Oliver Benjamin
him. What did he take?”
“He stole a golden cup. A very beautiful one. A very valuable
one.”
Roy shrugged. Ethiopia had lost many a treasure to the clutches
of wily foreign explorers. This was only the latest, probably minor,
transgression. Richard Burton, Portuguese missionaries, even Benito
Mussolini had all carried off their unfair share of Ethiopian loot. But
if the Ethiopians really had stolen the Ark of the Covenant from the
Jews in the first place, he figured they probably had it coming.
At the moment Roy was displeased with his Ethiopian brothers
and could have cared less about their hidden treasures—except for
one. The bean of life. The golden bean. The bean all, end all. The
supreme bean. The unbearable lightness of bean. Roy had to get off
of Deq, to demonstrate what was, to find the place where that lonely
ancestor of coffee was hidden. He had to do so before some
unknowing farmer tore it from the ground to plant chat. And he had
to do so before he lost his own fucking mind.
The monks gave up and walked away from the shore in angry
frustration. Roy called after them: “Hey, what about me? How do I
get back?”
“There is a boat that comes every Thursday,” said the monk-
guide, “You will have five days to relax on our little island. Make
yourself at home. And don’t steal anything.” And with that, they
disappeared into the foliage.
Some kind of backwards paradise, this. Like an anti-Adam, here
he sat exiled to an un-Eden from which he could not escape. He
dropped down dejected on the sand, scanning the horizon for a thin
chance of rescue: boat, aircraft, friendly mermaid, hungry leviathan.
He wasn’t fussy. Solo men generally couldn’t afford to be.
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