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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Indeed, especially for farmers, slicing at things was routine. The men use the word "cut" to describe their murders, as if what they did was akin to dragging a paper edge across a thumb. Obviously it's a callous way of distancing themselves from their deeds, but it also signals the parallel they saw between hacking Tutsis and working in the fields.
Yet, there were differences. "Killing was a demanding but more gratifying activity," said Pio. "The proof: none ever asked permission to go clear brush on his field, not even for a half-day." Soon it became addictive, and there were rewards: "We could no longer stop ourselves from wielding the machete, it brought us so much profit." The looting that accompanied the killing was dazzling for the poor farmers, and it offered a way for the women to pitch in (though some women and children did kill). They stole everything -- some even grabbed the bloodstained clothing of the dead. "If you went home empty-handed, you might even be scolded by your wife or your children," one man said. And despite knowing that their husbands were out raping women and then killing them, most wives still made love to their husbands at night.
Many men insisted that this life -- the one where they woke up and killed people all day -- was a better one. "Man can get used to killing, if he kills on and on," said Alphonse. Fulgence went one step further: "The more we saw people die, the less we thought about their lives, the less we talked about their deaths. And the more we got used to enjoying it."
As the killing went on, the men became intoxicated by the idea of "finishing the job." The idea appears to have been that when it was all over, the Tutsis would be gone, and there would be no reminder of them. So the drive to kill every last Tutsi became more ferocious. In Nyamata not one bond of friendship spared a life, writes Hatzfeld; unlike in Nazi Germany, for example, Tutsis found "not a single escape network."
But there was another key component to the genocide's ferocity: No one was watching. There is nothing so damning in "Machete Season" as when the men speak of the "whites." One man suggests that the idea of genocide germinated in 1959, when Hutus massacred many Tutsis "without being punished." And in 1994, Hutu extremists gradually realized that the world was averting its eyes from the present atrocities as well. "All the important people turned their backs on our killings," said Elie. "The blue helmets, the Belgians, the white directors, the black presidents, the humanitarian people, and the international cameramen, the priests and the bishops and finally even God ... We were all abandoned by all words of rebuke." Pancrace agreed: "Killing is very discouraging if you yourself must decide to do it ... but if you must obey the orders of the authorities ... if you see that the killing will be total and without disastrous consequences for yourself, you feel soothed and reassured."
These were ordinary men, for sure. And ordinary men would have feared the punishment of others; as soon as the West pulled out of Rwanda they knew they were free to kill. It's clear that if some force had been monitoring them, at least some of the motivation to kill would have withered away. Fittingly, one of the chapters in the book is titled "A Sealed Chamber."
Perhaps not surprisingly, because of this long absence of condemnation, the men have no regrets. "I want to make clear that from the first gentleman I killed to the last, I was not sorry about a single one," said Leopord. Hatzfeld notes in amazement that the killers speak in monotone and "never allow themselves to be overwhelmed by anything." During the men's seven years in prison, they knew of not one Hutu suicide. If they were depressed, it was only because they were locked up. "Aside from the anguish of my years in prison," said Pancrace, "I do not see my life as harmed by all these regrettable events." The unfortunately candid Elie takes a stab at remorse: "In prison and on the hills, everyone is obviously sorry. But most of the killers are sorry they didn't finish the job."
"Machete Season" is realistic and, above all else, terrifying; Hatzfeld brilliantly organizes his subjects' stories for maximum effect. His method captures the rhythm of a genocide -- the cold, workmanlike, fierce nature of its repetition. The book goes on and on, the killers are still alive, they persist, they won't stop talking. Just when you think they won't mention their machete again, it's back.
When the men return home from jail, it's to a country in trauma. "The silence on the Rwandan hills is indescribable and cannot be compared with the usual mutism in the aftermath of war," writes Hatzfeld. What Hatzfeld suggests is the possibility of an Africa in turmoil because of many of its people's learned fatalism. Perhaps the most terrible line in "Machete Season" is spoken by Pio, who noted with astonishment the silence with which the Tutsis confronted their deaths, even as he came near to where they hid in the marsh, machete in hand. They did not fight back. They did not cry out. "They felt so abandoned they did not even open their mouths."
