Godspeed You Black Emperor!

By Philip Primeau

November 11, 2008

GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR!
A dramatic rendering of future history.

For Calvin Coolidge, plain and simple; and for our wondrous president-elect.

From the streets, that familiar cheer . . . BLACK EMPEROR! BLACK EMPEROR! Echoing through the wide halls of the executive residence, reverberating in his heavy head: BLACK EMPEROR!

Oh my, he thinks, oh my. Still they have faith. All the people outside, crying for him, begging his presence. A nation of believers.

He opens his fist and stares at the coin. He hardly recognizes his own visage on the thing, so dark against the silvery gleam of polished cupronickel. The first one ever minted. Turn of the century.  

“So wretchedly young,” he mutters aloud, startling himself.

Oh my, I’m not . . . quite . . . okay, he thinks. The notion comes in pieces, emerging unhurriedly through a thick mental fog. Again he hears the crowd's feverish exclamation. BLACK EMPEROR! They want him—why? What is this day of importance? It used to mean something.

“My mind is not so fine anymore,” he says.

His dog’s ears flick. He looks at the dog. He looks at it sprawled upon the oriental carpet. “You’re just a mutt. A mutt like me,” he wheezes.

The dog laps at the long thin fingers of the black emperor. That’s a nice sensation, he thinks. How good it would be if it was only the dog and nobody and nothing else. No counselors or crowds, no cunning men with ambitions to stymie and advance.

The chamber bell rings, upsetting his contemplation. The chamber bell rings. Yes, yes, a minute. Just one minute. Cannot an old man have some time? Even an emperor must be afforded quiet now and then.

My darling knew how to deal with buzzers and bothers, he thinks.

He longs for the departed. It is an awesome longing that generates pain in his bones. How could God have stolen her away, and so early? Michelle. Without my rock, he thinks, I am not a strong man. Michelle.

“Alone I am barely a shadow.”

So many years, he realizes, so very many. He has managed, has he not? The adoring masses are no fiction. They are real. They are outside his window. Yes, the wild crowds. And yet . . .

“Michelle,” he whispers. He grows very dizzy.

He feels doubt like a cold stone in his belly. What day is this, he ponders. There is something in the air today. This day is important. Is it not? The fourth of August. 

His mind’s eye goes blurry. Each thought lags a bit more than the last. The black emperor looks around his desolate chamber: at the digital maps and vision screens and com sets, at the tightly-made bed and never-used fireplace.  

He remembers how, many years before, he had shown his eldest daughter one of the wall ornaments: A yellow sheet of paper covered with elaborate scrawl, mounted in a wooden frame.

“That’s the oldest extant copy of the republican constitution,” he had explained somberly. “Do you know what it means for it to be in my bedroom, Malia?” He had cried into her soft hair.

“Daddy,” she had said.

“Yes,” he had gasped.

“Nothing,” she had said.

Where is little Malia? Ah, right. The movie man. Gone to the western coast with the movie man. Those rude comedies that so rankled. She has a little girl of her own now, yes. The black emperor has never seen his granddaughter. Ashamed is Malia? Ashamed to be the daughter of a man who . . . changed things? Changed everything. Can it be? At this stage, he can grant that there is a real chance of it: Malia is a different type, after all.

Not like dear Sasha—though she too is gone. That horrendous day in November. The end of the beginning. The beginning of the end. That freezing November day, with its shock of heat and blood . . . The plans it set in motion.

“How long have I been sitting here?” asks the black emperor. His dog cocks its head. “How much longer must I sit here?”

The light in the chamber is faint. Despite his poor vision, the light is meager. That is the way he prefers it.

BLACK EMPEROR! The bellow of the people grows more excited. What does he mean to them? And they to him? It was not always like this.

He considers things uneasily: "the black emperor," how it had been a joke and slur. The way things change . . .  

Shivers wrack his body. “It must be cold outside,” he says. It is August. August in Philadelphia, seat of the permanent executory. It is eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit. The black emperor is icy.

He imagines the judgment of history. He does not trust it. It will not see the generous state apparatus cobbled together over four decades; it will see neither hard-wrought unity at home nor hard-won tranquility abroad. It will see just blood in the streets during the troubles. It will see just the strange laurel wreath among his short white curls. It will recall just his title—his name, yes—BLACK EMPEROR!

“Michelle,” he croaks, head upon shoulder. His neck is so . . . tired. His whole body is tired, simply exhausted. “Will they understand it? Will they see the necessity of what I’ve done?” The justifications given—are they sufficient? “Michelle, Michelle!”

The black emperor pauses, blinking into space, bewildered. Does he . . . ? Yes! He sort of—sees her, standing there, sleek in a strapless evening dress.

Yes, why yes, Michelle is here, he realizes. So very. So very beautiful.

“How is this . . .?” he begins.

Michelle flashes a melting smile. She is young again, the skin firm on her cheeks. She is not like how she was before passing: boney, brain-dead, all features bleached and sunken.

“I’ve come from Northern Virginia,” she says strongly. “The congress has consented to the treaty. They send their goodwill.”

The black emperor widens his eyes.

“There is news, also, from Texas,” continues Michelle, turning her nose upwards, grinning enormously.

Texas? He had finished with Texas decades ago. Texas is over and done with, he thinks. It was a crime, but . . . Oh, Michelle.

“Enough of that,” he pleads, beckoning her. “Enough of that, Michelle. I have missed you. You don’t know how it has been. Won’t you be with me?”

No reply sounds.

The black emperor alone in his chamber. Alone with the thunderous roar from the people in the streets outside his residence. Through half-cracked windows float strains of the national anthem’s presidential suite. People are singing, their voices rising into the sky.   

The black emperor hangs his head. This is it, he thinks—and gasps, thinking: This is it. Oh my, there is some weight upon my brain . . . This awful weight.

Suddenly, he sees himself in the wide and messy spread of human events. He is filled with pride and sadness. The wide and messy spread . . . Touching through the distance, strange and sweet, the anthem, blaring, steadily . . .

His eyes are closed. His mouth is open. His heart is still. The dog knows something has changed, and begins yipping madly.

Outside in the sweaty streets, the people scream over and over: BLACK EMPEROR!

VETERANS DAY 2008