The Gulliver Fortune

by Peter Corris

  "Isadore kept watch over you, darling," Carl said, "for many years."

  "Now is not the time to think of that, brother. Now is the time to sing and dance and drink and sing again."

  The party lasted for two nights and a day as promised. At the end of the time Carl had been drunk twice but had sobered up quickly from the cold and the food and the strong, sweet gypsy coffee. Vitalia had joined in the singing-but had drunk almost nothing and danced little, which surprised Carl who knew she was good at it. But he had never seen her looking more beautiful and happy. Most of the talk Vitalia had not understood but some she had—scraps of information about men still imprisoned, about the hardships they endured, the anguish of the separations from friends and family that stretched on, seemingly forever. Carl had told her almost nothing about his exile, saying he could not bear to think of it. From the talk Vitalia gained some understanding of what he had suffered. The bond between Carl and Isadore Laza was like that between father and son, but it was hard to tell which man filled which role.

  After the final farewells a gypsy drove Carl and Vitalia to the station in one of the horse-drawn wagons. It was snowing and they huddled close together under the canopy.

  "What wonderful people," Vitalia said.

  "Yes. They've suffered for centuries, like the Jews, but they survive."

  "Will they take the letters?" Vitalia whispered.

  "Yes."

  There was hesitation in his voice. Vitalia gripped his arm. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "Isadore wanted us to stay with them. They are going south. He said he could get us out of Russia."

  "Could he?"

  "Possibly, but I don't have the courage. If we were caught, we would be punished. They would separate us, and I couldn't bear it."

  The horses' hooves thudded in the snow while Vitalia considered what was in her mind. She decided. "I'm glad you said no."

  "Why? I feel like a coward. The letters will be slow. We may not hear anything for years. This way could have been quick."

  "I don't want to travel south with the gypsies. Not now. I'm pregnant. You are sixty, darling, and I'm nearly forty, but we're going to have a child."

  22

  When Mikhail Bystryi was eleven years of age his father asked him to make some tea and bring it to him in the bedroom. Carl was ill and almost bedridden. The Bystryi family had moved to Leningrad after the birth of Mikhail. Vitalia had got a job in a scientific library and Carl did piecework translations for academics. They had a flat with three rooms—Mikhail slept on a divan in the living room. They pulled a bamboo screen around it at night and called it 'the Chinese room'. They had a small kitchen where they lived and worked in the cold months.

  Mikhail read a book as he brewed the tea. He was a dark, serious boy, tall for his age and graceful. Everybody said he was old for his years. In looks he reminded Carl of his older brother Jack. Carl found himself thinking of his brothers and sisters more often lately. He wondered what had become of them. He hoped that Mikhail would not resemble Jack in character—sixty years had not removed Carl's memory of his brother's ruthlessness.

  The boy put lemon in his father's glass and sugar in his own. He took the tea into the bedroom and sat on the bed.

  "Thank you, Mickey," Carl said. "How's school? How's everything?"

  "Fine," Mikhail said. "How are you, Papa?"

  Carl sipped his tea. "As you see me—old. It has been hard on you having an old father, hasn't it? Not to play football together and so on?"

  "Sometimes, but there are other things. The kids at school tell me their fathers hit them and fight with their mothers. You don't do that."

  Carl smiled. "No. My father didn't do those things either."

  Mikhail looked at the old man with interest. "Your father? You've never spoken of him."

  "I'm going to speak of him now, and of a lot of other things. How's your memory?"

  Mikhail made a circle of his thumb and forefinger and jabbed the air affirmatively. He had seen the gesture in foreign films.

  Carl laughed. Jack again, he thought. He coughed violently. When he had recovered he drained his tea glass and began to speak. He told his son about the Gulliver family's departure from England and the ship voyage. He told him about the death of his grandparents and described them in detail when Mikhail put questions. He spoke of Sydney, Australia, the orphanage and the Thodeys. He omitted Pavel from his narrative and did not explain why he had gone to war. The boy's eyes widened at Carl's account of Gallipoli.

  "I didn't know you had fought in the war. Many of the boys boast of their fathers' bravery."

  "I wasn't brave," Carl said. "I was lucky and I survived it." He touched the grey mottled flesh on the side of his hand and told Mikhail about the rat. The boy's tea grew cold in the glass as he listened. Carl told him how he had come to Russia after the revolution and of the work he had done.

  "You met him? You really met him, Papa?"

  "I did. We spoke. He gave me this name—Bystryi."

  Carl answered a volume of questions about Lenin's manner and appearance as best he could, and then he went on to his arrest in 1936. Mikhail's face grew still and his hands moved nervously as his father spoke.

  "I have never told anyone of these things, Mickey. Not even your mother. But I want you to know."

  The labour camp was on the upper reaches of the Lena River in southern Siberia. The land was frozen for much of the year and sometimes even missed out on the short, warm Siberian summer because of winds from the high plateau to the north. The prisoners mined salt and limestone which was transported by rail and barge. They repaired railway tracks and locks. Sometimes, when the locomotives broke down, they pulled the carriages along the lines. They hauled the barges over sandbars and through log jams. They cleared snow and broke ice.

  "It was very bad," Carl said, "and I was there for nearly twenty years. Almost twice as long as I have had with you and your mother."

  Mikhail said nothing. He was not sure whether to believe or not—he could not imagine his old, frail father having the strength to haul a barge. But he had never known him to lie.

  "Well, it ended," Carl said. "And with the help of the gypsies I found your mother in Moscow, and here we are today. But I want you to know about the Gullivers, in England and Australia. They are your people and one day, if things keep changing in the Soviet Union, you may be able to visit them."

  "Did you not want to see them, Papa? Your sister and brothers?"

  Carl told him about the letters he sent with the gypsies in 1958. Letters to the orphanage, to Fort Street high school, to the Sydney Morning Herald, to the immigration authorities and to the Australian Army, in which he told his story, requested help in locating his relatives, and asked for advice about repatriation to Australia. "The letters were posted in Turkey," Carl said. "Isadore posted them himself, but there was no reply. And my requests to our government were ignored."

  Mikhail felt the tears coming and he sniffed loudly. Carl did not seem to hear. "So you are still a prisoner, Papa?"

  "What?" Carl jerked out of his mist of memory to see his son's distress. He reached for him and hugged him. "No, my boy, no. I've been happy from the instant I saw your mother again. It didn't matter where we were, and to have a son like you is a great gift."

  "You have had a hard life, Papa."

  Carl nodded. "At times. But what joy I've had. I would like to know what happened to Jack and Susy and Edward and the baby. But I never will."

  "Because it was so long ago and so far away?"

  Carl nodded, but that was not what he meant.

  Carl Gulliver Bystryi died six weeks after he had told his son his history. This helped to stamp the account in all its detail in the boy's mind. He questioned his mother but could learn very little more. Yes, she had met Isadore Laza. Once only. Yes, he and Carl had stayed in touch through the next ten years, but she did not know where he was now. No, she did not know the name of Carl's youngest brother, nor where any of the Gu
llivers were to be found.

  "Probably in Australia," she said. "But the girl would have changed her name if she married. The brothers close to your father's age are probably dead, and they may not have had children. There may be no one."

  Australia seemed to Mikhail like another world. He read the standard accounts of it in encyclopaedias but learned little. It sounded like a backward place. His mother recovered from her grief and continued her work. Books and her son were her consolations.

  "On your father's side there is no one and on my side the same," she told Mikhail. "You will have to make your own way in the world, my son. What do you want to be?"

  She dreaded his answer; if he said 'diplomat' or 'teacher', she knew he would be doomed to disappointment. The child of non-Party members, the son of a father who had been punished for political reasons, could never hope to fill such positions of prestige and influence.

  "I want to be a doctor," Mikhail said.

  Vitalia was relieved. Not a highly ranked occupation, she thought. They are training more women in medicine than men these days. And no political overtones. "Study hard, Mickey," she said. "I'm sure you can do it."

  Mikhail Bystryi did study hard, and qualified for entry to the Leningrad Medical Institute. After three years of intensive training, he was posted to a series of hospitals around the Soviet Union. He performed creditably, showing a flair for diagnosis. A quiet, undemonstrative man, with inherited linguistic abilities, he told no one that he read widely in foreign medical literature. This reading assisted him with diagnosis; his modest publications in Soviet medical journals helped him to obtain a post, as Provisional Assistant Medical Superintendent, at the tropical diseases clinic in Tashkent, capital of the Soviet socialist Republic of Uzbeck.

  "You have done well, Mickey," his mother said when they met in a Moscow cafe for her sixty-seventh birthday. Vitalia had been retired for seven years and now lived back in the same district as she had thirty years before. She had a small pension and a room and a half in a large block mostly occupied by pensioners. She liked the markets; she liked to look at the trains at Kazan station. Mostly she read. She and Mikhail corresponded regularly, and she worried that he was not married.

  "It's as well as I'll ever do, mother," Mikhail said. He poured coffee and pushed the plate of cakes towards Vitalia. She was watching her weight and refused.

  "Times are changing," she said. "The old days when things your parents did were held against you forever are going."

  "It's not what they did, it's what they are." Mikhail told her of the prejudice against Jews that was rife in the medical profession where so many Jews were to be found. "None at the top," he said.

  Vitalia studied the lean, intense young man. He wore a dark moustache which made him look older than twenty-eight, but his hair was thick and his body was firm. He earned three hundred roubles a month; he did not smoke and rarely drank. "Why have you not married, Mickey? You are a catch."

  Mikhail crumbled a cake on his plate. "Something always held me back. Recently I found out what it was. I want to marry another Jew. I'm learning Hebrew, also Arabic."

  "Be careful," Vitalia said.

  A year later Mikhail had been confirmed in his job; he had advanced in his Semitic studies. He met Sofya Vertova, a nurse in Tashkent's largest hospital. Sofya was Jewish. They planned to marry. In October 1986 he received a letter from his mother; enclosed was another communication, which had been posted in London. The sender was Benjamin Cromwell.

  23

  London, October 1986

  The arrival of Georgia Gee's telegram had sparked a row between Ben Cromwell and Jerry Gallagher that threatened to end their relationship. They were spending the afternoon in Montague's Chelsea house. Ben had read the cable, said, "Shit!" and passed it across to Jerry. As she read it she heard the unscrewing of a bottle cap that was the inevitable accompaniment lately to Ben's moods, high or low.

  Jerry read the brief message which informed Mr Cromwell that the sender was female, an Australian citizen and a journalist with ironclad proof of her descent from the exiled John Gulliver.

  "That's great," Jerry said. "What's wrong with you?"

  Ben tossed off a stiff whisky. "A journalist! Terrific!"

  Jerry was tiring of Ben's cynicism and self-absorption. He seemed to be more like his father every day—affable when not under pressure, self-indulgent and exuding a whiff of self-satisfied conspiracy. "I suppose you'd have preferred a little old lady in some nursing home or an illiterate dingo hunter?"

  "Yeah," Ben said. "Female journalists are all bitches, and most of them are dykes."

  Jerry crumpled the telegram and threw it at him. She left the room and the house and it had taken several humble and contrite phone calls from Ben to get them back together again. He promised to cut down on his drinking. Jerry didn't believe him. She began work on a short story about an alcoholic and she had coffee several times with Jamie Martin.

  Ten days after the contact with Georgia Gee had been made, Jamie and Jerry met under a striped umbrella in a patch of sunshine outside a coffee bar off Carnaby Street. Jamie showed her a postcard of the Turner painting "Approach to Venice".

  "It's beautiful," Jerry said. "I haven't seen the Gulliver painting, have you?"

  Jamie shook his head.

  "I wonder if it exists. I'm worried. They'll defraud that woman if they can."

  Jamie waited while the iced coffees were set down on the red and white checked tablecloth. "I wouldn't worry too much about that. I looked her book up in the library. She's a pretty highpowered lady—over the Alps in Argentina, all that sort of thing."

  "Andes," Jerry said.

  Jamie smiled. "How's your story coming?"

  Jerry wanted to touch him. She felt gratitude and something else. Ben never asked about her writing. "It's coming."

  "That's good." Jamie sucked up some froth. "Is Montague running short of money?"

  "I don't know, Jamie. Why d'you ask?"

  "Ben cut my rate. He said Monty had cut his."

  "He never said anything about it to me. God, they're so devious."

  "I feel as if I'm getting out of my depth," Jamie said. "I really don't know what to do."

  "About what?"

  "About you, for one thing." Jamie pushed the near full glass aside. He had lost weight and the skin along his jawbone was stretched. Although his clothes and hair were clean, something of the careless, unkempt look had come back over him.

  Jerry reached across the table and laid her hand on Jamie's forearm. "Well, we can talk about that."

  "I want you to leave Ben," Jamie blurted.

  "I have, more or less. What else are you out of your depth in?" She laughed. "Over? Under? Whatever."

  "I've found another one. Another Gulliver."

  "Jamie! Tell me."

  Jamie grinned. "Okay. It's a strange one. I wrote to a few people I know in Australia, historians and researchers and such, and I got this reply out of the blue from a bloke who's been working on the Cold War."

  "Yes, yes," Jerry said.

  "Seems he got hold of some army files, correspondence no one thought was worth classifying or something, and lo and behold there's a letter from one Carl Gulliver. It's dated 1956 and you'll never guess where it came from."

  Jerry attempted an Australian accent. "Ayers Rock."

  Jamie stirred his iced coffee with a straw. "Russia," he said triumphantly.

  "Russia!" Jerry's voice went up and the people at the next table stopped talking.

  Jamie moved his arm back and took hold of Jerry's hand. "Carl Gulliver got off the boat in Sydney. He was in an orphanage there for a while and then he got adopted. He went off to World War I in the Aussie army and he finished up in Russia just after the revolution. He wrote a letter in 1956 to the Army, enquiring about a pension and repatriation to Australia."

  Jerry groaned. After what Ben had told her about military procedures, she wouldn't have liked to rely on an army for anything. "What did the Arm
y do?"

  "Nothing. Filed it. It was the Cold War, remember? The Aussies wouldn't want to have anything to do with some renegade who'd decamped to the Soviet Union. The letter got passed around a bit, but there was no action."

  "Typical," Jerry said. "So, where are we?"

  "I've got a photostat of the letter. Seems Carl's wife was pregnant in 1956. We've got an address in Moscow."

  "Thirty years old," Jerry said, "address and child, if there was a child."

  Jamie nodded. "But it's something. Carl doesn't give any details about his brothers and sister, but he seems to think they'd be in Australia. He also wrote to a Sydney newspaper. Doesn't say what about, but my contact might be able to get onto that."

  "Looks like we've got to write to Moscow," Jerry said.

  "Yep." Jamie released Jerry's hand, took some folded photostat sheets from his pocket and passed them to her. "Sounds like an interesting chap, this Carl. D'you realise what you just said?"

  "What's that?"

  "You said we have to write to Moscow. Do you mean us, or Ben?"

  "God," Jerry said. "I was forgetting about him." She read the sheets and handed them back. "Monty paid for all this."

  "Yes, but how's he going to use it? How will this news affect Ben?"

  "He'll hate it. A Russian? It means complications and delays. They're the last things he wants."

  Jamie reached for her hand again. "That's great. Let's tell him right now."

  Susannah,

  Margot

  24

  'Southern Maid', Sydney, June 1910

  Susannah had spent all her time since her parents' death with the Welcomes and their de facto adoption of her went unquestioned. Dr Anderson, a man not accustomed to attaching much importance to females, contented himself by simply entering 'S. Gulliver' alongside the Welcome name in his list of passengers cleared by the health authorities.