‘Em! Em? Emmy!’
But I couldn’t look down or answer. I was pretty sure I’d be sick if I moved my head. So I just lay there on the shaking iron sheet until, after what seemed like a year later, I felt my momma’s lean, warm body pressed close against mine and one of her strong, thin arms holding tight around my shoulders.
The battle only lasted half an hour. That’s when Augustus got smart and retreated, I guess. I don’t know how long it will take the emperor to find out about it, if he ever does. And if it doesn’t even get reported in Ethiopia, it will never get reported in an American newspaper. How long will it take before anybody outside Aksum finds out? Before anybody else in the world ever gives a damn?
After a little while Momma let go of me and shifted around so I could squint up at her from beneath the crook of my arm. I saw that she had rescued the binoculars.
‘Listen, Em,’ she said softly. ‘In a minute, when you get your breath back and we climb down from here, you and me are going to be Red Cross nurses. This will really make it easy for us to be here. It doesn’t matter how we got here or where we’re going. That’s what we’re needed for and that’s what we can do. That’s what girls are supposed to do. Fix things. Clean up mess.’
‘Sooner make things pretty,’ I choked.
‘That’s why we like to make things pretty; it’s just ’cause we’re so dang sick of cleaning up horrible messes. Same instinct. You going to be OK?’
‘I’ll be OK,’ I gulped.
And of course I’ve helped out enough in the clinic that I’ve seen plenty of ugly stuff. I had to hold down a little kid while Ezra shoved his dislocated arm back in place, and there was that woman who nearly cut her foot off chopping wood. I also sat for about four hours in the middle of the night, telling stories about Connie and her ponies in Amharic to Sinidu, while Momma stitched up the places where her new baby had torn her coming out.
But I’d never seen a man get exploded by a rifle before. Or have a spear planted in his chest.
‘Good girl.’
After a few more minutes I realised Momma was waiting for me, and that if some wounded person on the other side of the airfield had already bled to death because there was no one leaning on his severed artery, it was going to be my fault. And anyway, White Raven wouldn’t be lounging around feeling sorry for herself if there were bleeding soldiers to rescue. I lifted my head.
‘All right, we can go,’ I whispered.
‘I’ll climb down first. Then I can help you. This shed’s going to fall apart if we’re not careful.’
Now the Fiat fighters were lining up and parking neatly along our side of the field below the hill, and men were climbing out. A handful of officers had banded together and were heading toward us. One of them waved up at us and Momma waved back.
‘Signora Menotti!’ the airman called to her. He was wearing round dark sunglasses that made him look like a bug.
It wasn’t Papà. I knew I recognised him, but it took me a minute to figure out why. Of course there aren’t too many Regia Aeronautica officers I know by name, but the dark glasses tipped me off. He must have a supply of them, because he gave his other pair to Habte Sadek. It was Captain Gianluca Adessi, the one who visited us with Papà Menotti at Timkat last year.
‘Signora Menotti and the lovely Emilia!’ he called up to us.
That made me remember how much I didn’t like him the first time. Calling me lovely when I am lying on a dusty roof, trying not to throw up because I’ve just watched a couple of people rip each other’s guts out. He is phoney. He doesn’t love play-acting because it is fun and beautiful, like Papà Menotti. Captain Adessi’s just insincere.
‘Crowned with flowers!’
I reached up to touch the Meskal daisies in my hair. I’d forgotten all about them. I thought, I am White Raven, the master of all disguises.
‘You welcome us more kindly than the local population –’ Adessi began.
Momma glowered down at him. ‘Is anyone hurt?’ she interrupted.
‘There is one, I know. Can you help?’
Momma slung the binoculars on their leather strap over her back so they wouldn’t get in the way as she climbed down from the iron roof. I thought about lying up there forever. Maybe everybody would feel so sorry for me, in my wreath of Meskal daisies, that they’d realise they were being stupid, pack up and go home. But White Raven nagged at me, and Momma did too.
‘Come on, Em,’ she called, with irritation in her voice.
So I came down.
Captain Adessi showered my hand with kisses. ‘A thousand apologies to Orsino’s lovely daughter! It is a tremendous and pleasant surprise to find you here! And after you have made this place so gracious, for the soldiers to frighten you like this . . .’
He suddenly reminded me a lot of Horatio Augustus.
‘What’s going on here?’ Momma asked.
Adessi let go of my hand so he could make a broad, sweeping gesture with his arm, showing off the airfield. ‘These are aircraft of La Disperata – the desperate squadron. You see how the skull and crossed tibias is our symbol!’ He had it on a patch on the breast of his flying suit. Suddenly the round black lenses hiding his eyes seemed sinister and creepy, like he was trying to make his boyish face look like a skull with empty eye sockets. ‘Those who are here have come to occupy this airfield while our soldiers occupy the city. You heard – I fear you saw that we have had an – an incident with bandits, mercenaries. No one from the locality. They have retreated, perhaps to join the fighting forces farther south, but we will not press the attack until we have established our base here.’ Adessi pointed to the thorn barriers that those mercenary bandits had put there themselves for us. ‘You were wise to barricade yourselves against them,’ he said.
Well, at least Augustus got away. I glared at Captain Adessi, feeling triumphant. Master of disguise, master of disguise, I reminded myself. You’re just a helpless ferenji girl looking for her father.
‘What in the blessed name of Our Lady are you doing here?’
‘Where’s my father?’ I interrupted. ‘We came here to find him! If it’s all going to be so dangerous I want to be with my father –’
Captain Adessi turned to Momma, silently asking her to verify what I was saying. I just long to have somebody take me as seriously as they take her. How many people do you have to charm and how many aerial photographs do you have to take and how long do you have to be married before anyone begins to take you seriously?
‘My son brought us here,’ Momma said.
‘Your son?’
‘Teo,’ she said icily. ‘My foster son. His father was Ethiopian.’
‘Where is he now?’
Momma’s worry line deepened and she hesitated. I jumped in to rescue her. ‘He’s gone back to Addis Ababa to fight for his country.’
‘You are a family divided,’ Adessi observed.
Momma gave a brief nod. I could tell she didn’t trust herself to answer aloud.
‘I do not know what to say,’ Adessi apologised. ‘Orsino flies far to the east of here. We will get news to him somehow – or, when an aircraft is free, take you straight to Asmara, where our main squadron is based and you will be safe –’
‘Thank you,’ Momma cut him off firmly, because we sure didn’t want to end up there. ‘We’re not going to Asmara without Orsino. But since we’re here now, put us to work.’
Oh, I’m so glad I’ve still got Momma. Even if she can’t control what happens, she still tries to fix things. We don’t think the same way, not like me and Teo, but we are still partners. I am so glad I’m not alone.
There were a dozen men hurt. Not just spear wounds. Some of Augustus’s soldiers have rifles too.
I didn’t have to do anything messy. Partly I think it was because I’m a girl with flowers in my hair. There was a military doctor who didn’t speak English, but Momma is good at taking orders from doctors and he liked her right away. He could see she knew what she was doing, and he’d jus
t point at gauze or tweezers and she’d do what he needed. They got me to run errands between their impromptu field-hospital tent and the supplies they were unpacking. More soldiers turned up in trucks with more stuff. The doctor would write a note and give it to me, and I’d run it to someone else forty yards away, and the next fellow would pry open a bunch of crates and trunks till he found a bottle of morphine or whatever it was I’d been sent for.
I did a lot of standing and waiting while they hunted. I felt sort of stunned. But I know the exact moment I woke up.
I’d been reading the labels on the boxes they were unloading, and they were all meaningless, and then suddenly they made sense again. There are always things that make sense, even when you don’t know what the words mean in a different language. A white cross or a rod and snake means a box of medical supplies. An arrow shows you which way up something is supposed to stand. The skull and crossbones warns you when something is dangerous.
I wasn’t really thinking about it, the moment I woke up. Everything just suddenly came into focus, the way it does when you adjust the lens on a camera.
People were taking crates out of a truck, directed by one of the Disperata pilots. He had a patch on his flying suit with the skull and crossbones – what did Adessi call it, skull and crossed tibias? It was white on a black patch, like the one the captain wears, like the pictures on the Capronis, with the words La Disperata painted underneath.
The crates the men were unloading weren’t labelled with the squadron symbol. They just had ordinary skulls and crossbones stamped on them in black. And though I didn’t understand what the symbol was when I saw it on the planes, I knew what it meant on the crates.
They were full of poison.
There were fifteen of these poisonous crates. They’d all come out of the same truck. A couple of men were examining a shell they’d lifted out of one of the open crates, checking it for damage. They were wearing heavy gloves and gas masks that made them look like giant bugs. The masks were attached to hoods that came down over the backs of their necks. I never saw anything so ugly that anybody would wear on purpose.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real shell before either, but it’s exactly the same long bullet shape of a Buck Rogers rocket, and I knew it was a weapon. If not a shell, maybe an actual bomb.
I’m pretty sure that no Ethiopian soldier I have ever met has got a gas mask in his kit. Not even the Imperial Guard have gas masks.
They are brave enough to run in with spears against men with rifles leaping out of airplanes. They are brave enough to fight them in hand-to-hand combat. But bravery is not going to make a difference if they can’t breathe.
It isn’t fair.
Even if they do still keep slaves.
None of it is fair.
I couldn’t talk to Momma alone till after sunset. After supper. After a long evening around a bonfire drinking unceremonial (but delicious) coffee with Captain Adessi. I hate his coffee. I hate how good it is, how nice everybody is to us. I was ready to explode by the time Momma and I were finally by ourselves.
They are letting us stay in our camp in the operations hut – we are the only women on the airfield and it’s a little bit more private.
Since we’d climbed down from the roof about six hours ago, Momma hadn’t said anything to me that wasn’t ‘Pass the iodine’ or ‘Isn’t it lucky Gianluca speaks such good English!’ After we went to bed we lay side by side on our tummies looking out toward the bonfire, which was still going – they’d hacked down an acacia from the edge of the airfield to feed their First Night of Occupying Aksum celebration.
‘The party’s for morale,’ Momma said. ‘They weren’t expecting that attack. They weren’t expecting resistance out here. Their soldiers who came on foot didn’t have to fight their way into the city. Gianluca’s official line is that no blood was spilled in taking Aksum – a bloodless victory.’
‘Not counting any fella fighting with Horatio Augustus, I guess?’
‘No civilians ended up bleeding. I don’t know. Don’t know how the Italian soldier with the spear in his chest doesn’t count. Maybe it only counts as a bloody battle if more than five people get killed.’
I shook my head bitterly. She couldn’t see me, but she felt it.
I said softly, ‘Did you see them unloading?’
‘Yes,’ she hissed under her breath.
‘Did you see what it was?’
‘Looked like shells. But that’s what the big guns on the trucks are for, Em. And the big planes are bombers. They’ve got to have explosives attached to them.’
‘It’s not explosives. I watched them unloading,’ I said. ‘It was poison gas. They were lifting the shells out of the crates and checking for leaks and they had to wear gas masks to do it.’
‘Em – that’s not –’
I don’t know what she was going to say – That’s not true? That’s not funny? That’s not very nice?
But anyway she cut herself short and didn’t say anything for a moment or two.
‘I saw what the boxes had written on them,’ I whispered. ‘Iprite. Do you know what it means?’
‘Iprite!’
It was a completely strange word and maybe I wasn’t pronouncing it right.
‘Momma?’
‘Iprite – are you sure? But that’s against –’ She cut herself off. ‘I can’t believe it –’ I could tell, despite her outrage, that she did believe it – whatever it was. ‘How much?’ she whispered at last. ‘You have any idea how much?’
‘A whole truckload.’
‘Em, I want you to show me. We’ll have to wait till they settle down –’
‘We don’t have to wait,’ I said. ‘We can go out any time we want and we don’t have to sneak. We’re girls. We’re harmless. And also we go to the bathroom a lot, and not in the same place as a bunch of soldiers. And if I had to go, you’d come with me because you’re my mother and you wouldn’t want me to go by myself. You’d want to make sure no one took me by surprise.’
‘Oh, Emmy!’ she laughed breathlessly.
I had got all wrapped up in my shamma to go to sleep. Now I rewrapped it ever so modest and demure, practically like a veil across my face, so I was covered head to toe. All that white would be very showy in the dark.
‘They won’t think we’re trying to hide,’ I said.
And no one did. We walked straight across the airfield with Momma’s big flashlight lighting up the grass in front of us. Other people were walking around with flashlights too, and some with flaming torches, so no one even bothered to ask who we were until we were practically right on top of the evil pile of crates.
They did have a couple of fellows standing there to guard the stuff, and Momma had a polite conversation in French with one of them, sharing cigarettes while I splashed the beam of her flashlight all over the crates and the carefully lined-up shells the men were guarding so that Momma could read the writing on everything.
At last Momma turned away from the crates and by this time everyone was laughing like they were at a party.
‘Seen enough, Em,’ she said to me in English as we headed back to the hut.
She didn’t go back to bed.
‘Hold my flashlight for me,’ she said.
She began sorting through her satchel, dividing everything up into two piles. After a couple of minutes I realised one pile was for her and one was for me.
‘We’re splitting up?’ I asked, alarmed.
‘Just in case we get split up. Just in case. Now listen. I know it’ll be awkward, but hang on to your bag any time you go outside. Just take it everywhere. Then you have the gas mask with you without it being too obvious.’
She waited.
‘OK.’
‘Say you promise.’
‘I promise! Jumping cats, Momma! Grandfather says Friends don’t swear oaths!’
‘Because we don’t need to – we’re supposed to be truthful all the time – but you’re not, and I’m not taking a chance again
st mustard gas,’ Momma said, her voice low. ‘That’s what that stuff is. Sometimes we called it yperite – must be the same word as iprite. It is absolutely the nastiest weapon anybody knows how to use. Even if you have a mask on it’ll still burn your skin. It gets in people’s clothes; it poisons the ground and everything it touches. We had to wear rubber gloves and rubber boots when we were stripping anyone who’d been exposed to it or we’d end up with the most God-awful burns on our own hands. The Germans used it in Belgium and the Italians used it in Libya and I am grateful to God that Orsino only ever killed people with machine guns.’
She paused for breath.
‘I thought it was illegal! I thought they said it was illegal to use in war, when they laid down the Geneva Protocol in ’25! They’d better not be planning to use it here. God, Emmy, all our barefoot soldiers!’
‘You said our.’
‘We live here.’ She was silent for a moment, then added, ‘Teo is ours.’
So that was it. At last I knew for sure whose side she was on. I was so relieved – it felt so right – that I started to sniffle.
‘We’ll be OK, Em,’ Momma said hollowly, pulling me close with one skinny, strong arm. She even tried to joke to cheer me up. ‘It smells like garlic. Mustard gas, I mean. I thought I’d never eat garlic again for years, but who can resist anything swimming in Sinidu’s clarified butter? So you smell garlic in the air, you put on the gas mask.’
‘But – Teo! But –’
I wanted to say Habte Sadek! Sinidu! Erknesh! Mateos! And all the other people who didn’t have twenty-five-dollar gas masks. But if I’d said another word I’d have burst into sissy tears, so I just sniffled and didn’t say anything.
Momma understood. ‘We won’t stay here forever, but we need to give Teo the time he needs. A month, maybe? If he doesn’t come back in a month we will leave. We will walk home. If Ras Assefa’s retinue can do it in a week, so can we.’
I am not sure I believe that. But I have trouble imagining portly Ras Assefa in his business suit doing it too, and I know that he did (probably not in that suit). Maybe we can follow the Italian soldiers some way south when they go after Ras Amde Worku and Horatio Augustus.