Footprints in the Sand Desert

by Manakhatan Boldsukh

  Alice: „Yes, but in my case, that was an exception, having private classes and Maria had arranged thanks to her renowned acquaintances in the city.“

  Adrian: „What kind of classes was considered the most important?“

  Alice: „There were different private teachers of mathematics, geography, anatomy, and Russian.“

  John: „Only four classes, you had been blessed.“

  Alice: „Well, but I had been overcharged according to the program they developed for my need. The school was close to the big post office, which I mentioned before, so that was only fifteen minutes walk crossing the government place to the apartment. After the lunch, all afternoon I had to spend doing homework, and I had already become tired before the dinner, which we had always accompanied by some visitors of Maria, mostly manly strangers in uniform, but some of them in nice elegant suits. Maria had been always there, sometimes we hadn’t a word to say to each other and somehow I felt bored, but I never felt sad to miss my camels and goats, old parents who didn’t care of me and elderly brothers mocking at me.“

  Telly: „They cannot be seen as your family, they had just abandoned and sold you.“

  Alice: „I followed my dream to be like the girl, whose name was Queen, actually. So I didn’t take the fact with that much tragedy. Once, I was about to go home after my overcharged lessons, that was a wintertime in Ulan-Bator, outside temperature was not warmer than minus twenty but dry cold, my cashmere shirt and Russian tweed coat which Maria bought me, kept me always warm. I saw Queen as I was waiting my coat at the wardrobe on the first floor, where the jackets of the pupils were hanging on rowed wardrobe bar served by an elderly woman in uniform sitting rounded by the golden painted counter along the wall in the blue marble first floor. I recognized Queen without a single hesitation, her luminous eyes and well dressed grace were not forgettable. She was a pupil of eighth class. I observed her and smiled at her as she turned to me, but she looked me down her nose, I felt myself ugly in her existence. She was waiting her friends and I stayed there to observe her till she went out dressed in yellow long feather jacket, looking very different from everyone in her surroundings.“

  Telly: „Oh really, how many years they should have studied to graduate from school?“

  Alice: „That time, the school consisted of ten years, which was equal to any European school regarding its rich content.“

  Billy: „Was Maria the only person who you knew in the capital city?“

  Alice: „Maria ordered me not to encounter anyone, there was some rules which I should follow like the best notes of my classes and being all by myself. She began to talk to me Russian, as she discovered the improvement of my language which was in fact already good at the tourist camp in the Gobi, but I had to learn the grammar and writing. Only Sunday was free of lessons and I spent mostly at home learning and preparing for the exams which kept me from being bored and missing company to talk to. Besides her friendliness, Maria was actually someone like an iron which was switched on by the electricity. I always enjoyed going to my private lessons in the elite school to observe Queen at the wardrobe after the lessons, who I met almost every day at school. Sundays, Maria taught me useful things like how to behave and to deal with crockeries and women stuff.“

  Adrian: „She must have been really kind to you. But your loneliness was tragic.“

  Alice: „Not really, I found happiness in my lessons and books that Maria brought me from the book shop, her manner of correspondence towards me remained always the same, and the evening was always accompanied by some elderly men from different nations, but almost of the same highly seen status, who stayed talking to each other when I went to sleep. The busy days let the time flow.“

  John: „She had really adopted you and stayed in touch as your family?“

  Alice: „I believed the proper adoption till may, where I had to face the first real pain of my life.“

  Telly: „What was it, oh my god.“

  Alice: „Two months had gone, my menstruation disappeared and that was my fifteenth birthday, which I celebrated with Maria at home in the kitchen looking through the window fresh green leaves of the avenue behind the government house, filled with students, striding gentlemen and elegant women. Maria presented me a new pair of shoes and a pretty dress blessing me with compliments regarding my diligent study and good results of the private exams. My Russian was improved keeping up with a native speaker thank to Maria and I liked mathematics able to solve the most complicated functions. As we were eating my birthday cake which was carefully decorated with butter cream roses and chocolate stripe of my name ‚Suvd' on it, suddenly I felt unwell and had to go to the toilet to vomit. Maria asked me what happened and if I had my menstruation in time. I told her the lacking menstruation of two months and then Maria took me to the bed and examined my body, afterwards she made a call to a doctor, well, I was two months pregnant and the men who visited Maria in the evening were in fact people who were waiting my falling asleep to rape me during my sleep, after having made me unconscious. I had learned anatomy and understood that I was pregnant, but I couldn’t imagine the fact terrified of the pain, only later I grasped what had happened during my sleep.“

  In the corner, where the gamblers were sitting, a mixture of anger and sympathy came into existence. John stood up to hide his emotion and came soon back with some chips and olives.

  Telly: „What a hell of a bastard was the Maria.“

  Adrian: „The poker face was a real witch, that much kindness on the surface and the brutality behind.“

  Billy: „All the sympathy is with you Alice, god blessed you, now you had it far behind you.“

  Alice was showing no single sign of emotion, if that were already erased footprints in the sand desert, and she continued,

  „After the abortion, which took place under half anesthesia, I had to stay in bed for a week caused by the pain both mentally and physically. Maria said nothing, but I began to understand, and her choice of the lessons began to make sense. She remained careful to me as she had been. After my recovery, she told me that I will be her girl obeying her words doing bravely. I just nodded and I missed my nomad parents despite their contempt, but more than the parents I wanted to be on the camel back among its humps wrapped with the warm cashmere wool of the humps. From that time on Maria began to give me a kind of medicine, I didn’t know that time, but later I found out that they were the pills of which effect changed my body a lot. I became thicker and calmer, my skin cleaner.“

  John: „What a hell of a witch, that kind of cruel souls must be recognized in time to be removed.“

  Billy: „You can say that again. There are also the same incidents like experimenting chemical substances on healthy person in order to improve any medicine or drug, you know, still a kind of human trafficking abusing the human rights, the experiment victim consists mostly of teenage and youths who were grown up physically robust in a healthy environment like Alice.“

  Alice: „Well, a month later we took a military plane and landed somewhere in Siberia fetched by Russian soldiers, afterwards drove to a summer camp of soldier training. There were different people of my age, from different nationalities like Vietnam, China and Russia. Besides me there were only two girls in our training group.“

  John: „Soldier training in Siberia? How did it look like? Did you train in the siberian mountains?“

  Alice: „Yes, very different from the desert Gobi the nature was blessed with deep green and colorful flowers provided by wild nature and instead of endless horizon of desert dunes there was a mysterious forest covering high mountains. We stayed in little wooden houses scenting after moisture of the forest, three girls in the same house and the other three houses were occupied by the boys, all together we were twelve people. There were a lavatory outside and land toilet in a small wooden box over a deep dug hole, where you can see the old shits. The emergence of the human nature made oversee that kind of vomit. We hadn’t had a proper shower, compared to my life in the Gob
i that was all right, but the life in the city had changed my habit missing the warm water and daily shower rubbing soap bulbs. The youth soldiers had to stand up at six o’clock in the morning, accompanied by the dawn and fresh moisture scent of the thick forest, afterwards we woke up our senses with cold water outside in the lavatory. Breathing fresh morning dew, we began our first workout which was consisted of walking and running over the meadow. Then we had breakfast consisted of bread, butter and house made marmalade in the restaurant hall in the big wooden house among the little wooden houses, which were in other words our rooms, where we stayed. We had to do different exercises on the place filled with a variety of equipments made of steel, colors were faded away in the places which were touched by the former trainees of a different generation, of which we knew easily the right posture and place to hold during the exercises. First few days I had to suffer from terrible muscle aches, but the strength of the outside made the inner softness disappear. Maria and a tall, robust man were our trainers, their whistles sounding the same causing the same effect on our senses. After three months of hard training and having nourished by the food like black bread, sausages and vegetables, milk, cheese, provided by Siberian peasants, and also Maria had stopped to give me the pills, I was transformed into a tin soldier. After the summer our group headed by Maria, flew to the Switzerland to spend the winter months. Maria possessed a lot of power and sponsor, what kind of background was exactly making up the engine of her motivation both for her life without any privacy and her tireless ambition to occupy with us. That was Zurich, where we stayed in a youth hostel, but each of us had its own room sharing the bathroom and toilet with each other. The days in Zurich were filled with English, French and German classes followed by lively evening in the youth hostel, compared to my stay in Ulan-Bator, I had friends and my brain was not fully charged to veil the sight of real life. Maria was always there looking after us and she had begun to give the girls pills again. That time I hadn’t become big change regarding my body and skin, and I knew that something supposed to be happening in the single rooms of the girls which would be erased in the next morning out of most consciousness. That way the days passed like an express train tunneling the swiss mountains, but there was an event where we learnt to ski, which become our occupation of some weekends. Maria had also organized lots of sightseeing around the Switzerland, like the church where the crying black Madonna is to be wondered. The body was growing and the brain was expanding, but the mind was still immature. What the pill supposed to be for, went without saying, but none of the girls had dared to ask or discuss, we were ashamed being victim of grownups.

  Spring was greeting the world, especially the part of the world where we were, the nature blossomed spreading the most color of the earth, our classes as well our stay in Zurich had ended, so we returned to the summer camp in Siberia to spend the summer months steeling our bodies which were softened indulged by the daily sweets, swiss chocolates during the fall, winter and spring in the Switzerland. As the former camper I knew everything what was going on in the camp, even the pills were stopped, all senses were relaxed, but the muscles of the body.“

  Billy: „You must be sixteen by then?“

  Alice: „Yes, shortly before our flight to Siberia we celebrated my sixteenth birthday by picnicking among flowers close to the Zurich sea.“

  Telly: „What a great, brave, strong, sweet sixteen you had been.“

  Adrian: „People are just products of their environment, regarding the purpose of the pills that was a mixed blessing.“

  John: „Had you ever regretted to have met Maria in the Gobi?“

  Alice: „Only once, after the abortion, where I cried my eyes out. But that made me stronger and my desire to be like the girl, Queen, was greater than the return to the desert.“

  John: „Ah, Queen, do you mean the girl with luminous eyes? What a hell of memory! Some people just have crossed their ways and remained tattooed in the memory, all life long.“

  Alice: „I liked her, but same time I hated her because I couldn’t change the genes, like trees of different roots producing different fruits.“

  Billy: „I suppose that one of the boys in the group was the love of your life, right?“

  Alice: „No, after the second summer camp of training in Siberia we flew to Scotland and stayed in an old castle to continue the language lessons in advanced level added by some new classes, where we were taught how to deal with some military devices like shooting and small transponders, also solving different cases which I had to thank to my mathematic classes in the elite school in Ulan-Bator that made me overtake the rest of the group. That was a nice winter without the pills, outside cold, but in the old castle in our place the stay was adventurous keeping up the vampires on a diet in their castle in Transylvania. We celebrated there an unforgettable Christmas, compared to the Switzerland.“

  Billy: „In Mongolia, do people celebrate Christmas?“

  Alice: „No, ninety percent of the population is supposed to be Buddhists, but we celebrated New Year’s Eve both according to Asian moon and European calendar.“

  John: „Two new year’s resolution in a year, that must be a fantastic idea to change the failed one!“

  Adrian: „The moon calendar is interpreted in twelve animal cycles, as I remember right, someone told me that I was born in the year of pig.“

  They all laughed. Alice calculated the right animal sign of the moon calendar by counting her fingers as Adrian told her the year of his birth, which was sheep. They laughed again and suddenly they counted among them besides sheep, serpent, tiger, cock and horse, feeling themselves in a zoo.

  Telly: „The summer did you spend in Siberia again?“

  Alice: „No, after the classes in the old castle in Scotland, we flew with Maria to South China to learn to fight, like kung-fu. That was not really hard regarding our steeled bodies in Siberia, which had been kept training during our stay in Scotland, in the big fitness hall of the old castle.“

  Billy: „Incredible to think that your mourning dress is hiding that much ability in you. How long did you need to have mastered the kung-fu?“

  Alice: „Oh, we were just panda bears compared to the master, who had trained from their childhood on as hard as a bamboo, but our only aim was to be able to protect ourselves in any given condition far away from being the professional one. But our master, who was a kind elder man with an exceptional lightness of body and soul, taught us the most discipline and some tricks to win the fight without losing energy both physically and mentally.“

  Adrian: „The way of kung-fu has its fantastic philosophical background and great wisdom. Even you can learn a lot regarding the wisdom to attain strength in mind without having to learn the physical challenge.“

  Alice: „Yes, that had been a great experience, but physically I haven’t had much occasion to practice in such extent as we learnt.“

  John: „So young and you had experienced so many things in life compared to the girls at your age.“

  Alice: „Yes, you are right by saying that, but that was just the thick visible silver lining which made the cloud look silver. Well, after having spent the summer in South China surrounded by Chinese meadows and mountains which were very different from the Siberian nature, we flew back to the old castle in Scotland, where I felt like coming home. There we spent all the time doing the same training both mental and physical, improving language skills dealing with security devices, till my eighteenth birthday, where I became my new name Alice officially, passports of different nationality, but the same name and age. Maria told us, as we turned eighteen, that we were turning a new leave of our lives, but under the same parasol Maria, we were her agents and the three girls including me were her call girls reserved by her high society clients.“

  John: „Poor girls! What the other two girls looked like?“

  Alice: „The one came from Russia, who looked like a barbie girl with her blond hair, big blue eyes, very pretty despite the soldier training, she kep
t her femininity and the other one was from Vietnam also good looking with her long black hair and big black eyes, wide low nose and bit darker skin. I think that Maria had made her choices, not only regarding the endurance provided by bad condition, but also the look, in other words the potential of the improvement of the beauty. As well the boys were all good looking, but none of them was my taste of beauty.“

  Adrian: „The potential of blossoming, that is right regarding the teenage youth.“

  Billy: „Alice, that looks like that the training had an expensive purpose playing big budget. Did you know who was the brain behind the organization?“

  Alice: „No, Maria had never told us anything about herself, because of the fear that one of us would change the devotion to her sometime, like a rifle lost in the other’s hand. Even the girls and boys had to keep a certain distance to each other, as if each of us was an independent agency, an agent and prostitute. But we loved Maria in a certain way, who gave us that much opportunity which we couldn’t have had without her, but the purpose of the pills left scars on the soul lightening silent fire of rage on the road to become a devil longing for a revenge.“

  John: „So, had you just done what Maria told you to be done?“

  Alice: „That doomed to be continued like that till I met the man…“

  Telly: „The man, who was the love of your life?“

  Alice nodded, her big brown eyes were filled with tears. John turned to the waitress made some order for the corner. The windowless velvet wall was filling the casino hall with an era of the twenties, keeping the real time away from the sense and the modern engine of the cruise was making the gamblers forget the ocean.

  Alice: „After having duties all around the world under Maria’s control and order, surrounded by the abundance of the finest materials, my hunger after acceptance was stilled and I couldn’t see any sense in all what I was doing. I had everything what I needed to indulge my eyes and body, but not the soul, not to mention the locked heart, of which key was hanging in Maria’s mouth. That time I could count myself to a professional agent in her late twenties, as well an expensive call girl.“