The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

  THAT NIGHT, ETTORE dreams: Leo is dressed in his wedding suit and holds a census form to his chest. He is trying to get home before his heart bursts through the page. Inside he can feel he is shrinking. His skin is loosening and soon he will be stepping out of himself, his bones moving faster than he, pushing past vein and flesh and ligament and muscle to leave it all behind again. He must find a corner. He must stand between stones and pull himself together. But he is too slow. He is too methodical. He has forgotten the haste of childhood, the dream of flight. He hides in a crevice between two buildings near Santa Maria Formosa, searching for Gabriella. He gives in to the hinged darkness and takes off his suit. For a moment he is long and lean and whole. Then Leo sheds his skin and folds it neatly. It is a perfect square in a spinning world. He is nothing now but muscle and bone, veins exploding like supernovas. He presses the form to his chest again. He is trying to hold what must be held. He reads the page and his heart slides out. It tumbles and collects at his feet. He reads some more and his lungs collapse. He gets to the end and his stomach churns. It begins to chew him up. And Leo utters his beloved wife’s name and holds out his hand. Then he goes home, bone scraping on bone.

  IT IS HIS BIRTHDAY AND COLONEL CARLO FUCELLI SALUTES HIS reflection in the mirror to begin his private celebrations. He opens his jacket and flattens his hand across the two belts he has taken to wearing since that horrifying assault. All along, he has assumed that the attack diminished him as a man. He has always believed that there is no true defense or recovery from any assault that exposes a man to his ultimate frailties. He has not known how to pivot away from the crippling humiliation that changed how he walked through his days and ended his nights. What those Abyssinians put on display for Carlo Fucelli, son of Domenico Fucelli, to witness about himself involved much more than his most intimate parts. They unzipped his trousers and tore out his very spirit and ever since then, he has been moving through his routines with a numbness that only disappeared in the most deliberate acts of power and revenge. His prisoners have also taught him this: It is possible to wipe dust and ash from one’s feet and step forward, wholly remade. Anything is possible. And with that, Carlo slips off his extra belt, buttons his jacket, and steps out of his office to reintroduce himself to his men.

  His men wait for him on the flat stretch of land between the prison and the cliffs. They have done as he has ordered and arrived at dawn, ready for battle. There is no sound besides the rustle of wind through tall grass and trees, and all that heralds this new beginning stands in breathless anticipation of his arrival. Carlo feels his heart swell. He will give them a show on this anniversary of his birth. He will teach them how a strong man can be made without the use of his fists. And as he approaches the prison, Colonel Carlo Fucelli, son of Italy, conqueror of Benghazi, breathes in the fragrant scent of a fresh new morning, and waits for his moment to begin. Anything is possible, he says to himself, moved by the quiet obedience of his men standing at attention in neat rows before him. Anything is possible because today, I am possible.

  Off to the side, Fifi and her servant are a silent chorus of two looking on worriedly. He nods to Fifi, who turns her head, disturbed but powerless to disobey his orders to be present. Overhead, the sky is slowly blossoming into blue, the sun a distant spray that holds no firm shape in the brightening expanse. A string of clouds disrupts the clean line of the distant horizon. Fog clings to rough mountaintops and flows between hills. All else is grass and rock and farmland: open terrain waiting to be claimed. There is enough room for all of Italy in this vast and empty country, he will point out to his men in another moment. Carlo shuts his eyes and nods. He slips a cigarette into his mouth and unbuttons the bottom of his jacket so the rumors can be dispelled for good: he no longer wears his double belts. He will never do so again. He has no need for symbolic protection. He has overcome his demons and today, he will bring them to their knees.

  Carlo Fucelli presses his hand against his chest. He leans toward his men and shouts loudly and clearly in Italian, then Amharic, Arabic, Tigrinya, and Somali: There are those who are meant for distance, and those who were born to fall!

  Ettore Navarra glances at his friends beside him then turns to Carlo, baffled, as Carlo knew he would. Carlo wants to remind him: Our fathers do not make us, Navarra. We are born with our own possibilities. There are those meant for distance and those who must bear the consequences of our choices. What he means to say to the young soldier is this: Today, I can be a witness to my own rebirth and bury the man those intruders attacked.

  Carlo pivots to Fifi instead. Aida, young maiden governed by the laws of love, slave to her desire for her father’s enemy, faccetta nera, come here, he says. Take my hand.

  While Fifi approaches slowly, he opens his arms wide in a gesture of goodwill toward his men and for a moment, he is overcome by affection and gratitude for their allegiance, their dedication to his ambitions.

  They have been breaking rocks and moving stones and dynamiting tunnels into mountains. They have been working in scorching heat and sleeping through cold nights. They have had no respite except for the breaks when new prisoners arrive and then tumble over the cliffs. The racial segregation laws forbid their mingling with native women but he has not stopped them the times they have risked ambush in order to go to a local bar. He has felt pity for them, in fact, and he has ordered his ascari to safeguard their trips each time. There has been nothing else to keep these young men preoccupied. So when Carlo puts out his hand and motions for Fifi to step forward, he is well aware of what he is unleashing. He knows the form of this beast he is nudging awake.

  Faccetta nera, cara Aida, vieni qua. Come to me, my black-faced darling. Come here, dear Aida. Carlo puts an arm around Fifi’s shoulder and draws her close. She is trembling, gripping her hands in front of her, her body rigid.

  Stop it, she says to him.

  Carlo leans into her ear, makes sure that his teeth brush against her cheek when he says to her: Pay attention to how a man is made. Then he pushes her away. Carissima Fifi, Faven from Gondar, how many names does a person need? He nods to Ibrahim.

  Ibrahim shouts over his shoulder in Arabic and two ascari rush forward.

  Carlo smiles again and points to the prison where the two female prisoners sit inside, quiet and unaware. Carlo grips Fifi’s hand and refuses to let go. Go on, Navarra, he says. Get them out so we can begin.

  Me, sir? Ettore turns to Colonel Fucelli. He is shaking.

  Fucelli slips on his sunglasses. He stands with his hands on his waist and only his mouth, a firm line across his face, gives away the slow-building tension nestling between them. How much of what I have said do you understand? the colonel says. Then he laughs. Get the prisoner out, Navarra, the younger one. Unless you’re afraid of a girl.

  Ettore hears soft laughter ripple through the line. He glances at the men, then at the colonel’s beaming face, and anger seeps out of his belly as shame rises to beat against him, and because there is nothing he can do and there is so much he does not know and there are things he is afraid will never be explained or discovered, Ettore spins toward that barbed-wire fence and shouts for an ascaro to open it. He jerks at the door until someone unlocks it. Then he barrels his way in, searching for that seam in the earth that has come undone to expose his humiliating weaknesses.

  Hirut shoots to her feet, desperate for a place to hide. She is knocked breathless by Navarra’s intrusion. She stretches a hand to Aster and calls out her name, but there is only this soldato waving his gun in her face while telling her in stilted Amharic to go outside. He is a body quivering with cruel resentments as he drags her out.

  HIRUT BLINKS WILDLY in the new morning sun. There is an entire army looking at her eagerly but all she can do is stare at Fucelli and his woman. And the cook. Hirut stumbles backward, made dizzy by the sight of this woman whose disappearance she has learned to accept as a certain fact in a confusing world. She presses her back against the prison wall and sinks down. She is clothed but she i
s naked. She is a spectacle but she is invisible. She is a girl who has been split, and what stands here is both flesh and shadow, bone and silhouette, no more than air filled with smoke. And the cook. The cook. The cook.

  Hirut looks at the woman but the cook shakes her head and her mouth trembles and there are no words needed for what she is telling Hirut: Do not act like you know me, do not look this way, you must find your own escape.

  Navarra is inside the barbed-wire fence, his camera held up like a shield. Somewhere next to her, Beniam tugs at her feet. Kidane hefts her into the air and slams her back to the ground. Aster raises the whip and lets it slice through her thoughts. Time melts and spins her senseless in this broken place where the cook can stand on the other side of a prison fence and watch her without offering to help. Hirut shuts her eyes and tucks her head. She extends a hand to an imaginary Aklilu, lets Beniam grip her ankles, lets her Wujigra rest across her back, and she waits.

  Ettore stares at Hirut crouched and shivering violently against the prison wall and feels his anger fading, giving way to remorse and pity. She is, after all, no more than a native, no more than a girl accustomed to harshness. This is a body unbroken by servitude and orders. This is a girl buoyed by the endless calls to serve. Here she is before me, Father, slumped low like a dying beast, waiting for me to offer her relief.

  Ascari! Fucelli says as he points to two guards. Make her stand up. Navarra, get ready!

  But Hirut refuses to be moved, even when the ascari pry her head up and her shoulders down. She is still bent so far into her chest that Ettore can see the ridges of her spine.

  If she doesn’t get up, tell her I’ll throw her over the cliff myself, Ibrahim, Colonel Fucelli says. Then he snaps his fingers and turns. Fifi, bell’ abissina, come. Bring your slave. Ibrahim, you know what to do now.

  Fifi and the servant step forward slowly. Ettore notices that Hirut is so troubled by the sight of the two of them that she barely protests when Ibrahim approaches, tugs at the top of her dress by its shoulders, then pulls it down to her waist. The material rips. Hirut looks down at herself, dazed, then at the two women, and whatever it is that engulfs her becomes too much to bear. Ibrahim steps back, his face like stone, as Hirut begins to mutter then speak loudly in an Amharic that is too fast for Ettore to understand.

  What’s she saying? Fucelli asks Fifi, his arms folded over his chest.

  Names, Fifi says. Just the names of people, maybe her family. Then she turns to Fucelli and puts a hand on his arm. Please, Carlo, she says. Let her be.

  Fifi steals a glance at Ettore, and for a brief moment they lock eyes and what he sees reflected back fills him with renewed shame. Ettore takes another step away from Hirut. He doesn’t want to look at her anymore. He doesn’t want to be inside this barbed-wire fence listening to the mutterings of this terrified girl. He looks at the colonel, the calibrated glee, the hardened features, the pride, and the barbed wire rises like a border between them.

  Shouts and claps erupt from the soldati and ascari: Il Duce! Viva l’Italia! Faccetta nera! Their voices hang overhead like low-flying planes, the rumble an endless ricochet through the hills. Ettore stands inside the fence with the girl, spinning in his own universe, horrifyingly alone with this native.

  Groups of soldiers gather closer. The colonel’s madama and her servant hunch into themselves, their arms crossed identically in front of them. Neither of the women can look at the girl. It is the girl who cannot stop staring now. She is fixated on the two women, her trembling growing more pronounced as her mouth opens to form a word she cannot push into sound.

  The colonel moves next to Ettore, a hand on his pistol. Navarra, he begins. Last week, a unit in Kossoye was nearly wiped out in an ambush. We know Kidane’s rebels are hiding in these hills. We know some of them are women. Take the picture, soldato.

  The girl is swaying, her face lifted to the sky, the scar on her collarbone rising up in her deep, heaving breaths.

  Tell her to keep still, the colonel says. Aren’t you an Italian? He pivots toward Fifi. Watch this, both of you, or it gets worse for her.

  Fifi straightens, agitated and uncomfortable, and smooths the skirt of her long dress. She taps her servant on the shoulder and pushes her upright. They grip hands and, together, they look at Ettore, their disgust evident.

  Navarra, do your job.

  This is what Ettore sees when he looks at the girl: That there is a dying-away that happens in a breathing body. There is a tumble into oblivion that occurs while we are still inclined toward movement. Hirut cannot stop blinking and mouthing an inaudible word. She is swaying and bending to the ground. One arm lifts slowly, motioning toward Fifi before dropping heavily to her side. She is giving up.

  Ragazza, ti prego, stand still, raise your head. Ettore lifts his own chin, and an emotion like pain surges inside his chest. He holds his hand out to the girl but she will not look at him, and for the first time he wonders if he is worthy. Ettore raises the camera to his eye and finds relief. Through the viewfinder, she is just a small, lonely figure, parts misaligned until he focuses and puts her back together.

  Ascaro, the colonel points to Ibrahim standing with the other ascari several paces away. Tell her what happens to those who don’t obey. Tell her, if you want, what I’ve taught you to do.

  The clear morning sky washes a pale light across Ibrahim as he steps to the fence, fearsome and splendid in his uniform. He pauses. His mouth wavers from its usual sternness. He whispers something to her so softly that it sounds like a rush of breath.

  A smile plays across Fucelli’s lips. In Libya it wasn’t so hard, was it?

  Hirut’s defiance slips away. She gets to her feet and places both her hands behind her back and plants a foot up against the wall. She stares at Ettore, her eyes full of spite. She wants to launch herself from there, he thinks, she wants to become a bullet spinning toward him and into his chest.

  He takes a photograph and advances the film. He readies the camera again. She doesn’t move so he takes another photo. Then he waits and Ibrahim mutters under his breath. And behind him a solid, thick wall of silence pushes out of the soil, so impenetrable that the sun cannot shine and he is on the precipice of a cliff, staring down at an endless fall. When she still doesn’t move, he snaps another picture, identical to the one before, and another and one more. Then he stops, unsure of what to do, a slow panic building inside him.

  Carlo, this is pointless, Fifi says. She is clutching her servant, holding the woman’s hand to her chest.

  Keep your mouth shut, Fucelli says. He rests a hand on his belt, tapping on the buckle while his head lowers and his breathing grows jagged. He appears to coil inside himself, a cornered animal ready to fight to the death, to leap forward and attack the girl.

  Then Fifi steps in front of him and shouts: Hirut! She stands upright, tall, and when Hirut looks at her, Fifi salutes, holding the stance of an Ethiopian soldier.

  The soldati gasp. The ascari lean forward. Fucelli blinks quickly. The girl raises her chin. She drops her hands to her side. She blinks away every expression in her eyes until they are flat and dark and cold. She stands straight and steps away from the wall. She brings her feet together. She lifts her hand to her forehead in one crisp, graceful swoop. She stands at attention, a soldier.

  Colonel Fucelli strides past Ibrahim and goes into the gate. He pushes Ettore aside. He pulls her away from the wall and walks around her in a circle that shrinks until he looms close to her, glaring into her face.

  Hirut stares past him as if he is invisible, as if he does not matter.

  They stand like that for so long, that Ettore moves in and photographs Hirut. He kneels and frames her dusty feet and slender ankles. He stands and captures the slope of her neck and the well-formed head that refuses to bow. He frames her face and shoots again and again and again.

  He does not know when Fucelli comes beside him but the man’s fists are knotted, and he is swinging in the direction of Hirut, who stands immobile and impas
sive, the slide of her eyes toward Fifi and the servant the only hint at what might be pride, but might also be mockery.

  Ettore steps closer, propelled by Fucelli’s shoves. He knows the lens cannot focus at the short distance that the man has pushed him, but Ettore takes photos of Hirut’s eyes anyway, knowing only he will ever see the way hatred sways so easily between shame and fear. I am doing as I’ve been ordered, Father. I am the beast bound by obedience. I am the creature buoyed by calls to serve.

  Then it is Aster’s turn. Where Hirut was quiet and defiant, the older woman is movement and noise. She is a body crashing through restraining hands, spinning so wildly that Ettore cannot take a photograph. When the top of her dress is pulled down, she pulls it up. When she is pushed against the wall, she slides down to the ground. When the colonel comes to yank her upright, she grabs his legs to throw him down. She screams a name that makes Ibrahim flinch and the ascari pause, and even Fucelli says: Now I have solid proof that they work for that rebel leader, Kidane.

  Hirut leans exhausted against the doorway, watching Aster with a trembling mouth, her hands on her face. The more the woman refuses to be stilled, the more Hirut begins to move. She opens her arms and swings her hands. She spins out of an imaginary hold. She is beautiful movement reduced to its most essential parts. Ettore angles away from Aster and leans toward Hirut. He adjusts the shutter and darkens shadows. He makes her a slender figure trying to find her rhythm, caught in a stunted pirouette: graceful and sad.

  WHEN THE CENSUS FORMS ARRIVE, COLONEL FUCELLI SIMPLY HANDS Ettore the envelope and says, Navarra, make sure every Italian soldier fills this out. Return them to me in two days. He puts a finger to his lips. Fill out yours too, of course, though we do things differently here. Then Fucelli shakes his head to silence any questions and gives him a salute. You may leave, soldato.