In the early evening we were treated to a meal of roasted mutton which one of the Circassian’s elder sons had killed soon after our arrival. While we ate, the father cut off strips of meat for the younger children and they ran out through the door with the meat in their hands. Salt was produced in a bowl to help our eating and I fear I ate a lot more of it than a thoughtful guest should have done. It was a delight to savour its sharp piquancy again.
After the evening meal half-a-dozen men neighbours joined the party, packing the room to its limits. The hard-working Tibetan wife produced more tea. Each of the visitors produced proudly a fine wooden bowl of the kind which the lone shepherd had shown us five days before. Here again it was evident that these were precious possessions.
‘What is so precious about these bowls?’ I asked our host.
‘Do you know,’ he replied, ‘that a man will sometimes trade two yaks for one of those?’
‘But why are they so precious?’
‘Because they just cannot be made in these mountain districts. They are fashioned with great skill from a special kind of hardwood which does not crack. Age increases their polish and their value. One of the reasons they are kept in linen bags is that the cloth improves the shine by constant rubbing against the wood.’
The men drank tea from their bowls and when they had finished the bowls were taken away and washed. Although they all looked alike to me, each man knew his own, and they were affectionately stowed away in their linen bags before the pipes were brought out and the tobacco handed round. Smoke was puffed out in great clouds and the Circassian was kept busy translating the busy talk between us and the neighbours. In this community he was obviously of great eminence, much respected for his gift of tongues and knowledge of matters of the big world outside the valley. He was human enough to enjoy his role, but carried it off with dignity and modesty.
As the place warmed up, the lice began to stir from their hideouts in our clothes. My body began to itch and so did my conscience. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the others reaching inside their fufaikas for a furtive scratch. I sidled over to the Circassian and spoke quietly.
‘I think my friends and I should sleep outside tonight. We have picked up a lot of lice on our travels and can’t get rid of them.’
He laid a hand lightly on my shoulder. ‘Please set your mind at rest. Lice are no strangers to us. Tonight you all sleep under my roof.’
The others asked me what the talk had been about. I retailed it to them. They smiled their relief. It seemed I had not been the only one to have worried about our uninvited camp-followers.
The neighbours bade us goodnight and went their way. They went like men who have had a rare and enjoyable evening. I could imagine that we had provided them with material for many a reminiscent talk to brighten their uneventful lives. We had told them only a fraction of what they must have wanted to know, but they would have fun filling in the blanks. Many of their questions had been about Kolemenos. This fair-haired big man from another world intrigued them mightily. We told them he came from a Western country near the sea. Kolemenos added the word Latvia, but it meant nothing to them.
We slept in bunks — our first night under a roof since our escape. How the family disposed themselves for the night I do not know. There was some makeshift arrangement behind the stone partition for the Circassian and his wife but I think the children must have been taken in by other villagers. For the first time I felt able to relax. I had a glorious, warm feeling of complete safety. I slept a deep, refreshing, untensed sleep and only half-woke at the urging of the rising sun. They let us lie on until the day was a few hours old. The household had long been astir and two of the younger children were peering in at us as we sat up in our beds. They ran out and I heard them chattering to their father.
Our benefactor came in with some squares of thick homespun linen over his arm. ‘Perhaps you gentlemen would like to wash?’ he inquired with a smile.
‘This is real hotel service,’ Zaro joked. ‘Just lead us to the bathroom.’
The Circassian joined in the laugh. ‘It is at the end of the village — nice, clean, flowing water.’
We went down to the stream. The morning air was sharp but we stripped to the waist, immersed our heads in the water, gasped, splashed and rubbed vigorously. We were tempted to wash our jackets and fur waistcoats but decided that we should have to wait too long for them to dry. We felt fine and chuckled at some spontaneous clowning by Zaro on the way back. The inevitable following of curious children enjoyed his antics even more.
We were given more meat, more oaten cakes, more tea. Then it was time to go.
‘When you come back this way,’ said the Circassian earnestly, ‘do not forget this house. It will always be a home to you.’
The American answered, ‘Thank you. You have been very kind and generous to us.’
I said, ‘Will you please thank your wife for all she has done for us.’
He turned to me. ‘I won’t do that. She would not understand your thanks. But I will think of something to say to her that will please her.’
He spoke to her and her face broke into a great smile. She went away and returned with a wooden platter piled with flat oaten cakes, handed them to her husband and spoke to him.
‘She wants you to take them with you,’ he told us. We shared them out gratefully.
There was one other parting gift — a fine fleece from the man, handed over with the wish that it might be used to make new footwear or repair our worn moccasins. We never did use it for that purpose, but later it made us half-a-dozen pairs of excellent mittens to shield our hands from the mountain cold.
He walked with us out of the village, pointed out our way. For the only time in our travels we received specific and detailed instructions of our route.
‘Some of the tracks you will follow will not be easy to find,’ he warned. ‘Don’t look for them at your feet; look ahead into the distance — they show up quite clearly then.’
He described landmarks we were to seek. The first was to be a crown-shaped mountain about four days distant and we were to take a path which would lead us over the saddle between the two north-facing points of the ‘crown’. From the heights we were to set course for a peak shaped like a sugar-loaf, which we would find to be deceptively far away. It might take us two weeks to reach it, he thought. More than that he could not from here tell us accurately, but eventually we should reach a road leading to Lhasa which at some point forked east to the city and south-west to the villages of the Himalayan foothills.
We left him there, a little knot of children at his heels. When we turned round he made a most un-Mongolian gesture — he waved his arm to us. The last we saw of him was a figure still waving a farewell.
Marchinkovas spoke for us all when he said, ‘These people make me feel very humble. They do a lot to wipe out bitter memories of other people who have lost their respect for humanity.’
For a few days we were on the look-out for Chinese troops, but we met no one and saw no one. We disciplined ourselves not to touch our oatcakes until the third day — we had three each — and then we spread out the eating of them as an iron ration. Our track was clearly marked and the way was not too hard. There were plenty of small bushy trees something like the dwarf junipers of Siberia which burned brightly and gave out good heat. At the end of the fourth day we camped at the foot of the crown-shaped mountain and started our climb at first light the next day. The ascent was long but not difficult and the crossing occupied us two days.
It had been fully a week since our last real meal when we came across a mixed herd of sheep and goats and found the two houses of the Tibetans who owned them. The day was warm and brightly sunny after the freezing temperatures of the heights. There were scattered bushes of a species of wild rose, attracting the eye with gay blooms of yellow and red and white.