A Fortune-Teller Told Me

by Tiziano Terzani

  “The answer is always there,” said the lama. “The problem is to see it in the bone. That’s where the difficulty lies.” In case of doubt one could take the bone, hide it under one’s arm, and approach some people who are talking: the answer will be indicated in the first words one hears. Rather like deciding to do or not do something according to whether the first person you see on leaving the house in the morning is a man or a woman.

  I paid for the sheep, distributed some gifts which the vet had advised me to bring, and took the small packets of arz which the lama gave me for protection against various ills. The vet was enthusiastic: he felt that he had seen something wonderful. On the way back we passed many beggars: grimy children standing on pieces of plastic in the middle of the pavement, women with cards explaining how they had been widowed, or had been victims of fires or other misfortunes. “Regress,” said the vet ironically: we had talked so much of the “progress” which in my view had not yet compensated the Mongols for all that was taken from them.

  The scene in which Baron von Ungern hears for the second time that his days are numbered is described dramatically by Ossendowski. The fortune-teller, a sort of small witch, very thin and haggard, goes into a trance. She tears up her headcloth, makes grimaces of fear and pain, twists her body, and at last the words emerge, strained but precise, from her lips: “I see him … I see the God of War … His life is ending in a horrible way … And then there is the shadow … black as night … Shadow … 130 steps remain … Beyond, darkness … Nothing … I see nothing … The God of War has disappeared.”

  Ungern bowed his head. “I shall die, but that is not important. The fight has begun and it will not die. No one can put out the fire in the heart of the Mongols,” he said. Then, rising to his feet, he spoke of his vision of a great Asian Buddhist state that would soon extend from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and to the banks of the Volga, a state governed by a man more powerful than Genghis Khan and more merciful than the Sultan Baber, who would rule until, from his subterranean capital, the King of the World would come. “But first Russia must cleanse itself of the insult of the revolution, it must purify itself with blood and death. All those who have accepted Communism must perish, with their families, so that not one seed remains and there are no descendants,” said the bloody baron, departing toward his destiny.

  The woman who read Ungern’s future in 1921 was a famous seer whose powers were said to have come from her mother, a Gypsy. According to the Mongol legends only a few human beings had visited the Underground Kingdom; among these were the Gypsies, who returned with the art of reading the future in cards, in grass, and in the palm of the hand.

  For me, meeting the most famous seer of Ulan Bator, described to me as “a sort of witch, of strange origins,” was another step in my journey in Ossendowski’s footsteps. The appointment was made by the former Communist official who had become religious. She introduced herself by telling me she was the reincarnation of a lama, that on her left shoulder she had three black marks where her “predecessor” had thrown his tunic, and that in all the religious places she visited she was immediately recognized as a person who had already gone a long way toward enlightenment. Even the Dalai Lama, during a visit to Ulan Bator, had singled her out and had given her some of his very special pills for protection in case of danger.

  “In what year were you born?” she asked as we drove to our appointment with the witch.

  “Nineteen thirty-eight, the year of the tiger,” I replied.

  “The tiger? So was I, but twelve years later. The 1938 tiger is the one with eight white spots. Your element is water. The tiger is generous, it controls its territory. You are always seeking food for your family, and always on guard to protect it.”

  The palmist in Singapore had told me similar things.

  “In Buddhism,” the woman continued, “the tiger is the great enemy of demons; therefore in the lamaist rites there is always a tiger, and the tiger’s tail is often portrayed in the tankas. No animal is stronger than the tiger. The tiger can kill everybody, but it has one great enemy: man, because he is more intelligent. Between the tiger and man there is a relation of love and hate, of mutual attraction and fear. I have a difficult marriage because I married a man born in the year of the monkey, and the monkey is the animal closest to man. Like many tiger women, I have trouble having children. Tiger women are greatly feared. Therefore in Asia a woman who is a tiger never mentions it, otherwise she would not find a husband. The tiger always seeks quality, she wants the best, and this can be a great defect when the tiger insists on the best food, the best clothes, the best way of living. Then she must control herself.”

  I listened to her with great pleasure, until it struck me that even tigers are an endangered species. How will the people of the future manage to orient themselves toward the character and personality of their neighbors when they no longer have animals to observe, when they no longer have nature from which to learn?

  By now we were out of Ulan Bator, heading north. We passed a large cemetery on a hillside. The line of white wooden steles resembled an immense picket fence. “In the past the dead were left to nature, to feed the birds, but since the revolution we bury them,” said my companion. “If the body disappeared in three days it meant that the deceased was a good person. If it lasted longer it meant that not even the animals wanted him, and that was a bad omen for his reincarnation.” A remnant of that tradition can be seen in the fact that the Mongols consider ravens and vultures as sacred, and no one kills or eats them.

  We passed a recently reopened temple with a beautiful pair of gilded beasts on its roof, and at last we arrived at a large colony of yurts, each ringed by the usual crooked wooden fence. Even the green doors, decorated with strange white dots and circles, were all awry. The home of the witch was in a cluttered courtyard with the usual yurt, and at the back a small white house. We entered through the kitchen, where women sat on the ground frying doughnuts in a big cauldron of oil.

  The witch’s room was very tidy: a bed covered by a tapestry of horses, some suitcases, a chest with photos of her family and men in military uniform on top. Under socialism everything is regulated, even the occult: on the wall hung framed documents certifying that she was a member of the Traditional Medicine Association and the Mongolian Association of Persons with Special Powers, as well as various other honors and photographs of her with prominent people.

  As soon as I saw this “witch” I realized that there was no better word to describe her: tiny and thin, with a wrinkled face, long greasy hair, very small eyes and a gold tooth. She wore a green floral dress, and over it a modest smock of a lighter green. She told me she had once worked as a bus driver in Ulan Bator, but her powers had made it impossible to continue. Driving along the street she would constantly feel the good or evil qualities of places and people, and this made her very nervous. If a thief or murderer got on the bus she immediately felt it and could no longer drive. She said she was fifty-eight years old, and was born in a region of the north near the Gobi Desert. Of Gypsy parents? She did not know. They were very poor, but her birth had brought them good fortune.

  The first time she realized that she had powers was when she was nine years old. Her father had sent her to guard some sheep, and she saw that the wolves and dogs were afraid of her and did not approach the flock. Even then she felt that her mission was to help people. If she saw that someone was near death, she had the ability to prolong his life for three or four years. Not more, she added modestly.

  She sat on her bed, and indicated that I was to sit on a low stool at her feet. She had a strange way of breathing, continually puffing like someone who feels a hair on his face and tries to blow it away. She picked up a Buddhist rosary and began scrutinizing me very intently, especially behind my ears, as if she were searching for something. Then she looked into a mirror behind me which reflected another mirror on the chest. Gazing into my eyes, she began to speak. My ex-Marxist companion, reincarnation of a lama, translated.
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  “Your family consists of four persons. You have two children, the first is a boy, the second a girl. Eight or nine years ago there was an important event in your life. I cannot say if that event was a good or an evil, but it changed your life.” (Excellent: my expulsion from China. It certainly changed my life, and for a while I myself was not sure if it was good or bad. Only today can I say it was good.) “Until the end of your life nothing else of that kind will happen to you, nothing bad, no accidents. You will have a long life, very long; especially if you calm yourself and begin to meditate.” (She too!) “Give me three numbers under ten.”

  “Three, six, nine,” I replied without thinking. She took her rosary, put it around her neck and around her waist, did some calculations, separated a few beads, and then said: “Your number is eighteen thousand. You must worship this number; you must never forget it. This number will help you throughout your life. If you are in trouble, if you feel yourself in danger, think intensely of this number and all will be well. Remember: eighteen thousand.”

  She stood up, took some peacock feathers and fanned the air around me, blowing on me very hard as if to drive away spirits.

  “What is your profession?” she asked.

  “I live by words, like you,” I said. Then, fearing that she might take me for a competitor and put the evil eye on me, I added: “I write articles, books.”

  “Good. In the year of the pig” (did she mean 1995 or 2007, I wondered) “your books will be successful” (I was about to believe her and feel delighted), “because in the past your works have been banned, suppressed. But now there is more freedom and it is easier to circulate them.” (Clearly she was looking not at my future, but at that of a Mongolian writer. Her prophecy, as I had noted in other cases, reflected local conditions.) “You have a problem with your wife. She is against your profession, she is against your writing, she wants you to stop. But you must pay no attention to her. You must continue. Your wife is very jealous of you because you always travel.”

  After a splendid beginning, it seemed now that the woman was reading the wrong book, and that I could expect nothing more of interest from her. She made some more inaccurate comments about my relations with Angela, gave advice as to how my children should marry, and put me on guard against the alcoholism of Folco (poor boy, he doesn’t touch even wine! But in Mongolia alcoholism among young people is one of the worst problems), and continued reciting other banalities I now knew by heart.

  But aren’t these the things people worry about most? If their wife or husband is unfaithful, if their daughter will marry, if their son will find a good job. Who goes to a fortune-teller to ask if the hole in the ozone layer can be repaired, if the world’s population can go on growing unchecked? It has always been so. Even the great oracles of the past were faced with the same questions: “Will I win the battle against my enemies?” Always survival, love, death. Our anxiety is for the immediate, for what closely touches us, our loved ones, our family. Curiosity about world affairs, about collective events, has always been limited.

  The witch picked up her rosary, blew on it, put it around my neck, blew on my head as if to drive away dust or evil spirits, and said she would think of me, she would pray for me, and I would live happily to the age of ninety or a hundred.

  I was annoyed with myself for having come so far to meet an ordinary soothsayer. In the kitchen there was a great sizzling of oil, and occasionally the aroma of burnt sugar came to my nostrils. I was thinking I would like to eat some of those doughnuts … now there was a powerful thought! A moment later the witch offered us some. The best part of the visit, I thought. But then, perhaps not. How else would I have come to the outskirts of Ulan Bator? How would I have entered one of those many identical houses? The thought consoled me.

  I asked the woman if she believed in reincarnation. Of course! When she walked among the graves in a cemetery, she could feel who was reincarnated and who was not. That was a new idea for me—the unfortunate ones who are not reincarnated and have to remain in the putrefying cadaver. “Therefore one must respect one’s father and mother,” said the witch. “They are persons who have helped another human being to be reincarnated.” That was another thing I had never thought of.

  Before I left, she, like the lama, gave me some arz wrapped in a little packet to always keep with me for protection. She also presented me with two Chinese bowls to eat from; if they should break I must absolutely keep the pieces. Then, as something even more sacred, she gave me her photo, passport size, one of the old-fashioned ones with deckle edges, to help me think of her from afar.

  I had a feeling that the sprig of scented grass drying between the pages of the book must have been pleasing to Ossendowski. It must have taken him back, as sometimes only odors can do, to the days he had spent in Urga. I would have liked to take another morning walk with him and revisit Hutuktu’s throne room, but I had an appointment with the geologist-taxi driver-head of faculty. He brought along, as interpreter, a stylish young man who spoke excellent French. He worked in the Foreign Ministry, but his dream was to go to a business school in Bordeaux and then become a businessman.

  We were headed for the monastery of Ghisir, on the high plateau where the Gandan Temple also stands. Long ago Ghisir had been a school for monastic astrologers and fortune-tellers, and it had just been reopened to resume its old work, training a few young novices in the art of prophecy. “The abbot is one who sees,” said the geologist-taxi driver as he drove along. My young interpreter was very skeptical, and somewhat embarrassed to be part of this expedition. He was wearing a well-cut blue blazer with brass buttons, gray trousers, white shirt, striped tie and shiny leather shoes: all the right gear to mark him as a respectable person, not to be challenged by the bouncers at the doors of hotels where imported products can be bought for dollars. He was an up-and-coming young man with his eye on the international future, and here I was taking him back to the Mongol middle ages.

  Practically nothing remained in the two remaining buildings of the old monastic complex. There was not one statue, one painting, one old piece of furniture. Grass was growing on the roofs, and even the stone steps leading to the terrace of the small pavilion where the abbot lived had been removed. It was hard to imagine the place in past times. Only certain sounds, perhaps, were the same as those of old. In a big bare room about ten novices, supervised by an elderly lama sitting on a high chair, were reading some sutras with obsessive monotony, to the rhythmic chiming of cymbals.

  My young interpreter found it absurd that the novices were reading in Tibetan, a language they did not understand. The geologist-taxi driver explained to him that lamaist Buddhism is Tibetan, that the originals of the sacred texts are in that language and the Mongol texts had been destroyed. “But it’s crazy,” said the young man. This crazy phenomenon, however, was becoming important: a huge number of young men were asking to be novices, said the geologist-taxi driver, and the temples were reopening “like mushrooms.”

  Perhaps here too the failure of socialist modernity has induced a movement back to the origins. Someone who recently returned from the north of Mongolia told me that the few factories in the region were closing for want of raw materials, and many Mongols were happily going back to tend the flocks. It would not be surprising. What has modernity offered them to compensate for all it destroyed? What has it substituted for the beautiful myths and legends it swept away? The myth of a business school in Bordeaux?

  We had to wait for a while, as there was a queue of people outside the abbot’s door who wanted to see him. After they had all been received—my young interpreter was annoyed that we did not have priority—our turn came.

  The room was small and very dusty. The abbot was a tall, strong man of about forty, with a pockmarked face and eyes like two narrow slits. His skin was very dark, his arms muscular as those of a wrestler, his hands large and oddly shaped, with palms much longer than the fingers and oversized thumbs. He sat at a table on which was a wooden box about two feet long and
a foot wide, containing some very fine gray dust: ashes of incense.

  I was the first foreigner to have his future read by the abbot. His method was to ask first for my year of birth and then for a number under 109. With a silver chopstick he drew some complicated signs in the ashes, canceled them, and drew some more. He traced a picture of my life that was there one moment and vanished the next, as with a simple movement of the box he restored the ashes to a perfectly smooth surface. I liked his truths because they were more ephemeral than horoscopes written on paper, to which one could later return.

  That was precisely the secret, said the abbot: because every calculation was canceled and he had to remember it by heart, he was forced to concentrate and therefore to “see” better. At the end he traced a perfect circle in the ashes, inscribed some signs in it, and went to consult a sheaf of handwritten papers. The original basis of his system lay in the 108 volumes of the Ganjur, the sacred book of the Mongols; but what counted most were the registers with annotations on the events of the past, and those had disappeared. The lamas had reconstructed them from 1940 on, but could not go back earlier than that. Therefore my horoscope was difficult for him to work out.

  “Do you have heart trouble?” he asked me.

  “Not yet,” I replied.

  He was sure that I would have it sooner or later—not serious, but definitely heart trouble. He said that if I wanted to stay healthy I should never cut down trees.

  For the young interpreter all this was madness—and anyway, he had heard talk of a great seer, a blind woman called Vanga. “Where?” I asked, once again ready to set off on the trail.

  “In Bulgaria, in a little town on the Greek border,” he said.

  I went back to the hotel for lunch. In the dining room I found the usual situation—no free tables. At first I sat at one where an American was explaining something about China to his Mongolian guide. I got up before ordering and moved to a table with a Lebanese who was in Mongolia to sell French telephones. I told him about my morning and mentioned the marvelous seer of whom I had just heard.