Read Online The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron - Free Book Online Page B

could picture it well enough: the double rank of ivory now breached by a slovenly void, as obvious as a fainted guardsman. Viewed from the right, I might pass muster. But seen from the left, I thought, I must show a Dracula-like unreliability. Would I be refused permits, visas, even hotel bedrooms, I wondered, on account of this lost incisor? Would conversations dry up the moment I grinned?
    These broodings were halted by the arrival of soup. Murad elevated the cauldron above his head as if at a pagan Eucharist, while the calf’s head bobbed obscenely to the surface. The big man skimmed off the fat and threw it on the sand. Then we drank, and it was delicious. Fumbling in my rucksack, I found a packet of English cheese biscuits and passed them round complacently. They nibbled them without comment. Later I noticed Murad dropping his into the sand.
    Little by little the party’s spirit mellowed. The men’s quick, guttural language was mysterious to me, but they translated their jokes into a babbling Russian, and finally Murad conjured up three bottles of vodka. ‘This is the whole point!’ He slopped it into shallow glasses, and we flung them back in one gulp, Russian fashion, at every toast. Only the old Mongol refused to drink at first. It suborned his stomach, he said. ‘He’s an ishan, a holy one!’ roared the big man, mocking.
    â€˜They drink most of all!’ retorted the Mongol, and they were rolling in the flowers with laughter.
    Some charred pots of green tea created a moment’s hiatus. Then the vodka-drinking went on. Sometimes, secretly, I spilled mine into the sand, but Murad replenished my glass at every toast, and fatally I lost count of them. Meanwhile they absolved themselves with blessings, and peppered their talk with ‘If God wills!’ or ‘Thanks be to God!’, while pouring out the forbidden spirit. Then they expatiated on remedies for hangover, and confided the medicinal properties of saxaul root or green tea (sovereign against headaches if you inhaled the aroma between cupped hands).
    â€˜Try it! Try it!’ But it was too late. The vodka had already detached me, and I was seeing them all from far away. Sitting cross-legged on their carpet among the flowers, they seemed to have regressed into a Persian miniature. Yet squatting amongst them was this outlandish foreigner, with a black stain advancing over his shirt ...’
    The big man turned to me with inebriate slowness and asked: ‘Where are you from then?’ All countries, I think, lay in mist to him beyond the oasis of his own. ‘London? That’s in America!’
    â€˜No, no!’ yelled Murad. ‘Great Britain!’
    The giant looked bewildered, but said: ‘Aah.’
    â€˜Margaret Thatcher!’ mused the Mongol. ‘She is very beautiful. I did not think that such an old woman could be so beautiful. So slender!’ He shook his own hands in congratulation. ‘Who is president of Great Britain now then? Does she have a son?’
    By now the shadows of the shrubs were wavering long over the dunes, and the sand grew more deeply golden, the sun descending. The men picked their teeth and let out soft whistles of contentment. For a while the Mongoloid had been plucking the poppies round him, and munching them. But now he took out his dutah – the frail-looking Turcoman lute shaped like a long teardrop – and started to play. From this coarse instrument he conjured tiny, plangent sounds on two wire strings, to which he sometimes sang, or half-spoke – but the words, he said, were untranslatable – about love, longing, and the passing of everything. His voice was a husky shadow. His shaven head, furred over by a grey and white chiaroscuro, bent close over the strings, as if striving to hear. He had never been taught to play, he said, but had learnt by listening to the old bards in his youth. Yet his gnarled fingers fluttered along the wires, and