NEWS FROM TARTARY by Peter Fleming

Author:Peter Fleming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2014-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

IV

Birthday

Two hours later we started ourselves, in the opposite direction. The two Turki guides loaded the camels clumsily, using a different method with the ropes from the Mongol one, and the people of the place bade us (we assumed) farewell. As we rode off I had my last sight of Greys; he had his head in a nose-bag full of chopped wild ass meat and appeared to be finding cannibalism congenial. It was sad to leave him, but for both our sakes I was thankful that there would be no more marches on which I had to supply the motive power for him.

It was a lovely day. Cynara, cocking perplexed and ungainly ears, scrambled along with a nervous, eager gait. After two hours we came to three outlying yurts where lived the family of a rich man whom Borodishin had known on a former visit. The rich man was away, but his wife gave us a charming welcome. In a smoky yurt, its walls lined with consequential-looking chests, we played with squealing children and returned the stares of half a dozen rather pretty girls who appeared singularly unmindful of Koranic law. Although neither party could understand a word the other said it was a pleasant interlude, and our hostess produced unheard-of delicacies in the shape of three wild goose eggs and an onion – a real onion – which we gathered had come all the way from Charklik, a long time ago. With these, and some flour, she made a kind of batter cake which we ate with as much restraint as we could. When we said good-bye Kini took off a presents-for-the-natives necklace that she was wearing and gave it her. Then we rode on after the camels.

We overhauled them slowly, riding west along a sluggish lagoon of fresh or fairly fresh water which runs between the little salt lake at Issik Pakte and the much bigger one, called Ayak Kum Kul, which the map showed ahead of us. To the south we could see herds of antelope and asses and a few yaks. After a long stage we halted at a place where there were plenty of the colourless tufts of brittle vegetation, the size of sea-pink, which camels can eat and horses cannot. If it was going to be like this all the way the horses were in for a bad time, for we had been unable to renew our supply of barley at Issik Pakte and it was almost finished.

I had compiled, with Borodishin’s help, a glossary of some twenty Turki words, and in camp we ran through this with the men, much to their amusement. One was an oldish man with a fierce dignity and an abstracted manner which cloaked, at first, his ineffectualness. The other, whose name was Tokta Ahun, was in his early twenties. There was nothing either dignified or abstracted about him. He was full-faced, surly, and ill-mannered, and he had a notable appetite. For many months he had subsisted on a diet composed exclusively of meat, and the sight of tsamba, flour, or mien went to his head at once.

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