by Norman Lewis
The rain soon stopped and we reached the village well before dark. A tiny man came out of a hut. Black hair fell to his shoulders and he was without front teeth. ‘Bow to the shrine,’ he said, and the Princess took us behind the hut to a mound under which the horses were buried, and I made my obeisance.
‘They passed a law making us Christians,’ Vloc explained, ‘but when one of us dies a note goes into his grave saying that he refuses to be resurrected. If there’s no way out of it we ask to be resurrected as horses.’
Next day he offered me a tiny pony to accompany him on a visit to areas which were out of reach by car. ‘They pray to horses there,’ he added as an inducement, ‘and hang flowers round their necks.’ My stallion in miniature threw me as soon as I mounted it. ‘It must be the smell he can’t stand,’ Vloc said. ‘We could rub you down with salt. That might do the trick.’
The salt was then applied, but with little success, for mounting under Vloc’s supervision the most docile of his ponies, I held on for only a few yards before being thrown over its head. Thereafter we trudged through squelching sand to a neighbouring village where garlanded horses were indeed in view. This may have been the steppe’s first attempt at transforming an authentic folk ceremony into a tourist attraction. On our arrival, young Uzbeks had been sent scurrying off into the dunes for flowers; a little while later a few returned bearing long trailers of what might have been a coarse and bedraggled version of convolvulus. While Vloc mumbled what he said was a prayer, the villagers hung the resulting garland round a horse’s neck, after which it was removed and given to the animal to eat.
Vloc had spent much of his childhood on the steppe, but he admitted that he no longer wished to stay here more than a few days—nowadays, he claimed, he was dependent on Russian food, not to be had in these backward places. When deprived of Russian bread in particular, he said, he began to feel weak after three days. The villagers had recently announced a godsend, in the form of a swarm of large edible flies, and the pessimism with which he received this erstwhile good news only served to emphasize the gap between his present state and his past.
Vloc clearly took (or pretended to take) the edible flies incident as an omen that we should depart, but, I asked, what was to be done about the Horse Princess? Was she staying on the steppe, or did she intend to return with us? Vloc said that he did not know her intentions, or whether arrangements should be made on her behalf. When he finally thought of asking the Princess herself, she replied that she would stay. She had returned to her people, after an absence of many months, to count the number of her tribe, she said. She was pleased to announce that this had increased by one. But she was worried about her horses. The Uzbeks could not be relied upon to deal with numbers, she was sorry to say, and she had come above all to be sure that the number of animals was not on the decrease.
I returned to Tashkent, where Natasha was waiting for me at the hotel. As I walked through the door nothing moved in the calm of that serene Slavic countenance. ‘Lucky you got in early,’ she said. ‘There’s been a plane cancellation and we have to take off tomorrow.’
‘Couldn’t be better,’ I said.
‘How about the steppe?’ she asked. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘I did. You’d have enjoyed it, too.’
‘I’ll phone Valentina straight away,’ she said. ‘She’ll be delighted. So it was a success in every way?’
‘It was a totally new experience,’ I explained, ‘and an immense surprise. Did you manage to amuse yourself in Samarkand while I was away?’
‘I visited more rose gardens, then Vilanski drove me here,’ Natasha said. ‘This is one of those quiet places where news soon gets round. They tell me the Horse Princess is back on the steppe.’
‘She was. I saw her; in fact I travelled with her. But not for long. She was on the move.’
‘Did they go in for a great deal of dancing wherever it was that you went?’ Natasha asked.
‘No, because it’s no more than the simplest of existences. The Horse Princess dances in the towns and puts the money to good use on the steppe. There they call her the teacher.’
‘And what does she teach?’
‘How to care for spider bites, calm lunatics and keep out the sand.’
Natasha nodded her agreement. ‘And what could be better?’
‘Another thing she teaches,’ I said, ‘and out there on the steppe it’s the most important thing of all, is resignation. I told you about the prison ship and the Uzbeks who were going to be shot? They knew it would happen, but they didn’t seem depressed in the slightest. They kept up their laughter and joking all the time. It was just about the only laughter you heard on that ship.’
‘It’s the old Muslim thing, I suppose,’ Natasha said. ‘Put up with it. It is written.’
‘I often wonder what happened to them. Do you imagine Valentina might be able to find out?’
‘I’m sure she’ll try if you ask her. Anyway, we’ll see her tomorrow. She’s certain to be at the airport to meet the plane.’
2001
About the Author
Norman Lewis (1908–2003) was one of the greatest English-language travel writers. He was the author of thirteen novels and fourteen works of nonfiction, including Naples ’44, The Tomb in Seville, and Voices of the Old Sea. Lewis served in the Allied occupation of Italy during World War II, and reported from Mafia-ruled Sicily and Vietnam under French-colonial rule, among other locations. Born in England, he traveled extensively, living in places including London, Wales, Nicaragua, a Spanish fishing village, and the countryside near Rome.
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Copyright © 2001 by Norman Lewis
Cover design by Kelly Parr
978-1-4804-3335-9
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