The pickup truck bounded through a landscape of baked orange scrub, hemmed in by distant mountains. The earth had been carved into terraces, and in each field a figure could be discerned, bashing at the dirt with a hoe or wandering behind oxen. Most of them seemed to be children. Jake was flung into the air by a bump and he gasped, clinging to his seat.
The driver cackled. “Ethiopia road, is disco road!”
Berihun was a barrel-chested rogue with a snatch of dark beard; the feel of a hundred US dollars had him in high spirits. He stopped to check the map and the children seemed to generate out of the earth itself, tiny bodies dashing to meet them from every ridge. When Jake produced biscuits it became bedlam.
“Faranji! Faranji! Faranji!,” they cried. “You! You! You!”
“Like feeding ducks in the park,” said Florence witheringly.
Jake ignored the comment. “Look at that one,” he whispered.
A boy of three was sniffing at his biscuit; evidently he did not know what it was.
They passed a gang of Chinese labourers, hacking a road out of the desert. European statesmen had given up on the continent, but the Asian scramble for Africa continued apace.
“What do you think about that?” Jake asked Berihun. “Good thing or bad thing?”
The driver frowned. “I not like. Just pretend he wants to help us. China is new Mussolini in our Ethiopia.” He remembered Florence and blushed. “Sorry madam.”
“I’m not Chinese,” she said. “I’m British.”
The driver looked sceptical about the claim, but he let it go.
As they neared the badlands the villages thinned out, leaving only a sense of desolation until it was like driving across Mars. They passed a field of mortars, pointing north on their tripods; a dozen pieces of artillery; a column of teenagers in camouflage jogging alongside the track. Finally they reached the end of the line.
The outpost was fortified with sandbags and a heavy machine gun pointed towards Eritrea. A piece of string was strung across the track, the winning tape at the end of a marathon. A soldier sauntered over, chewing on a stick, and addressed the driver in rapid-fire Amharic.
“He says is not safe past here,” Beriuhn translated. “If you want go further, you must buy permit. Is costing five hundred dollars.”
“I have three hundred.” Florence began counting out banknotes. “Will that cover the paperwork?”
The soldier eyed the cash.
“Three fifty, is ok,” muttered Berihun.
“Didn’t you hear what the man said?” said Jake. “It’s too dangerous.”
“He just wants money. This is Africa, remember?”
She handed over a wad of bills and the teenager lifted the piece of string. They were through.
“Madness,” Jake groaned as they drove into no-man’s-land. “Absolute madness.”
Beyond the checkpoint it was deserted. Jake and Florence kept up a constant watch, expecting a Kalashnikov to start clattering away at any moment. Cacti assumed the form of desperados before betraying themselves with their scarecrow stiffness. It reminded Jake of swimming in Australia, that dread of a dark shape passing underneath. Even Berihun was tense.
Without warning he hit the brakes.
“What is it?” demanded Jake.
The engine chugged over.
“What?” repeated Florence.
But the driver was grinning. “It is the Monastery of Debre Damo.”
A flat-topped mountain rose before them, a house brick dropped in the desert. A spire was discernible at the peak – but the cliffs appeared to be sheer.
“How do we get up there?” said Florence.
“Rope,” the driver replied.
Now Jake saw it – a sliver of spaghetti dangling fifty feet from the summit, two monks lounging beneath it. He felt his stomach turn over in synch with the engine. And something else perturbed him, though at the same time his blood pulsed with irrational hope.
“This might be coincidence,” he said. “Actually, it must be coincidence …”
“What’s coincidence?” said Florence. “Just spit it out, for God’s sake. Why do you always have to dither so much?”
“Don’t you remember? Eusebius, Book Four, Verse Forty-one. ‘I myself explained details of the imperial edifice.’ And look.”
The cliff towered above them, bearded with trees at its summit.
“The edifice,” said Jake. “And above it, a ‘Church of God’.”
“It’s not coincidence,” Florence whispered, almost to herself. “This is the place.”