The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat

by Ryzard Kapuscinski

  All this would disappear in an instant when His Distinguished Majesty would leave the capital on a visit abroad or to some province to lay a cornerstone, open a new road, or find out about the troubles of the people in order to encourage or console them. The Palace would immediately become empty and change into a replica of itself, a prop. The Palace servants did their laundry and strung their wash on clotheslines, the Palace children grazed their goats on the lawns, the masters of ceremony hung out in local bars, the guards would chain the gates shut and sleep under the trees. Then His Majesty would return, the fanfares would sound, and the Palace would come to life again.

  In the Golden Hall there was always electricity in the air. One could feel the current flowing through the temples of those who had been summoned, making them quiver. Everyone knew the source of that current: the little bag of finest lambskin. People would approach His Benevolent Highness by turns, saying why they needed money. His Majesty would listen and ask questions. Here I must admit that His Highness was most meticulous about financial matters. Any expenditure, anywhere in the Empire, of more than ten dollars required his personal approval, and if a minister came to ask approval for spending only one dollar, he would be praised. To repair a minister’s car—the Emperor’s approval is needed. To replace a leaking pipe in the city—the Emperor’s approval is needed. To buy sheets for a hotel—the Emperor must approve it.

  How you should admire, my friend, the diligent thrift of His August Majesty, who spent most of his royal time checking accounts, listening to cost estimates, rejecting proposals, and brooding over human greed, cunning, and meddling. His lively curiosity, vigilance, and exemplary economy always attracted mention. He had a fiscal bent, and his Minister of Finance, Yelma Deresa, was counted among those with the most access to the Emperor. Yet to those in need, His Highness would stretch out a generous hand. Having listened as his questions were answered, His Charitable Majesty would inform the petitioner that his financial needs would be met. The delighted subject would make the deepest bow. His Magnanimous Highness would then turn his head in the direction of Aba Hanna and specify in a whisper the sum of money that the saintly nobleman was to take from the purse. Aba Hanna would plunge his hand into the bag, take out the money, put it into an envelope, and hand it to the lucky recipient. Bow after bow, backward, backward, shuffling his feet and stumbling, the fortunate one would leave.

  And afterward, Mr. Kapuchitsky, one could unfortunately hear the cries of the wretched ingrate. Because in the envelope he would find only a fraction of the sum that—as the insatiable thieves always swore—had been promised to him by our generous Emperor. But what could he do? Go back? Hand in a petition? Accuse the dignitary closest to His Majesty’s heart? No such thing was possible. What hatred therefore surrounded the God-fearing treasurer and confessor! Because, since general opinion dared not stain the dignity of His Highness, it reviled Aba Hanna as a miser and a cheat, who dipped so lightly into the bag and sifted so much with his thick fingers, who reached in with such disgust that the bag could have been full of poisonous reptiles, who knew the weight of money so well that he stuffed the envelope without looking and then gave the sign to shuffle away backward. That’s why, when he was executed, I think no one but His Merciful Highness cried for him.

  An empty envelope! Mr. Kapuchitsky, do you know what money means in a poor country? Money in a poor country and money in a rich country are two different things. In a rich country, money is a piece of paper with which you buy goods on the market. You are only a customer. Even a millionaire is only a customer. He may purchase more, but he remains a customer, nothing more. And in a poor country? In a poor country, money is a wonderful, thick hedge, dazzling and always blooming, which separates you from everything else. Through that hedge you do not see creeping poverty, you do not smell the stench of misery, and you do not hear the voices of the human dregs. But at the same time you know that all of that exists, and you feel proud because of your hedge. You have money; that means you have wings. You are the bird of paradise that everyone admires.

  Can you imagine, for instance, a crowd gathering in Holland to look at a rich Dutchman? Or in Sweden, or in Australia? But in our land—yes. In our land, if a prince or count appears, the people run to see him. They will run to see a millionaire, and afterward they will go around and say, “I saw a millionaire.” Money transforms your own country into an exotic land. Everything will start to astonish you—the way people live, the things they worry about, and you will say, “No, that’s impossible.” Because you will already belong to a different civilization. And you must know this law of culture: two civilizations cannot really know and understand one another well. You will start going deaf and blind. You will be content in your civilization surrounded by the hedge, but signals from the other civilization will be as incomprehensible to you as if they had been sent by the Inhabitants of Venus. If you feel like it, you can become an explorer in your own country. You can become Columbus, Magellan, Livingstone. But I doubt that you will have such a desire. Such expeditions are very dangerous, and you are no madman, are you? You are already a man of your own civilization, and you will defend it and fight for it. You will water your own hedge. You are exactly the kind of gardener that the Emperor needs. You don’t want to lose your feathers, and the Emperor needs people who have a lot to lose. Our kindly monarch would throw coppers to the poor, but to the people of the Palace he would make gifts of great worth. He would give them estates, land, peasants from whom they could collect taxes; he gave gold, titles, and capital.

  Though everyone—if he proved his loyalty—could count on a bountiful gift, there were still continuous quarrels between lobbies, constant struggles for privileges, incessant grabbing, and all because of the needs of that bird of paradise that fills every man. His Most Extraordinary Majesty liked to watch this elbowing. He liked the people of the court to multiply their belongings, he liked their accounts to grow and their purses to swell. I don’t remember His Magnanimous Highness’s ever demoting someone and pressing his head to the cobblestones because of corruption. Let him enjoy his corruption, as long as he shows his loyalty! Thanks to his unequaled memory and also to the constant reports, our monarch knew exactly who had how much. But as long as his subject behaved loyally, he kept this knowledge to himself and never made use of it. But if he sensed even the slightest shadow of disloyalty, he would immediately confiscate everything and take the bird of paradise away from the embezzler. Thanks to that system of accountability, the King of Kings had everyone in his hand, and everyone knew it.

  One case, though, was different. An outstanding patriot and a leader of the partisans in the war against Mussolini, Tekele Wolda Hawariat by name, was ill disposed toward the Emperor. He refused to accept graciously tendered gifts, refused special privileges, never showed any inclination to corruption. His Charitable Majesty had him imprisoned for many years, and then cut his head off.

  G. H.-M.:

  Even though I was a high ceremonial official, behind my back they called me His Distinguished Majesty’s cuckoo. That was because a Swiss clock, from which a cuckoo would jump out to announce each hour, hung in the Emperor’s office. I had the honor to fulfill a similar duty during the hours that His Highness devoted to his Imperial duties. When the time came for the Emperor, in accordance with official protocol, to pass from one activity to another, I would stand before him and bow several times. It was a signal to His Perspicacious Majesty that one hour was ending and that the time had come to start another.

  The scoffers, who in any Palace like to make fun of their inferiors, would say jokingly that bowing was my only profession and even my sole reason for existing. Indeed, I had no other duty than bowing before His Distinguished Highness at a given moment. But I could have answered them—had my rank entitled me to such boldness—that my bows were of a functional and efficacious character and that they served a purpose of state, which is to say a superior purpose, whereas the court was full of nobles bowing whenever the occasion pr
esented itself. And it was no superior purpose that made their necks so flexible, but only their desire to flatter, their servility, and their hope for gifts and promotions. I had to be careful not to let my own formal and functional bow get lost among those of the crowd. And I had to place myself where those pushy flatterers would not jostle me to the rear. After all, if our kindly monarch did not receive the established signal in time, he could fall into confusion and prolong his current activity at the expense of another equally important duty.

  But, unfortunately, earnestness in performing my duty had little effect when it was time to finish the Hour of the Cashbox and begin the Hour of the Ministers. The Hour of the Ministers was devoted to Imperial matters, but who cares about Imperial matters when the treasure chest is open and the favorites and chosen ones are swarming around it like ants! No one wants to go away empty-handed, without a gift, without an envelope, without a promotion, without having cashed in. Sometimes His Highness would answer such greediness with a kindly scolding, but he never became angry, since he knew that it was because of the open purse that they pressed around him and served him more humbly. Our Emperor knew that one who is satiated will defend his own contentedness, and where else could one be satiated but in the Palace? Even the Emperor himself partook of this plenty, about which the destroyers of the Empire are now making so much noise.

  I’ll tell you, friend, that it got worse later on. The more the foundations of the Empire were crumbling, the more the chosen ones pressed forward to the cashbox. The more impudently the destroyers raised their heads, the more greedily the favorites stuffed their purses. The closer it got to the end, the more horrible was the grabbing and the unrestrained snatching. Instead, my friend, of applying himself to the tiller or the sails as the boat started to sink, each one of our magnates stuffed his bag and looked around for a comfortable lifeboat. Such fever broke out in the Palace, such scrambling for the purse, that even those who were not particularly interested in enriching themselves were dragged in, egged on, and so pressed upon that in the end, for their own peace and for dignity’s sake, they also put something into their pockets. Because, my friend, things somehow got so turned around that it was decency to take and dishonor not to take. Not taking was seen as a frailty, some sort of laziness, some sort of pathetic and pitiable impotence. On the other hand, the one who had taken would go around looking as though he wanted to show off his masculinity, as if he wanted to say, full of self-assurance, “Kneel, you wretches!” It was all so topsy-turvy that I couldn’t be blamed for tardily bringing the Hour of the Cashbox to an end so that His Benevolent Majesty could get on with the Hour of the Ministers.

  P. H.-T.:

  The Hour of the Ministers began at eleven o’clock and ended at noon. It was no trouble to call the ministers, since by custom these dignitaries stayed in the Palace all morning; various ambassadors often complained of being unable to visit a given minister in his office to take care of problems because the secretary would invariably say, “The minister has been summoned to the Emperor.” In point of fact, His Gracious Highness liked to keep an eye on everyone, he liked to keep everyone within reach. A minister who stayed away from the Palace appeared in a bad light and never lasted long. But the ministers, God knows, didn’t try to stay away. No one ever reached such a position without knowing the monarch’s likings and trying assiduously to comply with them. Whoever wanted to climb the steps of the Palace had first of all to master the negative knowledge: what was forbidden to him and his subalterns, what was not to be said or written, what should not be done, what should not be overlooked or neglected. Only from such negative knowledge could positive knowledge be born—but that positive knowledge always remained obscure and worrisome, because no matter how well they knew what not to do, the Emperor’s favorites ventured only with extreme caution and uncertainty into the area of propositions and postulates. There they would immediately look to His Distinguished Majesty, waiting to hear what he would say. And since His Majesty had the habit of being silent, waiting, and postponing things, they, too, were silent, waited, and postponed things.

  Life in the Palace, however lively and feverish, was actually full of silence, waiting, and postponement. Each minister chose the corridors in which he thought he would have the greatest chance of meeting the distinguished monarch and making a bow. A minister who got the word that he had been denounced for disloyalty would show the greatest eagerness in this selection of itineraries. He would spend whole days trying to create an occasion for an obsequious meeting with His Highness in the Palace, in order to prove the falsity and maliciousness of the denunciation by constant attendance and radiant alacrity. His Most Extraordinary Majesty was in the habit of receiving each minister separately because a dignitary would then denounce his colleagues more boldly, giving the monarch a better insight into the operation of the Imperial apparatus. It is true that the minister being received at an audience preferred to talk about the disorders reigning in other departments rather than about those in his own, but precisely for this reason His Imperial Majesty, by talking to all the dignitaries, could put together an overall view. Anyway, it didn’t matter if a given dignitary measured up or not, as long as he showed unshakable loyalty.

  His Benevolent Highness would show favor to those ministers who were not distinguished by quick wits or perspicacity. He treated them as a stabilizing element in the life of the Empire, while he himself, as everyone knows, was always the champion of reform and progress. Reach, my dear friend, for the autobiography dictated by the Emperor in his last years, and you will be convinced of how His Valiant Highness fought against the barbarity and obscurantism that reigned in our country.[He goes into the other room and returns with the London edition, published by Ullendorff, of My Life and Ethiopia’s Progress, leafs through it, and continues talking.] Here, for example, His Majesty mentions that at the beginning of his reign he for bade the customary punishment of cutting off hands and legs for even minor offenses. Next, he writes that he forbade the custom that a man who had been accused of murder—and this was only an accusation by the common people, because there were no courts—would have to be publicly executed by disembowelment, with the execution performed by the closest member of his family, so that, for example, a son would execute his father and a mother her son. To replace that custom, His Majesty instituted the office of state executioner, designated specific sites and procedures for executions, and stipulated that execution be only by shooting. Next, he purchased out of his own funds (a point that he emphasizes) the first two printing presses and recommended that the first newspaper in the history of the country begin publication. Next, he opened the first bank. Next, he introduced electricity to Ethiopia, first in the Palaces and then in other buildings. Next, he abolished the custom of shackling prisoners in chains and iron stocks. From then on, prisoners were watched over by guards paid from the Imperial treasury. Next, he promulgated a decree condemning the slave trade. He decided to end that trade by 1950. Next, he abolished by decree a method that we call lebasha, for the discovery of thieves. Medicine men would give a secret herb to small boys, who, dizzy, stupefied, and directed by supernatural forces, would go into a house and point out the thief. The one who had been pointed out, in accordance with tradition, had his hands and legs cut off. Just try to imagine, my friend, life in a country where, even though you are completely innocent of crime, you can at any moment have your hands and legs cut off. Yes, you’re walking down the street when a stupefied child grabs your trouser leg, and immediately the crowd starts chopping. You’re sitting at home eating a meal when a drunken boy rushes in; they drag you outside and chop you up in the courtyard. Only when you imagine such a life can you understand the profundity of the breakthroughs that His Distinguished Highness made.

  And he kept on reforming: he abolished forced labor, he imported the first cars, he created a postal service. He retained public flogging as a punishment, but he denounced the afarsata method. If an offense were committed somewhere, the forces of order
would surround the village or little town where it had occurred and starve the population until the guilty one was denounced. But the inhabitants all watched one another so that there would be no denunciation, because everybody feared that he would be denounced. And so, guarding each other this way, they would all die of hunger. This was the afarsata method. Our Emperor condemned such practices.

  Unfortunately, driven by the desire for progress, His August Majesty committed a certain imprudence. Because there used to be no public schools or universities in our country, the Emperor began sending young people abroad to study. At some point in the past His Majesty himself directed this effort, choosing youngsters from good, loyal families. But later—ah, these modern times make your head throb—such pressure came to be applied, such pushing to go abroad, that His Benevolent Majesty gradually lost control over this craze that possessed our youth. More and more of these youngsters ventured to Europe or America for their studies, and—how else could it have ended?—after a few years the trouble started. Because, like a wizard, His Majesty breathed life into the supernatural destructive force that comparison of our country with others proved to be. These people would return home full of devious ideas, disloyal views, damaging plans, and unreasonable and disorderly projects. They would look at the Empire, put their heads in their hands, and cry, “Good God, how can anything like this exist?”

  Here you have, my friend, another proof of the ingrati tude of youth. On the one hand so much care taken by His Majesty to give them access to knowledge, and on the other hand his reward in the form of shocking criticism, abusive sulking, undermining, and rejection. It’s easy to imagine the bitterness with which these slanderers filled our monarch. The worst thing is that these tyros, filled with fads unknown to Ethiopia, brought into the Empire a certain unrest, an unnecessary mobility, disorder, a desire for action against authority, and it is here that the ministers who were not distinguished by quick wits or perspicacity came to His Distinguished Highness’s aid. Well, it wasn’t deliberate help, but spontaneous and unbidden, and yet how very important for keeping peace in the Empire. Because it was enough for one of those favorites of His Distinguished Highness to issue a thoughtless decree. These young smart alecks see it, and they immediately imagine some fatal result and come running to the rescue. They start trying to mend things, straighten things out, patch things up and untangle them. And so instead of using their energy to build their own vision of the future, instead of trying to put their irresponsible, destructive fantasies into action, our malcontents had to roll up their sleeves and start untangling what the ministers had knotted up. And there’s always a lot of work to untangling! So they untangle and untangle, drenched in sweat, wearing their nerves to shreds, running around, patching things up here and there, and in all this rush and overwork, in this whirlwind, their fantasies slowly evaporate from their hot heads.