The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

by Marcia Douglas

  The next day, as he left, H.I.M. paused and said, “Meharene.” I stepped back a little against the wall; that the emperor even knew my name I had not been aware. He handed me, on a black string, a little brass prayer pendant. His eyes were kind and when he smiled, I saw between his teeth there was a gap. I knew the emperor was not one to give away easily such smiles.

  The prayer necklace marked the beginning of my relationship with Haile Selassie. On mornings, when the door was cracked, I knew that I was to enter the room before he left, then take off my shoes and remove my apron. He had slender fingers and long nails that he grazed against my skin. He liked me to smother him with silk bed pillows – just a little – before he had to come up for air, laughed and needed to put in his nose the Vicks inhaler. The emperor was austere in public, but now I knew why he had been forewarned about the danger of losing whiskers. Gradually I began to arrive earlier; the door cracked oftener. Once we listened to Billie Holiday in bed and he showed me, behind his ear, the place where by a magpie in his youth he had been pecked. The magpie had been attracted to the shiny hoop in his ear. It left with a piece of his skin instead. Understand I enjoyed these forays with the emperor. It gave me special privilege, true, but then much later, I also loved him.

  Always the Jamaican waited patiently outside, sweeping afterwards with his usual fervour. I was glad he was mute. They called him “Rasta”, and it was rumoured that his people took the emperor for god; I wondered at his surprise at the capers of god. His presence outside the door made episodes in the emperor’s bedchamber all the more interesting. With god I liked cavorting. Once, as I clipped H.I.M.’s beard, I asked, “What will the Jamaican of his god think now?” H.I.M. got up and closed the curtains, stood for a while and said this: “Who among us is god enough to choose to whom another man should pray?” For a long time I thought on those words, of their meaning not sure.

  When came the Dergue, I filled the prayer box with supplication. I prayed to every blade benevolent of grass, drop of rain, piece of moon; and with every fibre of my being, for His Majesty’s safety, so help me god.

  ADDIS ABABA: WHAT THE SWEEPER SAW

  3rd Version I-witness

  Outdoors, H.I.M. pulled himself to his full height (for he was not a tall man) and walked in the garden, so confident in his stride no one would have guessed the peril in his empire. He paused at an angel’s trumpet flower, stood with trademark posture, back straight, his fingers pressed together – thumb to thumb and index to index. Over the years, poets had called this space of his hands a consecrated heart, the holy of holies, a crown jewel. But it was Riva Man, chanting down Anansi web from the west window, who paused one morning and saw Jah truth – H.I.M. walking in the palace garden carrying the heart of Africa, careful as a high priest.

  He saw that the Most High carried Zion for groundation and protection; for I-liverance and rememberance; for the alpha and omega of her she-lion roar. He saw that he loved Africa and would give his life for her.

  In the cool of the morning, the Most High, looking up from the garden, saw Riva Man silent at the window, and though no words passed between them, their eyes made four – hibiscus pollen dropping libation on the path.

  RIVA MAN

  Twelve-Corner Stream of Reasoning

  I&I sanctify this chamber this day. Let no badmindedness enter therein. Jah live.

  Rasta-far-eye in the east/Rasta-far-eye in the west/ Rasta-far-eye in the north/Rasta-far-eye in the south/ Rasta-far-eye above/Rasta-far-eye below. Jah live.

  Holy holy are His Majesty’s feet/His Majesty’s hands/ His Majesty’s head/His Majesty’s liver/His Majesty’s heart/His Majesty’s lungs/His Majesty’s loins/Jah Live.

  I&I guard and I&I protect His Majesty’s bed, and the sheets which cover him. Sanctify the four-poster feet that touch the ground as lion’s paws.

  Rasta-far-eye sees – Jah-Jah maidservant/her woman spleen/her woman ovaries/her woman kidneys/her woman hands that fold/ that fold/ the sheets; and hold the blue love pillow/over Jah-Jah joyful face. When the time comes, may her lips stay sealed/ her eyes keep their secrets.

  I&I knew/ a woman with eyes like that/amber bottle-glass. Vaughn. Her name was Vaughn. Her locs were one hundred and forty-four. The last she spoke, I heard from under the window/she said these words: Jah live.

  Jah live and I&I count his name I-tinually as I sweep and I-tinually as I walk and I-tinually as I breathe and

  bass and fortify and bless the spider in the corner, for the broom breaks her house, but still she returns; she will not be moved. She builds her temple in the small hours of the morning; and even the prayers of the Most High resound therein.

  Jah live in the east/Jah live in the west/Jah live in the north/Jah live in the south/Jah live above/Jah live below/and above-above and below-below; for His ways are the ways of oneness.

  I&I sweep to guard and protect the red-red curtains that cover the shadow of/the shadow of /the shadow of Jah/from falling words.

  But how do you pray for the Almighty? I&I pray to Jah to remember himself and not forsake himself.

  Selah in the east/ and in the west/ selah in the north/ and in the south/ selah above and below.

  Jah live.

  MEHARENE

  Last Rite

  They hated His Majesty. “Ethiopia is starving,” they said. “He feeds his lions choice meat while the people starve. Look at our children, their bellies bloated from starvation. Our women wearing skin and bone. What good is the blood of Solomon and Makeda to us now? Dynasty cannot feed the hungry. Dynasty cannot clothe the naked. Dynasty cannot save our sick.” The rebel students were the worst. “Die nasty,” they said in foul English. “Down with the emperor!”

  The Dergue. They infiltrated the palace right under His Majesty’s nose. No one he could trust. Like slender razors in his side they were, opening a vein, sucking his blood. One day one of the lions was found poisoned. Then one by one the servants and dignitaries disappeared. There were rumours the Dergue enjoyed murder by strangulation best. A high ranking minister locked in a dungeon was left to starve. Each person watched the other, even flesh and blood could not be trusted. H.I.M. did nothing. He was like lamb to the slaughter. Who could he turn to? He was surrounded by enemies. The military, the ministers, the servants – everyone had bloody hands, it seemed.

  Me, he trusted. He trusted me. That last morning in his apartment, he read me a psalm of his ancestor, David; then fearful for my life, begged me to leave. He said I was Africa and Africa should be free.

  BACKGROUND SINGER SOUND SISTREN [SISTAH MAUVA]

  Track 14.0: Bobo infrasound

  Not a living soul spoke to Riva Man and Riva Man spoke to not a one.

  He was a keeper of secrets, the keeper of the keys, the keeper of the Most High.

  He swept the pathway clear-clear of stones so that when His Majesty walked with the heart of Africa out in the garden he would not slip nor fall.

  But for the love of power, bad-mindedness shall abound. People started to su-su su-su. They looked at the quiet man with the brooms and iniquity filled them up and one morning when he was gathering the thatch, they way-lay him and beat him and throw him out in the street and that’s when the downpressors close in on the Most High.

  The day news break say the Most High dead, Riva Man tongue catch afire and he ran through the streets of Addis Ababa shouting, “Bloodfiah! Bloodfiah!” Nobody in Jamaica in the little district of Priory in the garden parish of St. Ann knew a thing, but hear this, mongoose and dog did holler that night.

  FROM THE ANGEL’S LEDGER BOOK

  [Handmade Acoustic/Sardine Can Guitar]

  The Emperor’s maidservant is pregnant. She is comely like Mariam in his youthful dream.

  H.I.M. attributes his virility to walks in the garden and the company of lions.

  At the moment of the child’s conception, H.I.M. remembers Les Vingt et Un, and recites them in Meharene’s ear. This memory of words renders him as a young man.

  Only the mut
e Jamaican hears the sounds from under the door. And the angel. The angel listens too.

  The Dergue prods H.I.M. for secrets – keys to safeboxes, Swiss account numbers, the whereabouts of relics and jewels, hidden tunnels underground. They listen as he talks in his sleep. “Meharene,” he says. But in the morning H.I.M. keeps his mouth sealed; he will not be moved. All secrets go with him to the grave, including Les Vingt et Un.

  They throw his body in the sewer. The baby in the maidservant’s womb sucks her little hoof.

  MEHARENE

  Version: The Scent of Peppermint

  I was the one who killed the Most High. Three soldiers came for me in the night, dragged me out of bed and into his room pushed me. One of them tore the prayer box from my neck. They stripped my clothes off and took my bangles. All these years, and I had never shown H.I.M. my nakedness. Even when we lay in bed together I always kept my clothes on.

  His Majesty was stretched on a cot by a window. Someone had been kicking him – on his skin there were black and blue marks. He looked at me and I saw on his face the aloneness. I began to cry.

  They gave me his pillow – it was one of the silk blue ones from the imperial apartment. Of blood and urine and the entrails of a small animal, it smelled. They wanted me to suffocate him.

  “I won’t do it!” I said.

  One of them put a gun to my back and when I still refused, they began to beat me. “Ça suffit!” H.I.M. called and he made as if to get up but was quickly struck down by a club. They left me on the tile floor, too weak to move. A soldier chewing khat, spat it in my face. I held the pillow against me, buried my face into it, a life-line.

  When I was a small girl, I fell on a cactus once; the thorns stuck in both my hands. My sister the only one home and she ran to help me, but I would let no one else pull the thorns except grandmother. Eight hours I waited until grandmother came home. She had been all day at the market and smelled of goat’s milk; I buried my head under her arm and shut my eyes tight. I trusted her each thorn to curse as she pulled it out. Seventeen she counted. When grandmother turned old, her womb fell down and poke sometimes between her legs; it happen to women that age. My job to bath it and push it back in each time, and each time she cry for her eight children who grow there, seven of them dead before her, my mother except. Life give us job – when my mother dead, my job to tell grandmother the news. I want to tell grandmother before the neighbours do. I bath grandmother and wash her womb with salt water, and fold a eucalyptus leaf inside, then push it back in. I never said a word; but the news, she know it. Many years after – and I talk this part later – my sister job to pull a sorrow-nail from my heart. It bleed for a little while, but after that, the sorrow stop. Suffering, I know. I know suffering.

  So as I lay on the tile, the thought arrive to me – they were going to kill H.I.M. anyway – that perhaps it would be best if I am the one to do the deed. Life give us job.

  At my back, again a gun clicked. “Your love pillow; take it!” said the soldier. I pulled the pillow against me and crawled to the cot where His Majesty lay. His breathing was shallow and great effort he had to exert when he spoke.

  “I only am left,” he said.

  The soldier moved close behind, chewed his khat; green saliva he spat at my feet.

  “Move it, your gun.” I said.

  And I don’t know – perhaps because the khat made him giddy – he took the gun from my back, stood quiet by the wall.

  I kissed H.I.M. behind the ear where the magpie stole his skin, and I whispered words I heard the Jamaican say. Jah live. Those words, I like them. They mean, I think, something good for H.I.M. They are the only words the sweeper says. Jah live Jah live. H.I.M. closed his eyes then, because he understood. I held the pillow over his head, and did not let go.

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  The Red Ear Girl

  “A lunch money for this ring,” Bob says.

  He takes the ring out of the toilet paper and holds it out for the girl to see. She takes it and turns it over, runs her thumb over the lion.

  “I look like I have money to you?” She gives it back.

  “Then tell me my true name then. I’ll give you it for my true name.”

  She tilts her head as if watching for birds, takes back the ring and rests it in the crease of her book.

  “Alright,” she says. And she closes the book with the ring still inside; walks away without a word down Hagley Park Road.

  MEHARENE

  Aftermath

  I lay there for a while, my head on top of the pillow. No one moved. Somewhere a bell rang. Just a small sound – like a bell on a girl’s ankle bracelet. I wanted to stay that way, to die right there with him. To die, it would have been a good moment. This, the finale of all I had been born for.

  I lifted the pillow. There was a smile on H.I.M’s face as if he was in the middle of a lovely dream. The scent of peppermint filled the room and one of the soldiers shaken from stupor crossed the room; I looked him in the eye and felt no fear. The scamps, they were nervous suddenly now, impatient to get rid of the body. One put his gun to my neck, but the others said, “No.” They thought I knew His Majesty’s secrets and did not want to kill me yet.

  To this day I wonder. How could the Dergue have known about the silk pillows? The Jamaican was the only one who knew of our games. He also had the keys to the imperial apartment. But even then, the door had always remained closed as he waited outside. Perhaps it was all just coincidence. I don’t believe the Jamaican betrayed. This I don’t think.

  I had H.I.M’s baby. A little girl named N. born with one foot like a goat. No one knew she was H.I.M.’s child, not even she. When she grew and asked for her father, I told her he was killed in the Red Terror. “You have his long nose and arching eyebrows,” I say. “And his smile. You have his smile.” The truth is, I have guarded her identity like a secret in a shroud.

  My sister was the one who delivered N. She said, Push, and I pushed with all my might, something furious. N. was coming legs first and we were worried for her safety. I squeezed the edge of the bed, too weak to push anymore. At the church across the way, a priest was shaking a tambourine. When I pushed again, something made my sister scream.

  In silence my sister bathed N., wrapped her in a cloth then put her in my arms. “Throw her away,” she said, “before it is too late.” But I was already holding the little hoof in my hand.

  News of the hoof spread like grassfire. Some days the children say I mated with a goat, some days it is a hyena. I like it best when they say lion. I tell N. to be proud of her hoof.

  *

  Today, twenty-two years later, she leaves for Addis Ababa. She goes to study in the university there; she will be great woman. This I believe. We wait by the road for a truck to take her to town. The driver, we know him, and N. sits in front with her suitcase. I want to say, Jah live, but I keep it inside. My sister and me, we watch the truck leave, standing at the dusty edge of the earth, two women. Then, this is how my sister redeems us, pulls the nail from my heart –

  “The Queen of Sheba, she had one too,” she says.

  There is a sound. In the wind, eucalyptus leaves.

  “Return is in the blood,” I say.

  I write the word eucalyptus in the dust with my finger. I like the look of that word, like the curves of a wrought iron pattern in an open gate.

  Revelation of Wisdom According to Jah Prophet (0:52)

  [7.83 Hz]

  (A woman on her way to town catches a shadow from her corner eye — a quick dance of yellow light from a hole in a cotton tree’s trunk. She stops, puts out her spliff, goes behind the fence, bends close to better look. The tree parts its legs, the hole at its base growing larger; the smell — damp earth, goat’s pee-pee and broken sparrow eggs. The woman sprinkles a little wisdom weed inside the opening, realizing that with effort she can fit her whole body within, the space widening to accommodate her shoulders, her hips, the length of her thighs, her bare feet. When at last she opens
her eyes, she is in a womb lit up with fireflies; honey-yellow sap travelling up and down the walls. The womb grows larger, fireflies dancing a spiral above her head, the alive sap reasoning with revelation buttercup pollen and soldier ants underground. As she blinks to adjust to firefly light, she hears a voice, Zion, and at that moment, she is filled with yellow, the light washing off her heart, settling in the empty bowl of her belly-bottom, warming her tail-bone. By the time she climbs outside, the bus into town has already gone, but what does it matter?

  She takes her spliff from behind her ear, lights it and continues on down the road.)

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  Light Rain

  That night, there is sobbing in the clock tower. Bob sits on the ground, feels a tear fall on his cheek; it is not his – it comes from somewhere above his head. He wipes it off with the back of his sleeve and another tear falls and then another and soon there is a light rain falling from the rafters. Outside it is windy. A howling, bearing many-year news. The debris circling the tower is mixed with old bullets and bits of dry placenta, backbiting and confusion and blue lignum vitae flowers and sighing and dogs barking and milk teeth and the mud of funeral shoes and music. Just as suddenly as the wind starts, it stops. And so does the sobbing. Bob opens his eyes and sees a small whiteman sitting up in the rafters. He is holding a baby bird in his hand. The bird tweets and pecks at his palm.

  “I died in 1955 of a weak heart,” the man says. “My heart stopped at 1:19 am in the morning. The moon was waning and I had grey socks on.”

  Bob rubs his beard. The man’s eyes are little watery puddles. He sniffs and takes a hanky out of his shirt pocket and blows his nose.

  “It would have been better to die with a waxing moon,” the man says. And then with a quick smile – “The astrology of the dead, you know.”