Christopher called at the top of his voice to Winterpole, telling him to stop. It was time they halted and rested properly. At first Winterpole paid no need, then he raised a tired hand to show he had heard, reined in his horse, and slipped awkwardly to the ground. He waited for them to catch up with him, his arms folded across his chest, relaxed and apparently un flustered by their adventures. They did not hurry to reach him nor, when they did, did Christopher find anything to say to him. He dismounted and helped Chindamani to the ground. She yawned and held on to him tightly, shivering in the dawn breeze.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Christopher. He turned and spoke to Winterpole in English.
“Do you know where we are?”
Winterpole smiled.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said.
“I overheard some of them talking last night, before all the trouble started. I got a rough idea which way we were travelling.”
He turned and pointed.
“Do you see those mountains ahead of us?”
Christopher nodded.
“That’s the Bogdo Ula range. Urga is on the other side.”
“I’m tired.”
They had been walking for days now, but Zamyatm showed no signs of slacking off. Samdup had begun to wonder if he was human at all.
“Won’t you have another chocolate?” the Buriat said, holding out a large beribboned box to the boy. God knows where or how the man obtained the thing, but it had appeared one evening at Uliassutai, a burning temptation to a child who had scarcely tasted sugar in his life. The box bore the legend “Debauve & Gallais’, and had clearly originated in their little shop near the top of the Rue des Saints-Peres, whence it had travelled to St. Petersburg in the halcyon days before crowns and chocolates were together interdicted. But by what circuitous route the box now in far from pristine condition had come to the steppes of western Mongolia or how it had in the end fallen into Zamyatin’s egalitarian hands as an offering for his little god-prince, it was impossible to know.
Samdup shook his head and walked on in silence. He was not to be drawn so easily from his tiredness. It had not been petulance that led him to complain. The boy really was tired and needed more than battered chocolates to fortify his spirits or his body against the rig ours of another day. He hated Zamyatin with a raw and pitiless loathing, and longed to be rid of him. Yet a mutual dependence had grown up between man and boy, such that Samdup had little comfort in the thought of their parting.
Zamyatin fell back a little to where William was trailing along behind on his pony. They had agreed that he should have the remaining pony since he was in such poor shape. The bite he had received in the tunnels beneath Dorje-la had swollen out of all proportion. In the past week, it had become red and angry, the skin over it drawn taut like the skin of a drum. The boy suffered constant pain from it now and could scarcely sleep at night. At each of their recent halts, he had been examined by Mongol doctors, but all they had been able to do was to prepare herbal concoctions, which William drank without effect.
“Have a chocolate, William,” Zamyatin urged, holding the box up to him. But the boy did not even look down or show that he had heard. He was not eating properly, and Zamyatin was growing worried.
Strictly speaking, he should have dumped the English boy weeks ago. Tibet was still a long way in the future, and he was not sure how useful William would prove anyway. But something in the boy’s situation had awakened what little conscience there was in Zamyatin. He identified with him and in some respects regretted having taken him from his home. All the more now that he was sure the boy would not survive much longer unless he received proper medical attention.
The two boys had formed a strangely intense friendship in spite of their inability to understand one another’s language. William had taught Samdup a little English and learned some Tibetan in return, but they had only words without grammar or syntax. They communicated in some manner that transcended or side-stepped language. William would let only Samdup tend to him when his neck was particularly bad. And Samdup would go nowhere unless William was by his side. They had become like brothers.
Zamyatin tried without success to win the favour of one or the other.
He knew that, if William accepted him, Samdup would come round in time. Without Samdup, Zamyatin would lose all purpose in being here. True, there were communist cells at Urga and elsewhere now, with which he could liaise. But he knew that another Comintern agent, Sorokovikov, was already in the country and that he had organized the existing revolutionary group into the Mongol People’s Party under the leadership of a man called Sukebator. Udinskii had told him that a delegation from the MPP had visited the head of the People’s Section of the East for the Party’s Siberian Bureau in Irkutsk. That had been last August.
After that, a Mongol-Tibetan section of Comintern had been founded. The first Mongolian Party Congress had been held in Russian Khiakhta in March. Puzorin, commander of the Soviet of the Fifth Army, was already mobilizing his men.
So events had overtaken Zamyatin while he had been tucked away in his little monastery in the Himalayas. He could feel the reins of power slipping out of his grasp before he had even learned to move them through his fingers with any real dexterity. More than ever, everything hinged on the boy. Ungern’s defeat, the Khutukhtu’s overthrow, and Zamyatin’s elevation to the vice regency of the East. Others might move cells and parties and armies, but what could they achieve in the end without the underpinning only a Saviour-child could give them?
Already his expedition had met with success, as he had anticipated. The riot at Uliassutai had been a mere beginning. He had met with the Sain Noyon Khan and one of the princes from his aim ak a man called Damdinsuren, and had presented them to the boy. It had gone exactly as planned both men, together with the lamas in their entourage had recognized Samdup as the new Khutukhtu and promised their support, moral and military both.
They had given him letters to other princes, to the Tushetu and Setsen Khans, and to the heads of several key monasteries.
Somehow he could not explain it, did not wholly admire or admit it even to himself- the boy exerted some sort of charm over everyone he met. He played the part, but there was more to it than that. Perhaps it was simply that Samdup had throughout his life been little else but a god, so that he behaved as a god might be expected. And the boy did not have to act: he really believed he was the Maidari Buddha. But the Mongols, like the Tibetans, were accustomed to little boys who deported themselves as god lings yet they responded to Samdup with genuine respect.
Mongolia then was divided into several large provinces or aimaks, each of which was further divided into several ho shun Zamyatin calculated that he had already perhaps ten ho shun solidly behind him or, to be precise, behind the boy, which was the same thing as far as he was concerned. There would be more riots, and next time he would see to it that the participants were armed.
The main thing was to keep the boys on the move. Word would be out by now, and if what he had heard about Ungern Stern berg was even partly true, the baron would stop at nothing to crush the rebellion breeding beneath his nose. Every night, Zamyatin and the boys stayed at the juris of a different clan, moving in a broken pattern across the country, never keeping to a straight line, never staying in one place long enough to make tracing them easy.
Tomorrow they would start for Urga. The Sain Noyon Khan
would organize a series of uprisings in the west and north while Zamyatin and his young Pretender took horses to the capital. By the time they arrived there, Ungern’s attention would be focused elsewhere. They would make their way into the city with the assistance of a few sympathizers. Zamyatin would make contact with Sukebator and the other revolutionaries, explain what was happening, and put himself in charge.
Up ahead, Samdup had stopped and sat down by the side of the track.
Zamyatin went up to him slowly, holding the rein of William’s pony.
“My feet hurt,” Samdup said.
“What do you want me to do about it?” snapped Zamyatin. His own feet hurt.
“We’ve still got miles to go. Do you want to spend the night out here with the wolves?”
But he liked the boy. He really did. He liked both of them. It was just that he did not know how to show it. He had never known.
No-one had ever told him.
Urga
Urga lay in the sunshine uneasily, trapped in a hollow between dark hills. Sunlight had entered it in proper measure, scattered from a cloudless and smiling sky, but no sooner did it touch its narrow lanes and fetid alleyways than it lost whatever lustre it had possessed and became a grey and sickly thing. The city’s rooftops were golden and the spires on its temple tipped with sunlight and precious stones, but shadows hung over them and the sound of great trumpets echoed round them with a mournful and desperate flatness.
Mountains enclosed a melancholy plain across which the city stretched
for mile after mile, in three separate sections: Mai-maich’eng, the
Chinese trading city, to the east, its stores and warehouses deserted
and empty; Gandan, the grey city of the lamas, with its temples and
colleges for the study of theology and medicine, to the west; and in
the centre, Ta Khure, where the Living Buddha dwelt behind thick walls
of dull red and white, among rooms full of holy relics and a thousand
ticking clocks, each set to a different hour and minute. Time passed
in those chambers to a morbid creeping sound, like ice moving down a
mountain slope
In slow procession, pilgrims walked or crawled in circles about their god, while trumpets played and gongs shivered and the voices of ten thousand dreaming priests shimmered and echoed in the hollow air. All was as it had been, nothing was changed, nothing was altered except for the actors and their faces. They wore ancient robes and spoke ancient lines, turning and bowing and lighting the proper incense in the proper places, as generations of actors had done before them, as they themselves had no doubt done in former lifetimes. Precise, mannered, without a syllable altered or a gesture changed. And in the Buddha’s chambers, clocks ticked and rang out in the stillness.
In the centre, brooding, dressed in scarlet, his eyes heavy from sleepless nights, Roman von Ungern Sternberg sat among the warm tents of his troops, planning the stages of a small apocalypse.
He drank small cups of Chinese tea and smoked dark-scented cigarettes, but all the time his mind was on other things.
He stood up and went to the door of hisjwrt. It was situated in the courtyard of an abandoned hong that had once belonged to the great Shansi house of Ta Sheng K’uei. The Buriat regiment under Sukharev was stationed here by Ungern’s choice; nearby were the Chahar and Tatar regiments commanded by Bair Gur and Rezukhin. But Rezukhin had gone south with a Russian detachment two weeks ago and still had not returned.
The city filled his nostrils with its peculiar smell, a rich, sour smell that was a blend of holiness and corruption, sanctity mixed with greed and simple, raw humanity. He had not chosen Urga a malign Fate had chosen him for it and sent him there to serve its purposes.
Stubbing out a half-finished cigarette on the door-post, he lit another. His nicotine-stained fingers trembled slightly. It was late afternoon, time to receive the reports that had come in at lunchtime. The combined sounds of men and horses conveyed to him a sense of ease and normality. They did not know what burdens he carried on their behalf, what worries and anxieties he bore for their sake. But when the time came, they would ride out of Urga in his train, like a host of riders out of hell, destroying all that lay in their path. He could already see the dust rising above their horses’ fetlocks and hear the sound of their galloping. He had come to long for that moment as a lover for his wedding-night. Mongolia was to be his bride: he would tear her to pieces in order to possess her.
He turned and went back into the vurf. Colonel Sepailov had just
finished his third glass of han chi
“Have some more, Colonel.”
Ungern poured another measure into the colonel’s empty glass and watched him throw back the powerful drink as if it were milk.
If the colonel drank much more of this stuff, he would cease to be of much use, and that would be a pity. Ungern could only really trust two of his staff now Sepailov was one and the other was Burdokovskii, whom the men had nicknamed the Teapot. They were his eyes and ears and when there was dirty work to do, his hands as well. There was often dirty work to be done. Sepailov would have to cut down.
“Start at the beginning again,” Ungern said, ‘and tell me the story just as you had it from Jahantsi.” He lit another cigarette, blowing smoke carelessly in Sepailov’s eyes.
The Khutukhtu Jahantsi was Chairman of the Mongolian Council of Ministers. A sinecure really, but Jahantsi was astute enough to make his position count for something even in these times. He had spoken to Sepailov that morning and asked him to pass on information to the Baron. It gave an impression of intermediacy, even though all concerned knew such things were mere formalities: the Baron was in control for the moment.
“Jahantsi says something is going on at Uliassutai. Two riders came yesterday using tiaras with your name. They were given horses at every staging-post.”
“Who gave authority for the tiaras to be written?”
“Kazantsev, or so they said.”
“Very well, Kazantsev. And?”
“There was a riot.”
“A riot? You’re sure? Not justv.. . a disturbance?”
Sepailov shook his head. His skull was curiously shaped, flattened on top, a little like a saddle: in a deformed world, he was a prince.
“People were killed, General. A group of about ninety Mongols attacked a detachment from the Uliassutai garrison. They had to be beaten back.”
“Were they carrying weapons?”
“No. No, that’s the curious thing. They were all unarmed. One of the riders .. .”
He hesitated.
Ungern sucked on his cigarette. Smoke hung around him like a noxious halo.
“Yes?” he prompted.
“Go on.”
“He ... he told Jahantsi they chose to be unarmed. They had access to arms but chose not to carry them. They believed they were immune to bullets. So they rushed a group of armed soldiers, waving talismans and chanting slogans of some sort.”
“Slogans? Bolshevik slogans?”
Sepailov shook his head.
“No, religious slogans. That sort of thing’s more in your line of country than mine, sir. But I expect they were the sort of chants I hear them mumbling when I go past the temples here. Mumbojumbo, sir.”
Ungern nodded, a little impatiently. He believed in the chanting.
It wasn’t mumbo-jumbo. Nervously, he drew on his cigarette. He was up to eighty a day now. What would happen when his supplies dried up?
“No doubt,” he said.
“You say some people were killed. Were any shots fired?”
“Yes, sir, a few. It seems young Schwitters was the officer in charge.
Do you remember him? He .. .”
“Yes, I remember. Get on with it!”
“Sorry, sir. As I was saying, Lieutenant Schwitters was commanding officer. It seems he panicked and ordered a volley over their heads. When that didn’t work, he had his men shoot into the crowd. They killed about twenty of them, no-one’s really sure how many. Then they charged in, using their rifle butts. That did the trick. They cleared off double quick. But .. .”
“Yes? Yes?”
“Jahantsi thinks .. . He thinks it’s just a start, sir.”
“A start? What makes him think that? Has he any reason to think that?”
“The rioters were shouting about some child, sir. Some sort of Buddha, Jahantsi said. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about it’s all
gobbledegook to me, begging your pardon, sir. But it seems they expected this child to be some sort of leader.
So Jahantsi says, and he should know, I suppose.
“The child, well, he’s supposed to be some sort of Saviour they’ve been expecting. You know how it is. Jahantsi says there have been rumours about this child from other parts of the country. I asked him if...”
Sepailov’s voice trailed away into silence. Von Ungern Sternberg had grown rigid in his seat, his hands feverishly tight against the arms of his leather-upholstered chair. He wore a red Mongolian coat of silk above black Russian breeches and leather boots: a general learning to be a god. His face made Sepailov think of icons he had worshipped as a child. It was a thin, ascetic face, arid and Byzantine, waiting for ochre and crimson and gold leaf to transubstantiate it. All the fine, exhausted tensions of saintliness, yet without so much as a trace of anything holy. He had always been untidy, but recently Sepailov had noticed a greater disorder in him, less physical than mental. Ungern was breaking down. He was full of prophecies and dreams and undercurrents of a mad divinity. But basically, he was breaking down.
“Where does this child come from?” He snapped out the question angrily.
“Jahantsi thinks .. .”
“Yes?” Ungern stubbed out his cigarette, half-finished, and lit another.
“He thinks he may have come from Tibet. In fact, he’s almost certain. I think he knows more than he’s saying. Someone told him there’s a man with him, with the boy.”
“A man? A Tibetan?”
Sepailov shook his head.
“Jahantsi thinks he may be Mongolian or ...”
He hesitated.
“Yes?”
“Or Russian. A Buriat. So Jahantsi says.
“And there may be a second boy. A European child, so the rumours go.
There’s talk that he’s some sort of incarnation as well.”
The Ninth Buddha Page 38
