The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

  Ettore steps forward so they both stand in the shaft of light flowing through the open door. I’ve received an official notice of eviction from my landlord, he says.

  He looks around at his studio, tries not to let the man see the fear and sadness of it all, the relief that also floods in.

  I have until the end of this month, he adds. Then he looks at Hailu and hopes this man can see what he himself has not been able to say. I’ve been searching for Hirut, he says. I gave her something, letters from my parents that I’d like to get back.

  But Hailu is already turning away, stepping out of the door, and Ettore wants nothing more than to keep him here, to ask him: Surely you did not come here just to tell me what you know I already know?

  I can photograph you if you wait, Ettore adds. It is a silly thought but he cannot stop himself. I can take your photograph and have it ready by tomorrow, for your children, for family. It’s free, he lets drop.

  Hailu shakes his head but he pauses as if he, too, has something to say. Framed by the door, backlit by sunlight, that glorious white hair gleams.

  Your Amharic is good, Hailu says over his shoulder. You’ve learned a lot being here, haven’t you? Then he turns back around and those eyes tremble with a fury that Ettore should know by now, but he draws back into himself nevertheless and lowers his eyes briefly before lifting them again.

  You don’t think you’ve taken enough? Hailu’s voice quivers. What gives you people the right to act as if this is your home? Did you bleed for it? Yesterday, I operated on a boy—

  Ettore flinches.

  I operated on a boy, Hailu repeats. He is controlling himself with difficulty. Just a child. One of these protesters who wants to pretend he’s a soldier. Who will keep our children safe in this country? People like you? he scoffs. You’ve done enough. Get out. All of you, and leave us alone.

  I can’t leave until I see Hirut, Ettore says. I know you fought with her, Dr. Hailu. Inside, he is roiling, shrinking beneath this man’s disgust. He takes a breath to steady his voice. Once, before this place, he was someone, too, he wants to say. I have nothing else left of my mother and father except what I gave her, Ettore says instead. It is a double grief to lose someone when you are far away, he adds. And it is Ettore who now swallows the growing anger, the helpless rage that chews into his throat and takes away his words. I gave her their letters, I had letters for them I never sent. Dr. Hailu, I was afraid of the Italians too. I am Jewish. My parents . . . they were taken away, I never found them. If I could just find Hirut—

  I don’t know where she is.

  Why did you come here? You must know I’ve been looking for her.

  Hailu pauses and looks down at his hands. Ettore follows his gaze and notes the slender fingers with their tapered nails, the smooth skin. They are the hands of an educated man. How long ago it has been since they faced each other in a war that eventually counted them both as the enemy.

  A messenger will come to you in two days. Send a letter to her through him, he will know her. That’s all I can do.

  You didn’t have to come here, Ettore says. His heart is pounding so loud he can hardly hear his own voice. Thank you, Dr. Hailu. He bows deeply.

  The man looks away then gazes at the backdrop again. I don’t understand what I’m seeing these days, Hailu says. Back then, we knew immediately who to hate.

  There is the silence again. Standing in a bolt of shifting light, he can see now that Hailu’s eyes are red-rimmed, swollen from lack of sleep, but they still hold an unmistakeable fierceness tempered by a deep sorrow. We are old, Ettore thinks, we were young then, I was young, I was foolish, I was afraid of dying. But what words are enough now?

  Would you like to take some photographs I shot of the Simien Mountains? Of some of you? You might recognize some of the arbegnoch. I have them. Ettore is speaking quickly as he goes to his desk and begins to pull out a box of photographs. Please, let me give you something. They’re all here, some of my photos from those days. He is desperate to keep Hailu there, find a way to apologize, but Hailu has already walked out the door, leaving it open so sunlight streams in, a bold intruder in the somber studio that once felt like shelter.

  Alone again, Ettore looks around, willing himself to focus on the messy pile of photographs in front of him. He used to be much neater. His photos used to be arranged by date, newspaper clippings kept in strict chronological order. The box he gave to Hirut a lifetime ago was carefully organized and labeled. Since leaving the army, he has come to care less about the sequence of things. Has come to understand that it is impossible to connect what happened to what will. What he knows is this: there is no past, there is no “what happened,” there is only the moment that unfolds into the next, dragging everything with it, constantly renewing. Everything is happening at once.

  SOMETIMES HE DREAMS of her, imagines her stepping into his room as if she belongs there, as if she has been waiting all these years for Ettore to catch that elusive corner of light and see that she was just a girl, just a frightened girl learning to be a soldier. On some nights when he aches for female company and finds someone to bring home, Ettore startles awake and is certain he sees Hirut, and that she has found him herself. Then his companion moves and moonlight stutters and Ettore stares into the empty dark and silently repeats his father’s words: The boundaries of bodies are the least of all things. He wants to add, I’m sorry, I was not a good son, I was not a good man, I did many things wrong. He wants to shout that he had to do what he was ordered, that he was terrified, that all of them were at the mercy of war. But all Ettore can do is lie back and draw a stranger’s body closer to his and try to fall asleep to the familiar ache of old regret.

  Interlude: 1974

  Protesters have gathered in squares and schools across the city, calling for his ouster, but Haile Selassie sits in his office winding his gramophone, waiting for the final act to push Aida and Radames into the cave and toward the last song. In his nearly eighty years on this Earth, almost half of them have been spent with Aida and her father, Amonasro, with Radames and the Egyptians, and today, he needs their reassuring presence to push him toward those glorious days in 1941 when he returned triumphant from exile. Haile Selassie settles the needle in place and leans back on his sofa to let the melody flood the room and drown the chaos. He stares into the corner of the room, into the golden haze of the afternoon light seeping through his curtains, and he looks for so long that he thinks he sees the curtains shift. Then Amonasro steps out of the shadows and extends a hand.

  Haile Selassie, Teferi Mekonnen, Amonasro says to him. Are you just going to sit there?

  Haile Selassie blinks and rubs his eyes, and Amonasro is no more. The emperor sits perfectly still, bewildered. Then when he looks again, Amonasro has returned.

  Teferi, Aida’s father says.

  Yes? The emperor pats his chest to calm his leaping heart. He knows Amonasro is not there, but he cannot convince himself that what he sees and hears is not real.

  We must hurry, Amonasro says. We are fathers and kings.

  Amonasro wears a simple shamma, finely woven and draped expertly. His head is a wild bloom of curls: a warrior’s hairstyle. Across his handsome face, a slender scar traces the line above his brow.

  Haile Selassie looks through the window. It is late afternoon and the demonstrators have not gone home. Dust continues to rise from their marching feet. A brick thrown over the gate with alarming strength almost hits one of his tense guards. What he sees is what exists, so what is it that has just stepped into his private office?

  Help me save my daughter, Amonasro says. She has gone to meet the enemy of my people and we must stop her. Help me save my Aida. He points behind him, beyond the emperor’s office, out of the palace, to that place where a woman sits on the edge of a precipice and waits.

  Amonasro looks nothing like those awful drawings and pictures sent back from Europe’s opera houses. The man standing before him is proudly Ethiopian. That he has not bothered to bow befor
e Haile Selassie is a small detail that the emperor will allow, since he is refusing to bow himself.

  Not now, old friend, the emperor says, shaking his head. Do you not see that we must save Ethiopia? Haile Selassie taps the window next to the sofa, taking comfort in the reliable sound. Do you not see that our people are in pain?

  Help me before it’s too late and we are no more, Amonasro insists.

  Haile Selassie says what he has been thinking, what he has thought for decades: But the girl, your daughter, this Aida, was foolish to fall in love with the enemy. She was stupid to forget her own royal birth and lead with her heart. This is doom she brought on herself. Why didn’t you teach her better?

  Amonasro bows and drops his head in his hands. I fought a war with Egypt and she was captured, he says. It was my fault. Surely you know what I mean, King of Ethiopia, father of a dead daughter.

  Abbaba. Abbaba. And this time, it is Zenebwork quivering in the gentle glow of sunlight rippling through the curtains from the window on the other side of the room. Abbaba, did you forget me?

  The emperor ignores his daughter and turns to Amonasro. He hears his name rise above splintered screams from beyond the palace compound, then a word rings clear above the cacophony: Leyba! Leyba! Thief! Thief!

  The emperor peeks through the curtain then shuts it. Nearly forty years ago, the same people were falling to their knees at his return, overjoyed to have their country back after it had been stolen by invaders. He shakes his head and turns his attention back to Amonasro.

  You fought a war that they started, Haile Selassie says. He thinks of the invasion, of those treacherous Italians, and the fury from so long ago rises again and burns his chest. You were forced to do as you did, he says to Amonasro, tipping into that shimmering space between them. But their songs will never tell the entire truth, Haile Selassie adds. They will never sing of their own corruptions.

  He sees Zenebwork moving closer to Amonasro. On any other day, he would greet her and offer her consolation as he has done since he sent her off to be married to that terrible man. He would apologize and let her anger tear through him, knowing that this is also what it means to love. But today, she is too much. Today, everything feels like too much.

  Abbaba, he wants to find his daughter, Zenebwork says. We must help him.

  To leave a daughter to die alone is a father’s greatest failure, Amonasro says.

  Haile Selassie stares at Amonasro and squares his shoulders. He puts his feet together and shifts from side to side. He pats his medals and stiffens his back. He juts out his chin and clenches his jaw. Even after all these decades, his body remembers these movements, it has not forgotten what it means to be at war.

  Abbaba, did you forget me?

  Outside: his name shouted like a curse. Inside: guilt crashing against him and suffocating him of air. So Haile Selassie settles the needle toward the end of the record on the gramophone. He tries to focus on that final act in Aida, waits for Radames to discover that confused girl who has entered the cave to die needlessly with him. And as he listens, the emperor shakes his head in the empty room because he has come to discern the realness of those things not seen. This is why, perhaps, he is not surprised when Simonides steps out from behind the curtain and slides next to Zenebwork. The emperor watches as the old philosopher puts an arm around her shoulder and draws her close.

  Teferi, did you forget? the Greek poet asks. Which room in your memory did you leave us? Then he looks back at the emperor and shakes his head too.

  How many times must I bear witness to my daughter dying? This is Amonasro, still clutching his face in his hands.

  And then the three of them—Zenebwork, Simonides, Amonasro—pivot toward Haile Selassie and before any of them can speak, Haile Selassie clears his throat and taps his sternum and he says, We have placed everything here for safekeeping. He flattens his palms on top of his head and repeats again: We have placed everything here as well. We will hold this country together in this way.

  Teferi, Simonides says. Surely you remember where you belong. Surely you know how to put everything in its rightful place. We taught you well, did we not?

  This is what he remembers: taking a weeping Zenebwork and a sorrowful Menen to the train station to return Zenebwork back to that terrible man, leaving his daughter in the care of escorts and waving to her as the train sped away.

  Your place was not with him, my daughter, Haile Selassie says now. It has always been here, with us. I’m sorry, lijé, I’m so sorry I let you get on the train.

  Then he waits for Zenebwork to leave as she has always done, but this time, she does not. A shot rings from the distance, followed by a series of rapid gunfire. The emperor flinches.

  There is another who wants to take our place again, Haile Selassie admits. There is another who wants our throne.

  Zenebwork holds out her hand and crosses the threshold between shadow and light, between night and a new day, between his old life and this one bursting to break free.

  But you remember, don’t you? Simonides asks. You recall the life you left behind in the rubble? Step into those rooms and find your place. Do not leave the dead unclaimed.

  But Amonasro shakes his head and says, Let’s go. And he says, We are kings. And he adds, We must save our daughters from those dangers of our own making.

  And Haile Selassie feels Zenebwork leaning into the shadow descending on him. She is listening, waiting for his response, her anger like a solid wind slapping against his face, stinging his eyes and bringing tears down his cheeks. He taps his sternum again and Aida’s voice balloons in the room. She is calling for Radames, working her way toward becoming a ghost.

  My people looked for me when they could no longer identify their dead, Simonides continues above Radames’s voice soaring toward his last breath. When the dead are lost, those who carry their memory will find you, Teferi. And what will you remember to tell them?

  We are kings of Ethiopia, Amonasro says again. We must save our children from the dangers of our own making. And Amonasro points to the emperor’s uniform: You must become someone else so you are not recognized, as I did when I was captured. You must become a shadow of yourself and bear witness to your own demise, like me. Come, Teferi, let’s go.

  So Haile Selassie reaches into the bottom drawer of his desk where, tucked in the back, is a neatly tied parcel he has kept hidden for nearly forty years. He takes out a threadbare shirt and sagging trousers. He holds the items up: it is what one of his men brought for him to wear as he left his country in 1936, a feeble disguise in case he needed to leave as someone other than an emperor. He feels a shiver course through him and he turns to look from Amonasro to Simonides. He avoids his daughter’s stubborn gaze. He slips out of his clothes and puts on the peasant’s costume.

  When he is finished, he turns to look at himself, the shock a cold splash against his face. What he sees reflected in the mirror is that other image of himself, that other one who once moved in his shadow and led armies against his old enemies with a girl for a guard: the Shadow King. He touches his cheeks, his brow, the gray hair that now graces his burdened head.

  Is the king dead? Zenebwork asks. Is my father gone?

  We are here, lijé, the emperor says. It is us.

  Long live the king, Amonasro and Simonides say as they look at him and nod.

  The king is dead, he says.

  Long live Ethiopia, they all say.

  Abbaba, Zenebwork says, Are you sending me away again on that train? She slides next to his ear, pressing against his cheek.

  Haile Selassie shakes his head. Zenebwork, my daughter, I will go get you and you will stay with me, the emperor says, reaching out to take his lost daughter’s hand. You will stay with me till the end of my days. Don’t let go, he whispers. Don’t leave me.

  Then Haile Selassie and Zenebwork walk out of his palace together. He feels the warmth of her seeping into the cool breeze. Beside him, Simonides the aged poet, and Amonasro the grieving father of Aida, move t
ogether through Piassa, past Ettore’s shuttered studio, and toward Addis Ababa’s train station.

  THE AIR THAT SWEEPS THROUGH THE TRAIN STATION WHEN ETTORE STEPS in is thick, heavy with old dust and sharp fumes, and a pungent scent that brings tears to Hirut’s eyes. Hirut lowers the cover back on the box and presses it into her lap. She tucks the letter inside her dress. She feels the corner of the envelope, softened by age, poke into her chest like a cautionary finger. She is supposed to give him everything. She has wanted to rid herself of every memory of him and those years, but she knows the value of that letter and though she may not know what the words say, she has learned how to decipher the movement of the hand: its tightness or sprawling openness, its generosity or selfishness. She has seen the small, perfect script crammed onto the single page and she imagines a frugal, strict father: her father with his own precise lines on the old Wujigra that she still polishes every day, the evenness of the row with the five marks, the symmetry of it all.

  She understands what this letter is, and so she knows that Ettore has no right to it because of all that they have lost since he invaded her country, because of all she has lost, because she is a thief, and she has had to take in order to correct an unnatural balance. Because Aster was right: girls like her were born to fit into the world, the world was not built to mold around her. Because there are those born to own things, and those brought forth to keep those things in their rightful place. Hirut takes a deep breath, slides the closed box from her lap onto the ground, flattens the letter close against her skin, and adjusts her dress to hide her scar as best as she can. Then she waits.

  Ettore bursts through the door and stands at the threshold, searching, while draped in dying afternoon light. He is older and more worn, his face creased with lines brought by both years and worry, and Hirut might have felt a softness for him then, might have understood the way time carves its way steadily across the body, but she sees him standing rigid, with a military bearing that he has not forgotten: as if he still has a rifle and that camera slung around him. And that is when she knows for sure that he will not get that letter.