Gilgamesh

  Praise for Gilgamesh:

  “A quiet stunner.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Gilgamesh takes us from a small farm in Western Australia to Soviet Armenia during World War II and back via the Middle East. Her wanderers, however, are not the male heroes celebrated in the ancient epic which provides the novel’s title, but a young woman and her child. Even the most ordinary of people, we learn, are capable of extraordinary acts of sacrifice and betrayal. Despite its wide range and large gallery of memorable characters, Gilgamesh is not a long novel, just one in which every word counts.”

  —From the Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist citation

  “A powerful literary debut with appeal to fans of [Michael] Ondaatje and [Helen] Dunmore.”

  —The Bookseller (UK)

  “At its heart, this first novel by Australian writer Joan London is about family—about sisters, lovers and sons, and the strange, strong ties that draw them together, no matter how hard they are tugged apart. … [A] captivating novel… With poignancy and restraint, London skillfully weaves together world events with personal intimacy, and blends the legend of an ancient king with the quest of a mother and her son.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “Riveting in its strangeness and immediacy, evoking with stark power a world almost inconceivably isolated and remote. Right from the start … we are in a vividly realized and elemental landscape. … London’s stark prose and command of a wonderfully maintained brooding atmosphere … make this an adventure to remember.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A small masterpiece. Beautifully balanced and restrained, it is a journey in itself.”

  —Good Reading (Australia)

  “Gilgamesh is written in a wonderfully economical prose, alternatively bristling and resonating with suggestiveness. … Entirely unsentimental and understated … [but] no less moving for this restraint.”

  —The Australian Book Review

  “[A] compelling debut novel … Personal strife and global perils combine to make Gilgamesh a remarkable study of a young woman’s most literal rite of passage, growing up, taking control of her life and refusing to be content with the narrowly constricted world she has always known.”

  —Baltimore Sun

  “Gilgamesh is haunting from the very start. … London is a master of description, creating vastly different environments out of few words Gilgamesh is full of the spirit of place.”

  —Nashville Scene

  “London writes with a deft, poetic economy that makes every page sharp and of interest… [with] detailed observation and a fine lyric poise in the telling.”

  —The Age (Australia)

  “[London’s] style is simultaneously understated and sumptuous; she illustrates with expert handling of tiny details. … Wartime Europe, an all-too-familiar setting, comes alive in all of its anxiety, uncertainty, and horror.”

  —Baltimore City Paper

  “London writes with power, vision, and poignancy. Highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “This is a writer who understands both the power of myth in our lives and the ties which bind humanity, from the heartlands of conflict to the farthest-flung reaches of the planet.”

  —The Bulletin (Australia)

  GILGAMESH

  GILGAMESH

  A Novel

  Joan London

  Copyright © 2001 by Joan London

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

  First published in Australia in 2001 by Picador, a division of

  Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This Grove Press edition is made possible by

  special arrangement with Picador

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  All reasonable attempts have been made by the author to obtain permission to quote from material known to be in copyright; any copyright holders who believe their copyright to have been breached are invited to contact Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  London, Joan, 1948–

  Gilgamesh : a novel / Joan London.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9947-8

  1. World War, 1939-1945—Armenia (Republic)—Fiction. 2. Australians—Armenia (Republic)—Fiction. 3. Gilgamesh—Appreciation-Fiction. 4. Armenia (Republic)—Fiction. 5. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 6. Storytelling—Fiction. 7. Australia—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9619.3.L62G55 2003

  823′.914—dc21

  2003042192

  Grove Press

  a paperback original imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publisher’s Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  To Geoffrey

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Above all I wish to thank Drusilla Modjeska whose great generosity and inspiring narrative vision were crucial to this book.

  Special thanks also to Susan Hampton for her acute and skilful editorial work.

  And thanks to Charlie Mann, John and Julie Lewis, Cisca Spencer and Jack London.

  I am grateful to the Eleanor Dark Foundation for a Varuna Fellowship during the early stages of this book.

  The lines from The Epic of Gilgamesh are from the translation by Andrew George (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London, 1999).

  CONTENTS

  The Clearing

  Visitors

  Flight

  Armenia

  Orphanage

  Return

  THE CLEARING

  Frank met Ada when she came to the hospital to visit the soldiers.

  It didn’t suit her. She was supposed to chat and join in sing-songs and pour tea. But she was clumsy and offhand and didn’t smile enough. She lacked the sense of charity that lit the faces of the other young women. That afternoon they were all wearing a white gardenia pinned to their coats and, as they entered, a nun-like sweetness filled the vast draughts of the room.

  It was a convalescent hospital south of London, a gloomy country house requisitioned for the duration, where the soldiers, patched-up, jumpy, bitter, tottered and prowled like ancient temperamental guests. Frank shared a room with another Australian, an artilleryman from Melbourne, who wept like a baby in his sleep. Frank suffered from insomnia so it didn’t disturb him too much. He didn’t tell the doctors about the insomnia. Some were kind, but for some reason he found himself infuriated by kindness. He craved isolation. In isolation he would cure himself.

  They were days away from Armistice. On the afternoon that Ada came, Frank had expected to be discharged, on the train to London. His leg was officially healed: he’d been waiting all week for the order. Only boredom made him come downstairs for tea.

  They should really never have met.

  They were singing around the piano, ‘Over There’ and ‘He’s Coming Home’ and ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’. The young women sang in fervid sopranos,
harmonising with the men. Most of them, Frank thought, would have lost someone, husband, sweetheart, brother, in these past years. He noticed that Ada had left the group and was looking out a window. He went and stood beside her.

  ‘A bit painful, this old stuff.’

  ‘I never learnt the words.’

  Outside was a tennis court, with the nets rolled up. Beyond it black-limbed trees held back the mist.

  ‘What are you going to do when it’s over?’ He couldn’t help looking at her gardenia, desperately lopsided, which was about to slide off the generous slope of her bosom.

  ‘I don’t know. Much the same I expect.’ She had a flat, composed way of speaking, at odds with her appearance. Her dark hair was so bushy that she had to clutch her hat when she turned to him. She had fiercely sprouting eyebrows, dead white skin, a little silken moustache. She wasn’t old, but like him, like all of them, she was no longer young. He had the odd sensation that she was the only real person in the room.

  ‘What would you like to do?’

  ‘Oh I see, you are joking. Well, I would like to go far away to a country where there will never be another war.’

  ‘That’s where I’m going!’

  ‘There is no such country!’ The gardenia dropped and she was stooping down to it. Her hat fell off, and her hair uncoiled. Everything about her seemed ready to erupt. He’d never known a woman so precarious.

  ‘There is,’ he said, crouching down beside her as she scrabbled for hairpins. ‘Come home with me.’

  He found her odd, mysterious. She had been orphaned very young, grew up living alone with her older brother. Frank thought this might be the key to her: no one had taught her to be nice. Her brother had died early in the war, at Ypres. She lived with her sister-in-law and little nephew in the top half of a house in Cricklewood. The sister-in-law, Irina, was a White Russian. There were Russian lodgers in the bottom half of the house. It was an unconventional set-up, to say the least.

  They had visitors at all hours of the day. Whenever Frank called, there would be a strange hat or cane or pair of galoshes by the stand in the hall. The visitors, men and women, were always Russian. He sat among them in the dark parlour and drank cup after cup of black tea from the brass samovar on the table. They were a lively crowd who soon forgot to speak English in front of him. Ada said little but did not seem out of place. Sometimes she played trains on the floor with her chubby nephew, her hair uncoiling down her creamy neck. Frank, a poetry reader, thought of petals falling. She hardly ever looked his way.

  She only seemed to come alive off-stage, with Irina. He heard them laughing in the kitchen, or calling out to one another down the hall. Irina called her Arda, in the Russian way. Ardour. He didn’t trust Irina. She was the opposite of Ada, tiny, worldly, elegant in her widow’s weeds. She spoke excellent English, having lived in London since 1910. The others had only recently arrived from that debacle in Russia. She was in mourning not only for her English husband, but for her younger brother left behind in Russia, killed on the Russian front. Sorrow gave her a hard edge. There was a shrewd gleam in her eyes when she talked to Frank. He judged her to be clever and domineering, not his sort of woman.

  She even dragged Ada off to the Orthodox Church with her. He found this out one Sunday when he visited, and for once there was nobody at home. One of the lodgers let him in, and insisted that he wait. Suddenly Ada ran in alone, in hat and coat, pink-cheeked from the cold. It was ridiculous, she said, standing by the door, as if continuing a conversation, as if she’d known he would be there, she didn’t understand a word of the service, she only liked the chants. She wasn’t religious, she added shyly, she was a free-thinker like her brother. This pleased Frank, because though raised strictly Methodist he had become an atheist during the war. And then still standing there, she burst out that she was tired of the gossip in the émigré community, everyone knowing your business, she was tired of it all, she wanted to go away and make a life for herself.

  Then suddenly she stopped. They had never been alone together before. She started to move towards him. They fell on one another.

  There is no wedding photograph, but a few months later, in the spring, someone took a snap of them in front of the house in Cricklewood. They are leaning against a railing, their hips both slightly crooked to the left. Both are hatless. Frank, in cricket whites and pullover, has his hands in his pockets. This is as complacent as he will ever look. Ada rests one hand on his shoulder. Her pose is languid. Already she is pregnant with the first of their two daughters. They aren’t smiling but stare evenly at the camera. They look shy and proud and private. Is it the haze of a London spring that gives a dreaminess to the scene? They are proud of their dreams. They are going to take up land in Australia. Fresh air, honest toil, taking orders from no man. Because Frank can’t lose the habit of God looking over his shoulder, he feels that the War spared him for this. He has no money but he will find a way. Meanwhile he has promised Ada plants and animals she has never seen before, light so clear you seem to swim in it.

  They feel bold and superior, like revolutionaries. They have both just turned thirty. Their passage out is booked.

  Frank joined a government scheme to open up the wilds of south-western Australia. Land, parcelled into blocks, was given to a group of twenty or thirty settlers who would initially work together to clear each home block and build each other a house. Every man was made a loan by the Agricultural Bank to get him started, repayable over thirty years. Of course, if all went well for you, you could end up owning your own land much sooner, in a matter of five or six years. The scheme was called Group Settlement.

  In Frank’s group were other ex-soldiers, English and Australian. There was an ex-butcher, ex-blacksmith, ex-grocer, even an ex-sea captain. All of them had a passion to own their own land. Each farm was 160 acres. They were drawn by ballot. This made Frank nervous. He had a Methodist’s revulsion for gambling: he trusted only his own will.

  By the time they came to live on their own block their daughters were nearly school age. A son was born but died soon afterwards, while they were still camping in a hut, waiting for their house to be built. ‘We will put this behind us,’ Frank said to Ada, to stave off his own panic. ‘We won’t speak of it again.’ He dreaded her weeping. She could go quite wildly out of control. He spoke softly. One of the Settlement women was outside at the fire, cooking dinner for them. The hut had a dirt floor and whitewashed hessian walls. He took her hand. Ada kept her eyes closed. ‘We have two fine girls.’

  Their block was the outermost, cut off from the other farms by a belt of national forest. An afterthought, tacked on at the last minute over some government drawing board. It ran just beyond the dunes of the coast into bushy hillsides ridged with granite boulders and limestone caves. Close to the beach the soil became white with limestone. Only the wattles and melaleucas kept it from blowing into sand. Even at its furthest boundary, deep in the forest, you could hear the echo of the sea. It was the least arable of the blocks, but the most picturesque.

  Their nearest neighbour was an old wooden hotel, the Sea House, built high on the escarpment to catch views over the forest to the ocean. On still afternoons Frank and Ada could sometimes hear the tock of a tennis ball and scraps of laughter from drifting guests. It was only half a mile away through the bush, but it was another world, isolated from the district, far away from the life and death struggles of the settlers. Frank despised the guests—city clerks on honeymoon—but Ada liked to take the girls with her and sit in the gardens, like a governess on a nature ramble. It was the only place with any romance in this country, she said.

  The district was called Nunderup, but until 1927 it didn’t appear on any map because there was nothing there. Then by petitions and subscriptions the settlers managed to erect a wooden hall up the road from the Sea House, for meetings and dances and concerts and the occasional picture show. The milk truck stopped there and the bus to Busselton. This was the Nunderup Hall.

  Frank and Ada, o
r the Clarks as they were known in the district, didn’t go to the dances or the pictures. They didn’t go to any church service either. They didn’t socialise with the other families in the area, the Lewises, McKays, Wards, Robertsons and Rileys. Nobody saw Ada for years at a time. When the girls went to school she turned up once or twice at the end-of-year prize-giving concerts but she didn’t help the other women with the supper. She sat in an empty row of seats, her lips flecked with saliva, nervous as a student who has failed a test. Her girls left the other children and sat on either side of her.

  Frank came to meetings in the hall as the Depression worsened and more and more farmers couldn’t repay their loans. He spoke about being indentured slaves to the government, paying blood money to open up the country for them. He was a stirring speaker, Clarkie, he used to be a schoolteacher before the War.

  He built the shed across the seasons of a year. He cut the trees down one spring when he was clearing the hill paddock. With a wedge borrowed from Bert McKay he cut them into slabs: it was a case of finding the right grain, and in the end, like skinning a rabbit, he got the hang of it. He dragged the slabs back to the home block while he still had the horse and chains. All summer they lay drying in the yellow grass. In autumn when the ground had softened, he dug a three-sided trench and stood the slabs up in it, side by side. He cut saplings for beams and poles and laid in a little hoard of corrugated iron. He hoped to roof the space before the winter rains.

  But every day there was so much else to do, and nobody to help. He was methodical in everything he did, but slow and clumsy, teaching himself as he went. Some of the other men in the group had farming experience, or had worked with their hands in former life. Practical types. Some had already built a herd up, were picking up a nice little cream cheque each month. A bit of capital helped of course. Time and again before he took the next step he’d have to stop and hire himself out. A month picking potatoes down at Albany. A week here, a week there helping others to seed, in return for the loan of a team and plough. The ten cows he was entitled to from the government (to be paid for later of course) had never thrived. The two most adventurous had broken out and fallen down a gully. Another died calving. He thought he would go into pigs. But first he needed a shelter for them.