Horsemen of the Sands Read online

  “Filimonov smokes,” the cheerful boy squealed as he climbed out from under his desk again.

  “And he drinks,” someone added from behind, and he snorted.

  “Give it back, please,” Vekshina asked again.

  Rodygin hesitated. Fate had sent him a marvelous graphic aid for a story about the harm of smoking. He didn’t want to part with it, but he still didn’t know the right way to use it. His thoughts slid along the lines of the slipper, with its feminine curves and sharp predatory nose being the beauty of sin – not genuine beauty, which makes a person better and doesn’t arouse base desires in him. He had even started talking about this, choosing his words with difficulty, but he was interrupted by two well-dressed girls at the same desk.

  “Please, give it back to her! Yes, please!” they whined, looking at Rodygin brazenly, and lovingly at each other.

  “Or I won’t tell you about anything else!” the well-read boy threatened.

  At that moment Rodygin suddenly realized that he still hadn’t talked about the scariest thing, scarier than smoking or even alcohol. You had to talk about drugs with extreme caution to an audience of children, but he was already off and running. Surprising himself, he plunged right in, asking,

  “Who knows what mulka is?”

  The room got quiet. Rodygin squinted.

  “Does anyone know? Be honest.”

  “That’s what we call our cat,” the diaphanous little girl said timidly, doubting the correctness of her answer.

  Everyone burst out laughing, and then she added, “We used to call her Murka, but we renamed her because of my sister?”

  “Whose?” someone asked from the far window.

  “Mine. She’s little still and can’t say the letter r.”

  The bell rang, ending the lesson. Through the noise of the rain the bell sounded weak and uncertain, like an alarm clock ringing under a pillow, not telling you to get up but delicately reminding you of that sad necessity.

  The kids fidgeted with excitement. Calming them down, Rodygin raised his hand.

  “Quiet! That signal is for me, not you.”

  He tried to end all his lessons like this, so that he left them with two contradictory feelings simultaneously – the completeness and incompleteness of what he’d said. It wasn’t enough just to set out a topic and draw conclusions; you also had to instill in your listeners the notion of the subject’s inexhaustibility. Rodygin was a virtuoso of this art, but right now the tropical downpour outside kept him from concentrating. “Like in Singapore,” he thought, and he saw Vekshina suddenly rush for the door.

  She was holding her book bag, but she dropped it the moment Rodygin, who caught up with her in two bounds, grabbed the handle, and she whisked through the door. He felt like a little boy left holding the tail of a lizard that had slipped away. Rodygin tossed the bag on his desk and ran after her; the corridor rushed toward him in a din and shoving, and children’s faces raced by, like lights in a tunnel. He ran after Vekshina to give her back her shoe, but she had already dived into the vestibule and flown onto the front steps.

  Even here, under the roof, the air was saturated with a prickly drizzle, streams foamed down below, and clumps of clay plopped into the ditch like frogs. She heard the noise of the chase behind her; the heels of the man’s heavy boots thundered over the tile.

  In the vestibule, the smokers shied away from Rodygin, and in the corner a reedy voice said, “The water’s run out.”

  It was the boy who had gone for water for Vekshina.

  “The hot water,” he clarified. “In the pot.”

  Rodygin strode by him and stopped in the doorway.

  Vekshina was standing three paces away, at the very edge of the top step. It was as if she had run to the edge of a seaside cliff and was now prepared to throw herself into the water just to escape the person chasing her. The rain was whipping her little face, which was thrown back in infinite despair.

  “Here, take it,” Rodygin said in a whisper so as not to frighten her, holding the little slipper out to her on his palm.

  Vekshina turned around, and then he gave her a companionable wink. She looked in horror at his contorted face and horribly screwed up eye and dashed down the stairs. Rodygin leapt after her, and cold streams ran down his collar. He took a running leap over the ditch, nearly sliding to the bottom on the slippery clay, jumped onto the lawn, and was gripped by a chilly presentiment of the irreparable. There was a red light and Vekshina was approaching the thoroughfare as fast as her legs would carry her. In front of her, splashing through the puddles, rushed a solid stream of cars.

  Across the street, hiding under the kiosk awning, Nadezhda Stepanovna saw her and screamed “Stop! Stop!” and ran toward her. Her shoes, stockings, light coat, and under it the back and shoulders of her dress – everything was soaked through instantly; only under her belt was there still a thin layer of warmth. A broad stream seethed and twisted into tails along the edge of the sidewalk. Nadezhda Stepanovna stepped into the street, brakes squealed around her, time stopped, and she felt as if she’d been running in this rain her whole life.

  All of a sudden something struck her hard from the side, an incredibly vivid but warm and soft light streamed before her eyes, and to the sound of leaves, not rain, a familiar two-story building with glass humps on the roof drifted out of the fog. Chrysanthemums were growing right above the ceiling of her small room, which she now saw as clearly and with the same detail as if she’d lived here for years. A narrow bed made up with pink or beige sheets, like on trains, a blanket, and a night table with a lace doily. The stove was hot. Pinned to the wall was a fan of get well cards with little roses and bear cubs from her former pupils. The dinner bell had rung. The doors of the neighboring rooms slammed, and she could hear unhurried steps and quiet laughter. She poked a few pins into the knot of gray hair at her nape and went down the wooden stairs scrubbed white to the dining room. Dinner was the pleasure of other people’s company. The warmth of oatmeal and fresh milk and hot tea with jam, but also the warmth that came from understanding, so all the conversations here were about children, every night about children, always about them, the same as in the teacher’s lounge of her real school, where she still had not been able to go back to work. The abode of the righteous, an island of comfort and love, a heavenly corner extended by the garden that lapped calmly and joyfully out the window.

  “Idiot! Where are you going, idiot!” hollered the muzhik in the leather cap after he jumped out of his Zhiguli.

  Nadezhda Stepanovna stood there, leaning forward, both hands resting on the radiator, but at the same time she had managed not to let go of the two cones of bird cherries. How that had happened she had no idea. By some miracle the berries were still in the cones, only a few little dark spheres had rolled over the hood and fallen on the asphalt.

  Limping, Nadezhda Stepanovna continued across the street. Vekshina had disappeared somewhere, and the rain was pouring without letup. The city seemed to be rising slowly skyward from the waters’ abyss. There had been the sensation of flight, but it had been lost, somewhere very close, barely, pushing the earth down, plunging it back into the deep, and lightning had struck.

  Nadezhda Stepanovna was already stepping onto the safety of the sidewalk and Rodygin was running across the lawn when everything all around was illuminated by white, a brief and terrifying sizzle pierced the air, there was a sour smell, and steam was being thrown off by the grass, but he no longer saw or heard any of it. Even before, something had passed hard through him without a sound and plunged into the shuddering earth, knocking him off his feet.

  Looking back, Vekshina saw Rodygin being snatched from the shroud of rain by a blindingly white burst, flapping his arms, and collapsing on the grass, where flames were darting. The rain quickly pounded down on them and they went out, hissing angrily, but one little flame lasted longer than the others. It made its way toward Rodygin, danced and bowed, and suddenly turned into that imp who had been sitting in Vekshina’s thr
oat five minutes before, jerking its little foot. She recognized him, as he clearly realized, because he immediately got busy and ran off, hiding under the acacia bushes.

  8

  “HE’S BEEN KILLED,” Filimonov shouted, staggering back from the window.

  Kotova took fright.

  “Who?”

  Filimonov didn’t answer. His whole body was shaking from horror and remorse, and he wouldn’t look out the window for fear of seeing his victim’s charred corpse. Finally Kotova guessed she should go over to the window and see what had frightened him so. A second later she was racing for the phone to call an ambulance.

  Thunder clapped mightily over the grocery and school and rolled on, toward the chimney that looked like the minaret of Kalyan. Nadezhda Stepanovna struggled over to the lawn, in the middle of which, like a bonfire site, there was an uneven black spot of burned grass covered with a dissolving little cloud of steam. A man lay on the line between the black and the green. Over him stood a thoroughly soaked Vekshina. She had already found her treasure and wiped it with her hem. The glass slipper was squeezed in her fist with its sharp nose pointing down, like a dagger.

  “He was killed by lightning,” Vekshina said with a murderous calm that frightened Nadezhda Stepanovna.

  By this time the rain was letting up, the clouds were parting, their edges were brightening, and there was a rainbow. Directly in front of him Rodygin saw its steep, flickering, seven-hued bridge. The rainbow started somewhere behind him, but its other end was set precisely in the ditch. That meant a pot of gold was buried there. “They’re digging in the right place,” Rodygin thought.

  The buildings and acacia bushes were spinning around him at 78 rpm. He recognized the familiar speed of the old records, which had been replaced long since by LPs, at 33 rpm. Gradually the spinning slowed and then he heard the click of a tumbler: Stop! He sat up. Vekshina’s face appeared through the rainbow fog.

  “Take it,” Rodygin said, and he held out his empty hand.

  Vekshina recoiled and then rushed to Nadezhda Stepanovna, put her arms around her, and sobbed into her belly, her skinny little body quaking. She didn’t answer the questions about what had happened or where her coat was, she just held on tighter. The key hanging around her neck cut painfully into her belly. Over the child’s little head, which smelled like mushrooms, Nadezhda Stepanovna saw the man who had been lying and then sitting on the grass stand up, staggering drunkenly, and head toward them. She recognized Rodygin and gasped.

  “Lord! What happened to you?”

  “I think I have a contusion. From the lightning,” he said.

  The next moment Kotova was bearing down on them, shouting that help was on the way, she had called, and the special brigade was en route, so someone should go out on the corner and show them the way.

  “No need.” Rodygin stopped her.

  Vladimir Lvovich came up. Running behind him were the children, with Filimonov ahead of them all. His mouth was open in a soundless scream. When he ran up, Vekshina elbowed him away. She didn’t want to share Nadezhda Stepanovna with anyone.

  “Oh, Nadezhda Stepanovna!” Vekshina’s neighbor tattled inspiredly. “You wouldn’t believe what he told us! He told us how they cut off children’s feet and they all get put in jail. With their wives.”

  “Wait a minute, wait. Who do they put in jail?”

  “Everyone who, you know…Oh, like Vekshina’s papa. And they make them walk thirty kilometers.”

  “With their wives, too?”

  “No, with policemen on motorcycles.”

  “That’s how they punish drunk drivers in Turkey,” Rodygin hastened to explain himself. “And the wives, that’s in Singapore.”

  “He said even worse things, he did!” a crafty childish voice rang out in the clearing air. “That in foreign countries they chop their heads off right away.”

  “Chop, chop,” one of the children confirmed, “and take the corpse away.”

  “Filimonov!” someone else clarified.

  “Because he’s a bad judge of distance,” a third added. “People like that don’t live long.”

  “That’s why he got feeling sick,” Vera, mature beyond her years, summed up with feminine perspicacity.

  “I see.” Nadezhda Stepanovna nodded and looked questioningly at Rodygin.

  He was silent.

  “What do you have in your cones?” Filimonov asked.

  Only now did Nadezhda Stepanovna remember her bird cherries, which were barely contained in the limp newspaper.

  “It’s bird cherries,” she said. “Eat, children!”

  When everyone had crowded around her, they heard the ambulance’s high bleeping siren, and the white UAZ flew around the corner at full speed, went through the red light, braked, hopped the curb, and drove onto the lawn. Two men jumped out of the back doors and out of the cab, a woman. Kotova pointed to Rodygin.

  “There he is!”

  “I’m fine,” Rodygin said, after briefly reporting what this was about.

  One of the doctors squatted, ran his hand over the ashes, looked at his blackened fingers for a long time, rinsed them in a puddle, slapped Rodygin on the shoulder, and climbed back into the van. The special brigade left, Kotova left, and Rodygin watched from a distance as Nadezhda Stepanovna hand-fed bird cherries to her clamoring flock. Filimonov was grabbing fistfuls and Vekshina was pecking one berry at a time. Vladimir Lvovich, who had been standing off to the side, joined their feasting.

  “Remember that crocodile in the museum?” he asked Nadezhda Stepanovna.

  “Yes,” and she marveled at how the same memories had flooded back to them on the same day.

  “I think,” Vladimir Lvovich said in a low voice, indicating Rodygin with his eyes, “there’s quite a likeness.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s a specimen, too,” he answered in the same intimate half-whisper. “But that’s all right, their rule will end soon. Mark my word.”

  Nadezhda Stepanovna said nothing, and Rodygin hadn’t heard. Right then the boy who knew all about breadfruit popped up alongside him.

  “You promised to answer my question after class,” he reminded him.

  “Go away,” Rodygin said.

  His head hurt, his bruised shoulder ached, and for some reason his feet had twinges of pain, as if the celestial electricity dissolved in the soil was shooting through his interstitial soles and heels. At the same time he couldn’t shake the feeling that there hadn’t been any lightning and that ashen black spot under his feet had been burned by the heat of his soul, so misunderstood, slandered, and locked inside his old, freezing body.

  “Come join us,” Nadezhda Stepanovna called out.

  Rodygin came over and took a few berries from the offered cone. The forgotten tartness spread over his palate and tears rose in his throat.

  “You told us lots of very interesting stories,” said the cheerful little boy who had sat under his desk for most of the lesson, and he spat out a pit making the sound of a bullet.

  HORSEMEN OF THE SANDS

  Three spheres – the upper celestial, the lower dragon, and the middle, the earthly – gave birth to me so that I might vanquish the mangys who descended upon our nomads from the northwest.

  To avenge the sins of all living creatures he appeared, and he was invulnerable, invincible.

  – Daini Khurel, a Mongolian epic

  1

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1971, half a century after Roman Fyodorovich Ungern-Shternberg – a Russian general, Baltic baron, Mongolian prince, and husband of a Chinese princess – was executed in Novonikolaevsk, I heard the tale of his invulnerability, which he had acquired miraculously and lost soon thereafter. The tale was told to me by Boliji, a shepherd from the Buryat ulus, or village, of Hara-Shulun, but it’s hard to vouch for the authenticity of this amazing tale, especially since its main protagonist was not the narrator himself but his older brother Jorgal. It may be that Jorgal embellished events and his role in them ever so sligh
tly and that Boliji contributed his mite as well. Neither suffered from a lack of imagination. I won’t attempt to distinguish poetry from truth, but I do believe one qualification needs to be made from the outset. “Hara-Shulun” is a fictitious name. The real name seems to me much less winning as the backdrop for my story. Especially if one knows what it means in translation.

  Naturally, I could get along without any names at all. Simply an ulus in Selenge Province: a hundred fifty or so houses, an eight-year school, a store, and two farms, one for dairy and one for fattening. The hills began past the latter. Miserable, sparse pines poked up on the hills nearby, and those farther away were darkened by solid fir needles. This was to the north. To the south, bare hills with stony slopes curved smoothly, like the mirrors of giant telescopes, subtly changing color depending on the weather and time of day.

  Inserted into this landscape was a suburgan, a Buryat stupa, of one of the eight canonical varieties. Once upon a time, the local farmers may have been able to distinguish among them, but by the time I got there, they had forgotten how. No one knew what treasures of the “yellow faith,” as Ungern thought of it, the suburgan held; all that was long ago and hopelessly forgotten. Its foundation was partially destroyed, its edges jagged, and oddly shaped patches of dirty brick showed through the peeling plaster. Built in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, the suburgan seemed like a remnant of a civilization that had flourished in these parts centuries before. One almost exactly like it, but white and clean, was depicted in my officers’ topographical guide. In the present-day Mongolian steppe, where there is nothing for the eye to latch onto, suburgans can be used as reference points, and topographers since Przhevalsky’s day have given them a special symbol.

  Boliji’s home was a small, four-walled hut with a one-windowed wooden outer room. The roof was covered with felt, and the grooves between the scrawny logs were smeared with clay, not caulked. Here and there the Buryats had picked up from the Semeiskie, as the Trans-Baikal Old Believers are called, the custom of painting their hut walls blue, yellow, or green. Boliji’s walls were blue, and the back of his vegetable garden opened out onto the foot of the rise where the suburgan sat. The ground here was reddish brown from trampled brick shards. The surrounding area was grown up in cow parsley, but a faint path led to the suburgan, and in its sacrificial niche I saw pathetic gifts brought as if out of compassion for a divinity drained of its strength – candies in faded wrappers and stacks of store-bought cookies. These products of the local confectionary factory smoothed over the contrast between the suburgan and what surrounded it. I was so young, I looked with disdain on these cookies, having no doubt that they were utterly incompatible with true Buddhism. My notions of Buddhism at the time were based on a couple of popular pamphlets, which I considered exhaustive on the subject. In addition, the pyramids of Jubilee and Cream cookies kept me from forgetting what era I was in. When we’re young, we all like that game – blocking out the signs of contemporary mediocrity and enjoying the illusion that horsemen in chainmail are just about to come over the crest of the nearest hill. The suburgan was an appropriate stage set, but it was all spoiled by the cookies and candies in familiar wrappers. Reality had its way, no matter how hard I tried not to hear the empty milk cans rattling in the back of a passing truck.