by Joshua Fogel
“What have you just come from doing? What’s that look on your faces?”
Temüjin said that Begter was on the small mountain, but was not likely to be coming back. Ö’elün’s face was transformed in the twinkling of an eye; she let out a groan and scowled at Temüjin.
“You’ve killed one of a small number of your allies—like a dog chewing its afterbirth, or a panther rushing into a cliff, or a lion unable to stifle its rage, or a serpent swallowing animals alive, or a large falcon dashing at its own shadow, or a churaqa fish swallowing silently, or a camel biting at the heel of its colt.”
At the point, Ö’elün ceased speaking, or, to be more precise, her agitation took the words away from her. Eventually, though, she continued in an even more impassioned tone:
“You have killed. You have killed an irreplaceable ally—like a wolf injuring its head and mouth, or a mandarin duck eating its young because it cannot keep up with them, or a jackal attacking if one moves his sleeping spot, or a tiger not hesitating to capture its quarry, or a wolverine rushing off recklessly.”
Ö’elün ceased speaking at this point and collapsed onto the ground. Temüjin did not know that a person could become so profoundly incensed. Given the virulence of her manner of speech, she clearly had collapsed in anger, like a rainstorm raging so fiercely one does not even realize when it has stopped.
Until that moment, Temüjin was not the least inclined to allow Begter’s accomplice, Belgütei, to go on living, but his mother’s anger made him reverse his murderous designs. He whispered to Qasar:
“We’re going to let Belgütei live.”
Having now lost his partner, Belgütei was someone who might, as their mother had said, be an important ally. Qasar was dumbfounded at their mother’s expression of fury, but when he caught on to Temüjin’s words, this loyal family supporter offered:
“Belgütei does have some good attributes. When he takes a vow, he never breaks it.”
At their mother’s demand, Temüjin and Qasar buried Begter’s corpse on the small mountainside.
Ö’elün visited the site almost every day for some three months. For his part, Temüjin did not believe he had erred in his actions. Since Begter’s disappearance from the scene, life in their yurt had become immeasurably more peaceful. Not a single verbal argument had broken out among the brothers. In his accomplice’s absence, Belgütei had become a changed, mild-mannered young man. As Qasar said, once he made a promise, no matter what transpired, he would always abide by it.
After Begter’s death, Temüjin remembered the final words out of his mouth even with the passage of time. They seemed to follow him everywhere, as if replicating the tenacity of Begter’s rancor itself: “Qasar, you shoot your arrow first. … I don’t want to die from the arrow of a Merkid.”
Countless times these words came back into Temüjin’s mind. In the final moment when Begter realized that he could not escape, he thought to say something spiteful, but it was nonetheless a feeling that had gotten under Begter’s skin.
In addition, Temüjin always remembered the words that Begter had used to assail him that same morning. Was he was not the son of Yisügei but of a Merkid man? What would it mean if his mother was Ö’elün, but his father was not actually Yisügei? And what did Begter mean by saying that Yisügei never loved him?
Amid the many words that Begter had hurled at him, those that left the deepest scars in Temüjin’s mind were his final words, that Yisügei did not love him.
From time to time, when he wasn’t entirely sure, Temüjin would find himself recalling in precise detail every single word and deed that his late father had said or done to him. Even in Yisügei’s few words and trivial actions—such as how he moved his eyes—Temüjin tried to detect some kind of meaning. This sort of work inspired spiritual isolation and intense physical fatigue. An exhausted Temüjin thought that possibly there had been something different in the way Yisügei behaved toward him as opposed to his other children. Once he began thinking along these lines, Yisügei seemed altogether a different man from the one Temüjin had known when he was alive, and cast an immense eerie shadow.
The more he brooded over this, the more his having been entrusted from age nine to the Unggirads took on a completely different meaning. Perhaps it had been his father’s intention to get rid of him to this alien lineage settlement. He had returned home only because of his father’s death, but had his father been alive, would he have had to remain abandoned forever in that village near the Xing’an Mountains?
From around the time he turned fifteen, Temüjin became not only reticent but also more sullenly taciturn, rarely speaking to anyone. He and his younger brothers fortified their solid physiques tirelessly cultivating the leeks and shallots their mother planted, but the young leader always seemed to find himself alone, sitting inside their tent.
Unfortunately, Temüjin was not near anyone who could have alleviated his doubts. Were he to ask his mother, the whole problem might have been cleared up immediately, but he was not willing to ask Ö’elün about the secret of his birth. He thought he might again touch the frenzied rage that she had shown when they had killed Begter. It appeared as though the words he had uttered to her contained something that goaded her heart and might again put her in that maddened state.
As far as Temüjin was concerned, there was nothing particularly cruel in the hypothesis that Merkid, not Mongol, blood was coursing through his body. He simply had to be Yisügei’s son. If he were not, then he would have no connection with Grandfather Bartan Ba’atur or Great-grandfather Qabul, or earlier with Tumbinai Sechen (Tumbinai “the wise”), or with Bai Shingqor Doqshin before him, or much earlier with the brave Qabichi, or with Bodonchar Mungqaq (son of the fair Alan and light from a corner of heaven), or further back still to Du’a Soqor (the man with one eye) or Toroqoljin Bayan, or back many generations to Yeke Nidün, Sali Qacha’u, or all the way to the first Mongol Batachiqan—and, pursuing this chain all the way back, to the latter’s father, the blue wolf that crossed the large lake to the west, and his mother, the pale doe. No trace of such a doubt could remain.
When Temüjin contemplated the possibility that he bore no relationship to the wolf or doe of highest antiquity, he was overcome by a feeling of utter hopelessness, as if all had turned black before his eyes. Ever since he could remember from his earliest youth, he had lived within the transmission of the Mongol origins. Having his body now deprived of Mongol blood meant denying this entire past as well as any future. Temüjin now no longer knew what he had been living for, nor for that matter what he would live for in the future. Was there neither a drop of the wolf’s nor a drop of the doe’s blood in his own? Was he, then, unrelated to those two beautiful creatures that had spawned so many brave men, capable archers, and sagely figures? Qasar, Qachi’un, Temüge, and the weak female Temülün, as well as his half-brother, Belgütei, all carried Mongol blood—did he alone not share in this heritage? At his wits’ end, worried sick day in and day out, Temüjin would always forcibly thrust aside his suspicions as empty speculation unworthy of consideration. For, right or wrong, he had to be a member of the Mongolian people.
In the summer of his fifteenth year, Temüjin had an unusual experience. At this time, his yurt was set up on grassland on the right shore (as one went downriver) along the middle reaches of the Onon River. One day he was returning home from the pastureland when he caught sight of a destitute man walking at the far end of the plateau. Since he had been separated from his own settlement, Temüjin would see another person at most two or three times a year. Moved by an urge for companionship, Temüjin cautiously rode his horse over in the man’s direction. Unexpectedly, the man was a Borjigin known to Temüjin. In his youth, Temüjin remembered, he had played with the man’s children in their yurt.
“Hey, you’re Yisügei’s son,” he said with emphasis. “Absolutely, you’re Temüjin.” In a short period of time, fifteen-year-old Temüjin had grown into a fine young man. As far as he was concerned, this man
was one of the lineage who in anger had abandoned his mother and siblings, but Temüjin also felt in this shabbily dressed, haggard little man looking up at him a yearning to meet up with members of his lineage, and thus he bore him no ill will.
“How are you supporting yourselves?” asked the man. Not only was it incomprehensible that they could survive alone in their yurt, completely isolated from the settlement, but also it was beyond his comprehension that Temüjin could grow into such a stalwart youth. Temüjin learned from this fellow that the members of the Borjigin lineage who remained under Targhutai Khan of the Tayichi’uds had not fared well at all.
When the man finished speaking and was about to depart, Temüjin, from an emotion even he could not suppress, called out to him unthinking:
“Wait!” Temüjin thought that perhaps the man could help unravel the secret of his own roots by which he had long been haunted.
“I am Yisügei’s son? Go on, say it,” called Temüjin to the man, who was looking back over his shoulder. For a moment the man was confused by this extraordinary question, but after a while he answered nebulously:
“Well, certainly.”
There was a stern look on Temüjin’s face when he finally spoke once more:
“Not everyone knows this. Only Mother Ö’elün does. But what can I do? My mother was abducted twice by a Tatar. My younger brothers are Yisügei’s sons, but I don’t know whose son I am, because Borjigin and Tayichi’ud women were all taken by force once or twice.” Temüjin was speaking in utmost seriousness.
“Uhuh, I see. Well, your mother did come to us when Yisügei snatched her from a Merkid, so if your father’s not Yisügei, you’d be a Merkid, right? So, be the person you want to be. Anyway, you’ve got to wait until you’re fifty to know for sure. Truth be told, everyone learns who their parents are when they turn fifty. Merkid people age fast and they’re all thieves. Kereyids have receding hairlines and are all miserly.”
“Are they Mongols?” said the youngster with an expression of incomprehension.
“Mongols become wolves,” said the old man.
Temüjin didn’t know precisely what it meant to become a wolf, but didn’t question him further. Becoming a wolf—as opposed to ageing fast and stealing or have a receding hairline and being stingy—struck him as something qualitatively different. There was in the expression “to become a wolf” something that registered with Temüjin—vague, to be sure, but nonetheless something that had been with him from early on—and it was connected, it seemed, with the secret of Mongolian blood. In this sense, the answers offered up by this ragged old Borjigin man seemed accurate. Any other way of putting it could certainly not explain the issue of blood.
Although Temüjin had been unable to unearth any of the essential details of his birth, he was resigned to it and let the man go. Now all that he could think about was becoming a wolf at age fifty.
As he reflected on it, he thought that it was better to have met this Borjigin man than not. On his way home after leaving the man, Temüjin vowed that he would never ask his mother about the identity of his father. To shoot the arrow of such a question at Ö’elün would not only embarrass her but also sadden her—it offered not a single positive result. If his mother were to tell him that his father was a Merkid, what could that possibly mean for him? Everything that now supported him would be completely rent asunder. By contrast, if he were to learn that his blood was indeed that of a Mongol, it would be merely a consolation. Ö’elün surely knew what was proper to say and what was not. Most important, as the shabby old man had said, was that he, Temüjin, believed that Yisügei was his father and that accordingly he had inherited Mongolian blood.
When Temüjin reached home late that night, he reported having met an old man of their lineage that day. He told his mother and siblings that the Borjigin people were not, in this man’s assessment, doing at all well.
“Just a little more patience,” said Ö’elün. “When you all become full-fledged adults, the Borjigins will come scrambling to our side.”
Although he said nothing, Temüjin had no interest whatsoever in waiting until he reached his majority to launch an attack on their enemies, the Tayichi’uds, and regain the Borjigin settlement and bring it back together as before. His was not an easygoing manner. Temüjin could afford to lose no time in becoming a wolf—not only for the Borjigin lineage and for Ö’elün and his siblings, but also for himself. No becoming a thief or a miser! No hair turning light brown or going bald! He could never resemble another line’s appearance in any way. And Temüjin had to become a wolf. That would definitively prove that he was the son of Yisügei and that Mongolian blood coursed through his veins.
2
The Merkid Massacre
AFTER THE MISFORTUNE OF BEING abandoned by all of their other kin, Ö’elün and her children lived for two years in their small yurt in the northern foothills of Mount Burqan. Temüjin was now sixteen. Physically, he was considerably stronger than his father Yisügei had ever been, even in his most formidable years, with a far more robust build. Insofar as there was nothing pressing to attend to, he remained taciturn to the point of only rarely speaking, but the entire family had taken shape around him and in this way lived harmoniously. In any business matter or family affair, Temüjin had absolute authority and gave all orders. If there was a matter not to be decided solely by himself, he would consult his fourteen-year-old brother, Qasar, as Temüjin had decided that Qasar was his second in command within the family.
Qasar still had the dependable nature he had borne since his earliest years. Thoroughly cautious about everything, he continued to work as Temüjin’s trusted advisor. In those matters in which Temüjin sought his view and he himself did not have a fixed opinion, he would not give Temüjin an immediate response, but went and consulted with his half-brother, Belgütei, who was roughly the same age, and the two of them hammered out a position that they brought to their older brother. Belgütei had an extraordinary physique surpassing even that of Temüjin, though he possessed a number of rougher aspects as well. He was not particularly scrupulous about little matters and somehow had developed a certain gentleness about him. Therefore, more than Temüjin himself, he was beloved by twelve-year-old Qachi’un, ten-year-old Temüge, and their youngest sibling, eight-year-old sister Temülün. Ö’elün and her children may have been a poor and isolated family, but the seven of them—with Temüjin at the core—managed to live in peace.
Mother Ö’elün’s position within the family was special. Temüjin never consulted her on anything but used his own judgment for all decisions. On occasion, she might put in a word or offer her own opinion. In such instances, Temüjin listened attentively to what his mother had to say, but he never allowed his own view of things to be influenced by it. Opinions were for gleaning information only. To be sure, Temüjin never slighted or ignored his mother. She was his greatest concern. He always saw to it that she received the best pieces of meat, and when unusual items such as bedding or clothing came into his possession, he made sure to give them first to her. When it came to the business of running the household, though, he allowed her no voice at all. Ö’elün’s only options then were to be an advisor or a critic. Thus, no matter what she might have wished to do, without the approval of Temüjin, she could not so much as move some bedding around.
This method of operations adopted by Temüjin was highly prudent. If Mother Ö’elün had meddled in every matter and tried to alter things even a little, the family would never have functioned well. Even though Belgütei was a half-brother and Ö’elün loved him just as much as she did her other children, a distinctive relationship between the two of them had not been snuffed out. As before, Belgütei was a stepchild for Ö’elün, and Ö’elün was a stepmother for Belgütei. So Ö’elün always failed to demonstrate a fair proportion of love for Belgütei, and to that extent he always bore his own suspicions regarding her.
The complexity of relations among the brothers did not end there, though. Temüjin himself was
in precisely the same position as Belgütei. In his heart of hearts, he had not fully extinguished the idea that he might not be Yisügei’s son. He would have to bear the doubt once hurled at him by Begter, whom he had killed, all the way to the grave. Like his four siblings, Qasar, Qachi’un, Temüge, and Temülün, he had certainly been delivered of the womb of Ö’elün, but his father was a different matter. And although they were all born of the same mother, perhaps there were different allotments of love. This was an issue of subtle complexity that defied Temüjin’s imagination, but it nonetheless tortured him to no end. If he took control in all matters away from his mother, he believed, everything would move along smoothly.
Ö’elün was not the least bit disconcerted by this mode of behavior on Temüjin’s part. She was thoroughly cherished and treated with great affection by her children, and indeed, as a mother, was even pleased that all such matters would be handled under Temüjin’s leadership. The full trust she enjoyed in her six children shone in her eyes.
Just as Temüjin would on occasion take some time to himself and sit in a corner of the yurt, deeply engrossed in his own thoughts, Ö’elün too would now and again take time to indulge in her own private thoughts, which would never be divulged to anyone. These were never long periods, in fact quite short, but once in a while she would abruptly fall into such a secret abyss. Who did Temüjin really resemble? Was it Yisügei or Chiledü, a male member of the Merkid lineage?
Ö’elün herself did not know which of these two men had sired Temüjin. She assumed that when he grew up, she would be able to judge based on whom he resembled more, but Temüjin did not resemble either one—neither when he was very young nor at any time until the present. If she pressed her search for clues, at times, such as when he slightly stooped his large frame to enter the tent, his physical carriage seemed to resemble that of Yisügei. Although it happened only once, one evening when a fierce windstorm was blowing, while rain was pelting the outside of the tent, she heard Temüjin’s voice assiduously directing his younger brothers to reinforce weak spots in the yurt lest the wind blow it away altogether. Ö’elün sensed Yisügei’s presence on this occasion too. Temüjin’s voice shouting out orders reached Ö’elün’s ears intermittently as she stared out from the entrance into the darkness with its violent wind and rain.