipped the sticks into one of the pockets of the bag. Then she nodded her head every time the smoking pot passed in front of her eyes. The man stood up and swirled it over my mother. The ceremony was over and I tiptoed away.

The Nyumbakumi drew signs of the cross on my cousin's forehead and mine. At last, we had permission to leave. Uncle Pierre carried our things on his bicycle, Aunt Alice comforted her daughter, and the two of us walked silently, sad to leave these happy places. I said goodbye to every tree and plant I met. As we arrived at the side of the bus, the hugs were endless and painful. The bus shook and gained speed. Aunt Alice and Uncle Peter waved their hands until they saw the bus disappear from the horizon. Then we sped off at full speed. The trees vanished as we passed by. My mother kept touching the little pocket of the bag to see if the pieces of wood were still in place. She also recited her eternal rosary.

I was pulled from my sleep by the clamour of the passengers. We were on a road overlooking the town. Some of them were hugging each other, happy to have arrived safely. Many were signing themselves and thanking Heaven. When the bus arrived at the station, the joy disappeared from their faces. The square was empty. We learned that two hours earlier leaflets had been distributed warning the city of an imminent attack.

The panic was total: people were running and jostling for buses and taxis. We barely caught the last one. At home, my father was watching for us to arrive pacing around worriedly. When we opened the gate, he was relieved to see us. I found the living room full of my father's nieces and my mother's friends who had come to take refuge in our house.

Christine was amazed. The feverish atmosphere that reigned in the house did not offend her. She kept pressing the switch, turning the water tap on and off, going in and out of the toilet and looking for the person behind the television who was talking in the box. "Now I believe you, life in the city is fairy-tale," she told me. My mother still wrapped us in layers of clothes, then we had to turn off the lights and wait. My cousin slept sound asleep peacefully lying on the bed, her face smiling and smooth. 

 Around eight o'clock the first shots rang out. I lay under the bed with the maid. The dozens of cousins looked alike in the corridor. Christine emerged from her sleep screaming that we had to run away. My mother caught her as she tried to open the living room door. She fought like a fury, biting my mother, refusing to shut up. My father slapped her to wake her up. She calmed down with a long groan and asked after her mother. Her reaction was normal. In the countryside, during attacks, people hid in banana plantations, carpeted in a pit dug for the occasion. In the city, we sealed ourselves in the houses.

Suddenly, a general laughter broke out and my mother, who was holding my cousin, started laughing out loud. A thud rattled the windows of the house, the plates and glasses in the cupboard, and forced us to get down on the floor. Then one of our guests whispered: "Welcome to Bujumbura, dear little cousin".

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This is the end. I know the laughter seems to be impromptu and awkward. But kindly, understand that if you leave in fears all time because of the war and the death, to laugh is the only thing you have to release a pressure. 

Laughing is a proof of live. 

I hope you enjoyed it! It was the best summer. I wish I have many like that. 

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