The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat

by Ryzard Kapuscinski

  The Imperial decree I spoke of also ordered anyone who exerts himself in the slightest in his governmental duties to take a little rest immediately, to go to a secluded and comfortable spot, loosen up, take deep breaths, and, having adorned himself with everyday clothing and made himself casual, to get closer to nature. And anyone who neglected these vacations, whether out of forgetfulness or overzealousness, was scolded by His August Majesty and admonished by other courtiers not to waste the treasure of the Empire, but instead to preserve the most valuable resource of the monarchy. Yet how could you get closer to nature and enjoy your rest if the officers were not letting anyone out of the Palace? If someone managed to sneak home, the rebels would be lying in ambush and seize him and throw him into jail. But the worst thing about the calisthenics was that when a group of courtiers gathered in a salon to wave their arms and legs about, the conspirators would march in and drive everyone off to jail. “People whose days are numbered doing calisthenics!” the officers snickered, making impudent jokes. This was the best proof that the officers had no respect for values and acted against the good of the Empire. Even the Swedish physicians had a fright. Eventually they lost their contracts—though they were lucky to get away with their lives. To prevent the rebels from capturing everyone at once, the grand chamberlain of the court pulled off a cunning trick by ordering that calisthenics be done in small groups. So if some fell into the trap, others would be saved, and having persevered through the worst, they would keep the Palace under their control. However, my friend, not even this cautious and ingenious stratagem helped much in the end, because by then the rebellion had grown arrogant, pounding fiercely at the Palace with a battering ram and persecuting us with exceptional relentlessness.

  And so came the month of August, the last weeks of power for our supreme ruler. But do I really express myself well, using the word “power” about those last days of decline? It’s so very difficult to establish where the borderline runs between true power that subdues everything, power that creates the world or destroys it—where the borderline is between living power, great, even terrifying, and the appearance of power, the empty pantomime of ruling, being one’s own dummy, only playing the role, not seeing the world, not hearing it, merely looking into oneself. And it is still more difficult to say when omnipotence becomes powerlessness; good fortune, adversity; luster, tarnish. That is exactly what no one in the Palace could sense, since all gazes were so fixed that in powerlessness they saw omnipotence, in adversity good fortune, in tarnish luster. And even if someone had a different perception, how could he, without risking his head, fall to the ground at our monarch’s feet and say, “Your Majesty, you are already powerless, surrounded by adversity, becoming tarnished!” The problem in the Palace was that we had no access to the truth, and we didn’t recover our senses until we were behind prison fences. In each person things were comfortably divided, seeing from thinking, thinking from speaking, and no man had a place for these three faculties to meet and produce an audible voice. But in my eyes, friend, our misfortunes all started when His Most Exceptional Majesty allowed the students to gather at that fashion show and thereby gave them a chance to form a crowd and begin a demonstration, setting off the whole dissent movement. That’s where the big mistake was: no movement should have been permitted, since we could exist only in immobility. The more immobile immobility is, the longer and surer its duration. And His Majesty’s action was strange because he himself knew this truth very well, which was evident, for example, from the fact that his favorite stone was marble. Marble, with its silent, immobile, painstakingly polished surface, expressed His Majesty’s dream that everything around him be immobile and silent, and just as smooth, evenly cut, forever settled, to adorn majesty.

  A. G.:

  You must know, Mr. Richard, that by early August the inside of the Palace had lost its stateliness and its awe-inspiring solemnity. There was such confusion everywhere that the remaining ceremony officials could not introduce any order. The Palace had become the last refuge for the dignitaries and notables, who came here from the whole Empire, hoping to be safer at His Majesty’s side, hoping that the Em peror would save them and obtain their freedom through his entreaties to the arrogant officers. Without respect for their honors and titles, dignitaries and favorites of all ranks, levels, and distinctions now slept side by side on the carpets, sofas, and armchairs, covering themselves with curtains and drapes—over which they got into constant quarrels, since some didn’t want the curtains taken down from the windows, for fear the rebellious air force would bomb the Palace if it were not kept blacked out. The others maintained that they couldn’t fall asleep without covers (you have to admit that the nights then were exceptionally cold), and they selfishly pulled down the curtains and covered themselves. All these squabbles and gibes were meaningless, however, because the officers soon reconciled everyone by taking them to jail, where the contentious dignitaries couldn’t count on any covers.

  In those days, patrols from the Fourth Division would come to the Palace every morning. The rebellious officers would get out of their cars and order a meeting of dignitaries in the throne room. “Meeting of dignitaries! Meeting of dignitaries!” the cries of the ceremony officials resounded through the corridors. These officials were already sucking up to the officers. At the sound of this call some of the dignitaries hid in corners, but the rest, wrapped in curtains and drapes, showed up. Then the officers read their list and those whose names had been called were taken to jail.

  One must remark, Mr. Richard, that His Majesty was now always dressed in his uniform, sometimes in the ceremonial uniform, sometimes in the field uniform, the battle dress in which he used to watch maneuvers. He would appear in the salons where the terrified dignitaries lay on the carpets and lounged on the sofas, asking each other what fate would descend on them when their waiting came to an end. He would comfort them, wish them success, attach the greatest importance, treat them with personal care. However, if he met a patrol of officers in the corridor, he encouraged them as well, wished them success, thanked the army for its loyalty to him; he assured them that army affairs were the object of his personal care. At this point the Jailers would angrily and venomously whisper that the officers should be hanged because they had destroyed the Empire. The kindly monarch would hear them out attentively, encourage, wish them luck, and thank them for their loyalty, underlining the fact that he valued them highly. And the indefatigable mobility of His Venerable Majesty, by which he contributed to the general welfare, never sparing his advice or directives, was called a success by Mr. Gebre-Egzy, who saw in it proof of the monarchy’s resilience. Unfortunately, by calling everything a success, the minister so infuriated the officers that they dragged him from the hall and gagged him once and for all, throwing him in jail.

  I lived through the blackest days of that last month as an official in the Ministry of Palace Provisions, Mr. Richard. And let me tell you that it was impossible to ascertain the number of people in our court, since the roster of dignitaries changed every day—some sneaked into the Palace counting on help, others were taken off to jail, and often someone who had sneaked in overnight would be in jail by noon. So I didn’t know how much food to order from the warehouses. Sometimes there were too few servings, and the gentlemen dignitaries would have a fit, asserting that the ministry is in collusion with the rebels and wants to break down the court by hunger. On the other hand, if there were too many servings the officers would scold me for letting wastefulness reign at court. So I was planning to offer my resignation, but this gesture proved to be unnecessary since they drove us all out of the Palace anyway.

  Y. Y.:

  We were by now only a handful, waiting for the final and most terrible verdict, when—praise be to God!—a ray of hope appeared in the form of the lawyers who at last, after long deliberations, had prepared a revised constitution and come to His Majesty with their proposal. The proposal consisted in changing our autocratic Empire into a constitutional monarchy, creating
a strong government and leaving to His Venerable Highness only as much power as the British kings have. The distinguished gentlemen started reading the proposal immediately, dividing into small groups and hiding in secret corners, because whenever the officers noticed a larger gathering they jailed them right away. Unfortunately, my friend, the Jailers opposed this proposal, insisting that absolute monarchy should be preserved, the full power by notables and dignitaries in the provinces maintained, and the delusions about constitutional monarchy, coming as they did from the moribund British Empire, thrown to the dogs. Here, however, the Talkers started jumping down the Jailers’ throats, saying that it was the last moment to improve the Empire through constitutional change, season it, make it palatable. And so, quarreling, they went to His Merciful Highness, who was just then receiving the delegation of lawyers and looking into the details of their proposal with personal attention, attaching the greatest importance to their ideas. Now, having listened to the sulking of the Jailers and the flattery of the Talkers, he praised all, encouraged, and wished everyone success. But someone must have run off to the officers and informed, because hardly had the lawyers emerged from His Enlightened Majesty’s office when they ran into the military, who immediately snatched the proposal from them, ordered them to go home, and forbade them to return to the Palace.

  Life inside the Palace seemed strange, as if existing only of itself and for itself. When I went to town as an official of the Palace post office, I would see normal life—cars driving through the streets, children playing, people selling and buying, old men sitting, talking away—and every day I would pass from one existence to another, no longer knowing which one was real, and feeling that it was sufficient for me to go into the city, to mingle with the crowds, for the whole Palace to vanish from memory. It would disappear, as if it didn’t exist, to the point of making me anxious that when I came back I wouldn’t find it there.

  E.:

  He spent the last days alone in the Palace, with only his old valet de chambre for company. Apparently the group in favor of closing the Palace and dethroning the Emperor had gained the upper hand in the Dergue. None of the names of the officers was known, none was announced—they acted in total secrecy until the end. Now they say that this group was headed by a young major named Mengistu Haile-Mariam. There were other officers, too, but they are all dead. I remember when this Mariam would come to the Palace as a captain. His mother was a servant at the court. I cannot tell who made it possible for him to graduate from the officers’ school. Slender, slight, always tense, but in control of himself—anyway, that was the impression he gave. He knew the structure of the court, he knew who was who, he knew whom to arrest and when in order to prevent the Palace from functioning, to make it lose its power and strength, change it into a useless simulacrum that today stands abandoned and deteriorating.

  The crucial decisions in the Dergue must have been taken sometime around the first of August. The military committee—that is, the Dergue—was composed of a hundred and twenty delegates elected at meetings in divisions. and garrisons. They had a list of five hundred dignitaries and courtiers whom they gradually arrested, creating a sinking emptiness around the Emperor until finally he was left alone in the Palace. The last group, members of the Emperor’s inner circle, was jailed in the middle of August. That’s when they took the chief of the Imperial bodyguards, Colonel Tassew Wajo; our monarch’s aide-de-camp, General Assefa Demissie; the commander of the Imperial Guard, General Tadesse Lemma; the personal secretary to H. S., Solomon Gebre-Mariam; the premier, Endelkachew; the Minister of the Highest Privileges, Admassu Retta; and perhaps twenty others. At the same time they dissolved the Crown Council and other institutions directly subordinate to the Emperor.

  Then the officers made detailed searches of the Palace. The most compromising documents were found in the Office of Highest Privileges, and found with all the more ease because Admassu Retta himself started to spill the beans. Once only the monarch distributed privileges, but as the Empire began to fall apart the grabbing and snatching grew so strong among the notables that H. S. was unable to keep things under control, and he handed over some of the distribution of privileges to Admassu Retta. But Admassu Retta was not such a mnemonic genius as the Emperor, who never needed to write anything down, so he kept detailed accounts of his disbursements of land, enterprises, foreign currencies, and the other gratuities given to the dignitaries. All this fell into the hands of the military, who used these gravely compromising documents in a major propaganda campaign about the corruption in the Palace. They awakened anger and hatred in the people. Demonstrations flared up, the street demanded hangings in an atmosphere of horror and apocalypse. It turned out well that the military drove us all from the Palace—maybe that was what saved my head.

  T. W.:

  I’ll tell you, sir, I knew things were going under just from watching the dignitaries sticking together in a close little pack, slapping each other on the back, telling each other they were right and the rest of the world could go to hell. They didn’t even bother to ask us servants for news, because they knew what we said would give them the blues. Anyway, they said, what can we do? Everything’s falling apart. And you should have seen the Floaters—all consolation. Everything will work out, they said, because we’re in a state of inertia and inertia always wins. We’ll hang on in the Palace and the common people will never wake up, they’ll never overcome the weight of inertia. If we learn how to give a little here and there, at just the right moments, they’ll go on sleeping. We should let sleeping dogs he. The trick is not to resist evil, but to humor it. And the Floaters might have been right, except for those officers, they had a real burr in their tail, and they just sliced into the Palace, cutting off great hunks of dignitaries, until in the end the Palace was picked clean, flushed out, and there was nobody left except for His Most Extraordinary Majesty and one servant.

  That servant was the most difficult to find. As old as his former master, he lived buried in such oblivion that when I asked people about him they would shrug their shoulders and say he had died long ago. He served the Emperor until the last day, the moment when the military led the monarch out of the Palace. Then they told the servant to gather up his belongings and go home.

  In the second half of August the officers arrest the last of H. S.’s circle. They still don’t touch the Emperor, because they need time to prepare public opinion: the capital must understand why the monarch is being removed. The officers know about the magical element in popular thinking, and about the dangers it contains. The magical aspect is that the highest one is endowed, often unconsciously, with divine characteristics. The supreme one is wise and noble, unblemished and kindly. Only the dignitaries are bad; they cause all the misery. Moreover, if the one on the top knew what his people were up to, he would immediately repair the damage and life would be better. Unfortunately, these crafty villains pull the wool over their master’s eyes, and that is why life is so hard, so low and miserable. This is magical thinking because, in reality, in an autocratic system it is precisely the one on the top who is the primary cause of what happens. He knows what is going on, and if he doesn’t know, it’s because he doesn’t want to know. It was no accident that the majority of the people around the Emperor were mean and servile. Meanness and servility were the conditions of ennoblement, the criteria by which the monarch chose his favorites, rewarded them, bestowed privileges on them. Not one step was taken, not one word said, without his knowledge and consent. Everyone spoke with his voice, even if they said diverse things, because he himself said diverse things. The condition for remaining in the Emperor’s circle was practicing the cult of the Emperor, and whoever grew weak and lost eagerness in the practice of this cult lost his place, dropped out, disappeared. Haile Selassie lived among shadows of himself, for what was the Imperial suite if not a multiplication of the Emperor’s shadow? Who were gentlemen like Aklilu, Gebre-Egzy, Admassu Retta, aside from being H. S.’s ministers? Nobodies. But it was precisely such pe
ople the Emperor wanted around him. Only they could satisfy his vanity, his self-love, his passion for the stage and the mirror, for gestures and the pedestal.

  And now the officers meet the Emperor alone, they confront him face-to-face, the final duel begins. The moment has come for everyone to remove the mask and show his face. This action generates anxiety and tension because the two sides form a new geometry. The Emperor has nothing to gain, but he can still defend himself by his defenselessness, by inactivity, by the unique virtue of occupying the Palace, by virtue of his being long-established—and also because he performed an extraordinary service: he was silent, was he not, when the rebels claimed that they were carrying out the revolution in his name. He never protested, he never called it a lie, and yet it was precisely this charade of loyalty, acted out for months by the military, that made their task so eminently easy. But the officers decide to go further, to follow through to the very end: they want to unmask the deity. In a society so crushed by misery, by privation and worry, nothing will speak more eloquently to the imagination, nothing cause greater unrest, anger, and hatred than the picture of corruption and privilege among the elite. Even an incompetent and sterile government, if it lived a spartan life, could exist for years basking in the esteem of the people. The attitude of the people to the Palace is normally kindhearted and understanding. But all tolerance has its limits, which in its swaggering arrogance the Palace often and easily violates. And the mood of the street changes violently from submission to defiance, from patience to rebelliousness.