mightn’t have picked them for Jamuqa, who was a skeptic in religion and a cynic in the world.
In the day, when people woke up, were games. At the children’s archery Jochi, set to targets, trounced the opposition and put his mother into an uncharacteristic flutter. For his prize was a bow, a child’s bow but not simplified – triple-layer, a maple stave, a belly of ibex horn, a back of antelope hind-leg sinews, that had been a year in construction (factors of temperature and moisture) and was worth a few horses. It drew like a dream and you felt the accuracy, with or without you. Jochi barnacled himself to the maker and leeched in know-how, while he had the chance. Their wrestler was Belgutei, whose giant status was in no doubt in spite of bulbs and tubers. Great-Uncle Cutula, though mad keen on the sport, never had wrestled, with his unfair size. Belgutei, mad keen and a talent, at risk of brashness and his comeuppance through technique, skipped his age bracket to enter the open. As his crier Bagtor introduced him to the spectators with a self-lampoon on how his kid brother mistook him for a stick and picked him up scratch his back or clean under his fingernails. Temujin almost liked him for a moment. Size won the day, and Jochi and Belgutei, in a giants’ club, punched and cuddled and roared for Borjigin.
Amiably Temujin said to Bagtor, “Kid brothers, eh?”
From out his baggage Jamuqa dug a bolt of ruby silk and cut sashes for the homegrown champions. The remainder he gave to Hoelun, who hadn’t seen silk in years.
Temujin’s brothers had nicknamed Jamuqa not Puss-in-Boots but Weasel, which wasn’t far off. An undersized weasel can blur on the muscular heels of a hare and sink its teeth straight into the brain. Weasels are audacious and no beast, no size differential deters them. Like other little attack-animals they tend to be hyper-clever. Along with these traits Jamuqa had a face like a weasel, a triangle of slants.
He got mistaken for a Uriangqot, until he said to Temujin, “Here’s my chance. Leave my kit in a puddle of blood, my sword half-chewed, and I’m Weasel of Uriangqot, who never heard of Jajirat.”
Those who swear to be brothers, between the two of them they have one life. Temujin and Jamuqa resolved to talk as if they had one head, an andas’ honesty, at a stratum of the mind beneath ordinary honesty. This was their ideal. Trials included Temujin’s depiction to Jamuqa of a night session of his mother and his father, who liked the vent open for the starlight. Jamuqa hadn’t lived with a mother and a father and he listened enthralled. “You’ve seen things, haven’t you, Temujin?” They were at an age to start to have an interest. At Jamuqa’s instigation they went to spy on the animals, which is what incipient adolescents do.
Of andas’ honesty Temujin made an escape clause. His father’s stipulation, that he inspect Jamuqa’s equipment, never was to be. I am too cruel to cut you off from your friend, his father had said. Temujin told Jamuqa what for three years he had interred. “Blimey,” said Jamuqa. “God mentioned you by name?”
Shortly he said also, “Anda, you had the best dad in the world. Take no notice of me.”
Temujin took notice. The skeptical attitude of Jamuqa – that under terms he couldn’t disguise – had slow and vast effects on his mental growth. Left to himself, he almost certainly wouldn’t have questioned his father.
“Not that I can’t see you’re cut out for great things.”
Already Temujin had begun to feel a load off. “I’m not cut out to be a Mattyr.”
“Blimey,” said Jamuqa once again. He added, “Who in a blizzard is?”
“Even in the mental satchel. You have twice my brains, Jamuqa. That isn’t modest, that’s just a fact.”
“Nobody likes you for brains. Nobody likes me.”
“Nobody likes you, Jamuqa?” he asked naively.
“I don’t ardently want them to, either. And that’s wrong for a chief. My father wasn’t liked, but he earnt what happened to him and he ain’t the chief I need to be. Neither are my grannies. No-one has to love me: let them fear me. That’s the theory they’ve tested on me, and given me the perfect example, because what they have bred in me? Respect? No. Not respect. I don’t know, Temujin. I’m screwed up. But I’ve seen chiefs, amongst them your father, and a chief likes and is liked. He has the social graces, the oil for the wheels. Tact lessons, pooh – I’m too busy with drill. Who do I like? I like you.”
“I like you, Jamuqa.”
“See, I’m happy with that. I’m wrong for a chief.”
“You think you’ve got problems?”
They laughed at the future, which neither believed in right then.
“Tell you what,” suggested Jamuqa. “When we grow up, how about you and me be a bit of Mattyr together?”
“Yes.” And he was happy with that.
Onset of autumn spelt great tragedy for Temujin and Jamuqa. In the lead-up they grew haggard. When the time came, crisis brought out the contrast in them, Temujin emotional, Jamuqa stoic. But the stoic one left as if to a grisly fate and told his friend not to grieve. At this intensity of theirs Temujin’s brothers thought them daft or mad. Hoelun thought of her joys, at the trifling cost of her sorrows.
9. Temujin Slays his Monster
As the savage beasts, so have been my sons.
Hoelun, The Secret History of the Mongols, passage 78
To the eyes of one watcher, Hoelun was in her glory in her early thirties. Five years’ strenuous, outdoors life in the hills and forest had left her fit, lean and muscular. Unlike most horse masters of the steppe, who when they have fifty yards to go, ride, she wasn’t ungainly on her feet, for she used them; she used her limbs and joints in the terrain, she climbed rough, steep ground and trees, she had the supple hips of a cat. With her hat on, a cone at the rear of the scimitar-curves and half-orbs of her face and head, her neck uncluttered, the shape and poise of her had a grace seen otherwise in Persian steeds and swans. With her hat off her hair swam like the glossy back of an otter in a river.
She flourished in her solitude by a stance of indifference to the things she did not have, or could not contrive. In the harshest months she found or had saved ahead of time substance for the pot. No material came into her hands that she did not turn to purpose. She was never ashamed or embarrassed by their hardships. When Jochi wore a dog’s pelt for a cloak, because they had no fleeces and no felt and had to trade for hides and dog was cheap, none of them felt a sense of indignity. Indignity was alien to her. The dog’s pelt only meant to them rich ore for humour, in which Jochi basked.
When one loves far above oneself, love can uplift. One can know the object superb, and be content. If she is kind to an insect like you she is a queen. Hoelun was a queen in her court in her weather-battered great tent in the wilds; there she answered to no-one, and she flourished; from winter to winter they were dependent upon her. Bagtor had no wish to be other than her hand-servant, her first courtier, even as a husband. He didn’t make Daritai’s mistake. He waited. For pity, yes. Despise her pity? He had thrived on her pity since he was a child. One thing alone he had to offer: that he loved her, which he told her through the fact, only through the fact, that he was twenty now and he did not spare a glance for other women.
Twelve, to Temujin, was once upon a time, an idyll. Now he is a teenager. Their shortages are more severe, they go hungry, and life has a grimmer cast altogether. Temujin has undergone two major changes, two upheavals.
He has lost a fight. It was a fight he was committed to, and he is unhappy with himself. He even avoids the thought of his father, who told him that virtues are like muscles and strengthen with exercise... because he has gone backwards. Tooth and nail he fought, for he fought not to be ignoble, not to sink into the quagmire with his foe, not to cut the ground out from under his stand, from under his standard. But he can’t deny he has lost, when his nostrils twitch in disgust at Bagtor’s scent. Under daily siege, he has learnt to meet hate with hate.
He has learnt to criticize his mother. This, too, about Bagtor. To start his fourteenth year on she had given him a speech of censure. “It is a grave di
sappointment to me to see my children and Goagchin’s children split into camps. She and I have been like Joloi’s wives who are both mothers of Bolot; I promised her that Yesugei’s children are equal in our home. Temujin, you will say you didn’t start the antagonism. But I am going to tell you where I blame you, and you won’t answer me but listen. In our single family of Yesugei’s children, Bagtor is the agha. You, Temujin, refuse to acknowledge him yours, and the children underneath you, my children, do as they see you do; and you act to them as an agha. Once I asked you to understand Bagtor’s resentment of your clan rank. Clan rank isn’t much in evidence where we are. But Temujin, there is his status in the family, which you, deliberately this time, have done him out of. You will say he doesn’t suit you as a guide in life, he doesn’t suit your ideas of an agha. However, an agha grows into his position, and Bagtor has been prevented – frustrated – he has an agha in him, seen in his shepherd’s care of Belgutei, whom he loves tenderly. But you, Temujin, stand between him and the other children; you deny him, and they turn to you. That is why I have to see you the cause of the division.”
So Temujin was to blame, even for Bagtor’s (half-confessed) unsuitability to be a guide in life for the children. And Temujin, when he tried to