To the East

By Angus Kennedy

In this final novel of the Out of Solitude trilogy, Australian wine writer, Andrew Johnston, has had to leave Niki Mencetic in Dubrovnik while he returns to Australia to provide support for his brother, Adrian, during the illness of his wife. Andrew misses Niki and plans to return to Europe but receives an extensive new project from his publisher that takes him first through the wine producing regions of California. When he finally arrives in Dubrovnik, their feelings for each other have strengthened and matured. During his stay in Dubrovnik, and their travels around Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Niki reveals what she and her brother, Jakov, have been working on over the past fifteen years. What started with being a simple family project has developed into a complex search for the truth about her ancestorsover a period of several centuries. Andrew becomes drawn into the research and an unexpected and potentially dangerous connection with his own line of business emerges. Les Chemins de St. Jacques, or the Way of St. James, sprawls across Europe like a spider web and ensnares Andrew and Niki in its tendrils.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499017090

Angus Kennedy

Angus Kennedy is the world’s leading expert on chocolate and has been dubbed by the media as the “real life Willy Wonka.” Kennedy is the owner of Kennedy’s Confection, a chocolate review magazine his family has owned for forty years, and the founder of the World Chocolate Forum, the world’s largest chocolate industry conference. He’s been a guest on a variety of TV and radio programs, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Talk to Aljazeera (USA), and Bloomberg TV, and featured in a wealth of print and digital media, such as Huffington Post, the Telegraph, NBC News.com, and the Daily Mail. His most recent video about chocolate, on Business Insider, received 2.4 million views in twenty-four hours, setting a record high. Kennedy’s provocative assertion in 2011 that the world might be running out of chocolate received international media coverage and was a source of much concern by chocolate lovers around the world. He is a father of five and lives with his family in Kent, England. ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ANGUS KENNEDY The Kitchen Baby: Angus Kennedy, 9780957532908, Black Mansion, 01/23/2013.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Angus Kennedy.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014914430

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4990-1727-4

Softcover   978-1-4990-1710-6

eBook   978-1-4990-1709-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/11/2014

Xlibris LLC

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Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Appendices

1

Sydney is a sprawling, cosmopolitan metropolis on the east coast of New South Wales in Australia, hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Great Dividing Range, the spinal mountain system that runs down the entire east coast of Australia, about fifty kilometres away, on the other. From its beginnings as a British penal colony at Sydney Cove in 1788 on the shores of possibly the largest, most beautiful, and most protected natural harbour in the world, the city spread like a creeping, landscape-devouring mould around the shores of the harbour and out to the fertile plains to the west, covering every available piece of land with its housing, tenements, office blocks, factories, and roads. Over the ensuing decades and centuries, the suburban spread moved east until it was stopped by the ocean, north to the heavily wooded Ku-ring-gai Chase and Marramarra National Parks and the Hawkesbury River, and was finally stopped, at least temporarily, to the west by the Nepean River (the upper reaches of the Hawkesbury) and the equally heavily wooded Blue Mountains National Park. For a time, the only remaining land to devour was to the south and Sydney extended as far as Campbelltown and Camden. It has expanded so far from its origins that its demographic centre is now south-west of Parramatta, itself some thirty kilometres west of the city centre.

However, the temporary pause in the expansive growth did not last. The main northern, western, and southern highways and railways served as conduits for the living organism of the city to flow through and envelop formerly summer resort towns such as Gosford in the Central Coast, north of the Hawkesbury River, the various townships in the Blue Mountains and even the mainly industrial city of Wollongong in the south. All have been consumed by the almost sentient expansion and have become satellite dormitory villages and towns to the city, spewing forth tens of thousands of commuters each day to make their trek to the city to work.

Sydney is the largest population centre in the nation, with over four and a half million people, the majority of whom would probably see the magnificent harbour with its iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House or its golden beaches no more than once a year, if that. The New World city of Sydney is a teeming mass of humanity, accounting for over a quarter of the nation’s population.

While the many bays, inlets, and reaches of the giant harbour render movement around the sections of the city close to it geographically difficult and complicated, the obstructions to movement over most of the city are man-made, viz. congested road traffic. Although Sydney has an extensive urban rail and bus public transport system and various road tunnels have been constructed under the harbour and the city central, it is being slowly but inexorably strangled by motor cars and other vehicular traffic. Unlocking the inevitable gridlock provides one of the great challenges of the state government and the various local government bodies. It is not inconceivable that some form of congestion tax, as applies in central London, will one day be required over a good part of Sydney. In the interim, the inhabitants of the city get about their business as best they can.

I had spent most of my school days in the eastern suburbs of Sydney but the city had changed dramatically over the years during which I had lived elsewhere, and re-entering the maelstrom for an extended period was a major challenge for me. Adrian lived in an inner suburban area that was somewhere between ten and thirty minutes from the city centre, depending on the traffic, and the nearly three months I spent with him seemed to last forever. During this time, Adrian spent most of his hours visiting and worrying about his wife, Susan, in the hospital and I spent much of mine looking after his boys. There did not seem a lot of time for too much else.

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For two weeks after I arrived back from Dubrovnik, Susan’s life hung in the balance. From day to day her condition and the resulting prognosis varied by small degrees, both up and down, until, finally, her days of improvement started to routinely outweigh those of deterioration and the medical staff became cautiously optimistic that she would make a recovery. It was slow progress but it was at least progress.

I had not really considered before then how much Adrian depended and relied on Susan for equanimity and balance in his life. It was not the capacity to manage his own physical existence that suffered so much as his sense of almost spiritual well-being, his compass of existence, and purpose in life. This loss of personal sense even flowed through into the maintenance of his everyday affairs and he became almost paralysed into being limited to thinking only of Susan and her health and well-being. After twenty years of marriage, not quite the forty years that I had once jokingly suggested in France, although it may as well have been, their lives had become inextricably interwoven. I recalled Susan’s comment some months before in St Thibéry when she had talked about her faith—her faith in her husband and family and the world in general. Adrian obviously shared a level of that faith and it was shaken to the core when his apparent mainspring in life was threatened with being removed, with being rudely taken away. He was really only able to focus on Susan, almost to the exclusion of anything else, even, to a large extent, his children.

Undoubtedly my being there to assist with his household removed from him the need to focus on matters other than Susan. Quite possibly he could well have coped better if I had not been there, but I had and still have little doubt that his world at home could have easily disintegrated if he had been alone. In the event, my presence allowed him the freedom to spend his time with Susan and on matters concerning her in the knowledge that the rest of his world was being looked after, at least reasonably well.

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I learned a lot about modern male youth during that harrowing period, as well as a lot about managing a household many times the size to which I had been accustomed. Adrian’s boys were in their late teens, with one coming up to his final year in high school and the elder one preparing for his second year at university. I had been at boarding school for most of my schooling life and so had had a great deal of regimentation and organisation surrounding me when an adolescent. Consequently, the behaviour of young males at home was a major eye-opener. I had undertaken to Adrian that I would manage the household and he could manage Susan and her problems. I soon found that my part of the bargain was to prove far more exacting than I had imagined.

The challenges started first thing in the morning, took an occasional respite during the day, and resumed in full swing in the evening. While they were undoubtedly concerned about their mother, the boys seemed quite happy to leave the worrying about her to the medical staff at the hospital and to their father. It was not that they were callous or uncaring; it was simply that, to their way of thinking, there was little point in concentrating on something that was beyond their powers to affect, and so they continued with their lives. Once I had got over their apparent lack of concern, I realised that I too found it far easier to put the concern and uncertainty about the future to one side, to be there for Adrian as and when he needed support and to discuss Susan’s progress, and get about the matters of everyday living. It was enough that one of the household was in a state of complete distraction without the rest of us falling apart. So we went about our business.

Being their holidays, I at least avoided the hassles of getting the boys to their daily schooling or university but I felt obliged, if only for the sake of appearances, to ensure that they got out of bed before noon each day and washed and cleaned for what remained of it, albeit shorter by several hours than my own. After a week or so of trying to induce them to arise by nine o’clock, shower and breakfast, and then go about whatever they wished to do, maybe even helping me around the house, I finally gave up and compromised on eleven o’clock, with both of them being scrubbed up by lunchtime. Reaching this compromise certainly made life very much easier for me, and they seemed to be quite happy to have a lunch prepared for them each day. It also enabled me to get about, to do any shopping that was needed, and to ensure that the house was cleaned and in good shape for Adrian when he returned from his morning visit to the hospital.

In the afternoons, the boys simply disappeared, sometimes out and about with friends and sometimes just into their rooms. In some ways, I was unconcerned about their activities as I was pretty sure that they would not be getting into trouble and that were doing what they would have been doing if Susan had been at home. My one stipulation was that, unless they had a firm engagement for an evening meal elsewhere, they would join Adrian and me for an early dinner before Adrian headed back to the hospital and before they embarked on their evening activities. This required my preparing an evening meal almost every night and, while I enjoyed cooking, I came to understand that preparing a meal for four every night was exacting, both in the planning and in the execution. My second compromise was that we would all dine out at least once each week, and preferably twice.

The period after dinner was, in many ways, the most difficult. Adrian was usually back at the hospital, but I knew that he had to feel sure that the boys were being sufficiently supervised, both for his own peace of mind and for that of Susan. When the boys stayed at home, all was well, but when one or both of them went out, I had no option but to insist on either a curfew or a phone in by curfew time if they would be staying out later. I quickly came to understand that this control over their evening social life irritated them and we had many discussions about it but, to their credit, they accepted the rationale behind the restrictions and largely abided by them.

All in all however, by the time I managed to get to bed each night, I was mentally and physically exhausted. It was tough work but I think it made things very much easier for Adrian in his condition of extreme worry.

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I did, however, gain a little time to myself during the early afternoon before I began the dinner preparations and, when I was not dozing off over the newspaper, was able to catch up with my emails and my work, which had very much taken second place during this period. I communicated more frequently than usual with Roger Calshaw, my publisher in London, not only to see how things were going with the piece that I had prepared on the review of the French winemaking regulations, but also because he was concerned with how Susan was faring. He had never met either Adrian or Susan, but I received at least one request each week for an update on her condition, and sometimes two. I had a feeling that the requests were inspired by his assistant, Elaine, but was touched nevertheless by their concern. Roger seemed loath to give me any further assignments at this time, and I spent my working hours on general research into the wine industry and ensuring that I kept in touch with the various developments around the world. I felt confident throughout that Susan would recover in due course and return home, and I wanted to be sure that I remained au fait with my working universe.

I also made a couple of trips back to Adelaide for a day or two, just to see how things were going in my house there and to take a break from the constant chores that surrounded me in Sydney. Adelaide is a far smaller city than Sydney, about one million people, and although I lived in a suburb only ten minutes from the city, life there was far easier than the rat race of inner suburban Sydney, where Adrian lived. Whereas in Sydney the surroundings were largely narrow streets of terraced houses, Adelaide had far broader streets of leafy bungalows and single-storied dwellings and gardens. Sydney was almost invariably a challenge to get around in, to navigate the generally partially blocked streets blocked with road works, cars, or whatever, while Adelaide was the epitome of accessibility. There was a peak hour of around thirty minutes each morning and afternoon but, outside these times, getting around was a breeze. It was nice to get back to the relative peace of the town, as indeed it was whenever I returned from Europe.

During these weeks, I had found that my capacity to keep in close touch with Niki Menčetić was difficult to maintain. It was almost by inclination. I had effectively put my own life on hold while Susan was ill and I was looking after their household, and, while I knew that it was the wrong thing to do and one that I would possibly regret, I discovered that I was communicating with her only briefly and without a great deal of feeling. I was distracted and busy with my new role as housekeeper and found it difficult to indulge in my feelings of affection for Niki. I sent her regular, if not overly frequent, emails covering Susan’s progress and how I was faring generally, but I knew that I was not doing a great job of keeping our relationship rolling. Eventually, after one of her emails was heavily tinged with concern about how we were faring, I called her, and we were both greatly relieved to speak to each other after so many weeks. Reassured by our phone call, Niki made the comment that it was difficult to maintain a strong, loving relationship over such a long distance when there were so many other pressing things on one’s mind and that she understood my position—as I could probably recall, she herself had been in exactly the same position on many occasions. We thought about this remark for half a minute or so, and I then reiterated my feelings for her and asked whether she would understand if I emailed her, say, weekly or when anything particular arose but that I would call her each week, so that we could chat and reaffirm how we were both feeling. At this suggestion, she brightened up immediately and was clearly delighted that we would be able to talk to each other on a regular basis. It was not a totally satisfactory resolution of our problem but it was certainly better than the previous situation, and we both felt better for it.

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After about two months, Susan was finally allowed to leave the hospital and return home. Adrian collected her in the morning, and I had the boys up earlier than normal and ready to receive her. I had only been to visit her a few times in hospital and, while her appearance when she came through the front door was much improved from her prone position in a hospital bed, she was obviously still drained and weak and, after kissing us all and crying a little with relief, she went straight upstairs to their bedroom. Her welcome arrival heralded the second, but more positive, stage of my house management. I had agreed with Adrian that I would continue looking after things around the house but that he would be there to prepare some of the meals and progressively, as Susan grew stronger, my duties lessened and it became obvious that I was becoming merely a house guest, rather than a house-man. It was time to go and leave them to re-establish their old lives as a family and, with a feeling of relief and of a job well done, we had a final, celebratory dinner, and I flew home to Adelaide.

2

After three weeks in Adelaide, even with calls every two or three days with Adrian to check on Susan’s progress and to make sure that all was as expected, I was starting to feel edgy and unsettled. I had brought all my affairs up to date and caught up with some friends and business acquaintances whom I had not seen for some time, but I felt at something of a loose end. I had not been involved with any projects for over three months and had brought myself fully up to date with my general wine industry research. I mooned around the house a little and then one day realised that, quite apart from lacking any specific work to do, I had left some major unfinished business in Europe—my relationship with Niki. We had been exchanging emails and talking on the telephone each week, but I needed to see her again. We had separated so suddenly and abruptly at Dubrovnik airport that we had left so many things unsaid and so much that we had planned to do together not done. Since we had parted so precipitately, I had existed in a sort of time warp. Being so preoccupied with the problems of Adrian’s family, I had done little more than carry out the barest maintenance of my own personal matters. I suddenly remembered her email that I had received in transit in Dubai, outlining how the papers that I had brought back for her from Jakov in Cluny were only old folded newspapers and her musing over what had become of the ones that Jakov had actually given me. I went back and found it amongst my emails and sat back wondering myself what the reason could be. However, interesting though that dilemma was, my main concern was to restore our relationship to the position in which it had been when I left Dubrovnik—I needed to rectify the situation and could not do it from Adelaide. I thought for a while and then, late that afternoon, called her with a vague plan in mind.

‘Niki,’ I ventured after we had been chatting for a little, ‘how would you feel if I came back to Europe for a bit to see you. I think I can work out a project with Roger Calshaw in London that will require my being in Europe, and we really must do all those things that we were planning to do last year, before I had to rush back here to Australia. What do you think of the idea?’

There was a moment of silence and then she burst back.

‘Andrew, it would be wonderful. When would you be coming and how long could you stay? It would be lovely—we could do some touring around the region of Dubrovnik, and maybe even further afield if you have time, and you could do your work as and when you have to and I could go around with you on your visits and wait for you in the car if necessary and we could go to all sorts of places that you have not seen and I could tell you about them and …’

It took me a few minutes to successfully break into her stream of joyful enthusiasm and try to calm her down a little.

‘I just wanted to make sure that you would welcome a visit from me …’

‘Andrew! What a thing to say! Of course I want you to come—come tomorrow if you can, or as soon as possible, and I can make lots of arrangements. Oh, it will be so nice to see you again!’

It certainly seemed that I had hit on the obviously right thing to do to please us both and get me out of my restless lethargy.

We talked on for over an hour about the things we could do, with me most of the time having to caution her a little about some of the practicalities to be considered, but there was no stopping her. When she became excited and enthusiastic, she was unstoppable. Eventually, I was able to quieten her down and explain that I would have a number of things to organise first and that it may be a week or so before I could get there, but that I would like to stay in the area for a month or so. She was delighted and, when we finally finished up, reiterated how much she was looking forward to my visit and that she would organise everything at her end and that I should tell her as soon as possible when I would be arriving. It was a good phone call and, at the end of it, I sat down and considered how I might go about arranging it.

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As it turned out, Roger was not quite as amenable to some suggestions I made about doing some work on the wines of Croatia as I had hoped. He was not against the idea and even thought that it was about time that we covered some new areas, but he had a project of higher priority on his mind. He wanted me to do an article on the wines from California, not only about some of the larger volume commercial wines in which his clientele could be interested, but also about some of the higher quality wines from the various regions.

Reviews for To the East

[ratastrophe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It would be difficult for me to sum up this story in a concise manner, even though the text itself is relatively short. So in lieu of an actual review, here's one of my favorite passages:"The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and senseless desire--the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important? Have we not just had the experience that a long, horrible, monstrous war has been forgotten, gainsaid, distorted and dismissed by all nations? And now that they have had a short respite, are not the same nations trying to recall by means of exciting war novels what they themselves caused and endured a few years ago?"Although published in 1956, this still seems very relevant to our lives today.

[drakhir · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Promising start and as with Hesse's other works, some great prose. The reveal works dramatically as well as literally, but I can't say the end satisfied me. Yes it may be the inevitable conclusion, but it was a bit thick, i feel, hence 3 stars rather than the 4 that JttE was heading towards.

At just 93 short pages (in my edition), it is worth re4ading if you have liked any of Hesse's other books, and if you haven't, it's a good primer.

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hesse is usually one of my favored writers, but this one left me cold and unimpressed. I went through it quickly, having felt that the other books told his ideas better. It's not a bad book, though.

[booksfordinner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Found the original receipt from when I bought this in the book when I took it off the shelf for something to read on a long plane ride. Bought it back in the summer of 2000! 8 years between purchase and read.What a beautiful book. A short metaphor for youth and idealism turning to disillusion turning to wisdom. Just beautiful. Hesse has always been one of my favorites, and now it is cemented. Will re-read this again soon.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hermann Hesse is interesting as a person. He battled inner demons: like his father he suffered from depression, apparently as early as the first grade (!), and attempted suicide as a teen. He had unhappy marriages and of his wives had a psychotic breakdown. On the other hand, he searched for a higher truth and explored Buddhism and Hinduism, undoubtedly influenced by his parents having served in a missionary in India, and was well ahead of his time in embracing Eastern philosophy. And this is what “Journey to the East” references. The narrator “H.H.” is a member of a League of famous historical characters who go on a pilgrimage to the East in search of truth. Along the way a character who seems to be simply a servant disappears, causing the entire expedition to break down. As it turns out later, the servant is actually President of the League and his disappearance was a test of the others’ faith. A somewhat mediocre story and just this quote, on history: “I imagine that every historian is similarly affected when he begins to record the events of some period and wishes to portray them sincerely. Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can in some way be narrated, the historian must invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.It is so difficult to relate connectedly a number of events which have really taken place and have been attested, it is in my case much more difficult, for everything becomes questionable as soon as I consider it closely, everything slips away and dissolves, just as our community, the strongest in the world, has been able to dissolve. There is no unit, no center, no point around which the wheel revolves.…And now that I want to hold fast to and describe this most important thing, or at least something of it, everything is only a mass of separate fragmentary pictures which has been reflected in something, and this something is myself, and this self, this mirror, whenever I have gazed into it, has proved to be nothing but the uppermost surface of a glass plane.”

[librisissimo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Substance: Almost non-existent. A man on a mysterious journey with a secret League fails to recognize that a popular servant of his group is actually the President (more like the High King). Possibly a Christian allegory, but just as easily Pagan.Style: Sophomoric philosophical rambling with a supposed core of wisdom, but basically a boring monologue of pretentious simplicity. Akin to the sort of New Age mysticism of the Seventies. CSM blurb says it "resembles Kafka", which is true.

[sirilakcarter · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Comes to understand that it was he who failed the Journey rather than the Journey which failed him"

[autumnc_12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was intrigued reading other member reviews of Journey to the East, and that the average rating is 3-1/2.Like all of Hesse's novels, HH is reflecting on his interaction with religious philosophies, his experiences within different dogmas, and how this interaction and experience creates and re-creates his world. Journey is no different, however I think that a reader needs to have knowledge of HH's other writings and perhaps a little bit about the man himself to find meaning in Journey.It doesn't hurt to also have some self-directed philosophical or dogmatic questing or questioning.So I must preface my review with this information: my partner is a theological philosopher, well-versed in world religions and philosophies, and spending most of his reflection time (inadvertently) educating me on different religious principles. I, on the other hand, could be less interested. I feel that spirituality is a personal question and a personal endeavour, one that does not require the input or direction of others, but rather is not separate from my individual identity or daily values and practices. In fact, when someone presses me with any "god question" I generally say "this is not a question for me; it does not interest me. I know my belief system and that is enough."Journey was a harsh lesson in egoism for me. HH discovers for himself that just because he does not feel connected to the spiritual group that he ascribed to as a younger man does not mean that the group does not exist. In fact, the group has more cohesiveness and more meaning without him, if anything it is stronger. In the face of this knowledge, he truly finds his Journey completed..."I regarded myself as the chronicler...but it was weak and foolish of me to believe that the League could not exist if I was not a part of it."The lesson here, for me particularly, is that for one to think that a religious philosophy or belief system is not important cimply because I do not believe in it or care to discuss it does not make it less important or believable for the thousands of others who build their lives around it. This is not my universe to guide or "chronicle," rather it is my duty to share this space with others and recognize the wisdom of everyone rather than judge my own wisdom to be the end-all.A difficult lesson, true, as it requires of me that I take note of my own egotistical tendencies, my own "shadow side," and facing something about me that is not exactly what I wish it to be.Therefore I give this novel a high rating, because I learned a strong and poignant lesson from it, as I have from many of HH's novels. However I would suggest this novel to those who are themselves interested in spirituality, or perhaps entrenched in their own Journey to the East.

[ikkyu2462 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hesse's most difficult novel. Worth rereading on occasion.

[eduscapes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After reading The Glass Bead Game, I decided to dive into the other works of Hesse. Like The Glass Bead Game, I thought The Journey to the East was a little slow in the middle. However once I began to enter Hesse's "world" the deeper issues in the book became clear. If you like "books that make you think," you'll like this one.