The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

  CARLO’S SOLDATI ARE OVERWHELMED. They have been pushed out from the barricades and then trapped from all sides. They have been forced to retreat so far from any protection that Carlo orders his remaining soldiers to scatter and fight to the last man. The slaughter is relentless without the assistance of ascari and planes, and he can be no help to them with a bullet lodged in his stomach. Lying alone on the field, he clutches his side to stop the blood. He glances up, gauging the distance to safety. It is too far, he is too weak.

  Coraggio soldati! Retreat! Carlo screams to his men. He lets the force of his voice substitute for a splintering heart. Go to the hills! Retreat!

  From above the whir of spinning bullets, between the grunts of wounded men, forms this thought: He will die on this forsaken mountain he made into a military outpost, his corpse will be left amidst the debris and the forgotten tents. There will be nothing to mark his demise except his blood soaked into this wretched soil. No one will weep for him. No one will save his flesh from vultures. He will watch himself rot from above, the sun warm again, while his men collect their belongings and sail back home. Honor is no mortal thing, he reminds himself, hoping he can believe it. It lives in creation. It is everlasting.

  Colonel! It is Ettore, running at a low crouch toward him, his eyes frantic, his mouth a grim line. They’ve broken all of our lines, he says, breathing heavily. Let’s go toward the hills behind us, they’re moving the other way.

  Navarra slides his arm beneath Carlo’s waist to lift him up. The pain is so severe that Carlo cries out. He puts a hand on Ettore’s shoulders. Leave, he says. Get out of here, soldato. He looks at him for a long moment. He does not know what to say next, but this much has to be spoken. Well done, soldato. But it’s finished. I’m finished. Don’t let them take you back to Italy. Do as your father said, he loved you.

  There is a low-pitched whistle behind them. An Ethiopian signal to attack. Ettore looks over his shoulder and there is a strong-jawed man racing furiously toward Fucelli, holding a photograph in front of him while shouting a name: Tariku! Tariku!

  This stopped being your war a long time ago, soldato. Get out of here before he kills you too. Save yourself.

  It is too far to see it clearly, but Ettore knows the photograph the Ethiopian is holding. He knows this man is Tariku’s father, he knows that as surely as there is a bullet for Fucelli from this man, he deserves one too. He gets to his feet and turns around to face him. He holds up his hands and waits.

  The man pounds his chest as he gets closer: Seifu, he says. Seifu. He screams his name like a declaration while he pushes Ettore aside and pulls out his knife and bends to grasp Fucelli’s head and arch his neck.

  Carlo blinks slowly, his eyes seeking Ettore’s, trying to feign calmness. Survive, he whispers. Then he adds softly: Don’t leave any part of me in this place.

  HIRUT STUMBLES THROUGH the smoldering ashes of the burned field and finds Carlo Fucelli’s dead body, a tattered handkerchief draped over his swollen face and neck, his belt and bloody trousers gaping open, his legs spread wide. She kneels down and lifts the handkerchief. On his eyes lay two Italian coins. His collar is drenched in dark blood. Hirut undoes the shirt to check his heart and confirm that this monster of a man is truly dead. She presses her palm against his still chest. She takes the coins from his eyes and throws them aside. She slides off his shoes and pulls off his socks and reaches for the small knife strapped to his ankle. She says a prayer over the man, asks God to damn this one to eternal fire, to scorch the bottoms of his feet with poison rain. She makes the sign of the cross and takes one last look at Fucelli, then she makes her way to the other side of the field where she last saw Kidane fall, wounded and alone.

  The sound is like a sparrow winding out of the mayhem, a pure note so sweetly pitched that not even a cannon’s boom could drown it out. Ettore pauses in his rush away from the field where he covered Fucelli’s body as best he could. He knows that voice. It is Hirut caught somewhere between a song and a cry, a wail so painful and free it rises above the trees and fades into clouds. Without realizing it, he begins to run to her.

  She is across the field from where he left Fucelli, tucked just beyond some burned tents and the curve of the hill. Her back is to him, and she is on her knees hunched over the body of the man Ettore knows to be Kidane. The man is still alive, breathing heavily and loudly, reaching up for her face as she draws back then slaps his hand down. They are two figures floating in a dark river, one holding the other on her lap, bending to cradle him and whisper into his ear. She is embracing him gently, rocking back and forth, her head close to his, her arms tucked beneath and around his neck. Ettore wants to say, But he cannot breathe like that. He wants to say, Sit up, Hirut and give him air. But Hirut is rocking and murmuring, her grip tightening on the man.

  Kidu, she says, Kidu. Then she lifts her face to the sky and as Kidane tries to reach for her face to draw her near or push her away, Hirut stares down at the dying man, her eyes narrowing. I am a soldier, she says. I am Getey’s daughter. They will forget you and remember me. She clears her throat, wipes her cheeks, and says it again as Kidane groans and breathes his last, his hand falling on his chest, grasping for nothing: They will forget you and remember me.

  It is Aklilu who shouts first, a ruptured voice ricocheting into the hills: Kidane. Kidane: anguish in the form of a name.

  Aster follows behind him, screaming for her husband.

  Hirut blinks quickly, startled, and looks down then over at Ettore. They are several paces apart, but close enough to speak. She shakes her head, Go, she says. It’s finished. Go back to your country. Get out of here.

  He points toward the old prison. My letters, the box, my secret. Your secret. I have to go.

  She understands and offers no resistance to his suggestion. She is quiet, staring down at Kidane’s body with a horrified expression. Slowly she nods. Yes, she says. My secret.

  Ettore spins and runs toward safety, toward a place he will make into a home until he finds her again.

  5 May 1941

  IT IS A LONGER JOURNEY BACK THAN THE EMPEROR REMEMBERS, THE road an endless dark ribbon stretching farther and farther into the horizon. Haile Selassie opens the window of his Rolls-Royce and hears the smooth metallic purr of the caravan behind him. They are all returning with him, his ministers and advisers, his family and his bodyguards. His army is marching in front of him, those fearsome men who never gave up. He touches his chest, nudges aside his many medals and feels the outline of his sternum, the rapid beating of his heart. He has left nothing in England. He has taken even the hurried scraps of notes he made to himself in the days before departure, picking them up one by one from his rubbish bin, saving them in his pockets, in the corners of his suitcases, in his briefcase, until he is certain he has gotten each one. If he could, he would have scraped up every thread, every piece of hair, every drop of water that rolled off his skin onto English ground and brought it back. He wants to walk into his city a whole man, missing nothing, complete.

  He hears a strangled sound pushing its way into his reverie and he pulls his head back inside the car, into the warmth of the supple leather seats. His wife, Menen, sits next to him sobbing softly into the handkerchief she clutches as if it were his hand. He touches her leg and closes his eyes, hears the steady drone of tires spinning over rocks and potholes, feels the gentle weight of her head on his shoulder. He takes a deep breath then another, wills his mind still, urges his thoughts to settle here in this country, on this road. Exactly five years ago to the day, he was forced to leave Ethiopia in a locomotive racing for the border, his staff staring at the shrinking city behind them, the soft cries of his wife soaking once again into the handkerchief in her hand. He can smell the acrid tinge of smoke hovering just beyond his face. It is a tarry, pungent mix of burning rubber and rotting carcass lingering above the trees, falling in wisps driven by the wind. The Italians have left so much of their violence behind. How many generations will it take to erase it all? To for
give it all? And yet, he must speak to his people of divine love. As if the heart can withstand so much destruction. As if it is not too much to remember.

  On the side of the road, a row of his soldiers calls out his name, proud in their worn and stained uniforms. Haile Selassie leans his head out, and then he sees her: Kidane’s wife, the Aster that Menen has spoken of while shaking her head with both admiration and disbelief: She took her husband’s rifle and led his army, Menen told him. She put her own women in the front and left no Italian alive on that hill in Debark. Then his wife touched her chest with her fist and nodded, Who says we can’t do as the men?

  Slow down, he tells his driver, not caring that the procession in front of him is moving along while those marching behind him have to stop. He leans farther out the window and Aster steps forward. She is dressed in uniform, with a cape that hangs across her shoulders perfectly. She keeps her eyes lowered, but she raises her rifle and salutes sharply, and behind her and all around, soldiers mimic her action. A young woman beside her steps forward too, eyes blazing, mouth set, and dares to look him in the eye. Dares to test the power of his gaze. Haile Selassie salutes back, looking past that insolent young woman, refusing to let himself think of all it can mean.

  Forward now, he tells the driver. Keep going until we must switch cars and meet the general and the British. For now, let us be alone. Then he looks at his wife and holds her hand to his cheek: We’re finally home, he says. Home.

  As Emperor Haile Selassie rides in the back of the car purring through the hills into Addis Ababa, the weight of his absence settles like stone on his shoulders, pressing him down until his chest aches. He tries to convince himself that he has been given another chance to hold open his arms and beg forgiveness from his daughter Zenebwork, from his people, from those living and lost. This is what it means, he thinks now as they enter his city. This is what it means to be haunted by the dead.

  MINIM KNEELS at the steps of St. Giorgis Church, praying with a heavy heart he cannot seem to push toward joy. He came to this church to be alone but he is surrounded by a crowd of worshipers giving thanks for the return of their king. Jostled and pushed amidst the rows of white-clad believers, Minim is dressed like the poor peasant he is, his long hair held back by a strip of Hirut’s old netela. His heart is a hollow weight sitting in the pocket of his chest. He shifts away from the crowd and leaves a space next to him for another man his size.

  Your Majesty, he says to himself silently. Yes, he answers, and holds a hand out to himself. Let us go together to our throne.

  He tells himself the tears that fall to the ground from his eyes are not his alone. They are what Haile Selassie would have shed if they were both allowed to cry.

  Your Majesty, he says. Who will remember me?

  There is no answer, only his own silent breathing. He is trapped by his own skin, swallowed by the marching feet, suffocated by the purring procession and the satisfied cheers of Addis Ababa’s people. In villages and small towns across the rest of the country, in the mountains and caves, the people are still waiting for him, eager to bow to their leader, the proud warrior king who galloped into battle on his horse to fight for them against the enemy.

  Your Majesty, I am alone.

  Minim waits, and in the tender breeze rustling through the open church doors, he hears what it is that his emperor wants to say: Every sun creates a shadow and not all are blest to stand in the light.

  We have returned, he tells himself.

  Minim looks down at his slender fingers, the nails still neatly filed and short. He glances down at his feet, and lays a hand on the beard he learned to trim as well as any royal barber. Every day, he will grow back into himself until he can be who he is: a man who was once everything to everyone, then was reborn again to be nothing.

  EPILOGUE REUNIONS

  1974

  THEY HAVE BEEN COMING IN FOR WEEKS TO STAND IN FRONT OF Ettore in their faded uniforms. These men who slip off their shoes and tighten their empty ammunition belts and tell him to take their picture. In every face, he looks for Aklilu. He begs the door never to open and usher in Seifu. They call him The Ferenj, sometimes Tal-yan, once in a while they use Foto but nobody uses Ettore anymore, not even the Italians who still live in Addis Ababa. To them he is lo straniero, though Ettore knows they know his name, they have seen it on the postcards they preserve in envelopes and albums, those images of a young soldier named Hirut and her officer, Aster.

  He wonders if some of these arbegnoch know of those pictures too. If that is why some of them come in and stare at him then walk out. Others stand at attention with flames for eyes and declare they would still kill him on orders. Most of them surely know that he will photograph arbegnoch for free, but these patriots insist on paying. Lately, they have been coming into his studio in increasing numbers, these aging, proud men whose bones he once thought were made of steel. Every day, his studio blazes in sunlight as the door opens and opens and opens and he is thrown further and further into those years he has wanted so much to forget. They tell him their ferres sim, their nom de guerre, often they refuse any other introduction. Some say that this grumbling revolt of the youth is part of the war that began in 1935. What war ever really ends, one white-bearded man once said to him, near tears.

  He sleeps in the back of his studio in a flat he rents in Piassa. He has been here for nearly fifteen years, moving from Asmara to Alexandria to Gondar, where he spent decades searching for Hirut in the regions around old battle sites, in villages large and small. He traveled long distances, a portrait of her face in his pocket, and always he asked, Do you know this girl who once fought with the great Aster? He searched in convents, in churches, in the caves between Gojjam and Axum, in the villages tucked inside the Simien Mountains, in every place he thought she might be. Finally, he gave up and found his way to Addis Ababa, this city that still acknowledges and mocks his defeat, hoping that somehow she would hear of his search and come to find his studio. He used to sit at Enrico’s Café, hunched into his cappuccino, listening to conversations, waiting for them to veer toward that long-ago war and those women who knew so well the breaking points of fragile men. He waited to hear about Aster, the great wife of the great Kidane. But there was nothing. Only stories of the other proud warriors, those valiant men who were coming now into his studio, demanding proof of their greatness.

  Two days ago, he stepped outside to find the scrawls on the walls of his building: Ferenj get out! Down with imperialism! Mussoloni out! Ettore wants to say that the protests on the streets have revived old memories of that other war—his war—but he knows it is something else that it has resurrected, something sharper than a memory, something alive that was waiting all this time to come back. In the studio, the old men are surprised that he doesn’t flinch when they point their rifles at him as he peers through his camera. There are times when he wishes they would do what they threaten. Times when he wants to step from behind the lens and press his chest into the barrel and say, What right do I have to remain? It is what he still says to himself at night, in those moments when his brain has emptied itself of work and there is nothing to block those years from hurtling back. He lies in his small bed in the cramped room crowded with boxes of negatives and photos, and finds himself repeating, I photographed the dead and dying. I helped kill the innocent. I left my parents to their fate. What right do I have to remain?

  HE IS REPEATING this quietly one morning when the door opens again and he flinches as always before looking up, dreading Seifu’s appearance. One day, he knows, the man will find him. For a moment, he stares at this tall, elegant man with a shock of white hair, dressed in a well-tailored suit, and says nothing. Then he recognizes those eyes, that face. Dr. Hailu: the famed physician from Black Lion Hospital, the man who once fought beside the great Kidane, the man who refused, for over a decade, every effort by Ettore to speak to him. Ettore puts down the loupe he is using. He pushes aside the stack of contact sheets and fumbles with the cloth to wipe his hands. Neithe
r of them speaks as he stumbles toward Hailu still standing at the door in his dark-gray suit and a shirt that seems impossibly white against a light-blue tie.

  Dr. Hailu, he finds the voice to say. Lei è dottore Hailu? È giusto? Likinegn? Am I right? He is speaking in a halting Italian, a slow Amharic, as if they are both aware that language will never trudge the distance between them.

  Hailu glances around the messy studio, looks long and hard at the backdrop of the Simien Mountains still hanging from the last shoot.You should leave this country, he says. This is not a place for foreigners.

  There is no room for formalities, for falsehoods that would drape the harshness of the memories they share. He knows what Hailu is saying to him in the way he is speaking these words. He is addressing him as a familiar, refusing him the courtesy of formal address, of the respect that language bestows on those who are older or of higher rank or esteemed. They are simply two men standing in front of each other, one still regal and commanding, the other more wrinkled, more disheveled, more bowed by the years—a foreigner, a ferenj, Tal-yan.