The Lotus and the Wind (25 page)

So went the next day, when they came to a waterhole, a grey depression in the dark soil, its water so muddy and saline that the ponies would not drink.

And the next, when they found no water and camped again in the lee of a dune.

They rode on broad reaches of baked clay, across ridge after ridge of grey-black sand, over walking dunes that moved with the wind. There were sand waves seventy feet high and four hundred feet apart that rolled ahead for as far as they could see. There were tamarisk and artemisia and the withered leaves of spring tulips--and, for miles on end, there was nothing.

On the third evening two men mounted on camels came rolling up out of the south, like ships under bare masts. They were desert nomads and as they came close they stopped, but at a wary distance. Robin shouted the Turki greeting and discharged his rifle in the air. Jagbir did the same; then the nomads. So, when the four rifles were empty and the four-sharply watching pairs of eyes had seen no one attempt to reload, they all came together.

‘Where to?’ asked one of the strangers, perched on the rear hump of a hairy, thickset Bactrian.

‘The Akkal. Is the water on the road good?’

‘Bad enough. But passable unless the two Franks and their train in front have emptied the wells.’

‘Franks?’ Robin asked. ‘Are they men of peace? Is it safe to close with them? We travel fast.’

‘They seem harmless. They are mad--birdcatchers--one a woman, as bold-faced as her they call the Well, in Khiva. With bigger breasts too, but no harlot for all that. They are a day ahead.’

A day ahead. Jagbir would suggest catching up with them and shooting them. That wouldn’t do any good. Besides, Jagbir must not be allowed to shoot Muralev. Robin thought slowly, his lips burning, his eyes swollen and red-rimmed. He could continue to follow, as he was doing. But if the Muralevs increased their pace he might lose them. Or if the Muralevs slowed down he’d run into them unawares. He said carefully, ‘Those two Franks--I fear we know them. We had a little difficulty with them in Bukhara. They say we stole some trash of theirs. Is there another way to the Akkal?’

‘There is and there isn’t. A couple of miles on from here you come on a flat place of clay. There is a flag where Uluz my uncle died of fever, may he rest in peace. The true road goes straight across the flat, but if you bear left at the flag and cross the high sand ridge, there you come to a wide plain. Sometimes we go that way with camels. There are four oases, a long way apart, and then you reach Bezmein in the Akkal oasis.’

‘Is it shorter than the other way?’

‘By twenty miles. But at this season not a soul lives in any of those oases. Our people have gone south. There may be water at some, there may be no water. The stages are forty and fifty miles each.’

When the nomads had gone, floating north over the sand sea, Robin said to Jagbir, ‘We must take this other road. We may die of thirst and exhaustion.’

He wanted to explain the risks to his servant and friend and ask him whether he wished to turn back. Like a dog, Jagbir felt his need before he could express it in words. The Gurkha carefully scanned the empty desert, assured himself that the nomads were indeed a mile away and receding fast, then muttered,
‘Hawas, huzoor!’
--the Gurkhali phrase that accepts an order. A minute later he added,
‘Natra, kya garun?’
--What else can we do?

The ponies were already exhausted, and after an hour Robin and Jagbir had to dismount and drag them the last eight miles. Whenever they slackened the strain on the reins the ponies faltered to a stop. Worse, they tried the whole time to circle to the left. It was full dark. Time and again the North Star, which should now have been directly behind them, appeared over their left shoulders. Then they swore and wrenched the ponies’ mouths and turned again south.

At last Jagbir said, ‘I smell water.’ In the utter dryness of the desert even that slight dampness blew like a sea breeze on Robin’s cheek. The ponies raised their heads and, instead of pulling left, swung right and broke into a trot. Two hundred yards upwind they came to the water, a muddy pool, and flung themselves into it.

In the morning it took an hour to fill the skins, so shallow and soupy was the water. It lay like a green-black stain in the hollow, and Robin knew that if he had been able to see it the night before he could not have drunk it. That day the ponies marched for six hours, were dragged by the reins for three more, and then lay down. They would not move until Jagbir emptied the noisome water from a skin down their throats. Before the day ended they had emptied two more skins. From midday on recurrent attacks of diarrhoea twisted Robin’s and Jagbir’s bowels and spent their strength. At the next oasis, which they reached about two in the morning after a forty-mile stage, twenty hours on the road, they found a prayer flag and a shallow, unlined well. The well contained no water.

Near the well and the flag, the moon shone on a discarded saddle. It was of a strange pattern and might have belonged to one of Tamerlane’s riders. The aseptic desert had bleached, dried, and preserved it, to remind them that here was the point of no return. With the remaining skins they could either reach the next oasis ahead or go back to the last behind, but only with great hardship in either case. Behind they knew there was water--that filthy puddle. Ahead there might be no water.

A bowel spasm gripped Robin, and with it a similar knot of angry doubt. He found himself here not of his own decision but because someone had sent him, in this case a nomad on a Bactrian camel. Was he too an agent of Lenya Muralev? If so, she intended him to die of thirst in a place where no one would even know that he had died. He might be on the wrong road, but assuredly not on the wrong track. He would go forward.

There was no reason to wait, because they were too tired to sleep. It was best not to break the deadly rhythm of movement. They gave the animals half a skin between them, wetted their own tongues, and moved on.

Late in the afternoon, from the summit of a mountainous dune, Jagbir pointed. A dark-green band of colour, absorbing the light, lay like a blot against the shimmering horizon.

Ten more miles reeled back behind them. With infinite caution the green band separated out and in the moonlight became the dappled shadow of bushes. Jagbir first saw the hollow that held the well; then the horses sensed it and gathered their strength. Robin held Jagbir’s elbow. Together they all ran down the last dune, across the flat, over the moon-washed, sun-dried patterns of trampling hoofs and camel pads and human feet. The ponies won the race by several yards, and each sucked in a long draught. The water was deep and clear.

Even as the first drop passed over Robin’s lips its bitterness, like a serrated knife, ripped his tongue. He rubbed sand in his mouth and shrieked. The poison burned into his gums. He ran to a skin and rinsed and rinsed until he could breathe again. One horse was dead, the others lying sprawled on their sides at the edge of the water, their necks flat along the ground, the lips drawn back over their teeth. Those two lived still but had no strength left to struggle against the poison in them. Soon they would die, as the first had died and as Robin was ready to die, of disappointment and despair.

Robin lay down, collapsing slowly from the knees. When he opened his eyes he saw that all the ponies were dead. There was plenty of food, but it was all dry. The water had been poisoned. Lenya Muralev had lured them into the desert, and they could not turn back. Once, on the road to Karshi, Bahram had playfully bitten her. Now she’d killed him too. He had been a good horse.

Jagbir said, ‘We’ve had to pull the ponies sixty miles. We’re better off without them.’ He moved about slowly but unhesitatingly, collecting the things they must carry--the last water-skin, three parts empty, a bag of raisins, some dates, a dozen discs of unleavened bread. ‘The gold,’ he said. ‘Let me carry your belt.’

Robin said, ‘It’s not heavy. Can you manage the water? I don’t think I can carry my rifle any more.’

‘We’ll leave it. I have mine.’

Being beyond hope, they could sleep. In the freezing dawn they faced the last stage but one. If there was no water at the end of it, it would be, for them, the very last. Robin’s fingers were so numb he could not tie his load on his shoulders, and Jagbir had to do it for him.

Robin thought he must have marched unconscious for half the day, because next the sun was glaring down, and the wind stung his neck. The effort to march became a physical pain, increased to agony, was surmounted, and became an effort to live. That in turn increased as the other had, but it would be the last. Only death or water could surmount this. The words of the song Jagbir had sung in that camp near Karshi thrummed and drummed and rumbled in his head--
jaun,jaun,pareli
, in time with his steps, stumbling when he stumbled. Jagbir gave him water, and he cried because he could have no more.
Ankhen ma gazeli
, and Mclain came running down from the slaughter at Tezin Kach, and here were the faces of all the men who had not seen him shoot himself, and the snow whistled past his ears.
Samajaunchhu Dehra Dun
, and Anne Savage, who ought to have been Anne Hildreth or even Anne Hayling, loved him and believed she could lift him by force of love out of the deserts to a place of water and shade and no wind.

He only wanted water.

‘It is finished,’ Jagbir answered.

Jagbir’s feet kept on and on, left, right, left, right, just in front of him. There was a length of rein reaching back from Jagbir’s waist, connected at the other end to--well, his own hand, towing him along.

When he found it was black and hot and he had sand in his mouth, Jagbir picked him up.

So when he found it was black and cold and he had sand in his mouth, but no firm hand lifted him, he rolled over on his back and prepared to die while he yet had the strength. He must not be carried helpless and feeble past those gates. He must walk in wide-eyed and strong, looking about him.

Jagbir had gone. According to his pompous father, Colonel Rodney Savage, C.B., Jagbir had deserted him, spat on the glorious tradition of the regiment, and behaved like no true Gurkha. Nonsense. But it was strange that Jagbir, who did not fear death in battle, should run away from death in the desert. And foolish, because in the desert death would only follow him the more relentlessly. He would be lonely when he died.

He was not lonely himself. All the people had gone away.
Jaun, jaun, pareli
had gone away. The imperial danger had gone away, and the Czar, and Lenya Muralev, and Jagbir of course and at last even Peter Muralev. Being undisturbed, he was able to concentrate on the immediately pressing problem--what was God’s purpose in giving man awareness of God?

The water in his mouth caused his arms and legs to twitch, then the cold to bite and the wind to blow and his stomach to bind in a spasm of cramp. A quarter of a mouthful, and his throat swelled so that he could not swallow. The water that was in his mouth trickled down his face to the sand. He rolled over and licked at it, but it became grit.

‘Slowly, sahib, there is enough.’

Soon he found strength to take another sip. After an hour he went to sleep.

In daylight he saw that Jagbir, asleep beside him, nursed a half-full goatskin in his arms. His face had filled out, and he opened his eyes when Robin moved.

Robin said, ‘What happened?’

‘I was not tired, not very. The moon was up, and I could go faster by myself. You were resting.’

‘Dying.’

‘I went on, though I became a little more tired.’

O--master of the matter-of-fact, Jagbir. You were lonely and dying.

‘I knew we must be near the oasis. After a mile--three, perhaps--I saw a camel. When I went down to it I saw a man asleep. The sand deadened the sound of my feet.’

‘And he gave us water? It was a--miracle. It was the work of----’ He paused. He did not like to use the name of God aloud when he did not know whether God was like a man or like a thought or like a pamir.

Jagbir did not answer directly but said, ‘Let us go forward to the water now.’

Robin found he could not walk by himself, but Jagbir helped him. Soon he saw the camel, ridiculously close and large and alive, squatting by the waterhole and chewing cud. He saw its saddle and load neatly stacked beside it. He saw the man lying curled up ten yards off, still asleep.

Jagbir said, ‘It was not the work of God, sahib. It was the work of the Russian woman.’ Robin thought, Not the woman, surely? She wouldn’t help us. Peter Muralev, you mean? But Jagbir pointed to a glass jar full of blue powder that stood in full sight near the sleeping man. Jagbir said, ‘All this way I prayed for this. I know that woman. We were travelling fast. This man, her servant, thought he was still a day ahead of us. He was going to poison the well in the morning before he went on. Until then he needed the water for himself and his camel.’

Robin looked again at the man and said, ‘Then--he is not sleeping?’

‘No.’

Robin put his head in his hands. After a while he said, ‘We will rest all day here. To-morrow we will take the camel and go to the Akkal. But I did not hear a shot.’

‘I did not fire. I gave him a drink of water.’

So they came, both riding the camel, to the end of the desert. The mountains rose ahead in a pale wall from eastern to western horizon. The Akkal oasis stretched for many miles under the mountains. It was not a single well but an area where melting winter snows formed pools that did not dry up all year, and where the pressure along the hill faults expressed water in a hundred widely scattered springs. The black tents of the nomads dotted the plain. There were clumps of trees and bushes. There were small villages and herds grazing and tiny patches of cultivation.

Had the Muralevs already arrived? It depended whether they had hurried all the way or had gone slowly and spent time collecting specimens to reinforce their role of naturalists. In any case they would soon expect the owner of the camel, the man with the poison bottle, to come and report to them.