The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

  You go on, he says. There’s Mario, he points out. Mario sits apart from the group, holding a letter and looking stricken. You better see what’s wrong, Ettore adds. Then he hurries to his tent, his hands shaking.

  The letter he reads in his tent is a simple but loving note from his mother saying all the usual things: We are fine. We are proud of you. Nino sends his best, etc., etc. It has been filtered of information, stripped clean of any danger, written and rewritten to pass the censor’s test. What Ettore will not know until much later, when it is too late to do anything with the knowledge but mourn, is that Leo, too, writes unsent letters to his son. He writes furiously and without rest for days on end, continuously. He sits in his office and flings open every locked drawer and empties them of their secret contents. While Gabriella cooks dinner, he pieces together his old life, traces his fingers down the seams of a past he has tried to keep intact and benign. He exposes the fissures in order to explain to a baffled son why it is that he has not been able to write.

  This is what Gabriella is trying to tell Ettore when she mentions their map hanging in their kitchen. This is what she means when she says, Your father misses you. She means that Leo cannot do as she is doing. He cannot write those niceties that the post office claims are bolstering morale. Instead he writes down all that he could never say to his son while they shared the same house. He tells him about the man he was before Ettore was born, before he married Gabriella, before he learned to tame his tongue and clip his accent. He writes his soul onto those pages, his handwriting looping in expansive moments and shrinking during memories he would rather bury for dead. When he is done, he stands in front of Gabriella with a pile of letters in his trembling hands and says, I’m ready. Then they put the letters into a box they are saving for Ettore’s return.

  THE MOURNERS TURN their dresses inside out and rub dust across their faces. They pull at their hair and wail at the falling sun. They walk in slow circles around the bodies of the dead, beating their chests as they scream the names, their litany a slow dirge that threatens to tip them over and flatten them to the ground. As they go around the blanketed figures, Hirut forces herself to listen, dreading that name that will rise from their throats and bring Beniam forth to point at her with an accusing finger. They will work until every person has been mourned. They will repeat the names and utter the blessings, and curse the enemy that brought the men down. They will walk so many times around the corpses that a faint footpath will bloom in the grass. And then when they are done, those men still alive and able to move will give the bodies a burial. They will leave them in graves so poorly marked it will be as if they have vanished. They will rest in abandoned villages and near destroyed churches, a new set of inhabitants roaming lost on poisoned ground.

  Hirut looks down at the basket of medicine in her hand. There are countless ways to put the living in the service of the dying and the dead, to pull a veil over the feebleness of every effort. It is easy to shield ourselves, she thinks as she watches the women continue to pray, from a fact that has always been so: that the dead are stronger. That they know no physical boundaries. They reside in the corners of every memory and rise up, again and again, to resist all our efforts to leave them behind and let them rest. How else to explain the tugging at her ankles, the grasping hands that keep insisting that she bend down and look him in the eye?

  Over her shoulder, she can hear Aster call for more bandages, pain and discomfort evident in her voice. There are the murmurs of women preparing a meal out of meager supplies. She imagines she can hear Aklilu and Seifu’s firm footsteps as they supervise the ongoing surveillance of this area. Hirut arches her sore back and checks the sky, listens for a fearsome rumble, listens for a boy’s voice saying his own name again and again. There are rows of injured men and women waiting for her to return with her medicines. There are bandages to wrap and wounds to dress and plants to search for and save. There has been no rest since they escaped the planes the day before.

  She has been moving at a dizzying pace, with hardly any food, her body threatening collapse in moments of stillness. She has applied crushed leaves and honey to almost every kind of wound and hoped silently that it would work. She has packed open sores with turmeric and ash and held trembling hands until the pain subsided. She has found herself rushing between one fallen body to the next, the burns and injuries mingling, the pleas melting into one another until every increment of time, even the smallest, bursts with her own ultimate helplessness.

  She has done this with a thoroughness mistaken for devotion, repeating the act from patient to patient. She has let approving glances grow into appreciative whispers, and when those whispers formed into spoken praise by the other women, Hirut has simply nodded and continued to do as she was doing, hoping that it was adequate penance, fearing that no wound could be powerful enough to erase Beniam’s young face from her mind.

  Interlude

  Every day since leaving Dessie and arriving in Maichew, Emperor Haile Selassie has abandoned his Bible and his prayers to listen to Aida. He has taken each song and played it three times, then again, winding the machine until his arm grew sore and his lower back ached from the bend into the mouth of the speaker. Every morning, he has woken up in this cave that is his temporary headquarters to play those tinny, rattling voices and decipher the clues sitting between the overwrought, ballooning notes. That no true Egyptian sounds like this is another small fact that the emperor has had to set aside in order to find what it is that Aida has managed to keep hidden.

  Now Haile Selassie lowers the needle onto the 78 and waits for it to slide into the opening notes. This is not the best thing to do while his army readies for the offensive in Maichew. There are messages to convey and troops to inspect before dawn. There are supplies of artillery and mortars to distribute. He must gather his reserve troops and head to the mountains and have them wait until his men need the reinforcements. He must give more money to the people in this area, he must convince any who are unsure that he is their true king. He looks at the calendar, then down at the reports. There is still so much to do. And yet here he is, bending into the first orchestral sounds of Aida.

  He will skip his evening prayers in order to listen before his advisers come to discuss the next day’s plans. Because it was not until this morning, when confirmed reports of the poisoning and massacre of Kidane’s army reached him, that he could finally accept Aida’s real betrayal: the Ethiopian princess did not know the duties of a splintered heart. She could not fathom the burdens woven into her royal blood. It is an unforgiveable treachery. Her tormented innocence stops Haile Selassie short: it is as if she has forgotten rage and vengeance, as if she knows no other emotion except that childish, narrow-minded devotion to a man who enslaves and kills her own people.

  And as news comes of the devastating losses suffered by Kidane near Debark, Haile Selassie thinks back to the Christmas Offensive and Ayalew and Imru’s strategic attacks on Criniti’s forces at Dembeguina Pass. He reminds himself of Kassa and Seyoum and Mulugeta’s forces that pushed the Italians back to Axum. He considers the humiliation that left the enemy morally broken. He thinks of Desta gathering his troops to continue resisting enemy advances on the southern front. And the emperor stands in front of the record and feels his resolve grow: they do not expect an offensive, so that is what he will do. They have been weaned on lies set to music, so he will attack them with his army’s battle cries. They imagine this country full of Aidas and desperate kings willing to leave their people in enemy hands. And he will show them this is a country full of soldiers and leaders who charge rather than retreat, who will die on their feet rather than bow to save their lives.

  Caught in a moment of exhilaration so powerful that he trembles, Haile Selassie lifts the needle and takes the 78 off the turntable. He pushes the gramophone aside and holds the record in both hands. He stares at it: its sleek black vinyl, the neat and even grooves, the fading label with Aida then Teatro alla Scala in large block letters. Then he throws i
t across the room. It slaps gently against the wall of the cave and doesn’t break. He marvels at it, at its stubborn strength, and slowly gathers himself again. He pats his uniform straight and picks up the record and slips it into its sleeve. He sets it next to his Bible, opening the book to the verse in Isaiah he has read daily since the start of this war: Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia. Then he bows his head to pray for vengeance and the mighty rage of a thousand armies.

  HE CALLS FOR his priests. He raises his head from prayer only long enough to answer questions and give orders and update maps and reports. He turns his advisers away and ignores their urgent pleas to do it now, Your Majesty, attack now, it’s the only time. He writes letters to his wife and sends messages to his children. He dismisses the evidence of Italian fortifications. He confirms strategies and selects his commanders for his attacking columns. He orders preparations for a banquet in honor of Saint Giorgis’s holy day. He feels the sacred might of the divine. He lies down at night filled with a deep, unshakeable faith. He dreams of King Dawit, and Goliath’s head, and that single stone flung from the slingshot.

  On the night before Giorgis’s Day, Haile Selassie stands from his desk. He slips on his shoes. He flattens the collar of his shirt and cinches his belt. He winds the gramophone and turns up the volume then stands at attention. He listens to Aida: O patria mia, O patria mia. He hears the guttural screams of a million soldiers led by her father, Amonasro, breaking into the palace to take her back home. He hears the wind slapping against the palm trees and the crack of an overextended throat. He hears a hundred armed men charge into deafening noise. He hears the names of his beloved cities: Adua. Axum. Mekelle. Gondar. Harar. Dessie. Addis Ababa, they line up like dutiful soldiers and aim in his direction while shouting his name. Haile Selassie shuts his eyes.

  Ora basta. Ora basta. Emperor Haile Selassie puts his hands on his waist and stands with his feet apart. He repeats Mussolini’s words to himself, first in Italian, then in French, then in English, then in Amharic. Ora basta: Enough now. Yibeqal. We’ve had enough. Enough already. The meaning is unchanging. Haile Selassie listens: A true leader is not a stone lying immobile in a changing tide. A real king does not tuck into himself like a beast at night. This will not be a war between two immovable forces. This will be a contest between divine force and merciless greed.

  Ad atti di guerra risponderemo con atti di guerra! To acts of war we will respond with acts of war! Yetorin dirgitoch betornet dirgitoch inmelissalen!

  In the dim candlelight flickering in the cave, the emperor spies his shadow. He pivots in front of that billowing figure and juts out his jaw. He lowers his chin. He folds his arms across his chest and moves his head from side to side. He scowls and shifts from foot to foot. He is constant motion. He is uncoiling energy. He is aggression molded into human form. He practices saying in the dark what must be spoken in daylight: Now it begins. He says it again and again, arms folded, unfolded; feet apart, feet together; chest puffed, straight-backed; jaw tight. Now it begins.

  THERE ARE OATHS THAT HOLD THIS WORLD TOGETHER, PROMISES that cannot be left undone or unfulfilled. There is the bond between a ruler and his people, between the people and the soil, between the soil and the sun, and the sun and the tiller. There is that unspoken vow that leads the river to the tree, and the tree to its sky, the sky to the bird that flies up toward new lands and other kings. But this bird: it pivots away from plumes of smoke while a small child looks down from a hilltop and stares at all that man has wrought. Because it is all laid bare: the burning cities and the mountains on fire, the ruins of homes and collapsing churches, the scorched fields, the boiling rivers, the poisoned soil and the fallen trees, the exploding bombs, the choking men, the fragmented bodies, and those uniformed columns slipping into the valley numerous and innumerable, their rifles discharging, their bayonets swinging, their voices lifted, Giovinezza, Avanti, O patria mia. In the upheaval and debris, the emperor charges and charges and charges and his soldiers rise up and crumble down and rise up again, and the poisonous rains continue to fall on a blistered earth and because there are oaths and promises and vows to keep, Haile Selassie’s men continue to fight as hours pass and the blood-soaked sun slides slowly into the shelter of the horizon, and still the emperor and his army keep going, in death-defying conflict, until the order finally comes: Retreat. Retreat.

  IN THE DEAD HEAT OF THE AFTERNOON SUN, WORKU RUNS, HIS FEET like wings, his heart a swollen ache growing in his chest. Somewhere beneath the blue stain of sky, the ground pulses with the steady echoes of a locomotive train carrying the emperor farther away from his people. What will Worku tell of first? The weeping soldiers standing in a row before their emperor, as straight as a knife’s blade? Or the solemn royal grandchildren grasping their small suitcases and waiting obediently for their nanny’s commands? Maybe it is the emperor’s steps—so measured and slow—that he will mention first, the way they sliced through the distance between the royal car and the train, his heavy shoes scraping dirt? The emperor has left. Jan Hoy is gone. Teferi Mekonnen has boarded a train out of his country. Maybe that is what he will say first, breathing through burning lungs, speaking above the sighs of crestfallen angels: Our greatest warrior has left his people after the defeat in Maichew and the devastating massacre at Lake Ashangi. He is gone. He has left us.

  BOOK 2 RESISTANCE

  HIRUT AND AKLILU ARE TWO SLENDER SILHOUETTES ETCHED IN GRAY light, talking back and forth with the ease of old friends. Kidane catches the lilt of Hirut’s voice filtering through the night and a lower answering reply by Aklilu. They shake blankets loose of leaves and dirt and lay them gently over the injured. They re-roll a shamma to make a better pillow for one woman. They check the bandages of another. They move down the row without a break in conversation. There is no tension in their rhythms, no nervousness in their gestures, there is none of the fear that Hirut exhibits when she is around him. And though he has assumed that Aklilu’s behavior with him was both honest and comfortable, he sees now that the man has always approached him with a respectful but distant reserve, there has never been any real closeness between them.

  Before Kidane was pulled into the allegiances of war, he and his friends loved each other like brothers. They were men who understood him without explanation. Childhood companions who knew what it meant to be trapped by duties and expectations, and who shouldered all of it by moving deeper into their familiar circles, taking advantage of privilege because it all came at such a high, invisible cost. Aklilu and Hirut cannot imagine any of this. They are simple people, tillers of land. They hold nothing dear except what is directly in front of them: food and water and basic survival, and this is why they cannot imagine that he watches from behind the tree where, just moments ago, he received the message from Worku: The emperor’s speech at the League of Nations has done nothing to stop the Italians. The League has broken its own promises. They have abandoned us to continue this war alone. Mussolini has declared victory but there was no formal surrender and Ethiopia will not give up. Do not wait for Britain or France, do not wait for the League. Ethiopia is still ours, Kidane. Fight.

  Kidane’s chest aches. It is difficult to hold himself straight. Every part of him wants to curl into the gaping hole this new devastation has left behind: the emperor has deserted his people; he has gone to England and left them to fight or surrender alone. And his order to Kidane is to settle his camp permanently in the mountains surrounding Debark. He is to help protect this territory while the emperor gathers weapons and assistance from abroad and finds a way to oust these Italians. He is not to let Carlo Fucelli get a foothold in this area the Italians claim they already control. Fight and persevere. Have faith and rise toward battle.

  This is the order left behind by Haile Selassie, and this is what it contains: the assumption of obedience and loyalty at any cost. Kidane stares at Hirut looking up and smiling at something Aklilu has said. She is still in the early sweep of womanhood. She is still untouche
d, still pliable, only a little older than Aster when he married her. For the first time, he sees the emperor’s order for what it really is: a command from a man who has a son to one who does not. These are hasty instructions from a man who has a place to go to one who has left everything behind. A series of directives, hurled from the long echoing halls of European buildings, from a man who still claims his birthright to one who cannot even claim a child in his name. And Kidane understands that this is how a disappearance begins: with an order to move toward danger then continue on toward oblivion.

  Chorus

  Go back. Open the bedroom door and send young Aster down the stairs. Place the groom on his feet and draw him away from the bed. Wipe the sheet clean of the bride’s blood. Shake it straight and flatten its wrinkles. Slide off that necklace and return it to the girl as she races to her mother. Fix what has been broken in her, mend it shut again. Clothe him in his wedding finery. Let there be no light. Allow only shadows into this kingdom of man’s making. See him alone in the room. See him free of a father’s attention. See him step beyond the reach of elders and all who advise growing boys on the perils of weakness. Here is Kidane, shaking loose of unseen bindings. Here he is, gifting himself the freedom to tremble. All advice has been taken back and he is no longer the groom instructed to break flesh and draw blood and bring a girl to earthy cries.

  See this man in the tender moment before he takes his wife. See him wrestle with the first blooms of untapped emotion. Let the minutes stretch. Remove the expectations of a father. Remove the admonishments to stand tall and stay strong. Eliminate the birthright, the privilege of nobility, the weight of ancestors and blood. Erase his father’s name and that of his grandfather’s father and that of the long line of men before them. Let him stand in the middle of that empty bedroom in his wedding tunic and trousers, in his gilded cape and gold ring, and then disappear his name, too. Make of him nothing and see what emerges willingly, without taint of duty or fear.