The Shadow King

Home > Other > The Shadow King > Page 5
The Shadow King Page 5

by Maaza Mengiste


  In the great hall below, the air has grown thick with musk and smoke. The men have shut all the windows, their impatience flattening their eyes. They are waiting for one sound: for a girl’s startled cry, for the first signs of a man become free. Aster’s mother is waiting, too, while she trembles like the young girl she used to be. She reaches for the cook’s hand but the cook pulls away. She is tracing her steps back to that road she once hoped led to freedom. She is cursing anew the hard fists that brought her down. There is no way out but through it, she murmurs. There is no escape but what you make from inside.

  The bed is made of sturdy wood and thick slats of leather. It is immense. It is monstrously large. It is much too big for a girl like her. And there he is, an eager man pivoting in the light splashing into the room, his white clothes shimmering, the seams bright as teeth. He is wearing the necklace she gave him. It hangs loose in the bend of his body, the rich gold catching sparks of light. Aster yanks on the door to get out but it has shut and locked without her help.

  Come, he murmurs. He sits down carefully on the bed so not to disturb the crisp white sheet. He takes off the necklace and holds it out. Let’s see how this fits you, Little One. He pats the bed and shifts over. Here.

  Aster pounds on the door and pulls on it again. Please, she says.

  Go, the cook hisses from the corridor.

  Lijé, we’ll be here when you wake. Her mother’s voice is so small it can fit into the crevice between the wall and the door. This is nothing. Remember what I told you.

  Aster, Kidane says. The necklace lies crumbled in the center of his palm. I’m very proud to have you as my wife. I know you’re scared, but it’s okay. You’ll get used to it.

  Only we know that he is unsure of what to do with the girl. He has heard the men talk but there has been no one to ask about one so small. There has been nothing to do but walk with fake pride toward this bedroom and hold his hand out and say, Come. He has filled himself with drink and song. He has held his father tight. He has smiled and nodded and sat in church next to this Aster with a heart beating frantically in his chest. He is confused but he is not frightened. He is worried but he is not cautious. He is exactly as he says: eager.

  Let me go home, she says. I’ll come back tomorrow.

  He looks at her lithe figure, the slender neck, the small wrists. He notes the tears she is blinking away. And as he sees the shivering body and the quaking shoulders, his nervousness quiets. He begins to understand the stories of those men who gathered around him in recent weeks. You will feel old then you will feel young: that is what they said to him. You must be strong, they added, don’t give up. She will bear you sons who will be like their father, so decide what kind of man will you be from the first night. As Kidane sits on the bed, we can hear his breathing quicken. We can see the sheen of sweat. We can see him tremble and we know that he will do what has been done by those he has called his fathers.

  Get away from the door. Do it now. His breathing is slower. His body is tensing. The looseness is draining out of his bones. He is seated but he is starting to ripple with strength, grow sleek and reptilian, stiff.

  The floorboard creaks in the hall. The stairs groan and she knows that the women are gone. She smells the mingling odors of sweat and tej inside the hot room. It stinks of old butter and dried leather and sweet incense. Aster drops her head and clings to the wall. She cannot move. Her body has become like stone.

  Kidane rises from the bed and lays the necklace on the sheets. He pulls off his shirt then stands before her, arms at his side.

  Look at me, he says.

  His bare chest expands, tight flesh pushing against rough skin. Taut muscles stretch like ropes over his shoulders and down his back. His arms knot with a definition she has noticed in only the strongest of her cousins. His body fills the room and saps the air and even though he does not move, she can feel his heat pressing into her. Aster wraps her arms around herself and puts her head down.

  Look at me, he says again.

  He puts on the necklace. The thick gold chain glistens against his skin. He kisses the pendant and looks at the back, where her mother insisted the goldsmith carve Kidane’s name.

  This will be for our son one day, he says. He smiles.

  He pulls down his trousers and soon he is wearing nothing. Aster draws back from the sight. Between his legs is a triangle of hair, coarse and thick and threatening. He is bristling with hard flesh, draped in the room’s dizzying smells.

  He keeps his arms at his side. Don’t turn from me, he says. His voice quivers. He takes a step.

  We can only watch as Aster sinks to the floor and covers her face. She has promised the cook she will not cry but the tears are shaking loose. Her body slides flat onto the floor and in her mind is a growing space waiting to devour the memory of all that will unfold tonight. That, too, is a way, we remind her. That, too, is an escape.

  Aster begins to tremble, the shaking uncontrollable, the convulsions so powerful that she cannot hear Kidane’s steps until he is bending over her, wrapping his arms around her, lifting her to her feet, pressing her to his warm skin, to his knotted body, to his thickness and the necklace that cuts into her cheek like a knife. He is carrying her to the bed and there is nothing, nothing that she can do to pull herself back to safety.

  He settles her easily in the middle of the bed. She cannot hear it but downstairs in the corner of that great and cavernous house, her mother weeps while the cook looks up as if she can see through wood. Aster tries to curl into herself, but Kidane grabs her hands and brings them to his chest and she feels his quickening heartbeat and the slickness of his sweat. She pulls away, letting a small whimper escape. Kidane takes off the necklace and puts it on her, laughing softly as it flops below her chest and grazes her stomach.

  You’re so small, he says.

  Then he is twisting her to face him, pulling her hands to his face and kissing her fingers and when Aster tries to stand on the bed to run away, tripping on the hem of her dress, he yanks her down and flattens his closed mouth onto hers, pressing until her lips start to tear against her teeth.

  She manages to turn her head. Let me go, she says.

  Beyond the door, the world has fallen silent. The windows are shuttered. There is just the two of them, and there is nowhere to go. She strains to get out of his hold, a growing anger mingling with terror.

  He jerks her forward and throws her off balance, then slams her on her back and presses an arm against her chest. It is effortless, so easy that he gasps.

  It’s better if you relax, he says. He pushes his mouth to her ear. It’s okay, he says.

  She brings her legs together and presses them flat on the bed. She does the opposite of what the cook told her because it is unnatural the other way. It is unnatural and cowardly to lift your legs and wait for this man. It is more natural, she is realizing, to resist. There is no way but this way, she will tell the cook. There’s no way but to fight.

  Close your eyes, he whispers, against her cheek. Close your eyes and pretend I am that servant of yours helping you change. Close your eyes. His voice is gentle, soothing.

  Somehow he raises the hem of her dress and draws the skirt over her knees. The large hand that he plants on her thigh is a foreign object. It is a block of wood, a chunk of metal, a stone, inhuman and cold. She no longer recognizes what it is. It is just a mass resting on her leg, creating a strange sensation that feels like the start of a bruise. He moves deftly, strong hands working quickly while his shoulders pin her down, and then he is tugging one arm and the next out of the dress and before Aster can find a way to slide out of his hold, he is flinging it behind her and stretching on top of her while one hand follows the curve of the chain from her neck, down to her breasts, to her ribs, and he flattens his palm on her stomach and the heat sears her skin like a burn.

  I’ll be gentle, Kidane says. It won’t hurt.

  Aster makes herself like iron. She imagines herself steel and locks every bone in place. She ref
uses to look at him. She refuses to listen. She won’t move until morning comes and she is free. Then she will go home and face her father’s beatings. She will dare him to bring her back here alive.

  This man is still speaking, talking in that low voice meant to soothe her then catch her unaware but she is looking at the wall and on that wall hangs a sword and she is close enough to jump up and grab it and slice his throat in one easy stroke. She has practiced this with the cook many times, using rodents and chickens, planning for their escape. She will kill him if he puts his hands between her legs like the cook told her he would. She will kill him and spill his blood on this bed. Aster counts the steps to the sword and imagines the single leap back.

  Kidane smiles and pinches her cheek, mistaking her silence for agreement. You’re spoiled, he says, his voice is soft. He stares at her chest, his eyes shining. You’re not a girl anymore, he says. Then he is pushing her legs apart with his knee, balancing himself between them.

  When she opens her mouth to scream, his hand flicks against her teeth, the hit so stunning that it leaves her dizzy, the pain blooming rapidly across her jaw.

  Stop moving, he says. Stop and it won’t hurt. I promise. Again that voice trembling in the dark as if he is the one afraid. I promise, he repeats. I promise, he says again as he places his full weight against her.

  And it is just skin on skin now, flesh against flesh, and though she knows it is futile, Aster tries to push herself off the mattress but he is leaden and thick on top of her, suffocating.

  There is this: her mother told her when it was time, she would know what to do. But there is also this: the cook told her when it was time, there was nothing she could do. Take it, the cook said. Take whatever comes and wake up in the morning and live. And then Kidane jerks roughly as if he wants to punish her with his hips. He thrusts himself at her and at first, Aster does not know what he is doing. She cannot tell what it is he is searching for with his fingers and that part of him that she will break with the sword as soon as she gets a chance. And while she is wondering and swirling in numbing confusion, the pain slams itself behind her eyes and knocks her breathless, and she feels herself splitting. Aster opens her mouth to scream and this time, Kidane does not hit her, this time it is as if she is not even there even though she is the weight against which he is balancing as if he might drown while he gasps.

  Her mind grows nimble in the pain and she feels herself leave this stinking room and this sweaty man and soon she is hovering over herself, staring down at the girl reaching for the sword to split this man in half then make her way home.

  And then.

  She is lost and disappearing.

  SHE DRAGS HIRUT INTO THE STABLE AND WARNS THE COOK NOT TO unlock the door. Hirut lies curled where she is left, the pain a heated blade pressing against bone. After the first few hours, she steps outside of herself and watches, mesmerized, as a small pool of blood thickens at her neck. It begins to seam into the raised wound that stretches over her shoulder and onto her chest. When she grows bored, she leaves herself behind and wanders out of the stable and sneaks into Kidane’s office. She shuffles through the newspapers on his desk, gazes past the picture of Emperor Haile Selassie that he has cut out and set aside, then settles herself in his chair and pretends to read. She sees rows and rows of marching ferenjoch and a ship overflowing with uniformed men. She sees them waving to her with their rifles jutting into the sky. She sees gaping mouths that stretch and envelop her and she knows she is sinking into the mouth of the beast, and she will keep falling if she doesn’t move. She gets up and slides through the corridor then to the veranda and keeps walking, reveling in her unhindered freedom.

  At the threshold of the compound, she stops at the gate to listen to the trees beckoning her onward. Home, they say. Go home. Kidane’s horse, Adua, mourns for her in the stable. Aster’s horse, Buna, shakes its head angrily. The owls have gathered on the roof to say goodbye. Even the wind has bent to wrap itself around her shoulders and cool the fire. And Hirut knows she must go home. She must find the path and walk until she is back in her mother’s arms, waiting for her father to return from the fields. They are scared and she is lonely and she does not know why she has been away for so long. One day when she is strong enough she will nurse the bruise spreading across the middle of her chest. For now, she will let it roam, let it snag at rib bone and press at her lungs because she needs to be home. Hirut opens the gate and steps into the thick well of darkness.

  Here she stands in the center of this chamber where there is only the dark and only these wounds and only pain offers a treacherous light into her head. Inside her head there are words that stumble free of meaning and nothing to hold them in place except the sound of her own name gathering strength in its repetition: I am Hirut daughter of Getey and Fasil, born in a blessed year of harvest. She is Hirut surrounded by darkness thick as flesh, and she the pulsing wound at the center. She is a feeble light slanting into the room through a crack in the wall. She is the light chewed up at the threshold of the wound. She is the pain pulsing alone in this black chamber where there is only this, only the dark, only the wound that will not stop shivering like a damaged heart. Inside her head is the memory of light cracking like a whip above her head. Above the head of the girl who used to be Hirut daughter of Getey and Fasil, born in a blessed year of harvest. Above the girl who no longer has a head, who no longer has words, who no longer has memory, who no longer has a name, who is only a remembrance sinking into the dark hole of the forgotten.

  A SLENDER CRACK in the wall slants light into the stable. Then dusk slips between clouds to hover low in the trees. The gate to the compound creaks open. Footsteps and the lively voices of men. Firewood shifts and settles in place. Kidane is speaking. Someone answers: Yes, Gashe. Yes, Dejazmach Kidane. Hirut tries to sit up inside this box that pins her heavy body in place. A cold breeze crawls like an insect down her neck and traces the edge of the bruise on her chest. The bruise is expanding like spilled water. It is a tender wound cracking open beneath her skin. It is governed by time, by minutes and hours and days that Hirut can no longer recall. She has been here forever. She has just arrived. She struggles to sit up, to lean her head against the wall and let her eyes peer past the swelling of tender skin to peek between the slats.

  He is on the veranda and a hesitant light sags against the shamma he wears every day. He has on a belt as thick as a waistband. He stands next to a younger man with a rifle slung across his back. The cook is calling them to their meal: Gash Kidane, Aklilu, come eat. Kidane says the name that belongs to his wife. She’s tired, says the cook. And neither of them speaks the name of the girl wandering lost inside the dark, tumbling backward and falling down.

  Later, the door swings wide. Gray morning light floods the stable and a snap of wind rushes in. The cook pokes her head in and snaps her fingers, motioning her to get up. You didn’t sleep next to Adua and Buna? She shakes her head, frowning. Come on, we’ve got guests and she said to help. Hurry, I’m afraid she’ll come and check. Then the cook spins around and walks back to her kitchen.

  Hirut struggles to her feet and stumbles out of the stable, unbalanced and blinded by the sun. The wind glides cruelly against her cuts. Fresh air is a sharp, cold burst in her nose. Berhe’s whistling rattles against her aching head, and the chair scraping in Kidane’s office grates roughly down her spine. Near the front door is a pile of swords on a burlap sack. Large baskets rest against the veranda steps. Blankets and scarves she has never seen before are drying across a new clothesline erected next to the fence. A new pile of firewood leans next to those already at the stable. The world has become something else since she left it.

  The cook calls for her and Hirut finds her bent over her knife just outside of the kitchen, a cutting board balanced on her lap. She is slicing chunks of meat into smaller pieces, vigorously tearing off bits of fat. The blade hits the board with a jarring persistency, the sound throwing itself through the quiet courtyard.

  Get a fire start
ed for the wot. The cook points to the stack of firewood and charcoal in front of her then quickly resumes her work.

  Hirut knows the cook is watching her from through lowered eyelids. I need help.

  When the cook looks up, they lock eyes and the pain in her chest is so intense that Hirut lets her mouth tremble, and her legs relax beneath the great weight of her sadness. She would have let herself fall but the cook shakes her head, still bent over her work, and whispers: Don’t you dare let her see you cry.

  Over the cook’s bent head, Kidane’s figure is silhouetted through his office window: he is standing over his desk, looking down at his papers. Berhe balances the burlap sack of swords in his arms, grim with effort as he rounds the corner from the front of the house into the courtyard. Two young men stand up from the far corner where they were sitting and help Berhe set the sack down next to Aster’s flowers. Aster is nowhere to be seen.

  Are you deaf? Get the gulicha ready, we have a lot of food to make and more men are coming. The cook still does not look up.

  The two men shift toward her briefly as she drags the clay oven closer to the kitchen, then they go back to inspecting the guns. The courtyard sinks back into its unnatural silence as Hirut lowers onto her sore knees and settles firewood into the clay oven’s base. She lights it and blows. Every breath stirs the odors clinging to her: fear and manure, old straw and dried blood, all those smells she had once thought belonged only to the very poor. She fans the growing flames and tries to swallow her humiliation. The strangers are glancing at her again, their eyes full of knowing pity, like she is one of those who begs on church steps and in the mercato, pleading for mercy that does not come. For a moment, she is afraid of stirring the firewood more, afraid of smelling herself and pushing the odor toward the men, then Berhe drops the sword he is polishing and the two men shoot to their feet, and Kidane turns from his desk near the window and all of them turn toward the knock at the gate.

 

‹ Prev