Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [120]
CHAPTER 23
The Afterbird and Other Animals
THE RAINS HAD ENDED and we had been back in class fewer than two weeks when Hema woke us with what I took to be good news. “No school. We're keeping you home today,” she said. Something about trouble in the city. Taxis wouldn't be running. I stopped listening after “no school.”
It was a perfect day to be home. Meskel celebrations were to start, and already Missing's fields were carpeted with yellow. We'd lose the soccer ball in the daisies, we'd climb into the tree house … Then I remembered: with Genet under Rosina's watchful eye, it wouldn't be the same.
I pushed out the wooden shutters of my bedroom window and climbed onto the ledge. Sunshine flooded the room. By noon the temperature would reach seventy–five degrees, but for the moment I shivered in my bare feet. From my perch, I could see beyond Missing's east wall onto a quiet meandering road which descended and then disappeared, the hills rising just beyond, as if the road had gone underground before it emerged in the distance as a mere thread. It wasn't a road we traveled or even one that I knew how to get to, and yet it was a view I felt I owned. On the left side a fortresslike wall flanked the road, receding with it, struggling to stay vertical. Giant clusters of purple bougainvillea spilled over, brushing the white shamas of the few pedestrians. There was a quality to this pellucid first light and the vivid colors that made it impossible to imagine trouble.
In the dining room, I noticed the strained, preoccupied expression on Ghosh's face. He had his shirt, tie, and coat on. He'd been awake for hours, it seemed. Hema in her dressing gown was huddled next to him, twisting and untwisting a lock of her hair. I was surprised to see Genet there; her head jerked up when I came in, as if she didn't know I lived in the house. Rosina, who usually orchestrated our mornings, was nowhere to be seen. In the kitchen I found Almaz frozen by the stove; only when the egg began to smoke did she scoop it off the pan and onto my plate. I noticed the tears in her eyes.
“The Emperor,” she said, when I pressed her. “How dare they do this to His Majesty? What thankless people! Don't they remember he saved us from the Italians? That he's God's chosen?”
She told me what she knew: While the Emperor was on a state visit to Liberia, a group of Imperial Bodyguard officers seized power during the night. They were led by our own Brigadier General Mebratu.
“And Zemui?”
“He is with them, of course!” she said, whispering, shaking her head in disappointment.
“Where is Rosina?”
She pointed with her chin in the direction of the servant's quarters.
Genet came into the kitchen, on her way to the back door. She looked frightened. I stopped her, and held her hand.
“Are you all right?” I noticed the gold chain and strange cross around her neck.
She nodded, then went out the back door. Almaz didn't look at her.
“It's true,” Ghosh said, back in the dining room. He glanced at Hema, as if the two of them were trying to decide how much to divulge to us. What they couldn't hide was their anxiety.
The previous evening General Mebratu went to the Crown Prince's residence to tell him that others were plotting a coup against his father. At the General's urging, the Crown Prince summoned ministers loyal to the Emperor. When they came, General Mebratu arrested them all.
It was a brilliant ploy, but it unsettled me. I couldn't imagine Ethiopia without Haile Selassie at the helm—nobody could. The country and the man seemed to go together. General Mebratu was our hero, a dashing figure who could do no wrong. The Emperor had lost some of his glow for us. But I never expected this of the General—was this a betrayal, a dark side of his that had emerged? Or was he doing the right thing?
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
One of the prisoners, an old and frail minister, had had an asthma attack, and so Ghosh had been summoned to the Crown Prince's residence in the early morning. “The General doesn't