The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History. Aida Edemariam

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СКАЧАТЬ of his mother, he went.

      Not long after they arrived at Ba’ata, the priests asked Memhir Hiruy to perform a qiné. ‘Ask him,’ replied the scholar, pointing to his new acolyte. They were insulted. Recent experience had only confirmed their deep suspicion of outsiders. And who was this anyway? A youth from the sticks – from Gojjam, no less, where everyone knew the evil eye flourished. Why was he here, assessing them with his noncommittal gaze, threatening them with his very presence? Why, he hadn’t even finished his studies. But after a glance at Memhir Hiruy for reassurance, Tsega stepped forward to puncture their scorn.

      When Memhir Hiruy left for the new capital, Addis Ababa, Tsega stayed, learning the recondite church dances and committing to memory all the books of the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, their interpretations and commentaries, and the books of the Fit’ha Negest, the law of kings handed down from Byzantium and from medieval Egypt. He became a teacher himself, and, ambitious in the way of people who know they have only themselves to depend upon, quietly but steadily made connections, travelling across the city after church services to read to the families of increasingly important personages; for Tirunesh’s husband, among them, and for her oblivious niece.

      Less than a year after his wedding, Tsega deposited his young bride at her grandmother’s house and was on his way south. The mules were watchful on the long trek down into the Lake Tana basin. Their riders, too, looked around, into shaded copses, up at the lips of ravines, and once they had arrived at the Blue Nile gorge and were picking their way down its steep sides, into anything that even suggested it might be a cave. Everyone knew, from childhood stories, from scarred survivors, that this fertile country ran with bandits who regularly stripped mule-trains of their valuables then pushed off in low reed boats, poling them through the mud-coloured lake to islands and promontories, or disappeared into caves. They were all grateful when they scrambled up onto the wide cool highland plateau and then down, through aromatic juniper and newly imported eucalyptus, down into Addis Ababa.

      Once there her husband took his time, acclimatising, visiting Memhir Hiruy, attending services, listening to gossip about the empress, and especially about her subtle regent Ras Tafari, who had recently returned from an extended tour of Egypt, Jerusalem, and the European capitals (where, among other things, he had wisely declined to sign a treaty that would have allowed Italy to build roads, rails, and a port into Ethiopia). The regent also managed – daily, it sometimes seemed – to announce the institution of new-fangled things: a modern school, a printing press, a newspaper. Every decision of any importance passed through his hands, which was a useful thing to know, but for the moment was not what most interested the new-minted priest. Tsega presented himself at the head offices of the church, and was given the care of a country parish called Gonderoch Mariam. He travelled the city to read aloud in the households of great men, among them Ras Kassa, the regent’s pious cousin. And he joined the throngs that arrived daily at the palace, looking for an audience with the empress.

      Menelik’s daughter Zewditu, crowned after the brief reign and ruthless deposition of Menelik’s grandson Iyasu, was phlegmatic, conservative, uncomfortable in the presence of men and overwhelmingly pious, and had only once bowed to pressure to preside at the courts that operated in her name; she had hated the work, and never returned. She preferred, wrote her chronicler, kindly, to confine herself to ‘spreading spiritual wisdom by fasting, prayer, prostrations, and by almsgiving’. She read the histories of the female saints, ‘and a spiritual envy [to be like them] was stamped on her heart’. Each day she rose early and prayed into the afternoon, eating nothing, outdoing many of her monks and nuns.

      Zewditu’s self-denial was matched by generosity – socially required, an expression of pride and status as well as charity, but prodigal nonetheless. Hardly a month went by without a banquet given to soldiers, to clergy, to the nobility or the impoverished laity, and late one November, after Tsega had been in the capital for nearly two years, he was invited to one. The floor of the great hall was laid with hundreds of carpets, some of wool, others of silk. Guests filled the vast space, seated according to their rank: the empress, her regent and senior princes of the blood on a raised platform at one end, surrounded by curtains, then, when they had eaten, the curtains drawn back so they could look down at long low tables filled with lesser notables, ranks of clergy in high white turbans and glowing white shemmas, straight-backed soldiers. Crosses blinked in the lamplight, phalanxes of servants and slaves brought horns of mead and baskets piled high with injera. The smell of dark red chicken stew; of zign, beef in ginger and cardamom and bishop’s weed; the sight of entire sides of fresh-slaughtered oxen carried on poles balanced on the shoulders of slaves so anyone could take a knife and help themselves, made him ravenous, but he ate nothing at all.

      Eventually one of the higher-ranking servants enquired why. ‘Because this is the day the Ark of the Covenant, captured by the Philistines, was returned by God,’ he replied. ‘I am fasting in celebration of Zion.’ The servant, knowing this was the kind of thing that interested Empress Zewditu, told her there was a priest in her hall observing the fast of Zion, and who therefore could not partake of the abundance of meat on offer.

      She turned out to be observing it too. She had had fasting food cooked for her, pulses and vegetables rather than meat, and she sent the young priest a portion of it. When he had eaten he stood and addressed to her a qiné of praise he had composed in preparation for just such an eventuality, a poem playing upon the biblical echoes of her baptismal name and lauding her holy magnanimity. She inclined her head in thanks. ‘And what can I do for you?’

      This was why he had come to the capital, the moment he had been working toward for years. ‘I would like to lead Ba’ata Mariam church in Gondar,’ he replied. ‘And I would like to rebuild it to the glory of God.’

      ‘Of course,’ she replied. And she ordered the provision of all the accoutrements the new aleqa would require: a cape worked over in gilt, a tunic with a wide coloured band embroidered at the hem, a sash; bags of Maria Theresa silver.

      Half of Gondar, it seemed, came out to meet him, ululating praise of their new chief priest. Aleqa Tsega accepted the celebrations calmly, savouring his sudden leap above those who had denied him welcome, noting the practised tributes from his fellow clergy, the underlying silences, the curdled smiles.

      At her aunt’s house a feast was waiting. There too he looked about him – at the told-you-so pleasure of Tirunesh, the reluctant approval of Mekonnen. At the narrow-hipped girl in black who hung back, shaven head held low.

       TIQIMT

      THE SECOND MONTH

      Sunny growing and ripening season. Honey removed from hives. The first barley threshed and winnowed for roasting and beer-making. Children play outdoor games; girls dance and greet storks arriving ‘from Jerusalem’.

      She no longer hid as she had before he left, running to the storeroom, burrowing in among the wheat and split peas, the dusty green-smelling, crackling hops. Breathing shallow so no one could hear, crouching down behind a high basket or clay waterpot, willing herself invisible. If he found her he had chastised her, playfully. What, hiding again?

      Now, nearly four years older, she did not hide, but still she retreated to the back rooms, to sit on a low stool among the comforting grains and watch the days crawl across the floor. She would have spent the nights there, if she could. She did not look up at him, or speak to him; even if she had been expected to, she could not.

      When he was out the servants took charge, bossing her about the house like the child she still was, letting her help, yet refusing to play games with her because, being married, she was no longer СКАЧАТЬ