Love in the Land of Barefoot Soldiers

by Frances Vieta

  Standish walked with her to her tukul. “If you need anything, just call.”

  “Thank you,” she said wondering, in practice, how she could do that.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Inside she fumbled for the candles and lit one. She undressed and climbed into bed. For a moment she wondered if she could leave the candle burning. She decided against that, and gathering as much courage as she could muster, blew out the candle, turned over and slept immediately.

  A short time later, Rutherford knocked on the door of Standish’s tukul. “We need to talk, Forsythe. You do know that I’m not going to let Ceseli go to Axum alone. It would be possible if Hamilton were with her, of course.” Rutherford stepped inside and paused to look around for a second as Standish pulled a foot-high stack of books off the only other chair in the room. The diplomat sat down while Standish stacked the books along the wall. The minister’s eyes travelled to the garden as he thought about what he was going to say. “You know, I’ve known Ceseli from the day she was born. Hamilton and I lived relatively close to each other in New York and we spent a good deal of time together with our families.

  “The minute she was born he called me and I went to the hospital. By then things were starting to go bad. He handed me a cigar, but then told me that they didn’t expect Alex to live. Frances, Alex’s mother, who everyone calls Sotzy, was already there. Neither Sotzy nor Hamilton were ones to show much emotion, but it was a dreadful moment. Then you know what Sotzy did? She took Ceseli from the nurse. She was in a pink cotton blanket and carried her over to Hamilton and said ‘Look at this absolutely beautiful creature Alex has given us. We will have to be worthy of her, won’t we’ and with that, she put Ceseli in Hamilton’s arms and gave him a big hug. Alex died less than an hour later. Hamilton never remarried. The most tragic part of it all was that Alex was a doctor and had chosen a young woman protégé to deliver her. Hamilton never blamed the doctor, for that would have meant questioning Alex’s judgment. He would never have done that.”

  When Warren Rutherford stood up, his eyes were moist. “And now we are going to have to be worthy of Ceseli. Which is to say, you’re leaving for Axum with her. I’d go, but honestly you know I just can’t,” he said. His eyes were focused tightly on Standish as he moved toward the door. “Make the arrangement with Yifru. And watch out for her.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “HOW WOULD YOU LIKE your eggs, Ceseli? Sunnyside up, like your father?”

  “That would be perfect, thank you.”

  “Hilina, you’ve heard that?”

  “Yes, sir. It’ll be a minute.”

  “So, my dear, tell me how you’re managing since Hamilton’s passing?”

  “Some days are okay. It’s been four months. Sometimes I feel like sobbing. There are moments when I feel deserted. It was so sudden. There are so many things I’d like to have asked him and now I never can.”

  “What were the questions, Ceseli? Maybe I can help you find the answers.”

  “Well, I was wondering how my parents met. He told me a bit of that a long, long time ago, but I’ve forgotten most of it.”

  “Oh I remember that very well. He and I met Alex at the same time. We were juniors at Yale and had been invited to a debutante ball in New York City. The dance was given by the New York Junior League. There were twenty-three lovely young eighteen year olds walking to the center stage and curtseying before they walked down the stairs to the dance floor. They all wore floor-length white satin gowns, white kid gloves to the elbow and held a long ostrich plume dyed green. We had a long wait before we met Alex because the presentations were alphabetical. Alex was very pretty of course, but there was something in her smile that was captivating. I remember that Hamilton was smitten from the moment he laid his eyes on her. He cut in during a waltz and introduced himself.”

  Warren Rutherford paused as Hilina put the eggs and toast in front of Ceseli. “Afterwards, I asked him what he’d said and he smiled and repeated to me what he had said to her. ‘Miss Alex, my name is Hamilton Larson. Please remember that name, Miss Alex Sheraton, because I hope it is going to be yours.’”

  Ceseli listened as she used a spoon to open the yolk of her eggs.

  “She told him he was going to have a long wait because she planned to be a doctor. He told her he thought it would be worth the wait. After he finished the dance, Hamilton came back to me. ‘Warren, I’m going to woo that young lady,’ he said, never taking his eyes from her. And I told him “Hamilton, it looks like she has already wooed you.’ Oh, did he laugh when I said that. ‘Yes, she has,’ he told me. And then he said that while I could dance with her, she was absolutely off limits. He made me promise that.” Warren chuckled. “Over the next seven years, we all spent time together, especially after she introduced me to Marnie, who was one of her best friends. So that’s how they met. More questions?”

  “And they got married right after she graduated from medical school?”

  “The first Saturday, actually. There was a big party at the Metropolitan Club in New York with dancing, champagne, and the whole thing. Marnie and I had already been married for several years. Four I think, and my Abigail was the perfect flower girl. I’ve never seen two people so much in love, Ceseli; they were devoted to each other. That’s why he never remarried. No one could live up to her. Except maybe you, my dear. Do you remember coming out to our house on Long Island?”

  “Oh, yes.” For a minute, Ceseli was back there on the beach building sand castles on the dunes of Long Island Sound.

  “What is that, Daddy?”

  “It’s where the king and queen live.” Hamilton said as he built a castle almost as tall as his five year old daughter. “And this is a moat,” he said as he dug out a trench so the ocean water could rush into the moat.

  “What is a moat?”

  “Castles have a moat to protect them from people who might want to hurt them.”

  “Why would they want to hurt them, Daddy?”

  “Maybe because they want something the other person has. Like a doll.”

  “But if someone wanted my doll, I’d give it to them.”

  “What if they wanted your heart, sugar?”

  “They can’t have that, Daddy. You already have it.”

  “Remember what I’m saying, dear. Don’t build a moat around your heart.”

  I wonder if that’s exactly what I have done, she thought, and why her father’s death had left her feeling so empty.

  “I was just remembering the sand castles.”

  “And when you were older, the tennis games. You were quite the little champion.”

  Ceseli took the napkin and dabbed at her eyes. “Thanks, Uncle Warren. Excuse me, Warren. This makes me feel a lot better.”

  Warren Rutherford looked at her affectionately before continuing. “You will see a great deal of poverty in the next couple of weeks, Ceseli, but that shouldn’t be anything new to you. Hamilton wrote that his mother had been organizing a soup kitchen for those living in the Hooverville in Central Park.”

  “She’s been wonderful. I learned to ride my bike on the Great Lawn. Now it’s a shantytown. I help Nana when I’m in the city, but for the past three years I’ve been in Philly. Not to say that life there is any better these days.”

  “No, I’m sure it’s not. Just smaller. Enough of this. Now we’re going to move you along. You’re going to meet the emperor,” Warren smiled. “I hope you like him.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “THESE ARE MEN OF the Imperial Guard,” Standish explained as she saw that they were dressed in well-tailored European style khaki uniforms. They saluted smartly, presenting arms with their various guns, some of which looked very old indeed.

  “They’re barefoot,” Ceseli noted. It was the next morning and Daniele, the driver for the United States mission, stopped the Ford at the gate of the new, but unfinished, Ghibbi Palace. Ceseli and Standish were going to meet the emperor. She was dressed in a blue linen skirt with a white cotton short-sle
eved blouse. She had her wide-brimmed straw hat with her, but she had removed it at the gate.

  She looked to the right and left at the painted sentry boxes, striped diagonally in the Ethiopian green, yellow, and red colors. The car drove up the long elliptical driveway passing a circular marble fountain with its sea nymphs and rearing horses that was beautiful even without water.

  At the door of the palace, an aide met them and escorted them up the steep set of stairs into the palace and along the yellow hallways decorated with large gilded mirrors. Deep rich red Persian carpets were soft under her feet. On the landings of the gray marble staircase were other smartly uniformed guards, also barefoot.

  The Little Ghibbi, the emperor’s new palace, to be distinguished from Menelik II sumptuous palace, was unpretentious. On the ground floor was a square dining room and two large salons for dancing and receptions. On the second floor to which they were led, was the emperor’s study, his bedroom, his library, and his documents room.

  All of these rooms were connected more by heavily curtained doorways, but without real doors. In cold weather, fires were lit in braziers in each of the rooms.

  On the walls of the study, where they were taken to await the emperor, she noticed autographed sepia photographs of several European monarchs including Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III. Ceseli studied the leather-bound books lining the walls. Most of them were in French, but several were in English or Latin. They gave the impression of being well read.

  She joined Standish looking out the window to the European style gardens where rows of English roses stood somewhat out of place in these surroundings. Some were abundantly flowering and trained over iron trellises. They were a prism of whites, yellows, pinks, and reds melding together like a spring bouquet.

  She didn’t count them, but she saw that a long chain of men were passing buckets of water to the flowerbeds. Up until now, the only Ethiopians she had seen were, well, scrawny, but these men looked very fit; their muscles taut and their bodies strong with the white toga-like shammas hooked up to the waist. She thought of the roses at her grandmother’s house in Connecticut and of the gardener, Roger, who watered the huge garden himself with a hose.

  Standish tapped her arm and pointed to the diminutive man walking alone, lost in thought. He was wearing a black flowing cape over white Jodhpur pants. At his heels, two lion cubs played like kittens.

  “The emperor keeps several lions as symbols of the Lion of Judah,” Standish explained. “At times, he had full-grown lions sprawling on the carpet at the door of his study so that visitors had to climb over them as they came in. Yifru told me that one of the British consuls was so unnerved that he shot one of them.”

  They turned as Yifru came up behind them. He had exchanged his white linen suit for a khaki safari jacket and slacks. How blue his eyes are, she thought, and his smile is so open and friendly.

  “The emperor will be here shortly,” he said. “About Axum,” he said, turning to Ceseli, “How did you plan on getting there?”

  “Minister Rutherford has asked me to accompany Miss Larson to Axum,” Standish answered. “I hope we can drive the truck at least as far as Dessie.”

  “The minister called me this morning. He wanted to know how far the road actually goes. I told him I’d find that out,” Yifru said, tapping a silver pen with his index finger. “Eventually it will link up with the Italian road from Eritrea. As you can imagine, it’s not one of the emperor’s fondest projects just at the moment.” Yifru winked at her as he led them into the emperor’s study.

  Directly facing the door and with his back to the window, the Emperor of Emperors of Ethiopia, the Neguse Negest, the Conquering Lion of Judah sat behind his large antique French desk. Hanging from a standing gilded base was a large cage with a blue and yellow parrot watching them.

  “The emperor! Long live Haile Sellassie!” The parrot’s raucous cry was so unexpected and startling that Ceseli had to pinch herself to keep from laughing. She felt thankful that he had exchanged the two lion cubs for cocker spaniels. One of them walked over to her and wagged its tail as she patted it.

  “The Duke of Abruzzi gave them to us. He is a cousin of the king of Italy. We are very fond of them,” the emperor said, calling the dog, which took its place obediently under his feet.

  Ceseli had seen photographs of the emperor and knew what to expect. He’s even shorter and slighter, she thought, and looks much younger than his forty-four years. He had a high brow and the full mass of hair above the quick eyes and slender, handsome features of his face. Though his skin was dark, the fine high-boned features were Caucasian. As she studied him, Ceseli saw his movements were quick, and when he spoke, he gesticulated with his hands. She smiled to herself wondering where he had picked up this very Italian habit.

  “Minister Rutherford says that you wish to visit Axum. May we know for what reason?” the emperor asked as he took the parrot from its cage.

  “I’m doing my graduate work in archaeology, on the obelisks of Axum. Whether or not there is one for the Queen of Sheba. I have studied them through the many archaeological explorations to Axum.”

  “The Germans and the English?” the Neguse asked.

  “And even further back. James Bruce, the Scot, who traveled there in 1769.”

  “We know of James Bruce,” the emperor smiled, going to a shelf and taking down a leather-bound book. “Bruce lived at the Ethiopian Royal Court of Gondar.”

  “I’ve read his travel log about finding the source of the Blue Nile at Lake Tana. He thought the Blue Nile was more powerful than the White Nile,” Ceseli said.

  “Alas, history has proved him wrong,” said the emperor, sitting down again. “Please go on.”

  “I have been awarded a graduate fellowship at the American Academy at Rome next fall. That’s where I will complete my dissertation.”

  “We visited Rome in 1924,” the emperor interrupted. “Our trip was in the capacity of regent for the Empress Zauditu, not as emperor. We gave the king a lion and a zebra. He was starting a zoo. Our relationship was very different then. You have heard of Monsieur Mussolini?”

  Both Rutherford and Standish had warned Ceseli not to get caught up in political discussions and so she sidestepped the question. “I am an archaeologist, your majesty, not a militarist. I know only that there is talk of potential war. You have become a very sympathetic person in the American press.”

  “We have gotten many letters from people in America giving us advice on how to proceed. We wish that there had been more official communications,” he said. “We will allow you to go to Axum,” the emperor said, returning to the subject at hand. “Perhaps when you return you will come and tell us what you have found. We intend to set up a university center to study the history of our country. What ideas you might contribute would be important for us to hear. Is there anything else we can assist you with?”

  Ceseli looked at the emperor, her eyes moistened by emotion. “I’m so thankful to you for letting me go. I’ve come such a long way. I never thought if we, I, got all the way here, I couldn’t go to Axum. It just never entered my mind. Yes, I know you’re the emperor. And it’s your country and your decision.”

  “We are letting you go to Axum,” the emperor repeated as he tried to interrupt.

  “Yes. Thank you. I understand, it’s just I was so afraid you might say no.”

  He smiled warmly. “Is there something else we can help you with?”

  “There is one thing,” she said. “I was wondering whether there is a place where there is information on Axum and the Queen of Sheba that might not be easily available outside of Ethiopia.”

  “We ourselves have a very extensive library. When you return from Axum, let us talk. Perhaps there is information we could exchange.”

  “I would be very happy to do so,” Ceseli said.

  Yifru stood and Ceseli and Standish followed suit. “I urge you to go at once before the rains come.” He turned to Yifru. “You can arrange this to their satisfac
tion.”

  Ceseli and Standish walked backward out of the emperor’s office careful not to bump into the wall.

  CHAPTER 8

  “SO YOU MET THE emperor?” Rutherford asked at dinner that night.

  “He was very impressive,” Ceseli answered.

  “I agree,” Rutherford said, puffing on his pipe. “He is an absolute monarch like those in Siam and Afghanistan. He is not vastly rich. He lives within his means like a gentleman and spends the state’s money on the state. He’s a good father and loves his children. He likes good wines, books, music, his private cinema, horses, and his dogs. Before all this WalWal business, he had thought of importing sailboats to use on Lake Zwai. That is the limit of his extravagance.”

  Rutherford paused, intent on his reflections. “Right after his coronation he set up a constitution and a parliament so leaders would gain experience in running the country. He has been trying to centralize the government, but it’s a slow process because tribes like the Azebu Gallas resist his rules. But he is moving forward. And don’t underestimate for a minute the Empress Menen. She is not only the mother of his six children, she is his closest confidant and advisor. She’s also an extremely astute business woman, right Standish?”

  “The emperor, Empress Menen and others took a huge track of two thousand acres near the railroad to Djibouti and irrigated it to grow coffee, citrus, grapes, nuts, sugar cane, and kapok. They earned huge profits. Menen governed a vast area down there. They also let farmers of the Oromos tribe become sharecroppers and join in some of the well-being.”

  “Decidedly a very shrewd woman.” Rutherford added. “And a good match for Tafari. But everything about this man is extraordinary, including how he became the emperor.”

  “How do you mean?” Ceseli asked.

  “Succession in Ethiopia is not like it is in Europe. The eldest child does not automatically inherit the crown. You do have to be a direct descendent of Solomon and of the Amharic people, but it is the most powerful person in the family who becomes the king of kings. Menelik had no sons so he designated his grandson, Iyasu, as his successor and that proved to be a real disaster.”