Footprints in the Sand Desert

by Manakhatan Boldsukh

  Shortly after the table was occupied, the service man mixed the cards and the gamblers began to play. There was a short lasting silence, if it was caused by the concentration on the cards or by the lacking words, only the ghost could have known. There seemed that Alice’s story got forgotten in the dining hall. The cards seemed to be drawn to Telly’s yellow gloved hands, the magnet was not the hand, but the brain. Billy smiled to John, breaking the silence saying,

  „John, maybe you should learn from Adrian to enjoy the play, instead of aiming the final act.“ Adrian laughed.

  John: „In fact, I would like to let you invent that no superstition is winning.“

  Billy: „I know.“

  Alice: „I think Telly had a strange energy not only to draw people, but also the cards.“

  Telly smiled and Billy chose a card and threw in the middle of the table.

  Adrian: „Yellow dress, you know, that is just the color of optimism.“

  Alice: „Why do you think that yellow is always considered the symbol of optimism?“

  John was tired of the smoke in the cosmos not to be a fire and said by throwing a card on the gambling map,

  „Oh, that is so logical, yellow is just the color of the sun. Without sun there weren't colors.“

  Adrian: „That is right. The sun and the nine planets around the sun, by the way, you know there has been a ninth planet discovered.“

  John: „Oh really, that must be the most frozen one rounding the sun in the farthest distance.“

  Telly: „Why only the earth could be blessed with life, but not the other eight planets?“

  Adrian: „Because the earth follows the orbit in the right distance from the sun, not too close to be like Mars, and not too far from the sun to be frozen like Pluto.“

  John: „You hit the nail on the head, philosopher, but the hammer is now on the cards.“

  Alice: „Here in the casino hall, people can play losing the dimension of time, day long and night long, but when you were somewhere else, there can’t be so much patience to be proved.“

  John: „Not only patience, but also it is the concentration in such extent of endurance without any effort. Nowhere else would happen that kind of magic. Would you concentrate on your wife night long and day long looking at her without cease?“

  Adrian: „That must be a witch you have married to.“

  Billy: „You know, here in the casino hall the atmosphere from the outside and the greed from the inside, completely in harmony.“

  John: „Oh really, what makes the harmony in a case, if someone was out of greed?“

  Adrian: „But your eagerness to beat the superstition is considered a kind of greed too.“

  They laughed, but not Telly.

  Alice: „The environment plays everywhere the important role, right?“

  John: „What for?“

  Alice: „To lose the dimension of time, but also to be grown up to someone, like plant follow the environment to find its species.“

  Adrian: „What about the genetics? Can DNA be changed provided by the environment?“

  Billy: „DNA decides just about the aesthetics, the personality is made by the environment. There are twins or sisters, brothers who grew up in different environments and became totally different people, both in personality and character, maybe only the look could be similar to each other.“

  Telly: „Yes, you are right. But there are some special talents in the human history.“

  John: „Einstein, yeah.“ He blinked to Alice smiling.

  Adrian: „That is right, we are just the products of our environment, regarding our personality and character like plants resulted by the different soil and weather.“

  Billy: „Yes, I agree. Some people become able to develop by themselves adjusting to any new given conditions, mastering them growing on the challenge, but some remain limited by the given condition overwhelmed by the ocean’s wave and never show up on the surface, voilà, rest in peace.“

  Adrian: „And the one who passed away overwhelmed by the waves, would reborn as a fish which doesn’t need to learn to ride the waves anymore.“

  John: „I wish the reborn one would become a bigger fish far away from the sharks.“

  Adrian: „Or, that one would become much smaller fish which would be overseen everywhere, out of danger leading a senseless life.“

  John: „Do you think fishes feel the sense? Maybe dolphins?“

  Billy: „Nonsense, otherwise there won’t be frozen salmon in the refrigerator.“

  Adrian: „Anyway, fishes don’t gamble, but gamblers would reborn as fish.“

  Meanwhile, Alice had quitted. But the cards were mixed well, Telly’s telepathy had to adjust to the challenge.

  Billy: „John, that was not a bad idea to continue the play. Alice can still shake away the souvenirs on the gambling map.“

  Telly: „Alice, but you hadn’t known till you met Maria, what your future would be look like, as you said that some knew already in the late childhood about the future. Do you remember?“

  Alice: „Well, you are right. But I knew already as a five years old girl when I learnt to ride horse that my life would be different from the common flow.“

  Adrian: „Did you learn to ride already when you were five years old?“

  John: „Incredible, I tried to learn to ride twice, but the muscle aches lasted for a week and I preferred my motorbike.“

  Alice: „Yes, five years old is even too late for a nomad child, normally they learn to ride already when they are three years old.“

  John: „I made some picture of sweet children riding horses when I was in the desert Gobi. By the way, the nomads have a kind of beauty with their suntanned and deep wrinkled skin, but the most beauty was their smile, the teeth. I had never seen that much white and healthy natural teeth before.“

  Alice: „I know, the nomads are nourished by milk products from their nursery section on, you know, which means a lot of calcium. Unfortunately, we couldn’t become a golden tooth like yours.“

  John laughed showing his golden tooth upside in his small mouth and his other companies looked at him blinded by the golden smile.

  Billy: „I believe you Alice, your teeth are proving the calcium effect anyway. Would you like to tell us the story how you met the love of your life, as you mentioned?“

  Alice: „Well, that was a long way from the summer that I spent at the tourist camp as a fourteen years old girl, but inside I had been already grown up older than my age, thank to the desert.“

  Adrian, John and Billy looked at Alice, all the eyes were expressing the same excitement. Alice smiled to them and leaned back her soft chair to make her comfortable for the memory and continued,

  „During the summer at the tourist camp, I learned a lot of new things not only as a guide, but also as a cook, not to mention the improvement of my Russian conversation. The life was very easy compared to my usual day in the tent of my parents, where I stood up at five o’clock in the morning to milk the goats and all the day spent outside among the camels and goats. The cook women with whom I shared a tent taught me civilization like keeping hygiene and to deal with clothes like ironing. Since I began my work at the campus I had met Maria only twice, who was absent most of the time, one of my tent mates took her role as my mentor. Already in the mid-august the tourists and visitors decreased and I began to feel bored. A week before the end of august Maria came from Ulan-Bator and took me with her to the capital city.“

  John: „Didn’t you bid your parents farewell?“

  Alice: „No, I cannot tell, even they had brought me up, I had not the right feeling of belonging to the family. Maybe that is because I was a late birth, a kind of accident, and a girl dominated by the seven elder brothers. Well, Maria was friendly to me as she was from the first time on, and she told me just to take my little sack with few clothes and to follow her. I obeyed without asking anything, I was eager to follow her to see other places, and was afraid of going back to be part of the usual
nomad hard life, because the stay at the tourist camp with its visitors had already lighted the fire of my curiosity to be like them cultivated and highly respected.“

  Adrian: „And then, where did you go?“

  Billy glanced at Adrian, wondering his impatience.

  Alice: „With other workers of the camp, we took the plane to the capital city Ulan-Bator. You know, it was my first time being on a plane and it was fantastic, surrounded by people who were paying attention to me, well, I was the youngest among them, next one was five years older than me.“

  Billy: „What kind of plane it was?“

  Alice: „I cannot tell, anyway a plane made in the USSR and small sized passenger plane devoted for national flights.“

  Telly: „Then what happened to you in the capital city? Did you go to school?“

  Alice: „For me that was a big city and at the airport, we took a taxi, headed for the downtown driving through big white gate on a small hill, welcoming to Ulan-Bator, and as we left the white big gate behind I enjoyed the sight of the city in front of my eyes. There were not much traffic on the street, consisted mostly of Russian cars and busses till we drove over the bridge of ‚peace‘, where began the busy downtown. I enjoyed everything what the car window allowed me to see till we stopped in front of an apartment-block close to the government building behind the big square, which is considered one of the broadest government squares in the world, listed somewhere behind the parade squares in Moscow and Beijing. In the middle of the square in front of the government building, there is a monument of Sukh-Bator, who went to Russia to meet Lenin in 1921, in order to ask for help to free Mongolia from Chinese dictators, under whom Mongolia had been suffering for almost three hundred years. So in 1921 Mongolia was freed from Chinese, since then gained its independence.“

  John: „Yes, I remember that lively place, Sukh-Bator Square, where I saw people sitting around the monument, a man riding a horse his right hand showing the sky, a quite big square. People told me that on the square people were hunger striking for democracy, challenging perestroika and the communist regime gave up easily.“

  Alice: „Nice to meet you, John. Yes, that is right, the square was used for communist parade like Russian, there was a big political and economic influence of the USSR.“

  Billy: „But your country had not belonged to the USSR, right?“

  Alice: „No, but Russian integration was that much enormous giving an impression of being one of the USSR during the era of the communism before the perestroika. Mongolia is an independent and democratic country.“

  Adrian: „I see. So did you stay in the capital city with Maria?“

  Alice: „Yes, but only till the next spring. As we arrived the apartment, Maria showed me my room which consisted of a bed and a cupboard, a small desk next to it, all in the dark brown wooden furniture, but measured by that time, everything looked to be the finest. The apartment consisted of two rooms, kitchen and one bath. The other room belonged to Maria. But that apartment was kind of hotel, which Maria had rented till the end of the winter.“

  Billy: „Maria had adopted you? Hadn’t you feared of the strange woman to follow her?“

  Alice: „In fact, she had bought me, but it looked as she had adopted me. Her friendliness attracted me from the first time on, it was nice to be with her who was friendly and paying attention to me. Maria was a woman about mid thirty, a straight shouldered soldier woman, showing braveness and proud, her tough body spreading a charm of strength. Her eyes were big brown, despite her Russian accent she looked like an Asian woman, her short cut black hair was stressing her marked pretty face. For a fourteen years old nomad girl, who hadn’t seen much of the beauty in the world, Maria was an idol. As we arrived that apartment it was already late afternoon and through the big window under the tall ceiling of my room, I could see backside of the government house, and traffic light switching in orange, couples and children were going in and out of the fountain garden behind the big brown building of the government. August trees in Ulan-Bator was already yellow and red painted, sun had already lost its summer heat. That must be a Sunday, the street was relaxed. I looked the well dressed city women with the carefully combed hairstyle in the street flow and I was so happy to be in the city. By the way, the apartment was on the first floor of a four staged blockhouse which was built by the Chinese prisoners who were freed and stayed in Mongolia after the revolution of the red army in the early twentieth century. After dinner Maria ordered me to take off my clothes and scanned my body through her brown eyes carefully up-down and hundred eighty grade turning right and left, then she cut my hip long woven black hair to the shoulder, afterwards let me have a warm relaxing bath full of soapy bulbs. Maria’s expression told me that she liked not only my diligence, but also my body which was already well trained thank to the riding horses and running after the goats since I learnt to walk. Maybe my suntanned skin needed a while to keep up with the beauty of the city women. She gave me scissor and I cut my nails both of toes and fingers then I went bed. Next morning she woke me up we had breakfast with Georgian black tea and Mongolian delicious bread, butter and naturally blessed berry marmalade on it. Then Maria and I left the apartment, turned the corner of the block building of our apartment into the traffic light passing by the government building from the back side crossing the Sukh-Bator Square making us look like dwarves compared to its width, reached the big yellow building of the post where Maria sent some letters and had a phone call in the ‚international call‘ cabin to somewhere abroad. I was waiting in the hall sitting and wondering the busy people in suits and women in skirts and high heels, thinking that how a post office needed that much big building taller but not bigger than the government building. Afterwards, Maria led me along the ‚peace avenue‘ heading a department store which was also built by the Chinese prisoners and with its black stone and shopping windows filled with mannequins holding umbrella’s drew my attention already from the far distance. There Maria bought for me clothes for the fall and winter, then we visited a bookshop on the left side of the big department store, to see books for me. I didn’t know what Maria had planned regarding my future, but I was obeying every word of her.“

  John had been meanwhile already quitted the game which was slowed down, distracted by the narration. The clock somewhere on the bordeaux velvet wall was showing that it was already midnight, but the gambling table seemed to be occupied by the vampires on a diet.

  Billy suggested the couch corner in the casino hall, which was meanwhile freed and to give the cards time for regeneration. They made themselves comfortable sunk into the soft black leather couch, which was possibly the only furniture not sharing the same era with the other furnitures in the casino hall still filled with full life.

  John: „People adopt children not only to welcome a new member to the family, but also in order to give chance to the child who otherwise couldn’t have had the same occasion to spend their childhood in a nice environment having a future with great possibility provided by the adoptive parents.“

  Adrian: „Yes, my brother adopted two children from Africa, but that was not that easy procedure regarding the rights, laws and as well red tape.“

  Billy: „That is right when it comes to red tape regarding children’s right, you know, some people adopt children for the purpose which could be worse than their current situation, like human trafficking or organ deal.“

  Alice: „Well, at first sight that was adorable charity and at the beginning everything went smoothly.“

  Telly: „What had the adoption by Maria brought to you?“

  Alice: „Well, that fall and winter I visited a private class in the elite school of Ulan-Bator.“

  John: „Do you mean the bright blue big building close to the orange painted dramatic academic theatre next to the pearl white villa of the former communist dictator?“

  Alice: „Yes, you are right. How did you know?“

  John: „My friend, a friendly Mongolian man brought his little boys to the
school and I take some picture of the building, also inside. They said that was the only elite school holding the footsteps of many famous Mongolian, politician, artists and diplomats.“

  Alice: „I didn’t know really that much, and I was the only pupil in my class which took place from monday till saturday at eight o’clock in the morning till two o’clock afternoon. Anyway, that was a nice building, inside blessed with wide corridor rowing classrooms with big windows and both sides of the building there were wide stairs ending with big wooden framed antique mirrors on both sides on each floor, giving an impression showing you the former pupils whose reflected appearances were archived dating back to decades ago time and on the underfloor there was a big sport hall, also a room of a general practitioner with all the furniture, even the dentist chair, where all pupils had to pass through medical examination twice a year. I had taken classes in one of the big classrooms different in each weekday depending on the vacancy. The classes were arranged and paid by Maria to make me gain the most important ground knowledge within the months.“

  Billy: „That time in Mongolia, people visited school free without charge, right?“