The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

  Ettore shakes his head, trying to calm the driver. Colonel Fucelli wasn’t worried about it, he says. And he’s usually very aware of every possibility, he adds.

  This is true: Fucelli, on hearing of Graziani’s light injuries and the ruthless response, merely laughed. And if he’d been in my position when these savages attacked me? he’d asked Ettore. That man’s a coward, always has been, Fucelli added. And this is like killing a fly with a cannon ball.

  This place, the driver continues, shaking his head. This place, I can’t wait to go home. They just disappeared, he repeats. Then he stops, shakes his head again as if befuddled by a riddle, and walks toward a group of laborers staring at them in the clearing, watching for signs of alarm.

  Interlude

  The emperor lights a match and lifts his head to the cloudy sky above his new home in Bath, England. He closes his hand around the flame. He tries to hold it there as the heat licks against his palm and shoots waves of pain down his spine. He murmurs a chant to smother the growing agony. But then: he cannot help it and he snatches his hand away, defeated. He shakes his head, grateful for this private moment. What does it mean to burn an entire human being? This is the question that shook him awake in this pre-dawn hour of a new day. What does it mean to listen to the cries from a flame-engulfed home and stand with a rifle to shoot any who escape? And is it really possible that these Italians are throwing children into those same burning huts and houses? What kind of god fashions men like these? What miracle can stop this evil and send these foreigners back to their wretched homes?

  His house in Bath is large and made of stone and wood, rich with the smells of rust and dying flowers. It is many-roomed with paneled walls and a staircase leading to his sleeping family. In the large front lawn where he stands now and gazes at the hills that resemble the rolling landscape in Harar, it is still difficult to convince himself that he is here, in England, and so very far from home.

  His city is burning. His country is crumbling. His people are being butchered mercilessly by Italian civilians and military alike. He thinks he can smell the smoke even from this distance. He can hear the trucks that are dragging living bodies bound by rope until they are dead. Just behind him on a ledge at the window, his small English dictionary flutters between the words he has tried to find to best convey this horror: paralyzing, terrorizing, mortifying, shocking, stupefying. To kill: to make dead, to extinguish life, to murder. Ghostly apparitions have been trudging past him since the night before, motioning him back to Ethiopia: Haile Selassie, Jan Hoy, Teferi, we’re waiting. Where have you gone? Teferi, Haile Selassie, come home.

  The hills that return his stare in Bath show him no mercy. Home is everywhere. And every morning in this country has been like the first, an unending spiral into dejection, sunlight a timid spray behind stubborn clouds. He wakes in a large bed at one end of the gulf that separates him from his wife. He stands up, careful not to wake her, and looks around the spare room. He reads his Bible and says his prayers, then gets dressed and shrugs a shamma across his shoulders to ease the persistent cold. He walks into each day knowing what he will face: the same chill, the same feeble light, the same heavy raindrops that flatten on him like an accusatory finger.

  His fighters have moved deeper into the mountains. Carlo Fucelli is building a strange, new prison in Debark, his camp bloated with excess artillery and reinforcements. Kidane is based near the site. His men will continue to fight as hard as ever, but they need weapons, they need your help. They are wondering where you are, Your Majesty, Haile Selassie, Teferi, where are you?

  This is where he is: hunched in front of his speaker as Radio London announces the massacres in Addis Ababa. This is also where he is: crouched in plumes of smoke and screams, readying to charge at the advancing enemy. He is here, too, in his smoldering city, picking his way through the destroyed homes and mass graves left behind by those butchers. In Bath, in his home named Fairfield, Emperor Haile Selassie needs no help in imagining fire-ravaged huts and buildings, trees splintered by bombs, the teff and sorghum fields poisoned and burned by gaseous fumes. But he cannot imagine what the Italians are doing to human beings, his people, his subjects, the children of a generation born to lift his country up. Soon, the empress, his children, and his advisers will gather around this same radio and tilt toward the news and listen as if their bodies can soak up every hissing detail. But he, the emperor, Jan Hoy, Haile Selassie, Teferi Mekonnen, all he wants to do is stand up, then walk into another room to cross an ocean and enter his port and sneak through the highlands to tell his people he has returned to fight. Instead, he is here, where there is no sun, where all that breathes survives in shadow.

  MINIM’S TRAINING INTENSIFIES: KIDANE MAKES HIM STAND AND SIT, walk and pivot. He settles Minim’s arms at his sides and his hands in front of him and brings his index fingers and thumbs together in a subtle triangle. Aster watches closely, making adjustments, bowing to Minim and waiting for his signal to lift her head. Together, the couple holds his chin and pulls back his shoulders, and stops his quick glances backward to Hirut. They monitor his smiles, lecture him on the right demeanor with young subjects and injured soldiers, remind him again and again how to respond to soldiers and peasants and nobility.

  You are our father, Kidane and Aster say to Minim. The country is full of your children. You are the sun and we walk in the light of your grace. Don’t forget this, don’t become less than you are. Don’t you hear what’s happening in your country? You must be our every hope.

  Minim begins to walk straighter, to take more measured and even steps. He squares his back and raises his chin and learns to blink as if he has always stood in the glare of the sun. Minim wakes now in the mornings and solemnly waits for Hirut to serve his coffee. He turns his head as she approaches and gives only a nod to convey his approval. They start to move together, one tethered to the silent orders of the other, one following as the other hints at the direction they want to lead. By the time Kidane and Aster return to their routines, Hirut and Minim require no words to be understood, no sound to make known what the one who leads is asking of the one who guards.

  And as Worku and other runners crisscross the country with reports of more reprisals and bodies left to rot on Italian gallows, Hirut and the men and women move higher into the hills to train at night. They swing their knives while sprinting and aiming for the enemy’s throat. Hirut balances her rifle while galloping on Kidane’s horse. She angles her spear as Adua speeds down the field, and when Aklilu rushes to pull her down, she kicks so close to his jaw that he exclaims in surprise. They continue night after night after night until Hirut finds that her fear has lost its edge. The routine dulls the terror. She becomes so accustomed to the lean-and-swing of the knife exercises that she finds herself practicing the moves in daylight: while collecting firewood and hauling water, while serving coffee and bringing the emperor his food. Her body molds to its requirements, her mind shapes itself around new loyalties, and it happens almost naturally, until it is nothing to imagine a figure stumbling and falling. She is new and unstained, free of blood and unafraid. She is made whole. She pictures Kidane’s face illumined by a sliver of light in the dark. She imagines him imprisoned by a hundred shifting shadows, and she is the king of that dark dominion. She balances her knife in an expert hand as he pleads to be released. She slides it in an arch across his throat, and when he rises, due to a miracle, due to poor aim, due to lack of strength, Hirut no longer falters but does it again and again and again, striving for perfect vengeance.

  BOOK 3 RETURNS

  Photo

  The prison: a shrunken wooden box of a building surrounded by a barbed-wire fence: one small widow, virtually airless, without the mercy of light. There, between two hulking stones, beyond a short footpath leading toward oblivion, Fucelli points to a dark form in the sky, his mouth open, his eyes wide, that pale face twisted in gleeful cruelty. Above his head, a startled bird arrows up, into the sun. The soldati and ascari, menacing figures sculpted
in shadow, lean toward the plummeting form of a prisoner made heavier by despair. Two trucks frame the vision like guard posts, windshields and tires splattered in mud, canvas dropped to reveal two more men, bound by rope and frozen by terror, waiting for flight.

  Photo

  A young boy, bony shoulders and large-headed, shivering in the bright sun. Lips chapped, mouth parted, eyes stark in a gaunt and hungry face. A slender finger raised to the sky, a gesture for patience, for time, for mercy, for hope.

  Photo

  A woman slumped against a walking stick, paralyzed leg dangling beneath her long dress. A row of braids that fan out to thick, dark curls. Tattoos gracing the line of her throat to her jaw. Bruises near her eyes, at her mouth, a thread of blood dried against her ear. She is mid-sentence, her tongue against her teeth, curving around a word lost forever.

  Photo

  A young man, furious and proud, uncombed hair blowing freely in the wind. Sharp cheekbones, a slender chin, narrow eyes unafraid to glare at the photographer. A finger pointed, an accusation, an eternal damning.

  Photo

  Two. A young woman clasping an older man to her chest. Delicate features twisted in fear, swollen from fists. A mouth that dips to one side from a blow that has drawn blood and caked on a lock of hair. A stained dress. The older man: a masculine version of her, face darkened by sun, features stiff, shocked, a slender cut that follows the back of his neck, blood dripping into his worn T-shirt long past clean.

  An Album of the Dead

  Twins, bound back to back. A young man caught mid-movement, features a blur except for that open mouth. A boy, lanky and broad shouldered, hands clasped together to beg. An old woman, defiant, immobile, chin up, eyes blazing. A man, face beaten beyond recognition, a series of swollen, broken features. A couple, wife clinging to husband, face buried in his shoulder, his ripped shirt exposing a long, angry cut. Two young men, wild curls thick against their necks, gripping hands, face-to-face, eyes only for each other. A young man, rigid as a soldier, a bloom of dark curls framing a furious and handsome face. A young man, bookish, eyeglasses, trembling, shaking head forcing a sweep of blurry features. A young man, hands bound behind his back, shoulders protruding painfully, a slender neck jutting forward, mouth pursed to spit. A girl. A young woman. A nun. Two slack-mouthed beggars. Three young deacons, steady eyes. A girl. Another. A young man, his brother, his father, identical faces reshaped by blows, equally swollen. A girl buckling from fear, the top of her head, the face twisted in anguish and confusion. A girl, a woman, a young man, an elderly man, a man and his wife, a family of three, a defiant old man, a brother and sister refusing to let go of each other, a bent-backed woman, a tall, lithe boy. A blind man, opaque eyes. Twins, again, bound back to back.

  Signature: Ettore Navarra, soldato e fotografo

  Signature: Colonello Carlo Fucelli, Ricordi d’Africa

  IT TAKES NOTHING MORE THAN A SLIDE OUT OF LINE AND A STEP AWAY from the mail truck for Ettore to imagine himself back home at the kitchen table with his father, the two of them bent over a blank sheet of paper while his mother cooks, his father’s hand wrapped around his, both of theirs around a newly sharpened pencil, his heart beating rapidly, fearful of making a mistake. Let me see your handwriting, figliolo, my dear son, let me see how you write your alphabet. Ettore’s father takes his hand and guides it over the page, placing each letter between the markers, the lines slender and straight, the curves plump like inflated balloons. Imagine the shape of a word mimicking the shape of a thought, Ettore. Let your hand follow, like water follows itself in a river. Don’t give up. You will learn to keep pace with your thinking, you will chase your ideas in handwriting that is clear and always strong.

  Ettore stares down at the envelope. All the years of waiting push against him. His knees are weak. He is sweating even in the cooling breeze. He cannot focus though he keeps wiping his eyes until they hurt. He looks down at his hand again, his palm is open: this is the first letter he has received from his father since embarking on the Cleopatra and heading to war. Every message before now was filtered through his mother: Your father misses you, your father has bought a map of Ethiopia, your father says he loves you, your father asks if the reports about renewed attacks are true, he says your name every night before sleeping.

  Ettore hurries to the canteen and sinks against the building, the idling mail truck a grating noise in his head, the petrol fumes dizzying. He glances around but no one is paying attention. Everyone else is stretched toward the postman and the large canvas bag from which he withdraws handfuls of envelopes while shouting names. Ettore hunches over the letter: his mother’s name is in the upper-left corner but this is his father’s hand. No one else makes letters shaped as if they were racing for the other side of the paper. The speed of Leo Navarra’s writing has always been a wondrous confirmation of his astounding intelligence. And here is his own name, in bold letters in the perfect center of the envelope, TO: my son Ettore Navarra. There is no censor’s stamp; this letter has managed to slip past them.

  He feels along the edges of the envelope and traces the firm, solid marks that make his name. Ettore opens the envelope carefully, tearing it on the long side. Then he unfolds the letter, afraid to straighten the crisp creases, and he reads:

  My dear son, there is one thing you must keep in mind as you read this: I have never been a stranger to myself. I know clearly the costs of my decisions, and I understand well who has suffered my consequences. I hope one day we will sit together and I will have the courage to explain it all. For now, I write to finally tell you this: I was another man before you knew me. I had a family before you, another son and wife. You are my second-born, your mother’s first. I have never told you about my former life because I have taught myself to believe that what exists is what matters. What is visible is what counts. But you don’t even know my name, my son. My first wife, Anya, would have wanted me to tell you. My second wife, your mother, Gabriella, understands my caution. She knows how much can be contained in a word.

  I can tell you this: one night in Odessa, under a light so soft you could have photographed the shadows of ghosts, my old life ended. After I lost my first son, I did not know what I was. What do you call a sonless father? If I had found that name I would have exchanged it for Leo. When I was close to your age, I stepped out of the town of my birth, in Ukraine, and moved to Odessa for love. Then I was forced to turn my back on it because of everything that city destroyed. I left Odessa a Jew and entered Venice an atheist. When I escaped, all I tried to do was get as far away as possible on land, by foot. Alone. I forced my body to bear every pain and deprivation it could withstand. It was my attempt at penance. I sought my own forgiveness for being alive. You might have heard your mother whisper of the pogroms of 1905. Is it important to give you details? What do I tell you about them except they are coming again and I have failed to protect you?

  There are those who are meant for distance, my Ettore. I am one of them and I fear so are you. We are seekers of boundaries. If we are lucky, we will chance upon those generous enough to be drawn into our fold. Your mother has done this for me. She allows me to take her hand in the dark every night. She holds me until I fall asleep. She stays awake until I am sure there is no smoke seeping into our home. Is there a greater gesture of love than this? Is there a greater act of selfishness than what I force on her every day?

  I have said this to you before: every visible body is surrounded by light and shade. We move through this world always pulled between the two. I know that you have never understood me. You have found my instructions harsh and unforgiving, full of questions and irreducible. But you have lived without fear so you have always felt you had the right to judge. I have taken this as proof that I have done something right. Your father built a family and a new life without bowing his head. He raised a son to imagine a better future. That has been enough.

  Ettore, bear witness to what is happening. Make living your act of defiance. Record it all. Do it relentlessly,
with that stubbornness and precision that is so very much like your father. This is why I gave you your first camera. Do not let these people forget what they have become. Do not let them turn away from their own reflections—

  —why am I telling you this? These are not a father’s dying words. What do you understand of what I have said?

  My dear son, your mother sits in the kitchen while I am in my study. She, too, is writing you a letter she will put into a box we are saving for you. We write separately because you have now become the holder of our secrets. Your mother and I know too much about each other. We can no longer be safekeepers of new knowledge. We cannot take another truth. She cannot bear to look at me if she thinks I have one more layer she has not seen. I am telling you this because you will not see us again. As surely as my light burns in this office, I will not see my second-born, brother to a ghost, son to a phantom. Do not come back, Ettore. No matter what you hear, do not repeat your father’s history in the place he once called home. Stay in Abyssinia. Find the man you will become. This will not be my last letter but it will be the most truthful. I have always loved you. —your father, Leo

  HIS CHEST ACHES. His head spins. He is shaking uncontrollably, the rhythm both ugly and pitiless. Ettore stares at his father’s signature, the letters are abrupt and jagged, hurried and slanted. He goes back to the beginning of the letter: My dear son. My dear son. He leans against the wall of the canteen, presses his head on the firm surface. He tries to trace the logic of his father’s thoughts, the implications behind his questions: What do you understand of what I have said? Is it important to give you details? What do you call a sonless father? Ettore goes back again to the letter, forces himself to read it, forces himself to let the weight of it press down on every memory of his father, of his father’s relentless instructions and unending disapproval, until his life sinks beneath every fact and assumption he took for granted. Because he cannot escape this uncompromising detail: he was not the son his father wanted, and perhaps he never will be.