Cometa - Last Queen of Sheba: A Novel of the New Era

By Gisela

Cometa-Last Queen of Sheba, a novel of the NEW ERA by GISELA (Gisela: nom-de-plume for the author - AA DaSilva) is sort of compilation of nine big essays which emerged from 1999 to 2004, when the author studied Languages and Psychology at London Guildhall and Alcal de Henares (Madrid). Only two of those 9 essays were written in English, however English Language appeared as most appropriate for the first attempt at developing something as a new thesis on the sweet illusion of happiness. Its a rough attempt (awkward at places, along these 9 long chapters) to depict a clear-cut picture of those quixotesque characters who try to weigh-up about the rat-race society and any possibility of transcendence in human life.
The hug of Mother-Earth as Rod seems to advocate or, the Philosophy of the day as Pablo preaches it from behind the bar of his Caf Can this be enough help, along this nebulous adventure we call LIFE?

Perhaps Portuguese originals (22 chapters, under the title Cometa-em busca da felicidade), which is soon expected to be handed to publishers, can bring more clarity to what we mean by sweet illusion of happiness.
Cometa which is Spanish for kite should be understood as conscience, innocence or just soul... a bit like any last ray of hope to the old and decrepit King Solomon with no more hope for happiness than some last sweet look from his Queen of Sheba.
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Me? est? p????s???? ?s da??t?? Nothing is as inspirational as death, allegedly from Diogenes, 450 BC: this could be the very appropriate caption for Cometa-Last Queen of Sheba, but it just appears as a logo for the chapter II.

Cadunt altis de montibus umbrae when twilight replaces sunshine, from Publius Ovidius Naso (40 BC 20AD) is a poetic quotation from Metamorphosis, opening chapter V of Cometa-Last Queen of Sheba.

Circumstance and leitmotiv: September 11, early afternoon in Lisbon waiting for the train to Madridthose images from TV took my attention from Rebelion de las Masas and made me very sad indeed.

? Typing error: on page IX where it reads 1942 it should read 2042.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 2, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467017367

Gisela

Gisela is  "nom-de-plume" for:  Antonio DASILVA. He was born, when the first announcements of Spring of 1946 all over the huge vega of Chavez,  overlooked by the South Cantabrian Mountains, were just visible on the willows along the river Tamega. At 12 he travelled to southeast, near Oporto to study Humanities with the Vincentian Fathers from te Lazarist Congregation from Paris. From 1967  to 1970 he studied Philosophy and Theology at I.S.E. E. what later should be called the Catholic University in Lisbon. The following year he could be found at Gulf Oil-Cabinda, in Northern Angola, working as Time Keeper/Interpreter. From 1972 until late 80's Antonio DaSilva has lived in Mozambique. There he worked as a teacher of Portuguese and History; there he married the gifted daughter of a Portuguese sugar cane farmer. From 1990 the author can be found in Lisbon working as a translator at MINOLTA and Portuguese TV. February 95: Antonio moves to London and in 1997 he studies Law for some months at Westmisnter University. From 1999 to 2004 he studies Psychology and Languages at London Metropolitan University. Cometa-Last Queen of Sheba started on the very day the Twin Towers came down, and given as complete the very day when the Central Madrid Railway Station went off.

Book preview

Cometa -

Last Queen of Sheba

A novel of the New Era

GISELA

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

© 2007 Gisela. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 2/28/2007

ISBN: 978-1-4259-6044-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-1736-7(e)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Cometa - I

Cometa - II

Cometa - III

COMETA – IV

Cometa - V

Cometa - VI

Cometa - VII

Cometa – VIII

Any fool can pretend that he or she are happy and fullfilled when they happen to cope with rat race and make money…

The Legend

London, 15.05.1999: International Team of Archaeology "Legend & History" discovers new evidence about SHEBA.

"… Cumulating years of team research in different parts of the African Continent an International Team of scientists has allegedly uncovered evidence about the controversial whereabouts of the fabled Queen of Sheba’s.

After being placed in different geographies from the Middle East to the basins of the River Niger, across the Sahara desert, the newest sites are currently being moved to Central-East Africa.

Central Mozambique and Zimbabwe seem to gather overwhelming proof that some migratory waves from places like the actual Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the old Kingdom of Abyssinia and Central Libya - just in front of Eastern Sahara headed south, looking for gold and brought with them a different civilization.

Apart from what scattered stones and remnants of shipwrecks in the area of Sofala as well as the monumental ruins of Zimbabwe let us suspect, scientists still refer to toponimics such as Sheba-Ababa and Shabbier.

Across an area ten times the size of Britain, as far back as many hundred years ago, millions of Sheba’s subjects rushed and fought wars for the gleaming diamonds under the illusion of eternal happiness.

Synopsis - Plot and Characters:

Considering just the plot in itself, it should be difficult to look at "Cometa-Last Queen of Sheba" as a novel. However, as a novel of the New Era – we leave it as much open and blurred as possible for the reader to figure her or himself into the transcendental pit that human life in its unpredictability seems to suggest.

On the other hand, the novel is intended to be a sort of a metaphysical thriller, and as that, the plot on Cometa-Last queen of Sheba doesn’t follow a linear timing: The author – Gisela – releases her prologue for the book on the 20th of January 1941, in London. And, chapter two - The Will – is about an email received from her godparents a year before…

Well, let’s see: Gisela is in her middle thirties, a student of Psychology in London, by the beginning of the fourth decade of the third millennium… She travels to Central-East Africa. (Her grandmother, as well as her father, originally comes from that part of the world). The previous year Gisela had no choice but to travel from Lisbon to the mountains in North Portugal. She does that as compelled by a strange force – a calling from the rocks where her godparents Missu and Pablo, according to their last message, seem to live forever. Up there all reminds Gisela of Quixote (so her granddad was called), his childhood friend Rodrigo Lopez O’Sullivan and the mysterious brother of the later – Pablo, the poet, the doctor theologicus, the social misfit…her beloved godfather!

Pablo is the true quixotic figure who would live through some adventures of their own. To some extent he could be seen as the main character of the entire script. However, under a closer analysis it won’t be difficult to see that Pablo’s Cometa – the goblin-like figure who sweetly overshadows the real world dominated by the rat-race – is the hero, the ideal, the queen, the soul, the rainbow of happiness, the transcendental illusion.

Before travelling to Central-East Africa and to the mountains in North Portugal, Gisela at the time a young journalist in Lisbon, saw herself developing a big interest in browsing through the notes, albums and souvenirs covered in dust at her dad’s flat. As some sort of catharsis or random attempt to cope with sudden changes Gisela goes to London. There she engages in the study of Psychology and organizing all the rich material she has in her hands: the whole collection of scripts, notes, poems, albums and souvenirs that roughly cover the last 50 years of the second millennium and the first 50 of the third.

And from the hot cauldron of tragedy and unpredictability of human history between the Spanish Civil War and all the sad events that unfolded along the first decades of the third millennium’s apocalyptic cataclysms, it’s more the transcendental gasp and eternal illusion of the rainbow of happiness what Gisela somehow starts to see along he lines of all the scripts her grandmother passed down to her father.

But coming back to the word transcendental as it keeps coming up from the first paragraph, we should bear in mind that it’s a sort of recurring ghost all along the script. And ghosts, illusions, flying figures of undefined profiles are what the plot is mostly made of. Even Pablo’s real father who by reasons of keeping things composed in the real world of society with it’s interests, taboos and conveniences – like, for example short-sighted, well-intentioned, traditional catholic views of Dona Martha - can’t ever be named… The secret is kept, but in his dreams Pablo talks to his old father, and, apart from accepting him as a respectable dad who, like King Solomon, had no alternative but to be seduced by he young gipsy in the mountains… Well, all appears a bit nebulous and blurred to keep vision unfocused as it applies to the sweet illusion of happiness.

So, still sticking to the idea of plot, it’s never too much to stress that the author is Gisela who in her thirties, a little while after her beloved grandparents died, starts to question her ideals. Until then she seems to let it emerge that her life had been quite normal by normal standards.

Inevitable changes, maybe triggered by developmental intrinsic codes in one’s genes, social unavoidable standards or mysterious pathways determined by god Destiny – Gisela doesn’t seem to define any clear thesis to seek a clear answer to that – make the writer keep some attention and interest to albums and souvenirs, family and friends on a specific time and place…That’s the undefined space-temporal dimension – one side connected to the chain of events in the biological and historical tables, the other end emerging from a suspicious cloud of transcendental beliefs, legends and obscure procedures.

Under some unclear context like this Gisela’s attention was taken by a light, a little cometa, a fairy, a star, a guide…a sort of ideal.

And Ideal should probably be the most appropriate word if we had to change the title of the novel. Then Pablo’s little Cometa – like the golden, hairy star that every night comes twinkling in front of his window – isn’t but his ideals recurring from his childhood. These ideals go with him, partly undercover, partly changing and adjusting. However, like old Solomon in old age, one most inevitably comes to a questioning point where wealth and fame are no longer the satisfactory answer to the transcendental ring of a rainbow which seems to show any sort of way to happiness.

And happiness is the key word for the correct understanding of the book. And it’s apparent from the many stories (each character is a story, any human seems to be a shadow of a star that in other worlds or dimensions freely roam and reign) that the ring of the rainbow of happiness it’s what keeps we going.

It’s the illusion.

Solomon in old age, trying in his royal, decaying gasp to reach to his adolescent enchanting experience is certainly the prototype of any quest along the wisdom path. His Sheba, his last illusion of the rainbow of happiness is the equivalent of what little gypsy girl is for old Don Lopez in the mountains. Also Pablo got his kite, his cometa from his childhood, and in a chain of events of a long lifespan there come Natalie the Gypsy, Natalie La Mauritienne…

Characters could be changed; times could be arranged differently; chapters could be swapped…In the end all should go on the same way: illusion and delusion, dreams and hopes over the rainbow of happiness.

Just a state of mind, some sort of historical and behavioural arrangements, some sort of coincidences along the ant trail, some sort of entangling in the weaving rods of the seven daughters of god Destiny…happiness is the treasure hunting on a stage.

And, the stage, of course, is the world. Throughout this speck of rock, characters roam and act, and they pass away to the other side of the stage. Depending on some nuances we feel obliged to use a classification code called tragedy, or then, we come up with a sort of rosy, optical illusion and name the play a happy end. Under a general theory of everything that gets hold of the flying concept of illusion, all can get blurred and inconsistent: madness can be envisaged as wisdom, palaces can be bombed as flaming, nasty dragons seem to look out of the windows.

Tragedy…maybe what happened to Rodrigo O’Sullivan as his brother watches him coming down like a fallen bird from the high of the Twin Towers…what else? Why Rod? Why at that time, at hat place?

Tragedy that’s what could be called the last drive of despair for Big – the Brazilian Formula 1, cousin of Rod O’Sulivan – who upon the news from New York…his little daughter…Well, he saw no other way out but speeding up his car for the last time.

Tragedy, also, that’s what could be said about Claudio’s fatal accident in Mozambique’s capital – cut in full blossom, his graduation as an MD just some months away!

Some tragedies or high charged dramas and suffering lives are visibly caused by some extreme organizations: Missu’s father becomes a widower and eventually kills himself due to the relentless fanaticism of ETA’s hit men. Rod’s uncle who had just sought refuge under the cassock of his brother – the secretary of Cardinal Neves of Salvador – thinking that he had found a shade against IRA’s fury…

Happy ends? Well, let’s see: Missu’s grandmother crippled by old age and grief, under the roof that belonged to generations of noble and courageous soldiers in the old Roman town of Bracara Augusta, passes away, her rosary and her shaking hands holding her beautiful princess still asking her for a sibling…

Not far from there, in other old Roman site called Aquae Flaviae, when Pablo, after forty something years on the hide due to the rules and prejudice of the Establishment, comes up to face his first Sheba - Rod’s granny who first had taken him in her arms, baptised him, brought him up like a son - she is half blind, half insane and apparently, like the other few remnant dwellers of the village, keeps calling him Rod.

Any happy end at all? Can we call it a happy end to the old couple Missu and Pablo making their will to their goddaughter Gisela? Or is it a better happy end if one just concentrate on old Pablo taking refuge under the shade of a tree at Old Brompton Cemetery, his rucksack filled with a piece of cheese and a couple of tins? No happy ends, no! Just a happy toast from a happy old man, a long-life wish to the well being of old rocky Gaia – our Mother Earth, our heritage, our platform for any further roaming through the skies.

May 1, 2006

The author of Cometa-Last Queen of Sheba

image004.jpg

At sunset, early 1982, somewhere in my country near the border of Zimbabwe – My Quijote and I… and our lovely MITSUBISHI GALANT

Palomita



Souvenirs from my grandparents … granny should be 97 today!

15.09.2040 - Gisela

Cometa - I

PRESENTATION

Preface

                                     Sheba

                                           Salomon

                                                   Gisela

Prologue

After I graduated in journalism and languages in 2034, I travelled around the world a lot and didn’t much bother about Universities, literature, family albums or close-to-heart memoirs.

Then, around two years ago, almost immediately after my grandma died, in an apparently inexplicable turn of whims and fortune, I decided to come back to London. I had been in London before. It had taken me six months to get my Certificate in Advanced English. Then, back in London without a definite purpose apart from trying to brush away my sorrow, I decided to register as a mature student on a modular of Psychology and Sociology at London Metropolitan University. My grandfather had studied Languages and Psychology at LMU from 1999 till 2003. Studying there came to my mind so suddenly and instinctively and as some sort of ultimate soothing effect…that, whatever the academic outcome, any awards… wouldn’t greatly matter. There wasn’t any clash with my freelance journalism. Studying part time left me with time and a chance to manoeuvre. It sounded perfect!

Reading about trends and personalities I decided to choose for my project a theme that caught my attention the moment I read it from a list - Quest for happiness.

Initially all my mental effort, the first couple of notes, bibliography, and plans…was directed to developing something like a long essay. I had to establish a thesis, carry out assessments, and study as many statistics as possible… Finally I was expected to come up with something like a clear picture with more or less defined lines about human experience and all the dramas that appear in any life. I also thought that I was expected to come up with conclusions about some apparent variations along the scale of HAPPINESS. And I also would be expected to access how powerful or influential some of these agents such as: Age, Ambience, Food, Health, Intelligence, Jobs, Luck, Relationships, Sex, Skills, Traditions…could be as to trigger those apparent variations. Actually, how far can each one of these ingredients push us forward or pull us back when it comes to determine the real force of any detail, as far as the analysis of human actions is concerned? Or, should it all rather be envisaged as a question of LUCK…THE STARS… Or is it simply a question of persistence – where there’s a WILL there’s a way?

My task looked very arduous indeed! And I also had to escape the temptation of the dreams, the para-psychological, the spiritual, the religious, the philosophical, transcendental…the spirit, the soul were high season game for my incipient skills.

Facing so many difficulties I decided instead to consider humankind and the most consistent, relentless quest of all human efforts – happiness – as something incarnated. I had to look for characters I could look in the eye or have a chat with. Happiness in itself is a concept that detaches humans from other

Inhabitants of the planet. Even the most sophisticated primates don’t seem to have targets such as worrying about the after death, not to mention artistic expression, fashion, and history. Our so-called cousins – the primates – certainly haven’t ceased performing the same juggling and acrobatics for thousands of years whereas we, the newest siblings of homo sapiens, seem to be addicted to things such as styles, trends, fashions, sports, awards, cults, registers…history. We don’t seem to end our wishes after our bellies are full. We don’t seem to be especially happy because we feel fit and are surrounded by our siblings. Unlike other species we have special needs such as building palaces and digging cemeteries…

I decided not to concentrate my efforts on these singular excelling qualities or depressing predicaments of the human race, in themselves - dry and detached as some uncompromising paragraphs from a manual of psychology or a biological sample under the microscope. I also eschewed the slippery path of spirit and soul as the central subject of scientific analysis. I decided for some flesh and blood human, a specimen, a paradigm, and a guide for my study, er…the normal man!

Starting from the premise that there’s no such a thing as the normal man, I had notwithstanding to try and find that paradigm, my model…

Pablo was the name that first came to my mind. I had met half a dozen of them: Pablo in Mexico City, Pablo in Los Angeles, Pablo in Frankfurt, Pablo in Paris… And then there came Pablo from London.

As early as I can remember from early childhood, I called the latter "padrinho¹ and his wife Missu as madrinha"². The brightest and earliest memory I have of godfather – I was probably 5 – is of a rather tall man, grey beard, fairly receding hair line, cascading, roaring laughter when people asked him about his secret about keeping himself fit like that, at seventy years of age:

-Quite simple! – roared godfather’s vibrant, strong voice. At night I’m gone and then, gleaming in the moonlit top of the chestnut, Cometa comes through the window and stays with me. Together we go to the other side of Memoryland. When Aurora comes, my Cometa flies away leaving me there, facing my day, just my day, nothing more. What else? Ah! I also learned how to sit in with the pace of Mother Earth. I’m not in a hurry to get to somewhere special. Er…the day will come for me to leave. It’s granted! Why rush? People just pretend to be busy. And if they can’t find something to do they go mad. I’m the opposite. I prefer the other way round. Nothing to do? I’m happy! I can keep busy and happy, mouth open, wondering throughout the hills like I was a little boy pulling the tail of my Cometa"

Things were not as simple as that. Godfather was very controversial indeed! It came to my mind that he had a real new way, a new light, and a new focus to look at the world. Somehow, I was in front of the most difficult person to understand. His approaches to many issues of human life, his own behaviour, and, his life…In my mind, I tried to figure it out what the idea of happiness could be for godfather. Once I was talking about that with godmother. What she told me then, conveyed some images of a detached, easygoing, free, male human being. Yet, at same time, it wasn’t complete alien to me the hidden part of the stage. Like certainly everyone else, Pablo was not immune to despair and to those invading, erosive, nihilistic ideas that in quite a number of cases lead to suicide. Taking things from the angle of happiness, all about godfather could be considered in the opposite direction. Almost any detail about him sounded out of the beat. His childhood was marked by a fatherless status. I knew that it was a well-kept secret that even godmother didn’t know. His brother Rod who had died in New York’s Armageddon of September 11, 2001 shared this secret about godfather’s progenitor. About his mother, nobody ever knew where the little beautiful gypsy who gave birth in the hills could be hiding as soon as she recovered enough to sneak away.

It had been a very heavy and disturbing tag what came upon baby Pablo, not helping much really in the way to a happy development. With these considerations about people’s birth, the very beginnings of each human life, instinctively came to my mind the very question about the element, ingredient, detail, must, conditio-sine-qua-non for a happy life – happiness! Somewhere, as a marking for my readings, I had a little postcard someone had sent me for my birthday. There it was a sentence: …all we need to make ourselves really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

-I got it! I got it!

At least I was convinced that the sentence from Charles Kingster explained it all. But it was just a flying moment of certainty. Second thoughts over this subject as it came to my consideration on the stage of life - on the streets, family dramas, political farces and all literary arrangements about all possible sagas human beings can get into - made me come back to the story of my grand parents and their friend Pablo with all his acquaintances, involvements, dreams, efforts, illusions and delusions.

Godfather’s childhood developed er…as a relatively normal one. At 12, before the local vicar and Dona Martha decided to send him to the seminar, young Pablo had made two very special friendships, which would haunt him forever. Firstly, there was Cometa. Godfather would refer to her as to his very soul, inseparable, intimate…as if she was his very, same self. Secondly, by the time Pablito had finished the last of Grammar School there was Natalie, a little gypsy, wild, beautiful…much like his own mother.

For a smashing majority of those who knew him, Pablo was far from a normal man. As a child I would love to be with him and obviously would never go to the analysis of oddities and particularities. Later, my concepts of normality were tailored according to the social frames of law, morals, religion, tradition…And,

then, that’s where godfather would appear singular: His approaches and his behaviour had been moulded by unique patterns.

Thinking about godfather, once I tried to get deeper into his childhood, adolescence, and, as a young student, too. Had he been really happy? What kind of existential track had developed until this stage of godfather’s personality that seemed to be something permanent, something attained as a natural development of one’s character. That at least was what I would be inclined to think about developmental psychology: Eventually, human beings come to a point of their play where they can’t but behave all right - be wise, saints, wizards, happy human beings. Then, later, seeing social diversities, developmental winding, tormented tracks and millions of different responses - as many as human beings - under a much brighter light, it seemed very hard to understand the way to happiness. In a wider sense, it was human life in itself as a concept in three different dimensions what appeared to be my puzzle. On one hand there I had the biological side of life, very apparent indeed in flora and fauna, developing into more and more er… perfection, complication, simplicity? What is the real meaning of evolution? Are humans the very top, the tip of the evolutional harrow? On the other hand, there was the psychological issue: minds, characters, personalities, memories, logics, history, mental states, all moving in the space-time fluid of evolving consciousness. Third – impossible to ignore it – the philosophical, transcendental: beliefs, worshipping, promises, love, happiness, all harrowing to an out of the space-time common concept, er…eternity, the otherness.

Then, lately, in spite of not being able to see much of godfather and godmother (they lived in Salvador and I had a fairly stable situation in Lisbon), a special interest developed in me for browsing through all the family files and photo albums. As granny would put it, godfather had been considered as one of the family from the very day they met by middle 90s, in London. Granny had a word of comfort for every troubled soul, a natural remedy, a healthy tisane, the correct massage for every sore muscle. In the kitchen she was unsurpassable. She was the cleanest, the most sensible and sensitive.

From all my browsing through my family’s albums and memoirs I could conclude that before Pablo and his wife became my godparents, they had become part of the family due to a series of coincidences – destiny, as some would put it. It was in London, from late 1980’s until around the end of the 20th century hat this special friendship developed. Godfather had come from Paris. There, as he used to say, he had experienced all the illusions and delusions of life. He had become prepared to embrace the philosophy of the day. Godfather was marvelled with granny’s saga. And both had a tooth for this part of life that touches the occult. Initially, some customers thought that godfather and granny had an affair…

Time flies. As an adolescent I wouldn’t give it much importance. Then, after my teens I became more interested about family. And lately it developed into a sort of an obsession. They say that it’s a sign of old age. But for me it’s an

inexplicable urgency of continuation; it’s the call of life’s cycle. For some inhabitants of the planet, this cycle seems to be the 24 hours that go from the Aurora with the split of the egg of life to the expiring moment before the following dawn. That’s the cycle of many butterflies. They inspired grandma and godfather to create the philosophy of the day.

By the time grandma passed away and my godparents came from Brazil, it was this philosophy what kept my mind busy. It was then that I became really obsessed with those albums, letters and yellowish folders in my dad’s loft. When most of this documentary and literary stuff was still with grandma I wouldn’t much bother. She had brushed and tied everything out of those trunks in her bedroom before she passed all the stuff to dad. Dad didn’t seem really interested in all those stories of a past that, as he said, couldn’t bring him anything really worth the trouble of dusting it off

"Bits of poetry and saudosismo doentio; ¹ not much more than that!

And dad would conclusively let me to tide up all the mess out from his office and take all as my possession. It was then that some light was shed on me about the big changes that had taken place since the last days of the second millennium. Some concepts have been completely overturned: what would be considered healthy started to be envisaged as dangerous – cigarettes, for example! What would be considered taboo – sex, for example – turned out to be considered a very special, very important unit of psychological studies.

Pablo! I liked the name. It was full of memories: In Los Angeles, my favoured young artist… just pals, nothing else! In Paris, he was from Barcelona, not just Pablo… Pau was his real name, but who would care about Iberian details like provincial nuances? For me, for everybody, he was Pablo the painter, the singer…

Not much different from godfather: born in Portugal, baptised as Paulo Jesus Lopez and as such registered in all his papers. However, nobody has any memory about him to be called by any name other than just Pablo.

First reason why Pablo appears to have been called just that must be due to the fact that nobody knew – or at least nobody would like to say anything – about Pablo’s father. About his mother all knew that it was a young beautiful gypsy girl belonging to that clan of travellers who had made their head quarters at CABEZOS – Rocks - up in the hills encircling the valley of Aquae Flaviae in the Northern border of Portugal and Spain. Not really a big fuss, though, about the fact that Pablo’s mother was a poor gypsy girl who wouldn’t dare say who the father of his baby was. And eventually she disappeared from the town leaving his baby with Dona Martha.

Dona Martha’s husband – sturdy, old Don Lionel Lopez – had suddenly and mysteriously died in the hills, nine months or so before the gypsy girl had his baby.

As there seemed to exist a well-hidden secret about Pablo’s father and it also seemed to be a forbidden matter, all went round in rumours. Dona Martha had taken care of the baby and would tell anybody that he would be brought up as Rod’s brother.

As Rod’s brother that’s how Pablo has always been known. But he wasn’t. Efigenia and her husband – a British officer – had both died in a car accident one year before Pablo was born. By that time Rod should be 3.

In the village, by the time Pablo was at college, nobody would question the current story about Pablo being the son of a red whose girl friend had come across the border, flying from Franco’s Falangistas in the aftermath of bloody Civil War. The girl had eventually been put under the protection of Don Lopez…

True or false, the story had been successful enough for little Paulo de Jesus to be called just Pablo.

The second development in Pablo’s life to justify his follow-up name was the coincidence when he finished Humanities at 16 years of age. His Congregation decided to send the novices to Spain. It was easy official procedures and a short journey by train from Lisbon to Salamanca.

And, there we have Pablo at 23 years of age. He had finished Philosophy and Theology. A letter of approval from Father General in Paris for him to be ordained as priest was the final requirement. Instead, an order came for Pablo to be placed at La Maison Mère. Arguably, that should be due to the fact that Pablo had been caught up involved in some student leftist movements in Lisbon.

Young Pablo didn’t change much to the conformist side while studying for his doctorate in Canonical Theology at Sorbonne. He loved that: the scholar ambience, student protest marches… And there it came the Student’s Revolution of 1968. Pablo was caught involved again and finally expelled from the Congregation.

Eventually Pablo, as a private tutor of Spanish and French, got involved with Natalie, a Parisian second generation from Maurice who one way or other (I’m still unsure about the real story) seems to be the last straw for Pablo to cross the Channel by the end of 1986.

Strange character indeed! That’s what one can tell of godfather Pablo. Strange too is the word applicable to what I came across when a couple of winters ago I came from London for my granddad’s funeral, less than one year after grandma had passed away. There was half a trunk of folders, diaries, and notes dating back to 1998. There were some references to godfather’s diaries, which he tore by late 1990’s. The only person who would boast the honour of having red them was grandmother whom godfather called Sheba. Those special attentions to grandmother were the last drop in Missu’s ego. Some of these notes from granddad’s folders were a bit of an eye opener on top of what I had collected from grandma’s.

It was in the ambience of Pablo’s Café that the idea of Last Queen of Sheba appeared, although it’s not quite clear how. It seemed commonly accepted that it was after godfather heard grandma’s colourful but afflicted wanderings that the idea started to gain body. Then, before the Millennium was over, there was a sort of another legend on top of the legend itself.

Upon my discovery of family folders and old albums, in Lisbon with following curiosity regarding some strange characters, who started to appear familiar, some dispersed bits of godfather’s λογια ¹ would come to my mind now and then. Once he had just arrived with godmother from one of their voyages from the New World. They had their own flat in Lisbon and for some weeks we saw much of each other. A warm September in Lisbon we were breakfasting and there it came a very characteristic, poetic, sudden explanation about his feelings:

-A sense of great contentment and immense gratitude for life that’s what I feel for each day my eyes open upon. And then, when night comes I feel wondering for the next voyage. That’s where my enthusiasm stems from: this perpetually repeated wonder of the day. Happy is the butterfly! In the morning she opens the wings for the day; when the night comes, it’s the farewell – nothing more, nothing less than the waiting for the dawn.

Upon this recall from the great master – as I considered it to be the case of my padrinho - I worked hard on those materials that covered almost a century. I wished to celebrate godfather and all his entourage for their wonder in front of the Universe and the mystery of human soul. Their faith, their love, their hope - their hope for a happier day - that’s what Last Queen of Sheba seemed to be inspired from.

I must confess that from all the treasure of folders I found and after much talk with my father I hesitated many times regarding the scripts I ought to choose and the order to present them. After a bit of thinking I decided that it could be arbitrary. In fact, all those scripts focussed in the same direction: the mystery of human life and the most inexplicable human quest for happiness. It was a whole subject that involved a sort of a jump of faith. It wasn’t something that one could acquire as a consequence of any hard studying or as a normal sequence of any degree from any Faculty. Psychology as a science had never taught me about the way to deal with mysteries. However, from those dormant papyrus and souvenirs I got the urge to get to the mountains, listening to the rocks and wait for the result: faith, openness, understanding, consciousness, love…

My godfather as a doctor theologicus could read Greek, Hebrew and German apart from his absolute mastering of French and Spanish. Godmother got addicted to him, as she would mention sometimes, when she elected him as her private tutor of French in late 1980’s, in London. Upon one of our long conversations when he came to Lisbon in winter to have a break from the singular hard winter of the northern mountains, I remember asking him about science and legend in Bible. Then, he started from the Genesis, many legends from Middle East and different parts of the World. After that he came to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the likelihood of the historical support… From there, godfather went on talking about many technicalities on biblical exegesis and he came to the myth of salvation. I was somehow shocked because for someone who received a medium Christian education – like in my case - Salvation was just Jesus Christ and…full stop.

Not capable of fully understanding all the matter I had in my hands, I did my best as an organiser, word processor and at certain point a translator. I also had to hide some of the true characters. Some of them I knew them personally and most of them my dad had been conversant with. Hence my decision to hide most characters under a fictional name. The only name I kept in its full historical existentiality was my father’s cousin Claudio. This second-degree cousin of mine should be now 67 hadn’t a stupid accident cut his life full of promise when he had just finished his studies at Maputo’s Faculty of Medicine.

Last Queen of Sheba, as I could understand it from the scripts I discovered in my dad’s loft should ultimately have to do with some sort of explanation of humans struggle to stay alive and the relentless pursuing of happiness. King Solomon wrote the Song of Songs as a memory of his adolescent love and as the waving glimpse of this passionate, blinding wave. Tahaj Mahal built the most magnificent palace of his time to celebrate his beloved Sheba – the memory, the hope, the promise of happiness. Godfather, like many human fellows seemed to have reasons enough to give up. Like old King Solomon he could have cried to the sky in protest:

What is the reason for this wandering in the desert? Why keep going on suffering, struggling against a hostile world? What is life but illusion and despair?

Godfather not only could cope with the apparent, complete failure that his life seemed to be, but also managed to achieve an enchanting, uplifting influence around him. Granny and grandpa had great admiration for Pablo. And from his side, he had them in the highest regard. He called grandpa Quixote and granny The Queen.

London – January 20, 2041

SHEBA

"… Voici que la jeune femme est enceinte et enfantera un fils et elle lui donnera le nom de Emmanuel. De miel il se nourrira et sachera choisir entre le bien et le mal.

Isaiah 7, 14-15

After infinity of years, there came Γαια as the most beautiful daughter of Father Κοσµοσ, who on his turn came out from the infiniteness of the Great Chaos.

Γαια was meant to be grandmother to a great generation of warriors, seers and sages.

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For millions of years life on Earth was smooth, terrestrial, simple and paradisiacal: no such things as sophisticated theories of origins, relationships… just mother Earth and her