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The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat

Page 13

by Ryzard Kapuscinski


  C.:

  The whole world stood on its head, my friend, because strange signs appeared in the sky. The moon and Jupiter, stopping in the seventh and twelfth houses instead of turning in the direction of the triangle, began ominously to form the figure of a square. Accordingly, the Indians who explained the signs at court now fled the Palace, probably because they were afraid to disturb His Venerable Majesty with a bad omen. But Princess Tenene Work must still have had meetings with these Indians, because she would run through the Palace perturbed, upsetting His August Majesty, urging him to order imprisonments and hangings. And the remaining Jailers also pressed His Noble Majesty—and even begged him on their knees—to stop the conspirators, to put them behind bars. They were completely dumbfounded, however, completely unable to understand, when they saw that His Most Singular Majesty wore his military uniform all the time (medals jingling), and carried his marshall’s baton, as if he wanted to show that he still commanded his army, still stood at its head, and still gave the orders. No matter that this army had designs against the Palace. Well, so it had, but under his command it was a faithful, loyal army, which did everything in the Emperor’s name. They rebelled? Yes, but they rebelled loyally!

  That’s it, my friend—His Venerable Majesty wanted to rule over everything. Even if there was a rebellion, he wanted to rule over the rebellion, to command a mutiny, even if it was directed against his own reign. The Jailers murmur that stupor must have come over His Majesty if he can’t understand that by acting the way he does he is supervising his own fall. But His Kindly Majesty does not listen to anyone. He receives in the Palace a delegation of that military committee called “Dergue” in the Amharic language, locks himself in his office with the delegation, and starts conferring with the conspirators! At that moment, my friend, I must confess with shame that one could hear godless and reprehensible rumors in the corridors that His Venerable Majesty has lost his mind, because in this delegation there were common corporals and sergeants, and it is unthinkable that His Majesty could sit down at the table with such low soldiery! Today it is difficult to deduce the subject of His Majesty’s conference with these people, but immediately afterward new arrests started and the Palace was even more depopulated. They locked up Prince Mesfin Shileshi, a great lord with his own private army, which they immediately disarmed. They imprisoned Prince Worku Selassie, who had immense landholdings. They imprisoned the emperor’s son-in-law General Abiye Abebe, the Minister of Defense. Finally they locked up Premier Endelkachew and several of his ministers. By now they were imprisoning someone every day, insisting that it was in the name of the Emperor.

  The Lady Jailer kept urging her venerable father to show some firmness. “Father, stand your ground and unveil your severity!” But, to tell the truth, what sort of firmness can one show at such an advanced age? His Majesty could only use a soft approach now, and he proved his wisdom by displaying a conciliatory attitude instead of trying to overcome the opposition with toughness, intending thus to appease the conspirators. And the more the Lady demanded harshness, the more she regarded his softness with anger, and nothing could calm her or settle her nerves. But His Benevolent Majesty never lost his temper; on the contrary, he always praised her, comforted her, cheered her up. Now conspirators came to the Palace more often, and His Majesty received them, heard them out, praised their loyalty, encouraged them. The Talkers took heart, calling all the time for sitting down at the table, improving the Empire, meeting the demands of the rebels. And whenever the Talkers would present a manifesto in that spirit, His Most Exceptional Majesty would praise them for their loyalty, comfort them, and encourage them. But the Talkers were also being thinned out by the army, so their voices were heard ever more faintly.

  The salons, corridors, and galleries grew more deserted each day, and yet nobody took up the defense of the Palace. Nobody gave the call to close the doors and break out the weapons. People looked at one another thinking, Perhaps they’ll take him and leave me alone. And if I raise a hue and cry against the rebels, they’ll lock me up right away and leave the others in peace. So it’s better to keep quiet and not know anything. Better not to leap, in order not to weep. Better to keep your peace, and avoid an early decease.

  At times everybody would go to His Highness asking what to do, and Our Supreme Ruler would listen to our complaints, praise us, and encourage us. Later on, however, it became more and more difficult to gain an audience, because His Noble Majesty grew tired of listening to so much grumbling, demands, and informants’ reports. Most willingly he received the ambassadors of foreign countries, and indeed all sorts of foreign representatives, because they brought him relief by praising him, comforting him, encouraging him. These ambassadors, along with the conspirators, were the last people with whom His Majesty talked before his departure, and they confirmed unanimously that he was in good health and had full presence of mind.

  D.:

  The remainder of the Jailers, those who were still left in the Palace, walked through the corridors calling for action. We must get moving, they said, take the offensive, stand up against the malcontents. Otherwise everything will perish in a deplorable way. But how to take the offensive when the whole court is locked up in defense, how to help if there is such helplessness, how to listen to the Talkers who call for change without saying what change? Change could come only from the monarch. It demanded his support and approval because otherwise it would become faithlessness and would meet reproof. The same was true of all favors—only His Majesty could dispense them, and what someone did not obtain from the throne, he could obtain in no other way. Thus distress reigned among the courtiers: were His Majesty no longer to exist, who would bestow favors and increase their property?

  In this Palace beset by troubles and condemnation, how very much one wanted to break the passivity, to come up with something worthy, a brilliant flash that would show vigor. Whoever was still fit paced the corridors wrinkling his brow, searching for that thought, straining his head, until finally just such an idea was born: to organize the celebration of an anniversary! “What?” the Talkers cried, “occupy ourselves with an anniversary now? Nonsense. It’s the last moment for us to sit down at the table and save the Empire.” But the Floaters considered it a worthy, inspirational sign of vitality, and they enthusiastically started to prepare the anniversary, planning all the festivities, including a gala for the poor. The occasion, my friend, was His Majesty’s completion of the eighty-second year of his life, though the students started rummaging through some old papers and set up a cry, claiming it was not eighty-two but ninety-two, because, they shouted, His Majesty had once subtracted a few years from his real age. But the students’ venom could not poison the holiday that the Minister of Information—miraculously still at large—called a success and the best example of harmony and loyalty. No adversity could overcome this minister, who had such a sharp mind that in the greatest loss he could spot an advantage and turned everything around so cleverly that in failure he saw success, in unhappiness joy, in misery abundance, and in defeat good fortune. Were it not for such turning around, who could have called that sad holiday a wonderful one?

  It was raining that day, a chilly rain, and mist floated in the air as His Majesty stepped out onto the balcony to make his speech. Next to him stood only a handful of soaked, depressed dignitaries—the rest were in prison or had fled the capital. There was no crowd, only the Palace servants and some soldiers from the Imperial Guard standing at the edge of an empty courtyard. His August Majesty expressed his compassion for the starving provinces and said that he would not neglect any chance to keep the Empire developing fruitfully. He also thanked the army for its loyalty, praised his subjects, encouraged them and wished them good luck. But he spoke so quietly that through the steady rain one could hardly make out individual words. And know, my friend, that I will take this memory to the grave with me, because I can still hear how His Majesty’s voice breaks, and I can see how tears stream down his venerable face. And then, yes, th
en, for the first time, I thought to myself that everything was really coming to an end. That on this rainy day all life is seeping away, we are covered with cold, clinging fog, and the moon and Jupiter have stopped in the seventh and the twelfth houses to form a square.

  All this time—it is the summer of 1974—a great contest is going on between two shrewd antagonists: the venerable Emperor and the young officers from the Dergue. For the officers it is a game of hide-and-seek: they are trying to encircle the ancient monarch in his own Palace, in his lair. And the Emperor? His plan is subtle, but let’s wait, because in a moment we will come to know his thoughts.

  And other players? The other players of this dramatic and absorbing game are drawn in by the course of events; they know little of what’s going on. Helpless and frightened, dignitaries and favorites rampage through the corridors of the Palace. We must remember that the Palace was a nest of mediocrity, a collection of second-rate people, and in a time of crisis such people lose their heads and think of nothing but saving their own skins. Mediocrity is dangerous: when it feels itself threatened it becomes ruthless. Such precisely are the Jailers, who are not up to much beyond cracking the whip and spilling blood. Fear and hatred blind them, and the basest forces prod them to action: meanness, fierce egoism, fear of losing their privileges and being condemned. Dialogue with such people is impossible, senseless. The Talkers are the second group—people of goodwill but defensive by nature, wavering, compliant, and incapable of transcending the patterns of Palace thinking. They get beaten worst of all, from every side, shoved out of the way and destroyed. They try to move about in a context that has been torn in half, in which two extreme adversaries—the Jailers and the rebels—don’t want their services and treat them as a flabby, superfluous race, as an obstacle, since extremists tend toward battle rather than reconciliation. Thus the Talkers understand nothing and mean nothing; history has outgrown them and passed them by. About the Floaters nothing can be said. They drift along wherever the current drags them, a school of small-fry carried away, pulled in all directions, fighting, striving for even the meanest kind of survival.

  That’s the fauna of the Palace, against which the group of young officers is acting—bright, intelligent men, ambitious and embittered patriots conscious of the terrible state of affairs in their fatherland, of the stupidity and helplessness of the elite, of the corruption and depravity, the misery and the humiliating dependence of the country on stronger states. They themselves, as part of the Imperial army, belong to the lower ranks of the elite; they, too, have taken advantage of privileges, so it is not poverty—which they have never experienced directly—that goads them to action, but rather the feeling of moral shame and responsibility. They have weapons, and they decide to make the best use of them. The conspiracy comes into being in the headquarters of the Fourth Division, whose barracks lie in the suburbs of Addis Ababa, actually fairly close to the Emperor’s Palace. For a long time the conspirators act in the strictest secrecy—even the slightest suggestive leak could bring repressions and executions. Gradually the conspiracy penetrates other garrisons, and later the ranks of the police.

  The event that hastened the confrontation between the army and the Palace was the starvation in the northern provinces. Usually it is said that periodic droughts cause bad crops and therefore starvation. But it is the elites of starving countries that propagate this idea. It is a false idea. The unjust or mistaken allocation of funds and national property is the most frequent source of hunger. There was a lot of grain in Ethiopia, but it had first been hidden by the rich and then thrown on the market at a doubled price, inaccessible to peasants and the poor. Figures about the hundreds of thousands who starved next to abundantly stocked granaries were published. On the orders of local dignitaries, the police finished off whole clans of still-living human skeletons. This situation of intense evil, of horror, of desperate absurdity, became the signal for the conspiring officers to go to work. The mutiny involved all the divisions in turn, and it was probably the army that had been the main prop of Imperial power. After a short period of bewilderment, shock, and hesitation, H. S. began to realize that he was losing his most important instrument.

  At the beginning the Dergue acted in darkness, hidden in conspiracy; they didn’t know how much of the army would back them. They had workers and students behind them—that was important, but the majority of generals and higher-ranking officers were against the conspirators, and it was the generals who still commanded, still gave the orders. Step by step—that was the tactic of this revolution. If they had come out openly and at once, the disoriented part of the army might have refused to support them or might even have destroyed them. There would have been a repeat performance of the drama of 1960, when the army fired on the army and the Palace was thus preserved for another thirteen years. In any case, the Dergue itself lacked unity; sure, everyone wanted to liquidate the Palace, they wanted to change the anachronistic, worn-out, helplessly vegetating system, but quarrels went on about what to do with the person of the monarch. The Emperor had created around himself a myth, the force and vitality of which it was impossible to ascertain. He was well-liked in the world, full of personal charm, universally respected. What’s more, he was the head of the Church, the Chosen One of God, the ruler of men’s souls. Raise one’s hand against him? It always ended in anathema and the gallows.

  The members of the Dergue were people of great courage. And also, to some extent, desperadoes, since they recalled afterward that even when they had decided to stand up against the Emperor, they still didn’t believe in their own chances of success. Perhaps H. S. knew something about the doubts and divisions that consumed the Dergue; after all, he possessed an extraordinarily well-developed intelligence service. Perhaps he was guided only by instinct, by his penetrating sense of tactics, by his great experience. And what if it was something else again? What if he simply didn’t feel the strength to continue the battle? It seems that he alone, of the whole ruling circle, understood that the wave that had arisen could no longer be withstood. Everything crumbled; his hands were empty. So he began to yield, and more—he stopped ruling. He feigned his existence, but the ones closest to him knew that he really wasn’t doing anything; he wasn’t in action.

  His associates are confused by this inactivity, and they lose themselves in conjectures. First one faction, then the other, presents its arguments to him, each viewpoint at odds with the other. He listens to everyone with the same attention, nods his approval, praises everyone, comforts, and encourages. Haughty, distant, reserved, aloof, he allows events to run their course, as if he were already living in a different space, a different time. Perhaps he wants to stand above the conflict as a means of giving way to the new forces, which he can’t stop anyway. Perhaps he reckons that in exchange for this service these new forces will later respect and accept him. Left alone, he, an old man with one foot in the grave, won’t be a danger to them, will he? And so he wants to stay? To save himself ? The military begin with a small provocation: on charges of corruption, they arrest a few of the already-dismissed ministers from Aklilu’s government. They wait anxiously for the Emperor’s reaction. But H. S. is silent. That means that the move was successful, the first step taken. Emboldened, they go on—henceforth they put into motion the tactic of gradually dismantling the elite, of slowly and meticulously emptying the Palace. Dignitaries and notables disappear one after the other. Passive, torpid, they await their turn. Later, they all meet in the jail of the Fourth Division, in a new, peculiar, inhospitable anti- Palace. In front of the barracks gates, right next to where the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway line passes, stands a long line of limousines—these are the princesses, the ministers’ and generals’ wives, shocked and terrified, bringing food and clothing to their incarcerated husbands and brothers, the prisoners of the coming order. A crowd of disturbed and excited spectators gapes at these scenes, because the street doesn’t yet know what’s going on; it hasn’t really got through yet. The Emperor is still in the Palace
and the officers are still deliberating in the division headquarters, planning the next move. The great game goes on, but its last act is approaching.

  August—September

  M. W. Y.:

  Amid all the depression, with the sense of being crushed and pushed against a wall—a feeling that filled the Palace and all the courtiers with mournful gloom—there suddenly arrived the Swedish physicians whom His Most Exceptional Majesty had summoned long ago. Delayed by some inexplicable sluggishness they had come only now—to lead calisthenics at court. And please remember, my friend, that things were already in ruins, and whoever hadn’t been thrown in the clink was awaiting his hour, stealthily making his covert way through the Palace—afraid to show his face because the rebels were clearing out the place, taking people to prison day and night. No one could slip through a net so tight. And here you were in the middle of all this rounding up and hunting down, and you had to show up for calisthenics! Who on earth can think of calisthenics, the Talkers want to know, when this is the last moment to sit down at the table and put the Empire straight, season it, make it palatable? But it was the desire of His Majesty and the Crown Council, just then, that all the Palace people should take very good care of their health, take full advantage of the blessings of nature, rest as much as necessary in comfort and affluence, breathe good—and preferably foreign—air. His Benevolent Majesty forbade any economizing in this regard, saying often that the life of the Palace people is the greatest treasure of the Empire and the most valuable resource of the monarchy. A decree to just this effect had been issued long before by His Majesty, a decree requiring the performance of these calisthenics, and since the decree was never annulled in spite of the pervasive tumult and growing commotion, we now—we, the last handful of people remaining in the Palace—had to fall in for morning calisthenics and force the greatest treasure of the Empire into supple fitness by moving our arms and our legs about. Since the calisthenics went on, as if to spite the impudent invaders who were slowly taking over the Palace, the Minister of Information called it a success and a heartening proof of the inviolable unity of our court.

 

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