Love in the Land of Barefoot Soldiers

by Frances Vieta

  “I always thought they were giant phalluses. And you found the one for the Queen of Sheba?”

  “She shouldn’t have had one, at least if what she told Solomon was true. She told him she was a sun worshipper, but that she meant to convert to his religion and intended to set up a Jewish state. So, if she kept her word, she must have worshipped Yahweh, not the sun.”

  “What century are we talking about?”

  “Solomon ruled from 970 BC for about forty years.”

  “And he built a temple and had a lot of gold mines.”

  “Um.”

  Ceseli looked down the long polished mahogany table to where Hilina was taking the teff from a matching sideboard. “Can I have some more, please, Hilina?” The girl smiled and came back.

  “When did Ethiopia become Christian?” Rutherford asked.

  “In the fourth century AD,” Ceseli answered as she brought her attention back to the subject of Christianity.

  “Ethiopia accepted Christianity before Rome did?”

  “Quite a bit before.”

  “What about the story of Constantine? The vision in the sky.”

  “Constantine didn’t convert until he was on his deathbed in 337 AD. But the story that he converted the Roman Empire to Christianity is just untrue. He did no such thing. Did Standish tell you about the coins we found?”

  “No, we were talking about the news of Mussolini.”

  “What news is that?” she asked. “If you can tell me, that is.”

  “Well, the Germans and the British have signed a naval treaty by which the German navy can build up to thirty-five percent of the British navy.”

  “What’s news?”

  “It allows Germany out of the arms restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, and it was signed without consulting either Italy or France.”

  “So Mussolini is angry, is that it?”

  “That, my dear, is the understatement of the day,” Rutherford said, chuckling. “So why are these coins important?”

  “Axum was the only state in Africa to mint its own coins over a three hundred year period. Those coins give us a complete chronology of the Axum rulers. Through the coins from the rein of Ezana, we can pinpoint the exact date of his conversion as 331 AD. Before that date, all his coins bore an image of the full moon. After 331 AD, they are stamped with a cross. These were the earliest coins to bear the Christian symbol. The ones we found . . .”

  “You found, Ceseli!”

  “Okay, the ones I found are all stamped with a cross.”

  “Why did Ezana decide to become a Christian?” Rutherford asked.

  “There were two Christian brothers at his father’s court. They were Phoenicians from Tyre in Palestine. They were shipwrecked off the coast of Ethiopia and brought to the court as slaves. The oldest was Frumentius and the king appointed him as his treasurer and secretary. He held him in very high regard. Then the king died abruptly leaving his son, Ezana, as an infant. The queen asked Frumentius to stay on and to become Ezana’s tutor. So of course he had a great deal of influence over the boy while he was growing up. During this time, Frumentius invited Christians to settle in Ethiopia to build their own churches and to worship in them, not in catacombs as they did in Rome. Somewhere along the line, Frumentius was appointed a bishop of the church in Alexandria and he succeeded in converting Ezana.”

  “What are you going to do with the coins?”

  “Standish asked me the same thing. I’m giving them to the emperor.”

  “I’m sure he’ll like that,” both men said at the same time.

  Three days later, Ceseli was asked to go to the palace and meet again with the emperor. Yifru told her that the emperor had already read her report and that he had expressed interest in having her do some work for him.

  The following day, after speaking at some length with the emperor and giving him the coins she had found, Ceseli took possession of a small office near the library. Working for the emperor would give her the opportunity to look at historical papers and letters, many of which had not been catalogued.

  “Can I stay on here with you?” she asked Rutherford.

  “Of course you can. Your father would be very proud of you. But what about Geneva?”

  “Geneva can wait. It’s not far from Rome. I’ll go over the Christmas break.”

  “Just one thing. Please don’t let anything you hear here be repeated at the palace. We must follow very clean lines in our relationship with the emperor, and with Yifru.”

  “I’ll be very careful.”

  Ceseli was very pleased. The archives were meticulously arranged chronologically and a wonderful source of information. She had access to the library, to all the bound letters and correspondence of the former emperors, and to the books in the emperor’s extensive collection. Her task was to gather all the obelisk references together and while doing so she was free to use any of the content as she saw fit for her dissertation.

  Down the hall in his own office, Yifru took Ceseli’s report and reread it. She reminded him of another young American girl he had known many years before in New York. Her name was Debra. It was the only time he had thought of defying his emperor.

  It was the spring of 1917. Yifru was graduating from Columbia that June, and he would be returning to live and work in Ethiopia. That was the repayment for studying abroad.

  Then he met Debra, and all his ideas of young American ladies changed. Standing in line outside the college on Broadway and 116 Street, Debra was picketing for a woman’s right to vote. She had masses of dark curly hair under a jaunty sailor’s hat and was waving an American flag. He stopped to look at the flag. It was cut diagonally from the top left tip of the stars to the bottom right of the stripes. Half of it was missing.

  “Half of our people have no vote,” she shouted, waving it energetically in his face. “Women!”

  She was a student at Barnard College, he learned, and wanted to be a doctor like her father, and her grandfather.

  “You don’t like it here?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then why are you going back to black Africa?” she asked some days later while they shared a hot chocolate in one of the small coffee shops on Broadway.

  “Because I made a promise to help my country.”

  “Ask them to let you stay another bit.”

  “I have no right to ask. I made a promise.”

  She looked at him over the whipped cream. “Well that’s noble. When I’m a famous doctor, maybe I’ll start a hospital there like Dr. Schweitzer.”

  “Dr. Schweitzer didn’t work in Ethiopia. It was in . . .”

  “Yifru. The trouble with you is that you take everything so seriously,” she laughed, mischievously sticking out her tongue at him.

  “I’m a serious person.”

  “Oh I know. I know.”

  It was the only time, ever, he had questioned Tafari. That one time he wanted to refuse his order and to remain with Debra. And he had for a month. He had fallen in love and it was excruciatingly painful for him. After he had been in Addis for several months, he was able to offer to pay for her ticket if she came to marry him. She declined.

  CHAPTER 15

  “BE CAREFUL. THE WATER is boiling,” Marco said, offering his hand so she could walk across the slippery stepping stones.

  “So I see, Doctor,” she said, watching where she was going. “I’m watching very carefully.”

  “You have to, or you’ll end up like cooked spaghetti,” he grinned. ”Let me carry the saddlebags.”

  “Thanks. I get the point. So this is why Queen Taitou decided to settle in for the stay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I read that she asked Menelik to build a capital here because she loved to bathe in these springs with the ladies in waiting.” Ceseli looked around her noting that mountains now forested in Eucalyptus surrounded the plain. “It is a beautiful place.”

  “Look around when we get to the other
side, please,” Marco shouted, above the whishing of the bubbling water. “Otherwise you might become the Queen of the Boiling Spaghetti!”

  “Okay, okay,” Ceseli laughed to herself. “I think I might not like that title.” She followed him to a small grove of Eucalyptus on the far side of the spring where they put down the saddlebags and sat down. They had already gathered the flowers he wanted.

  “How was your trip?” Marco asked.

  “Really, really wonderful,” Ceseli answered.

  “That sounds optimistic.”

  “I’m an optimistic person.”

  “That’s what I like about you,” he grinned.

  “I’m glad there’s something you like about me!”

  “I haven’t got time to make a list. Just let’s content ourselves with that. The obelisks are all lying on the ground?”

  “There are about fifty standing, and many more on the ground.”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I don’t know. The silting up of the river, or an earthquake maybe. Some say a Muslim army.”

  “Like the leaning tower of Pisa? That’s what they say is happening. The ground is settling differently than one would have expected. Did they all come down at the same time?”

  “I have no idea. But they’re sort of like a house of cards. Not in any one direction, just any which way.”

  “I’ll bet on the earthquake. Armies follow orders. Nature doesn’t.”

  “Well, there’s a chance we’ll find out. I’m going to work with the emperor.”

  “What? Tell me more!”

  “I’ll be trying to catalogue everything there is to know about the obelisks.”

  “So you’re not going home?”

  “Not right away.”

  “Working for the emperor? That sounds impressive. Does he pay well?”

  “Does he pay at all? I forgot to ask, but money isn’t the issue. My father left me quite well off.”

  “So, tell me about Axum.”

  “You know Axum is to Ethiopians what Rome is for the Roman Empire. It even has a lot of hills. I wonder how much of all this is true? Sociologists believe that behind every legend there’s some part that is true. Unless it’s Jack and the Beanstalk, or Johnny Appleseed.”

  “Who was he?”

  “A man who wandered around Massachusetts planting apple trees.”

  “I thought horses do that?”

  “They do. That’s the scientific part. Sure the Bible says Solomon had four hundred wives and six hundred concubines. We don’t have to take that literally. Everything he touched didn’t turn to gold. It meant he was a wealthy king. And he was a wise man. Remember the story of the two women who were claiming they were the mothers of the same child? He ordered the child cut in two so each one of them could get her half. The real mother gave up the child rather than have it cut in two.”

  Marco laughed. “I guess I don’t know much about Solomon, or Sheba. But Solomon sounds pretty smart to be able to keep four hundred wives. Do you believe that there ever was a Queen of Sheba?”

  “I doubt that we will ever be able to prove that the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon was a pure blood Abyssinian, or an Arab queen from Yemen or Sheba, or any other part of the Arabian Peninsula. But the folk tales that some queen did visit Solomon are so old and so widespread that there must be some kernel of historical fact.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the caravan men and the scribes would certainly have told the tale around their fires. The way they did for Homer.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry. I’ve told you that. Daddy said it was not very ladylike.”

  Marco took a bottle of white wine, and some cups and napkins from his saddlebag. Ceseli took from hers some chicken, bread, and a piece of cheese. They settled down and ate for a while in silence.

  “What was it like going to a British school?” Ceseli asked, breaking the comfortable silence.

  “Well, they don’t cane you, if that’s the question. It was near my home in Fiesole. There’s a large British colony living in Florence. The school was small. My brother and sister go there now.”

  “You haven’t mentioned them before.”

  “They’re much younger. My brother, Paolo, is fifteen and Chiara, my little sister, is thirteen.”

  “I would love to have a sister and a brother.”

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “I grew up in New York. I went to a school for girls.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much fun. Why didn’t you say no?”

  “You don’t say no at six. It was what Daddy wanted. My mother went there. And it was a lot of fun. Boys didn’t exist of course. I also went to a women’s college. It was also where my mother went.”

  “So you had no serious loves?”

  “Oh I did. Peter Jennings. He lived near Sotzy’s house in Connecticut. We’d play together every day.”

  “Doctor and nurse?” Marco asked.

  “You probably did that.”

  “I certainly did. I always wanted to be a doctor.”

  “And marry your high school sweetheart?”

  “There were quite a few of them.”

  “I believe you,” she said, laughing as she struggled with a chicken leg.

  “Well, not as many as Solomon,” Marco laughed. “Tell me about Peter.”

  “He had red hair and lots of freckles. We played with other farm kids in the area. We played baseball almost every evening. When my father came he’d be the pitcher. I was quite a tomboy. I loved to climb trees and watch birds. In college I had a few boys that I liked, and a few liked me. They just weren’t the same ones.”

  Ceseli leaned back on the grass and looked up to the sky where huge thunderheads were massing. “You know the first time I knew that clouds moved, I was leaning back on a swing in Central Park and I thought I was being chased by the clouds.” She lifted her finger tracing the path of the clouds. “Giant thunderheads like these moving very fast. As I was swinging, they were moving.” She smiled across at him. “Have you ever thought about miracles?” she asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Like the birds flying away in the fall. One day they’re there, and the next they’re gone. Or butterflies. The next year they’re back again.”

  “We have swallows in Florence that come out in the late afternoon and fly all over trying to find food. They fly very low over the squares and even along the bridge at Ponte Vecchio. Then one day, they’re all gone.”

  “Swallows are so graceful, but I’ve often wondered how they get any food. You know, flying around blindly with their beaks open. It must be pure luck.”

  “One summer I found a baby swallow that had fallen out of its nest. I took it home and I fed it freshly ground flies. It grew tremendously big and I tried to launch it so it could be with its friends. But I think it was too heavy. Or it didn’t have enough strength in its wings. It kept falling and I’d have to find it again before some cat did.”

  Ceseli smiled at him as she turned back to the clouds. “There’s a marsh along the shore in Connecticut. One minute the marsh was full of water and the next it was empty. The water rose and fell every six hours. If you tied up a rowboat it would either float or lie on the bottom. Over and over again. Do you have a tide in Italy?”

  “It’s not like the ocean. The Mediterranean is calmer.”

  “Where did you spend vacations?”

  “In Viareggio. It’s on the coast west of Florence. Lots of people from Florence go there. When I was small we’d make sand castles. Swim of course. Go riding in the pine forest that is all along that coast and very deep. It’s easy to get lost.”

  “I had a dappled grey Shetland pony in Connecticut named Rosie. Sotzy gave her to me for my fourth birthday. There was a man who worked on Sotzy’s farm and took care of her. His name was Jimmy. He was Irish. He taught me to ride bareback like an Indian princess. As I grew older, he taught me about the la
nd and how to track deer and woodchucks. How to get the beavers to build a dam where you wanted it, and not where they wanted. Recognize poisonous berries. Know north from south. I followed him around all day long and I loved him very much. He went fishing one day in the winter and his boat capsized. He caught pneumonia and died. That was when I was seven. I didn’t know what ‘died’ meant. I was taken to his wake. His sister wanted me to kiss him goodbye. I still remember how his lips were so cold and smelled of flowers. He was the first dead person I’d ever seen. After that, I was terrified of death.”

  “You should never have been taken there.” Marco looked at her. He lifted her face to him and kissed her gently on the mouth.

  “Now you’re sounding like a doctor,” she said, drawing back. “Or rather, a psychologist. It wasn’t done on purpose. But it did scare me.”

  “Death is scary. Even to me, and I’m trained to deal with it.”

  “Are you really trained to deal with it?”

  “Not really. But it gets easier and it’s easier when you don’t know the person. That’s why doctors try to stay removed.”

  “But can you do that?”

  “I can’t yet. But I think it does get easier.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “This conversation has taken a morbid twist,” he said, looking at her and using his finger to trace the line of her eyes down to her lips.

  Ceseli looked up into his eyes. He kissed her again and she felt his weight on her as she kissed him back. The moment was broken as Marco turned and looked over his shoulder at the sky that by now was very threatening. “We’re in for a hell of a storm.”

  “I don’t mind, but maybe the horses will.”

  “I don’t know whether they’ll be afraid of the lightning, but we’re about to find out.”

  They hurried back to the horses and galloped back toward Addis. The cold rain started pelting down as it does in the tropics. The sky above them was almost black, the wind screaming. The peaceful clouds had turned into the churning of gray waters. Right in front of them lightning struck, joining earth and sky. Ceseli felt her horse balking, rearing, and whinnying in terror. She was just able to keep her seat on the wet slippery saddle.