“Come over here and bring the boy with you!” He knew Ungern would need the boy now, if he intended to execute the Khutukhtu. Ungern would not let Sepailov fire as long as he was aiming at the boy.
“Ka-ris To-feh!” cried Chindamani.
“Tell him to put his gun down or I’ll have to kill him. Please tell him!”
At the main door, Ungern and Sepailov hesitated. Zamyatin had realized they needed the boy. But why didn’t the woman take the child and run? And what did she mean, that she would kill him?
“There’s no point, Zamyatin,” Ungern said.
“You’re finished.
Sukebator has retreated. The members of your cell in Urga are either dead or in prison awaiting my orders. If you kill the boy, the Khutukhtu lives. If you kill the Khutukhtu, the boy will serve me as he has been serving you. And in either case, Sepailov will kill you. Better just to drop your gun and make the best of it.”
Zamyatin’s hand was shaking. He could scarcely control the gun. He turned from the boy to the Khutukhtu and back again.
Sepailov took a step forward. Zamyatin raised the gun and pointed it at Samdup.
Ungern nodded. Sepailov took aim and fired, hitting Zamyatin in the left shoulder. Zamyatin’s hand jerked, firing his pistol, then he dropped it. It fell like a stone to the heavily carpeted floor.
Sepailov motioned with the gun, directing Zamyatin to join
Christopher, and the Khutukhtu. Clutching his bleeding shoulder, the Buriat complied.
At first, no-one noticed what had happened at the rear of the room. But when Zamyatin moved, Christopher saw Chindamani bending over Samdup, who was lying on the floor. Her long black hair fell over the boy like a curtain, concealing his face. But from the edge of the curtain, like the petals of a tiny flower pushing themselves out above the black soil, fine drops of blood appeared, spread, and combined into a gently moving pool.
No-one spoke. Sepailov continued to cover Zamyatin with his pistol.
Ungern turned his attention to the woman and the boy.
When she raised her face at last, it was smeared with blood, and blood clung in fantastic drops to her hair. She said nothing. All her eloquence was in her face, in the blood that had fastened to her cheeks and lips, in her eyes, staring past her matted hair into the still room.
Christopher rose from his seat. He felt a great numbness come over him, striking his limbs into immobility. He remembered Chindamani’s words, speaking of the prophecy: he will have to die in order to be reborn yet again. Her blood-streaked face chilled him. He knew that some terrible doom had taken hold of them and was harrying them towards an end of sorts. Or a beginning: it was all the same now.
“Let me go to her,” he said in English, addressing Sepailov. The Russian did not move. He held his pistol pointed at Zamyatin, ready to fire again. Christopher stepped towards him, but Sepailov did not alter his position. He let Christopher pass.
Ungern watched as though fascinated as Christopher walked up to Chindamani and raised her. Samdup’s head had been shattered by the bullet: there was no question of saving him. He held her against his chest, feeling the futility of everything.
They stood like figures of wax, separate, immobile, dreaming individual dreams. There were no prayers to take away the blood or the spiders, no gestures to bring life back to the dead. No-one saw Chindamani move, or if they did, they ignored her.
From the folds of her jacket, she took out a gun, a small Remington she had somehow managed to palm and hide during the tour of the Khutukhtu’s treasures. She had no certain idea how it worked, or whether it was loaded, or whether it worked at all.
She had picked it up without my notion of what she intended to do with it. Now she knew.
The first shot found Sepailov’s back. He dropped without a murmur, dead or paralysed. Zamyatin saw his chance. He ran forward, fingers clutching for the gun that had fallen from Sepailov’s hand. As he picked it up, she fired again. And twice more.
Zamyatin clutched the air. He tried to breathe and swallowed blood. He tried harder and blood came gushing out of his mouth and throat. Suddenly, his legs felt like lead and his head was spinning through space, divorced from his surroundings. He heard himself coughing, choking, drowning in his own blood. The red flag fluttered in front of his eyes against a velvet sky. Then it was blood, smothering the world. And at last he was one with History and the sky was empty and as black as night.
Chindamani dropped the gun. With a moan, she bent forward, burying her face in her hands, sobbing without control. With Samdup, the last vestige of her world had vanished. Her love for Christopher had destroyed the boy and the world he had symbolized.
Christopher picked up the gun. He had guessed who the baron was, guessed what he had to do if they were to get out of here alive.
Von Ungern Sternberg carried a pistol in a leather holster strapped to the belt around his waist, but still he had not drawn it. He had watched everything without emotion, a spectator rather than a participant. Now, he looked at Christopher and the gun in his hand as if it were a flower he held out to him.
The precision of death, its absoluteness, its finality these had been the things that had commended it to him and made him linger over it in the long days and nights at Urga. How simple it was, he thought, how plain, how lacking in affectation. It was all that he admired, the ultimate statement of man’s innate simplicity.
There was a perfection in it such that he had never found in anything else, and he loved to see that perfection renewed, that bold simplicity restated time after time in his presence.
And now his own death. It had come sooner than expected, but it was welcome all the same. It seemed like a good enough time to die.
Christopher raised the pistol. There were still a few bullets left,
but he would need only one. He stepped up close to the baron,
it looking him directly in the eye. Yes, he could understand the stories he had heard. It would be better for everyone if von Ungern Sternberg were removed. He put the pistol to the baron’s head and felt the trigger start to give to the pressure of his finger. The baron did not move or flinch. He stared into Christopher’s eyes patiently, without reproach.
It was no good. Christopher could not be an executioner. Not even of this man. He lowered the gun and threw it away from him, into a corner.
There was a sound of running feet outside.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” Ungern asked.
“You would never understand,” Christopher replied, turning away and putting his arm round Chindamani. She was trembling.
The door opened and a group of armed men ran into the room.
They stopped dead, slowly taking in the scene before them. Two of them stepped past Ungern and took hold of Christopher and Chindamani, dragging them apart.
“Let them go.” Ungern’s voice was sharp.
The soldiers looked puzzled, but the baron’s tone had been unmistakable. Their hands dropped, leaving Christopher and Chindamani free. Christopher bent down and picked up Samdup’s body. He was still warm. Blood ran unimpeded over Christopher’s hands. He cradled the small body against his own for a moment, then passed him tcxCIhindamani. Ungern watched as Christopher crossed the roorrr to where his own son lay and picked him up carefully.
They said nothing as they left. Ungern sent a man with them, to see that they got through. They left the Khutukhtu behind, sitting on a heap of cushions, kneading his soft robes with nervous fingers.
His hands still held traces of scent from the boy’s skin. By dawn, even that faint perfume would have faded forever. He closed his eyes as though something had crept into his darkness, and he dreamed of freedom.
They carried the bodies to the Maidari Temple and left them there, at the foot of the giant statue of the Maidari Buddha. There was no resemblance between the statue and Samdup, except that neither lived nor breathed. Chindamani tidied Samdup’s clothes and hair, but otherwise did nothing to disguise the fact that he was dead. Christ
opher took the small teddy-bear and put it in William’s hands as he had done in England when he was asleep. There were no words.
It was dawn when they left the temple. The first rays of the sun were striking its towers, and everywhere pilgrims were rising to pray the first prayers of the Festival. They prayed for paradise and an easy death to take them there, for the removal of the weight of their sins and enough food for the journey home. Today, nothing would be refused them.
Christopher and Chindamani walked out of the city without any very clear idea of where they were headed. Their clothes and hair were covered with blood, but they walked on without stopping to wash or refresh themselves.
It was well after noon before they halted. They had long since lost anything that looked like a road or a track, but had gone on as though they had found a path of their own to follow. They went north into the Chingiltu Ula mountains, making their way by guesswork. The sides of the steep hills through which they passed were heavily forested with dark conifers. They passed no-one. They could hear birdsong, but saw no birds or any other form of wildlife.
The place they stopped in was a small temple, abandoned and partly ruined. They spent that night there, huddled against one another for warmth. The following morning, Christopher went into the forest to find food. There were berries on low bushes and small mushrooms that he gathered in his shirt. He found a small stream close to the temple and carried water back in an abandoned bowl he discovered in an inner room.
They spent the rest of that day in the temple, resting, and decided to spend the next night there too, lighting a fire with wood Christopher collected from the forest floor. By now, they could talk about what had happened.
There was no point at which they decided to stay in the temple.
But gradually, they made themselves more comfortable there, and soon they regarded it as home. No-one came there. Nothing disturbed them. Christopher found abundant game deeper in the forest and made small traps for deer and rabbits; but Chindamani would eat no flesh and subsisted on what they could gather from the trees and bushes.
She suffered badly from a sense of guilt. She was convinced that her illicit passion for Christopher had in some way been responsible for Samdup’s death. Her hesitation at the entrance to the tunnel had, she was certain, cost Samdup his life. No amount of reasoning could convince her otherwise.
She was a trulku, she said, a vehicle for the Lady Tara. She had not been born to love or marry or have children. That was for mortals; but the’gbddess in her was not mortal. He used the arguments that she had used with him before, that she herself was a woman, that she was not a goddess, that their love was its own justification; but she would not listen, or if she did, she chose not to accept his reasoning.
For the first two months, she would not sleep with him. He, for his part, neither pressed her nor made her feel unwelcome. But when they walked in the forest together, she would sometimes hold his hand, and at those times he would feel she still loved him in spite of herself. And one day towards the end of June he kept a rough calendar on the trunk of a tree outside the temple she came to his bed as she had done the first time, without explanation.
The summer passed in shadows and bars of sunlight slanting through me trees, restless and delicate. Chindamani prayed each day in a small shrine that formed part of the temple, and together they restored the building as best they could. They never spoke of leaving or finding a place for the winter, although they both knew they could not stay where they were much longer.
At the beginning of September, a traveller passed near the temple. A lama, he spoke adequate Tibetan, and was able to explain to them what had happened since they left Urga. At the end of May, von Ungern Sternberg had taken his forces out of Urga for a last engagement with the Soviet troops now entering the country in large numbers. He had been defeated, captured, and, it was rumoured, executed exactly one hundred and thirty days from the time of his visit to the Shrine of Prophecies in Urga, when the words recorded on the placard to the south had been whispered to him. Sukebator and his partisans had taken Urga at the beginning of June, assisted by Bolshevik troops, and a People’s Republic had been proclaimed. A sense of normality was beginning to return to the country.
The lama was on his way to a monastery north of the mountains, a place called Amur-bayasqulangtu, situated on Mount Buriinkhan, of which both Christopher and Chindamani had heard. It was the site of the tomb of Ondiir Gegen, the first of the Jebtsundamba Khukukhtus.
They persuaded the lama to stay with them for a day or two. He explained to them that the temple in which they now lived was known as Maidariin sume and that it had been dedicated to the Maidari Buddha. When it was time for their visitor to leave, he asked if they would accompany him to Amur-bayasqulangtu, and they agreed. The nights were growing cold and before long food would become scarce. But they had another reason for leaving.
Chindamani was one month pregnant.
Amur-bayasqulangtu was a vast establishment that amounted to a small town, with some two thousand lamas in permanent residence. The abbot, known as the Khambo Lama, was happy to receive them and provided them with quarters where they could spend the winter. During the coming months, Christopher and Chindamani lived together as man and wife. Once, a deputation from the new government paid a visit to the monastery to assess it for taxes; but the lamas hid their guests until the officials had gone.
Once winter set in hard, they were not troubled by further visits.
But Christopher knew the monks would not be left in peace for ever.
There would be fields to dig and roads to build and armies to train.
There would be a price to pay for independence.
Years later, Christopher thought he was never so happy as during that
winter and spring. All his time was spent with
Chindamani or doing things for her. And he believed she too was happy.
“If I left you, Ka-ris To-feh, could you bear it?” she once asked him
while they lay in bed together listening to the wind flapping against
the walls of their yurt
“No,” he said, and held her hand beneath the rough blanket.
The wind blew and snow fell and ice lay packed against their door. It was a bad winter, during which many of the monastery’s livestock died. But in the end spring came and the ice melted and turned to water. At the beginning of May, Chindamani’s baby was born. It was a boy. They called him William Samdup.
Christopher woke one morning a week later to find both Chindamani and the baby gone. He looked everywhere, but could not find them. Then, on the table where they had eaten supper the night before, he found a note in Tibetan. It was not easy for him to ready-but he persevered, and in the end he understood it.
Ka-ris To-feh, it read, I am sorry that I could not leave you in any other way. Forgive me if this causes you pain, but it is hurting me too, more than I can bear. If I could choose, I would stay with you forever.
Even if it meant endless lifetimes, I would willingly stay with you. I love you. I have always loved you. I shall continue to love you until I die.
But I cannot stay with you. You already know that, I am sure. Our child cannot stay here, he will always be in danger. We cannot go to your country, for you have told me there are no gompas there. I think you know who the child is, who he is destined to be. I will tell him about you. Every night when the sun goes down and the monks leave us alone, I shall talk to him about you. I will never forget you. Please remember me.
He remembered the last evening at Gharoling, when she had gone out to the terrace to gaze at the darkness. Don’t think I can be yours forever, she had said. You must not think that. But he had thought it and he had wanted it.
He left the monastery two days later. He knew where she had gone, of course. In his mind, he could see the little lake on the borders of Tibet and the rocky island in the centre, with the tiny temple. And he heard her voice, speaking into the wind: I have been here before. And I s
hall come here again. More than anything, he wanted to go there, to see her just once more. But of all the places in the world, he knew it was the one place he could not go.
He headed for Urga. For the first time that year, there were no clouds in the sky. England was a long way away.
-----------------------------------------------
Thanks to everyone who helped with this book, especially my agent, Jeffrey Simmons, John Boothe and Patricia Parkin at Grafton, Patrick Filley and Jennifer Brehl at Doubleday; Frs. John Breene and Tony Battle for their patience; Dr. Dermot Killingley for his rendering of the Bengali song on pages 44 and 96; and Beth, for everything.
Daniel Easterman was born in Ireland in 1949. He studied English, Persian and Arabic at the universities of Dublin, Edinburgh and Cambridge, and is a specialist in several aspects of Iranian Islam. He has lived in Iran and Morocco, but in 1981 returned with his wife to England to teach Arabic and Iranian studies at Newcastle University. In 1986, he gave up teaching to concentrate on writing full-time.
When not researching or writing, he devotes much of his time to the study and promotion of alternative medicine. He is currently working on a new novel.
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