Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga

Author:Scholastique Mukasonga [Mukasonga, Scholastique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-914671-04-6
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2014-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

It was clear to everyone that Frida was with child, indeed she didn’t try to hide it. She was proud to be pregnant, despite the shame it would bring on her family, what with her not being married.

“His Excellency, my fiancé, wants a boy, he’s only had girls till now: me, I’ll be having a boy.”

“So, he’s got other women then?” suggested Gloriosa.

“No, he doesn’t, not at all,” Frida said to reassure herself. “They’re either dead or he rejected them.”

“And how do you know you’ll have a boy?”

“Balimba took every precaution this time. He went to consult a great soothsayer in the forest. It cost him a fortune. The soothsayer told him that to cheat the curse his enemies had cast on him, and which made him father only girls, he should wed a girl from the other side of a lake beneath the volcanoes, for the evil spell of the Zairian poisoners would be useless against her. He gave Balimba all the necessary talismans to beget a boy, all the dawa whose secrets he knew, for him and for me. I have to wear a belt of pearls and seashells around my belly. It’s to have a boy. My fiancé is sure I’ll give birth to a boy.”

“You should ask Father Herménégilde to bless your belly,” said Godelive, “I think he, too, knows every prayer to have babies, or above all, not to have them.”

Frida’s condition soon worsened, she didn’t want to get up, and she complained about agonizing stomach pains. Mother Superior grew anxious and appalled at having to house a pregnant girl in her lycée whose marriage had yet to be celebrated according to the sacraments of the Church. “It’s a sin, it’s a sin,” she repeated to Father Herménégilde, who tried in vain to calm her nagging scruples: “They’re engaged, dear Mother, they’re engaged; and I’ll receive Frida at confession, I will absolve her.” Yet Mother Superior couldn’t stop her lamentations: “But, Father, have you considered the other innocent pupils? The lycée of Our lady of the Nile will turn into a home for teenage mothers. Oh, the scandal! The scandal!”

Mother Superior sent message after message to the ambassador, begging him to fetch Frida right away, each time exaggerating the urgency and gravity of her state a little more. Balimba finally dispatched a powerful Land Rover, which managed to drive along tracks hitherto considered impassible to any vehicle, and succeeded in reaching the lycée and taking Frida back to Kigali.

News of Frida’s death plunged the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile into considerable disarray. Mother Superior decreed a week of mourning to pray for Frida’s soul, and at the end of it, on Sunday, the whole school went on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Nile so she might shelter that poor little soul beneath her great mantle of mercy. Father Herménégilde decided to give a Mass every morning that week, to the same end. Each class had to attend, one after the other. And the presence of the senior class was of course compulsory at every one.

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