Oliver Benjamin
It was all a bit much. To be offered a job and a place to live after
bathing nude with strangers, all within the space of a few hours. She
couldn’t accept the offer. She accepted the offer.
Thus began the easiest job she ever had, perhaps that anyone
ever had. The trickle of customers was so faint that were
Undergrounds a faucet, no one would bother to fix it. The only other
visitor that came by that day was the cat. And she also stayed for
good.
At the end of the day, after they finished what little work there
was to do, Leona went out for half an hour and came back with a
present. It was a modest placard she had printed at a sign shop which
read This Way to Undergrounds. She hung it in the entrance to the
alleyway. It seemed natural to imagine it a clandestine whisper to the
wayward and forlorn.
“What shall we name her?” Leona said, stroking the lean brown
animal with her large white hands.
Roy suggested an old favorite, Sheba.
“That’s very traditional of you,” she said.
“More than you think,” he replied, “I’m of Ethiopian extraction.”
Since Leona was unfamiliar with the story of the great Ethiopian
queen, Roy told her the tale as he knew it.
2. Before the Ark
Abyssinia, the old name for modern Ethiopia, was once an empire of
great wealth and prestige, trading on equal terms with the other great
empires of the time: Persia, Greece, and Rome. If her ancient glory
emerged uncelebrated by history it was through no fault of her own;
she became isolated in the middle ages after Muslim nations
surrounded and separated her from the rest of the Christian world, a
world which quickly erased her from its memory.
Long before that happened, however, a certain Sheba ruled the
far-flung territory. Her subjects were peaceful and wealthy, and had
little need for anything their rich earth didn’t already produce. Yet
the precocious queen suspected there was more to the world than
that which one could see with the eye or touch with the hand.
She had heard of a wise king far away, a king reputed to possess
a singular wisdom that transcended mere earthly things. He knew
what moved the clouds and who ignited the sun. He knew what lay
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