The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
I asked Gebredan two nights ago, again, to show me the inside of the
church, but again he refused. Since then he has behaved strangely, refusing
to stray far from the house, insisting that I engage a different man
for “outside work,” and remaining shut in his quarters for most of the
day. I can only assume that he has said too much to me. Whether he fears
tradition or something altogether sharper remains unclear.
My mission here, as far as I am concerned, is over. Either the Ark is
in that church or it isn’t, but the results for us are the same. Most of the
villagers—all but one, in fact—have never seen the Ark, but they believe
that it is there and behave as though it were there, which is enough to
render the question moot. It might be possible, of course, to come into
Axum with a heavily armed battalion and barrel your way into the
church. Convincing the officially atheist Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics to divert precious matériel from the front in order to obtain a
religious artifact of questionable authenticity that might not even exist
is a task that would probably outpace even your gifts of persuasion.
Besides, I think it best, for reasons beyond the material needs of the fight
against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, for reasons that a
Soviet official would call “regressive superstition” but that you and I
know by a different name, to leave Axum in blessed peace. I feel I defile it
by my presence, though I would like very much to return here under different
circumstances.
I shall return to Asmara early next week, and from there hope to be
back in Santiago by Our Lord’s birthday (though I understand that
your cultural attaché, that fat buffoon Gennady Shtarpin, insists on
referring to Christmas as “The Winter Celebration of the Workers’
Seizure of the Means of Production and the Ever-Increasing Outputs of
Collective Industry Under the Benevolent Iron Hand of Socialism”).
Yours in comradeship and warm personal friendship,
Captain Felix Armando Correa de Todos los Santos
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