And then Aster says, What’s this? She is still standing below the window, the blanket and gun dangling from her hand.
A stench that Hirut has never gotten used to wafts by. It comes from a short stack of stones near the entrance where, as a boy, Kidane learned to slaughter sheep for special occasions. Beneath those stones is a small shallow ditch where blood used to flow. That’s what you smell, the cook said to her when she first arrived at the house. It’s the rot of blood, you’ll get used to it. Still in the room is the stink of old blood, of helpless animals, of the piss and excrement that seeped into dirt, instinct and fear working together.
Whose gun is this?
Hirut says, It’s mine.
The rifle was Hirut’s father’s most prized possession. It was too big for the small crate so Hirut kept it tucked into the pile of straw and blankets that she uses as a mattress, all of it covered by a large sheet that she knots at the corners to keep intact. On those nights when she is at her most tired, she sleeps so she can feel the rifle by her side and pretend it is her mother’s arm.
Aster holds the rifle to light. It’s old, she says. She runs a finger over the five grooves in the barrel, marks that Hirut’s father said helped him count the Italians he killed. Do you know how to use it? She weighs its heft, testing its balance. My father taught me, like he taught my brothers. She presses the butt against her shoulder, one hand steadying the barrel. Where did you get it?
From home, Hirut says.
Home: exactly five kilometers from this place that is also called Aster and Kidane’s house. Five kilometers: a distance that Hirut will not comprehend until later, when she realizes that all things, even those things lost, can be put down on paper and measured. What she comprehends, standing at the threshold of her tiny room staring at Aster, is that even if she could run back at a fast sprint, it would not decrease the distance separating her from the plot of land that holds her parents’ bones. She is far from home.
Home, she says again. My father gave it to me.
Then Hirut feels a hand on her shoulder. She turns around and it is Kidane, bathed in the bright afternoon light.
What are you doing here? Kidane’s frame fills the door and blocks the light. A slender line of sweat trails down his neck, darkening his white tunic. The bottoms of his white jodhpurs are dusty; a leaf drags from the hem. What happened?
Ask her where she put the necklace.
Kidane searches Hirut’s face, then he turns back to his wife. Where did you get that gun? He is surprised. The cook had it?
It’s hers, Aster says. Then she coughs, her nose curling. It stinks in here. They don’t clean themselves.
Give it back to her. It is spoken in the tone Kidane takes when he expects to be obeyed. It’s not yours.
Aster’s laugh cuts through the room. So you’ll let her disobey the emperor’s orders? According to your leader, this now belongs to the armies of Ethiopia.
Kidane wipes his neck with a handkerchief he shoves back into his pocket. He dusts off his jodhpurs. He seems to be thinking. Then he says, Little One, can I see it?
He waits until Hirut nods before he takes the gun from Aster. He holds it in both hands. He hefts it to his shoulder the same way Aster did, the same way Hirut’s father showed Hirut how to do.
It’s a Wujigra, he says. My father used one in the battle at Adua when we faced these Italians the first time. This must be at least forty years old, maybe closer to fifty. He raises it higher and looks down the barrel, points it out the door, into the courtyard as if he can see beyond it, through walls and past the gate, toward Hirut’s old home all those kilometers away. Do you have bullets?
Hirut has memorized the contents of the crate that are scattered around Aster’s feet: the cook’s spare scarf, knotted around three Maria Theresa thalers and two blue buttons; the outgrown dress that Hirut came with; a piece of charcoal she uses for drawing; a broken ceramic plate with pink flowers that is the cook’s; the chipped handle of a water jug that is also the cook’s; and a bullet that is Hirut’s.
Where are the bullets? Kidane lowers the gun. How many does she have?
There is only that single bullet. There has only ever been one bullet and it belongs to that gun and that gun belongs to her. Her father made her promise to keep the two separate until she was in real danger and then, my child, you hold it like I’ve taught you and you aim it at the heart like I’ve shown you and you must fear nothing except leaving your enemy alive.
I didn’t even know she had this. Aster puts her hands on her waist, and in the semidark, Hirut can see her chin trembling, her gaze on Kidane shifting between tenderness and unease. What did you do with it?
Not now. Kidane’s voice is a whisper. Little One. He clears his throat.
This gun is important to me. Do you know a war is coming?
The war is all that the cook and the servants who meet at the mercato can talk about. They gather and whisper about freed slaves and liberation by the ferenj army. She shakes her head.
She’s lying, Aster says. Look. She holds up a piece of paper.
It is one of those leaflets scattered everywhere in the mercato. She did not know the cook had it. She did not know it was something the cook was keeping hidden.
This was in the cook’s blanket. These are the papers the Italians have been dropping from planes. I’ve been hearing about them. They’re telling them they’ll be free if they join the ferenj side.
Kidane takes the slip of paper and holds it toward the light. A lopsided drawing peeks through from the back. There is a scrawny beggar in chains kneeling in front of a large-headed man wearing a crown. Below it and beneath a series of words, the same beggar stands, his chains broken off, the emperor’s shattered crown at his feet. The beggar, now with a slight paunch, is waving at a soldier, his arm stiffly raised, his smile jubilant.
These Italians want to start a revolt before they try to take our country, Aster says. Mussoloni wants these people to join his army.
But they can’t read. Kidane is staring between the leaflet and the gun.
They can understand pictures. Aster flings aside the cook’s blanket and searches again, shaking the mattress. Puffs of dust bloom around her. Now, what do you say to this one?
Hirutiye, Kidane says. I need this gun. We’re going to war and we need all the weapons we can get. These Italians have many more than we do. He looks at her with those kind eyes of his, pleading with her in a way that gives her the courage to say:
My father gave it to me. He said to always keep it near me.
If we don’t gather every weapon in this country, we’ll lose before the war begins, Kidane says. He’s not loosening his hold on the gun, he’s not extending it to her. He still grips it firmly in both hands. The emperor himself told everyone to contribute their weapons. He said it himself, on the radio. We all have to do it. Even your father would do it if he were alive.
No. It’s mine. She has looked into his eyes before: where there was kindness, there is now a sternness that is new to her, a reprimand veiled by something else she cannot understand. But all Hirut can think about is the day her father handed her the rifle when he was already sweating and shivering, his cheeks unnaturally gaunt. She will not give the gun away.
You’ll get it back. I promise you, Kidane says. He is kind again, gentle.
Stop talking to her like she can reason, Aster says, reaching for the gun. Just take it.
She’s a child. Kidane pulls the rifle away.
A child. Aster stops. A child. She leans toward Kidane. You think I don’t realize you brought her here exactly one year after our son died? Her voice is low but it holds a bitterness that makes Kidane step back.
He places a hand on the doorframe and speaks slowly: Her parents died. I made a promise to Getey, she was like a sister to me.
Aster stares down at her hands, uncharacteristically hesitant. She came exactly one year after Tesfaye died, she says. Aster lifts her head and repeats it, more confident. You brought
her here after the mourning period. So you could do what you pleased without gossip.
She came here the day they were buried. There was nowhere else for her to go. Kidane takes a deep breath as if to steady himself.
You brought her here to insult me. Aster places a hand very quickly on her stomach and drops it. You brought her here to try to teach me my place.
On their faces, identical grim expressions, as if they have fought like this before, as if both are tired but cannot help it.
The necklace isn’t here, Kidane finally says. I lost it a long time ago. I told you.
And she’s not a child anymore. Think of what you knew of me when I was her age.
Kidane looks at his wife, his face faltering around the twisting line of his mouth. He says it softly, so softly Hirut thinks she is the only one who can hear: She’s Getey’s daughter. Then he walks out of the room with her rifle and after one long look, Aster follows.
They were both in here? The cook leans against the wall and tugs at the collar of her worn dress. Beads of sweat roll down on her neck. She wipes the back of her hand across her chin and chest. Stop looking at me like that, she mutters.
Hirut sits in the middle of the room with her arms around her legs. She buries her face into the crevice of her folded arms.
She was still looking for that necklace? the cook asks. Now she is standing over Hirut, her feet in that wide stance of hers, and Hirut doesn’t need to look up to know that her hands are on her waist and her chin juts out. She sets the crate upright, then stops at her unrolled mattress. What did they do in here?
Hirut looks up. The cook’s round face looms above her.
The cook’s mouth begins to tremble. Why’s everything a mess? She spreads her arms wide, and turns in a slow, stunned circle. She sinks to her knees and slides her hand inside the straw filling and begins to slowly pull it out, scattering the clumps. No, she is saying.
Hirut watches her stupidly, reminded of a bird she once saw, aged and thick-bodied, fall out of a tree already dead.
Why didn’t you call me? The cook’s mattress lies depleted across her lap. My flyer. She starts to tip to one side before she rights herself. You let them take it. You couldn’t think about anyone but yourself?
Hirut turns to her and sees her clenched jaw, the rigidity of her back. She cannot understand what the cook is talking about. You can get another one. She hears the bitterness creep into her voice. He took my rifle.
It’s so simple for you, isn’t it? the cook says.
Both sit in silence, staring around the messy room. Over the cook’s head, a wavering strand of light flickers past floating dust. There is no pool of sun that collects at her feet, like Aster. No sunshine glimmers over her shoulders, drenching her in golden light, like Kidane. She is the cook: square and stout, in her drab dress and the same stained scarf, standing in a room that still holds all she owns.
I was younger than you when I came here. The cook says this in a voice that Hirut has to lean forward to hear. My father was killed by those people who came to steal us away to work in rich houses. I saw it. She speaks with a quiet anguish. You think you’re better. She pauses. But I’m stronger.
I don’t, Hirut says, keeping her voice low.
I’m too useful. The cook plants her hands on her stomach and slumps. She is lost in her thoughts, still whispering in that tone that scrapes against her chest. I wasn’t always like this. Look at me. She extends her arms like wings, lifts her chin.
Hirut looks at the cook’s hands, the bones that are lost in all the flesh, the burns that crater her skin, the callouses she knows line her palms and are rough to the touch. Today her short fingernails are tinged yellow from turmeric, on the back of her wrist a dot of awaze, the red pepper paste gleaming like fresh blood. She woke before dawn to pack Kidane’s food for his trip to recruit villagers into the army. She stayed up all night preparing the meal and filling jugs of water. She is often the first to wake and the last to sleep, working with a persistence and steadiness that Hirut has never questioned. She never considered what the cook would be, if not this.
You don’t think I had a family before this. The cook reads her mind. You think I was born with these scars.
She has never heard the cook speak about the life she led before this one.
Some of us came by force, the cook adds. This war will help us go back. Berhe and I could have gone home. But now. She stops. They know everything.
Berhe said I can leave when I want.
The cook’s laugh is a brief, sad sound. He said the same to me when we came here.
My father gave me that gun. Hirut turns to the wall and blinks away the tears.
The cook slides to the ground and sits next to her. In the long silence, loneliness stretches between them and draws them close.
You didn’t know Berhe when he was a young man, the cook finally says. He was so proud, so strong. She picks at her nails. They dragged his father behind a horse and that man still wouldn’t surrender. He refused to give them his land, so they took it and his son.
Hirut thinks back to her father’s stories of the war against the Italians, the same ones who lost long ago and now want to come back. Those ferenjoch?
The devil has always lived in this country to torment people like me. The cook quiets and stares out of the door, toward the courtyard. The day you came, she begins softly, Aster was burning her clothes. She burned the flowers in the garden too.
Hirut nods. She remembers the barren courtyard, the charred bushes and grass. And now she remembers something else: the day she arrived, Aster met her on the veranda dressed in black.
Get her out of my house, she said to Berhe.
This is Getey and Fasil’s daughter, Berhe said. She buried both of them today, she has no one left, Kidane brought her.
And Aster lifted a trembling hand to her face. Berhe, she said, is this how he intends to do this?
Kidane didn’t know what to do, the cook adds. When their little boy died he was a broken man, you wouldn’t believe it. Then you came and something changed. The cook shoves a twig out of the door with her foot. You can blame her for many things, but don’t blame Aster for everything.
EVERY DAY, HIRUT SEARCHES FOR HER RIFLE AS SHE CLEANS. SHE goes into the sitting room and lifts the sofa. She shakes out the curtains and the rug and shifts the radio to either side. She runs a flat palm under the dining table and lifts each of the four chairs and looks underneath. She begs the cook to help lift the bags of teff and check their weight, to knock on the side of the gourd with the injera mixture. She looks in the sack of potatoes and the bag of lentils. She rustles through the rosebushes in the courtyard and the piles of hay near the horse’s pen. She unstacks then restacks Berhe’s neat pile of firewood at the side of the stable. She peers into the water well outside of the compound. She crawls under the veranda. She refolds all of Aster’s scarves and beautiful dresses in her cupboards. Though she is not allowed in Kidane’s office, she sneaks in when he leaves for his war meetings, and sweeps. She cleans thoroughly and diligently until every room sparkles, until all the silver and copper centerpieces glow like a slow-burning fire.
Aster grows tense and watches her with careful eyes. Kidane gets up and walks out whenever she enters a room. Every night the cook says: But you’ve cleaned these rooms already, enough. She says: They’ve given it to one of Kidane’s recruits. She says: Berhe, make her stop. But Berhe follows her quietly when she rechecks worn paths outside the compound, an infinite sadness on his weathered face. Then one day, weeks later, he stops her at the gate and gathers her in his arms and whispers into her ear: What is lost is gone, my child, what is lost makes room for something else. But still, she washes and dusts and polishes and sweeps and does it all again as if it had never been done, and with every new day, the dread builds:
The rifle has disappeared. It is as if it never existed. As if this life, in this house, is all that she has ever known, as if she has been no one else but this unloved girl. Soon, sh
e will have to admit that it is nowhere. It has slipped into a crevice that can swallow girls just as easily as it devours guns. She feels herself disappearing, senses her bones softening and sliding in her skin. She wakes, feverish, convinced that invisible hands are dragging her away, and she, defenseless without a weapon, is too weak to face the enemy. I’m sorry, Abbaba, she says each night. She apologizes to her father then waits for sunlight to blaze its angry heat and burn the darkness away.
Aster’s necklace: She finds it one day, tucked deep in the top drawer of Kidane’s desk, that splendidly carved wooden desk now always piled high with maps and newspapers and a portrait of their son, little Tesfaye. Hirut jerks her hand out of the drawer, clutching it in her palm. It is a thick gold crucifix on a splendid chain, heavy and solid in her shaking hand. It slips out of her hold and clinks onto the floor like a bag of coins and when she snatches it up, heart pounding, something breathes in the room. She spins around: In front of her are the two chairs facing the desk, on the wall is the faded photograph of Kidane’s father and another of the couple in younger days. There is the same heap of documents and newspapers that cover the surface of the desk and on top, a picture of truckloads of marching men in their abesha libs, and a picture of Emperor Haile Selassie peering accusingly at her. There is the same sword that leans in the same corner. Nothing has moved, but Hirut feels as if the walls are expanding and a hand stretching to snatch the necklace away, so she grips it even tighter and runs.
She buries it at the side of the stable, in a hole that she digs beneath Berhe’s firewood. She continues to clean. She continues to look for the rifle. Hirut goes about her days mindful of being seen, of being observed, of being a curious spectacle in the house that still shines from her thorough work. It is at night that she lets the change take effect, lets her heart swell with triumph, and allows herself to smile. Quietly, she pats the place beside her where the rifle once lay then she shuts her eyes and dreams of a girl standing on a mountain, gazing at her fallen enemies with the gun in her hand, victorious.
The Shadow King Page 2