He faces forward and grips his hands and watches. He pays attention to every detail. He sees the gushing waters of the Tsissat Falls and the hills of Gondar. He sees a map and an animated white line following the path of the Nile, snaking past Sudanese women wading through the great river, past Egyptian laborers constructing a dam, moving out of Ethiopia to disappear completely. Then he sees the tall lines of New York City and a group of American men around a table dominated by two large tusks. He pauses at the tusks.
The reportage recounts his coronation and there he is. Haile Selassie remembers this moment. He was proud. He was ready for what lay before him. Haile Selassie sees his younger self saluting the Duke of Gloucester as he steps off a train. Behind the duke are foreign dignitaries who have come to witness Ras Teferi Mekonnen become Emperor Haile Selassie.
And then the broadcaster slips past the years and it is 1935 again and there is Benito Mussolini: narrow-eyed and stern-jawed. There are his soldati, numerous as ants. There they are clambering onto a hulking ship. There is Benito on a white horse before a statue of Julius Caesar.
And the scene cuts and there is an older and more somber Haile Selassie in an office, sitting with his hands folded, a quiet dread resting behind his eyes as he nods and looks past the camera. Who was speaking to him? What question made him turn away like that? The film slides to black, throwing the office into darkness.
We are here. We are here, he whispers then thinks better: I am here.
Again, he says. Move the projector closer to the wall.
He wants the images to bleed across three walls. He wants them to his left and to his right: stereoscopic. He wants to tilt into this splitting world. He wants to gaze at the center until the periphery snaps into the middle at his behest. He wants to train himself to withstand disorientation and stay calm until the world melds itself back together.
The reel begins again.
The emperor shuts his eyes and listens to the whir of celluloid on metal. He understands the pieces of this impending war. He can take it apart and analyze each corroded segment of Mussolini’s dream for an empire. He can see the small parts but he cannot comprehend the whole. He cannot see what more he can do.
Your Majesty? It’s ended. Should I begin again?
He nods because he doesn’t trust his voice. He inches his chair back and opens his eyes and lets the images collide.
Your Majesty, again?
The emperor cannot answer. He can only sit in this dark room and blink to shift the world into focus.
HIRUT PAUSES OVER THE TEFF SHE IS SIFTING ON THE VERANDA. Kidane and Berhe are near the stable, around the corner and out of view. They are speaking with an unstrained camaraderie, unaware of what is buried beneath the firewood steps from them. It has been weeks since she put the items there and she has been vigilant, so aware of Aster and Kidane’s presence whenever they’ve stepped outside that she wonders if they can feel her sitting at their shoulder, swiveling her head with theirs, tucking herself inside their throats to listen for that first hint of a discovery: the sharp intake of breath, the sudden snap of neck. The men’s voices drift. Then they walk out of the gate, a long burlap bag with two new rifles in both their arms. They are going to deliver more guns to Kidane’s new army, young recruits he is training for the war that has not arrived. Hirut bends her head and continues sifting the teff, relieved.
She tosses the bowl filled with the grain, letting the wind blow away the chaff. Her eyes follow the rise and fall of her hands. Her heart slows to an even rhythm. All the noises of the world quiet to their normal, buzzing calm. She is so intent on her work again that, at first, she does not notice Aster at the window, watching her intently, her eyes moving with Hirut’s, noting the way the girl stares and tips toward the stable. It is only when Hirut hears the tap-tap-tap that she looks up, startled to see the woman’s hand pressed against the glass as if she wants to shatter it in her fist.
Later she will understand the impulse as an instinctive desire to escape: Hirut sets down the teff and gets to her feet. She is shaking already, her body responding to what words have yet to form. Aster walks out of the front door and stands beside her, following the path of her gaze. Aster steps down from the veranda, pauses to look up at Hirut, then pivots toward the stable. Hirut stares at Aster’s back, at the woman’s hands clenching at her side. They stand like that, one behind the other, both facing the stable, until Aster takes a step forward then another, and Hirut follows, guided by a fear stronger than the dread trying to root her in place.
Aster stops at the stable door. What’s in here? She grinds her teeth over each word.
Hirut will say later that there was no other way for this to happen. There was nothing else for her to do but to confess and beg forgiveness. It was foolish to take those trinkets, the jewels, the discarded coins. It was foolish to imagine them hers. There is no place in this world where a girl like her can own the things she has buried in dirt for safekeeping. All along, she has known this, just as she has known she will never see her rifle again. Some people are meant to be owners of things. Others, only to set them in their rightful place and clean them. It is a thought she has known but chosen to ignore, hoping that by force she can make herself into something else.
Are you hiding something in here?
No, Hirut says.
Hirut waits for Aster to say more, but the woman stands there, unmoving.
Then where is it? I’ve seen you turning to look this way whenever someone gets near.
She recognizes the stiffening in Aster’s back, the set jaw that tugs at the muscles in her neck. Aster is controlling her temper, waiting for the perfect moment to let it loose. Whether it will come is not the question.
Tell me what you’ve been doing. Her face is flushed. Tears collect in her eyes before she blinks them away.
Looking for my rifle.
The space between them stretches and it is as if they are groping for balance as the ground beneath them starts to shift.
You don’t understand? The look she fixes on Hirut swims between loathing and frustration. It’s not yours anymore.
Hirut wipes her eyes. She does not want to let this woman see how much she understands.
From the stable seeps the ripe odor of manure, the acrid sharpness of urine and straw. They both smell it at the same time, and when Aster turns her head, Hirut does the same and finds herself confronted with the edge of firewood poking out from the corner of the building. She looks away quickly and settles on the stable door but not before she meets Aster’s gaze.
There are enough hidden things in my house, don’t you think? Aster says it quietly but now it is easy to see she is trembling with rage. She is trying to contain it, every muscle tensed toward stillness. The effort bloats her face, tightens her mouth into a grim line.
I’ve seen you looking around in my bedroom, Aster continues. You go into his office and go through his papers. You can’t even read. You think you can replace me?
From inside the stable, one of the couple’s horses huffs loudly.
Hirut is watching Aster’s mouth, waiting for the words that will break her resolve and push her to her knees. She can feel color rushing to her cheeks, pooling at the spot where Kidane planted his lips. She lifts her hand to flick the sensation away before Aster notices.
Who are you? Aster asks.
Hirut tugs at the collar of her dress and keeps her head down. She knows who she is, but she knows she is also lost.
I don’t want anything, Hirut says. Just my rifle.
Aster raises her hand to strike her then stops herself. She takes Hirut’s arm and digs her thumb into her elbow. You still think this world was built around you? she asks. You were born to fit into it. That’s your fate. It was your mother’s. That gun belongs to Ethiopia. It’s been given to someone who needs it for the war. Do you think you matter more than this country?
Aster yanks her to the side of the building, in front of the firewood. Now, show me.
Here is
something: she likes to sing. She likes the sound of her voice cupped in melody and rolling out of her throat. It is her mother who taught her how a voice can tremble between two feelings without splitting. She sings to memorize, to pin fact onto rhythm and lodge it firmly in her head. When she creates songs she can change a happening, reverse its course of action and alter meaning, even make it forgotten. She has always understood the shifting terrains of truth. She knows that it is belief that makes a thing so.
So when Aster leads her to the side of the building, in front of the stack of firewood and says, Now, show me, Hirut thinks of a melody and lets it tumble up from her chest and settle just inside her throat, ready. An incantation to wipe this moment clean. And when she has no choice but to pick up the firewood, piece by piece, as Aster watches with a set mouth, Hirut begins to hum. As she removes one row after the other, keeping pace with the sad cadence of her wordless ballad, she starts to say her mother’s name: Getey. She whispers it as she works, until nothing but the narrow mound of dirt rises to meet her gaze like an accusation. Then she and Aster stand before it, both struck mute, until Aster drops to her knees and crawls to the hole and starts to dig.
Hirut turns her back. Then she feels herself swaying. Her body starts to fold into itself and not even her mother’s name is strong enough to keep her upright. She puts her head on the ground, against her knees, and shields her skull with her hands and waits, moaning in rising hysteria: Emama, Emaye, help me.
What Aster finds: two crushed cigarettes, a broken pencil, a leather satchel, an empty pillbox, a stack of stamped documents, a leather bracelet, an ashtray, a strapless watch, an ink pad and a broken compass, a small amber stone, a horsehair fly swatter, a rusted pocketknife, a collapsible hand fan, two folded envelopes, a wooden cross pendant, two closed amulets, two silver chains wrapped around a silver-handled letter opener, a leather cross pendant, six matchboxes, a scrap of black velvet, a blue rock, a gold-handled spoon, a chipped piece of sandstone, a knot of discarded cotton, one fake gold earring, a scratched teacup, small binoculars, and her necklace.
There are words spoken in this moment, but later, Hirut will not remember if it was Aster or she clinging to the torn edge of a broken thought: Emaye, Emaye, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this?
Aster dangles the necklace above Hirut’s head. She cannot seem to comprehend what it is she is holding. Her face is contorted, features crumbling then gathering then falling again. She is shaking her head and saying, What right did she have? What right did she have? Then she looks down at Hirut and that is when Hirut realizes she has lifted her head to look upon this new version of Aster: collapsing and enraged, stunned into dizzying confusion, bowed beneath an invisible force that Hirut can feel but cannot grasp.
Sit up.
Hirut obeys without thinking. She finds herself on her knees, eye-level with Aster, reaching out to take the necklace so she can hide the evidence of her deepening shame. Aster is whispering: What right did she have, when she grabs Hirut by her hair and slaps her hard across the face.
The blow comes as a relief to Hirut. It is something to do: to be hit. It is somewhere to go: to be in pain. She welcomes the distraction from the tremor she feels seeping out of Aster and sinking into her own skin. She is crying as she braces herself for the shout because she knows that Aster, too, uses her voice, that she knows how to hurl it like a stone from a slingshot and buckle a grown man’s knees. With her neck twisted awkwardly, Hirut grasps her hair at the roots to keep Aster from pulling chunks out. Already a section of her scalp burns raw. Then she shuts her eyes, stiffens her back, and waits for another hit. She braces for the fist to grind into her jaw and snap her teeth together. Her ears will ring from the slip of jawbone before it slides back in place, and it will be bruised but not broken. Hirut tilts toward the coming blow, a tiny kernel of triumph pressing through the dread. No matter what she does, Aster cannot untake the necklace. She cannot unbury it. She cannot force Kidane not to stick it so far inside an overstuffed drawer that he forgets where it is. She can do nothing but strike, each hit an impotent replacement for the fury she would rather direct at her husband.
Then: from somewhere far away she hears a snap, then the crisp crack of pliant leather. The thought is a slender beam of light sailing across a dark sky: Aster has unhooked the horsewhip, the one that Kidane rarely uses on the horses, Buna and Adua. It has hung on a crooked nail on the side of the building for as long as she has been in this place. It hangs just above the firewood. Now it is in Aster’s hand and it is not the wind but this whip slicing through her.
Please, Hirut says. She turns over to shield her back from another blow.
The tip of the whip catches her on her shoulder and craters the skin on her collarbone. The cut is a split wound filling with blood, arching down one side of her throat like a broken necklace. A warm, wet shield spreads across her dress and she knows she is bleeding badly. Hirut breaks into a sweat and feels a dark curtain drop inside her head. For a moment, there are no words. There is no sound. There is only the deliberate, clawing weight bearing across her spine and shoulders, pounding its way through skin and bone. She wants to cry out but Aster is still hitting and there is no voice strong enough to climb out of this abyss. No sound deep enough to burrow beneath it. Slowly, she feels the cuts and gashes, the burn of open wounds. She is splitting into pieces.
She hears the cook: Aster. Asty. Emebet. Not like this.
Get out of here, Aster says as she kicks Hirut in the stomach.
Hirut rolls onto her back, coughing to breathe. Help me.
The punch lands in the center of her chest and Hirut curls breathless around the new pain, propelled by dumbfounded shock. Now she is afraid. One eye is sliding shut. She can see the corner of a swollen lip. She swings her head in the cook’s direction, made nauseous by the momentum, and sees the cook is shaking her head, flat-eyed with a quivering chin. Hirut can hear a voice she knows is hers calling for her mother, calling for Kidane, calling for her father. And when she turns to beg Aster to stop, please stop, she will leave, she will go and die and never come back, she sees Aster fall to her knees and throw the necklace next to Hirut’s head where it lands in a heap like a wounded animal.
For a moment, the world spins in an unnatural quiet. There is just Aster pressing her face on the ground, sliding toward her. Hirut notes the frantic sorrow in her eyes, the way her mouth is chewing words to spit them out. Dust blooms as Aster drags herself over dirt as if she has forgotten the use of her legs, as if her body cannot contain the full weight of her fury. Then there is nothing except a finger’s width of dusty air to mark the distance between the two of them. Silence extends until Hirut can hear the ringing in her own ears. Then: It was for nothing? Aster shouts as she shakes Hirut by the shoulder. Was it for nothing?
Chorus
We see the young Aster. We see the way she creeps up the stairs with a chorus of women ululating at her back. She is gripping the railing for strength, dragging her leaden body over the steps. Her childish heart, wild with fear, shivers visibly in her chest. We can hear the men laugh in the hall below. We can hear the scrape of heavy chairs resounding through the great house. A bright kerosene lamp swings from a long nail on the landing in front of her. Shadows scamper across the walls and what can she do but recoil and look at her mother? She is young, after all. She is just a girl, so when they tell her, Go on, Aster, and walk to your new husband, what can Aster do but walk?
At the top step is the cook, her arms open to take her and pull her toward the bedroom. She does not know that we are there. She cannot see how her glorious abesha chemise glows in the dark, dark stairwell. There’s no way out but through it, we tell her. There’s no escape but what you make from the inside. We are whispering but she cannot hear. We are offering the advice all mothers give to daughters leaving girlhood behind. She stumbles and pauses at the last step. She opens her mouth to plead again. This girl so hard to bring to tears is on the verge of colla
pse. The cook shakes her head and puts a finger to her lips and motions her on.
Don’t be afraid, Asty, the cook says. He’s wearing the necklace you gave him. It’s a good sign. Go, emebet, don’t worry, he’ll be gentle.
But Aster cannot hear. She is suspended above the celebratory voices, trapped by a curdling rage that she mistakes for fear. Past that door is the bedroom. Inside that bedroom is Kidane. When she steps in, she must do it without the cook or her mother. She must go in as the wife of a man she hardly knows. They will be alone to do what it is that husbands and wives do when they close the door behind them and grow deathly quiet. There is no choice but forward. No other way but through it: we say it again.
At the landing, the cook draws her close in an embrace. Lie down on the bed and open your legs and close your eyes. In the morning I’ll be here waiting. I’ll bathe you myself if you want. She kisses Aster on each cheek, pats her hair, and adjusts the folds of her dress. You’re beautiful, she says.
The cook’s swollen eye has almost healed, the cuts on her mouth are now tiny scabs. Neither of them has spoken of the night Aster’s father caught them trying to run away. It is an erased memory, burned and crushed to ash. When the wounds are gone, there will be no proof that Aster and the cook once made a pact to leave together and never look back. The cook speaks to her now as if Aster did not break her promise to confess it was her idea. She looks at her tenderly, as if Aster took the full weight of the blame herself, as if it were Aster who felt her father’s fists sink into her stomach and blast into her jaw.
Aster clings to the cook, burying her head in her shoulder. Come with me, just through the door.
The expression that flashes across the cook’s face is a glance of hard light. We all have to do things we don’t want, she says.
They walk to the bedroom and the cook steps away. Aster places her hand on the door and pushes it open because there is no way but through it, because there is nothing else to do, because there has never been anything left to do but walk where she is supposed to walk. She slips in and presses her back to the wall, her body pulsing, an unopened wound. She still imagines escape. She cannot see her mother at the bottom of the staircase ready to catch her if she comes running down. The cook, too, gazes at that bedroom door, her jaw tight as she tries to hide that smile she cannot fully wipe clean.
The Shadow King Page 4