Horsemen of the Sands Read online

  Ungern entered the gates. The Bogd Gegen’s palace guard clumsily presented arms, and a respectful whisper rolled through the courtyard: “The chiang-chun…the chiang-chun….”

  The general.

  The palace’s formal porch had eight steps – a prototype of Buddhism’s eightfold path to salvation. The lamas crowding by the front door parted and formed staggered lines against the walls. All the doors had been flung open, and Ungern saw the familiar enfilade of rooms haphazardly hung with pictures in gilt frames and furnished with sculptures of Buddhas and Chinese vases. Table, floor, and wall clocks ticked away everywhere, and there were stuffed exotic animals and birds in glass boxes. The former reminded men of the brevity of earthly life, the latter of all the diverse guises it takes inside the cycle of samsara.

  The two escorts noiselessly slipped ahead. When Ungern walked past the depiction of some buddha or bodhisattva, Naidan-Dorji would explain who it was and under what circumstances one should go to him for assistance. His duties included initiating the baron into the teaching about the four noble truths, but above all, Ungern valued him for his ability to predict the future – from the stars, from fish scales, from the cracks in a sheep scapula tossed on the fire. At the beginning of each lunar month, Naidan-Dorji would determine his lucky and dangerous days, indicate the dates incompatible with the use of artillery, machine guns, or cold steel, and in special instances perform the duties of interpreter. Ungern understood Mongolian but spoke it poorly.

  They entered the Bogd Gegen’s modestly furnished study – screens, a rug, a bronze brazier with a pipe, an altar by the side wall, a low lacquered table with nephrite writing implements and a stamp with the state seal. The khutagt was awaiting his guest seated in an armchair and squeezing a thick yellowish-red camel’s hair rope that went from his fingers through a half-open window. Ungern knew that the rope stretched across the courtyard, through a brick enclosure, and down the other side, with its other end knotted and hanging down. There, two lamas traded in the right to touch this knot. Transmitted through the rope, like electricity through a wire, was the life-giving might of the Javzandamba Khutagt, that is, the Bogd Gegen, the living buddha. Pilgrims would reverently take the knot in both hands and kiss it, or apply it to those places on the body where the evil spirits causing their illness had settled. Payment was exacted in tea, squirrel or tarbagan pelts, and more rarely in silver sycees, Romanov rubles, or Mexican dollars, the last of which, after the revolution, became official currency in Republican China and were used in Mongolia when it was liberated from the revolutionaries. Here, as of old, the currency was called the yanchan. Only the banknotes printed under Ungern on Urga presses were not accepted, even though he had ordered them to be printed with images of the animals most important for the nomadic economy: the note of highest value was decorated with a camel; then, in order of descending value, came the horse, bull, and sheep. The Mongols were very proud of the first national currency in their history, but the feeling was Platonic. As a means of payment, no one recognized them other than Ungern’s own quartermasters, who attempted but failed to purchase provisions with them for the Asiatic Division.

  On either side of the Bogd Gegen stood retinue lamas in luxurious raiment, but the khutagt himself was dressed in a simple monk’s coat with a black border along the lower edge, a sign of his rank. Dark green spectacles concealed the blind man’s eyes. Russian colonists who had lived in Urga said that the living buddha, who in his early youth had suffered from a predilection for alcohol, had gone blind from methyl alcohol. Chinese traders had slipped him this poison on orders from Peking, which was displeased with the khutagt’s pro-Russian sentiments.

  Naidan-Dorji prostrated himself before the Bogd Gegen in an eight-point bow, falling on the rug with feet, knees, elbows, and hands – but Ungern limited himself to clicking his heels and bowing his head slightly. Here, in the East, the gesture weighed more than the word, and he had grounds for being dissatisfied. The finance and interior ministers were absent, and by that alone it was understood that the audience would be purely a matter of protocol and serious decisions would not be made. Meanwhile, another audience in the near future was not envisioned. The troops were preparing for a campaign to the north and were stuffing their packs with dried meat.

  Opposite the Bogd Gegen, lamas placed a bench with a stack of five flat pillows. Among those around the khutagt were men prepared to humble “the great bator, the commander, who revived the state.” Therefore, before sitting, Ungern glanced inquiringly at his companion. Naidan-Dorji nodded barely perceptibly as a sign that etiquette had not been violated and that the number of pillows were proper for a khan or qing-wang, the possessor of yellow reins and a three-eyed peacock feather.

  “Your High Holiness,” Ungern began in Russian after sitting. “I have come to pay a parting visit. The day after tomorrow we will begin our campaign to the Trans-Baikal region. I would have liked to see your ministers by your side, but unfortunately, those men are avoiding me. We will not meet again before the war begins, so I must inform you of the following. If military fortune betrays me but I myself remain alive, I will lead my host to Tibet, to the Dalai Lama. We will assemble our forces and begin a new campaign. I will be so bold as to remind you that you were a captive of Chinese revolutionaries and my men freed you. If the Red Russians enter Urga, your fate will be in their hands, but I will no longer be able to give you back your freedom and throne. Do not repeat past mistakes. Do not stay in Urga! Go to Uliastai, where you will be in safety until my host’s return. From there we will continue on to Lhasa together.”

  Naidan-Dorji interpreted.

  Bogd Gegen nodded with a polite smile but did not utter a word in reply. Obeying an invisible sign, one lama stepped away from the others. He was broad-chested and had a powerful neck, like a wrestler’s. In his outstretched hands he held a square package of rough halemba silk the size of half a packet of cigarettes. Forming a long loop, another silken cord was fastened to it, with a single red thread woven into the yellow. The drawing on the packet depicted a bald graybeard with a kindly face holding a crooked staff. Evidently, this was an amulet. Ungern respectfully accepted the gift and immediately hung it around his neck, hiding it under his robe.

  The fat lama said something, but taken together, the familiar words made no sense and their meaning slipped away. Ungern turned toward Naidan-Dorji, who whispered, “Clothed in yellow, your path guided by yellow, take as a gift the gau of the great Sagan-Ubugun, who guards the earth from his holy grave. He will protect you in your affairs, and his spirit will fortify your body and mollify the stern ways of the inhabitants of the northern lands….”

  Sandalwood powder smoldered in a bronze censer on two tall bird legs, emitting a fragrant, sweet bodily scent, like the scent of an importunate lover’s bed in the morning. He felt like getting out into the fresh air quickly. The lama kept talking, Naidan-Dorji kept interpreting, and Bogd Gegen rhythmically nodded his shaved parchment head, showing that the words were coming from him, only their sound belonged to someone else.

  This old man with the face of a cardinal knew how to hear the gods whisper and was himself a god, but having returned from journeys through other worlds, he drank by the bottle champagne proffered him by the Russian, Japanese, and American consuls competing among themselves, enjoyed the gramophone’s banal arias, and entertained himself by using his dynamo to run electric charges through his terrified servants. He was blind, but all his intimates who wished to send the blind buddha back to nirvana themselves disappeared. Some died after drinking a bottle of Veuve Cliquot; others after riding on a horse with poisoned reins, or having put their foot into a boot with a poisoned thorn inside.

  Suddenly, Ungern felt a faint burning on his chest right where the gau with the bald graybeard touched the naked skin under his princely deel.

  The lama who looked like a wrestler had finished his speech, and Naidan-Dorji was hastily interpreting the last words:

  “The rolling wheel of the t
eaching knows no obstacles, the mountains in its path become foam, water like a stone….”

  Ungern silenced him with one look.

  “Thank you for the gift,” he said in Mongolian.

  “Is the gau burning you?” the Bogd Gegen asked with a smile.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t be afraid, it isn’t poison. It is that Sagan-Ubugun has touched your body.”

  The amulet was evidently rubbed with something foul. Ungern could feel the burning become an itch.

  “Your ministers,” he reminded him, “promised a thousand bulls and three thousand sheep for my army, but I have not received even three hundred.”

  Silence.

  With the eyes of his soul the Bogd Gegen saw that the star of the man sitting in front of him was declining relentlessly. He made no reply, but one of the suite’s lamas, sighing sorrowfully, began to explain that there had been a decline in livestock now and they could not keep their promise. He was supported by two or three other voices. A plague had befallen the bulls, the sheep had been lost in the sands and fallen into chasms, wolves had been carrying them off by the hundreds, they were emaciated and weakened from the spring’s shortfall of forage.

  “Your High Holiness,” Ungern said. “You promised to continue the mobilization to reinforce my army and to supply it with provisions. It is likely your gift will make up for everything I have not yet received. I thank you.”

  He bowed, turned his back to the khutagt, and walked toward the door. Naidan-Dorji, speechless from this lack of tact, backed out toward the doors and only then chased down his pupil.

  At the gates, without so much as a glance at the green palanquin and the frightened bearers, Ungern strode toward his motorcar. Barely keeping up, Naidan-Dorji recounted as he went:

  “Sagan-Ubugun, the White Elder, perhaps the most enigmatic figure in our pantheon. He is depicted as a hermit sitting on the shore of a lake surrounded by wild animals and birds. Deer press up to his feet and birds alight on his shoulders.”

  “What’s enigmatic in that?” Ungern interrupted. “Your ordinary hermit.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t become a hermit until after Genghis Khan’s death; previously he had led a totally different life. On his campaigns, Genghis Khan let a white filly out ahead of the troops and on it, invisible, rode Sagan-Ubugun. He led the Mongolian army to victories, but he had no desire to help any of the Chingisids.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the riddle.”

  The driver, having noted the baron from afar, managed to start the engine, and the machine gave a shudder, enveloped in aromatic smoke. The gasoline stores seized from the Chinese had dried up long ago, and the engine was running on turpentine.

  “It is no accident Bogd Gegen gave you that amulet,” Naidan-Dorji hastened to finish. “Sagan-Ubugun will guard you in battle and help you vanquish the Reds. In Mongolia, many consider you the hubilgan of Genghis himself.”

  “His hubilgan?”

  “Yes, his reincarnation. Actually, he was redheaded, like you.”

  The convoy Cossacks flew into their saddles. Bezrodny opened the vehicle’s door wide and asked, “Well, and how was it, Your Excellency? Giving us at least a few sheep?”

  A Trans-Baikal half-breed, he alone in the division did not fear the mad baron. According to rumors, Bezrodny had bribed a seer who told Ungern he would live as long as his orderly did. Ever since, he’d safeguarded Bezrodny like the apple of his eye, and Bezrodny had waited out battles in the transport.

  Ungern and Naidan-Dorji sat in the back seat and Kozlovsky in the front beside the driver, so that during conversation it would be he and not the baron who would have to turn his head.

  “Yes, Buddhism teaches to spare everything living,” Naidan-Dorji said, “but when you are accused of cruelty, you have to answer them in the following way: I kill sinners so they will not commit new sins, and in this way I ease their fate in future reincarnations.”

  They left the Tuul Valley behind and drove into Urga, passing a stretch of solid fences made of unstripped larches, Russian log houses with blue or green shutters, and Chinese wattle-and-daub dwellings. Above a jumble of felt yurts and the courtyards of the East Monastery, the temple’s copper-leafed cupola glittered in the sun, honoring the buddha Maitreya, the future lord. Not a cloud in the sky. It was May – in Mongolian, the month of the cuckoo. There were cuckoos in the forests on the sacred mountain of Bogdo-Ola, which shielded the capital from the sandstorms that descended from the Gobi, but Ungern would not risk asking them how many years he had left to live.

  They passed the Square of Adorations with the cathedral temple of Tsogchin and the second palace of the Bogd Gegen, known as the Goldtop, which had a yellow roof, and from here they drove out onto the main commercial street with its Chinese stalls, cook-shops, and leather and fur workshops. Then they ascended the riverbank terrace to the dismal, stony heights of the eastern outskirts and stopped beside the two-story building of the old Russian consulate, of which the Nogon Temple was an exact copy. Division headquarters were located here. On the metal roof, punished officers sat in a flock, like pigeons. This punishment, considered relatively mild, had been invented by Ungern himself. Those guilty of disciplinary infractions were put on the roof, and bread and water were raised up to them in a basket on a rope once a day.

  At the sight of the general’s motorcar, the officers on the roof froze, and some made an attempt to stand, balancing on the pitch. Of the nine men, not a single one was a Mongol, or a Buryat, or a Chinese, or a Tatar. What they had been punished for, Ungern forgot, as he forgot everything there was no point remembering.

  “Notice, not a single Asiatic,” he told Kozlovsky. “For Asiatic peoples, the main thing is loyalty. But Russians can be forced to serve only when they have no choice and need to eat.”

  “A Russian man has to know what he’s fighting for,” Kozlovsky objected cautiously.

  “Stop it! War is war. It’s Europe that came up with the idea that you always had to fight for some idea or other. In our era, the authentic knight is to be found only among the yellow peoples. There in China, each general has his own province, and they fight among themselves, but they still call on each other as they used to. Before the battle, they set up their troops and sit together in a tent, drink tea, and play mahjong. The heralds report to them who’s beating whom. They might report something to one of them, and he will start to weep. The other asks, ‘Why is my brother weeping?’ He says, ‘It’s a disaster. On the right flank my cavalry has routed my brother’s cavalry!’ ”

  Ungern threw back his head and exclaimed, “I forgive everyone! Off to your companies!”

  He strode past the officers and clerks, who had pressed against the walls, to his study, where there was nothing but a telephone, two chairs, and a table with a plate of unfinished noodles. He remembered he hadn’t had breakfast and looked for a spoon, but before he could find it, in walked Kozlovsky with a test print of a decree for his division printed on the consular printing press.

  “They just brought it,” he reported.

  Ungern took out his faithful pen and at the top of the first page, wrote in the reference number – 15 – although by the count it should have been a different number, and on the last page added the date: 21 May 1921.

  “Today is the twelfth,” Kozlovsky reminded him.

  “I know,” Ungern replied, but naturally he didn’t explain that according to Naidan-Dorji’s calculations, in the fourth lunar month, those two numbers – 15 and 21 – were lucky for him.

  The decree’s preamble proclaimed:

  “In the struggle against Russia’s destroyers and defilers, it must be remembered that as there has been complete moral decline and total spiritual and corporal depravity, we can no longer be guided by our previous assessments. There can be only one measure of punishment: the death sentence of various degrees. There is no more truth and mercy. There is only truth and pitiless severity. The evil that has come to the land in order to e
xterminate the divine principle in man’s soul must be ripped out by the root.”

  It went on point by point.

  It was ordered after the first successes not to bring wives and children along with them but to distribute them in the villages for feeding, in so doing not making any distinction by rank and not leaving the batmen with the officers’ families.

  Rules were set for the upcoming mobilization in the Cossack villages and Buryat uluses and the direction of the columns’ movement was indicated, as was the procedure for the formation of garrisons, the means for replacing lost officials, etc.

  A separate paragraph prescribed that all those holding noncombat posts resew their epaulets and wear them not along the shoulder, like those in combat posts, but crosswise.

  Finally, the last, unnumbered, with a reference to the prophet Daniel:

  “From the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.”

  The time for the campaign to the north was chosen with an eye to these periods of time. All had been verified long ago, multiplied in a column, added, and a line drawn beneath: from the time the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd, the count of days was approaching the fourteenth hundred.