Gilgamesh Page 13

Tati sat sombrely, her eyes distant, her hands trembling a little. Tati had survived the Turkish Massacres, the Great War, the Communist purges of the thirties. She had lost everyone. Her only son had disappeared to the NKVD in Yerevan three years ago.

  Edith was quiet. If England was at war then she supposed that Australia was also. War for her country was her father’s story. Young men in slouch hats and khaki marching to the ships, their faces eager and innocent. To be slaughtered and maimed on the other side of the world. At this very moment boys from her district would be enlisting. Dave Robertson, Bob Riley, the Mclntyre boys. She remembered her father’s stories of the mates, the songs. Her mother talking of the bells ringing in London for the Armistice. Because, of course, their side always won. Their side was on the side of right. And now she was on the wrong side! Among strangers, behind enemy lines! How could she ever go home now? She was trapped: for the first time she admitted to herself that without Aram she had no place here.

  She thought of Frances at the kitchen table reading about the war in The West Australian. Ada wandering around, indifferent, though war had taken her brother and given her a husband and a new country and a life of despair.

  She thought of Aram as a crop-haired recruit, even harder to find now. And Leopold, Fat Leopold, unimaginable in uniform. Did he ever get her letter? Did he know she was here? Was he still in the Middle East? Not very far away but across impenetrable borders. She wanted to tell him about this new dilemma. She was always writing to him in her head.

  September 23rd, 1940

  Dear Leopold,

  It’s the beginning of my second autumn here. I recognise the sound of the dry leaves rattling in the street. The poplars are yellow in the park. Soon they will be bare. I know now what winter is like here. Winter and war seem to go together. The chill never leaves your bones. There have been fuel cuts. We collect twigs and branches in the park and cook on the little iron stove in Tati’s room. There is never enough food.

  What else is there to talk of but war? And yet what use is talk? The focus of the day is the news. All the neighbours gather in the corridor below to listen to the wireless in one family’s apartment. H. comes back upstairs with the report. Europe is falling over like a pack of cards. Now the Luftwaffe is bombing London. I hope Aunt Irina is safe. Does Australia still exist? There is never any mention of it here.

  I have not found A. At least I know that he has always been a survivor. I still think he is around. One night I could have sworn I heard his voice out in the corridor. I ran out but there was no one, just the echo of footsteps on the stairs. N. says I’m crazy. All Romantics go crazy in the end,’ she says.

  I am always writing letters to you, Leopold. I don’t know why. Is it because you always listened to what I said? The little crazy girl I was. Because you are my cousin, and blood is everything in times of war? Because you know A. really does exist? This letter I will send. At least there is no shortage of paper or pens in Tati’s room. Do you know why? Because she is a poet, a famous Armenian poet. Her name is—no, I had better not write it. I asked her if this was why everybody loves her. Tati said no, she is loved because she has lost everything and thus she is a symbol of an Armenian. She said she is not very famous because she has not written many poems. I asked her why not. Because she has had too many lovers, she said.

  Jim is two and a half now. Most of his words are Armenian. He is called Dmitri here, the name of your uncle. All day Tati speaks to him in Armenian. ‘Hokeet seerem,’ she tells him. That means: I love your soul. I can understand a lot more now.

  I’m writing to you though I know this letter may never reach you and that there cannot be a reply. It’s too dangerous to give my address. H. says letters to or from foreign destinations would be opened at the post office. He’s going to post this for me on his travels. He would post a letter to Australia too, but that feels like a lifetime away. Please tell Aunt Irina we are well and living a respectable life. Send her my love.

  Leopold, I hope you are alive. Your cousin, E.

  Hagop was often away now. It was a good time to buy cloth, he said. People in wartime panicked, sold everything while they could. He went to Baku, crossed the Caspian Sea, travelled by camel train to the bazaars of Bokhara and Samarkand and Tashkent. He spread out wondrous reams of silk in royal colours across Nevart’s bed.

  ‘Who will buy this?’ said Nevart, in English, so Edith could hear. ‘You are crazy. In a war silk is for parachutes. You buy cheap, yes, but you don’t sell at all.’

  Hagop was thinner, more tattered, smoking cigarettes down to the butt in his small stained tapering fingers. Nevart’s criticisms affected him not at all. He was endlessly good-natured, though distracted, like a traveller who has not really come home. He rolled the cloth up expertly and stacked it with the other bolts and bales against the wall by the door. Half their room was used as a storehouse for cloth, the Essayan family inheritance, Hagop called it. After a week or two he set off again, this time on his old route, to Tiflis, and the ports of the Black Sea, and a day in Istanbul. Turkey was prevaricating, he reported, waiting to see which side was winning before entering the war.

  When Hagop was away, Edith’s duties increased three-fold. Every morning she ran between the two rooms, Jim following, helping Tati dress and then Nevart. Nevart’s voice rang out every few minutes. Ee-dit, pleez! Edith helped her with the long print dresses that she wore, flowery prints from the Essayan inheritance, pulling them down over her startlingly voluptous breasts, her muscular torso, her poor withered legs. She brushed Nevart’s long thin hair that ran in ripples over her shoulders. It was dyed dead black. The accident had turned her prematurely grey. While Edith ran back to Tati, Nevart wheeled herself to the window and peering in a hand mirror, outlined her eyes with kohl. Her eyes frightened Jim. He screamed whenever Nevart looked at him. Nevart raised her arm and jangled her gold bracelets at him. He beat on the door for Edith to come and save him.

  ‘Nevart, please, he is easily upset in the morning.’

  Nevart did not tolerate even mild criticism. ‘Don’t fool yourself, Ee-dit. He is upset all the time. He is always afraid. You must know, Ee-dit, he is a very strange child.

  ‘You know what we do in Armenia with children like Jim when they grow a little older?’ Nevart mused, as Edith carried her down the stairs. ‘We send them to Industrial School.’ Edith set her down in her wheelchair with a thump and ran back up the stairs for Jim. Once she forgot to put on the brake of the wheelchair and came down to find Nevart being picked up from the front steps by concerned passers-by. Tears ran black down her cheeks, she was a poor broken doll in her flowery dress, half old woman, half child. Nobody understood they were tears of rage. ‘There are no accidents,’ she hissed, as Edith, apologising at every step, wheeled her off down the street. ‘Only jealous hearts.’ She spoke loudly in English though Hagop had warned her to speak only in Armenian in the streets.

  But when they reached the markets Nevart made an entrance like a queen, waving gaily as Edith, trailing Jim, pushed her wheelchair down the aisles. In the markets, the shouka, a great dark basement hall, farmers came down from the hills to sell apples, pears and cherries, walnuts, tomatoes, eggplants, brandy, home-cured tobacco and stacks of lavash bread. Here knives and scissors were sharpened, medicinal herbs dispensed, fortunes told. It was warm and communal in the shouka, a refuge from Yerevan’s dour, business-like streets.

  The cloth stall was set up in a dark corner, displaying only a fraction of the Essayan inheritance. A day’s sale: a square of muslin for a cheesemaking. A length of navy blue serge for a schoolgirl’s uniform. Occasionally a bride fingered the silk or lace, but weddings were frugal now. How did Nevart and Hagop survive? Nevart bartered Turkish braid for kasha, and the cheapest flannelette for turnip greens. The market folk looked after her. They brought her tea and tahn, a drink made from yoghurt, and, if she sang for them, a sweet made from walnuts preserved in grape juice. She sang rarely, only once did Edith hear her. Her voice filled the sho
uka. Even the sparrows stopped twittering among the roofbeams. She sang a folk song, centuries old. She sat in her chair, her hands folded over the drum of her chest, her eyes looking upward, her head rolling from side to side. It was impossible not to relent towards her, to forgive her when she sang.

  If people gave her money she put it at once down the front of her dress, never to be seen again. After singing she was tired and liked to be wheeled home. All the way over the bumpy pavements of Yerevan she complained. ‘Ouch! Ee-dit, pleez! I wish you knew how it is to be in a wheelchair. I hope you do some day.’

  Nevart sulked when Edith left her at the market stall while she went back to Zakian Street to give Tati her lunch. Edith did not like to think of Tati too much alone. As she hurried home she sometimes thought of Frances running back to Ada.

  All day Tati sat in her chair by the balcony, and let the movement of light and dark chase across her eyes. Her only connection with the world outside was the light in the window and the strip of light under the door. She could hear the footsteps in the corridor, the apartment doors opening and closing, the ring of the metal banisters on the stairs. She knew the time of day by the shades of light, the ebb and flow of traffic, the chiming of the Post Office clock in the square.

  The first thing she asked Edith every morning was if Ararat was visible that day.

  She liked her books and her notepads to be placed on a little table by her chair. She could not see to read them. But she knew so many poems by heart, that she would suddenly break into words, reciting them to herself.

  One day when Edith came home from the markets, she found Tati had put herself back to bed. Someone had come to visit, Tati had seen the shadow of the feet beneath the door. He—the tread was masculine—had not knocked, but stood for a long time at the door. Tati had edged her way out of her chair towards the door, calling out hello, asking who was there, but the footsteps moved away. Now she lay on the bed exhausted, shivering in her shawl. Edith made her tea.

  ‘Who do you think it was, Tati?’

  ‘He walked like my son. Carefully, like someone who is always being followed. Like someone who doesn’t want to bring you trouble.’ She shook her head to herself, her eyes cloudy and inward.

  ‘Could it have been the NKVD?’

  ‘No. The steps were too—sensitive. Listen, I know those footsteps. I have heard them in the corridor before.’

  ‘Tati … could it have been Aram?’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps it was my son. That is how it is with sons. They are beautiful strangers. They are angels that sometimes fly down to visit their old mothers.’

  Perhaps Tati had agreed to take in Edith and Jim out of kindness. Or for Hagop’s sake. She was very fond of Hagop. Her face brightened when she heard his quick, uneven step. But now she said that God had sent Edith to her, and that Jim was her own soul. Nevart rolled her eyes at this but said nothing. She was always civil around Tati. Tati was smoking a long-stemmed ivory pipe and drinking her evening tot of brandy. Nevart and Edith were smoking too, fierce little Armenian cigarettes, so that a blue cloud of smoke swirled around the ceiling of the room. Jim lay on his pallet, watching the smoke clouds and the three women’s shadows on the wall. For Jim this was home, Edith thought. Three women. She had re-created what she had left.

  Edith yawned. All day she had run up and down the stairs, washed, shopped and cooked, tended bodies, emptied slops.

  ‘You are very strong,’ Tati told her.

  ‘I’m a farm girl,’ Edith said. She thought of Frances again, running through the bush back to Ada. Ada’s eyes were clear and empty, her body capering and agile, like a dried-up child’s. Thought of Ada, even of Frances, sent a pain through her so sharp she held her breath. She couldn’t afford to think about them. But sometimes she thought that as much as God had sent her to Tati, Tati had been sent to her. That somehow in looking after Tati she was making amends to Ada.

  ‘But you of course always had enough to eat,’ Nevart said. ‘Did you ever eat rats or dogs like the peasants did here during the collectivisation? The stuffing from an armchair? Grass soup?

  ‘But you’re thin like a skeleton now, Ee-dit,’ she said. ‘Of course, you are odar. Look at the King of England’s woman, Mrs Simpson. It is not the Armenian idea of beauty, I must say.’

  In Tati’s room they knew when Hagop was back because Nevart started screaming again. ‘Eshon kulukh!’ Edith heard her screech ten times a day. Donkey head. If he stumbled as he carried her down the stairs, she smacked him across the head. At the bottom, she always remembered she had left her comb or shawl and sent him back for it. Some nights Hagop escaped. There was a bar where he liked to go late to listen to music. He went to wash at the sink in the kitchen. Nevart followed him across the corridor, pulling on the wheels of her chair. ‘That’s right, my little humming bird,’ she called out, in English, so Edith would be sure to understand. ‘Make yourself beautiful. So the whores will buy you vodka. Because there is no money for vodka, Hagopdjan, you know that, don’t you? The money I make from singing is blood-money, you know that.’ Hagop calmly dried his face, pulled on his jacket, saluted Edith, kissed his wife on the cheek and departed down the stairs. ‘Where do you get your money for drink, Hagop-djan?’ Nevart screamed down the stairwell. ‘I’m curious, I really am. Or do the whores buy you drinks because they know they are safe with you?’

  She rolled her way back to her room. ‘Saint Hagop,’ she sneered at Edith. Tears poured down her cheeks. She went inside and slammed the door.

  ‘Why doesn’t Hagop ever get angry with Nevart?’ Edith asked Tati.

  ‘Because,’ said Tati, ‘he owes her something. Or thinks he does.’ She tapped her brow and shook her head.

  One spring day when Edith had taken Jim to the Twenty-Six Commissars Park, Hagop suddenly appeared. Jim ran towards him. ‘Where is Nevart?’ Edith asked.

  ‘At the markets.’ He gave his black-toothed grin. ‘I can run faster than her.’ He picked up Jim. ‘Come, I am inviting you to drink coffee with me.’

  The café was several long streets away, at the base of the hills, where the city blocks gave way to roughly-built, flat-roofed houses, thorny bushes, old cars half repaired. The start of the countryside. The café was crowded with men, many in uniform, drinking brandy, playing chess or cards, smoking and talking. Everyone turned to look at Edith and Jim. A wireless above the bar blared out Armenian music. The central room was surrounded by a warren of cubby holes concealed by shabby velvet curtains. Hagop found them a table by the doorway and sat Edith and Jim facing the room. He seemed distracted. He drank vodka with his coffee and ordered paklava, oozing honey-coloured syrup. He fed the pastries to Jim, laughing, rather theatrically Edith thought, as the syrup formed a beard on Jim’s chin. She wiped it away, told Jim to sit straight in his chair. The coffee was thick like mud, you could almost chew it. Something about the atmosphere made Edith uneasy, too selfconscious to light a cigarette. She felt watched.

  ‘You know, Edith,’ Hagop said, quietly, looking outside, ‘it is only a matter of time before Germany attacks Russia.’

  ‘What will happen then?’

  ‘The Germans will almost certainly try to reach Baku. And if they look as if they are winning, the Turks will attack from the west. And then, my dear Edith, you would be caught in a bloodbath.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘It may be better for you to leave, sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Now? Where would I go? Europe is closed off.’

  ‘There are other ways. It’s a risk, but there is Persia.’

  ‘Persia! Who do I know there? Where would I go? This is my life here now, Hagop. After all, Jim is half Armenian.’

  ‘He is also half Australian.’

  ‘Have you had news of Aram? Is that why you’re saying this?’

  Hagop shook his head. He turned away to order more coffee.

  ‘I suppose you think I’m a crazy romantic, as Nevart tells me I am. Every single day. If you mu
st know, I’m fed up with Nevart.’ The coffee was making her hands shake. She looked down at them. She felt a savage dizziness.

  When she looked up again Hagop was smiling at her. ‘Oh, Edith, if you only knew Nevart before. How brilliant she was. We call it jarbig, you know, life, wit.’

  ‘Wit at other people’s expense.’

  ‘You understand, all that power she once had, it has to go somewhere. The gift she had, that force has gone dark and crooked.’

  ‘She beats you over the head, Hagop.’

  ‘Ah, but you don’t know what it is she gives to me. Each time I have to find my balance again. Each time I struggle and each time I come through.’

  By the door two men, departing, embraced, kissed each other on the cheek. In Australia not even fathers and sons did that. What did she know of their ways, the dark men of this country? Was it her imagination, or did she hear among the conversations the name Gilgamesh?

  A waiter wiped their table. It was time to go. As they stood up she felt so strongly that she was being watched that she looked behind her. Had that curtain just swung closed? Or was it nothing but a vibration in the smoky air?

  Hagop organised an expedition to the country, to a house of a friend of his, a member of the Party. He borrowed an ancient car and strapped Nevart’s wheelchair to the roof. They all went except Tati, who said she was impossible to move, now that she was a national monument. Besides, everything she saw now was in her head. ‘But tell me how it is, hokees,’ she said to Jim. ‘Tell me about our mountains.’

  The car wheezed up the Yerevan hills onto a plateau, surrounded in every direction by giant snow-capped mountains. The poplar-lined road passed settlements of wooden houses, State farms, with ragged sheep grazing beneath cables and pylons, and, in the valleys, the smoking chimneys of factories.

  Nevart pointed out the looming peak of Mt Ara, named for Ara the Beautiful, an ancient Armenian king. An Assyrian queen fell in love with him but when he wouldn’t marry her she went to war with him. He died, and she had his body carried to the top of this mountain, where she believed he would come to life again. But he didn’t. His was an eternal sleep.