Edition I Year of publication: 1978 Print run: 35,000 copies Price: 26 zł

Edition II Year of publication: 1980 Print run: 40,000 copies Price: 26 zł

Edition III Year of publication: 1982 Print run: 35,000 copies Price: 60 zł

Edition IV Year of publication: 1987 Print run: 50,000 copies Price: 220 zł

Edition V Year of publication: 1988 Print run: 30,000 copies Series: vol. 3 “Wrzenie świata”

Edition VI Year of publication: 1990 Print run: 50,000 copies Series: vol. 3 “Wrzenie świata”

Edition VII Year of publication: 1995 Print run: 5,000 copies

Edition VIII Year of publication: 1996 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition IX Year of publication: 1998 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition X Year of publication: 1999 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition XI Year of publication: 2000 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition XII Year of publication: 2000 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition XIII Year of publication: 2001 Print run: 5,000 copies

Edition XIV Year of publication: 2002 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition XV Year of publication: 2003 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition XVI Year of publication: 2004 Print run: 3,000 copies

In addition, in 2001 the book appeared in the Biblioteka “Czytelnika” 2001 series in a print run of 3,000 copies.

Table of Contents:

• The Throne. • It Comes, It Comes. • The Collapse.

Introduction to the Book

In the evenings I listened to those who had known the Emperor’s court. Once they had been palace people or had had the right of entry there. Not many of them remained. Some had been shot by firing squads. Others had fled abroad or were sitting in the prison located in the dungeons of that same palace: from the salons they had been cast down into the cellars. There were also those who were hiding in the mountains or living in monasteries disguised as monks. Each tries to survive in his own way, according to the possibilities available to him. Only a handful remained in Addis Ababa, where — it turns out — it is easiest to throw the authorities off the scent.

I visited them when it was dark. I had to change cars and disguises. Ethiopians are deeply distrustful and did not want to believe in the sincerity of my intention: I intended to find the world that had been swept away by the machine guns of the Fourth Division. These machine guns are mounted on American jeeps, next to the driver’s seat. They are operated by marksmen whose profession is killing. In the back sits a soldier, who receives orders through a radio set. Since the jeep is open, the driver, the marksman, and the radio operator wear dark, dust-protecting motorcycle goggles shielded by the peak of a helmet. So their eyes cannot be seen, and their ebony, stubble-covered faces are expressionless. These threesomes in jeeps are so familiar with death that their drivers drive the vehicles suicidally, taking sharp bends at maximum speed, driving the wrong way down streets, everything scatters to the sides when such a rocket approaches. Better not to get in their line of fire. With the radio set held on the knees of the one in the back, nervous voices and shouts resound amid cracklings and squeals. It is not known whether any of those hoarse mumblings might be an order to open fire. Better to disappear. Better to turn into a side street and wait.

Now I go deeper into the winding, muddy alleyways, reaching houses that from outside gave the impression of being abandoned, that no one lived in them. I was afraid: these houses were under observation and I could fall into a trap together with their inhabitants. This was very possible, since they often sweep through some alley of the city, even entire districts, in search of weapons, subversive leaflets, and people from the old regime. All the houses are now keeping watch on one another, peering, sniffing. This is civil war, this is what it looks like. I sat close to the window, and they immediately — please change places, you are visible from the street, it is easy to shoot you like that. A car goes past, stops, shots are heard. Who was it — them or those? And who are “they” today, and who are “not-them”, those others who are against those ones because they are for these ones? The car drives off, dogs bark, all night in Addis Ababa dogs bark, it is a dog city, full of pedigree and wild, matted, eaten by vermin and malaria dogs.

Needlessly they keep repeating for me to be careful: no addresses or names, or even a description of faces, not that he is tall, that he is short, that he is thin, what kind of forehead, that his hands, that his gaze, and his legs, his knees, there is nobody left to kneel before.

Source: www.poema.art.pl

“The Emperor” originally appeared in the pages of the weekly “Kultura” under the working title “A Little of Ethiopia”. Although the colophon of the first edition of the book gives October 1978 as the date of completion of printing, it appeared in bookshops only at the turn of 1978 and 1979.

• 1978 Kultura nos. 8–12 p. 10 A Little of Ethiopia. “The Emperor”.

• 1978 Kultura nos. 14–16, 18 p. 10 A Little of Ethiopia. “The Emperor” — It Comes, It Comes.

• 1978 Kultura nos. 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27 p. 10 A Little of Ethiopia. “The Emperor” — The Collapse.

• 1978 Sztandar Ludu nos. 74, 76, 78–9, 82, 84–5, 88, 90–1, 94–7, 194, 196–9, 201–2, 204–5, 207, 210–12, 214, 216–17, 222 A Little of Ethiopia. “The Emperor”.

source: kapuscinski.info