Beneath the Lion's Gaze (22 page)

It wouldn’t be so surprising, then, that the girl had died. Hailu would simply point to her heart. It would be enough to explain everything.

—

HE’D BEEN ALONE
in the room, the soldiers smoking outside. He could see their shadows lengthening over the bare and brittle lawn as the sun swung low, then lower, then finally sank under the weight of night. It was easy to imagine that the dark blanket outside had also swept into the hospital room, even though the lights were on. It was the stillness, the absolute absence of movement, which convinced him that they, too, this girl and he, were just an extension of the heaviness that lay beyond the window.

She’d been getting progressively better, had begun to wake for hours at a time and gaze, terrified, at the two soldiers sitting across from her. The soldiers had watched her recovery with relief, then confusion, and eventually, guilt. Hailu could see their shame keeping them hunched over monotonous card games.

It hadn’t been so difficult to get the cyanide. He’d simply walked into the supply office behind the pharmacy counter, waved at the bored pharmacist, and pulled the cyanide from a drawer that housed a dwindling supply of penicillin. Back in the room, Hailu prayed and made the sign of the cross over the girl. Then he opened her mouth and slipped the tiny capsule between her teeth. What happened next happened without the intrusion of words, without the clash of meaning and language. The girl flexed her jaw and tugged at his hand so he was forced to meet her stare. Terror had made a home in this girl and this moment was no exception. She shivered though the night was warm and the room, hotter. Then she pushed her jaw shut and Hailu heard the crisp snap of the capsule and the girl’s muffled groan. The smell of almonds, sticky and sweet, rose from her mouth. She gasped for air, but Hailu knew she was already suffocating from the poison; she was choking. She took his hand and moved it to her heart and pressed it down. He wanted to think that last look before she closed her eyes was gratitude.

IT WAS ONLY ALMAZ
who’d recognized the vivid flush of the girl’s face, the faint hint of bitter almonds, and known what had happened. She’d
walked
in just as Hailu was explaining to the soldiers how the electric shocks she’d received had damaged her internally.

“Oh,” she said, “yes.” She collected herself. “It was too much for her. Too much infection.”

The soldiers were agitated. They paced back and forth. They asked Hailu again and again to explain exactly what had happened.

“The infection was climbing from her feet to her heart,” he repeated. “There was no way to stop it. She was too weak to fight it.”

“But she was waking up, getting better.”

Hailu’s palms were sweaty. He heard a ringing in his ears that seemed to get louder as he talked. He cleared his throat. “It was a surprise for all of us.”

The girl’s body was still in the bed, covered completely in a sheet. They hadn’t filled out the necessary forms, the soldiers had yet to acknowledge these next steps.

“You have to do something,” the deep-voiced soldier demanded. He grabbed Hailu’s arm and shook it. “We reported she’d be able to leave in a few days. People are expecting her.” He tightened his grip. “Do something.”

The skinny soldier sat back down in his chair and began to rock. “What are we going to say? They’ll send us to jail.” He shrank back against an imaginary blow.

“I’ll write up the death certificate,” Hailu said. “Everything will be explained there.”

“I’m a witness,” Almaz said. “There was nothing we could do.”

The soldier stopped rocking and looked at his partner. “We can’t say anything for a few days.” He nodded to the girl. “Just yesterday we told them she was fine.”

The other soldier nodded. “We should wait.” He looked at Hailu, his eyes growing cold. “They’ll want to ask you more questions, I’m sure of it. She was an important prisoner.”

So it was that the girl was still in the hospital room tonight, dead, being watched by two frightened soldiers who could do nothing but stare in front of them and shudder at the reaction their report would bring. Hailu had wanted to stay, to sit with the girl, but Almaz had ordered him home.

“Nothing changes,” she advised. “I’ll be here anyway.” She’d handed him a small brown paper bag just before he walked out of the hospital. “It’s the girl’s. She had it on when she came here and I was keeping it for her.” She squeezed his arm. “Keep it.”

Inside the bag, in the brown hollow of space entirely too large for it, was a slender, delicate gold necklace with an oval pendant of Saint Mary holding her child. He held up the necklace and watched as it swung daintily under the glow of his lamp. Cold, bright light caught the pendant and shot glints against the windshield.

37.

SOFIA PINCHED ROBEL’S
cheeks to get him to smile as she poured water into the large can she used as a teakettle. She pushed a wooden stick through two holes she’d cut into it. The can swung on the stick like a bottom-heavy bridge. She lit the small mound of charcoal and twigs and let Robel blow on the coals, smiling as his eyes brightened when the coal flared a brilliant red. She hugged him tightly.

“It’s your brother’s first day of work,” she said. “Go wake him up.”

They were outside their small shanty, in front of the dugout Sofia used for cooking meals.

Robel hesitated. “He should go to school,” he said, pulling out of her embrace and frowning. He added twigs to the fire and stared into the sputtering flames. He was twelve years old but had already begun to carry himself like a man since Daniel’s disappearance.

“We need the money,” she said, rubbing the bridge of his nose where his eyebrows met as he frowned. “It’s bad luck,” she reminded him.

He relaxed his face, his brows wide apart again. “But I promised I’d make sure he went to school.”

“If Berhane sells newspapers, it’ll help.” She kissed his cheek. She knew of the silent promises Robel made to his father. He’d begun keeping a growing list of them on a sheet of paper he carried everywhere. “He’ll go to school one day,” she assured him. “You, too.” She dropped a few leaves of tea into the water. “Go on, wake him.”

Robel went inside.

“Emaye, I’m ready for work,” Berhane said, stepping out with his arms open wide for a hug.

She held him, squeezing until he giggled. “Come have tea.” She poured even amounts of the pale, sweet water into two smaller cans.

“I’m big now,” he said.

Sofia’s stomach turned at the thought of her youngest son selling newspapers on the street. Things were never supposed to be this way.
Both
her sons should have been in school. Daniel had taken the job as a guard to pay for the best education for Robel and save for Berhane’s. Now everything was different. Every plan she’d ever had had collapsed into a pile of dust.

She could cope with the hollowness of Daniel’s absence. She’d already begun to learn ways to mask the empty side of her pillow. She’d started to sleep with one of Daniel’s shirts next to her head. She vowed to do this for the rest of her life. She planned to wake each morning before her sons, tuck the shirt back in a plastic bag, and preserve a bit of her husband every night. She could do this until the day she died. It would not be enough, but it was something. But the children. Our sons were born poor, Daniel, but they were never meant to stay poor, she thought.

Berhane slurped his tea and smiled. “It’s sweet.” He touched his stomach.

Today, her youngest son, her special boy, was going to start selling newspapers on the same street Robel shined shoes. They would work until she came home. Long days like these were never meant for children.

She leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Wear your shoes, you’ll be walking a lot.”

Berhane held up a calloused foot. “Tizita says my feet are the strongest.”

“I still want you to wear the shoes,” Sofia said, referring to the worn pair of slippers that had once belonged to Robel. They were too big for Berhane, but they’d protect him from the glass and rocks on the road. Robel, at her insistence, had finally agreed to wear a pair of Daniel’s shoes on cold days, stuffing the toes with cloth to keep them from slipping off.

Berhane stood up to reveal dark red shorts that were much too large for his thin frame and sagged around his waist.

“Why aren’t you wearing your blue ones?” she asked.

“Red is Tizita’s favorite color,” Robel said.

“Give him your belt.” Sofia motioned to the worn leather belt around Robel’s waist. “I’ll try to find you another one so you don’t have to share.”

Sofia watched her two boys run back into their home to prepare for
their
day. She angled her face towards the sun rising in the horizon. Out of habit, her eyes raked the road that stretched around their cluster of shanties, searching for Daniel.

DAWIT AND HAILU
stared at each other in the shrinking space of Dawit’s bedroom. The air was charged.

“I found this,” Hailu said. He raised his hands to his chest. In the center of his open palms lay a pistol. “Where the hell did you get this?” His hands shook as if the weapon was too heavy. He stood so stiff he was sure his son could see the pounding of his heart through his hospital jacket.

“I asked you a question,” Hailu said. In his nose was the smell of cyanide, in his pocket, the girl’s necklace, and now, in his hands, his son’s pistol. Selam, what am I doing wrong?

Dawit was taken aback and out of breath. He’d just witnessed two armed men leap from a car and gun down two others. He hadn’t stopped to watch the bodies fall, hadn’t asked whether the gunmen were part of the opposition or the government, hadn’t wanted to do anything but get to the safety of his home as fast as he could. And now, here was his father, in his room, holding the gun Mickey hadn’t wanted back since that terrible day of the executions. The gun that fell into Dawit’s hands depleted of bullets and that he’d hidden deep under his bed, repulsed.

Dawit let moments pass as he looked at his father. “Do you really think this is mine?” He was starting to sweat. “Do you think I’d use it?” Anger was rising in him again at the accusation, the violation, the arrogant demand for answers that should have been obvious.

His father held the gun closer to him and Dawit stepped back against his desk.

“Don’t lie to me,” Hailu said, his face flushed and determined. “I already know what you’re doing. Tell me the truth!”

“You’d rather believe a lie than the truth,” Dawit said, taking a step towards him, raising his voice. “I could tell you it isn’t mine, but that’s not what you want to hear. You want to hear what you think you already know. And you don’t know anything!”

“You think you’re strong enough to fight them with this?” Hailu dangled the gun in front of Dawit’s face by the grip, holding it with two
fingers
as if he didn’t want to stain his hands. “Where do you keep the bullets?” He bent down and stretched an arm under the bed. He stood up and dusted a mark off the front of his jacket. “Get the bullets and give them to me.” He put the gun in his pocket, adjusted the drag on his collar, and waited with folded hands.

“I don’t have bullets. There was a boy from my school,” he said softly. “They left him near the road like trash. They’re the killers, not me.”

“So you want to carry a gun now? I’ll take you to work,” Hailu said, shaking his head, then looking at the gun in his pocket. “I’ll show you what I have to fix.” There is no room in this country for youthful errors. Nothing but me protects you from them, he thought. “You’re all making yourselves easy targets.”

He wanted to shake the defiance out of his son’s proud shoulders and push logic into a mind that had closed long before. A year ago, he would have hit him. Today, he felt too tired. “I forbid you to have anything to do with those groups. I’m keeping the gun, and from now on, you’ll be home by dinner and you won’t go anywhere without permission,” he said.

Was that a scream coming from another house raid or the cry of a father looking for his daughter?

Dawit spoke over the noise in Hailu’s head. “You can’t do anything and you know it. You don’t understand. You don’t even know the right questions to ask. You want to control me and try to pretend there’s nothing happening in this country.” Dawit wiped his eyes, swallowed the pain in his throat. “We have to keep fighting. We’re different from your generation. Just because someone has authority doesn’t mean they should be respected.” His mouth opened, then closed, and slid into a straight line. He kept his eyes level with his father.

Hailu saw in that move his own youthful arrogance come back to visit him.

“Dawit,” Hailu said. He sank down onto the bed. He put his head in his hands. “Stop this. I beg you.”

My father doesn’t know what he can’t see; he can’t see what he can’t understand. I’m a son to him only in name. Dawit strode out of his bedroom and slammed the door, leaving Hailu alone with that distant cry.

—

A DARK RIBBON
of bodies slunk down the road towards his kiosk and Melaku’s heart caught in a beat and shook. Soldiers. He hid Coca-Cola in an empty box, then tried to prepare himself for his newest and most regular customers. It was early morning but they were already making their way to his window to be served. He opened his shutters, drank in the cool dewy breeze, then prepared himself for the routine exchange of money for goods. He conducted his business with a set of movements as choreographed and precise as in a stage play: a sharp grunt, the hiss of coin on counter, the slap of bottle against palm, another grunt, then shuffling footsteps, another uniform, then it began all over again.

He tried to hide his inventory of rations from the soldiers when he could, and save his stock for the neighborhood. He pretended to these soldiers that he was a struggling kiosk owner selling only cigarettes, gum, and such, surviving on the good graces of an old friend who was now a high-ranking official—not one of the many black-market vendors who’d begun to flourish in the city. Every morning, Melaku turned himself into a performer, a shell of moving body parts and a pasted smile. He stared only at the coins, at the soldiers’ hands, at the Coca-Cola they loved so much. He avoided their uniforms and their eyes.