Laurent said, "He didn't try to stop them?"

"How? What could he do? At Mokoto, the monastery, the priests walked away and a thousand were murdered."

Laurent would have to think about it. He held out his glass and she poured whiskey into it, Laurent saying that he thought it was here in the church she was mutilated.

"On the way here," Chantelle said, "worried to death for my mother and father, also my sister. They lived not in the village but on a farm in the hills where my father kept his herd of cows." Chantelle shook her head, her voice becoming quiet as she said, "No one has seen them or knows where their bodies are. They could be stuffed down a latrine or buried in a mass grave on the side of the road. I do believe my sister could be one of the dead still in the church. I look at the skull faces-is this Felicit6 or an old king of Egypt found in a tomb?"

"You were on your way here," Laurent said, prompting her.

"A friend drove me, a Hutu friend. He said there would be no problem, he would speak for me. But we came to cars stopped at a roadblock and everyone had to show their identity cards. If you were Tutsi you were ordered out of the car. There was nothing my friend could say to protect me. I was taken from his car into the forest where already people from other cars were waiting, some with their children clinging to them." Chantelle paused, she leared her throat. "The Hutus, most of them were boys from the streets of Kigali, but now they were Interaharawe, they were in charge and they were all drunk, with no control of themselves.