Gilgamesh Read online

  ‘Did you visit these sites with Aram?’

  ‘Some of them, yes.’

  ‘Did you drive along this road?’

  ‘Yes. Aram took me to Aleppo. He showed me the orphanage where he grew up. That’s where I’m taking you.’

  He was always silent after he spoke of Aram. It was always she who brought his name up. And she was careful when she spoke of him, as if Leopold was the one bereaved. Not her. She didn’t know why. It was as if she had thought and thought so much about Aram that there was nothing left to think. She had mourned him a long time before she heard of his death.

  There was much that she and Leopold had not talked about yet. The jeep was noisy and they could only talk in short bursts. And at night they were too tired to do anything but sleep. Besides, she thought suddenly, Leopold didn’t talk as much as he used to. He was often quiet.

  ‘Do you still have the Gilgamesh book?’

  ‘Yes, I always carry it. It’s in my kitbag.’

  ‘Would Gilgamesh have wandered in these parts?’

  ‘He and Enkidu probably walked this very way to slay the giant Humbaba, or on another of their harrowing quests.’

  ‘What were they looking for?’

  ‘Action. Great deeds. You know, young men rushing off to fight, convincing themselves it’s for the good of their civilisation. And they were arrogant, they thumbed their noses at the gods, they wanted to make the whole world lie down before them.’

  ‘And after Enkidu dies?’

  ‘Gilgamesh sets off like an outcast or a holy man. He grows his hair long, he wears animal skins. He walks hundred of miles, mourning, looking for the secret of eternal life.’

  ‘He’s afraid of dying, like his friend?’

  ‘Aren’t we all? He wants to become immortal, which is I suppose another form of arrogance, though common enough among us. So he sets off to find an ancient sage, the one immortal man, a Noah figure who survived a Great Flood. There’s a school of thought that says he walked all the way to Mt Ararat, where the Ark was supposed to have been. Finally, after many trials, the great sage presents him with a magic plant that gives back one’s youth. It’s called “Old Man Grown Young”. But on his way back home he falls asleep and a snake eats it and immediately sloughs its skin!’

  ‘Does he give up then?’

  ‘He accepts mortality and goes back home to Uruk to fulfil his responsibilities. He brings back all he has learnt to his people and writes it down on a tablet of stone. He becomes a wise and good king. His story, which is really a story about growing up, is told through the ages, as I am telling it to you. Paradoxically, of course, he does achieve immortality.’

  ‘And Enkidu?’

  ‘Enkidu? Enkidu stays in the Underworld. He never comes back.’

  The desert seemed flatter and harsher as they drove into the oncoming dusk. There was no sign of army convoys, English or French, nor of the bands of nomads they sometimes glimpsed high on a rocky ridge. According to the map there would be a village soon where they could stay the night.

  ‘I wonder why I heard his name in Armenia.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Gilgamesh. I thought I overheard it once in a cafe in Yerevan.’

  ‘He’s a mythical figure. He belongs to everyone, everywhere. Take us, for instance. Aren’t we on a heroic quest?’ He reached across and patted Edith’s knee. Ever since they crossed into Syria she’d noticed a change in Leopold’s spirits. He’d become lighter, carefree, almost playful. This was the last lap of their journey. Was he relieved at the parting ahead? Or was this the light-headedness she’d heard of, soldiers on the eve of battle, their fate, like children’s, taken out of their hands?

  ‘Oh yes, very heroic.’ It was easy to be ironic about themselves as travellers, the battered jeep’s ragged canvas, the pathetic bundles that made up their luggage, the bag of pumpkin seeds Leopold snacked on from between his solid thighs. With their makeshift headdresses, red eyes and pale, unsuitable skin they were almost comical. And there was another unheroic feature of this journey. Little tantrums and sulks. Petty self-assertion: she had been far from a good sport. She accused Leopold of being bossy. He was so sure of himself. He was vain about his ability to find the best khan, to choose the sweetest fruit. You wouldn’t think, she said, that for five years she had managed to keep Jim warm and fed. She hardly knew why she was saying these things. She even mimicked his English accent. She was like a child who has come home and can at last behave badly.

  And he saw straight through her. Again and again he teased her with his patience and goodwill. Again and again she put him to the test.

  Now she said: ‘There are no women in this myth.’

  ‘Yes there are. There’s the temple girl who is sent to seduce Enkidu out of the wilds. There’s Gilgamesh’s mother, who prays for her son’s restless heart.’

  ‘But nothing happens to them. It’s not their story. No woman goes off on quests like that. Women get stuck. They are left behind with the children.’

  ‘What about you? All the way from Australia!’

  ‘With a small child. I did it for Jim’s sake. Well, all right, I did it for love.’

  ‘Isn’t that the same as eternal life?’

  Edith blew out smoke. She was twenty-four and felt she could never be made young again. She drew on her cigarette and felt the lines on her dry face form some hard, predictive pattern. She was much too cross to tell him that she had found what she was looking for.

  What happened next? Over the next rise, delicate plumes of smoke high and steady in the twilight. The cooking fires of a village. Thirty or so adobe houses that looked down on the Euphrates valley. Then there would be a cluster of little boys around the jeep, salaams with the elders, goats nudging them, messengers sent. Leopold speaking Arabic, bowing, enjoying the courtesies. Jim standing beside him. She with her scarf wrapped across her face.

  It was always the same. They took off their shoes at the door of the khan where they would sleep. They sat on straw matting and were served by women moving in and out of the shadows from the oil lamp. Rice and grilled river fish and rough Arab bread. Goats’ milk for Jim. They were so tired that time seemed to slow, almost stand still. This was how they lived in villages along the Euphrates five thousand years ago, Leopold said. People raised goats and ate fish while great civilisations came and went.

  Then a mattress was rolled out for the three of them beneath a tiny star-crammed window. They huddled beneath woven blankets. At night beside him she saw their journey was unfolding at breakneck speed. Their hands touched over Jim’s sleeping body and held a moment before they slept.

  In Aleppo they stayed at the Baron Hotel. ‘Everybody stays at the Baron,’ Leopold said. ‘The Lindberghs, Isadora Duncan, T.E. Lawrence. All the famous archaeologists. My dear, we simply couldn’t stay anywhere else.’ It had been built and owned by an Armenian family, the Mazloumians, since 1909. Edith recognised the arched windows and the Armenian designs carved into the stone walls. It seemed like the acme of luxury to her, the sweeping staircase, the parquet floors, the steam rising from the bath. In their room the provision of a cot bed for Jim, and the bowl of flowers beneath the window, almost made her weep. It had the same wood-panelled, slightly shabby gentility as the Sea House. Like any servant, she had always craved to be a guest.

  They spent their last free day wandering in the Armenian quarter of Aleppo, down streets of Armenian gold shops, rug shops, spice shops, past Armenian schools and Orthodox churches. Thousands had fled here from Turkey during the 1915 massacres. This is where Aram had come as a tiny survivor. There was Armenian script over the shopfronts, the smell of Armenian food. They heard Armenian again in these streets. It intensified everything.

  They wandered down the passageways of the famous Aleppo souk, the largest in the Levant, miles and miles of stalls along cobbled walks, under the domes of stone roofs. They watched the sun set over the Citadel.

  After Jim fell asleep, avoiding the nuptial-looking bed,
they went downstairs to the dark wood-panelled salon and drank Armenian brandy. The Free French and British soldiers drank here when they were in town. There was a poster hanging over the bar of a large ear with a swastika inside it. Beneath it was written: Words can Kill. Some Australian officers had been here not two weeks ago, the Armenian barman told Leopold. The Aleppo airfield had been bombed and there were rumours of mines in the desert. The salon was empty that night apart from an Armenian family in the far corner speaking together in French.

  ‘Leopold, did Aram write to you?’

  ‘Not after he went to Armenia.’

  ‘How did you know he was dead?’

  ‘Hagop. I was in touch with Hagop. Or rather, he got in touch with me. Through my address on your letters, actually.’

  ‘So you got my letters?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. I enjoyed them immensely. They were very informative. I could start to find a way for you to leave.’

  ‘How did you have the connections?’

  ‘Ssh. Look at the poster. Let’s just say it was in my line of duty.’

  ‘Was Aram a friend of Hagop’s?’

  ‘Finding Aram was in Hagop’s line of duty.’

  ‘Who did Hagop work for?’

  ‘He used to be in a nationalist group when he was a student before the war. Aram searched out and joined what was left of it. Do you know what his codename was, by the way? I believe it was Gilgamesh! In ’42 they were all betrayed and sent off to Stalin’s Penal Squadrons on the Russian front. They’re marched in first to battle. About one per cent survive.’

  ‘And Hagop?’

  ‘The NKVD probably enlisted him after the bombing of a music school before the war. Nobody knows to this day whether it was caused by the nationalists or the NKVD.’

  ‘It must have been the nationalists. Tati always said Hagop suffered from guilt.’

  ‘Guilt from what? Was he in the NKVD before or after the bombing? You’d never know with Hagop. He serves many masters. You know, I met him before the war in Istanbul. He was a sort of part-time agent for an Armenian millionaire then, who wanted to do oil deals with the British.’

  ‘You mean Mr Five Percent?’

  ‘You’ve met?’

  ‘On the Orient Express. He invited me to his compartment. I met Hagop on the same train.’

  Leopold went silent for a while.

  ‘Leopold, when Hagop sent Jim and me out of Armenia he said I was no longer useful.’

  ‘As a lure to rope in Aram and his group. That’s why you were left alone by the NKVD.’

  ‘But Hagop said Aram died more than a year ago. Why did he keep on protecting us?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m being immodest in saying that I was the larger prize. He did some work for us. He wanted me to work for them. I think he wanted to do a deal with me, to help him to get out. He was always a bit of an Anglophile. He spoke excellent English.’

  ‘Armenians are quick with languages,’ said Edith, automatically.

  ‘There was also the case of a modest but regular retainer from Mr Five Percent. Hagop would have been told to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your old Armenian gentleman is well known for this kind of thing. He has an eye for the ladies, a very specialised eye. He has agents in all the countries he travels to, to look out for him, his type. He has apartments in several countries and beautiful companions, specially trained in his tastes.’

  ‘But I ran away from him.’

  ‘Oh, he’s renowned for his patience. He enjoys a challenge. And I suppose there was a chance, through you, of a link to the nationalists, or even to the British. He backs every horse in the region, old Mr Five Percent, any horse which might get him to Baku’s oil. And of course, every government wants to do business with him.’

  They were silent for a while.

  ‘So Hagop was guarding me for that old man.’

  Leopold thoughtfully shovelled up a fistful of pistachios.

  ‘Is that why Jim and I survived? Even in Batum … Is that why we got into Armenia in the first place?’

  ‘Very likely.’

  ‘Because of a lecherous old man.’

  ‘Because of a beautiful face.’

  Edith was warmed in spite of herself.

  ‘You must remember that it was you and Jim who got out, not Hagop. He got you out, even though without you he has probably outlived his usefulness.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘That was our deal. But you know, Edith, I think he was very fond of Jim. He always mentioned him in our communications.’

  Because of Jim.

  ‘What will happen to Hagop?’

  ‘Didn’t his wife die recently? I don’t know how much he wants to live.’

  They kept talking back in the room while Jim slept. She lay in Leopold’s large arm, brown to the elbow and then soft and white.

  ‘Do you feel funny?’

  ‘Not with you, Edith. It would waste time. Besides I’ve given up hating myself. What’s the point? In a war there’s too much else to hate.’

  He said that all the way back to Aden on the ship, he and Aram had talked about Nunderup. Nunderup always brought a smile to Aram’s face.

  ‘Did he ever talk about me?’

  Leopold said that Aram never spoke of the personal. He’d once said that in the orphanage you had to hide what you wanted to keep for yourself.

  So, no words of undying passion. Nothing to justify her journey.

  ‘Leopold, Armenian men are very strict with their women. You know, wives, sisters.’ It was painful to say this. It made her want a cigarette. ‘Virgin brides, reputation …’

  He understood it was a question.

  ‘Aram was a survivor. What did he know of families, of mothers or sisters? He didn’t feel he really belonged in the world. I don’t believe he thought he would live.’ He squeezed her close so she had to look up at him. ‘If he’d heard about Jim, he would have tried to see him. I’m sure about that.’

  ‘I think perhaps he did. Could that be why he died?’

  ‘Oh, Edith, in wartime a group like his will never survive. It goes against popular feeling, the war effort. It will always be betrayed.’

  ‘Who knows?’ he said after a little while. ‘Perhaps his last thought was of Jim.’

  They held each other, their faces almost touching. Later Jim stirred and cried out. She lay and watched Leopold pad across the room in the moonlight, gather Jim up and carry him to their bed.

  Who would have thought to put an orphanage out there, on the outskirts of the city, far from the hubbub of the souk, in the silence of the desert? What sort of place was this for children? Once it had been an inn for travellers from the west, from the port of Alexandretta, now ceded to the Turks. It sat beside the road in the lee of a hillside scattered with thorn trees, one-storeyed, flat roofed, behind a stone wall coloured red by the dust. The dormitories and school rooms were set around a large central court. The children were gathered in the shade of a roofed pavilion, eating their lunch. There was no fountain or garden. The only place to play was among a little grove of date palms outside the walls.

  It was a Christian orphanage, the director, Miss Anoosh, a tiny Armenian woman, explained. They sat in her office, a little dark room with a high barred window and white-washed walls. There were Greek Orthodox and Maronite Catholic children here as well as Armenian Orthodox these days. Of course the original children from the Turkish Massacres had all grown up now. There were about forty children, some from the present war. Miss Anoosh said she would be glad of Edith’s help if she stayed. There was an Armenian Orthodox cross on the wall behind her.

  Edith’s heart was pounding, her hands were cold. From the moment she woke up that morning, she had a conviction that someone had died.

  Miss Anoosh spoke precise expressionless English. She remembered Aram as a child, and meeting Leopold with him before the war. When she heard of his death she crossed herself. There was so
little of her, she was so plain and spare in her dress and manner, it was impossible to guess her age. She wore dark tinted glasses, her eyesight was very poor. No one was sure she wasn’t blind, Leopold said. No one could remember a time when she had not been at the orphanage. She knew each stone of it as she knew the voice of each child. When she asked Jim his name and his age in Armenian, Jim answered her, unafraid.

  Miss Anoosh led them to the pavilion where the children sat cross-legged at low benches smeared with grains of rice and drops of milk. She clapped her hands and the children raced each other across the courtyard and dropped their tin mugs and bowls into a keg by the kitchen door. Two or three helpers, older girls, ushered the children out into the palm grove and their voices blew into the courtyard in the desert wind.

  They sat at one of the empty benches. A large girl brought them tea and a mug of milk for Jim. Leopold and Edith sat side by side, like an old couple who need say nothing more to each other. Edith watched the girl. She was about sixteen, with swinging hips and heavy breasts and a womanly headscarf. But the way she stood gazing at them, plucking at her mouth, was babylike. Edith could not take her eyes from her, her vast docility. She would be one of Edith’s charges. Why did she feel this was her fate, coming to meet her? ‘Sevan!’ someone called—the name of the Armenian lake—and the girl turned and ambled back towards the kitchen. There was a wet patch at the back of her dress.

  Leopold said that she must make contact with the Australian Seventh Division in Syria. That he would try to get in touch with them on her behalf.

  ‘Can’t we wait here for you?’

  ‘Edith, you must take Jim home to Australia.’

  ‘Will you come there again one day?’

  ‘Oh yes. I want to see this chap grow up.’

  He said she mustn’t be afraid of going home.

  At the jeep he dug into his kitbag and handed her the slim brown book she had last seen in the kitchen in Nunderup. ‘This is for you. And Jim.’