The question he had been itching to ask came at last. He looked at Kristina. Her hair, bleached several shades lighter in the sun, was in sharp contrast to the dark tan of her face, in which the blue eyes frankly returned the old man’s gaze. He asked how old she was, if she were related to any of us, where were we taking her. I answered as I had done that other old man to the north.
This leisurely catechism had taken over half-an-hour and the patriarch had appeared to enjoy it immensely. I suspect he was proud of the opportunity of showing his younger kinsmen how he could converse in a foreign tongue. He turned from us and spoke in his own language to the others. They smiled among themselves and bustled about the packs on the animals.
From the packs they brought him food and smilingly he distributed it between us. He was meticulously fair in ensuring that each of us had exactly the same share. At one stage he saw that he had given big Kolemenos one fig more than the rest of us. Politely he took it back. He handed round nuts, dried fish, some partly-cooked swollen barley grains and biscuity, scone-sized oaten cakes. We all bowed and I, as the spokesman, thanked him in the finest phrases I could lay tongue to. I thought the meeting was over, but the Mongols made no move. They were waiting for a signal from their leader but he seemed to be in no hurry to part from us.
He volunteered the information that his party were bound for a ‘big market’ not far away to the east to buy some goods. He went over to his camel, busied himself for a while and came back smoking a rolled tobacco leaf held in shape by a reed tied around the middle. He held out to me a flat-pressed wad of about fifteen whole tobacco leaves. I thanked him and made to put the leaves in the pocket of the jacket I was carrying over my arm. He put out a restraining hand. ‘Please smoke,’ he said.
I explained that I was unable to make his kind of smoke with the whole leaf and that we had no paper to roll cigarettes. He went over to the camel again and returned with the inside double sheet of a newspaper. ‘For you,’ he said. ‘Please smoke.’ I looked at the paper and saw it was the Russian Red Star printed the first week in May. The American, standing close beside me, saw it too. ‘Take care of that, Slav,’ he murmured. I needed no telling.
From the top of the paper I carefully tore off a strip so as not to cut into the reading matter. From one of the tobacco leaves I rubbed up some shreds in the palm of my hand, rolled my cigarette and fished out my piece of flint, my steel rod and a thumbnail-sized scrap of gubka tinder. I held the tinder tight against the flint in the thumb and forefinger of my left hand and struck with the steel in my right hand. The tinder took spark first go. I blew on it until it smouldered red and applied it to my cigarette. The Mongols watched in open admiration of my skill.
‘What do you call that fire-maker?’ asked the patriarch.
‘The Russians give it the name chakhalo-bakhalo in some places,’ I told him.
The sound tickled him. He repeated it twice. I puffed happily at my cigarette, the Mongol leader at his cigar. As the glowing end crept towards the middle he moved the knotted reed band along ahead of it. We finished our smokes standing in the group there beside the road. It was time to break up.
Our host thrust his right hand down to the level of his left hip, withdrew it and bent his ear down to the object he was holding. I craned forward. He was holding a watch, a big silver watch, attached by a short length of heavy silver chain to his belt. He was immediately aware of our interest. We all crowded round and he allowed me to hold it and examine it. It was an old key-winder, made in Russia, and might have been fifty years old. Certainly it was a pre-Revolution product. In flowing Russian script on the watch face was the name of its maker and by some odd quirk of memory the name has always remained with me. It was Pavel Bure – some Czarist craftsman probably long dead.
‘When the Russians were fighting each other,’ the old gentleman explained, ‘some of them ran away to my country many years ago.’ It explained not only the possession of the watch – a gift, a payment for services or an article of exchange – but also his ability to speak Russian.
We parted with many expressions of felicitation for our respective journeys and many kind wishes for the continuing health of our feet. It was perhaps our most interesting encounter in Mongolia but we were to find that all these people, whatever their station in life, had those typical qualities of courtesy, complete trust, generosity and hospitality. The help we received was according to the means of the giver, but that help was always cheerfully given. Another delightful quality was their naive and frank curiosity. Unfortunately, the language barrier ruled out conversation with the people we subsequently met, although we became adept at putting over simple ideas by gesture, talking the while in our own languages because it was easier and less embarrassing than employing only silent mime.
When the caravan had disappeared from view we whipped out the Red Star. There was little news in it, but we read every line because it was the first newspaper we had seen since those sheets, six months and more old, which were issued back in the camp for cigarette making. It did not tell us what we were most anxious to discover, the eventuality confidently forecast from the beginning by every prisoner I ever met in Russian hands – whether Russia and Germany were at war. There were some dull internal political items, the aftermath of May Day celebrations and the usual promises by industry and agriculture to exceed their production targets. One odd paragraph, which seemed to dispose of the idea of an immediate clash between the two great Continental powers, recorded the dispatch of a big consignment of wheat to the Germans.
Having read the paper we tore it up and shared it out, using each piece to wrap the apportioned tobacco cut in chunks with the knife. We travelled on over undulating country until we met a stream about seven o’clock in the evening, where we camped, set a fire going against the night cold, ate a meal and enjoyed luxury, smoking and yarning together.
By the end of our first fortnight in Mongolia our methods of advance had been modified from those employed in Siberia. No longer was it necessary to post night sentries. The urge to keep on the move persisted; it had become a habit of our existence. But we were not now bedevilled by fears of imminent recapture, we could make contact with the people of the country, we could ask for food or work for food. We did long day marches from the cool hour before dawn until the late evening setting of the sun, but we had adopted the hot country custom of resting in shelter for the two hours of fiercest heat at midday.
The country ahead presented a prospect of a series of round-topped low hills which we skirted when we could and surmounted when we had to. Some of the hills were clothed in heather, which always grew more profusely on the northern slopes. There were few trees except near the villages and the waterways but hardier bushy vegetation – among which I recognized a type of berberis with juicy, oval red fruit, and the wild rose – was fairly widespread. The population was sparse and the villages, sited near water, were widely separated. A very small part of the vast land through which we travelled was cultivated.
Our first thought on reaching the crest of a hill was always to look for the next river. This Outer Mongolian journey was in essence a succession of forced marches through great heat from water to water. Streams and rivers meant solace for the feet, water to slake thirst, water to bathe in. The navigable waterways, too, brought us food on a few occasions, and the incidents, not unnaturally, remain in my mind.
The first time we struck lucky was when we came across a laden sampan held fast on a mudbank. The boatman jabbed first one side and then the other with his bamboo pole, but though he heaved and grunted the craft only swung a little across the current and remained fixed. Kolemenos said ‘Let’s give him a hand,’ so we waded out to the boat ten yards or so from the bank. Kristina watched from the grass as the Chinese handed us a spare bamboo. We rammed the pole under the bows and started levering, while the boatman thrust away above us with his own pole. After a few minutes of pleasantly hard work we got her off. The Chinese was delighted. His cargo was melons, nearly the size of footbal
ls. As the sampan glided off he bombarded us with the fruit.
Between us and the bank on which Kristina waited as we splashed happily ashore was a belt of a few yards of thick mud marking the limit of the river in the rainy season. The top was patterned with deep cracks where the sun had formed a drying crust, but underneath was squelching grey-brown mud which came up to the calf. Zaro had just thrown Kristina a melon and was standing laughing in the mud when he suddenly let out a yell. We called out to ask him what was the matter, but before he answered I felt a wriggling movement under my own feet. I bent down and groped. Twice the thing eluded me after I thought I had a good grip and then I found the head and gills and hoisted it, lashing violently about my hand and wrist, into the sunlight. It was nearly a foot long, round and thick-bodied, superficially like an eel. I recognized it as a species of loach which the Russians call viyuni.
‘Can you eat it?’ the American asked. ‘Yes,’ I said.
That started a hilarious half-hour of mudlarking, at the end of which we were ready for a distinctly unusual evening meal. Like eels, they were tenacious of life and we had to cut off the heads before we could prepare them for cooking. We washed the slime off in the river and found them to be a velvety jet black. We roasted them on hot stones and while I cannot remember exactly their taste, I do remember that it could not be mistaken either for fish or eel. The word we used at the time to describe the taste was ‘sweet’. The flesh was hard-packed and filling.
The rare meal was rounded off with succulent melon slices. Marchinkovas had the brainwave of taking two hollowed-out halves of melon to use as gourds for drinking. The idea was good but in practice did not work out. As the skin dried it cracked. He threw the two halves away next day.
15
Life Among the Friendly Mongols
MAINTAINING A schedule of around twenty miles a day hard slogging for days on end made us welcome an occasional break. These days when we eased off were never wasted. One reason for stopping a few hours was to repair and remake worn-out moccasins and tend cut and swollen feet. The other reason was the necessity of earning our food – we could not always expect to be handed food out of charity.
In the second month of our Mongolian Journey we arrived at a village of straggling smallholdings. To European eyes a strange feature would be the absence of fences or indeed any boundary markings. Possibly the life of these villages was largely communal and no fences were needed. We approached a stone-built, flat-roofed shack of a house, in front of which, in a hard-beaten, cleared space, we could see a bullock gyrating slowly and patiently round an upright thick stake driven into the ground. It was mid-morning and we had already covered ten or fifteen miles. As we walked we swung our long cudgels. We were a little hungry, a little thirsty, but by no means in desperate straits.
We stopped quite near to watch the bullock and decide what work he was doing. Between the beast and the house were four people – the Mongol farmer squatting, lazily lifting his cap to scratch his bald pate, a lusty-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen armed with a stick with which he encouraged the bullock now and again as it trudged past him, and two women, one of whom might have been the boy’s mother and the other his grandmother. The women took no notice of us, but the farmer got up off his haunches and with the boy came over to us and bowed. We returned the greeting. The farmer talked and we talked, but it got us nowhere, and we all, bobbing and smiling, sat down together on the hard earth. The bullock, freed of the boy’s attentions, stopped work. By then I could see what was happening. The beast was threshing rye. It was tethered to the central stake by a rope of plaited rushes or osiers. At the outer limit of its tether were spread out in a circle sheaves of ripe rye with the ears outermost. As the bullock trampled the sheaves the grain dropped to the ground where it was gathered by the womenfolk.
I turned to Kolemenos. ‘That’s a slow way of threshing. Let’s give the old boy some help.’ Kolemenos nodded. ‘Show me how.’
We went over and gave the sheaves a few tentative clouts with our sticks. The grain, bone-dry, showered down. I looked over to the farmer. He was grinning broadly and watching closely. I went over to the others. ‘Let’s do the job. It won’t take long.’ Everybody agreed quite willingly, and Kristina, armed with a light staff she used as a walking stick, came too. We stationed ourselves round the circle and set to. The boy, laughing, unharnessed the bullock and led him away. When it was almost done, the farmer spoke to the two women and they went into the house. He stood near me and I ran grain from one hand to the other and then held out to him a thick bunch of cornstalks. He ran his hand along it and shook it and when he saw it had been beaten clean of seed, showed evident pleasure.
I made gestures to inquire of the man whether he had a sifter for separating the chaff from the grain. He called to the boy, who went to the house and came back with a sieve, the meshes of which were formed from the tail-hairs of a horse. We cleaned up throughly, sieved the grain into baskets and then poured it into sacks. The boy led the way to the house as I humped one of the first filled bags.
The interior of the house was interesting. Two-thirds of it was living space, the remainder storage space. There was no partition and little else that could be called civilized refinement. As I stepped inside one of the women was working a primitive flourmill comprising a pair of well-fashioned circular stones set on a yard-high wooden bench. Pivoting from a hole in a roof-beam was a length of bamboo, the other end of which fitted loosely into a hole near the rim of the upper millstone. Grain was fed through a central hole in this top stone and the woman ground it by swinging the bamboo round and round. The other woman was busy over a stone fireplace in the middle of the floor, the fuel for which, judging by the smell, was dried animal dung. There was no chimney. The smoke curled out through a hole in the roof.
The boy had a sack, too, which he took over to a tall wooden bin, roughly the shape of a barrel, iron-hooped. As we tipped our sacks into the bin I looked round. On a wooden peg driven into the wall were three or four sheepskin coats for winter wear. Bunches of what looked like dried herbs hung from the roof. On the floor were a couple more bins and some tall unglazed brown earthenware jars narrowing at the necks. One of them had a small piece of cloth over the top. I later found the jars held water and milk.
When the operation was over the farmer disappeared. The boy stayed with us. I said to the others in Russian, ‘The women are cooking something in there.’ There were hopeful glances at the smoke spiralling up out of the hole in the roof. About half-an-hour passed and then we heard the characteristic creaking and groaning of wheel-hubs on ungreased axles. Round the corner of the house came the farmer leading his bullock yoked to a four-wheeled cart piled high with sheaves.
Mister Smith broke the dismayed silence which had fallen on us. ‘Gentlemen, the joke is on us. We have some more work to do before we dine.’
Zaro jumped to his feet. ‘Come on, all of you. Let’s see how quickly we can get through it.’ He pulled Kristina up by her wrists and led the way over to the cart.
We worked until well on in the afternoon and became more proficient as a team the longer we went on. I found it was easier on the back and no less efficient to beat out the grain against the tethering stake. As I was the only one of the crowd who had any previous experience of such agricultural pursuits, I was agreeably surprised at the results of our combined labours. So, understandably, was our Mongol friend trotting happily behind each sack as it was toted from the threshing ground to the bin.
The women came out to us then with our reward. One of them carried a shallow straw pannier piled with oaten cakes held with an outstretched arm against her right hip. The older woman brought one of the tall jars I had seen in the house. It was filled with whey. The boy ambled along behind with what looked like three glass tumblers, but when he came close enough for me to examine them I saw they were what was left of bottles from which necks and shoulders had been cleanly removed, probably by the application of heat followed by cold water. The cakes,
still warm, were delicious and filling, but the first draught of whey was tainted by paraffin which had been in or near the drinking receptacles. We switched over to our communal metal mug.
This was a period when I had a great craving for salt. I used to dream of the taste of it. It occurred to me then that I would lose nothing by asking the farmer for some. In dumb show I made my request. I pointed to him and to myself. I held my left hand out and made the motion of taking a pinch of salt with my right. I conveyed the hand to my mouth, drew in my cheeks to demonstrate the sharpness of salt upon the tongue, smacked my lips and smiled. The man comprehended immediately. He turned towards the house and beckoned me to join him. Inside he spoke to the women and it was quite a long palaver. Finally the older woman took the tight-fitting lid off a small wooden bowl and produced the salt. It was brown and the crystals were large. She handled it with a care that indicated it was a rare and precious commodity as she spilled out a quantity which would barely have filled a matchbox on to a square of sacking stuff and wrapped it up. I bowed, smiled and thanked them all for the gift.
As we moved off down the track leading through the village I was intrigued with the primitive mechanics of the square-sunk well, from which open-topped sections of wooden conduit led away for irrigation. From two opposite sides heavy planks reared up six feet above ground level to hold the winding spindle. But there was no familiar winding handle. The rope took two turns around the spindle; one end disappeared into the well and the other led off to a point ten feet clear of the well where it was secured to a thick, well-rounded post socketed deeply into the ground and extending vertically above ground a height of eight or nine feet.
About four feet above ground and well below the point at which the well-rope was made fast, a stout wooden bar was slotted through the post, making of the whole contraption a capstan for which the motive power was, as usual, the patient bullock moving in a circle. Provision was made, too, for employing the other hard-labour force of the country – the women – by four arms thrust through the post at breast height, a kind of auxiliary four-women-power motor. It seemed rather an elaborate arrangement for raising water, but the well was deep and the bucket, twice the size of the Western household type, was of solid wood hooped with iron and difficult to lift even when empty.