Beasts, men and gods — Background and Themes

II. THE SECRET OF MY FELLOW TRAVELER

III. THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE

V. A DANGEROUS NEIGHBOR

VI. A RIVER IN TRAVAIL

VII. THROUGH SOVIET SIBERIA

VIII. THREE DAYS ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE

IX. TO THE SAYANS AND SAFETY

X. THE BATTLE OF THE SEYBI

XI. THE BARRIER OF RED PARTISANS

XII. IN THE COUNTRY OF ETERNAL PEACE

XIII. MYSTERIES, MIRACLES AND A NEW FIGHT

XIV. THE RIVER OF THE DEVIL

XV. THE MARCH OF GHOSTS

XVI. IN MYSTERIOUS TIBET

PART II. THE LAND OF DEMONS

XVII. MYSTERIOUS MONGOLIA

XVIII. THE MYSTERIOUS LAMA AVENGER

XX. THE DEMON OF JAGISSTAI

XXI. THE NEST OF DEATH

XXII. AMONG THE MURDERERS

XXIV. A BLOODY CHASTISEMENT

XXVI. THE BAND OF WHITE HUNGHUTZES

XXVII. MYSTERY IN A SMALL TEMPLE

XXVIII. THE BREATH OF DEATH

PART III. THE STRAINING HEART OF ASIA

XXIX. ON THE ROAD OF GREAT CONQUERORS

XXXI. TRAVELING BY “URGA”

XXXII. AN OLD FORTUNE TELLER

XXXIII. “DEATH FROM THE WHITE MAN WILL STAND BEHIND YOU”

XXXIV. THE HORROR OF WAR!

XXXV. IN THE CITY OF LIVING GODS, 30,000 BUDDHAS AND 60,000 MONKS

XXXVI. A SON OF CRUSADERS AND PRIVATEERS

XXXVII. THE CAMP OF MARTYRS

XXXVIII. BEFORE THE FACE OF BUDDHA

XXXIX. “THE MAN WITH A HEAD LIKE A SADDLE”

PART IV. THE LIVING BUDDHA

XL. IN THE BLISSFUL GARDEN OF A THOUSAND JOYS

XLI. THE DUST OF CENTURIES

XLII. THE BOOKS OF MIRACLES

XLIII. THE BIRTH OF THE LIVING BUDDHA

XLIV. A PAGE IN THE HISTORY OF THE PRESENT LIVING BUDDHA

XLV. THE VISION OF THE LIVING BUDDHA OF MAY 17, 1921

PART V. MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES--THE KING OF THE WORLD

XLVI. THE SUBTERRANEAN KINGDOM

XLVII. THE KING OF THE WORLD BEFORE THE FACE OF GOD

XLVIII. REALITY OR RELIGIOUS FANTASY?

XLIX. THE PROPHECY OF THE KING OF THE WORLD IN 1890

There are times, men and events about which History alone can record the final judgments; contemporaries and individual observers must only write what they have seen and heard. The very truth demands it.

DRAWING LOTS WITH DEATH

In the beginning of the year 1920 I happened to be living in the Siberian town of Krasnoyarsk, situated on the shores of the River Yenisei, that noble stream which is cradled in the sun-bathed mountains of Mongolia to pour its warming life into the Arctic Ocean and to whose mouth Nansen has twice come to open the shortest road for commerce from Europe to the heart of Asia. There in the depths of the still Siberian winter I was suddenly caught up in the whirling storm of mad revolution raging all over Russia, sowing in this peaceful and rich land vengeance, hate, bloodshed and crimes that go unpunished by the law. No one could tell the hour of his fate. The people lived from day to day and left their homes not knowing whether they should return to them or whether they should be dragged from the streets and thrown into the dungeons of that travesty of courts, the Revolutionary Committee, more terrible and more bloody than those of the Mediaeval Inquisition. We who were strangers in this distraught land were not saved from its persecutions and I personally lived through them.

One morning, when I had gone out to see a friend, I suddenly received the news that twenty Red soldiers had surrounded my house to arrest me and that I must escape. I quickly put on one of my friend’s old hunting suits, took some money and hurried away on foot along the back ways of the town till I struck the open road, where I engaged a peasant, who in four hours had driven me twenty miles from the town and set me down in the midst of a deeply forested region. On the way I bought a rifle, three hundred cartridges, an ax, a knife, a sheepskin overcoat, tea, salt, dry bread and a kettle. I penetrated into the heart of the wood to an abandoned half-burned hut. From this day I became a genuine trapper but I never dreamed that I should follow this role as long as I did. The next morning I went hunting and had the good fortune to kill two heathcock. I found deer tracks in plenty and felt sure that I should not want for food. However, my sojourn in this place was not for long. Five days later when I returned from hunting I noticed smoke curling up out of the chimney of my hut. I stealthily crept along closer to the cabin and discovered two saddled horses with soldiers’ rifles slung to the saddles. Two disarmed men were not dangerous for me with a weapon, so I quickly rushed across the open and entered the hut. From the bench two soldiers started up in fright. They were Bolsheviki. On their big Astrakhan caps I made out the red stars of Bolshevism and on their blouses the dirty red bands. We greeted each other and sat down. The soldiers had already prepared tea and so we drank this ever welcome hot beverage and chatted, suspiciously eyeing one another the while. To disarm this suspicion on their part, I told them that I was a hunter from a distant place and was living there because I found it good country for sables. They announced to me that they were soldiers of a detachment sent from a town into the woods to pursue all suspicious people.

“Do you understand, ‘Comrade,’” said one of them to me, “we are looking for counter-revolutionists to shoot them?”

I knew it without his explanations. All my forces were directed to assuring them by my conduct that I was a simple peasant hunter and that I had nothing in common with the counter-revolutionists. I was thinking also all the time of where I should go after the departure of my unwelcome guests. It grew dark. In the darkness their faces were even less attractive. They took out bottles of vodka and drank and the alcohol began to act very noticeably. They talked loudly and constantly interrupted each other, boasting how many bourgeoisie they had killed in Krasnoyarsk and how many Cossacks they had slid under the ice in the river. Afterwards they began to quarrel but soon they were tired and prepared to sleep. All of a sudden and without any warning the door of the hut swung wide open and the steam of the heated room rolled out in a great cloud, out of which seemed to rise like a genie, as the steam settled, the figure of a tall, gaunt peasant impressively crowned with the high Astrakhan cap and wrapped in the great sheepskin overcoat that added to the massiveness of his figure. He stood with his rifle ready to fire. Under his girdle lay the sharp ax without which the Siberian peasant cannot exist. Eyes, quick and glimmering like those of a wild beast, fixed themselves alternately on each of us. In a moment he took off his cap, made the sign of the cross on his breast and asked of us: “Who is the master here?”

“May I stop the night?”

“Yes,” I replied, “places enough for all. Take a cup of tea. It is still hot.”

The stranger, running his eyes constantly over all of us and over everything about the room, began to take off his skin coat after putting his rifle in the corner. He was dressed in an old leather blouse with trousers of the same material tucked in high felt boots. His face was quite young, fine and tinged with something akin to mockery. His white, sharp teeth glimmered as his eyes penetrated everything they rested upon. I noticed the locks of grey in his shaggy head. Lines of bitterness circled his mouth. They showed his life had been very stormy and full of danger. He took a seat beside his rifle and laid his ax on the floor below.

“What? Is it your wife?” asked one of the drunken soldiers, pointing to the ax.

The tall peasant looked calmly at him from the quiet eyes under their heavy brows and as calmly answered:

“One meets a different folk these days and with an ax it is much safer.”

He began to drink tea very greedily, while his eyes looked at me many times with sharp inquiry in them and ran often round the whole cabin in search of the answer to his doubts. Very slowly and with a guarded drawl he answered all the questions of the soldiers between gulps of the hot tea, then he turned his glass upside down as evidence of having finished, placed on the top of it the small lump of sugar left and remarked to the soldiers:

“I am going out to look after my horse and will unsaddle your horses for you also.”

“All right,” exclaimed the half-sleeping young soldier, “bring in our rifles as well.”

The soldiers were lying on the benches and thus left for us only the floor. The stranger soon came back, brought the rifles and set them in the dark corner. He dropped the saddle pads on the floor, sat down on them and began to take off his boots. The soldiers and my guest soon were snoring but I did not sleep for thinking of what next to do. Finally as dawn was breaking, I dozed off only to awake in the broad daylight and find my stranger gone. I went outside the hut and discovered him saddling a fine bay stallion.

“Are you going away?” I asked.

“Yes, but I want to go together with these ---- comrades,’” he whispered, “and afterwards I shall come back.”

I did not ask him anything further and told him only that I would wait for him. He took off the bags that had been hanging on his saddle, put them away out of sight in the burned corner of the cabin, looked over the stirrups and bridle and, as he finished saddling, smiled and said:

“I am ready. I’m going to awake my ‘comrades.’” Half an hour after the morning drink of tea, my three guests took their leave. I remained out of doors and was engaged in splitting wood for my stove. Suddenly, from a distance, rifle shots rang through the woods, first one, then a second. Afterwards all was still. From the place near the shots a frightened covey of blackcock broke and came over me. At the top of a high pine a jay cried out. I listened for a long time to see if anyone was approaching my hut but everything was still.

On the lower Yenisei it grows dark very early. I built a fire in my stove and began to cook my soup, constantly listening for every noise that came from beyond the cabin walls. Certainly I understood at all times very clearly that death was ever beside me and might claim me by means of either man, beast, cold, accident or disease. I knew that nobody was near me to assist and that all my help was in the hands of God, in the power of my hands and feet, in the accuracy of my aim and in my presence of mind. However, I listened in vain. I did not notice the return of my stranger. Like yesterday he appeared all at once on the threshold. Through the steam I made out his laughing eyes and his fine face. He stepped into the hut and dropped with a good deal of noise three rifles into the corner.

“Two horses, two rifles, two saddles, two boxes of dry bread, half a brick of tea, a small bag of salt, fifty cartridges, two overcoats, two pairs of boots,” laughingly he counted out. “In truth today I had a very successful hunt.”

In astonishment I looked at him.

“What are you surprised at?” he laughed. “Komu nujny eti tovarischi? Who’s got any use for these fellows? Let us have tea and go to sleep. Tomorrow I will guide you to another safer place and then go on.”

THE SECRET OF MY FELLOW TRAVELER

At the dawn of day we started forth, leaving my first place of refuge. Into the bags we packed our personal estate and fastened them on one of the saddles.

“We must go four or five hundred versts,” very calmly announced my fellow traveler, who called himself “Ivan,” a name that meant nothing to my mind or heart in this land where every second man bore the same.

“We shall travel then for a very long time,” I remarked regretfully.

“Not more than one week, perhaps even less,” he answered.

That night we spent in the woods under the wide spreading branches of the fir trees. It was my first night in the forest under the open sky. How many like this I was destined to spend in the year and a half of my wanderings! During the day there was very sharp cold. Under the hoofs of the horses the frozen snow crunched and the balls that formed and broke from their hoofs rolled away over the crust with a sound like crackling glass. The heathcock flew from the trees very idly, hares loped slowly down the beds of summer streams. At night the wind began to sigh and whistle as it bent the tops of the trees over our heads; while below it was still and calm. We stopped in a deep ravine bordered by heavy trees, where we found fallen firs, cut them into logs for the fire and, after having boiled our tea, dined.

Ivan dragged in two tree trunks, squared them on one side with his ax, laid one on the other with the squared faces together and then drove in a big wedge at the butt ends which separated them three or four inches. Then we placed live coals in this opening and watched the fire run rapidly the whole length of the squared faces vis-a-vis.

“Now there will be a fire in the morning,” he announced. “This is the ‘naida’ of the gold prospectors. We prospectors wandering in the woods summer and winter always sleep beside this ‘naida.’ Fine! You shall see for yourself,” he continued.

He cut fir branches and made a sloping roof out of them, resting it on two uprights toward the naida. Above our roof of boughs and our naida spread the branches of protecting fir. More branches were brought and spread on the snow under the roof, on these were placed the saddle cloths and together they made a seat for Ivan to rest on and to take off his outer garments down to his blouse. Soon I noticed his forehead was wet with perspiration and that he was wiping it and his neck on his sleeves.

“Now it is good and warm!” he exclaimed.

In a short time I was also forced to take off my overcoat and soon lay down to sleep without any covering at all, while through the branches of the fir trees and our roof glimmered the cold bright stars and just beyond the naida raged a stinging cold, from which we were cosily defended. After this night I was no longer frightened by the cold. Frozen during the days on horseback, I was thoroughly warmed through by the genial naida at night and rested from my heavy overcoat, sitting only in my blouse under the roofs of pine and fir and sipping the ever welcome tea.

During our daily treks Ivan related to me the stories of his wanderings through the mountains and woods of Transbaikalia in the search for gold. These stories were very lively, full of attractive adventure, danger and struggle. Ivan was a type of these prospectors who have discovered in Russia, and perhaps in other countries, the richest gold mines, while they themselves remain beggars. He evaded telling me why he left Transbaikalia to come to the Yenisei. I understood from his manner that he wished to keep his own counsel and so did not press him. However, the blanket of secrecy covering this part of his mysterious life was one day quite fortuitously lifted a bit. We were already at the objective point of our trip. The whole day we had traveled with difficulty through a thick growth of willow, approaching the shore of the big right branch of the Yenisei, the Mana. Everywhere we saw runways packed hard by the feet of the hares living in this bush. These small white denizens of the wood ran to and fro in front of us. Another time we saw the red tail of a fox hiding behind a rock, watching us and the unsuspecting hares at the same time.

Ivan had been silent for a long while. Then he spoke up and told me that not far from there was a small branch of the Mana, at the mouth of which was a hut.

“What do you say? Shall we push on there or spend the night by the naida?”

I suggested going to the hut, because I wanted to wash and because it would be agreeable to spend the night under a genuine roof again. Ivan knitted his brows but acceded.

It was growing dark when we approached a hut surrounded by the dense wood and wild raspberry bushes. It contained one small room with two microscopic windows and a gigantic Russian stove. Against the building were the remains of a shed and a cellar. We fired the stove and prepared our modest dinner. Ivan drank from the bottle inherited from the soldiers and in a short time was very eloquent, with brilliant eyes and with hands that coursed frequently and rapidly through his long locks. He began relating to me the story of one of his adventures, but suddenly stopped and, with fear in his eyes, squinted into a dark corner.

“Is it a rat?” he asked.

“I did not see anything,” I replied.

He again became silent and reflected with knitted brow. Often we were silent through long hours and consequently I was not astonished. Ivan leaned over near to me and began to whisper.

“I want to tell you an old story. I had a friend in Transbaikalia. He was a banished convict. His name was Gavronsky. Through many woods and over many mountains we traveled in search of gold and we had an agreement to divide all we got into even shares. But Gavronsky suddenly went out to the ‘Taiga’ on the Yenisei and disappeared. After five years we heard that he had found a very rich gold mine and had become a rich man; then later that he and his wife with him had been murdered. . . .” Ivan was still for a moment and then continued:

“This is their old hut. Here he lived with his wife and somewhere on this river he took out his gold. But he told nobody where. All the peasants around here know that he had a lot of money in the bank and that he had been selling gold to the Government. Here they were murdered.”

Ivan stepped to the stove, took out a flaming stick and, bending over, lighted a spot on the floor.

“Do you see these spots on the floor and on the wall? It is their blood, the blood of Gavronsky. They died but they did not disclose the whereabouts of the gold. It was taken out of a deep hole which they had drifted into the bank of the river and was hidden in the cellar under the shed. But Gavronsky gave nothing away. . . . AND LORD HOW I TORTURED THEM! I burned them with fire; I bent back their fingers; I gouged out their eyes; but Gavronsky died in silence.”

He thought for a moment, then quickly said to me:

“I have heard all this from the peasants.” He threw the log into the stove and flopped down on the bench. “It’s time to sleep,” he snapped out, and was still.

I listened for a long time to his breathing and his whispering to himself, as he turned from one side to the other and smoked his pipe.

In the morning we left this scene of so much suffering and crime and on the seventh day of our journey we came to the dense cedar wood growing on the foothills of a long chain of mountains.

“From here,” Ivan explained to me, “it is eighty versts to the next peasant settlement. The people come to these woods to gather cedar nuts but only in the autumn. Before then you will not meet anyone. Also you will find many birds and beasts and a plentiful supply of nuts, so that it will be possible for you to live here. Do you see this river? When you want to find the peasants, follow along this stream and it will guide you to them.”