THE EMPEROR
Kapuscinski, Ryszard
n The Emperor (which will be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich this winter and from which we here reprint several excerpts), Ryszard Kapuscinski recounts the career of Haile Selassie from...
...During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor's lap and pee on dignitaries' shoes...
...His sole teacher —and that only during his childhood—was a French Jesuit, Monsignor Jerome, later Bishop of Harar and a friend of the poet Arthur Rimbaud...
...They are manned by gunners whose profession is killing...
...The Minister of the Pen, standing half a step from the throne, had to bend his ear close to the Imperial lips in order to hear and write down the Imperial decisions...
...Let's say our monarch is flying north, where everything has been prepared, the protocol spruced up, the ceremonies well rehearsed, the province gleaming like a mirror, and then suddenly in the airplane His Distinguished Highness beckons to the pilot and tells him, "Son, turn this plane around...
...dollar bills float out of hundreds of frisked Bibles...
...There's nobody left to get down on your knees for...
...Did he say nothing because he didn't know, or did he hold his tongue because he belongs to the conspiracy...
...It wouldn't do if His Majesty appeared suddenly, unexpectedly, like some poor tax collector, or if he merely came into contact with life as it is...
...He feeds the dogs and the black panther, and then he admires the anteater that he recently received as a gift from the president of Uganda...
...For instance, a great Palace was constructed in the heart of the Ogaden Desert and maintained for years, fully staffed with servants and its pantry 54 kept full, and His Indefatigable Majesty spent only one day there...
...I had to change 49 cars and disguises...
...Such a thing was possible, since they often made a sweep through a neighborhood or even a whole quarter of the town in search of weapons, subversive leaflets, or people from the old regime...
...Sit down on it...
...Sleep was a private, intimate interval in a life meant to be passed amid decorations and lights...
...Without a paper to write for, he now devotes his time to "Poland 2000," a group futuristically looking ahead...
...The Emperor ponders...
...His Majesty liked to visit the provinces, to give the plain people access to him, to learn of their troubles and console them with promises, to praise the humble and the hardworking and scold the lazy and the disobedient...
...Let me say that during working audiences His Majesty spoke very softly, barely moving his lips...
...and Makonen, the enemy of Asha and Solomon...
...Today he would surprise the province of Bale, in a week the province of Tigre...
...everything had to be relayed by word of mouth...
...The Ethiopians are deeply distrustful and found it hard to believe in the sincerity of my intentions: I wanted to recapture the world that had been wiped away by the machine guns of the Fourth Division...
...The night breeds dangerous conspiracies, and Haile Selassie knew that what happens at night is more important than what happens during the day...
...says the Finance Minister...
...The monarch would not know what was going on in the country and the Palace...
...the fog thins out, and reflected sunlight glimmers on the lawns...
...How badly His Benevolent Majesty would feel...
...Everything scatters when they come careening along...
...Andrzej Wajda's film Without Anasthesia is presumably based on Kapuscinski's career, a reporter always away, covering a story in a distant land, removed from the turmoil of office politics and domestic, and personal, affairs...
...I penetrated the muddy alleys, making my way into houses that from the outside looked empty and abandoned...
...F.: IT WAS a small dog, a Japanese breed...
...His name was Lulu...
...He nods his head and Asha walks away, bent over, wondering whether he said more or less than what was reported by his most fervent enemies—Solomon, the enemy of Makonen and Asha...
...It was the same with writing, for our monarch not only never used his ability to read, but he also never wrote anything and never signed anything in his own hand...
...In the south, there is nothing...
...Here began the Hour of the Cashbox...
...During the day he kept his eye on everyone...
...Egypt, of course...
...The occupation to which these people devoted themselves was hard and dangerous...
...The Emperor was a big success...
...And the Minister of Information immediately announced His Venerable Majesty's decision as a new success, and I remember that in the twinkling of an eye the following slogan appeared in the streets of the capital: As soon as the work on the dams is done, Wealth will accrue to everyone...
...Finishing his walk, the Emperor listens to what was reported last night by Asha's people...
...Well, yes, murmur those who had been whispering, but how long will it take to build the dams...
...News of this spreads throughout the Empire, and what is the result...
...The masters of ceremony had to use all sorts of stratagems to prevent the Emperor from being embarrassed financially...
...And what's worse, because they feel uncertain and threatened, not knowing the hour or the day, united by common inconvenience and fear, they start murmuring, grimacing, grumbling, gossiping about the health of His Supreme Highness, and finally they start conspiring, inciting others to rebel, loafing, undermining what seems to them an uncharitable throne—oh, what an impudent thought—a throne that won't let them live...
...Even though, dear friend, it might seem incomprehensible to you, not even Aba Hanna's little bag was a bottomless treasury...
...Let's say that he would surprise first one, then another, here and there...
...Nowadays, all those who destroyed the monarchy point out that in each province His Most Worthy Majesty maintained a Palace always ready for his arrival...
...Furthermore, the Emperor's words were usually unclear and ambiguous, especially when he did not want to take a definite stand on a matter that required his opinion...
...W. A.-N.: . . . AND SO, having finished the Hour of Assignments, His Indefatigable Majesty would move on to the Golden Hall...
...The Emperor walks along the avenue and Kedir stays a step behind him, talking all the while...
...For him, neither the written nor the printed word existed...
...In the back sits a soldier taking orders by radio...
...Even the way these people looked told of the threat under which they lived...
...Unfortunately, our unenlightened people will never understand the Higher Reason that governs the actions of monarchs...
...Everyone was trying to survive in his own way, according to the possibilities open to him...
...Again, His Majesty walks on, listening without questions or comments, keeping his hands behind his back...
...He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor's great bed...
...Only a handful remained in Addis Ababa, where, apparently, it was easiest to outwit the authorities' vigilance...
...But one thing was unchanging, indestructible—one dreads saying it—eternal helplessness...
...This was my job for ten years...
...Silent emptiness, deserted fields, and everywhere you look, not a living soul...
...The author sometimes speaks in his own voice (as in the first excerpt below...
...How can you act...
...That's why the Emperor punished silence...
...There was no personnel office in the Palace, no dossiers full of personal information...
...He falls in, a step behind the Emperor, and delivers his report...
...But we servants of the royal bedchamber, who saw his unguarded moments, knew how much the effort cost him...
...The Supreme Master of Palace Ceremony appeared on the balcony and asked them to move to the rear of the Palace, where His Magnanimous Highness would shower them with money...
...Later, when things grew worse in our country, he traveled more often...
...n the evenings I listened to those who had known the Emperor's Court...
...The people waste away, the province declines, but all that is nothing compared to the fear of His Majesty's anger...
...This cleric had no chance to inculcate the habit of reading in the Emperor, a task made all the more difficult, by the way, because Haile Selassie occupied responsible administrative positions from his boyhood and had no time for regular reading...
...Each step was a struggle between shuffling and dignity, between leaning and the vertical line...
...Y. M.: THE EMPEROR began his day by listening to informers' reports...
...From the secret cabala of the monarch's words he could construct any decision that he wished...
...I was afraid...
...It seemed that he never knew such states, that his nerves were cold and dead like steel, or that he had no nerves at all...
...He was so slight and frail that you couldn't see him—he was lost among the sheets...
...at night that was impossible...
...He weighed fifty kilograms...
...The jeeps are open, so the drivers, gunners, and radiomen wear dark motorcycle goggles under the brims of their helmets to protect themselves from the dust...
...murmur the whisperers...
...But this called for special imagination and sensitivity, because money was not lying around the chambers, and His Merciful Highness had no inclination to spread packets of dollars among his favorites...
...In the smoke and loud noise leaders changed, governments failed, new people sat in the easy chairs...
...Yet the reader cannot escape the sense that behind the lines of text on Ethiopia something is being said about Poland as well...
...True, the servants whispered about why Haile Selassie didn't replace the minister, but in the Palace questions were always asked from top to bottom, and never vice versa...
...His Distinguished Highness asks no questions, makes Do comments...
...It's never comfortable on the summits...
...Sometimes he stops before the lions' cage to throw them a leg of veal that a servant has handed to him He watches the lions' rapacity and smiles...
...The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or make the slightest gesture when they felt their feet getting wet...
...He summons the provincial dignitaries to Addis Ababa for the Hour of Assignments, scolds them, and removes them from office...
...During the Emperor's hours of official functions, the Minister of the Pen always stood at hand and took down all the Emperor's orders and instructions...
...When, in 1974, insurgents invade his palatial office, they find the carpet resting on a layer of American dollars...
...Shouts and nervous screams blare amid crackles and squeals from the radio on the knees of the one in the back...
...What's more, there isn't even a car to get you to the nearest village to look for the viceroy...
...It's better to disappear...
...Their trembling...
...Kedir also reports on the work of the military cryptography department...
...Whether or not one could call it a conspiracy...
...His Most Extraordinary Majesty steps off the airplane, and around him—nothing...
...His Venerable Highness had his ideas, and he would adjust to them all the signals that came from his surroundings...
...But when he knew that someone was watching him, he forced a certain elasticity into his muscles, with great effort, so that he moved with dignity and his imperial silhouette remained ramrodstraight...
...U. Z.-W.: IN THE PALACE, dejection, discouragement, fearful waiting for whatever might happen tomorrow—when suddenly His Majesty summons his counselors, reprimands them for neglecting development, and after giving them a scolding announces that we are going to construct dams on the Nile...
...Those machine guns are mounted next to the drivers' seats on American-made jeeps...
...They bark all night...
...Poland is never mentioned...
...An icy wind always blows, and everyone crouches, afraid that his neighbor might hurl him down the precipice...
...He walks and listens...
...The rebels press the old man for his Swiss bank accounts...
...And if we don't build the dams," he asks, "how are we going to catch up and surpass...
...By turns funny, ludicrous, pathetic, The Emperor achieves a remarkable portrait of an anything-but-benevolent tyrant...
...That's why 50 he woke up seeming discontented with having slept, impatient with the very fact of sleep...
...This is when Solomon Kedir, the head of the Palace spies, approaches and gives his report...
...Government can't work under threat, can it...
...The minister transcribed his ruler's scant and foggy mutterings...
...We haven't read the book on Iran, but the quotation evokes something that is conveyed subliminally but strongly in The Emperor...
...But how can God help...
...Let's fly south...
...It was a signal to the Empire that His Supreme Majesty had begun a new day...
...If a move by the Emperor dazzled everyone with its accuracy and wisdom, it was one more proof that God's Chosen One was infallible...
...To this the Finance Minister replies that if the dams are built, it will be possible to let water into the fields and such an abundant harvest will result that there will be no more death from starvation...
...Though he ruled for half a century, not even those closest to him knew what his signature looked like...
...Haile Selassie finishes his walk alone...
...Their fear...
...He thinks deeply about what was contained in the informants' reports...
...Let me add, however, that the Emperor never showed the slightest sign of irritation, nervousness, anger, rage, or frustration...
...even the smallest datum will be remembered...
...No, His Benevolent Majesty did not make their lives easy...
...It was followed by a book on Iran, Shah of Shahs, from which we quote (with the help of his publisher here): "Iran—it was the twenty-sixth revolution I had seen in the Third World...
...One had to admire the Emperor's dexterity...
...Wherever His Majesty went, the people showed their uncontrolled, insatiable greed...
...The Emperor smiles at the sight of creatures that refuse to obey him...
...And he notes: "loafing around, filthy, black with flies...
...Then he approaches the leopards, which are chained, and gives them ribs of beef...
...What an affront to his dignity...
...At a certain moment His Highness bows his head, which is a signal for Kedir to move away...
...The excerpts below come from three different parts of the book, the last leading us up to the point where His Distinguished Majesty nears the end of his reign—and his life...
...The houses were watched, and I was afraid of getting caught along with their inhabitants...
...A car passes, then stops...
...It is true that some excesses were committed...
...Therefore, in order to avoid such unrest in the Empire and to avoid the paralysis of government, His Highness introduced a happy compromise that brought peace to him and to the dignitaries...
...Imagine His Worthy Highness's having the habit of arriving unannounced...
...That way, many years hence, everyone who could get to the Imperial Dams would cry out, "Behold, all ye...
...The custom of relating things by word of mouth had this advantage: if need be, the Emperor could say that a given dignitary had told him something quite different from what had really been said, and the latter could not defend himself, having no written proof...
...It hasn't died yet, so it isn't going to die now...
...You never can tell if one of the hoarse screams is an order to open fire...
...In old age, he became even smaller...
...His Highness was accompanied by the saintly Aba Hanna, who in turn was assisted by his faithful bag bearer...
...But what if His Distinguished Majesty's itinerary were such that at some point he had to spend a night in the heart of the Desert...
...These three-man crews know death so well that the drivers race their vehicles around suicidally, making abrupt high-speed turns, driving against the flow on one-way streets...
...His knees stiffened up, and when he was alone he dragged his feet, swaying from side to side as if on stilts...
...n The Emperor (which will be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich this winter and from which we here reprint several excerpts), Ryszard Kapuscinski recounts the career of Haile Selassie from the primitive barbarism of his early years on the throne to the limousine-equipped barbarism of his late years, both resting on the misery of the Ethiopian people...
...He enters the park...
...This dignitary supervises the government political police...
...Or that his eyes, or that his legs, or that his knees...
...Where are we supposed to find the funds for our dams...
...Those...
...Over the years, Kapuscinski published a number of volumes, mostly based on his reporting, occasionally visiting Poland, spending more time there while writing his books...
...Then the whole system of informing would collapse into subjectivity and fall prey to anyone's willfulness...
...His Majesty never forgot about this infirmity of his old age, which he did not want to reveal lest it weaken the prestige and solemnity of the King of Kings...
...As I've mentioned, Haile Selassie never commented on or asked questions about the 52 reports he received, during his morning walks, about conspiracies in the Empire...
...This humility of the subjects creates the dignity of the throne and gives it meaning...
...Frail, the end coming close, his lips remain tightly sealed...
...All the people surrounding the Emperor are just like that—on their knees, and with knives...
...When asked by a dignitary for the Imperial decision, he would not answer straight out, but would rather speak in a voice so quiet that it reached only the Minister of the Pen, who moved his ear as close as a microphone...
...This is civil war...
...This hour came between ten and eleven in the morning...
...This department, part of Kedir's office, decodes the communications that pass among the divisions —it's good to be sure that no subversive thoughts are hatching there...
...To be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc...
...We have provinces where the people are depressingly savage, pagan, and naked...
...His Highness wanted to receive the reports in a pure state, because if he asked questions or expressed his opinion the informant would obligingly adjust his report to meet the Emperor's expectations...
...On the other hand, incoherent streams of words tired and irritated the Imperial ear, so nervous loquaciousness was also a poor solution...
...0 God, save me from those who, crawling on their knees, hide a knife that they would like to sink into my back...
...He had the habit of sleeping little and rising early, when it was still dark outside...
...Now is the time to lay out strategies and tactics, to solve the puzzles of personality, to plan his next move on the chessboard of power...
...What do you mean, whom...
...they usually report on each other...
...But against whom are we supposed to be racing, anyway...
...he isn't giving anything away...
...Not many of them remained...
...Some had perished, shot by the Excerpted from The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski...
...I remember, for instance, how His Majesty paid the salaries of foreign engineers but showed no inclination to pay our own masons after the construction of the Imperial Palace called Genete Leul...
...It was an inborn characteristic that His Highness knew how to develop and perfect, following the principle that in politics nervousness signifies a weakness that encourages opponents and emboldens subordinates to make secret jokes...
...English translation copyright 1983 by Ryszard Kapuscinski...
...Some were hiding in the mountains or living disguised as monks in cloisters...
...L. C.: THE EMPEROR slept in a roomy bed made of light walnut...
...Set up the throne and roll out the carpet...
...Habte-Wald falls silent and retreats backward, disappearing down the avenue...
...You're visible from the street...
...Ryszard Kapuscinski is Poland's most prominent foreign correspondent, spending the better part of the last 20 years or so in journalistic "hot spots"—Latin America, Africa, the Near East...
...Once they had been people of the Palace or had enjoyed the right of admission there...
...One can imagine the surprise and mortification of the local dignitaries...
...Addis Ababa is a dog city, full of pedigreed dogs running wild, vermin-eaten, with malaria and tangled hair...
...All the rest was interpretation, and that was a matter for the minister, who passed down the decision in writing...
...When the first question was asked in a direction opposite to the customary one, it was a signal that the revolution had begun...
...The delighted crowd went around back to the indicated spot—which enabled His Supreme Majesty to leave unembarrassed through the front door and go to the Old Palace, where the court awaited him...
...It would be easy to pick you off...
...But he knew what he was doing, as I shall show you...
...Besides, His Majesty has ordered, has he not, that we all develop constantly, without resting even for a moment, putting our hearts and souls into it...
...Who was it...
...It's best to stay out of their range...
...His Majesty had had no schooling...
...Then the only business of the Palace was to prepare the Emperor for najourneys...
...No, His Highness cared little for that sort of thing...
...His Majesty has made mental notes of everything...
...firing squad...
...I visited them after dark...
...No one to speak to, no one to console, no welcoming arch, not even a car...
...Nothing ready...
...These simple masons gathered in front of the Palace they had built and began asking for what was due them...
...Only the subsequent activities of the day restored his inner balance...
...He treated sleep as a dire necessity that purposelessly robbed him of time he would rather have spent ruling or at Imperial functions...
...Let the slanderers spew their lies and shams— They will suffer in hell for opposing our dams...
...But Egypt, sir, is wealthier than we are, and even Egypt couldn't put up dams out of its own pocket...
...Wait for something to happen...
...At last, still walking, he nods his head...
...Since the publication of his book, the paper for which he wrote, Kultura, ceased publication as martial law was imposed on the country...
...Some had escaped the country...
...Nevertheless, this affair so infuriated the conspiring officers that the Imperial Council established by His Unrivaled Highness for the special purpose of supervising the dams was thrown into jail a few days later, on the grounds that nothing could come of the dams but increased corruption and more starvation among the people...
...He is reported to be at work on a book, entitled World at the Boiling Point, about the universalization of the sort of social problems and conflicts associated with the Third World...
...They lived in fear of not reporting something in time and falling into disgrace, or of a competitor's reporting it better so that the Emperor would think, "Why did Solomon give me a feast today and Makonen only bring me leftovers...
...He competes with Solomon Kedir's Palace intelligence service and battles fiercely against private informer networks like the one that Makonen Habte-Wald has at his disposal...
...But how can we erect dams, the confused advisers grumble, when the provinces are starving, the nation is restless, the Talkers are whispering about straightening out the Empire, and the officers are conspiring and rounding up the notables...
...In the meantime the nation will die of hunger...
...Is it surprising that in such circumstances His Benevolent Majesty did not sneak up on people...
...Against whom they are forming alliances...
...He bows and disappears down the avenue, never turning his back on the Emperor...
...Thus the Emperor heard from his subordinates not what they told him, but what he thought should be said...
...And, not to mince words, how ridiculous...
...Without the humility around it, the throne is only a decoration, an uncomfortable armchair with worn-out velvet and twisted springs...
...They asked now for bread, now for shoes, now for cattle, now for funds to build a road...
...His Majesty has to be careful as he approaches the unpredictable beasts of prey...
...A throne in an empty desert—that would be disgraceful...
...For that reason, he attached great importance to the morning reports...
...And who, today, are "these," and who are the "those" who are against "these" just because they are "these...
...But this predilection of His Majesty's drained the treasury, because the provinces had to be put in order first: swept, painted, the garbage buried, 53 the flies thinned out, schools built, the children given uniforms, the municipal buildings remodeled, the flags sewn, and portraits of His Distinguished Highness painted...
...Here the minister really lost his temper with the doubting, and began lecturing them, telling them how important it is to sacrifice oneself for development...
...Count on someone's showing up to render homage...
...EDS...
...On the basis of his information, he now briefs the Emperor on what happened last night...
...I see him now as he walks, stops, walks again, lifts his head upward as though absorbed in prayer...
...He approaches a flock of flamingos, but the shy birds scatter when he comes near...
...Someone with good ears and a good nose could tell how the Palace rustled with money, smelled of it...
...At this moment the waiting Minister of Industry and Commerce, Makonen HabteWald, emerges from behind a tree...
...Just imagine it, friend...
...Little of importance...
...The south is loafing around, a mess, in rags, black with flies...
...others had been locked in the dungeons beneath the Palace, cast down from the chambers to the cellars...
...The lights were turned on in the Palace...
...Finally he moves on, with Kedir behind continuing his report...
...You can't see their eyes, and their bristled ebony faces have no expression...
...Wouldn't the Palace then prove itself indispensable...
...Makonen Habte-Wald keeps his own network of informers, both to satisfy a consuming passion for intrigue and to ingratiate himself with His Venerable Highness...
...All this the Emperor carried in his mind, all the most important files about the elite...
...He felt that the years were burdening his shoulders with an ever-increasing weight, and so he wanted to leave an imposing and universally admired monument after himself...
...I had to walk among the dignitaries and wipe the urine from their shoes with a satin cloth...
...The sound of gunfire...
...more often, though, he simply records the words of those he interviewed—the courtiers and menials (whose narratives are introduced by initials) recounting palace intrigue and court life under His Venerable Majesty, His Distinguished Majesty, His Magnanimous Majesty, His Benevolent Majesty...
...I have always been of the opinion, however, that this action on the part of the officers must have brought particular grief to His Majesty...
...But I'm getting ahead of myself and must go back to the moment when the Emperor appears on the Palace steps in the morning and sets out for his early walk...
...He ate less and less, and he never drank alcohol...
...Next, as if springing up from the ground, rises the hunched silhouette of the devoted confidant Asha Walde-Mikael...
...The Minister of the Pen was the Emperor's closest confidant and enjoyed enormous power...
...And here I would like to make one thing clear: His Venerable Majesty was no reader...
...Better , to duck into a side street and wait it out...
...All the houses were watching each other, spying on each other, sniffing each other out...
...His Majesty knew that a joke is a dangerous form of opposition, and he kept his psyche in perfect order...
...We have other provinces where the benighted peasantry would flee at the sight of the monarch...
...On 51 the other hand, if from some corner the breeze carried rumors of discontent to the monarch's ear, he could blame it all on the minister's stupidity...
...His mind is a computer that retains every detail...
...Our distinguished monarch knows who he is, but how to find him...
...What can you do...
...Look around the neighborhood, get back into the plane, and fly north after all, where everything waits in excitement and impatient readiness: the protocol, the ceremonies, the province like a mirror...
...And so the minister was the most hated personality in the court...
...Copyright by Ryszard Kapuscinski, Warsaw 1978...
...They caution me again, needlessly: no addresses, no names, don't say that he's tall, that he's short, that he's skinny, that his forehead this or his hands that...
...They had no shield but the Emperor, and the Emperor could undo them with one wave of his hand...
...Who but the Emperor could have caused such things to be done, such extraordinary, wondrous things, whole mountains flung across the river...
...It grows light in the park...
...Immediately, audacious rumors are heard in the corridors saying that it would be better to help the starving and forget about the dams...
...without instructions from the police they might do something that would offend His Highness's dignity...
...These...
...Public opinion, convinced of His Venerable Highness's wisdom and goodness, blamed the minister for any thoughtless or malicious decisions, of which there were many...
...Or, to look at it from another angle, were he to give ear to the whispers and murmurs that it would be better to feed the hungry than to build dams . . . well, the hungry, even if they are satiated at last, will eventually die, leaving behind not a trace— neither of themselves, nor of the Emperor...
...He got up at four or five and, when going abroad on a visit, at three in the morning...
...Hadn't His Distinguished Highness often experienced, at cost to himself, betrayal by his most trusted allies...
...Tired, looking as if they hadn't slept, they acted under feverish stress, pursuing their victims in the stale air of hatred and fear that surrounded them all...
...I sit down by the window, and immediately they say, "Somewhere else, sir, please...
...But I think there was more to it than a lack of time and habit...
...Upon waking, he rang the buzzer on his nightstand—the vigilant servants were waiting for the sound...
...So what remains for His Majesty to do...
...Isn't government a convention, based on established rules...
...The result is that dignitaries stop doing everything except looking at the sky to see whether His Distinguished Highness is coming...
...Who met whom, where, and what they talked about...
...The throne adds dignity only by contrast to the surrounding humility...
...That would only make it more ridiculous...
...The nation isn't going to die," explains the Finance Minister...
...The car drives off, accompanied by the barking of dogs...
...this is what it's like...
...The governor is off in the capital, the dignitaries asleep, the police have slithered off to the villages to plunder the peasants...
Vol. 30 • January 1983 • No. 1
