Horsemen of the Sands Read online

  Ungern peeked out of one eye, but Jorgal was already waving a dry branch over him, as if to safeguard his sleep and drive away gadflies. Ungern’s eyelids stuck shut again, and Jorgal threw aside the branch, walked into the bushes, swaying from horror, and sat down on the ground. His ears were ringing, and his right ichig, where the gau lay, was hot, the heat rising from the bottom of his leg to the top. He thought that Sagan-Ubugun himself, of his own will, could not love a mangys, and that meant the gau had forced him. Living in the gau was a power ordering Sagan-Ubugun: Do this!

  Jorgal picked up a piece of sandstone and flicked it sideways at his right ichig. Nothing happened. The stone didn’t disintegrate in flight, and it hit his boot top. But he had understood before that Sagan-Ubugun was not going to protect him. A horse needs grass to run, a lamp oil to burn, and so a gau manifests its power under a secret spell that only Ungern himself knew. After all, with just grass and no horse you won’t ride anywhere, and oil without a wick won’t light a yurt. A spell is powerless without a gau.

  Jorgal tied the ends of the cord, put it around his neck, and hid it under his coat. One day he would learn the magic words, and until then Sagan-Ubugun would be free and could return to his mountain lake to feed birds from his hand rather than flatten lead with it. Colorful magpies would peck grain from his hand, dropping black feathers, and peace would come to the uluses. Jorgal crept up to the white mare and untied the rope wound around the trunk so that Sagan-Ubugun wouldn’t break his nails on the clever steppe knot.

  7

  HE DREAMED OF HER for the first time in many months – the Manchurian princess with the bird name, the daughter of a dignitary of imperial blood. After the revolution, the family had made its way from Peking to Manchuria, and the little girl had grown up in Harbin, where Ungern had met her. He was taking Chinese lessons from Ippolit Baranov, a connoisseur of all Far Eastern languages, and she, who had spoken Chinese since childhood and who also knew English and French, went to this same Baranov’s apartment twice a week to study the language of her ancestors, which she had previously disdained as crude and barbaric. After the Manchurian dynasty’s overthrow, this had become a matter of national dignity for her.

  Sometimes they talked when they met between lessons. She liked the strange general. She was an emancipated young woman, and tired of waiting for some masculine initiative from him, she one day invited him to a restaurant herself, and a couple of days later to the cinema. As a result, the twenty-year-old princess fell madly in love. He had avoided women since his youth, but this was a special case, and in his thirty-fourth year of life, Ungern entered into his first marriage, counting on getting close to Chinese monarchists by way of his wife’s family. They were married in church, and his bride was christened Elena.

  Six years earlier, having returned from Urga to his native Revel, he had told his cousin Ernst, “You know, events in the East are shaping up such that given success and a certain agility, anyone could become emperor of China.” His cousin had laughed. “You wouldn’t mean you, would you, Robert?” To his family he remained Robert, the name he was given at birth. To the envy of his Revel cousins, Robert Nikolai Maximilian Ungern-Shternberg, a half-educated failure, had brought under the wedding crown the heir to the glory of the greatest dynasty in the East.

  Actually, they didn’t live together for long. A month later Ungern sent his wife back to her parents, visited her rarely so as not to see her tears, and lost all interest in her when it became clear that the Chinese monarchists were just as much worthless windbags as the Russian ones. In and of herself, she did not interest him. He had never needed women. They were venal, base, cowardly creatures whom the West, in its ruinous blindness, had raised on a pedestal, once it had pulled the warrior and hero off it.

  On the eve of his campaign against Urga, he informed his wife by letter of their divorce. According to Chinese law, this was sufficient to dissolve a marriage. War with Peking was coming, and he didn’t want her to have any trouble with the authorities. In their own lands, wives answered for their husbands’ crimes and were punished on a par with them.

  He barely thought of his Elena. Her image had long since faded in memory, but now she leaned toward him, stroked his chest with her small, cool hand, and whispered something in the language of her ancestors, which was beyond him. For the first time he regretted having parted with her before his campaign, and with the blinding final clarity one has only in one’s sleep, he suddenly understood that it was no accident that his Elena had appeared to him.

  Sleeping at sunset was the worst of all. Waking up, he lay with closed eyes, the skin on his chest still remembered the chill of her little fingers, but along with the relief that this was all just a dream, he felt a vague alarm. He ran his hand over the place her palm had touched and shuddered: the gau was gone. He bolted upright, fumbled around himself, turned his saddle over, and searched under it. Gone. The silver packet had disappeared, and so had the cord. The thought flashed that his wife had died and that her soul had come to summon him, to warn him that his time was nigh.

  He woke up Bezrodny.

  “Sleeping, grouch?”

  “Sorry, Your Excellency, I was worn out.”

  Ungern looked around. Not far off a dry pine branch lay, gray against the green and yellow of the grass. The longer he looked at it, the more distinctly he recalled that when he had lain down it wasn’t there, the grass had been solid green and yellow, but for some reason he remembered that branch, as if he’d seen it long ago, and now he recognized it. That pine cone over there had hit his cheek. He recognized it, and Jorgal’s face floated up, standing over him, fanning him as he slept.

  Lately, Ungern had changed his habit of not carrying a weapon on himself. A rumor had started up somewhere that he was leading a division into Tibet, and informers reported a plot brewing in the division to kill him and turn toward Manchuria. The conspirators’ names were unknown, and suspects were killed at night, in their sleep. In the morning after every night’s rest, they would find the hacked corpses of those whom Ungern no longer trusted.

  In any case, he had moved his holster from his hip to his stomach. This was the question: had someone talked Jorgal into taking the amulet so that the Mongols would cease to believe in the immortality of their chiang-chun, or had he taken this step without any encouragement? If so, then why? He either wanted to be invulnerable himself or to make him, Ungern, vulnerable. The former was forgivable; the latter, not.

  The bushes rustled at the glade’s edge, and Jorgal stepped out. He was not carrying a rifle.

  “Come here!” Ungern called to him, unfastening his holster in case Jorgal decided to run.

  Jorgal stopped in fear, but he approached.

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Looking at the horses.”

  “The horses are there.” Ungern gestured in the opposite direction.

  “Yes,” Jorgal agreed.

  “So why did you go there?”

  Jorgal thought a moment, groaned expressively, and responded with something he’d heard an officer say: “I sat like an eagle.”

  “Sour, you mean? Your stomach hurts?”

  “Oh, it hurts bad!”

  “Naidan-Dorji will give you some herbs right away. You’ll drink and it’ll pass….Take him.” Ungern turned toward Bezrodny.

  “That’s all right. It doesn’t hurt anymore!” Jorgal reported joyously.

  Bezrodny hesitated, but Ungern repeated, “Take him.”

  He looked up. Although the sky was blue as before, everything around had changed imperceptibly. The wind could barely be felt close to the ground, but the tops of the pines were swaying and droning. This raised a presentiment of danger, the menacing proximity of another life. There, up top, roamed the gods of the steppe, Sagan-Ubugun’s comrades. They had flown in like flies to honey – to have a look at what would happen to the man whom the White Elder had abandoned.

  “Are you a Bolshevik?” Ungern asked suddenly.

 
Jorgal had learned this word last spring, when he’d been stopped by a drunk Japanese officer and two soldiers on the road between Hara-Shulun and the Russian village. The officer had poked Jorgal in the chest, after which he showed him first his thumb, then his pinky, and started questioning him, wagging one and then the other alternately: “This? This?” Jorgal thought the Japanese was asking him how to get to the Russian village, which was bigger than their ulus, and pointed to the thumb, which was pointing in that direction. In that instant the Japanese let up a howl, like a wounded hare, and knocked him down with a terrible blow. For a long time, Jorgal couldn’t understand why he’d done that, until a Russian veterinarian came to Hara-Shulun and explained that the Japanese wanted to know what his party affiliation was – Bolshevik or Menshevik.

  Now, armed with bitter experience, Jorgal stuck out his pinky and said, “Why big? Little…Menshevik.”

  A sleepy Naidan-Dorji walked up. A fern branch had left an impression on his cheek, like the frosty pattern on a rimy window. Learning that he’d been awakened because of Jorgal, who had a stomachache, he was insulted but didn’t let it show.

  “Let’s go. I’ll give you some herbs. You’ll drink them with tea.”

  “No,” Ungern said. “Examine him in my presence. Have him take off his coat.”

  “Take it off,” Naidan-Dorji obeyed, perplexed.

  “Why should I? It doesn’t hurt at all anymore. It’s passed,” Jorgal informed him and cheerfully slapped himself on the belly.

  “Take it off!” Ungern ordered, pulling out his revolver.

  Jorgal unfastened the top hook with trembling fingers. He knew Sagan-Ubugun wouldn’t lift a finger to save him. He’d probably walked off, since the white mare was still standing at the edge of the glade, but he’d come back when Jorgal fell dead and they ripped the gau off his neck. He should have thrown it into the forest or burned it.

  He undid the second hook. Naidan-Dorji stepped closer, noticed, was astonished, and reached out. Jorgal pushed him back. He himself grabbed the gau, clutched it with both hands, without removing the cord from his neck, and threatened: “I’ll tear it!”

  Naidan-Dorji staggered back when he heard the sacred silk rip in his fingers.

  “I’m strong!” Jorgal warned.

  Bezrodny, holding his sword, stopped Ungern, who had already raised his revolver.

  “Don’t, Your Excellency, don’t shoot. It’ll be heard far off. I can do it Cossack-style.”

  “Chop me down!” Jorgal shouted. “Only I’ll tear it before you do!”

  “What for?” Ungern asked.

  “So you don’t live, mangys!”

  “Why do you call me a mangys?”

  “You have mangys eyes.”

  Ungern grinned.

  “You think Sagan-Ubugun protects me because I wear that gau? The Chinese arrested Bogdo, and I fought the Chinese. The Red Russians are killing lamas, desecrating monasteries, and I’m fighting the Red Russians. Sagan-Ubugun loves me and he’s going to love me even without the gau.”

  Jorgal listened but didn’t hear a word. One thing was clear. Give the gau back and they’ll kill you; tear it and they’ll kill you, too. Only like this, digging his nails into the silk, could he live a little longer.

  Without taking his eyes off Jorgal, Ungern ordered Naidan-Dorji: “Show him. Let him see I’m speaking the truth.”

  Slowly, stooped over, Naidan-Dorji made his way across the glade, performed an eight-part reverence to the white mare, and began reciting prayers. Finally he exclaimed, “Oh, great one! Let us know that you are with us!”

  With a joyous snort, the mare sat back on her hind legs. Seeing the invisible rider lower himself onto her back, Jorgal couldn’t help but weep. A tear ran down his cheek and over his newly grown mustache and crept into the corner of his mouth.

  He held the gau in front of his chest, slightly separating his hands and tugging on the silk, then pushing them together, as if he were playing a tiny accordion. It was clear he wouldn’t be able to stand like that for long, they were just about to pounce, knock him down, and take it away. His entire body was already dead, as if his soul had once again abandoned him, and life remained only in his fingers, although they were growing weaker by the second. Soon he wouldn’t be strong enough to deal with the Chinese silk. Through his tears he saw the thread of a flock of geese hanging high above the steppe and remembered how his mother had splashed milk in his wake so that he would return home unharmed.

  “Give it back,” Ungern said.

  “You don’t need it, you say?” Jorgal whispered. “Then why are you asking?”

  “It holds the Bogd Gegen’s blessing. Give it back and I’ll forgive you. I like daring men.”

  Bezrodny noiselessly slipped to the side, ran across behind the trees, and with his saber at the ready began creeping up on Jorgal from behind, but Jorgal looked around in time.

  “Don’t come any closer! I’ll rip it.”

  “You should give it back,” Naidan-Dorji advised. “The general sir will forgive you.”

  “I swear,” Ungern confirmed, and he raised his hands, calling on heaven as his witness.

  “Swear in Russian!” Jorgal demanded.

  “My word as a Russian officer. I’ll forgive you.”

  Jorgal shook his head.

  “That’s not right!”

  Realizing what was wanted of him, Ungern crossed himself with three fingers, like an Orthodox Russian, although he was a Lutheran.

  He didn’t see the white mare shake her head, pull the lax rope from the trunk, run off, and disappear into the forest. Not a single branch cracked under her hooves. No one but Jorgal noticed she had vanished. Everyone was looking at him, and he now was thoroughly convinced that this was all about the gau. Would Sagan-Ubugun in good faith protect someone who wouldn’t give up the orus hajin, the Russian faith? His fingers tensed. He realized his death was nigh. Tears were running down his cheeks, but he felt neither sadness nor fear, the Milky Way shone white in the advancing darkness, and right now his feet would run down it, back to Hara-Shulun, all by themselves.

  Weightless as an autumn leaf, the gau became as heavy as gold. Jorgal ripped it forcefully and tore it in half, but neither half fell to the ground. Both, the moment he let go, hung on his neck, on the cord. Sagan-Ubugun sprinkled ashes from his earthly grave on the grass and dissipated in the air.

  Jorgal closed his eyes, expecting a shot or a saber blow. He stood, and the tears trickling into his mouth no longer seemed salty. He knew the dead weep fresh water tears.

  Bezrodny tossed up his saber, but one of the Chahars grabbed his arm.

  “Why slaughter a man without benefit? We’ll cut off his ears and throw them behind us.”

  “They believe an enemy’s cut-off ears can cover their tracks,” Naidan-Dorji explained, leaning toward Ungern.

  Bezrodny attempted to pull away his arm holding the saber.

  “Let go! I’ll finish him off and then you can cut them off.”

  “You can’t from a dead man. It doesn’t help. He has to be alive. We’ll cut them off tomorrow. We have to spend the night here. The horses are tired. They won’t go any farther.”

  The other Chahars came to stand beside their comrade menacingly.

  “Your Excellency! Tell these savages!” Bezrodny implored.

  “Leave him,” Ungern said indifferently. “Let them do it their way.”

  Someone noticed the white mare’s disappearance. They ran off to catch her, and Jorgal heard them crashing through the bushes, calling out, calling to each other, but he was calm. He knew they’d never catch her.

  An hour later, he lay on the ground, tied up, looking at the sky. It was getting dark and the August stars were burning. Among them, high up, the Milky Way had also spread out, and Sagan-Ubugun, freed from his oath, was riding along it and smiling.

  I PICKED UP the gau from the table. A very old seam I hadn’t noticed before ran right down the middle, cutting Sagan-Ubugun’s body in t
wo and making the tiny figure even smaller. He got thinner when he was repaired, his shoulders pulled together and his chest jutted out, but this was not reflected on his face. The White Elder smiled shyly as before, and his raised hand, untouched by the seam, seemed disproportionately large compared to the mended body.

  “My mother mended it,” Boliji explained.

  8

  THE WAG ON TRAIN pulled in and they started setting up tents. Ungern lay down but couldn’t fall asleep. He’d learned two days before that Bogd Gegen had not left Urga for Tibet, had stayed on with the Reds, and the fact that today this Buryat had ripped the gau apart could not be a coincidence. He felt the gods had abandoned him.

  Ungern got up, crawled out of the tent, and looked into the next one, where the Koreans of his personal guard were sleeping. He knew enough Chinese words to explain himself to them, and they didn’t understand Russian or Mongolian, as is to be expected from people whose ears are supposed to be closed to any speech other than their own.

  Rousing them, he told them to go sleep in his tent. He himself lay down in this one and realized that his instinct had not misled him when after midnight, shots rang out nearby and one of the Koreans who had taken the bullet intended for him let up a howl. He flung the canopy aside and plunged into the darkness.

  Someone shouted, “There he is!”

  There was a splash of gunfire.

  Crouching, Ungern ran off, slid into a gully, jumped onto someone else’s horse, and sent it into a gallop. Bullets whistled in pursuit, but there was no chase. He galloped through the blinding darkness, relying on fate, and believing that all was not yet lost since otherworldly voices had whispered to him to lie down with the Koreans. Even now they were with him, these voices, and they were naming the traitors, advising who to execute by sword, water, fire, or rope, and he answered them and laughed.