Volzhenko shook me awake what seemed like moments later. The dark barrack was filled with dozens of soldiers’ bodies, their sour smell and uneven snoring. “Wake up,” Volzhenko said. “It’s six in the morning, and we’d better get moving if we want to get to the Buryat village.”
“Are Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi coming with us?” I asked and sat up, rubbing my eyes with both fists, the grit of sleep grinding into my swollen eyelids that wanted only to close and get some more sleep.
“Yes,” Volzhenko said. “Kurashov found us a sleigh and three horses, and it shouldn’t take us more than an hour to get there. Are you sure that this is where we should be going?”
“Somewhat,” I said. “In any case, I guess I’ll have a chance to try that Buryat tea you were so eager to share.”
Volzhenko’s teeth flashed in the dusk. “I told you that it was an interesting experience, not necessarily a pleasant one.”
“You’re just mad that you fell for it and now you want everyone else to do the same.” I rolled out of the bed, and cringed when my bare feet hit the frozen floor with an uncalled for thud. “It’s cold here.”
“The sort of thing you would expect in the middle of winter in Siberia,” Volzhenko said amiably. “Put your furs on, you’ll feel better.”
I collected my jacket and the coat from the foot of the bed where they were folded for safekeeping as well as providing additional warmth for my feet, and put them on. I could’ve used a clean shirt, but Volzhenko standing next to me deterred me from putting one on. The reverse corset felt unpleasantly mushy, as if it was welding itself to my skin, becoming some porous and smelly flesh. I only sighed and hoped that I would be able to detach it when time came for me to become a girl again.
The sleigh and horses, covered with felt blankets, waited by the stable adjacent to our barracks. Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi, barely visible in the gray morning light, outlined against the long blue snowdrifts hopped from one foot to the other, their hands stuffed in their sleeves. By mute consent, Volzhenko took the reins, and the rest of us piled in the back of the sleigh. There were blankets and felt spreads, and Kuan Yu offered me a flask filled with hot and sweet tea. Thus equipped, I felt prepared for the trip to the Buryat village, and only hoped my interpretation of Jack’s note was correct. Finally, I had time to sit and think about the meaning of it as well as the tremendous leap of faith he had taken leaving his note — a mere trifle, so easily lost — in the wake of his destructive appearance. Of him staging the distraction — so much like his old self in that — to attract my attention. Such dramatics, however, also seemed excessive.
Volzhenko steered the horses along the narrow road, packed snow hard as a pavement. A sliver of the sun curved over the black treetops on the horizon and the three horses neighed in unison, as if greeting the new day with jubilation it did not, in my opinion, warrant. I sat back and waited for the trees to open up, showing us the village.
Chapter 15
The Buryat village loomed between the trees, a small cluster of low octagonal wooden houses, a strange russified species of nomadic yurts. The tall spruces, their palmate branches weighed down by the snow, shielded the pointed roofs covered with more snow. The nearest roof showed traces of dried grass — I suspected that in the summer this grass was alive and green, a sure sign the yurt hadn’t been moved in many years. The rest of the village similarly retained the illusion of nomadic mobility but with walls that had sunk into the ground and grown roots.
At first, I thought the yellow glow came from some sort of lanterns left outside, but as we pulled closer, I saw that the doors stood open and light emitted from the inside of these yurt-houses. Smoke rose from the tops of most, and the air smelled like wood smoke. My hair and furs and the Trubkozub hat I wore low on my forehead became saturated with the smell instantly. I noted with irritation that I would likely smell like a campfire for weeks to come.
Volzhenko rubbed the horses dry, as the Chinese furriers and I danced from one foot to the other and clapped our mittens together. Only when he was satisfied with the horses’ condition and content they were unlikely to catch some insidious form of consumption, did he let us move to the nearest yurt, which was bigger than the rest, and boasted an especially thick and straight pillar of smoke coming from the hole in its roof. I guessed it was inhabited by… I realized then that I had no idea what Buryats had for authority, but assumed it wouldn’t be a superior officer or an emperor, two authorities I was familiar with.
Volzhenko knocked on the wooden wall, close to the doorway opening. Inside, I could see the central room covered with a bright carpet. A hole in the carpet allowed a view of a fire pit dug in what seemed to be bare dirt. Over the fire in the hole there was an iron rack, where a copper kettle bubbled away.
Volzhenko grinned and winked at me. “That would be tea,” he said.
“Who lives here?” I whispered.
“The shaman,” he said. “When we cross over the Baikal, you’ll see more Buddhist Buryats closer to Mongolia, but here they were christened but reverted to their pagan ways.” He shrugged. “What can you do?”
“Accumulate experiences,” I answered with more acidity than I felt.
The man who came to the door looked short in stature but wide in girth, and his tanned placid face seemed a mere background for his very bright and very black eyes that looked at us with great curiosity. He looked past Volzhenko and myself to Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi, grinned, and said something in the language I didn’t understand. Judging by the enthusiastic response from Kuan Yu, it was some form of Chinese, although it sounded different from his usual speech.
Volzhenko tired of waiting, and pushed past the small round man into the yurt. I hesitated, not wanting to be impolite, but the small shaman caught himself and ushered us all inside. My eyes watered from the smoke — most of it managed to escape through the hole in the roof, but enough of it lingered inside to cause some discomfort.
“Sit down,” he said to me in good Russian. “Have some tea with me.”
I sat down and looked around to distract myself from the unpleasant thought of larded tea. The walls of the yurt rose and cupped above us, in a surprisingly smooth and elegant curve that reminded me of the sweep of the St. Isaac’s Cathedral dome.
The yurt was clean and spacious; one corner of it was separated from the rest of the central area by a partition made of green bamboo, pounded flat and woven into a curtain. Along the walls, there were sable pelts tied together in multi-pawed bunches, and small statues interspersed with tall lacquered baskets. There were dried herbs and mushrooms hanging along the walls, and, most mysteriously, despite the wide open door, the interior of the yurt was warm and cozy enough for its owner to wear nothing but a thick quilted robe. All his warmer clothes were piled up on what seemed to be a bed by the wall opposite of the entrance.
Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi, still immersed in a discussion as lively as it was incomprehensible, settled next to me, by the fire and the bubbling kettle. The pine and spruce branches glowed a menacing red in the fire pit, and our host tossed in a few more, needles still green and attached, to liven up the flames. The spruce needles hissed and caught fire, crackling, exhaling great clouds of resinous smoke that smelled like Christmas. It occurred to me that I had missed Christmas, probably asleep on the train somewhere. It was so hard to keep track of days in a place so vast and so distant.