Carlo strides out of his office the next day to meet with the crew from Luce News. The orders from Rome are to give them full access to his men, to let them film the confrontation while ensuring their safety. Italy should not still be fighting these rebels. This war was declared a victory for Il Duce. The northern front should be subdued by now. Let the cameras see Italian might. Carlo checks the buttons on his jacket, straightens the helmet on his head, wipes his sunglasses clean, and slips a cigarette into his mouth. Every detail must be considered, from his appearance to his performance: he must act the part he has wanted all his life, that essence of leadership that he has worked to exhibit in Ethiopia. He must be the heroic leader, the ruthless enemy, the fearless commander at the helm of an undefeatable army.
But something in Leo Navarra’s letter has nudged against memory. As if the man had been writing to him, the ghost-son he lost, a man now risen from the flames and ashes to fight against his opponents. Leo Navarra has introduced him to something new: a paternal affection that does not include even a hint of mockery or disappointment.
Today, this detail strikes him as breathtakingly potent, perhaps even fatal prior to battle: there are some things he has never known about grown men, about those who watch over the small boys who grow into men. This ignorance feels like a quiet disease discovered too late, an infectious wound that was gnawing deeper while he thought he simply had an itch. His father was a difficult man, trapped by his own competitive inclinations, but Carlo Fucelli had assumed this was the way of most fathers. To see the aching reserve in Leo Navarra’s reminders to his son was to see a love and adoration too large to be contained in mere words. It is to see what he has lacked his entire life.
This is why Carlo insists that the camera crew take long, lingering shots of him in full uniform, proud and unafraid in front of his prison. It is for those men like his deceased father who confused fear with cowardice, mistook tears for weakness, and blamed a soft heart for the unspoken hatred that a son learned to nurture until it was time to leave home and sail to Tripolitania. It is for them, ragazzi, Carlo wants to say to the camera crew, it is for all those who doubt the legends we will make on this day, for all those who refuse to believe that simple men can be gifted a hero’s remembrance. Today is for all those who do not think it is possible to rise up from total collapse and still walk on one’s own two feet.
Focus in close, Carlo Fucelli says to the cameraman as his men set up their barricades. Pan up slowly. Get wide shots of the prison and swoop right to capture the cliffs. Shoot from the rebels’ perspective. Get your stills of the landscape before the attack. The Abyssinians are on their way and we’ll defend our country as you have never seen. I will give you a battle worthy of the Roman Empire, worthy of the great Trojan conflict. I won’t send the tanks or cannons to destroy them before they approach. I won’t bring the planes to spray them with poison while they’re still getting dressed to fight. We will do this as our fathers did and win for Italy with bayoneted rifles and bare hands. Focus and zoom and steady the shots. Prepare for wondrous displays of bravery. Look! Behold the enemy now in the dust rising on the horizon. See their might but do not be deceived: they will come as Memnon came for Achilles. And they will die just the same.
THIS IS HOW THE AMBUSH BEGINS: WITH THE SLOW RISE OF A MONARCH’S shadow from a tall mountain peak. With the emperor’s faint image caught in the whir and snap of a camera, reflected in the glint of a lens to ricochet against fog and hill. As Kidane’s army, new recruits and seasoned fighters, prepares to separate into groups that will surround the Italians, the Shadow King and his female guard step forward onto that highest crest and gaze below. The army looks up and grows silent, awed by the presence of Emperor Haile Selassie, thrown into speechlessness by the sight of the guard who steps forward, resplendent in her uniform.
The whispers: He has come back. He is here. Jan Hoy will free his people. He will charge with us and kill the enemy and reclaim his throne. He is here!
They do not fear the growing rumble sliding through the valley from the Italian camp. The noises do not matter. Instead, they look toward Hirut, their new image of Mother Ethiopia, the one who represents all the women who have survived the war to raise their guns and fight or rush onto the battlefield to carry the wounded. The army falls prostrate. They press their foreheads into dirt. They curse those rumors that claim the emperor has fled to a foreign land. They thank the Almighty that their great leader has come to lead them in battle. And they vow to fight until they win or die.
Hirut glances at Minim as he slowly slips back out of view, behind the hill, and away from the line that will lead the charge. The army has dispersed into their positions, and no one is aware that the emperor has disappeared from sight. It is nearly impossible to distinguish his slender figure from the soft plume of dust that fans like a cape at his back. Hirut shivers as she watches him leave and sees Aster a few steps away doing the same. It is almost too much to bear: the thrill and the terror, the call and the risk, the honor and the obligation. She looks at Aklilu beside her and she feels herself steady and grow calm beneath his unwavering gaze. She nods to him, and he smiles back, then together, they look toward the fighters below and she finds Kidane. He is gripping Seifu’s hand, nodding to Amha, glancing up at Aklilu, then over to Aster. Most of the other women who will fight alongside them are in dresses. Hirut imagines she can decipher what Kidane says to Seifu then signals to Aster, and what Aster in turn relays to the other women waiting for her command, it is what messengers warned them about already: The Italians are prepared. This will be no ambush but a real battle.
Get ready, Aklilu whispers. Follow me and stay close, he adds. He squeezes Hirut’s arm, the pressure reassuring against her trembling. You’ve got a new gun now, the Wujigra is safe, you’ve been training.
When Kidane gives the signal, they will charge at the Italians while another group, led by Amha and Hailu, will swerve around the hill toward the construction workers’ camp to puncture tires, steal tools and weapons, and cut communication lines. They will burn tents and kill those who get in their way. They will set fire to that awful prison and hurl the barbed wire off the cliff.
Hirut braces herself. The valley expands. Her ears begin to ring. She is sweating. They must run into the valley and then climb the next hill in order to begin their assault. There is a vast stretch of land they must cross where anything can happen, where everything is possible.
Steady, steady. Aklilu’s voice is a brush of cool wind. Be strong, brave soldier, I’m right next to you.
And then: the darting light, a fallen star, a beam playing on water.
Kidane spins and arches toward the enemy, then flings himself down the hill, graceful and effortless, feet like wings, his long curls whipping in the wind, a dark and murderous crown. The army pivots in his direction, leans forward, and charges behind him without one sound, the valley below still trembling in anticipation.
Aklilu pulls her, and soon she is thrown into the sweep of dust clouds, other figures pushing beside her, against her, around her, to make their way to the enemy. She feels like she runs alone, a solitary figure balancing on slippery rocks. Then she trips over grass and finds herself helplessly caught in her own momentum. She falters then rights herself. She is shoved aside and forward and backward and she cannot see Aklilu. She stretches her hand as she barrels down the hill but he is nowhere.
Wait, she says softly. Wait for me.
She cannot see anything but the ground in front of her, and her legs moving her forward. She knows she is running, she knows she is quiet, but she cannot fathom how she is managing to do all this while paralyzed inside. She tries to call Aklilu’s name, tries to lift her voice and puncture the silence, puncture this strange numbness, this uncontrollable momentum, but the sound is a soft buzz thrumming through her head, coursing down her spine and leaving her breathless as everything of this world unfolds in slow motion. Shoot, she tells herself. Shoot at the enemy. But she is blinded and deafened by that
strange, internal cacophony, the world a dim outline pulsing in dust.
Hirut runs toward the noise. She runs away from it. She propels herself into the smoke and twirls out from it. She hears her name, then hears nothing at all. She jumps into the line of gunfire and swerves around it. She smells the tang of spilled blood and the suffocating aroma of new flowers. She spins in the chaos, pushed by instinct, guided by something else not her own. I stood up inside myself, Emama, she hears herself say, I stood up and I rushed against the enemy like a soldier and I saw that there was no one there, I saw that I had already killed them all without a shot. Then Hirut is spiraling in a whirlwind all her own, compelled by fury and fear, a singular figure stumbling across a now-empty hill, away from the action, further from her army, moving toward a separate, different battle.
SHE NEARLY CAREENS INTO HIM, moving so fast that she has to wheel her arms to stop herself. She imagines a knotted twig, then a pile of hardened dung left to bleach in the sun. The round-faced ferenj jerks his head back to look up at her, so stunned by her sudden appearance that he has no time to stand and pull up his trousers. His gun lies at his feet like a discarded shirt, a mound of leaves clutched in his hand. He delicately balances on his toes over a stink that hangs all around him, the odor so sharp that Hirut has to cover her mouth.
She takes small steps backwards, her rifle slanted across her back while he watches with his mouth sagging open, incapable of anything except the expulsion he has already started, helpless in the midst of this bodily function.
I’ll go, she mumbles, but she cannot stop staring. She has never understood the ferenj to be real. These foreigners are mysterious killing beasts drained of goodwill and compassion, heartless and bloodless, machines.
He drops his leaves and grabs his rifle, the actions slow and blurry. He shouts and his soft, pink mouth sags open, his tonsils wiggle in the panic of his words.
She has done this many times before in her dreams: She has swung her rifle from her back and aimed and shot at Kidane. She has buried a single bullet into his chest then bent down to make sure he was dead. She has killed him many times, day after day, night after night, while walking and sleeping and eating and caring for the wounded. She has trained herself to brace for the blunt force of discharge. She has carved a single line into the barrel for a new enemy down. She has practiced it so many times with Aklilu during training, and in her sleep, and as she dreamt, that her body knows just what to do. She imagines Kidane and pulls the trigger.
Boom, she says alongside the crack of the bullet spinning free. Boom.
Then she steps back to avoid his jerking legs, the splatter of blood pooling in the leaves, the new stink of urine, the soiled uniform and boots. Boom. And she picks up his rifle and shoulders it across her back, and runs.
Hirut hurls herself toward the noise, toward the grunts of pain. She pushes until she has no sensation and can only keep pace with that obedient body speeding back across the hill, aching for a final resolution. The closer she gets to the curtain of dust, the louder the clash of the rifles on her back. They flop against her spine, knocking into each other, forming a clamor that ricochets through the hills.
Hirut! This way, this way. Watch out!
Aklilu stands at the threshold of the cacophony, motioning her to one side, bloodstains streaked across the front of his shirt. He is waving his arms, drawing a dirty sleeve across his forehead to swipe aside the hair falling into his eyes, plastered down by a bleeding wound near his ear. The look he gives her is one of panic shielded by a hard glaze of cruelty, the emotions colliding in his open-throated scream of her name. He steps away from the tangle of bodies: uniformed and white-clothed, helmeted and bareheaded, and Hirut thinks for a moment he is opening his arms to her, calling to hold her tight and keep her from harm. Then she catches sight of Aster in the tangled group, weighted with dirt and blood, swinging her hand up and down, up and down, the gleam of a blade flashing with a terrifying quickness.
Help me! Aster is fury and fear woven into one simple body, a knot of rage bent over a limp and broken man.
Aklilu is motioning her away from the fight, Aster is beckoning her forward. Hirut feels the tug of safety but one of her rifles slides off her back, lands in the crook of her arm, and she who has nothing left that is really hers understands there is no other way. She nods to Aster, throws down the extra rifle, and charges into the huddle of bodies, screaming with her eyes shut.
She trips over a pair of legs, sinks onto her elbows, and scrapes her chin against a dirty boot. An elbow connects with her jaw and she jerks her head, blinded by the impact. She reaches out, tries to guess where she is, how far she has fallen. It is impossible to distinguish whole bodies. There are legs and arms, torsos and knees. She tries to stand but Aster flings her full weight against her back as she struggles to wrest a rifle away from an ascaro. Aster shouts curses at the soldier, making sound into a wall, and Hirut feels herself pressed down and flattened, and she knows she will die like this: trapped beneath legs. She swings her rifle up, tries to slide out, then she cannot breathe and starts to gasp, the sensation stifling and familiar: of being held in place in a dark night with Kidane’s heavy weight across her. Hirut panics. Her chest tightens and she elbows and shoves and kicks until a hand takes hers and pulls her out and keeps pulling and she lets herself be dragged because what do girls like her know about rebellion, what do girls like her know about resistance, what do girls like her know but how to live and obey and keep quiet until it is time to die? And so it is not at all a surprise when she finally lifts her head to stare at Kidane in a sweat-stained uniform. He draws her closer to his chest while gripping her arm in that familiar way. Hirut pushes back, notes his confusion.
And when he takes her arm again and points away from the fighting bodies and says, And what if you are with child? You must keep yourself safe. Hirut feels herself bloom with a fresh and untapped terror and she imagines herself wholly destructible and worthy of death all at once.
There is no language but this:
Boom, she says. She picks up the rifle at her feet, taps her chest and mimes pulling the trigger. Boom. Kill me. She wipes the tears from her cheeks and says it: Shoot me. Boom.
Already, relief is washing over her. The hard knot that formed long ago inside her stomach is starting to unravel. The feeling is so sweet that she cannot help smiling and then she starts to laugh, spinning away from Kidane, watching him jump back into the fray. Boom, boom, please, shoot me. She is close enough to see his flushed cheeks, the scarred hands, the sweat on his neck, the dark curls that mat at his forehead. She does not know where Aster has gone. She cannot think. She is here, where she should be, at the center of the world, spinning free, finally.
SHELTERED BEHIND THE BARRICADE, his rifle aimed at an empty hill across from the narrow strip of land in front of him, Ettore sees an Ethiopian moving toward them at a fast sprint. Startled by the sight, he glances toward the rest of the soldati, all of them waiting to charge into the valley below. Fucelli has been sending them in waves, lengthening the battle for the cameraman, prolonging the attack and clumping groups across the field, spreading the points of contact. The colonel has been warned that Ethiopian reinforcements will come from behind the central fray, and Ettore can see now that they will provide a cinematic backdrop to the series of skirmishes dotting the valley.
Ettore settles into his weapon, trains the sights on the rebel. He considers this unnerving lone figure rushing at them, the impossibility of it. He must surely be an actor sent by Fucelli for the camera, a symbolic reminder of Italian strength.
Mario presses himself into his rifle, the veins in his arms bulging from the effort to hold his weapon steady. Then slowly, he lifts his head. My God, he says, my God.
A group of Abyssinians are astride horses in brightly colored saddles at the top of the hill across the valley. They are galloping down at full speed, a burst of light and color: a dozen warriors with wild hair, their cries like a discordant Greek chorus. Far a
head of them, that improbable figure, his chest exposed to the soldati, leaping over stone and grass, incomprehensible. Beautiful, even.
Then a dozen more on horses soaring down from that hill, close to engulfing that slender rebel, leaving the lonely soldier to scramble out of the way.
Is this real? Mario asks. Or is this for the camera? The face he turns to Ettore before swiveling back around is astounded and scared.
The thuk of spear: and a soldato toward the end of the line, behind the barricade, screams in pain. The soldiers shift forward, tense, and wait for Fucelli’s order to shoot. They aim at the hill, at the soldier stumbling through the horsemen, confused and confusing.
But the Abyssinians keep rising from the other side of the valley, several now on foot and charging toward them and still: no order from Fucelli, no order to shoot, no order to do anything but wait for these men, a hundred bolts of lightning bound into human form.
Hold fire! The order comes from down the line. Let them get closer.
Fofi shifts his rifle from left to right, right to left, his head low. Giulio is breathing through his teeth, the hissing sound a current sliding through their row. The soldati lean against the rising cloud of dust and the crescendo of hooves. They flinch at the Ethiopian war cry, rising slowly, ballooning in the echoes slamming against their ears. Ettore balances on his toes. Every muscle stretches taut. His mouth is dry. Waves of noise sink against his head and he blinks to clear his vision: but what he sees is real.
No firing! Hold fire!
What’s this? Ettore looks up so fast his helmet tips backward. Who’s she?
The lone soldier is a delicate-featured girl in uniform: a solitary Abyssinian floating above grass, moving effortlessly between the horsemen, captivating and surreal.
The Shadow King Page 27