Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

  There’s a police office he could go and scare, but I took Suhbataar straight to the museum to enquire after Bodoo. The door was locked, but Suhbataar can open any door in Mongolia. Inside was similar to the last museum, booming with silence. Suhbataar found the curator’s office empty. A large, stuffed buzzard incorrectly labeled as a condor hung down from the ceiling. One of its glass eyes had dropped out and rolled away somewhere.

  There was a middle-aged woman knitting in the empty bookshop. She didn’t seem surprised to see a visitor in the locked-up museum. I doubted she had been surprised by anything for years.

  “I’m looking for a ‘Bodoo,’ ” Suhbataar announced.

  She didn’t bother looking up. “He didn’t come in yesterday. He didn’t come in today. I don’t know if he’ll come in tomorrow.”

  Suhbataar’s voice fell to a whisper. “And may I ask where the esteemed curator is vacationing?”

  “You can ask, but I dunno if I’ll remember.”

  For the first time since I transmigrated into Suhbataar, he felt pleasure. He slipped his gun onto the counter, and clicked off the safety catch. He aimed at the hook suspending the buzzard.

  BANG!

  The thing crashed to the floor, disintegrating on impact into a cloud of plaster, powder, and feathers. The noise of the gunshot chased its own tail through all the empty rooms.

  The woman threw her knitting high into the air. As her mouth hung open I saw how bad her teeth were.

  Suhbataar whispered. “Look, you tapeworm-infested dung-puddle peasant bitch—with bad teeth—here is how our little interview works. I ask the questions, and then you answer them. If I feel you are being just the least bit evasive, you will spend the next ten years in a shit-smeared prison, in a distant part of our glorious Motherland. Do you understand?”

  The woman blanched and tried to swallow.

  Suhbataar admired his gun. “I don’t believe I heard you.”

  She whimpered yes.

  “Good. Where is Bodoo?”

  “He heard that the KGB man was coming. He did a runner. I swear, he didn’t say where. Sir, I didn’t know you were the KGB man. I swear, I didn’t.”

  “And where does Bodoo reside in your fine township?”

  The woman hesitated.

  Suhbataar sighed, and from his jacket pocket pulled out a gold lighter. He set fire to the card NO SMOKING sign on the counter. The quivering woman, Suhbataar and I watched it shrivel and burn up into a flapping black flap. “Maybe you want to be locked up and maimed in prison? Maybe you want me to castrate your husband? Maybe you want your children to be taken into care by a Muslim-run orphanage in Bayan Olgii with a nasty reputation for child abuse?”

  Beads of sweat sprang up through her mascara. Idly, Suhbataar considered ramming her head through the glass counter, but I interceded. She scribbled an address on the margin of her newspaper and handed it over. “He lives there with his daughter, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Suhbataar yanked the phone line out of the wall. “Have a nice day.”

  Suhbataar circled the house. A prefabricated little place on the edge of town with only one door. There was a barrel for rainwater, which falls ten times in a good year, and an optimistic herb garden. The wind was loud and dusty. My host pulled out his gun and knocked. I clicked the safety catch on without Suhbataar noticing.

  The door was opened by Bodoo’s daughter. A boyish-looking girl in her late teens. We noted that my host was expected. Suhbataar guessed that she was alone in the house.

  “Let’s keep this painless,” said Suhbataar. “You know who I am and what I want. Where is your father?”

  This girl had attitude. “You don’t really expect me just to turn in my own father? We don’t even know the charge.”

  Suhbataar smiled. Something in the dark hole was humming. His eyes ran over the girl’s body, and imagined slashing it. He stepped forward, gripping her forearm.

  But for once Suhbataar was not going to get what he wanted.

  I implanted an overwhelming desire to drive to Copenhagen via Baghdad into Suhbataar’s mind, and made him throw his wallet containing several hundred dollars at Bodoo’s daughter’s feet. I transmigrated through the young woman’s forearm. It was difficult—the girl’s defenses were high and thick, and she was about to scream.

  I was in. I clamped the scream shut. We watched the dreaded KGB agent throw money at her feet, spring into his Toyota, and drive west at breakneck speed. My order might not get Suhbataar quite as far as Caspar’s flowerbeds, but it should take him well clear of Dalanzagad, and into a displeased border patrol in a volatile country where nobody spoke Russian or Mongolian.

  My new host watched Suhbataar’s car disappear. The screeching tires flung ribbons of dust to the desert wind.

  I saw her name, Baljin. A dead mother. There! The three who think about the fate of the world. A different version, but the same story. Her mother is weaving by firelight, on the far side of the room. Baljin is safe and warm. The loom clanks.

  Now all I had to do was find out where the story is from. I overrode Baljin’s relief and took us into her father’s study, which was also his bedroom and the dining room. Baljin was her father’s amanuensis and accompanied him on fieldwork. The notes for his book were in the drawer. Not good! Bodoo had taken them with him when he fled.

  I laid Baljin down on the bed and closed down her consciousness while I searched her memory for information on the origin of the tale. In what town is it still known and told? I spent half the afternoon searching, even for after-memories, but Baljin’s only certainty is that her father knows.

  So where was Bodoo? Yesterday he left for his brother’s ger, two hours’ ride west of Dalanzagad. Unless he received an all-clear message from Baljin by noon that day he would depart for Bayanhongoor, five hundred kilometers northwest across the desert. I woke Baljin, and looked at her watch. It was already three. I assured her the danger had passed, that the KGB do not want to question her father about anything, and that he can be contacted safely and told to come home. I waited for Baljin to choose the next logical step.

  We needed to borrow a horse, or maybe a motorbike.

  Two hours later we were thirty kilometers west of Dalanzagad in a sketchy village known in the local dialect only as “the bend in the river.” Baljin found her uncle, Bodoo’s brother, repairing his jeep. I had missed Bodoo by five hours. He left before noon, believing that the KGB must have reopened the file on his part in the democracy demonstrations. Baljin told her uncle about the wallet thrown at her feet. I had erased the memories of Suhbataar’s aggression. Bodoo’s brother, a tough herder who can wrestle rams to the ground and slit their throats in ten seconds, laughed. He stopped laughing when Baljin gave him half the money. This would feed his family for a year.

  We could go after his brother in the jeep, if we could get it working. I transmigrated, and with Jargal Chinzoreg’s automotive knowledge started reassembling the engine.

  Evening came before I got the engine working. My host considered it dangerous to leave after nightfall, so we decided to wait until dawn of the following day. Baljin brought her uncle a cup of airag. In the cold river children were swimming and women were washing clothes. The river flowed from springs at the feet of the Gov’-Altai mountains, born of winter snow. The sunset smelt of cooking. Baljin’s niece was practicing the shudraga, a long-necked lute. An old man was summoning goats. How I envy these humans their sense of belonging.

  Men arrived on horseback from the town, hungry for news. They had learned of Suhbataar’s visit two days ago from the truck drivers’ grapevine. They sat around the fire as Baljin told the story yet again, and an impromptu party got going. The younger men showed off their horsemanship to Baljin. Baljin was respected as one of the finest archers in all Dalanzagad, male or female, and she was unbetrothed, and the daughter of a government employee. Baljin’s aunt made some fresh airag, stirring mare’s milk into fermented milk. The mares were grazed on the previous autumn’s taana grass, w
hich makes the best airag. It grew dark, and fires were lit.

  “Tell us a story, Aunt Baljin,” said my host’s eight-year-old. “You know the best ones.”

  “How come?” said a little snotty boy.

  “Because of Grandpa Bodoo’s book, stupid. My Aunt Baljin helped him write it, didn’t you, Aunt Baljin?”

  “What book?” said Snotty. “The book of stories, stupid.”

  “What stories?”

  “You are so facile!” The girl exhibited her recent acquisition. “Aunt Baljin, tell us ‘The Camel and the Deer.’ ”

  Baljin smiled. She had a lovely smile.

  Now: long, long ago, the camel had antlers. Beautiful twelve-pronged antlers. And not only antlers! The camel also had a long, thick tail, lustrous as your hair, my darling.

  [“What’s ‘lustous’?” asked Snotty.]

  [“Shut up, stupid, or Aunt Baljin will stop, won’t you, Aunt Baljin?”]

  At that time the deer had no antlers. It was bald, and to be truthful rather ugly. And as for the horse, the horse had no lovely tail, either. Just a short little stumpy thing.

  One day the camel went to drink at the lake. He was charmed by the beauty of his reflection. “How magnificent!” thought the camel. “What a gorgeous beast am I!”

  Just then, who should come wandering out of the forest, but the deer? The deer was sighing.

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked the camel. “You’ve got a face on you like a wet sun.”

  “I was invited to the animals’ feast, as the guest of honor.”

  “You can’t beat a free nosh-up,” said the camel.

  “How can I go with a forehead as bare and ugly as mine? The tiger will be there, with her beautiful coat. And the eagle, with her swanky feathers. Please, camel, just for two or three hours, lend me your antlers. I promise I’ll give them back. First thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Well,” said the camel, magnanimously. “You do look pretty dreadful the way you are, I agree. I’ll take pity on you. Here you are.” And the camel took off the antlers and gave them to the deer, who pranced off. “And mind you don’t spill any, erm, berry juice on them or whatever it is you forest animals drink at these dos.”

  The deer met the horse.

  “Hey,” said the horse. “Nice antlers.”

  “Yes, they are, aren’t they?” replied the deer. “The camel gave them to me.”

  “Mmmn,” mused the horse. “Maybe the camel will give me something, too, if I ask nicely.”

  The camel was still at the lake, drinking, and looking at the desert moon.

  “Good evening, my dear camel. I was wondering, would you swap your beautiful tail with me for the evening? I’m going to see this finely built young filly I know, and she’s long been an admirer of yours. I know she’d simply melt if I turned up in her paddock wearing your tail.”

  The camel was flattered. “Really? An admirer? Very well, let’s swap tails. But be sure to bring it back first thing tomorrow morning. And be sure you don’t spill any, erm, never mind, just look after it, all right? It’s the most beautiful tail in the whole world, you know.”

  Since then many days and years have passed, but the deer still hasn’t given back the camel’s antlers, and you can see for yourself that the horse still gallops over the plains with the camel’s tail streaming in the wind. And some people say, when the camel comes to drink at the lake he sees his bare, ugly reflection, and snorts, and forgets his thirst. And have you noticed how the camel stretches his neck and gazes into the distance, to a far-off sand dune or a distant mountain top? That’s when he’s thinking, “When is the horse going to give me back my tail?” And that is why he is always so sad.

  Dust devils bounced off the shell of the jeep like kangaroos. Nothing among these rocks but scorpions and mirages, for the length and breadth of the morning.

  Bodoo’s brother stopped in an isolated ger. A camel was tethered outside, but there was no one around. As Gobi etiquette permits, my host entered the ger, prepared some food, and drank some water. The owner’s camel snorted like a human. A warning flared up from my host’s unconscious, but it went before I could locate its source. The wind was strong but the world was silent. There was nothing to blow against, or in, or through.

  We got back in the jeep. Gazelles darted through the distance, flocks of them turning like minnows in a river. Bodoo’s brother drove down the Valley of the Vulture’s Mouth, where we stopped at a store for enough provisions and petrol to get us to Bayanhongoor. Bodoo had passed through early that morning. We were catching up with him.

  Hawks circled high. One of the last Gobi bears shambled along the fringe of forest. There are less than a hundred left. Bodoo’s brother slept in the jeep, under several blankets. It gets cold at night, even in summer. Dreams came, of bones and stones with holes.

  The next day, the dunes, the longest running for eighty miles, swelling and rolling, grain by grain. Bodoo’s brother sang songs that lasted for miles, with no beginning and no end. The dunes of the dead. There were bones, and stones with holes.

  There was a stationary jeep in the shimmering distance. Bodoo’s brother pulled up to it and cut his engine. A figure was asleep under a makeshift canopy in the back.

  “Are you all right, stranger? Are you in need of any help? Any water?”

  “Yes,” said the figure, suddenly sitting up and showing his face, chewing gum. “I need your jeep. Mine seems to have broken down.” At point-blank range Punsalmaagiyn Suhbataar fired his handgun twice, a bullet for each of my host’s eyes.

  ————

  Nobody replies. Firelight without color. Outside must be night, if there is an outside. I am hostless and naked. The faces all stare in the same direction, all of them all of their ages. One of them coughs. It is Bodoo’s brother, his eye wounds already healed. I try to transmigrate into him, but I cannot inhabit a shadow. I’ve never known silence so deep. By being what I am, I thought I understood almost everything. But I understand almost nothing.

  A figure rises, and leaves the ger through a curtain. So simple? I follow the figure. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid you can’t come through here,” says a girl I hadn’t noticed, no older than eight, delicate and tiny as an ancient woman.

  “Will you stop me?”

  “No. If there is a door for you, you are free to pass through.” Wrens flutter.

  I touch the wall. There is no door. “Where is it?”

  She shrugs, biting her lip.

  “Then what shall I do?”

  A swan inspects the ground. She shrugs.

  Tallow candles spit and hiss. These few guests are many multitudes. Thousands of angels swim in a thimble. From time to time one of the guests stands up, and walks through the way out that is not there. The wall of the ger yields, and reseals behind them, like a wall of water. I try to leave with them, but for me it never even bends.

  The monk in a saffron robe sighs. He wears a yellow hat that arcs forward. “I’m having some problems with my teeth.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. The little girl talks to her twitchy marmot.

  Horses galloping by, or thunder? The swan spreads its wings and flies up through the roof. Bodoo’s brother has gone through the door.

  “But why can’t I pass through? The others have.”

  The little girl is playing cat’s cradle with a length of twine, knitting her brow. “You chose not to!”

  “I chose nothing.”

  “All your tribe leave your body while it still breathes.”

  “What do you mean, my tribe?”

  The monk with the yellow hat is here, humming through his broken mouth. He whispers in her ear; she stares at me distrustfully. “Very well,” she concurs. “The circumstances are uncommon. But what can I do?”

  The monk turns to me. “I’m sorry—my teeth.” A prophet’s nod. “Time has gone around, the years are cold and far away.… I kept my promise.” And he, too, passes through the wall of the ger.

  La
st to leave is the little girl, carrying her marmot. She feels sorry for me, and I don’t want her to go. I’m all alone.

  I was in a human host again, and the walls of the ger were living, pulsing with viscera and worry and nearby voices. I explored the higher rooms, but found nothing! No memories, no experiences. Not even a name. Barely an “I.” Where were those voices coming from? I looked deeper. There were whispers, and a suffusion of purposeful well-being. I tried to open my host’s eyes to see where I was, but the eyes would not open. I checked that there were eyes—yes, but my host had never learned to open them, and couldn’t respond. I was in a place unlike any other, yet my host didn’t know where. Or rather, my host didn’t know anywhere else. A blind mute? The mind was pure. So very pure that I was afraid for it.

  The well-being transformed into palpitating fear. Had I been detected? A knot of pain was being pulled tight. Panic, such panic I had never known since I butchered the mind of my first host. The curtain was ripped, and my host emerged into the world between her mother’s legs, screaming indignantly at this rude wrenching. The cold air flooded in! The light, even through my eyelids, made my host’s tender brain chime.

  I transferred into my host’s mother along the umbilical cord, and the depth of emotion was sheer and giddy. I forgot to insulate and I was swept away by joy, and relief, and loss, and gain, and emptiness, and fulfillment, a memory of swimming, and the claw-sharp, bloodied love, and the conviction that she would never again put herself through this agony. But I have work to do.

  Another ger. Firelight, warmth, and the shadows of antlers. I searched for our location. Well. Good news and bad. My new host was a Mongolian in Mongolia. But I was far to the north of where Bodoo was last heading, not far from the Russian border. I was in the province of Renchinhumbe, near the lake of Tsagaan Nuur and the town of Zoolon. It was September now and the snows would be coming soon. The midwife was the grandmother of the baby I just left; she was smiling down at her daughter, anesthetizing the umbilical cord with a lump of ice. Her hair cobwebby, her face round like the moon. An aunt bustled about in the background with pans of warm water and squares of cloth and fur, chanting. This flat and quiet song was the only sound.