Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

  I returned to my Holy Mountain, possessing knowledge from over a hundred hosts, but still knowing nothing about my origins. I had tired of wandering. The Holy Mountain was the only place on Earth I felt any tie to. For a decade I inhabited the monks who lived on its mountainsides. I led a tranquil enough life. I found companionship with an old woman who lived in a tea shack and believed I was a speaking tree. That was the last time I spoke with a human.

  “Come in, daughter,” said the shaman’s voice from inside the ger.

  Sun-bleached jawbones hung over the door. Gunga looked over her shoulder, suddenly afraid. A boy was playing with a red ball. He threw it high into the hazy blue, and watched it, and caught it when it fell. There was an Ovoo, a holy pile of stones and bones. Gunga asked for its blessing and entered the smoky darkness.

  “Come in, daughter.” The shaman was meditating on a mat. A lamp hung from the roof frame. A tallow candle spluttered in a copper dish. The rear of the ger was walled off by hanging animal skins. The air was grainy with incense.

  There was a carved box by the entrance. Gunga opened it, and put in most of the togrugs that Caspar had tipped her the day before. She slipped off her shoes, and knelt in front of the shaman, on the right-hand side of the ger, the female half. A wrinkled face, impossible to guess the age of. Gray, matted hair, and closed eyes that suddenly opened wide. He indicated a cracked teapot on a low table.

  Gunga poured the dark, odorless liquid into a cup of bone.

  “Drink, Gunga,” said the shaman.

  My host drank, and began to speak—the shaman halted her with his hand.

  “You have come because a spirit is living within you.”

  “Yes,” both Gunga and I answered. Gunga felt me again, and dropped the cup. The stain of the undrunk liquid spread through the rug.

  “Then we must find out what it wants,” said the shaman.

  Gunga’s heart pounded like a boxed bat. Gently, I shut down her consciousness.

  The shaman saw the change. He picked up a feather and drew a symbol in the air.

  “To whom am I speaking?” asked the shaman. “An ancestor of this woman?”

  “I don’t know who I am.” My words, Gunga’s voice, dry and croaky. “I want to discover who I am.” Strange, to be uttering the word “I” once again.

  The shaman was calm. “What is your name, spirit?”

  “I’ve never needed a name.”

  “Are you an ancestor of this woman’s?”

  “You already asked that. I’m not. Not as far as I know.”

  The shaman struck a bone against another bone, muttering words in a language I didn’t know. He sprang to his feet and flexed his fingers like claws.

  “In the name of Khukdei Mergen Khan art thou cast hence from the body of this woman!”

  Human males. “And then what do you suggest?”

  The shaman shouted. “Be gone! In the name of Erkhii Mergen who divided night from day, I command it!” The shaman shook a rattling sack over Gunga. He blew some incense smoke over my host, and sprinkled some water in her face.

  The shaman gazed at my host, waiting for a reaction. “Shaman, I’d hoped for something more intelligent. This is my first proper conversation for a very long time. And you’d be doing Gunga more good if you used that water to wash her. She believes that the Mongolian body doesn’t sweat, so she doesn’t wash and she has lice.”

  The shaman frowned, and looked into Gunga’s eyes, searching for something that wasn’t Gunga. “Your words are perplexing, spirit, and your magic is strong. Do you wish this woman ill? Are you evil?”

  “Well, I’ve had my moments, but I wouldn’t describe myself as evil. Would you?”

  “What do you want of this woman? What ails you?”

  “One memory. And the lack of all others.”

  The shaman sat back down and resumed his initial repose.

  “Who were your people when you walked as a living body?”

  “Why do you think I was once human?”

  “What else would you have been?”

  “That’s a fair question.”

  The shaman frowned. “You are a strange one, even for one of your kind. You speak like a child, not one waiting to pass over.”

  “What do you mean, ‘my kind’?”

  “I am a shaman. It is my calling to communicate with spirits. As it was with my master, and his master before him.”

  “Let me explore your mind. I need to see what you have seen.”

  “The spirits do not commune with one another?”

  “Not with me, they don’t. Please. Let me in. It’s safer for you if you don’t resist.”

  “If I allow you to possess me for a short time, you will leave this woman?”

  “Shaman, we have a deal. If you touch Gunga, I will leave her now.”

  I experience memories like a network of tunnels. Some are serviced and brightly lit, others are catacombs. Some are guarded, yet others are bricked up. Tunnels lead to tunnels, deeper down. So it is with memories.

  But access to memories does not guarantee access to truth. Many minds redirect memories along revised maps. In the tunnels of the shaman’s memory I met what may have been spirits of the dead, or delusions on the part of either the shaman or his customers or both. Or noncorpa! Maybe there were many footprints, or maybe there were none. Or maybe evidence was there in forms I couldn’t recognize. I deepened my search.

  I found this story, told twenty summers earlier on a firelit desert night.

  Many years ago, the red plague stalked the land. Thousands of people died. The healthy fled in its face, leaving behind the infected, saying simply, “Fate will sift the living from the dead.” Among the abandoned in the land of birds was Tarvaa, a fifteen-year-old boy. His spirit left his body and walked south between the dunes of the dead.

  When he appeared in the ger of the Khan of Hell, the Khan was surprised. “Why have you left your body behind while it is still breathing?”

  Tarvaa replied, “My Lord, the living considered my body gone. I came here without delay to pledge my allegiance.”

  The Khan of Hell was impressed with the obedience shown by Tarvaa. “I decree that your time has not yet come. You may take my fastest horse and return to your master in the land of birds. But before you go you may choose one thing from my ger to take with you. Behold! Here you may find wealth, good fortune, comeliness, ecstasy, grief and woe, wisdom, lust, and gratification.… Come now, what will you have?”

  “My Lord,” spoke Tarvaa, “I choose the stories.”

  Tarvaa put the stories in his leather pouch, mounted the fastest horse of the Khan of Hell, and returned to the land of birds in the south. When he got there, a crow had already pecked out Tarvaa’s body’s eyes. But Tarvaa dared not return to the dunes of the dead, fearing that to do so would be ungracious to the Khan. So Tarvaa took possession of his body, and rose up, and though he was blind he lived for a hundred years, traveling Mongolia on the Khan of Hell’s horse, from the Altai mountains in the far west, to the Gobi desert in the south, to the rivers of Hentii Nuruu, telling stories and foreseeing the future, and teaching the tribesmen the legends of the making of their land. And from that time, the Mongols have told each other tales.

  • • •

  I decided to go south, like Tarvaa. If I lacked clues in reality, I would have to find them in legends.

  ————

  Jargal Chinzoreg is as strong as a camel. He trusts only his family and his truck. As a boy, Jargal longed to be a pilot for the Mongolian air force, but his family lacked the bribes to get him into the Party school in the capital, so he became a truck driver. This was probably lucky, in the long run: nobody knows what would happen if the handful of rusting aeroplanes that constitutes the Mongolian Air Force were started up again. There’s talk in the parliament of scrapping the Air Force altogether, given Mongolia’s glaring inability to defend itself against any of its neighbors, even lowly Kazakhstan. Since the economic collapse, Jargal has work
ed for whoever has access to fuel: the black marketeers, the theoretically privatized iron works, timber companies, meat merchants. Jargal will do anything to make his wife laugh, even put socks up his nose and chase her around the ger making a noise like a horny yak.

  The road we are traveling, from Ulan Bator to Dalanzagad, is the least worst in the country. It’s usually passable, even in rainy weather. The road is 293 kilometers long, and Jargal knows its every pothole, bend, ditch, checkpoint, and checkpoint guard. He knows which petrol pumps are likely to have petrol when, how much life is left in each of the parts of his thirty-year-old Russian truck, and possible sources for spares.

  The horizon widens, the mountains toss and turn and then lie down until the grasslands begin. There’s a lonely tree. A signpost. A dusty café that hasn’t been open since 1990. A barracks where the Soviet army once did maneuvers, desolate now with the plumbing and wiring ripped out.

  The sun changes position. A cloud shaped like a marmot. Jargal wipes the sweat from his eyes, and lights a Chinese cigarette. He remembers a Marlboro a Canadian hitchhiker gave him last year.

  A chestnut horse stands on a ridge, looking down at the road. There’s a settlement beyond those rocks. The great sky marmot has become a cylinder valve. There’s a rock shaped like a giant’s head seventy kilometers outside of Dalanzagad. Many years ago a wrestler used it to crush the head of a monstrous serpent. The sky turns clear jade in the evening cold. Jargal lights another cigarette. Five years ago, around here—just off this incline—a truck rolled over with its cargo of propane gas. They say you can still see the burning driver running towards the road screaming for help that will forever be too late. Jargal knew him. They used to drink together at the truckers’ hotels.

  Jargal sees the town lights in the distance, and he thinks of his wife on the day their first son was born. He thinks about the toy goat that his aunt, Mrs. Enchbat, made for his baby daughter out of old scraps of cloth and string. She is still too young to talk well, but already she rides as if she were born in the saddle.

  Pride is something I have never felt.

  “You’ve never been interested in the old stories before.” The wizened man in an army jacket frowned. “They were prohibited when the Russians were here. All we had was goatshit about the heroes of the revolution. I was a teacher then. Did I ever tell you about the time Horloyn Choibalsan came to our school? The president himself?”

  “About fifteen minutes ago, you senile fart,” muttered a greasy listener. A radio in the bar played pop songs in Japanese and English. Three or four men were playing chess, but had become too drunk to remember the rules.

  “If I told any of the old stories in the classroom,” the old man continued, “I’d have been a candidate for ‘reeducation.’ Even Gingghis Khan, the Russians said he was a feudal character. Now every bunch of gers with a covered pisspool is rushing to prove Gingghis was born by their bend in the river.…”

  “That’s very interesting,” I said. Jargal was bored. It was uphill work for me to keep him here, polite. “Do you know one about the three animals who think about the fate of the world?”

  “I could tell you a few stories of my own, though. Did I ever tell you about the time Horloyn Choibalsan came to my school? In a big, black car. A black Zil. I want another dumpling. How come you’re so interested in the old stories all of a sudden anyway?”

  “I’ll get you another dumpling. Look, a nice big one … lots of lard. It’s my son. He complains if I tell the same one twice. You know what kids are like, always demanding new things.… I remember when I was a kid, about three animals who think about the fate of the world.…”

  The wizened man burped. “There’s no future in stories.… Stories are things of the past, things for museums. No place for stories in these market-democracy days.”

  Suddenly a shouting match broke out. Chessmen whistled past. A window cracked. “He came in a big, black car. There were bodyguards and advisers and KGB men. Trained in Moscow.” The drunk was standing on a table, shouting down into the foray. A man with a birthmark like a mask was smashing the board down on his rival’s head. I gave up and let Jargal get us out of here.

  The man in the museum looked at Jargal and me in astonishment. “Stories?”

  “Yes,” I began.

  He started laughing, and I had to stop Jargal taking a swipe at him. “Why would anyone be interested in stories about Mongolia?”

  “Because they are our culture,” I suggested. “And I don’t want you to tell me stories. I want information about the origin of the stories.”

  Silence. I noticed the wall clock had stopped.

  “Jargal Chinzoreg,” said the curator, “you are spending too long in your truck, or with your family. You always were a weird one, but now you’re sounding like a crazy old man, or a tourist.…”

  A man wearing the smartest suit in Mongolia walked out of an office. The director was laughing the laugh of a man of no importance. The suit was carrying a briefcase, and chewing gum.

  “We’ve got our stuffed birds,” continued the curator, “our Mongolian-Russian eternal friendship display. Our dinosaur bones, our scrolls, and the Zanabazar bronzes we could hide from the departing Russians. But if it’s information you want, you’ve got no business here. I ask you!”

  The suit drew level. Even though it was a dull day, he had already slipped on a pair of sunglasses. “You know,” he said, suddenly addressing us, “what’s-his-face down in Dalanzagad is putting together an anthology of Mongolian folk stories. It’s a quaint idea. He’s hoping to get it translated into English and flog them to tourists. He put a proposal to the state printing press last year. It was turned down—no paper. But he’s been doing some lobbying, and at the next meeting he might pull it off.”

  The suit went. I thanked him.

  “Now, Jargal Chinzoreg,” said the curator, “will you please get lost? It’s lunchtime.”

  The manager shut his office door with a loud sigh of relief.

  Jargal looked at the curator’s watch. “But it’s only ten-thirty.”

  “Exactly. We’ll reopen at about three.”

  The moon was in the morning sky, a globe of cobweb.

  “Sir!” Jargal ran across the empty road in front of the museum. The suit was getting into a Japanese-made four-wheel drive. Jargal was nervous: the owner of such a car must be a powerful man. “Sir!”

  The suit turned, his hand twitching inside his jacket. “What?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but would you try to remember the name of the gentleman you just mentioned? The folklorist? It might be very important to me.”

  The suit’s guard went up. I had used the wrong register of speech for a truck driver. The suit touched his forehead, and dropped his keys. Jargal picked them up and handed them to him. I made sure they touched, and I transmigrated. Like Gunga’s, it was a hard mind to penetrate. Unusually viscous, like jumping through a wall of cold butter.

  I didn’t need to scan my new host’s memory for long. “His name is Bodoo.”

  Some passersby were staring at the immobile government man. My new host regained control. “Now, you’ll excuse me, I have important business that won’t wait.”

  Oh yes it will. Here’s a picture. Bodoo is a short, balding man with glasses, sideburns, and a tufty mustache. We are going to meet, you and I, Bodoo. You are going to direct me to my birthright.

  I watched Jargal walk away, a man awakening from a strange dream.

  My new host was Punsalmaagiyn Suhbataar, a senior agent of the Mongolian KGB with a disdain of vulnerable things. We sped south, his four-wheel drive spewing up clouds of dust. He chewed gum. The grass grew sparser, the camels scraggier, the air drier. The road to Dalanzagad wasn’t signposted, but there was no other road. The checkpoint guards saluted.

  I would feel guilty for using my host so selfishly, but as I read Suhbataar’s past I felt vindicated. During his career he had killed over twenty times, and supervised the mutilation or tortur
e of ten times that number of prisoners. He had accrued a medium-sized fortune in a vault in Geneva at the expense of his old overlords in Moscow, and his new ones in Petersburg. Even I couldn’t see into the hole where his conscience should be. Outside this hole, his mind was cold, clear, and cruel.

  As night fell I let Suhbataar stop to stretch his legs and drink some coffee. It was good to see the stars again, the whole deep lake of them. Humans thicken the skies above their cities into a broth. But Suhbataar is not a man given to astral contemplation. For the fiftieth time he wondered what he was doing there, and I had to snuff out the thought. We spent the night at a truck drivers’ boardinghouse, scarcely bothering to talk to the owner, whom Suhbataar didn’t intend to pay. I made enquiries about Bodoo, the folklorist curator of Dalanzagad museum, but nobody knew him. While my host slept I broadened the Russian I acquired from Gunga.

  The following day the hills flattened to a gravel plain, and the Gobi desert began. I was getting weary of it all. Another day of horses and clouds and mountains nobody names. Suhbataar’s mind didn’t help. Most humans are constantly writing in their heads, editing conversations and mixing images and telling themselves jokes or replaying music. But not Suhbataar. I may as well have transmigrated into a cyborg.

  Suhbataar drove over the body of a dog and into the dusty regional capital of Dalanzagad. An unpainted place that dropped from nowhere onto a flat plot of dust devils. Doomed strips of turf-less park where women in headscarves sold eggs and dried goods. A few three- or four-floor buildings, with suburbs spilling around the edges. A dirt-strip runway, a flyblown hospital, a corrupt post office, a derelict department store. Beyond stories of black-market dinosaur eggs fetching $500 and snow-leopard pelts from the Gov’-Altai mountains to the south fetching up to $20,000, Suhbataar knew less about the southernmost province of Mongolia than he cared about it.