The Lotus and the Wind (36 page)

Five hundred feet below the notch another thunderclap struck them. They clung together on a narrow rock shelf, the snow slope steep above them to their left and steeper yet below them to their right. Robin, sheltered under an overhang, saw a hand close to his eyes. The fingers of the hand were dead white under the dark pigmentation of the skin. Then the snow drove at him, and he had to close his eyes. The fingers of Jagbir’s left hand were frostbitten. Where were the gloves? Gone, blown off, lost.

The wind changed direction and blew his feet from under him. The lip of the slope came to him, and he was looking down and moving down. The snow fell five thousand feet, not sheer but too steep to climb. He saw his pony tumbling head over heels down the slope, gathering speed in the centre of a cloud of racing, glittering, green snow. Perhaps the pony shrieked, but its shriek was lost in the wind. Then he was over, the wind swinging him around and forcing his body and feet over the edge. He dug in with his hands and hung on the lip, the wind turning him over on his wrists. He saw Jagbir’s face a yard away. It was like a child’s. Jagbir cried bitterly, his useless, frostbitten hands held out to Robin.

Muralev’s hand gripped Robin’s wrists. Jagbir sat down astride Muralev’s back, and Muralev hauled slowly, jerked back, hauled again. The wind abated. Robin dragged snow-spray and air into his lungs and slowly came to the ledge. Muralev turned him over and began to rub snow into his face. Robin saw Jagbir, crouching back under the overhang, his mouth still open, and furious, helpless tears freezing on his cheeks.

Jagbir’s faultless legs and cracked heart lifted them to the notch. Muralev’s pony, too, Jagbir pushed up the mountain. Jagbir alone still had his rifle, strapped across his back. In windless silence, under a yellow sky, they crossed the notch.

By nightfall they had reached the snowline again. They tore up a strip of felt and made mittens for Jagbir’s hands, and found juniper and stunted rhododendron on this southern face of the range, and lit a fire. The burhan passed away, and for a few hours they all slept, huddled together on the ground before the fire.

Robin awoke first and scrambled up to put more roots on the fire and blow it back into life. He glanced at the stars and knew it was about two o’clock. Muralev crept out to him, and for a while they crouched in silence by the fire.

Then Muralev said, ‘Jagbir’s left hand is bad. His right is much better.’ Several days’ growth of stubbly beard hid the outline of his face. Scratches and small holes pockmarked it where the burhan had blown stones and snow through the skin. His voice was harsher than ever, as though he had swallowed some of the flying gravel. When Robin nodded, he said, ‘What sort of a name is that--Jagbir? I’d like to know, so that I can remember him better and can place him in the world.’

Robin said, ‘He is a Gurkha, a Pun from Zilla Four Thousand Parbat in western Nepal. He is a rifleman of the Thirteenth Gurkhas.’ The fire muttered sullenly, and a wandering shaft of moonlight flitted across the silent tower of Muztagh Ata.

Muralev said, ‘He is the most loving man I ever knew. He is lucky.’

Robin nodded. He was tired, but with a pleasant lassitude, like a climber who has reached a summit, returned through the sleet, and come to his warm refuge. He said quietly, ‘What are we going to do?’

Red lights from the fire glowed in the depths of Muralev’s shadowed, bloodshot eyes. He had lost his spectacles in the burhan, and the eyes were puckered at the inner corners. He said, ‘I don’t know, Savage.’

Robin lay still. The moonlight went from Muztagh Ata, and Jagbir moaned in his sleep. Muralev said, ‘The course of my life has shown me that I must go out and search. I think I may end in a monastery, but first--forty days in the wilderness. Or forty months. Or forty years.’

Robin said eagerly, ‘Yes. But we ought to do good for people--not for any particular person, for all people. Perhaps we can find out things that are important but have been hidden or buried or forgotten.’

Jagbir had been moaning for some minutes. Now he got up, swaying unsteadily on his feet and blinking at the fire. They watched him, not speaking, until he walked away into the darkness.

Robin rushed on. ‘The people who act and work and love are good. People like us, who sit in deserts or are like Ishmael, people who try to get rid of all action, work, love--they are good too. God made all of us. Can we not find a bridge between the two kinds of people--buried in history, perhaps? In our minds, perhaps? We--’

He stopped short. Jagbir came towards them, heavy-footed and unsure, out of the darkness, and they rose together. After a long look into each other’s eyes they turned to help the rifleman lie down. But Jagbir staggered on and stopped only at the edge of the fire. His left arm ended in a lumpish tangle of bloody wool. Blood seeped through the wrappings and dripped sizzling into the fire. In his right hand he held Muralev’s wallet. He was young and badly hurt. The wound showed in his eyes. Gently Robin took the bandaged stub in his hands. ‘What have you done?’

‘Cut off the fingers. Stopped most of the flow with barley meal--and the cold. I’ve got his wallet.’ He stared at Muralev.

‘You shouldn’t have done it.’ Robin began to unwrap the bloody strips of felt, but Muralev said, ‘Leave it. We’ll only start the flow again. There’s nothing we can do.’

‘Chup!’
Jagbir silenced him with a threatening jerk of his right hand, which held the wallet. He returned to Robin. ‘We must open this, sahib.’

Robin took it because Jagbir pressed it into his hands. The padlock hung broken from the hasp. Robin looked at it, then at Jagbir’s hungry, hurt eyes. He did not want to open it. He did not need to. He knew the truth, and nothing in the wallet could make the truth truer.

Jagbir said, ‘There will be papers in there. Proof. The Jangi Lat Sahib will believe then.’ It was true. It would be like the legend of Alexander. They’d want to see ‘proof,’ and here it was.

Muralev said, ‘Please don’t open it.’

Robin murmured, ‘Why not?’ Of course he knew why not. Muralev had removed himself, once and for all, from the world of human struggles. Tacitly Robin had agreed to go with him, to travel with him at least until they could find their separate ways. But Jagbir’s eyes flamed with fighting, jealous love, and his hand dripped blood, drop by drop. The pressure of Jagbir’s love forced Robin’s hand to the lock. It was wrong. The lock would burn him. This was what he had to leave behind. But he said again, his voice made harsh by guilt, ‘Why not?’

‘You know.’

Robin opened the wallet. There was a thin file of papers inside. Muralev tugged urgently at the lobe of his ear, and his long face wrinkled miserably as Robin brought the papers to the firelight and began to examine them. Jagbir stared angrily at Muralev--a long, still-hungry look.

There was a map of western Asia. A thick, blue-inked line sprang down from southern Russia, crossed western Persia, and swung east. The head of the arrow rested on the Bolan Pass. A second arrow curved down from the Farghana through Samarkand to Balkh and crossed the Hindu Kush, and the head of that arrow rested on Peshawar. A few thin lines crept out from the Farghana towards the Russian pamirs, but before they reached the passes into India they swung back and rejoined the second arrow at Balkh. There were figures inked in beside these last lines.

‘What do these figures indicate?’ Robin asked tonelessly. ‘The number of days ahead of the start of the main assault that those forces are to begin their movements.’

‘Sufficiently far ahead to give us time to commit our troops to the northern passes?’

Muralev did not answer.

Robin held out another document, five pages of closely-written manuscript pinned together at the top left-hand corner. ‘And this?’

‘The detailed plan to which the map relates.’

‘And this?’ Robin put his finger on an isolated group of letters and figures in the top right-hand corner of the top sheet.

‘The serial number of that copy. Number five. There are only eleven in existence.’

Robin folded the papers back into the wallet. ‘I’ll carry it,’ Jagbir cut in, and held out his hand. ‘Under my shirt.’ Muralev sat down by the fire and drummed his fingers on his knees. Jagbir went back to the shelter.

Robin stood hunched and cold behind Muralev. Everything that he had known to be truth was deception. The Russians were going in centre and south--the main weight south, the Mongols centre after a feint at the northern passes on their way from Andijan to Balkh. So his visions were not visions but hallucinations, his certainties the self-cozenings of a madman. And for this he had committed a sin. Jagbir’s love had driven him, and his own love for his country. He had thought he would do England this last service.

And there was Anne. Did he not see her face and eyes now? Had he not hoped in the deep of his heart to do his task so well that there would be recognition, medals perhaps, to make her proud?

All these were kinds of love; so, once more, love had caused sin. He was weak and foolish.

He said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve hurt--I’ve hurt myself and you, and I’m--I’m sorry. What can I say?’

Muralev said, ‘You haven’t hurt me, my friend. Perhaps it is best that you did what you did. Perhaps I tried to stop you only because I did not want to be lonely. Really I know that you and I are not of one kind. I just hoped. But you do love, and I think you always will. I do not and never can. What are you thinking of?’

Robin caught quickly at the slow-passing images in his mind before the necessity to answer Muralev’s question could jerk him back to here and the fire and this present reality. He said slowly, ‘Anne--my wife. I was explaining why I had done it, opened the wallet. She was saying she didn’t want me to do it for her sake--just if I thought it was right. We were in a shikara in Kashmir, and the lotus in bloom everywhere.’

‘You see? You must go back. Jagbir is your charge and your load, because he will never understand. But I think your wife might. You must go back now and many times later, because also you must go away many times.’

‘Yes, yes! When I am here I see her and the lake. When I am there, though I love her, I see this and the snow that no one sees, and I keep wondering. What I’m looking for is always somewhere else.’

‘Perhaps. But do not be unhappy about it. There is joy in the search if you know love. For me--’ He hung his head, then got up slowly. ‘I’ll get wood and heat some gruel for Jagbir. Go over and keep him warm, friend, until I come.’

In the morning they got up and began to move. Robin walked with Muralev and ordered Jagbir to ride the one sick pony. Jagbir’s face was stony with despair as he obeyed, because it was Muralev’s horse, but he had no choice; for the first two days he was too weak to walk. His face was greeny-grey, and at night he shivered in a low fever, but the bandages smelled sweet and his hand was healing cleanly.

They pushed on south and came in four days to the next mountain wall. On the other side of it lay the Taghdumbash Pamir. Two passes, the Chichiklik and the Yangi, which were several miles apart, crossed the range. The travellers camped beside the trail until a party of Kirghiz came up, bound in the opposite direction. Muralev tried without success to buy two more ponies from them, but they sold him some food. Robin said, ‘Ask them what’s happening on the Taghdumbash. Tell them we hear strange rumours.’ The leader of the Kirghiz beat his gloved hands together and spoke in short torrents of strange words. There was much activity over the border--he jerked his head towards Russian territory. The Chinese soldiers heard rumours and counter-rumours; they thought the Russians were going to attack them; they stayed inside their forts--the Kirghiz huddled dramatically into his coat and peered right and left--and they had no courage left even to pester travellers.

‘Are there any soldiers on the pass here?’ Muralev jerked his chin at the mountains ahead.

None on the Chichiklik--the Kirghiz had come over that. The Chinese never bothered to guard the Yangi. It was a difficult route and longer than the Chichiklik.

The party of Kirghiz rode on. Robin said, ‘We’d better use the Yangi. Are you coming over with us?’

‘Yes, if you’ll let me.’

‘Then?’

‘The Tsaidam, by way of the Takla Makan. I told you.’

‘Will you be there if I come looking for you later?’

‘Perhaps.’

Jagbir interrupted them. ‘It’s time to go.’

Later Jagbir said to Robin, ‘Is the woman, his wife, hunting us, sahib?’ Robin nodded. Jagbir spoke in Gurkhali, which Muralev did not understand. Sometimes as he rode Jagbir would tap his chest where the wallet was concealed, and at night he always refused to sleep next to Muralev for fear it would be stolen back from him. He said now, ‘Why should we not hunt her instead? She will expect us on the trail. She will be in ambush near it. Let us hunt her as if she were one of the big-horned sheep.’

‘We don’t know whether she’ll be on the Yangi or the Chichiklik. She’ll have men with her.’

‘Her men will be on both passes. Not more than two or three on each, though. They’ll find it hard to hide the horses up there.’

‘What does he say?’ Muralev asked.

Robin told him. Muralev said, ‘She understands that and will be ready for it. She will welcome it. It is a game. But I cannot hunt her.’

‘Of course not. None of us can hunt really. We’re too weak.’

Late in the evening they camped on a long slope where thin grass bound the shale together and snow lay between all the stones. Jagbir moaned in his sleep during the early part of the night. The bitter wind sharpened before dawn, and then none of them slept. In the morning Muralev’s pony lay dead in the lee of the shelter. Robin stood wordlessly over it, thinking of the road ahead and Jagbir’s hand. As he stood, the rifleman came to him and said, ‘It is better, sahib. Now we have to avoid the pass.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was going to say it yesterday but I was too tired. Now I am stronger. We have no hope of getting over the pass. She will be there. We must climb around it even if it takes us two days. A Pun’s legs are better than any horse’s.’