… Josh seemed reluctant to talk about himself at first but, when he did do so, it seemed hard for him to stop. A couple of times Pennie thought, ‘Too much information’, but she was fascinated by his story.
“Everyone calls me Josh but my name is, officially, Joseph Samsat,” he started. “That’s not the name I was born with but I changed to that sometime after coming to Europe. I was brought up in Double Bay, that’s one of the swanky suburbs of Sydney. There’s me and a younger brother and my baby-sister, and I always thought we were just like any other family.
“When I turned twenty-five, after I finished uni, my father gave me an all-expenses-paid weekend on Hamilton Island where I was ‘befriended’ by a beautiful woman and her girlfriend. The three of us didn’t see much of the island but we saw everything of each other and we did everything with and to each other. When I came home, my father was waiting to congratulate me. He’d already had a report from the two women, who were both hookers from one of his brothels. Apparently, they told him I was a ‘stud’.
For the next week, dear old dad introduced me at all his business operations, including all the strip clubs and brothels, making sure they understood there was to be no charge for me. Then, he showed me all his private record-keeping and offered to give it all to me, to own and operate everything. Said he wanted to sit back and enjoy life. He’d still be there, in the background, if there was anything I couldn’t handle. I was so disgusted by the way he manipulated and bullied people, and by the way people sucked-up to him, that I told him to ‘shove-it’. I wanted no part of it.
“I know now that my father is a crook, a liar, and a ruthless conman. I also know he’s gotten away with murder because I’m sure he arranged to have my mother killed. She died in a car crash, in what the police say was an unfortunate accident. That so-called accident happened soon after she went to the police to testify against my father. She was supposedly being protected, by the same police who said it was an accident.”
“That’s terrible, Josh,” said Pennie as she placed her hand over his in a sign of support.
“I confronted him about it and he wouldn’t deny it. ‘Such is life’, he said. “That’s supposed to be what Ned Kelly said when they put the noose around his neck. And that’s what it felt like to me, when he offered to give me everything. Anyway, a week later, I woke up in Budapest.”
“Interesting choice,” said Pennie. “Why Budapest?”
“I’d read somewhere that it was like two cities in one, that somehow Buda had joined to Pest. I figured I’d be in two places at once, so no-one would ever find me.”
“Hmm, sounds very deep. You put a lot of thought into that, right?”
“None. It was a starting place. I stumbled around Europe, and I do mean, ‘stumbled’, because I was drunk most of the time.”
Their first two courses had come and gone as they talked and now they were once again reading their menus, trying to decide which of the wonderful desserts they should say ‘no’ to.
“I know drinking can help a bit, sometimes, but I’ve never known anyone who kept it up for years. Do you think you were an alcoholic? And, was the alcohol helping you?”
“I think it helped because it let me forget. I tell myself I’m not an alcoholic because I’ve stopped drinking alcohol almost completely, except for special occasions like this, and I didn’t need AA to do it.”
“How?”
“Turkey.”
“You went ‘cold turkey’, or you ate turkey, or what?”
“I arrived in Turkey.”
“Yep, that makes sense,” said Pennie, as she raised her eyebrows. “Go to Turkey, stop drinking. I’ll remember that.”
“In Turkey,” Josh went on, trying hard to ignore her sarcasm, “I awoke in pain. A very old farmer had poked me in my bum with a pitchfork. I was sleeping in his barn. It took me two days to come out of my stupor. He fed me, gave me watered down wine for my thirst, and made me sleep in his house. When I was sort of, back to myself, I awoke to find a priest sitting beside my bed. Frightened shit out of me. Thought he’d come to give me the oils, you know? Because I was dying?”
“Obviously, you didn’t die.”
“Nope. He was there because he spoke some English and the old farmer had called him. When he asked my name, I told him the name I’d been born with. And, no, I’m not going to tell you.” He looked up at Pennie who was indulging herself in the chocolate concoction that had just been brought to their table. She looked back at him but said nothing.
“Something about my name convinced the old priest to run back to his church to pick up a very old book. When he came back with it he insisted I should have it, that it was destined to be mine. He always knew someone would come for it. Thank goodness, it was written in English. I still have the book. It turned my life around.”
“Are you going to tell me he gave you a Bible, perhaps?”
“Nothing like that. The book is called ‘A Collection of the Works of Lucien of Samosata’. It’s not a Bible in any shape or form. The introduction says all this guy’s work was originally written in Greek. My sperm-donor father always claimed he had Greek ancestry. Maybe, that was the reason I started reading.
“Turns out, this Lucien guy wasn’t Greek at all. Greek was considered the scholarly language of his time. He lived in the second century. The town of his birth, Samosata, was in Turkey. It was later renamed Samsat, and Samsat was flooded when they built a dam on the Euphrates River, only ten years ago, nineteen eighty-three, just a few years before I arrived in Turkey. That was in nineteen eighty-seven.”
“Something in that book inspired you to change your name to Joseph Samsat, right?”
“That’s right. At first, I thought that maybe, it was pre-destined that I should end up there at that time, especially when I heard about the town being flooded and lost forever. I thought that’s what I wanted to be, lost forever. Then, the more of his stuff that I read, the more it intrigued me. He liked to make fun of religions and other kinds of superstitions and all the beliefs in the paranormal, fortune telling, card reading, ghosts, all that sort of crap. He loved sarcasm. He might even have written the first book about science fiction when he wrote something he called, ‘A True Story’. It was about other authors, scientific authors, who liked to tell tall tales. He wrote it as a satire, making it obvious it was not a true story at all. That was when I realised that I was just like him. I can be very sarcastic and, like him, I don’t believe in all that superstitious nonsense. I reckon churches are just like any other business. And, like my father, they bully and intimidate people. I knew then that I was Joseph of Samsat. I changed my name to Joseph Samsat.” Quietly, they sipped their port as their evening drew to a close.
Back in the car, Josh said, “I know your name is Pennie Irvine. Is there any more to your story, and how you’ve ended up here, with a baby, and a friend?” He laughed gently as he said it and Pennie did not feel pressured to tell.
“I’m just a tiny bit like you, Josh, because I also ran away from home. In my case, my mother threw me out so I didn’t have much choice. And, I never knew my father. Just another sperm-donor. I became a backpacker until …”
“Until?”
“I’ll save that for another day, maybe…
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