The Road to Oxiana (16 page)

That moisture was the undoing of us. Beneath the snow, and after we had left it behind, the road was as greasy as vaseline, as steep as a scenic railway, and often not a yard wider than the lorry's wheel-base. In vain we tore down branches, clung to the ropes and piled up rocks at the hairpin corners. Indifferent to brake or steering-wheel, the lorry went its own way, lurching crabwise down the boulders, dangling its tyres over space,
cannoning from cliff to cliff, while we stumbled after it through the dusk and the freezing slush. A shepherd hailed us from underneath. Beside him, in the moonlight, lay another lorry with its wheels in the air. By now our lights were failing. When at last we reached the open slopes, the driver could not drive, and we could not walk, any further.

Choosing a narrow defile, which compressed the wind to fury, the soldiers lit a fire. We had nothing to cook, and still worse, no water. I had been thirsty since the morning, and now drank a supply of white mud, melted snow, and oil, which was kept in a petrol tin for the radiator. The moon shone bright, the road was hard, the wind blew my blankets off; tramping up and down, the soldiers kept watch and sang to reassure themselves. I was bemoaning these obstacles to sleep when I woke up in daylight, having slept for ten hours.

The village we had hoped to reach that night was only a quarter of an hour away. Here we found two more lorries from Andkhoi. Their passengers were Jews, whom I recognised, by their oval faces, delicate features and conical fur-brimmed hats, as cousins of the Bokhara community. They too had slept in the open. But their trouble was worse than that, an exodus of some sort; several of the women beckoned me aside and started to mutter in Russian. When I said I did not understand this language, they were incredulous, pointing to my fair hair as a proof that I must be Russian. Our account of the pass reduced them to pitiable agitation. Mothers clasped their children; the old men rocked and moaned, combing their beards with grimy nails. Further on, we met another couple of lorries carrying more Jews at breakneck speed.

Kala Nao or “New Castle” is a small market town of about 2000 inhabitants. At the end of its one broad street I found the Governor sitting in a ruined garden,
while his horse, a grey stallion of nearly fifteen hands, pawed the derelict flower-beds. On seeing my letter from the Mudir-i-Kharija in Herat, he assigned me a room overlooking the street, where Nur Mohammad continues to attend me. “Don't you bother about the price of chickens,” he says, “you are a guest here.” This is courteous and friendly, but has prevented my buying two chickens, one of which I need for the journey tomorrow.

This afternoon Nur Mohammad and I walked a mile and a halfback along the road we had come by to look at some caves in the hillside. Just below them, I was attacked by vertigo and had to go down again before I was marooned. Nur Mohammad completed the exploration, and assures me they contain neither paintings nor carvings.

The Governor's Secretary, wrapped in a purple fur-lined cloak and holding an electric torch, has just called, and has written a long sentence in this diary, for the privilege, as he put it, of using my beautiful fountain pen.

Kala Nao
,
December 2st
.—Another day of rest, but not so grateful. A storm got up in the night, which blew with such force that the two doors on opposite sides of the room flew open with a crash, and I was almost swept off the floor. Thus woken, I found I was ill. There are no “usual offices” in this establishment; the court at the back serves instead, for men and beasts alike. As I reached the outside staircase, I slipped. The lantern went out; my only garment, a mackintosh, flew over my head; and I found myself lying naked in a bed of snow and excrement, which clove to my body in the frost. For a moment I was too dazed to move.
Something had broken: I had to feel if it was my skull or the bottom step. When I found it was the step, I chuckled aloud.

It is now snowing hard, and we cannot start.

The Governor's Secretary sent a messenger this morning to tell me, after a lot of circumlocution, that he would like my pen as a present. This I resisted. Later he came to ask for it in person. Seeing I ought to give him something, I sat him down and did his portrait in colours. He drew my attention to the fur-lined cloak, which I reproduced with exquisite care. This contented him.

All the Jews have come back; the four lorry-loads amount to over sixty people. In addition a party of Turcomans have arrived, whose women wear tall red head-dresses hung with cornelian-studded plaques of silver gilt. Owing to this influx, food is short. There is no fuel. And as I can only light the room by opening the doors, I have to keep warm by putting on all my clothes and staying in bed. The shops sell Russian cigarettes and Swan ink, neither of which is much comfort. But I have bought some home-knitted socks that would resist the North Pole.

Kala Nao
,
December 2nd
.—The people here now say that even if we do reach Turkestan, the road down to Kabul will be snow-bound. I might have seen this from the heights on the map. By horse the journey takes a month, and needs, I imagine, more money and equipment than I possess. I am also worried by the prospect of not being able to telegraph home for Christmas. Meanwhile the snow continues, and they have sent to
Herat for horses, to fetch the Jews. Perhaps I ought to go back with them.

Even Nur Mohammad is depressed. He prays incessantly, and if I happen to be in the way, prostrates himself on top of me.

Kala Nao
,
December 3rd
.—Diarrhoea has turned to dysentery. I must go back.

It may be cowardice. I prefer to call it common sense. In any case the difference is lost in the disappointment. However, I have discovered the journey can be done, which no one knew before.

The weather has cleared, which makes my resolve the more difficult. Lest it should break down, I took a stiff dose of whisky and waited on the Governor early. I found him in conclave, squatting by a brazier at the end of a long room. He felt my pulse, and said that I was not ill, while even if I was, he must telephone to Herat before he could give me a pass. For the moment the telephone was broken and anyhow there were no horses. This evening a message arrived to say that the telephone has been mended, that the pass is waiting, and that horses will be paraded for my inspection at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.

The lorry is leaving at 4
A.M.
I might still go with it if I did not feel so weak.

Laman
(4600
ft
.),
December 4th
.—The village below the pass.

The horses were punctual. One could not put its near foreleg to the ground, and the other two resembled the mount of Death in the Apocalypse. My protests roused the Governor before he was dressed, and in order to spare himself any further breach of manners on
my part, he offered me three government horses and a guide for £5. The money was well spent. In spite of my disorder, which delayed us every twenty minutes, we have done a double stage in half a day, and shall try to make Karokh tomorrow, though it is said to take thirteen hours.

Neither an Afghan saddle nor the pangs of starvation could spoil the beauty of our ride among the glistening silver hills. Where the ravines join the valley, Kazaks had taken up their winter quarters inside mud walls, which serve them year after year. Each encampment made a silhouette of low black domes against the white landscape. Generally a pack of snarling dogs came rushing down the slopes to greet us, among which the salukis were rugged as carefully as entrants for the Waterloo Cup. But at one camp two men stopped us. “Where is your kibitka?” they asked.

“My what?”

“Your kibitka?”

“I don't understand.”

With expressions of contempt and irritation, they pointed to their own felt-and-wattle huts: “Your kibitka—you must have a kibitka. Where is it?”

“In Inglistan.”

“Where is that?”

“In Hindostan.”

“Is that in Russia?”

“Yes.”

The people of this village are strangely disobliging. Eggs? Paraffin? Hay? They had nothing of the sort. I said I would pay. But seeing me accompanied by a government servant, they would not believe it. His authority evoked what we wanted in the end, and also a house for us to sleep in, which consists of four walls and a roof with a hole in it. Unfortunately, the smoke
from the bonfire in the middle of the floor does not escape by this hole. But it is nice to be warm for a change. We are a party of seven.

My guide suspects the villagers of evil intentions towards us. I am not quite easy myself. There is a rent in the wall above me, which was stopped with a bit of rag. Suddenly, to my astonishment, the rag disappeared and a hand took its place, which came groping after my possessions. I told the guide, who seized his rifle and rushed outside. But there were no shots.

We have blocked the hole with a stone. Sleep I must. My mind is full of plans to do this journey in the summer. Perhaps Christopher will be able to come then.

Karokh
,
December 6th, 2.30 a.m
.—I rode nearly sixty miles today and have just got into bed with a cup of soup. The first cock is crowing.

Herat
,
December 8th
.—What a day it was! God save me from any more adventures on a drained stomach.

Dawn had scarcely broken when we rode out of Laman to ascend the pass. The ghostly shapes of the junipers bobbed up and vanished in the grey mist. Snow muffled the horses' steps. At last the sun revealed the pinnacles above the pass, redder still against a blue sky and a white world. I looked goodbye to the Band-i-Turkestan, wondering if the lorry was already there, and deploring my irresolution. On the descent, the horses began to trot. In vain I tried to make mine pace; either it could not, or I had not the knack. If I rose in the stirrups, the wooden saddle tore my legs, despite its tasselled scarlet cloth. If I sat tight, easternwise, and jogged, the disturbance to my intestines was almost past bearing. I tried one, and then the other; I tried sitting forward on the
pommel and back on the cantle; I tried sitting sideways; I considered turning round and facing the tail. But pain or no pain, I intended to reach Karokh that night, and so did the guide, since the people of Laman had prophesied that we should not. All the afternoon, after stopping to graze the horses, we plodded down that endless valley. Round the corner of each spur I expected to see the grass uplands; round each waited only another spur; and Karokh, I knew, was a long way from the opening of the valley. As the sun fell, I exchanged my horse for the guide's, which was saddled with a soft pack. At last we were out. Across the river in its canyon, the dank yellow uplands stretched away to ink-blue mountains streaked with snow and capped with leaden clouds. A white-cloaked shepherd with his flock, and the smoke of a distant village, gave human measure to their vast inhospitality. Down the canyon and up again. Down again and up. The guide was worried and urged me to canter.

The last glimmer of light had gone as we splashed through the river for the third time; neither moon nor stars replaced it. While lighting the lantern, we heard footsteps. The guide stiffened, but when they proved to be those of a single person, he spurred forward, brandishing his rifle and threatening to shoot the man for being out after dark. Eventually we came to a village. It was not Karokh, but Karokh Sar, and from here, the guide said, he knew a short cut. The path narrowed. We turned this way and that. We tried to retrace our steps. At last we were following a mere rabbit-run.

“Is this really the way to Karokh?” I asked for the tenth time.

“Yes, it is. I have told you again and again it is. You don't understand Persian.”

“How do you know it is?”

“I do know it is.”

“That is no answer. It is you who don't know Persian.”

“Oh, I don't know Persian, don't I? I don't know anything. I certainly don't know where this path goes.”

“Does it go to Karokh or does it not? Answer me, please.”

“I don't know. I don't know Persian. I don't know anything. You say Karokh, Karokh, Karokh. I don't know where Karokh is.”

And all of a sudden, sinking down upon the herbage, he put his head in his hands and groaned.

We were lost. It was a tiresome predicament in a country where personal safety ceases with the curfew. But it dispelled my pains like magic. I wondered for a minute if the guide had brought me to this pass for some purpose of his own. His moans contradicted the idea; he might be a robber, I thought unjustly, but not an actor. He would not even help me unload the luggage. Finally I shook him out of his despair and he consented to hobble the horses. Then he sank on to his tuft again, refused the food I offered him, and tried to refuse the blanket till I tied it round his shoulders. It was very cold; we were again in a thick damp cloud. I spread my own bedding, dined off some egg, sausage, cheese, and whisky, read a little Boswell, and fell fast asleep among the aromatic herbs with my money-bags between my feet and my big hunting knife unclasped in my fist.

At one o'clock I was woken by the moon, and saw that we had stopped on the very edge of the canyon. Far below, the river wound away like a silver snake. In front of us, about two miles off, appeared a dark patch which I recognised as the pine trees of Karokh.

It was a lucky glimpse. We had no sooner found the horses than the clouds closed in again. But the guide had taken his bearings, and an hour later we were
knocking at a big caravanserai, which he said was more comfortable than the shrine. So it proved. I went to bed by myself in a spacious carpeted room, where I was roused, late next morning, by three bearded sages who had come to say their prayers and were not deterred from doing so by my inquisitive glances.

We reached Herat at four o'clock. Seyid Mahmud and his whole staff greeted me like a prodigal son. One spread carpets. Another brought water to wash with. The nails for my ties, looking-glass, and hat were replaced without my asking. There was a new pot of the jam I had liked so much, and tomorrow Seyid Mahmud promised a batch of sponge-cakes.