The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat

by Ryzard Kapuscinski

  Now comes the moment when the officers decide to lay bare the King of Kings, to turn his pockets inside out, to reveal to the people the secret hiding places in the Emperor’s closet. All the while the ancient H. S. wanders through the deserted Palace, accompanied by his valet, L. M.

  L. M.:

  This, my gracious sir, was when they were taking away the last of the dignitaries, inviting the gentlemen to the trucks. An officer tells me to remain with His Venerable Majesty and perform all the services I had always performed. Having said this, he drove away. Immediately I made for the Supreme Office, to lend my ear to the will of His Omnipotent Highness. I found no one in the office. I was walking through the corridors, wondering where my lord had gone, when I discovered him standing in the main reception gallery, watching the soldiers of his Guard loading their backpacks and duffel bags, readying themselves to leave. How can this be? I think—they are all going, leaving His Majesty unprotected in a town full of thieves and unrest. So I go up to them and ask, “And you, my gracious sirs, are you leaving like this, altogether?” “Altogether,” they answer, “but the sentry at the gate stays so that if some dignitary tries to sneak into the Palace, they’ll capture him.” His Venerable Majesty is standing, watching, not saying a word. Then they bow to His Majesty and leave with their bundles, and His Most Reverend Majesty looks on in silence as they go, and in silence he returns to his chamber.

  Unfortunately, L. M.’s story is chaotic. The old man cannot turn his images, his experiences, and his expressions into a coherent entity. “Please try to remember more details, father!” urges Teferra Gebrewold. (He calls L. M. “father” because of his age, not of kinship.) So L. M. remembers the following scene: One day he found the Emperor standing in a chamber, looking out the window. He came closer and also looked out the window, and saw cows grazing in the Palace garden. Someone must have told herdsmen that the Emperor is no longer important and that everyone can share his property, or at least the Palace grass.

  The Emperor now devoted himself to long periods of meditation (“In this the Hindus once gave him instructions, ordering him to stand on one leg, forbidding him to breathe, making him close his eyes”) Immobile, he would meditate for hours in his office (at least the valet thinks he meditated—perhaps he dozed). L. M. did not dare to disturb him. The rainy season wore on. It rained for days on end; trees stood in water. Mornings were foggy and nights cold. H. S. still wore his uniform, over which he would throw a warm woolen cape. They got up as they had in the old days, as they had for years, at daybreak, and they went to the Palace chapel, where each day L. M. read aloud different verses from the Book of Psalms. “Lord, how they are increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me.” “Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not.” “Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.”

  Afterward, H. S. would go to his office and sit down at his desk, on which more than a dozen telephones were perched. All of them silent—perhaps they had been cut off. L. M. would sit by the door, waiting for the bell to ring, summoning him to receive orders from his monarch.

  L. M.:

  So, my gracious sir, in those days, only the officers intruded. First they would come to me, asking to be announced to His Unparalleled Majesty, and then they would enter the office, where His Highness would seat them in comfortable armchairs. Then they would read a proclamation demanding that His Benevolent Majesty give back the money that, they claim, he has been illegally appropriating for fifty years, depositing in banks around the world and concealing in the Palace and in the homes of dignitaries and notables. This, they say, should be returned, because it is the property of the people, from whose blood and sweat it came. “What money are you talking about?” His Benevolent Majesty asks. “Everything went for development, for catching up and surpassing, and the development was proclaimed a success, was it not? We had no money for ourselves.” “Some development!” cry the officers. “All this is empty demagoguery, a smoke screen.” And they get up from the armchairs, lift the great Persian carpet from the floor, and there under the carpet are rolls of dollar bills stuck together, one next to the other, so that the floor looked green. In the presence of His August Majesty they order the sergeants to count the money, write down the amount, and carry it off to be nationalized.

  They leave soon afterward, and His Dignified Majesty calls me into his office and orders me to hide among his books the money he used to keep in his desk. Since His Majesty, as the designated descendant of Solomon, had a great collection of the Holy Scriptures, translated into many languages, that’s where we stashed the money. Ah, those officers, clever sharks they were! The following day they come, read their proclamation, and demand the return of the money, because, they say, it’s needed to buy flour for the starving. His Majesty, sitting at his desk, shows them the empty drawers. At which the officers spring from their armchairs, grab all those Bibles from the bookcases, and shake the dollars out, whereupon the sergeants count them, write down the figures, and take them away to be nationalized.

  All this is nothing, say the officers. The rest of the money should be returned, especially the amounts in the Swiss and British banks in His Majesty’s private account, estimated at half a billion dollars. They persuade His Majesty to sign the appropriate checks, and thus, they claim, the money will be returned to the nation. “Where am I to come up with all this money?” asks His Venerable Majesty. “All I have is a few pennies for the care of my ailing son in a Swiss hospital.” “Pretty pennies they are, too,” answer the officers, and they read aloud a letter from the Swiss embassy which says that His Majesty has on account in banks there the sum of one hundred million dollars. So they go on quarreling until finally His Majesty falls into meditation, closes his eyes, and stops breathing. Then the officers withdraw, promising to return.

  Silence fell on the Palace, but a bad silence, in which one could hear the shouts from the street. Demonstrators were marching through the town, all sorts of rabble loitering about, cursing His Majesty, calling him a thief, wanting to string him up from a tree. “Crook! Give back our money!” they cried, “Hang the Emperor! Hang the Emperor!” Then I would close all the windows in the Palace, to prevent these indecent and slanderous cries from reaching His Venerable Majesty’s ears, from stirring his blood. And I would quickly lead my lord to the chapel, which was in the most secluded place, and to muffle the blasphemous roar, I would read aloud to him the words of the prophets. “Also take no heed unto all words that are spoken; lest thou hear thy servant curse thee.” “They are vanity and the work of errors: in the time of their visitation they shall perish.” “Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our re proach. The joy of our heart is ceased: our dance is turned into mourning. The crown is fallen from our head: For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.” “How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street. They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.” “Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me. Thou hast heard their reproach, O Lord; The lips of those that rose up against me; I am their musick. They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me.”

  And as His August Majesty listened, gracious sir, he would doze off. There I would leave him, proceeding to my lodgings to hear what was being said on the radio. In those days the radio was the only link between the Palace and the Empire.

  Everybody listened to the radio then, and those who could afford a television set (still the greatest symbol of luxury in this country) watched. During this period, late August and early September, every day brought an abundance of revelations about the Emperor and the life of the Palace. There was a shower of names and figures, of bank account numbers, of the names of properties and private firms. Dignitaries’ houses were shown: the riches gathered there, the contents of secret safes, piles
of jewelry. One often heard the voice of the Minister of Highest Privileges, Admassu Retta, who testified before the Commission for Investigating Corruption about which of the dignitaries received what and when, where he himself received it, and what its value was. The difficulty, however, was that it was impossible to determine the borderline between the state budget and the Emperor’s private treasury; everything was blurred, muddled, ambiguous. With state money the dignitaries built themselves palaces, bought estates, traveled abroad. The Emperor himself amassed the greatest riches. The older he grew, the greater became his greed, his pitiable cupidity. One could talk about it with sadness and indulgence, were it not for the fact that H. S.—he and his people—took millions from the state treasury amid cemeteries full of people who had died of hunger, cemeteries visible from the windows of the royal Palace.

  At the end of August the military proclaimed the nationalization of all the Emperor’s Palaces. There were fifteen of them. His private enterprises met the same fate, among them the Saint George Brewery, the Addis Ababa metropolitan bus company, the mineral-water factory in Ambo. The officers kept paying their visits to the Emperor, having long talks with him, urging him to withdraw his money from foreign banks and transfer it to the national treasury. The exact sum in the Emperor’s accounts will probably never be known. The propaganda bulletins spoke of four billion dollars, but this was probably a gross exaggeration. It was rather a matter of hundreds of millions. The insistent demands of the military ended in failure: the Emperor never gave his money to the state, and it remains in foreign banks to this day.

  L. M. recalls that the officers came to the Palace one day and announced that in the evening the television would show a film that H. S. should watch. The valet passed on this information to the Emperor, and the monarch willingly agreed to fulfill the request of his army. In the evening he sat down in his armchair in front of the television and the program began. They were showing Jonathan Dimbleby’s film Ethiopia: The Unknown Famine. L. M. assures me that the Emperor watched the film to the end and then became lost in thought. That night, September 11, the servant and his master—two old men in an abandoned Palace—did not sleep, because it was New Year’s Eve according to the Ethiopian calendar. For this occasion L. M. lit candles in chandeliers all through the Palace.

  At daybreak they heard the throbbing of motors and the clank of tank treads on asphalt. Then silence. At six o’clock military trucks pulled up in front of the Palace. Three officers in combat uniforms made their way to the chamber where the Emperor had been since dawn. After a preliminary bow, one of them read the act of dethronement. The text, published later in the press and read over the radio, went as follows: “Even though the people treated the throne in good faith as a symbol of unity, Haile Selassie I took advantage of its authority, dignity, and honor for his own personal ends. As a result, the country found itself in a state of poverty and disintegration. Moreover, an eighty-two-year-old monarch, because of his age, is incapable of meeting his responsibilities. Therefore His Imperial Majesty Haile Selas sie I is being deposed as of September 12, 1974, and power assumed by the Provisional Military Committee. Ethiopia above all!”

  The Emperor, standing, heard out the officer’s words, and then he expressed his thanks to everyone, stated that the army had never disappointed him, and added that if the revolution is good for the people then he, too, supports the revolution and would not oppose the dethronement. “In that case,” said the officer (he was wearing a major’s uniform), “His Imperial Majesty will please follow us.” “Where to?” H. S. asked. “To a safe place,” explained the major. “His Imperial Highness will see.” Everybody left the Palace. In the driveway stood a green Volkswagen. Behind the wheel sat an officer, who opened the door and held the front seat, so that the Emperor could get into the back. “You can’t be serious!” the Emperor bridled. “I’m supposed to go like this?” It was his only gesture of protest that morning. However, he presently fell silent and sat down in the back seat of the car. The Volkswagen set off, preceded by a jeep full of armed soldiers, with an identical jeep following. It wasn’t seven o’clock yet. The curfew was still in force. They were driving through empty streets. With a gesture of his hand, H. S. greeted those few people they passed along the way. Finally the column disappeared through the gates of the Fourth Division barracks.

  On the orders of the officers, L. M. packed his belongings in the Palace and then went out into the street with his bundle on his back. He flagged down a passing taxi and had himself driven home, to Jimma Road. Teferra Gebrewold says that two lieutenants came that same day at noon and locked the Palace. One of them put the key into his pocket. They climbed into their jeep and left. Two tanks, which had stood before the Palace gates during the night and been showered with flowers by the people during the day, returned to their base.

  HAILE SELASSIE STILL BELIEVES HE IS EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA

  Addis Ababa, February 7, 1975 (Agence France Presse). Imprisoned in the rooms of the Menelik Palace on the hills above Addis Ababa, Haile Selassie is spending the last months of his life surrounded by soldiers. According to eyewitness accounts, these soldiers, as in the best times of the Empire, still bow before the King of Kings. Thanks to such gestures, as a representative of an international aid organization discovered recently when he paid a visit to the Emperor and other prisoners remaining in the Palace, Haile Selassie still believes that he is the Emperor of Ethiopia.

  The Negus is in good health, has begun to read a lot—in spite of his years he still reads without glasses—and from time to time gives advice to the soldiers who guard him. It bears mentioning that these soldiers are changed every week, because the aged monarch has retained his gift of winning allies. As in the past, each of the ex-Emperor’s days is arranged within the framework of an inviolable program and proceeds according to protocol.

  The King of Kings gets up at dawn, attends morning mass, and afterward plunges into his reading. The former supreme ruler still repeats what he said on the day of his deposition: “If the revolution is good for the people, then I am for the revolution.”

  In the Emperor’s old chamber, several meters from the building where Haile Selassie is staying, the ten members of the Dergue hold continuous conferences on saving the revolution. New dangers threaten because of the outbreak of war in Eritrea. Close by, the Emperor’s lions, locked in their cages and growling threateningly, demand their daily portion of meat.

  On the other side of the Palace, near the building occupied by Haile Selassie, stand lodgings for the former court, where dignitaries and notables await their fates in the basements where they are imprisoned.

  * * *

  The Ethiopian Herald

  Addis Ababa, August 28, 1975 (ENA). Yesterday Haile Selassie I, the former Emperor of Ethiopia, died. The cause of death was circulatory failure.

  * * *

  About the Author

  RYSZARD KAPUŚCIŃSKI was born in eastern Poland in 1932. After studying Polish history at Warsaw University, he began work as a domestic reporter. Later, as a foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency (until 1981), he gained critical and popular praise for his coverage of civil wars, revolutions, and social conditions in the Third World. In Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, he ventured into the “bush”—the word that has become his trademark—to search out hidden stories. In addition to his books on the Third World, Kapuściński wrote about the Polish provinces and the Asian and Caucasian republics of the Soviet Union.