Cleopatra VII meets Paul Bunyan

Chaz Pallas

Cleopatra wearily arrived at her plush private palatial pyramid after two weeks away at the semi-annual All Pharo Dessert Orgy. “Such a drag,” she moaned, “nothing but sex, gluttony, sex gluttony and more sex and still more gluttony until I couldn’t remember which night it was and whether I was expected to appear dressed or undressed.”

She threw herself in abject exhaustion onto her golden Queeny Chaise adorned with 53 silk pillows gifted to her by the Great Kahn. He visited her one evening with 300,000, mounted warriors straggling behind after they had finished pillaging Baghdad as well as The Silk Road again. Kahn left the next morning with a noticeable smile on his face just as the last 150 thousand straggling warriors were arriving only to turn around again and follow Kahn away toward another pillage.

Working for the Great Kahn was exhausting with a constant coming and going and never leaving horseback. The older warriors kiddingly joked that they were more familiar with their horse’s bodies then they were with their wives. “What’s a wife,” asked a younger soldier who was one of the Kahn’s elite guards since he‘d been seized for service at age 5. He was answered with derisive chuckles. The work of being one of Kahn’s warriors was either boring or dangerously exciting and the rewards from pillaging were enormous. Most warriors had two or three horses trailing behind them packed with booty.

“Get me some peeled grapes please,” asked the queen of Mustxa her 7-foot-tall Nubian slave girl with a shaved head, gold teeth and legs longer than a camel’s, but shapelier, and with less hair.

Cleo, we can call her that while dropping the formality of dealing with royalty since she has long since shuffled off this mortal coil...mortal coil...strange metaphoric phrase that...

“Can’t my queen.” answered the loyal Nubian lady servant.

“What do you mean can’t, are we out of grapes? Get the steward here immediately. How could we run out of gra...”

“We have grapes my queen, but no one to peel them.”

“We have two hundred slaves in the basement to peel grapes...pick ten at random, execute them and get rest peeling. Now! Go! And bring back peeled grapes.”

“The slaves are all gone.”

“Gone! gone where?”

“While you were away, your majesty, some strange itinerant wanderer named Moses, came by. He had bull rushes in his hair and was carrying two stone tablets. He told the slaves there was a better life for them, ‘Somewhere, beyond the sea.’ They all left with him singing and walked into the sea.”

“Walked into the sea! They drowned themselves?”

“No, my Queen. The sea parted for them.”

“What? The sea parted. Are you a meshuggener?’

“No, my Queen, I saw it.Moses on the other side, almost to the edge singing “Waiting for thee, beyond the sea...”

“Captain, off with her hairless head! Sea parted, singing, I want a damn peeled grape...NOW!...Never mind captain, I’m just weary and have no grapes.”

Of course she relented on Mustxa’s sentence. Quietly, to herself, while awaiting the arrival of the grapes, Cleopatra murmured that the world’s gone off the edge and drowned in the Styx.

Mustxa glided over, still possessed of a head, balancing a golden bejeweled platter piled high with plump, dew-speckled grapes, her footsteps barely a whisper against the cool alabaster tiles.

Cleopatra watched the lazy drift of a sandstorm beyond a lattice window, the desert’s swirl echoing the chaos of being a ruler. Outside, the parade of camels, elephants, and increasingly eccentric foreign dignitaries seemed endless, each bearing tokens of far-off wonders, or, in the case of the last ambassador, a suspiciously oversized ox yoke.

“You know, Mustxa,” Cleopatra mused, rolling a grape between lacquered fingertips as she stretched her overused shapely aching legs across the pillows and slowly peeled the fruit and spit the skin into the river, “after so many conquests and banquets and midnight philosophical debates with that insufferable mathematician, I wonder what it might be like to host someone truly different—someone not so easily dazzled by my obvious beauty, my overabundance of treasures, my wit, or my collection of scandalous hieroglyphs.”

“Perhaps,” Cleopatra said, fixing her gaze on the horizon as the peculiar silhouette of a huge, larger than life, man and what looked like a blue (blue?) ox approached out of the haziness of the sandstorm, “the gods are finally sending me a new diversion!”

Paul Bunyan, with Babe faithfully following, entered the sanctum of the inner private palatial garden of Cleopatra VII.

“Nice place you got here.”Paul said in a subtle silky slightly melodic voice, so surprisingly soft for such a big man. He had easily passed over a dozen walls and numerous awe- struck guards to reach the queen ensconced on 51 silken pillows while the two remaining ones covered parts of her strategic welcoming nakedness, “Though it is a bit arid,”

“You’ll get used to it, big fella. Would you care for a liquid papaya refreshment to wash away the weary grit of your travels?” Cleo said amazed at his effrontery while walking in unexpected, uninvited and without a word or sign of paying any respect to royalty.

“So kind, and perhaps a gallon or two for Babe, my big beautiful blue ox,”

Cleo was about to order the refreshments when Mustxa appeared with the requested drinks and lingering while wantonly eyeing the newly arrived giant.

“That will be all Mustxa”, Cleo said while noticing Mustxa’s fascination with Paul. “I said that will be all!!”

Mustxa drifted off in a tantalizing, inviting hip swaying way, while Cleo said to Paul trying to get his attention off her tall bald, gold toothed, leggy slave. “Tell me about your travels.”

“Many tales there, but one recent occurrence is particularly interesting and perhaps of interest to you based on my observations since arriving in your glorious kingdom.”

“What could you possibly see in all your wanderings that surpasses this place, which by the way, has a Mustxa and of course me,” she purred as she shifted provocatively trying her best to get the giant’s attention onto her and not a mere bald slave.

“I’ll tell you and you be the judge.” He rose and commenced relating his yarn of one of the seven wonders of the world.

“Once, long ago I went walking and my feet shod in these size 93 XX boots made indents into the soft earth. Anon the indents became lakes such as Superior, Hudson’s, Black and Caspian.Flowing from Superior was a swift river, later called the Niagara. As the river flowed it meandered as rivers sometimes do and carved out other lakes, such as Huron and Ontario to name a few. Downstream from Ontario there was an escarpment that..”

“A what?”

“An escarpment is a fault in the earth that can cause elevation differences between adjoining lands if purposefully or accidentally misaligned.”

“OK.” Cleo slowly said, not really understanding but willing to listen to this amazing huge man.

“Well, I noticed that the Niagara was trying to get toward the St. Lawrence River and eventually the sea but was blocked by various geographical features. So, I stomped my foot exactly right and the escarpment developed and lo and behold a monstrous waterfall was created that is considered one of the wonders of the world. All this with a foot stomp!”

“Interesting, but of what use is that here in my realm, might I ask?”

“See that river out there in which you throw all your grape skins and other unwanted items?”

“Yes the river Elin, what of it?”

“It flows the wrong way.”

“It is as it has always been, flowing south.”

“Exactly it is draining the Mediterranean Sea, flowing south and depositing garbage and salt which ruins farmland.”

“And?”

“I can reverse the flow, thus restore farmland and wash out decades of trash washed into the wastelands.”

“My Corps of Engineers has developed plans to fix the river’s course and even implemented some of them all, sadly, to no avail.”

“I can fix that problem and get the river flowing in the right direction into the sea.”

“OK, big guy, go for it!”

***

The next morning after a wonderous evening filled with numerous delights spent with Paul, Cleo and Mustxa the three arose, collected and rearranged the 53 silken pillows left by the Kahn which had been scattered over the entire palace and surrounding palatial grounds and gardens and almost to the river Elin during the previous night’s exuberances.

Then Paul gathered Babe and his ax and set out for the mouth of the river in the distant swampy lowlands.Cleopatra VII and Mustxa, aching from the previous night’s exuberances and unable to move yet, sat in awe as Paul left whistling a happy tune. “If he doesn’t come back, Mustxa, it’s off with your head, for real this time!” Cleo warned.

“Oh, he’ll be back, I guarantee it,” Mustxa sighed.

Once at the mouth of the river, Paul tested the land with his ax and found the soil able to handle some rearrangement. Immediately he landed a monstrous, earth-shattering blow with the great ax and stood aside as the released marshland loaded with generations of detritus from the kingdom roared back whence it had come. The gushing waters, grape skins and muck of centuries stormed down the riverbed and roared into the Mediterranean forming a tsunami which gathered strength as it rushed westward extinguishing Mt Etna and flowing over the pillars of Hercules into the Atlantic inundating and submerging Atlantis forever.

Portions of the grape skin loaded tsunami continued across the Atlantic, finally subsiding in what is now known as the Saragossa Sea. Even today, if you search carefully you may find grape skins once discarded by none other than Cleopatra VII.

Cleopatra stood in awe as the river roared past her into the sea. ‘I’ll rename this The Nile since it now flows the other way and is no longer the river Elin.”

Mustxa stood and simply ran her tongue slowly over her lips in anticipation of the return of Paul Bunyan.

In the distance, through the mist of the roaring river a giant with an ox by his side was seen approaching with an eager look of anticipation on his broad, tanned face.

Don’t drink the water!