Horsemen of the Sands Page 12

  THE NEXT DAY, Ungern was taken prisoner by Shchetinkin’s partisans, and soon after, Naidan-Dorji, who had attempted to flee to Uliastai, was captured as well. He and the baron were taken to Troitskosavsk, to Expeditionary Corps headquarters, and then sent to Irkutsk and from there to Novonikolaevsk, where Ungern was convicted and executed the night of September 15, 1921. The same fate awaited Naidan-Dorji, but in the morning he was taken to the Cheka and provided with travel documents for as far as Urga that gave him the right to eat for a full day in the railroad commissaries along his entire route. They gave him tea and a little money and let him go. Later it turned out that Bogd Gegen himself had interceded for him through the Mongolian revolutionary government.

  At noon, Naidan-Dorji left the prison and went outside. It was warm for autumn. In his cell he’d been told that the bodies of those executed were buried in a wasteland outside the city, and they explained how to get there. He arrived only as night was falling. Along the way he stopped at the market and, with the money given to him, acquired a round handled mirror and a handful of hemp seed.

  As everywhere, the wind came up at sunset, chilling his head, which had been shaven clean by the prison barber. The windows in the little houses on the outskirts blazed with the pink light of sunset. The wasteland served as a cemetery and a dump, with hulking piles of trash grown over in burdock and nettles all around. The trash was old and almost tidy. Rarely did they bring out fresh trash and even more rarely did they bring it this far. Often they dumped it somewhere along the way. There was the smell of foreign grass, a foreign autumn, and nonetheless the smell of decay hovered over the wasteland – seeming, perhaps, to penetrate the consciousness not through the nostrils but through the eyes that saw these dried up clumps of clay over the body of the “Restored state of the great bator and commander.” A little Buryat soldier from the convoy unit secretly whispered how to find his grave.

  Naidan-Dorji thought he would see at least something, even if a nearly unremarked mound, but he saw a flat spot of poorly rammed clay a little lighter than the earth around it with a shovel haft poking up instead of a cross. Pulling it out wasn’t hard, but he couldn’t break it. Naidan-Dorji brought a crippled bentwood chair lying around nearby, smashed it apart on a brick, and built a small fire from the pieces. Then he got out the mirror and sprinkled it with the hemp from his pocket. Cautiously running his finger over the glass, the way women do when they sort through groats on a table, he made a little scorpion figure out of the grains and whispered over it for a long time, until all the sins of the deceased chiang-chun’s body, word, and thought relocated to this scorpion born and doubled on the mirror’s surface. It lay there as if alive, black and scary, but the glass around it reflected the sky and the stars coming out here and there.

  When it grew dark, Naidan-Dorji began tossing the hemp into the fire, not the whole scorpion at once but part by part – first the left paws, then the right, then the curled tail, and the body. He tossed them with precise, deft flicks, and his pupil’s sins burned up with the hemp insect. His cruelty and hypocrisy, hatred and deceit, pride and ambition burned up, turned to smoke, and scattered as ash in the fire on the outskirts of Novonikolaevsk, amid the broken glass and cattle bones now green.

  Naidan-Dorji sat down on the ground and rocking, began to sing and murmur.

  “You, the creation of a line of thinkers, son of a line who have departed life, listen….Now you have descended to your beginnings….Your flesh is like foam on water, your strength is fog, your love and worship are visitors at a bazaar….All is deceptive and lacking in essence….Do not strive for that which lacks essence or your new reincarnation will be filled with horror….”

  A little ways away, several large, shaggy dogs were waiting their turn; the fire’s flames didn’t scare them away. Curs like this know how to tear away the earth covering the dead. Naidan-Dorji rejoiced that after death the chiang-chun would serve the good of other living creatures, and he continued.

  “You who have departed life, listen to these words….Everything gathered is running low, the high is falling, the living is dying, the united is disuniting….”

  His pupil had wanted to subdue half the world, like Genghis, and now he lay in the Siberian clay, and at last Naidan-Dorji, who knew how sad any ending is, could tell him this directly.

  “Let the fire vanquish the trees…the water the flame…the wind the clouds….The gods will be strengthened by the truth, the truth shall rule, and the lie shall be powerless,” Naidan-Dorji sang.

  He was waiting any second for one star overhead to blaze up brighter than the others – for a white ray, blindingly radiant and hollow inside, to burst from the heart of the buddha Amitabha, lord of the Western paradise. A divine reed growing with its top down would pierce the grave clay, and the chiang-chun’s soul, having quit its dead body through its right nostril, with a soft whistle that only the initiated hear, would be drawn into the heart of this ray and rush through it toward the stars, like a bullet through a rifle barrel.

  Naidan-Dorji looked up, but the heavens were empty. The wind was blowing harder and harder, the fire was burning down, and clumps of dry grass were racing over its blue tongues, getting lost in the dark.

  9

  IN CHITA, Verkhneudinsk, and Irkutsk, the newspapers came out with banner headlines: UNGERN ROUTED. Victorious communiqué’s flew to Moscow, although there had been no rout and the Asiatic Division in full had successfully skirted Urga on the south and moved east down the Old Kalgan highway, to Manchuria. The victors preferred to pass over this in silence. The prisoner they had delivered made up for all their miscalculations and allowed them to hope that their failure would be declared a triumph.

  Jorgal and the boys from his ulus of Halgai headed home singing songs. Before he got to Hara-Shulun, he already knew Ungern had been taken prisoner. This news had been brought by Ayusha Odoyev, who had served with the Reds and been awarded a watch for bravery, but even he couldn’t explain why Sagan-Ubugun had failed to protect his favorite. The mystery was solved after Jorgal returned and showed the ripped gau and the Halgai boys confirmed what he said.

  When he learned this, Sagali’s father allowed him to bring a betrothal horse to his yurt without a payment. His mother cried from happiness the whole night through. Her son’s fame filled Hara-Shulun to the brim and flowed out across the steppe, and even the lamas from the Goose Lake monastery came to look at the man who had made Ungern as soft as all men.

  They celebrated a rich wedding, and when in November the order came to send delegates from the district to Verkhneudinsk for the sacred revolutionary celebration, Jorgal was chosen, among others. It didn’t matter that he was young and only recently had untied the horse from his father’s hitching post.

  Sagali was afraid to let her husband go, but his uncle said, “You are a great hero, Jorgal. Why don’t you have a medal? Ayusha Odoyev has a watch, and what is Ayusha compared to you? When you get to the city, go to the chief and ask for a medal. You’ll be a chief yourself!”

  Many people gathered for the celebration. In the large hall, little men gave long speeches, and all those assembled clapped loudly as if they were driving away evil spirits. Wide red banners with white letters hung everywhere. Soldiers walked up and down the street singing songs and firing cannons. Jorgal and the other delegates stayed in a stone building and each had an iron bed, a blanket, and two sheets. Three times a day they were fed in a cafeteria. They ate for free and instead of money turned in stamped slips of paper. Jorgal was issued nine such slips of paper because the celebration was supposed to last three days.

  The first day, he ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but the next day he ate nothing from morning to night and saved his slips. On the third day he went to a shop to buy a flowered kerchief for Sagali with the remaining six slips, but the clerk laughed and drove him away. Insulted, Jorgal complained to the official who had stamped the slips, but the official said that they could only be used to buy food and nothing more. Jorgal we
nt to the cafeteria to get lots of food, yesterday’s and today’s, but they wouldn’t give him the food he didn’t eat yesterday and this morning. All they gave him was lunch. Then Jorgal went back to the official and told him how Baron Ungern had lost his heavenly protector and why he had fallen prisoner. He thought that even if they didn’t give him a medal but a watch like Ayusha Odoyev, that wouldn’t be so bad, and Sagali would be just as happy for that as for a scarf with flowers.

  The official didn’t understand anything about his story, or rather he understood only that Jorgal turned out to have volunteered for the Asiatic Division, fought with Ungern, and now had seen how strong the state was that had arranged for the people such a marvelous celebration with mutton and artillery fire and had decided to repent without waiting for the state itself to find all this out about him. This official called in another, who came with soldiers and before arresting the former Ungern man demanded he return his food slips.

  Jorgal refused to give up his last slip, for the evening meal. Right then, the soldier bent his arms behind his back, and the officials began to search him and rummage around under his coat. He broke away and punched one of them, who fell, and his nose started to bleed. Jorgal was beaten and taken away to prison. The district delegates who came to petition for their comrade were ordered to go home and the next time to verify the people in their district more carefully.

  Jorgal was in prison for a whole month, during which time he learned to play cards. At interrogations, he would tell the investigator about Sagan-Ubugun, the white mare, and the flattened bullets, and instead of his signature he would draw on the document a tailless tarbagan, such as his grandfather had used to brand his horses, and waited for them to let him go home. They didn’t beat him anymore, but they weren’t in any hurry to release him, either. The investigator couldn’t decide what to do with him. He realized that if all this was true, Jorgal should be given a medal, not kept in prison, but as a man with a university education, he was aware that this simply could not be the truth.

  This investigator was replaced by another, who thrashed Jorgal on the cheeks with his newspaper but tried to explain to him the harm of the religious fetters that were depriving him of his legal right to sleep with his young wife. Jorgal heaved a discouraged sigh, agreed, and showed him what small ears and slender wrists Sagali had and willingly cursed the lamas for their greed, but he would not admit his guilt and would not renounce his tale. The white flies were already circling outside. In search of the truth, the new investigator tried to catch Jorgal in contradictions, which turned out not to be hard. Out of a desire to please him, Jorgal, who firmly maintained his basic line, easily changed his testimony in particulars and for his lying was thrown into the punishment cell, which had a window without glass. The pail iced over, and his bones were breaking on the concrete floor, but Sagan-Ubugun would not let him freeze and covered him with his coat. That was what he told the investigator, and after that investigator disappeared, the first one showed up again.

  Sagali’s father came to town for Tsagaan-Sar with three men, not relatives. They confirmed that they had fired a rifle at Ungern at twenty paces but couldn’t kill him, and then they found a Mongol in the prison who had served in Ungern’s detachment and had seen it all with his own eyes. After his confrontation with Jorgal, left alone, the investigator sat at the table, looked dully at the wall, and repeated: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…”

  With this he began his report to the Cheka chairman and as a result received this resolution: “To hell with him then! Let him go back to his squalid Sagali.”

  After he got home, the first thing Jorgal did was beat his uncle for giving him bad advice, and then he ran to see his mother to rip the gau to pieces, but his mother had hidden it and twenty years later, when Boliji went to the front, she hung it on his neck. That was why he survived. Not a single bullet hit him, whereas Jorgal was killed outside Leningrad.

  After the war, Boliji and Sagali worked on a farm together. Both had certificates for their exceptional labor, and their photographs hung on the Honor Board. One day, the two of them went to the district center for a celebration. There, Ayusha Odoyev, now a big shot, spoke at a formal assembly in the House of Culture, sharing his memories of the Civil War and the battles with Ungern, whom he, Ayusha, had personally captured and taken prisoner.

  The Pioneers gave him a model tractor and everyone clapped. Sagali looked at Boliji pleadingly.

  “If you’re a man, go and say what truly happened!”

  “Why don’t you go yourself?”

  “I’ll cry. I’ll forget all the Russian words.”

  Boliji didn’t go, though, and Sagali didn’t say another word to him to the day she died.

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU DO IT?” I said in surprise.

  Boliji sighed.

  “I was afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “The bosses. I wasn’t old yet, then, and my fear bubble was very full.”

  As before, we were sitting at the table, and there were yellow pineapples on the oilcloth. The gau I’d been given lay in my tunic’s chest pocket. Boliji himself put it there and buttoned it up.

  10

  WE WORKED OUT the field tactics for a tank landing party, and in the evening we drove the tanks and armored transport vehicles into the hollow between the hills, covered them with camouflage nets, and posted guards. Along the way, the trumpet’s song reached me, melodiously promising kasha with tinned meat and stewed fruit. Major Chigantsev liked the classic army signals, and on the days he was on duty for the regiment, the cornetist went out on the parade ground first, and only after that was the selector communication turned on.

  I strode faster, cut corners a little, walking through the bushes across the slope, and the camp opened up before me from that height, where the army vehicles looked like huge, shapeless bundles. The new camouflage nets with the pretend leaves were a little greener than the grass, which had shriveled up early. The sentry walked up and back near the forward tank, and the tents were farther along. The field kitchen was sending up smoke by the stream, and the soldiers were sitting around with their mess kits. The old timers ate in groups; the younger guys alone or in pairs. The officers sat separately. One of them gave me a friendly wave, and that was enough for me to feel happy.

  After dinner I asked for half a kettle of hot water in the kitchen and sat down to shave. The officers dispersed, leaving just Chigantsev. He was mending the torn case for the signal flags. A company commander wouldn’t normally stoop to such things and would make the soldiers do it, but Chigantsev always did everything himself.

  After shaving, I got out a small bottle of Triple cologne – to splash my cheeks. Chigantsev frowned painfully.

  “Just not in my presence, please. Go somewhere far away.”

  I remembered that Triple cologne was his bitterest enemy. He was an orphan, a true son of the regiment, or rather ward, as children like that used to be called in the army. He was raised by a music detachment, who fed and clothed Chigantsev and taught him to play the oboe. As was the custom, military musicians moonlighted at civilian funerals, and in the heat, in order to stave off the smell of decay, they would spritz the deceased with Triple cologne. Ever since, this had been the smell of orphanhood and death for him.

  I put the cologne away and taking advantage of the moment began telling him the story I’d just heard from Boliji, which I was bursting to tell. Chigantsev listened with interest. His attention was flattering, and a sudden, impulsive inspiration came over me that I subsequently regretted. By that time I knew from experience that if a story was told out loud even once, I would remember it in the way it had reached its first listener, all the rest vanishing without a trace.

  Chigantsev had already finished mending his case and might leave at any moment. To detain him, I embellished here and there, crudely stressed certain places that should have been the plot’s strong points, and later, attempting to restore Boliji’s original, authentic st
ory, I became convinced, bitterly, that I wasn’t getting it right. In my telling, a story of simple human courage in the face of authority, mystery, and death had been transformed into a banal equation with one unknown: the flattened bullet.

  “So,” Chigantsev asked, examining my gau, “what’s got you so worked up?”

  “What do you mean? This is mysticism! He wasn’t wearing armor under his robe.”

  “Are you having me on?”

  “Why would I do that?” I was offended.

  “Maybe you find it more interesting that way.”

  “Do you mean they fired blanks at Ungern?”

  “There’s no other option.”

  “That’s what I thought at first….Hardly. You can hear if it’s a blank. You can’t confuse the two.”

  In truth, a blank doesn’t have the authentic boom, depth, and echo, just a brief, dry clap like a pistol shot but maybe even more diffuse. There’s something nasty and false in that sound, as in any imitation.

  “If you know in advance and compare, then certainly,” Chigantsev agreed. “But who in this Buryat village had ever seen blank cartridges? It would be incomprehensible to a shepherd or a hunter why they were needed at all. Here you have to be a military man.”

  “You can tell the difference from their outward appearance,” I objected.

  “Well, yes! But from a distance?”

  “Boliji later served in the army. He could have figured it out.”

  “It just never occurred to him. He’d been a boy and listened with other ears. The others were no better. The people are ignorant. Anyone can muddle their head. The sound’s wrong, so that means this Ubugun was muffling it with his hand. Deforming bullets, even for those times, wasn’t technically difficult. Stick them in a belt and then whack them as much as it takes.

  A FIRE WAS BURNING in the field smithy’s forge. A red-hot bullet squeezed in tongs touched the anvil and the hammer was cautiously lowered onto it – once, twice. Two hammer strikes were equivalent to one movement of Sagan-Ubugun’s palm. The white mare was waiting its turn. The smith’s assistant had already taken a measurement from its hoof and marked it off in coal on a stick. Russian horses had to be shod to cross the Gobi; Mongolian ones would make it as they were.