It could not be a book by him or he would know that much. No, that was not necessarily the case. Supposing he had visited this part of the world before, during the years of stolen memory… Supposing on that occasion he had done the identical things he had done this time. Supposing he had even been stung by a scorpion before. Supposing he had even met Murray-Roberts and Dr. Haydar before—and they had just happened not to mention it this time. No: absurd. But they might not have been here in earlier years. Supposing he had traveled in Central Asia and written a book about it… If it had been published—well, let’s say two years earlier: then not just he but the rest of the world might have forgotten about it. Supposing… A word that embraced infinity.
As he was bumping his way over the cobbles of these speculations, he was pushing through the crowds looking for a bookstall carrying English-language books.
Of course it was preposterous to imagine he had written any such volume. But the alternative was even more alarming. The alternative would be a book featuring him in it as a character. In which case, he would be reduced to fiction, someone with no existence beyond the printed page. What if he came on that book, “Burnell’s Travels,” or whatever it might be called, and found himself to be merely imaginary… And an imaginary subsidiary character at that…
What price reality then? “Shit,” he thought, “the universe is badly at fault. If I’d been in charge of creation I’d have found some less tacky medium than time to stage the whole performance in.”
He would have started to tremble and had there been room to do so in the general crush. “Well,” he said to himself, “there is an argument which says our whole world is nothing but a dream.” Who was the Chinese idiot who dreamed he was a butterfly and woke to wonder whether he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a man, or words to that effect? Shortly following his mother’s death, he had gone to a monastery in Nottinghamshire for a week of yogic transcendental meditation. On the wall of the Hall of Meditation (draughty in a rather Nottinghamshire way) hung a painted scroll which read, “I prayed to my soul to keep on dreaming me and my soul said, Who’s there?”
Recalling that scroll now, he wondered why his maternal hallucination by the Friendship Bridge bothered him so: he was a rational being. He toured all the stalls in the station foyer. No English books anywhere. Just to make sure, he toured them again. Still no English books. The hallucination had been joking. Was that good or bad? He could not decide, just as he had never decided whether he was into Bartok or Chaos theory.
The stall at which he was standing stocked foreign newspapers, most of them printed in Arabic script. Among them he saw a London paper, The Independent. It was only two days old.
Scanning its headlines, he was surprised or otherwise to find that General “Gus” Stalinbrass had been assassinated. Stalinbrass had stepped ashore at the port of Varna and had been hit by a sniper’s bullet an hour after landing. Seventy people had been rounded up and arrested but nobody had been charged as yet. Stalinbrass had died in a naval hospital that evening.
Turning to the Obituary page to see what good could possibly be said about that ferocious soldier, Burnell saw at the bottom of the page another name he knew. The champion Hungarian skier, Peter Remenyi, had died after many days in a coma. He left behind a widow and two children.
Closing the paper abruptly, Burnell shoved it back on the rack and went to sit down on a nearby bench, nestling against a fat Turkmeni lady.
The world, no doubt about it, was more weirdly constructed than anyone could realize. Had his near-death by scorpion coincided with the hour of Remenyi’s death? Had the vision of his mother led him to this one particular newsstand in order that he should pick up The Independent and read there of the death of his friend?
But of course Peter had ceased to be his friend. He had no memory at all of Peter: only his name in green lettering on the screen of his electronic diary.
Then there was the business of his being haunted by Remenyi’s coma. Because that seemed insoluble, he had carefully put it to one side.
It must all be highly significant, or it meant nothing.
But as much could be said of an individual life.
He felt rather faint. Nastiklof was right. Man’s main drive was a quest for meaning in life, bugger it. How much more straightforward would be drives for pleasure and power, as advocated by—to use Nastiklofs phrase—“those rotters Freud and Adler.”
Behind the steamy windows of the station restaurant, meals were being served up at a great rate, mutton curries, pilaffs, kebabs, and a hundred dishes of exotic name. Doors swung to and fro, waiters bustled back and forth. Over everything genial disorder reigned. A bowl of chicken and paprika soup would be welcome, but Burnell had not the courage to enter the melee. He bought a hot dog at a stall instead, his spirits reviving as he chewed. Hot dogs were ideal antidotes to metaphysical scares.
His equanimity regained, Burnell, squeezed among the immense jostle of people, felt something he recognized as contentment: the scent of a great unknown Asian world with its own laws, tongues, and customs he could never learn. To a foreign eye the pressures of the twenty-first century seemed scarcely to impinge on this world. He had no knowledge of why such impressions made him happy. Was there a lost memory which might explain it? Had a woman—perhaps some ideal unprofessional whore who had taken a fancy to him—once told him a secret, or even made a gesture, through which he had been able to enter, if vicariously, into the beckoning-forbidding universe of Muslim faiths?
The noticeboards announced trains due to make routine journeys eastwards to Bukhara, Samarkand, Alma-Ata, and even Kashgar in Sinkiang Province. A cheap ticket would carry you to the unknown.
But he and Hikmat Haydar were to be traveling westwards, heading away from the mysteries, the yellow distances, the irregular, towards a world of money markets and regulations, where airports never closed.
He climbed aboard the Krasnovodsk train. There was no point in staying where he was. There never had been, for as long as he could remember.
Haydar arrived dressed for the journey, a carnation in the lapel of his sand-colored suit and an astrakhan coat draped over his shoulders. He appeared unusually anxious as he boarded, complaining about the numbers of armed police patrolling the platforms. “They’re looking out for the Three Young PRICCs, I suppose,” said Burnell, carelessly. Haydar continued to mutter, clutching more closely to his ample chest a heavy carrier bag.
The bag bore the legend “Nieman Marcus, Dallas.” The sight of it, the sight of Haydar in his finery, filled Burnell with pleasure. Here was something of which he could be certain. He could be certain that Murray-Roberts had not lied to him. Haydar was a crook. Today in his immense suit he looked the part.
It was expedient for him to let things cool down in Ashkhabad. This was why he was on the train, and had somehow finagled himself a reservation in the same compartment as Burnell.
“At five do we leave?” Burnell asked, glancing at his watch, conscious that his grasp of syntax was disintegrating under a bombardment of home-made English. Beginning to get nervous, he rose and looked out of the window. Certainly there were police on the platform; one was licking an ice cream.
“I can tell you what I read on the timetable by the ticket office,” Haydar said. “The notice says: ‘The times printed on this timetable are times before which trains will not leave.’ From that, you gather what you gather. This train will not leave definitely before five o’clock.”
The train pulled away from Ashkhabad station at five-twenty. Burnell considered this not bad at all. Hauled by an immense Czech diesel, the carriages clattered through suburbs and cotton mills, in the direction of the Caspian; before Ashkhabad fell away behind them, the heating was working, and they closed the window.
Watching with interest, Burnell saw the “Nieman Marcus, Dallas” carrier bag go up on the luggage rack, to be pulled down again as Haydar had second thoughts. He settled himself with the bag on his knee, keeping tight hold of it.
On the luggage racks, numerous boxes of wood and cardboard were already stacked, all tied about by string. They belonged to the first occupants of the compartment, a grim-faced man and woman sitting close together by the door. Not a word escaped them. It was as though the clothes in which they were swathed ensured their silence. The couple eyed all newcomers suspiciously; the male did his best to envelop himself in cigarette smoke. In a muttered aside, Haydar told Burnell the two were Russians—something Burnell had already gathered for himself. Russians had been leaving the Central Asian republics for years, often to face poverty in what they regarded as their native land. From the labels on the boxes overhead, it could be gathered that this glum couple planned to take a ferry across the Caspian, from Krasnovodsk to Baku, the Azeri capital, and thence northwards by rail: the hazards of which prospective journey probably accounted for the unsmiling countenances.
A gypsyish woman with two boys aged about eight and ten moved into the compartment, to take up the remaining seats between them. After settling her children, the woman exchanged a few words with Haydar. The boys were either well-behaved or cowed by the novelty of a train journey. They sat opposite Burnell and Haydar, to stare at them with expressions devoid of curiosity. The woman, who had shifted from another carriage, took some while to accommodate herself, nervously arranging luggage and clothes. She was swathed in white, in her late thirties, draped with cheap bazaar jewelery. Though pleasant-looking to Burnell’s guarded scrutiny, she was running to embonpoint and corsetry.
When she finally became content, and had stuffed sweets into her sons’ mouths, she leaned forward and showed her three rail tickets to Haydar. Haydar answered her questions with elaborate courtesy, speaking with gravity over the top of his carrier bag.
Ever curious about women, Burnell remained standing by the window, occasionally looking down at the woman and out at the disappearing city. He had achieved little, he reflected; but that was nothing new. At least Ashkhabad had sustained his interest. There was that familiar pang, always induced in him by train journeys, at the thought he was leaving the present. Although there was no point in staying, the present was always a kind of paradise; being kicked into the future was never comfortable.
Perhaps the story of Adam and Eve could be understood as a journey from present to future, beyond the Eden of the moment into the bleak world of tomorrow. His Eve of the previous night had offered him little in the way of fruit. To start with, she had tried to fob him off with a hand job. Perhaps her vagina was sore: it must be an occupational hazard in her way of business. Her nipples had lain as flat as coins, her eyes had been dark and—he had not troubled to explain it to himself at the time—dim. Of her life he knew nothing; now that the train was carrying him out into the Karakum, he could never learn anything about her circumstances. He longed for her as he stood at the window looking back: not physically, much, but wanting to know what misfortune had trapped her in that place Mr. Khan knew well. Had she enjoyed any years of happiness before her imprisonment?
What the original riper Eve had been like remained a mystery. Nothing was known of her except that she took an apple from the tree of knowledge and gave it to her lover. Gustave Dore depicted her as a well-built Victorian lass with ivory haunches.
That stupid Cox—and the snake, and God in a vile mood about what was merely a childish misdemeanor… The present so soon became the past, when the almond tree would flourish instead. Had Eve enjoyed any years of happiness before the unfortunate incident?
It came to Burnell that he had read a scholarly commentary on Genesis which discussed that very question. Some authorities believed that Adam and Eve had spent many pleasant years together before they were cast out of Eden, others that they had had only a few hours. That seemed a miserable swindle, rather like losing…well, not exactly, no.
Then there was the question of fornication. Apparently Adam and Eve had had none of that until they were kicked out into the wilderness. Genesis did not disclose if she even gave him a hand job. Once beyond the Garden, the sexual act became their consolation. Much misery followed for the first parents, with their two sons at odds with each other; at least Burnell’s AIDS light remained on the green.
“Mother,” he muttered to himself, “I know not why these questions bother me. It’s so endlessly long since I tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge. If you managed to appear to me before, please do so again. I’m going home to see Father now, at Diddisham Abbey, where you died.”
The train was rolling through cotton fields, which soon gave way to desert. Desolation stretched on either side. No human being could be seen, no bird or animal. The landscape appeared as it had been thousands of years ago, late-afternoon glow suspended above it like fossil light.
“We can pull the blind if you hate to see it,” said Haydar. Burnell took his seat. The vacant places of Earth held a fascination of their own. Maybe Adam preferred the wilderness to the garden. He began to tell his companion of an expedition to Iceland on which his father had taken him as a boy. Haydar interrupted, remarking that such places were what he called an English taste. Who would wish to go to Iceland unless they had urgent business there?
For reasons obscure even to himself, Burnell began a defense of Iceland. In fact, he had been uncomfortable and wet for most of that strenuous trip and had moreover been forced to read Burnt Njal’s Saga. He was elaborating on the virtues of the hot springs when a commotion arose in the corridor of the train. Haydar was immediately alert and peered out. The gypsy woman also rose and started to question everyone in an anxious manner; whereupon the Russian man ordered her curtly to sit down.
She shrieked a little as she complied, and her boys, glad of a diversion, took up the cry.
Haydar patted her shoulder and told Burnell a random inspection was in progress. He tut-tutted, saying that these inspections made life wretched for passengers, alarming—as he put it—”women and horses.”
As he spoke, he pushed his heavy Nieman Marcus bag on to Burnell’s lap. “Keep hold of it, please, until the police have passed.” He tapped the side of his ample nose with a forefinger by way of caution.
Burnell protested he could do no such thing. Looking down into the bag, he saw only an old gray garment, tucked on top of a package. Haydar held it firmly in place on Burnell’s knee, hushing him as if dealing with a child. The Russian, rolling his yellow eyes, puffed out smoke as if to provide a screen for anything untoward.
“Just hold my bag a moment only, dear Mr. Burnell, a moment! You are English. Inspectors are often rough men, but they will not touch your belongings because you are from England and Western countries. The bag is innocent. It contains some delicacies for my old aunt in Krasnovodsk, merely.”
“What are the police looking for?”
“Oh, you know police—ignorant men wherever they are found. They look for contraband possibly. Nothing, nothing, really. Show them your English passport. They will disappear.” He gestured with wide arms and wicked expression, convinced that vampires would disintegrate at sight of a silver cross.
He had to raise his voice because the white-clad woman was shrieking at her boys, who clung together in fright.
Thought Burnell, the man may be a crook, and this bag may be full of heroin, but—what the hell, he sucked out my poison and saved my life. Would I have been willing to do the same for him? I owe him something
Angry voices were raised in the corridor. The express ground to an unexpected halt. Wails of distress sounded from the corridor.
In the gathering dusk, desert could be seen on either side of the track, heaving up into dunes like dissembling shoulders. The vulnerability of a stationary train became apparent. Haydar raised his gaze to the ceiling, the Russian couple exchanged glances and shrugged, mutely remarking, What do you expect from this lot?
After a minute, two uniformed inspectors squeezed into the compartment together. They were armed, and saw to it that their boots made a great clatter as they came in. Following them came the tra
in’s female conductor, a large woman in large boots, a blue serge skirt being her chief badge of gender. She wore a red handkerchief round her head and a peaked cap on top of that to increase her air of being intolerant of nonsense. She pulled a scary face at the two boys, who shrank into their corner, raising spread fingers to their eyes.
One of the inspectors stood by the sliding door while the other checked tickets. The latter was plainly nervous and inexperienced, despite his years. The boys’ mother, being anxious, asked questions, to which she received grunts for answer. The boys were made to stand up. An inspector went through their pockets. Their mother was ordered to take her packages from the rack. She rattled all her bracelets in protest, but pulled them down, whereon the inspector, a grizzled man of dark complexion, poked through her modest possessions with business-like contempt.
When the inspector had discovered nothing there, and the gypsyish woman had clucked a little, the turn came of the Russian couple. While the man smoked sullenly, arms folded across his chest, his wife rose and harangued the inspectors. She was a short dumpy woman with an upturned nose which she turned up even further in her refusal to take her belongings down from the rack. The conductor, intervening, thrust her red face forward, vulture-fashion, to shout in her ear. Argument ensued, counterpointed with gesture.
The Russian woman’s puffy face grew crimson. When she turned to her husband for support, he told her curtly to sit down. The conductor placed her hands on the woman’s shoulders and forced her into her seat. The inspectors, muttering, seized down the various boxes from the rack, wrenched undone the securing strings, and examined their contents one by one.
With clumsy haste, the inspectors unloaded everything on to the floor. As the woman, still red-faced, set about restoring her possessions to their boxes, she complained angrily. The conductor yelled at her to be quiet. This had some effect. The Russian’s complaints became more guttural, more closely akin to the growls of a cornered tigress, but she continued them unabated.
Somewhere East of Life Page 35