White Blood

by James Fleming

  "Who's the great big peacock, then," said my mother, to dampen the conceit that was making the walls of her house bulge.

  Two weeks after Norman's cable I received a letter from his publicist, a Mrs. Amy Carson.

  The ribbon spool must have been loose in her typewriter, for many of her characters were tipped with red, like cinnabar moths. Or the excitement of writing to me had made everything bounce.

  "We all find him so cute, and have nicknamed him Wiz. I asked if Wiz was a he. They told me Yes, but it wasn't quite as straightforward as that. I hope you weren't thinking of him as a girl! Now I must be serious or I shall be out of a job. The fact is that the museum is working up an exhibition of which Wiz is to be the centrepiece ..."

  She was doing a poster, in which I was to feature, photographed "in a characteristic costume, if you please." Lewis's in Oxford Street had a good jungle background; they snapped me in my shorts and helmet, butterfly net poised. Amy got this into a number of popular American magazines. The story of our sojourn in the rainforest, the sensation of Hpung's murder and my capture of Wiz in the baroque post office of Chaungwa caught the imagination. Over two thousand people showed up on the first day he was exhibited. Amy sent me press cuttings. I was the most famous naturalist in America, she said.

  The most famous! Hartwig Goetz—well down the list, among the plankton. It was a good feeling. I plumed and preened myself all over gloomy London, especially in the Darwin. At home I was insufferable.

  Here let me praise my noble, generous mother, so harassed by the fates, and give thanks unto her for the gift of life, which I regard as an honour. I was told of her death on the platform of Smolensk railway station. Pneumonia, that was what my cousin Nicholas said.

  Eleven

  It was an acquaintance of Igor, my great-uncle, who tipped us off about the Russians' expedition to Turkestan. For many years there'd been rumours in the Darwin Club. The collection of bird skins in the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg had been damaged. Had the rain got in? "Was it the heating? Or was it really the case, as alleged, that Brandt, the curator, had sold the rarest skins to a dealer in Hamburg who happened to be his brother? There were always tales on the go. But now Mother heard via Uncle Igor that the Academy had actually received the money to do something about it. The word "received" had been underlined in red ink.

  This was always the point with the natural sciences in Russia, which were much spoken of and the subject of many collections including royal ones—but rarely the recipient of State funds. That scene from Gogol's later, destroyed, volume is ever applicable, where a candidate for the civil service is asked to solve a problem that is stated as follows: "Given a scheme, a promoter must secure the finance for carrying it off. Compose a secure defence against all promoters."

  But now the Academy actually had the money for a three-year trip working out of Samarkand to assemble the definitive collection of the passerines of Central Asia. It was in their pocket. How to get it into mine, that was the trick.

  Goetz had the ear of people who counted at the Academy. I was more or less Russian. We had international reputations. But it was Wiz who clinched it. I was the man in form and there to prove it was Wiz, gathering new admirers every day. So the job became ours, subject to an interview at the consulate in Bedford Square with Zhdanov, the head in Britain of our Third Section. His eyes, obscured by the thick lenses of his spectacles, moved murkily over us as if they were slivers of jellyfish. He related in vicious tones how much his family had suffered in the uprising of 1905. All the terrorists had come from Germany. Their propaganda sheet, Iskra, had been printed there. He looked threateningly at Goetz. "This is what comes out of your country to bite us. Why should I grant you a visa, Mister Goetz? How do I know you may not have the inclination to be a terrorist, that you do not have this disease?"

  I was sorry for Goetz. He was a naturalist, a student of beauty and Linnaeus. Soldiers at frontier posts he could deal with. Bureaucrats panicked him.

  "But I've been here so long that at last I dare call myself English. Only a speck of German remains. A speck, sir,—ein kleines bisschen . . ."

  "There, one hundred per cent German," said Zhdanov in triumph. "But I see you have employment capturing birds, so I suppose you are harmless. My wife likes birds, the sort that lives in cages. They're the easiest. However, I don't suppose your people concern themselves with canaries."

  With poor grace he filled in our passports, single sheets of paper measuring fifteen inches by twelve. The way he stamped them was so curious—a sideways, furtive, crimping motion. It seemed to say, "See how far that gets you." I imagined him selling papal indulgences in the square at Padua.

  At lunch in the Club some wiseacre remarked that the tools of trade of the naturalist are identical to those of the terrorist: rifle and gun, knives, cyanide and arsenic. This made me think. We could be delayed interminably if we used the railway system of Europe. It was a standing joke that more Tsarist police agents were on it than travellers. So we went by tramp steamer, through the Mediterranean. When we got to Smyrna, Goetz suddenly decided that Troy was too close to miss. "Antioch and Ephesus too. I wish to see these places while they still have a smell of the Bible and one can visualise things as they used to be. I'm getting old. My health may collapse, my luck likewise. Where do you want to rendezvous, skipper?"

  We decided to meet at Kattikurgan, a small garrison town on the edge of the Turkestan desert, roughly midway between Bokhara and Samarkand.

  There was a difficulty between us concerning the Russian calendar, which operates several days behind the rest of the world. We agreed that it was thirteen. He wrote down the date of our meeting on the flyleaf of his journal: May 28th, 1914. He said he'd arrive from Samarkand on the second train.

  When I made fun of him for specifying the train he'd be on without seeing a timetable and having a thousand miles and two mountain ranges to cross before he got there, he retorted, "All railway stations must receive a minimum of two trains daily in each direction. There are travellers with morning urges and travellers with evening urges. If they all go the same way—but that's foolish even to consider talking about. What I say is logical. There will be a second train, Doig, and I shall be on it."

  It was the way we planned our expeditions. Except for Russia, whose frontiers were notorious, we could have gone anywhere in the world without a passport. What constricted our movements were not borders but natural obstacles: mountains, deserts and rivers, in that order. When collecting, our speed was negligible. But on the hoof, as a general rule, we would reckon to cover a thousand miles a week in railway country and the same distance in a month where we had to use mixed transport. The least reliable conveyance was a boat. Whatever the means of propulsion boats always have the potential to go slower—because of the wind or the absence of wind or the tide or the current or the shoals or the waterfalls. Never completely trust a boat, that was our rule. Goetz's calf muscles were a constant reminder of the truth of his adage: "Walk steadily to travel quickly."

  A Turk of the same build as himself carried his baggage off. Goetz was using the commercial-sized airtight salt jars of Messrs. Cerebos to store specimens such as snakes and the larger insects. I'd offered to take them all myself. But he was certain he'd alight on something worth collecting. He'd wrapped half a dozen in sacking and roughly boxed them. The Turk went down the gang-board with muffled chimes ringing on his shoulder.

  On the quay Goetz turned and shouted up, "Don't sneer at me, Doig, I'll be there. The second train, going from east to west."

  I travelled on to Odessa and thus to the Crimea and Uncle Igor's cool, colonnaded villa, the design for which had been lifted from one of Diocletian's palaces.

  My cousin Elizaveta had just been staying with him. Uncle Igor could do nothing but talk about her. On several occasions I asked his opinion about the international situation and in particular about the Russian policy with regard to Serbia. The nearest I got to an answer was this, which came with a shake o
f his old rouged cheeks: 'I never heard such a foreboding consonant as that 'b' in Serbia and that's as far as I want to think about it.'

  He would say nothing about war or politics. Happiness came most easily to him when he was sitting in his arbour of vines with his Vichy water and medicines, staring at Elizaveta's photograph. It was the best one ever taken, a close-up of her dark, angular face as she stepped off the running board of his Astro-Daimler.

  But he must have been one of the few people in Europe not brooding about the political situation. When the second westbound train arrived at Kattikurgan on May 28th, the possibility of war was all Goetz could talk about.

  From forty yards he hurried towards me, this thick, crumpled naturalist, this absolute connoisseur of beauty, breaking into a trot after a few paces so that I believed he must have vital news, like an outbreak of the plague. I too began to run. Other passengers had descended, portly gentlemen in robes, turbaned in many colours. Goetz and I converged erratically, swerving through them like a boy and girl hastening to declare a passion.

  He put his hand to his breast as he got his breath back. "Not as young as I used to be . . . listen, skipper . . . yesterday in the bank in Abramovski Boulevard I met a German, a merchant. He had a newspaper, some days old, which he lent me. In it I saw reprinted the speech of Germany's Chancellor at the time of the Army Bill last year. His words were so ruthless that I've memorised them. 'We are not bringing in this bill because we want war but because we want peace and because, if war comes, we desire to be the victors.'' These are the words of a man begging for war. It cannot be otherwise. When I gave the paper back I asked the merchant his opinion. He looked at me as if I was some stupid pig farmer from Holland. 'Of course, what else?'

  "Then we went to the Civilians Club and had some beers together. But only Russian beer, light stuff not worth talking about. Anyway, I wanted to tell you this before we start our work. You're the leader. It may be that you would wish to take some special action, that's what I thought on the train."

  I had the same feeling then for Goetz as I'd had when he was being questioned by Zhdanov: that he should be kept well away from the unalterable baseness of mankind. Here was someone who'd sleep happily amidst the most venomous snakes in the universe yet pale to ashes at the prospect of human bloodshed. He was truly shocked by what he'd heard. His eye-whites were stark and so magnified that his face looked unnatural.

  He said, "I'm too old to fight. Thank God, for I could never kill a man."

  "What about me?"

  "Ja, you'd kill alright." His jowls shook with a little mirth.

  "So what should each of us do if it comes to war?"

  Goetz considered me. The natives were flowing round us in a noisy stream. He said, "That depends on the balance of your patriotism—are you a subject of King George or of the Tsar? For me there is only King George."

  He remarked there was time enough for one of the Powers to step back. No one would start fighting before the harvest had been gathered: September, say, if the year was normal. He said how disgusting politicians were, that they'd ruin us before they'd finished. This required so little comment that we let the subject lapse. It drifted away into the soft desert dusk as we strolled up the platform to his baggage.

  We spent the night in the front room of Kobulov, the station-master, beneath the glow of his household ikons. Goetz was sleeping poorly, moving around a lot and speaking words or even half sentences. I knew all the signals by heart. But I was the leader now and mine the more important sleep. I woke him. The subject that was exercising him was War and Patriotism. How much could the State demand of its citizens? Could men be legally compelled to fight, even if the cause was odious to them? The words came rushing out. He was greatly disturbed. He'd only been in a state of semi-sleep: "Touching the clouds having a foot on the ground," was how he put it. What was needed was a new and invincible Truth to which all men could subscribe with an easy conscience. In place of battle standards there should be banners of Christ; in place of marching songs, hymns. (I should mention that he was a devout Lutheran.) In this way the blind pursuit of soldiering that was the curse of England and Germany would wither to nothingness. The armies of the future would be spiritual gatherings seeking One Truth. "Then go and join one," I growled. "That'll cure you quickly enough."

  Twelve

  Stationmaster Pavel Kobulov was vital to us. He'd been stuck at Kattikurgan for twenty-eight years, having arrived there as foreman of the gang laying the rails. One evening the surveyor and a commissioner had come rattling up the line on the platelayers' bogie, which was pumped by hand and could be heard a mile away. They got out their map and said, Here there will be a station: who's the foreman? Pavel was a tall, clean character who stood up straight. It was enough. He was appointed stationmaster on the spot, even though he had no maths.

  It had taken him six years to sell his first drum of tickets. The railway auditor couldn't believe it and had accused him of fraud. The experience had scared him stiff—taken years off his life and turned his hair white. But now he'd got over it and had learned the tricks.

  He dealt with only six trains a day (four civilian and two military). He was delighted to have the chance at a second occupation.

  The greatest practical difficulty for any naturalist in the field, after locating his quarry, is to get his specimens home. Naturally it is also important to dry, eviscerate and prepare them; to do these things thoroughly and without short cuts, which is not always easy. To be birding during a migration, as we were in the following year, leaves few of the twenty-four hours for eating and sleeping. Cleaning a bird, skinning it, inserting the shaping materials as required, and sewing it up again takes thirty minutes. There can be no interruption once the job is started or the ants will take over. By day we would select, stalk and kill, usually with a blowpipe. In the evening I would prepare a meal while Goetz fed our animals. If the light was good we'd write up our journals while everything was fresh in our minds. Then we'd settle to the exacting job of skinning the day's bag, sexing the birds and analysing the contents of their guts—by lantern, by the stickiness of night, smeared with sweat, a fur of mosquitoes swaying on our forearms. Then we'd check and recheck the information to go on the label and try to write it out without smudges. Sometimes, in important cases, one of us would paint on the label a match of the bird's plumage colours. These can take on a different hue when seen six months later on a February afternoon in St. Petersburg. It is vital for a scientist to know what the bird looked like in situ.

  Much of a collector's reputation rests on the quality of his skins. If it's impossible to imagine that the bird in question ever flew, sang or raised a brood of young, then his efforts have been wasted. The skinning style of one man is quite different from the style of another. Curators recognise them instantly. There's no hiding at the topmost level of museum work.

  So, it's three o'clock at night in the Kizil Kum. The annual bird migration from India is in full swing. The air is full of them, from the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush to where we are. Their purpose is to breed. For this they seek prolonged daylight, space, and ready supplies of food and water. From Turkestan they'll spread as far north as Siberia.

  For Goetz and I the day is already twenty-one hours old. We are camped in the snow-fed marshes where the river Zarafshan runs to waste. There is a wilderness of saxaul and tamarisk thickets here that give excellent cover to most of the species we're after. In them live also the small, melancholic tigers of Central Asia. We are coming to the end of our stint of skinning. It's not good for Goetz, who next year will drink an entire bottle of brandy by himself to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, to work these hours for six weeks without a break. Therefore I do much of the skinning alone, while he sleeps. But tonight he is busy searching again for the Truth about the war that he foresees. He is bothered about Patriotism and wishes to discuss it. We talk as we go along, with long pauses since scalpel work is delicate and we have to concentrate.

  The night is nev
er quiet. There is a constant murmuration of voles and other small mammals among the saxauls. There are the owls that hunt these sounds, and the cock nightingales and the sleeping noises from our donkeys that are related to snores. We hear the frantic squeals as a wild pig, which was happily rootling through the mud for fleshy young tubers, is jumped by one of the tigers. Whenever this happens, a short and poignant silence falls upon the desert. We are all imagining death, even the voles.

  We hear the stars whisper to each other tidings of dawn. We stretch, yawn, clean and store our skinning tools, hook the skins to a pole standing in a bucket of water, check that everything is listed correctly in our journals and collapse onto our sturdy Army & Navy beds in the same clothes that we have worn for two weeks. Every other morning we'll pack the skins in a cotton shift and leave them with the headman in the nearest village, whom we'll also inform of our future movements.

  The rest is up to Kobulov.

  His son-in-law works at the Kommercheskaya Hotel in Samarkand and has access to a daily supply of wooden wine cases. It was he who found that a claret case fits inside a champagne case with a tolerance of an inch all round—a double skin and so perfect. Kobulov employs someone to follow us collecting the skins. He then despatches them by train to St. Petersburg. (We have Priority labels printed with the Imperial eagle.)

  All the stationmasters on the Samarkand loop keep in touch with each other via the electric telegraph to warn of approaching auditors or gangs of ne'er-do-wells, or to assist in the common cause of enrichment. Even five hundred miles away I found that Kobulov's name did the trick.

  In the village he got us a couple of baggage donkeys for our guns, ammunition, traps, the lime green Skyproof tent, our skinning equipment and personal stuff. The purchase of our two riding donkeys he left to us. All riding animals are a personal choice.