The Wife's Tale

by Aida Edemariam

  So they cast about for entertainments. One day Edemariam took her into the front yard, broke a thorn out of a hedge and gestured, ney, come, sit here next to me. Then he leaned over and began to scratch shapes into the dust. A line swept up, bore left, then curved back in on itself like a noose. Yè, he said. She looked up at him and then down, suddenly and utterly focused on what he was doing. A plain cross, each arm of equal length. Tè. Then two ovals, like eggs, held upright by a straight walking stick balanced across their tops. Mè. A broken-backed vertical with a flat roof, and another small line, two-thirds of the way down, jutting out toward the right. Ngu. See? Try it. And she took the thorn from him and slowly wobbled out for herself the four letters that spelled her name. Yetemegnu. Those who believe. He smiled at her, a wide, pleased smile, and her face shone back.

  Or they sat over coffee and asked her questions. What had she seen on her most recent travels? So she told them about priests trying to catch her eye when she went to church, about the messengers arriving with invitations to this party or that, the matchmaking matrons, the monk who knocked on the door, sat himself comfortably down, watched her moving about her house for a while, her youngest strapped to her back, and asked, ‘Madam, is there no child who can bring us food, or pour mead for us?’ Who do you think you are? she had snapped back. Get out! She laughed, telling it.

  Edemariam had always loved her laugh, which was low and full and entirely mischievous. Loved it more now that it was so rare. He watched her spinning, the practised snap of her wrist, and thought, she’s still young. Her face is sad, but it’s unlined, and she’s beautiful. Why does she have to reject them all so completely?

  ‘Why don’t you marry again? We could have more brothers and sisters.’

  What? Her answer was instant. Are you wanting a stepfather, then?

  ‘Hmmm.’ He thought. ‘Maybe not.’

  And that was that. But in the days afterwards she looked at him even more closely. How to tell him? How to tell him all that had gone through her mind before she had left for Debrè Libanos? How to tell him that she – and he, as the oldest son, however young and in need of a father he might feel – would head the family from now on?

  How to tell him that finally she had a choice when it came to men, and she chose no?

  * * *

  —

  Again she hardly remembered, later, how she got up the steps, how she crossed the hall, how long she waited, if she did, before she was ushered in; what the room looked like, who was there – apart from him, of course.

  He was standing before his throne.

  She bowed, deep.

  He was king of kings, elect of God. But, as she had sometimes tried to remind herself over the long months, human too, with his own sadnesses. Le’ul-Ras Kassa, who had been at the emperor’s side for forty years, advising, offering steadfast friendship, had died just a year before. Hailè Selassie had already lost three of his four daughters to childbirth and to illness, one of them in Italian captivity; a few months ago his favourite son, chosen, many said, for succession, had died in a car crash.

  Your Majesty.

  Your Majesty, my husband is dead. He cried out that he was burning, that he was being scorched from within.

  No need to spell out who she thought was responsible – hadn’t the emperor sent letters, after all?

  He died a secret, terrible death.

  No reply. Then a slight movement. She raised her eyes from the floor, toward the emperor’s chest. It was his index finger that had moved, and was now pointing at the gilded ceiling.

  ‘Tell that to Him.’

  Eyes back down, instantly, to hide the gulfs of disappointment breaking open within her.

  Yes, Jan Hoy.

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  My enemies have taken my land, they have taken my trees.

  ‘That is a matter for the church authorities.’

  Then, in a rush, in a bid to make him – a man, a father, the same age now as her husband would have been had he lived – to make him consider what her husband’s death had been like, what it meant, what his enemies had been responsible for –

  I have given birth to many children. They are scattered across his ashes.

  ‘They shall go to boarding school.’

  Yes, Jan Hoy.

  And then she was being ushered out, bowing, being handed – what? A few birr, money ‘for the journey’. What journey? Laughs too loud, remembering it years later. What was it? A bribe? Charity? Insulting, anyway.

  * * *

  —

  Those were bleak days. The urge for justice drove her still, but now it had nowhere to go. Should she have spoken differently? More persuasively? No, she had said what she needed to say. And he had understood. Perhaps he had even sympathised, but what use was that? What a burden for her children. What a burden for her. What a waste.

  As for the schooling – they were too young. The smallest girls especially, they were far too young. She wanted desperately to keep them with her, to feed them well, to hold them close. Alemitu was old enough, of course, but her case was different. She was deaf, and therefore vulnerable, especially in a big city. Who would watch out for her, make sure no advantage was taken? She could sell the rental rooms, she would do whatever was necessary, but she could not send them away. They needed her. And they were her companions and her closest friends, now more than ever.

  It took some time, well after she had told people what had transpired, after they had responded with varying degrees of envy, depending on how many children they had and what kind of schooling they were receiving, if any, before she realised she had no paperwork, no proof of the emperor’s order. So she made her way to the ministry of education. But they were practised at turning people with this particular request away. Jan Hoy has directed you to educate my children. ‘Do you have proof?’ No proof. ‘Be patient, madam. Be patient. Wait.’

  After four months of waiting she went to see Basha Deneqè’s son. His gate was shut, the walls were high and barbed. But she stood there until he came out, and threw herself before him, begging that he do this one thing for her. Please, upon your father’s death, please bring me to Jan Hoy.

  She felt him considering her from his great dark height.

  ‘Ayzosh,’ he said eventually, raising her to her feet. ‘Ayzosh. I will bring you to him.’

  On the sixteenth day of the sixth month, which is the feast of the Covenant of Mercy, she came before the emperor one last time. Hailè Selassie repeated his order; the court recorder, this time, did his part.

  As soon as she had pushed the letter over a counter at the ministry, after it had been stamped and, miraculously, ratified that same day, she packed up her little house by the cathedral and took her daughters home.

  BOOK V

  1959–1989

  Credit 5

  YEKATIT

  THE SIXTH MONTH

  Dry. East winds bring puffy clouds and hungry locusts. Some ripening of wild fruits. Late barley matures and is harvested. The price of meat doubles.

  AND AGAIN THE ANGELS SET HER SO THAT SHE MIGHT SEE THE PLACE OF JUDGEMENT…AND OUR LADY MARY SAID, ‘WOE IS ME! WHO WILL ANNOUNCE TO THE CHILDREN OF MEN THAT THEY SHALL COME HERE?’…THEN THE ANGELS CARRIED HER ALONG AND BROUGHT HER BACK TO HER FORMER PLACE. NOW THAT DAY WAS THE SIXTEENTH DAY OF THE MONTH OF YEKATIT, AND SHE STOOD UP ON ‘THE PLACE OF THE SKULL’ (GOLGOTHA), AND SHE MADE SUPPLICATION UNTO HER SON…AND JESUS CHRIST CAME DOWN, AND WITH HIM AND ROUND ABOUT HIM WERE THOUSANDS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ANGELS. AND HE SAID UNTO HER, ‘WHAT SHALL I DO FOR THEE, O MARY MY MOTHER?’…AND OUR LADY, THE HOLY VIRGIN MARY, MADE ANSWER…‘WHOSOEVER SHALL CELEBRATE THE FESTIVAL OF MY COMMEMORATION, OR SHALL BUILD A CHURCH IN MY NAME, OR SHALL CLOTHE THE NAKED, OR SHALL VISIT THE SICK, OR SHALL FEED THE HUNGRY,…REWARD THOU HIM, O LORD, WITH A GOOD REWARD FROM THYSELF.’…AND OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ANSWERED AND SAID UNTO HER, ‘IT SHALL BE EVEN AS THOU SAYEST, AND I WILL FULFIL FOR THEE ALL THY PETITION. DID I NOT BECOME MAN
THROUGH THEE? I SWEAR BY MYSELF THAT I WILL NOT BREAK MY COVENANT WITH THEE.’

  – THE COVENANT OF MERCY

  It seemed to her that she was walking down a familiar street. Under her feet familiar stones, over her head familiar sky. The dust of high summer caught in her throat.

  When she looked up, a woman was standing under the branches of a wild olive tree. Its narrow leaves cast a filigree of shadow over white shawls and a pale face.

  Her heart leapt. But she was also wary, and hung back.

  The woman came toward her, arms outstretched. ‘Come, child, kiss me. What, have you forgotten me?’

  Years of hurt burst from her then. Oh, but it is you who has forgotten me! I would have come to kiss you, to bow to your walls, to pray to you, but you abandoned me!

  ‘No, child,’ replied the woman. ‘I have always been here. It was you who abandoned me.’

  * * *

  —

  For the first year both the girls and the boys attended schools in Gondar. That she was able to countenance. But then her half-brother Gebrè-Selassie came to tell her there weren’t enough pupils to sustain the girls’ school, and her daughters would have to go to Harar – Harar? Harar? Her voice rose. A Muslim city, far to the south-east. An ancient city, thronged with chat-chewers by day, was all she had heard, its walls assailed by hyenas at night. Above all, so far away.

  But they are so small! They cannot go!

  They must go. You’ve been so strong, such a man, will you be weak now? The girls will be well raised, by the most modern methods. And there will be nurses for the youngest. They must go.

  Let them stay! I’ll sell every room, every tree –

  After you went through all that pain? For all those years? After God himself came to your aid? I forbid it. They must go.

  Eventually he relented about the smallest. But when the rains ended and the hills were clothed in golden flowers, she took the two middle girls down the long road to the airport and saw them off on a plane to Addis Ababa. Her son would meet them and put them on the train to Diré Dawa, and from there they would travel in a car to Harar. Years later Tiruworq would remember that when they arrived at the school they were greeted with amazement. What were they doing here, so young? Had their mother died?

  For days she could not eat or sleep. They’re going to be so accomplished, they told her, attempting comfort. So modern, so educated. But she would only turn away and weep. Her youngest watched her overtly, watched her covertly, whispered to her in the middle of the night, when the pillows they shared were soaked and it seemed as though the invocations to the saints would never end, Ayzosh, Nannyé. Ayzosh. Yibejish, lijé. Take heart, mother. Yes, child. May you be saved. But it made no difference.

  Relations with the eldest were more fraught. The husband they had chosen for her drank to excess, it transpired; while she was away Alemitu had discovered he was going through her father’s library, taking hand-illuminated church manuscripts to sell them for mead, and kicked him out. Now she cleaned and cooked and pounded spices, she spun cotton and embroidered and wove baskets, she cared for her brothers and sisters and watched as they were readied for a future she knew she was capable of but could not have, and when the resentment and frustration rose too high in her screamed at her mother that she was being left behind, nothing was being done for her, why was nothing being done for her? But what do you want us to do? Yetemegnu would wail in return, facing Alemitu directly so her daughter could read her lips. I am protecting you by keeping you at home. If you were well you would not speak to me like this. But Alemitu knew that her mother had turned down the empress’s offer and was not appeased.

  When her sons came through the door on weekends or high holidays, all slim dark limbs and shining eyes, Yetemegnu’s heart would lift and she would fuss and fuss, making fresh injera dripping with butter and berberé, sitting them down, asking them about every corner of their new lives. Nannyé, we get up at six, said Molla, and there is marmalata for breakfast, and foreign butter, and tea and milk and bread and eggs, for lunch there is macaroni, sometimes soup. The teachers are Indian, they know everything. The classroom walls are covered in useful sayings and proverbs. After class we go to the study room, and everyone is so quiet, reading – Sometimes we go into the garden to water our plants, interjected Teklé, who had always loved to do this, and there is a male matron to look after us. And everyone, rich and poor, has to wear blue khaki. Princess Hirut said so.

  She searched their faces and tried to imagine their new lives, and loss was entangled with pride and hope and became indistinguishable. They saw this and were silent about the journeys through the city that bracketed their time at school, how each Saturday they would break away from the shortest, most direct route home and weave through stony back streets to avoid the children who pointed, whispered behind their hands, or jeered. They had always known, in their father’s last years especially, that they were not allowed to accept ad hoc hospitality; now, angry and humiliated, they did not want to. They had become wary even of children with whom they had grown up. To the cold sense of their father’s absence – exacerbated on holidays such as Masqal, when schoolmates in fresh white jodhpurs and bright new shemmas followed their fathers to the bonfire below the castle walls – was added a sense of being fundamentally alone. Much later, Molla in particular would wonder if their father was not in fact ahead of his time, a kind of revolutionary, even, but now there was nothing but home and school, and they understood, with a clarity so pure it was almost a physical pain, that education, for them, would be all. They knew that if they had told her about their walks home she would have understood, and enveloped them in sympathy. But also they knew how hard she would take it, and so a habit of silence began where their mother was concerned; a sense of care, and a duty not to worry her – she was worrying about enough already, worrying too much.

  After her dream she had started to go to Ba’ata again, stepping through the streets, eyes fixed on the hard ground, shemma over her head and tight about her shoulders. The women parted as they always had, allowing her back into her place, but when they poured out of the church after the service she felt fewer of them greeted her, that the welcome was not as warm as it had once been. She looked around her, at the trees, the worn outbuildings, the piles of hewn stone still lying under the trees.

  The threshold at home, she would insist to anyone who would listen, was growing grass. No one stepped over it. Where were his students, who once had eaten her food so enthusiastically, who had drunk her mead and sung her praises? The deacons and priests he had supported and promoted? Though in fact some people still did drop by and sit for a while, sipping barley beer. Gaping holes would open up in the conversation, which flapped and lagged like a web ripped through by a spider’s prey. Or it was too garrulous, overloud. Again and again she found herself saying the same things. Harsh things, laced with incipient tears. They ensnared him. They killed him. They wanted to get him for years and finally they succeeded. It was like a compulsion she could not control. She looked at her neighbours and friends and could see or think of little else. They ensnared him. They hated him. They killed him. They are after me now, and after my land. Her visitors sat in front of her murmuring awkward assent, and did not always come back.

  But one visitor did stay – a scrawny son of her favourite half-brother’s who late one night appeared panting at her door, having run away from home after one too many arguments with his stepmother. May I stay? Please? She looked at Alemitu, for whom it would mean yet more work, and Alemitu looked back at her. The next morning the boy, Alemantè, went to school, and she went to his stepmother, to ask for his blanket.

  They set about knocking the cobwebs out of the house. The one-room properties that flanked the entrance to the compound, fifteen in all, had never been empty – a couple were rented to poor householders, some went to sellers of barley beer, others to market traders from Asmara, who piled them high with bars of salt, bolts of brilliant-coloured cloth, sacks of teff, gre
at brass measuring scales, and waited, vigilant, for the prices in the market to peak. Her husband, far-sighted, had circled the main house with more rooms, each of which had an entrance into the yard. Alemitu took two; various relatives moved in and out of the others.

  For herself she took charge of the big central room, dividing it with curtains, making beds in the far corners, leaving the centre as a living room, where, with great ceremony, she installed a radio. It was a huge radio, encased in wood, protected with embroidered runners. Three times a day, every day, she asked for silence, or, if it was not immediately forthcoming, enforced it with a sharp ‘ish!’ then sat down to listen to the news. She listened for mentions of Gondar and of Addis Ababa, for the names of those she knew or had met, and of those, thanks to this amazing box, she felt she was coming to know. She drank in accounts of events across the rest of the country, and in the world beyond its borders, trying out on her tongue the names of foreign leaders, entering, over the following decades, wholehearted into their achievements and their anxieties, weeping for Samora Machel, listening intently to the progress of Indira Gandhi – ayi! If I’d gone to school I could have been like her! – absorbing all she could about the myriad countries in which her children and her children’s children came to live.

  When the girls came back for the rainy season, held together by a short rope so they would not lose each other, reprising the stages by which they had travelled – Harar to Diré Dawa by car, overnight train to Addis, where they were met by Edemariam (whose holidays were not paid for by the government, and were therefore less frequently spent at home), by plane from Addis to Gondar – her ililta, her hugs, her kisses were planted deep in the hollows of their necks and punctuated by hiccupping tears. She was so happy. Come, come, let me look at you. Kissing and kissing them, holding them tight, as though she would never again let them go.