The Gobi Desert (11 page)

Again I heard Sanders' voice, a peculiar voice in which there was persuasion, seriousness, tenderness, altogether something very moving.

‘Michel,' he began, ‘if until now I have had any doubts, those doubts have now been dispelled forever. What I told you, I was right to say it, and right also to have done what I did.'

The wind, howling more and more like a tempest, chopped up his words, pounded them, and in so doing conferred on them a sort of inexorable authority. This was no longer just a different world but a new existence, it seemed, to which I had been invited, and which was now being offered to me. Sanders was constantly watching me and he smiled, persuaded that the game had been won.

‘Be brave,' he said forcefully. ‘I have nothing more to say to you, for the time being at least. With each day that passes it will be the sand, the ice, and the wind which will see to it that you forget those kisses - which I have promised never to mention again from now on. So in view of the danger which you have left behind, you won't be afraid of the terrible, awful, darkness which we are about to enter. Whatever happens to you now, you can tell yourself that there is something even more empty, more deserted, more desolate, than the Gobi Desert, and that is the heart of certain women . . . . . and especially
her
heart!

Like most people who have had to learn to read only late in life, he was a voracious reader, was Sanders. Every hour which was not taken up with his duties as leader of the caravan found him with a book in his hand. Not poetry, of course. Travelogues, most of all. As for those works which dealt with hunting for tigers, he already knew them all by heart.

One of the old books which he was particularly fond of was something written by an Italian by the name of Marco Polo, who a good number of centuries earlier had come to look around in these regions. At that time China was ruled by a khan called Kublai. I don't know why this name was so pleasing to Sanders, but he delighted in repeating it over and over again.

‘Kublai Khan! Kublai Khan!' he said. ‘With the permission of the Good Lord, Michel, that's what we shall call our little friend. Just wait till you see him. You will realise straightaway why he can't be called anything else. Kublai Khan was the greatest emperor in the history of the world, did you know that?'

I don't know what use the book by this Italian could have. But as for what it said about the terrible region to which we had committed ourselves, you had to agree that it wasn't far wrong. ‘When you ride in this desert by night,' it said, ‘and if a traveller remains behind or leaves his companions to sleep or for some other reason, when he wants to resume his journey or tries to re-join the group, he sometimes hears spirits or voices which seem to be his companions; sometimes the spirits call out his name, and often they divert him from his path, and in this way many have become lost and have perished. I assure you that even during the day you can hear these spirits. You can sometimes hear them playing different instruments, especially a drum . . . . . ‘ Rocks shattered by ice, the howling of sand storms, the muffled roar of rock falls in the night - those who think they know about these things, sitting by their fireplace, they can smile and put forward all sorts of theories. But as for me, I'm certain that these noises exist, and that in the abominable solitude of that desert I have heard my name called out like that; and I can swear that on many occasions I have been on the point of collapsing in a faint, and Sanders and Neratov also, and even Nain-Sain, in other words people who are not exactly babies.

*

The days now followed one after another without us meeting a single human being. We could manage without them. ‘Yes, but what about animals?' you might ask. Well, the animals didn't show themselves either. Apart from a strange type of crow, of an unusual size, we only found
bobaks,
those curious marmots that you shoot with a small-calibre rifle while it is stroking its moustache, sitting on a hillock above its poor little earth, a type of hunting which despite the relatively high price for its pelt – roughly two roubles – in the end becomes tiresome. And then neither Nain-Sain, nor Sanders, was much in favour of rifle shots which only served to announce our presence. Sometimes, two or three times a day, never more, you seemed to get a glimpse of something elusive, disappearing on the horizon, a unicorn, or a yak, or a wild horse. It was strange, this feeling of making your way through a world haunted by mysterious beasts that were impossible to approach. At other times, breaking the monotony of this immeasurable land, where snow alternated with sand, the capacious mouth of a cavern gaped wide open in a chalky ridge. We ventured into these caves, on tip-toe, with hearts beating.

There was never anything inside, not even a common owl, nor bats, but this did not prevent Sanders, when we came out, from playing a little game. He meticulously measured the dimensions of the entrance to each cave with a piece of string which he pulled out from one of the enormous pockets of his jacket.

‘What on earth are you doing?' I asked him on one occasion.

‘It's interesting for me, in case I want to have a villa built somewhere here,' he replied ironically. ‘But for the moment there is something else going on. Michel, dear friend, what in your opinion is the most unpleasant thing that you can thing of?'

I was a bit annoyed. ‘I imagine that must be untimeliness in making witty remarks.'

He laughed and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘That's not right, you bad fellow. As for me, well, I'll tell you what it is: the most unpleasant thing, without doubt, is the feeling that you are being followed.'

I looked at him blankly. ‘What do you mean by that?'

He appeared not to have heard me. He was completely absorbed with his string which he wound up and carefully put back in his pocket. This was often his habit, doing everything to provoke a question, and then ignoring it.

*

Spring, as I said, was on the point of arriving when we set sail on the Hoang-Ho. Now we had the impression that it was avoiding us and that we were returning to winter. What's more, it seemed as if we were abandoning the century itself to return to earlier, prehistoric times. Each day we began to make another strange discovery. Was there anything among them which might have had a link with the main objective of our expedition? That was Sanders' secret, Sanders who was always so mean with explanations. Besides, it sometimes happened that he himself would shake his head with almost the same astonishment or anxiety that we felt, when we came across a sight or when something happened which was particularly disconcerting.

One day it would be the fauna which held our attention; the next day it was the flora. The living flora consisted almost solely of sad, faded clumps of moss which our camels forced themselves to dig up from under layers of frozen snow, often five or six feet deep. And then there was the other, the dead vegetation, of which there were mysterious traces and vestiges, encrusted in the sides of underground tunnels, as if glazed inside blocks of transparent mica. The remains of strange animals, of snakes, camels, flying fish, all were mixed in with their mournful skeletons. I'm not a great expert in geology and I don't know the type of rocks or crystals which were suddenly lit up in the beams of our electric torches. But what extraordinary colours they were adorned with all of a sudden! There were some in pink, in blue, in silver with veins of purple, in sulphurous green streaked with olive, in amethyst and celadon. One might have thought these were statuettes and priceless Chinese jewels, in the shape of goddesses, or of birds, or miraculous plants or shrubs. And then everything fell back into the night, the deep night without stars, beaten by the furious moaning of the wind, and the bitter sobbing of the spirits.

As for the animals, that was something else. We came across fewer and fewer of them; and the less we saw the more we felt oppressed by some obscure presence, something which we felt with a mixture of haste and of terror, that it might deign to manifest itself in a tangible form. One day our dogs, as they had just gone ahead of us into one of those grottoes in which, to put our minds at rest, we always had a look around, began to bark hysterically. They came out dragging behind them enormous strips of a sort of lumpy mane. The remains, more or less intact, of a prehistoric elephant lay inside the cave. We stood around with Sanders, looking at him without saying a word. He couldn't hide the gleam of triumph which shone in his eyes. He restrained himself, however, and just shrugged his shoulders. ‘A mammoth!' he said. ‘That's nice! But what of it? It's not even as big as the one you can see every Sunday, free of charge, in the museum at St. Petersburg. It would be better if it was alive. But in this condition? We're not collecting bits and pieces to go behind plates of glass, guys!'

It was Kailar, the taciturn gatherer of gin-sen, the oldest of our Koreans, who was responsible for looking after our pack of hounds. The pack consisted of half-a-dozen short-haired Manchurian dogs, as savage and as aggressive as wolves. Their backs and their sides, covered with wounds and scars, were proof of the excellence of their service against wild boars and even against tigers. Sanders, out of the goodness of his heart, had also taken on a frightful little Japanese mongrel, which had attached itself to him in the streets of Fouzan, and which had stuck to him like a leech ever since, growling and constantly baring its teeth. At first the six Manchurians had welcomed it by giving it a good hiding. Now they recognised it as their leader.
Kiss
was the name which Sanders had given it, and it so happened that Kiss was not slow in justifying the high opinion which people might have of his intelligence. Most of us might not have witnessed his little games over the past week, but there were in fact a couple which had not gone unnoticed.

It had not been snowing so heavily on that particular day. At the evening halt we managed to make a fire to revive the horses and camels. While waiting for Youen to call us to dinner, we were leaning against our vehicles, our eyes looking with melancholy towards the west. In the livid beige light of the sky, a clearer spot indicated the place where the sun, which we had not seen for many days, was just setting. We were dreaming of those happy people in both hemispheres, who at the same time were also able to contemplate how it was disappearing with such radiance.

Sanders, smoking his pipe, was walking up and down, with Kiss stuck to his heels. Suddenly he stopped in front of me.

‘Are you coming?' he asked abruptly.

‘Where to?' I asked calmly, accustomed as I was to his ways.

‘To go for a little ride. Youen hasn't laid the table for us yet. We have time.'

‘I'm at your disposal,' I said, thinking that he must have his reasons.

Our two ponies, on the other hand, seemed less pleased with this unexpected news.

Suddenly I let out a cry. ‘My horse, look how it's shaking! And so is yours also!'

Nain-Sain was there, checking the straps for both animals. I thought I saw him glance at Sanders.

‘You think so?' was all Sanders said eventually. ‘After all, it's possible. It's certainly cold enough, thank God!'

We set off. Our itinerary was simple. We would confine ourselves to going back along our route of that afternoon. Darkness was falling rapidly. Sanders didn't seem bothered.

‘Got your rifle?' he asked.

‘I didn't bring it.'

‘Why not?'

‘I didn't think we would go far from the camp site. Besides, I've got my revolver.'

‘Oh really! You've got your revolver? And why not a penknife, or even a pop gun?'

For some minutes the awful Kiss had been making a dull whimpering sound. He was trotting along between the legs of Sanders' pony. His master finally leant forward and, after punching him on the back of the neck, lifted him up and installed him on the pommel of his saddle.

‘There now, little thing! What's the matter? Are you cross? What can you see?'

The wretched dog continued with its lamentable yapping. It wasn't funny, such a litany, in the twilight, and who knew how far we were from any civilisation?

‘What are you looking at there?' I asked, unable to stand it any longer.

‘Oh! So you've suddenly got curious have you?' he said.

He got down from his horse. I did the same. In the muddy clay of the path, along which our convoy, one hour earlier, had passed, you could see the tracks left by the wheels of our lorries, as well as some circular-shaped footprints, all mixed up together, and which the snow, now beginning to come down again, was slowly covering up.

At that instant there rang out a cry so mournful that I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Sanders' horse, which had begun shaking again throughout its whole body. Kiss responded with an almost equally terrified barking. What was the point of our ridiculous promenade? The dinner which Youen had prepared should be ready by now. There was no reason not to get back to the camp.

My companion started speaking, pointing to the footprints.

‘You were asking what I was looking at. Well, what do you think this could be?'

‘The tracks left by our camels, of course!'

‘The tracks left by our camels? Why not? It's possible! Everything is possible! All the same, when you discover a camel which has five toes on its front feet, and four on its back feet, not to mention the little heart-shaped cushion underneath which we can see here, pointing forward, and all about twice the normal size, then you really must do your best to keep a specimen for me. I promise you we'll send it on favourable terms to those gentlemen at the Sydney Zoo. While you're waiting, try to remember what I said last week. You will have to acknowledge that I was right.'

‘Right? What about?' I said sullenly.

‘When I told you that the most unpleasant thing in the world is the sensation that you are being followed, my friend.'

*

It took us another hour to get back to the camp. The legs of my horse were giving way even more than were those of Sanders' horse. When finally we could make out two or three lights from our lorries, we could at last feel a bit reassured.

‘What do you think of it then, Michel?' asked Sanders. ‘Your life here, our life I mean, certainly isn't without some little inconveniences. Even so, for my part I find it more worthy than the sort of life you can lead in Fouzan, or anywhere else for that matter. Don't you think so?'

He looked at me with an expression as if he was visibly seeking approval. It was the first reference to my previous life which he had dared to make since his recent revelation, and the afternoon when the Gobi Desert had suddenly loomed up in front of us. And you would be right in thinking that, as far as I was concerned, I hadn't sought to turn the conversation back to that again.

‘Don't you think so?' he repeated, with such a pathetic expression that anyone else would have felt some sympathy for him.

‘Absolutely!' I said emphatically.

In the darkness I heard him breathe what sounded like a sigh of relief. Never had he seemed happier or in a better mood than he did that evening. He could believe that he had convinced me, that we had made our peace . . . . . . And even if that wasn't true, what would be the point of trying to put him straight, I ask you?