The Ninth Buddha (59 page)

The next step will be diplomatic recognition.
 
Do you tell me you were ignorant of this?”

“I left London long before that.
 
No-one thought to tell me.
 
There must be some mistake.”

“There is no mistake.
 
You are, are you not, one of the two men responsible for the deaths of General Rezukhin and seven of his unit at a camp five days south of here?
 
Wrere you not originally arrested by the General for spying on the execution of a party of Bolshevik infiltrators?”

Winterpole tried to stand, but his legs had lost their strength.

He felt Sepailov’s powerful hands on his shoulders, pinning him down.

He was beginning to break.
 
In a moment he would shatter and be gone.

Ungern stepped out from behind the desk.

“Please don’t take too long, Colonel I want that boy dead by midnight.”

He went to the door and stepped outside.
 
Sepailov put one hand on Winterpole’s windpipe.

“Relax, Major,” he said in a whisper.

“It won’t hurt if you don’t fight against it.”

Sometimes the ticking of the clocks soothed him.
 
At others, it depressed him, and he sought out the silent chambers of his palace, where time seemed to stand still.
 
Tonight, it brought him neither pain nor pleasure, and he realized that he was growing old.
 
He was fifty-one, but he felt older and sadder than that.

Tomorrow, he would have to play the god again for the multitudes already assembling outside in the darkness to receive his festal benediction.
 
A long cord of red silk stretched from his throne through the length of the palace, across the perimeter wall, and into the wide street outside.
 
For the entire morning, he would have to sit holding the cord in one hand while pilgrims gathered in the mud and refuse to touch its other end.
 
They believed that a blessing would pass down the cord from him to them, wiping away their sins, cancelling all the bad karma they had accumulated.
 
It was a farce; but it was the only farce he knew.

He had been blind for seven years now.
 
The doctors said it was because he drank so much, but he set little store by their dictums and went on drinking regardless.
 
At least it consoled him in his blindness.
 
He loved maygolo, a sweet aniseed brandy that the Chinese traders had sold in small round bottles; and French cognac, whenever Ungern could get a shipment through, which wasn’t often; and above all the boro-darasu wine that they used to send him from Peking.
 
They gave him a kind of sight, or at least a shimmering in the blackness.

For all that, he resented his blindness.
 
It meant he could no longer enjoy all the beautiful things he had gathered about him over the years.
 
The world was such a place, he thought, such a place; and he had seen so little of it.
 
Locked up in monasteries and palaces all his life, he could not go to the world; but he had brought the world to himself.

His secretaries were in bed.
 
His wife was amusing herself with a new lover, in her own palace outside the walls of Ta Khure: he would cover her breasts with oil and her thighs with essence of sandalwood.
 
His monk-attendants were busy praying in readiness for the Festival tomorrow.
 
Alone, he walked through the silent rooms and corridors of his private residence, touching his past with regretful fingers.

It was all here: plate after plate of Sevres porcelain, from which he had never eaten, silvered with a fine patina of dust; pianos that he had never learnt to play, cracked and out of tune now; clocks of every description, their hands set at every conceivable hour;

albums of ivory and malachite, of mother-of-pearl and silver, of onyx, agate, jade, and ornately tooled Russian leather, of blue and red and purple velvet, crammed with fading photographs of the dead and the living; liqueur stands, champagne tweezers, gold and silver and glass candlesticks for which there had been no candles in years; cigar-cases, card-cases, spectacle-cases of tortoise-shell and gold and silver filigree; telescopes through which he had once gazed at the stars, abandoned and dust-covered now.
 
Dreams and fancies to keep a god happy and a man possessed.
 
He ran a stubby ringer over a set of Japanese wind-chimes.
 
They tinkled in the still air like flakes of falling ice.

As the sound faded, it was replaced by another.
 
Footsteps, heavy footsteps.
 
He had expected no-one at this hour.
 
Least of all here, in his private quarters, which no-one entered without his permission.
 
The footsteps grew in volume, muffled by the thick kin cob carpet that covered every inch of floor.
 
His visitors were not pilgrims seeking a private audience: pilgrims would have come on silent feet or on their hands and knees.
 
The footsteps halted, still several feet away from him.
 
He turned to face them.

“Your holiness,” a voice said, “I beg your pardon for this intrusion, but I have brought someone to speak to you.
 
Please listen to what he has to say.”

He recognized the voice.
 
It was Bodo, a high-ranking lama who had once served briefly as one of his secretaries.
 
What on earth could he be doing here?
 
Before he had time to respond, someone else spoke.
 
He could not be certain, but he thought he had heard this voice before as well.

“You are the khubilgan of the Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu, the Bogdo Khan, known by the reign-title “Exalted by AH”?”

He nodded.
 
He was sure the voice was familiar.

“Who else did you think I would be?”
 
he asked.

“Then I am authorized to tell you, on behalf of the Provisional Government of the Mongolian People and the Central Committee of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, that you are hereby placed under house arrest and will be confined to these quarters until such time as it has been decided what is to become of you.
 
Do you understand?”

He nodded again.

“Yes,” he replied.

“I understand perfectly.
 
I recognize your voice, but I cannot remember your name.
 
Who are you?”
 
He thought the man had sounded nervous, as though something was wrong.

“My name is Nikolai Zamyatin, a Burial representative of Comintern.
 
We met last year when I came here to negotiate with you concerning your possible role in the coming revolution.
 
You denied me then.
 
You shall not deny me this time.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I remember you.
 
You talked about giving power to the people.
 
But then I had no power to give: the Chinese held it all.
 
And now you have taken away whatever power I might have gained.
 
Who will be the new ruler here?
 
You?”

“The people will rule themselves,” Zamyatin said.

“Yes,” he replied.

“But who will rule the people?”

“We’re wasting time!
 
I’ve already instructed your secretaries to prepare your study.
 
There are papers you must sign.”

He did not move.

“You are early,” he said.

“I was not expecting you until tomorrow.

I understood you intended to have me arrested after the ceremonies in the Tsokchin.
 
Has something happened to make you change your plans?”

There was perfect silence.
 
He imagined the Burial staring al him.
 
There was a note of increased nervousness in the voice when it resumed.

“How did you obtain that information?”

“I know everything,” he answered.

“Didn’t anyone tell you?”
 
He smiled evenly.
 
Strangely, he was not afraid.
 
After all, this had happened before.
 
And this time at least his caplors were Mongols.

It was a pity they had come tonight, though.
 
That had rather upset his plans.

Someone stepped up to him and took his arm.

“Come with me, my Lord.”
 
It was Bodo.
 
He could sense the embarrassment in his voice.
 
Bodo would not last long, he thought.

He would be one of the first to fall when they brought out the guillotines.
 
A pity, he mused; I should like to have seen a guillotine in operation.
 
He loved mechanical things.
 
And he had heard that guillotines were particularly efficient.
 
Perhaps he could purchase one and have it sent out.
 
It might entertain him for a while.
 
And then he remembered he was blind.

They began to walk, arm in arm, down the corridor.
 
He could hear the footsteps of more than one person in front.
 
When the strangers had first entered, he had guessed there were about eight of them.
 
One was a woman, he thought.
 
And two of them children.

In less than a minute, they reached his study.
 
Bodo helped him find his chair, though he could have done so perfectly well without assistance.
 
Someone else opened his drinks cupboard and took out a glass and bottle.

“I would prefer some port,” he said.

“The decanter on the top shelf He had first been introduced to the drink twelve years earlier by an English explorer called Barnaby or Farnaby or something.

Barnaby had sent him several cases of what he called ‘vintage tawny’ through the Chinese am ban who had kept a couple for himself.
 
He was down to his last case or two now, but with care they should last some time.
 
In fact, it was quite likely that they would outlast him.

The port arrived on his desk and he took a tiny sip.
 
He kept it for special occasions.
 
This, he fancied, was as special an occasion as he was likely to experience for some time.
 
The problem was, how to get Ungern here to share it.
 
He had planned everything for tomorrow, and now here they were already, stamping over his carpets, opening his bottles, sampling his wine, and, for all he knew, redistributing his wealth.

“What exactly is it you wish me to sign?”
 
First the Chinese, then Ungern, a saviour turned monster, and now a home-grown menace.
 
They all wanted him to sign something.
 
Two years ago, Hsti Shu-tseng had given him thirty-six hours in which to sign a list of eight articles relinquishing sovereignty to the Republican government in Peking.
 
He had refused; and his ministers had been forced to sign instead.
 
In the end, it amounted to the same thing:

he had no real power, only what others chose to give him.

The Buriat answered him.

“This is a document in which you acknowledge the sins you have committed during your reign as Khutukhtu.
 
In it, you state that, as a result of these sins, you have ceased to be a khubilgan and that the Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu has incarnated in another body.

You accept that this is so and freely permit the reins of power to pass into the hands of the true incarnation, who is to rule in your stead, assisted by the people’s government led by Sukebator.
 
The new Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu and the people’s government in their turn acknowledge the help rendered to them by the People’s Soviet of Russia and seek to establish a special relationship with that country.
 
You yourself shall become a private citizen, living in your summer residence and relinquishing your other properties and your Shabi fiefdom.

“We shall deprive you of nothing but your title and your power.

You may continue to drink.
 
You may have as many women and boys as you like.
 
You may keep all your toys and baubles, although you may not add to them.
 
The state will repossess them on your death.”

And how soon would that be?
 
he wondered.
 
There must be a way to get Ungern here.
 
Let them sort it out among themselves.

What had all this to do with him?
 
He knew now who one of the children must be, of course.
 
He had expected as much.
 
But who was the second child?

“And if I refuse to sign?”

“You have no choice, you know that.
 
But if you co-operate, it will make life considerably easier for you: a comfortable home, a generous allowance, gratification of worldly desire.
 
In a way, I envy you.”

“Do you?”
 
he said.

“Perhaps you will change places with me, then.
 
Your eyesight for my blindness, your power for my comfort, your humanity for my divinity and my drunkenness.”

The Buriat said nothing.
 
He had not expected him to.

“So,” he said, ‘what else do you want me to do?
 
What other papers are there for me to sign?”

“You can help us prevent bloodshed,” said the stranger.

“Your soldiers are still loyal to you.
 
Most of them are disaffected with von Ungern Sternberg the Khalkha Mongols, some of the Burials, the Tibetans, the Chinese you gave an amnesty to.
 
He tries to buy them with booty, but they owe an allegiance of faith to you.
 
Tell them to lay down their arms or to join the People’s Army.
 
The baron will have nothing left but his Russians and the handful of Japanese he brought to Urga in February.
 
I have a decree here in your name, instructing all Buddhist troops to stand down and await further instructions from you or one of your representatives.