Beasts, Men and Gods quotes

There in the depths of the still Siberian winter I was suddenly caught up in the whirling storm of mad revolution raging all over Russia, sowing in this peaceful and rich land vengeance, hate, bloodshed and crimes that go unpunished by the law.

No one could tell the hour of his fate.

The people lived from day to day and left their homes not knowing whether they should return to them or whether they should be dragged from the streets and thrown into the dungeons of that travesty of courts, the Revolutionary Committee, more terrible and more …

“

One meets a different folk these days and with an ax it is much safer.

”

On the lower Yenisei it grows dark very early. I built a fire in my stove and began to cook my soup, constantly listening for every noise that came from beyond the cabin walls.

Certainly I understood at all times very clearly that death was ever beside me and might claim me by means of either man, beast, cold, accident or disease.

I knew that nobody was near me to assist and that all my help was in the hands of God, in the power of my hands and feet, in the accuracy of my aim and in my presence of mind. However, I listened in vain.

During our daily treks Ivan related to me the stories of his wanderings through the mountains and woods of Transbaikalia in the search for gold. These stories were very lively, full of attractive adventure, danger and struggle.

Ivan was a type of these prospectors who have discovered in Russia, and perhaps in other countries, the richest gold mines, while they themselves remain beggars.

He evaded telling me why he left Transbaikalia to come to the Yenisei. I understood from his manner that he wished to keep his own counsel and so did not press him.

And it was so. The charm of my lone refuge was in the cedar wood and in the mountains covered with these forests which stretched to every horizon.

The cedar is a splendid, powerful tree with wide-spreading branches, an eternally green tent, attracting to its shelter every living being.

Among the cedars was always effervescent life. There the squirrels were continually kicking up a row, jumping from tree to tree; the nut-jobbers cried shrilly; a flock of bullfinches with carmine breasts swept through the trees like a flame;

Among the bushes frolicked the hares and often near them a red fox lay flattened to the ground watching his chance. I never heard any wolves and they are usually not found in the Siberian regions covered with mountains and forest.

But there was another beast, who was my neighbor, and one of us had to go away.

One day, coming back from the hunt with a big heathcock, I suddenly noticed among the trees a black, moving mass. I stopped and, looking very attentively, saw a bear, digging away at an ant-hill.

My early visitor made off with all his energy; but his visit did not please me. It was very early in the spring that this occurred and the bear should not yet have left his hibernating place.

He was the so-called “ant-eater,” an abnormal type of bear lacking in all the etiquette of the first families of the bear clan.

I knew that the “ant-eaters” were very irritable and audacious and quickly I prepared myself for both the defence and the charge. My preparations were short.

One step, one moment of weakness and dark madness will seize a man and carry him to inevitable destruction.

I spent awful days of struggle with the cold and hunger but I passed more terrible days in the struggle of the will to kill weakening destructive thoughts.

The memories of these days freeze my heart and mind and even now, as I revive them so clearly by writing of my experiences, they throw me back into a state of fear and apprehension.

It is the single normal way to develop a new generation of strong, healthy, iron men, with at the same time sensitive souls.

Nature destroys the weak but helps the strong, awakening in the soul emotions which remain dormant under the urban conditions of modern life.

My presence in the Sifkova country was not for long but I used it in full measure.

“

It is great good fortune that among the Bolsheviki the good-for-nothing shoemaker of yesterday is the Governor of today and scientists sweep the streets or clean the stables of the Red cavalry.

I can talk with the Bolsheviki because they do not know the difference between ‘disinfection’ and ‘diphtheria,’ ‘anthracite’ and ‘appendicitis’ and can talk them round in all things, even up to persuading them not to put a bullet into me.”

“Ah, that’s it, is it? But it’s very little for those trousers. Nowhere in Russia can you now find trousers.

All Russia goes without trousers and for your rifle I should receive a sable and what use to me is one skin?

”

Constant dangers develop one’s watchfulness and keenness of perception.

We did not take off our clothes nor unsaddle our horses, tired as we were. I put my Mauser inside my coat and began to look about and scrutinize the people.

I was chest deep in the icy water. Sometimes the floating blocks struck me; sometimes the waves broke up over my head and face. I had no time to look about or to feel the cold.

The animal wish to live took possession of me; I became filled with the thought that, if my horse’s strength failed in his struggle with the stream, I must perish.

All my attention was turned to his efforts and to his quivering fear. Suddenly he groaned loudly and I noticed he was sinking. The water evidently was over his nostrils, because the intervals of his frightened snorts through the nostrils became longer.

They were nervous, morally weary men, badly dressed and armed and most of them were without weapons. I knew that during a fight there is no danger so great as that of disarmed men.

They are easily caught by panic, lose their heads and infect all the others.

Therefore, I consulted with my friends and decided to go to Kosogol. Our company agreed to follow us. After luncheon, consisting of soup with big lumps of meat, dry bread and tea, we moved out.

“Noyon (the Prince) asks you to come! He is very glad!”

From a warrior I was forced to change myself into a diplomat.

As we approached the yurta of the Prince, we were met by two officials, wearing the peaked Mongol caps with peacock feathers rampants behind. With low obeisances they begged the foreign “Noyon” to enter the yurta. My friend the Tartar and I entered.

“Do you want to cure me? Yes?”

The character and manners of lovely woman are the same everywhere: on bright Broadway, along the stately Thames, on the vivacious boulevards of gay Paris and in the silk-draped yurta of the Soyot Princess behind the larch covered Tannu Ola.

“I shall certainly try,” assuringly answered the new oculist.

“Remember that you are always welcome guests here.

Life is very complicated and anything may happen.

Perhaps you will be forced in future to re-visit distant Mongolia and then do not miss Narabanchi Kure.”

where are dying out the people who formerly conquered China, Siam, Northern India and Russia and broke their chests against the iron lances of the Polish knights, defending then all the Christian world against the invasion of wild and wandering Asia: that is Mongolia.

The land swelling with natural riches, producing nothing, in need of everything, destitute and suffering from the world’s cataclysm: that is Mongolia.

In this land, by order of Fate, after my unsuccessful attempt to reach the Indian Ocean through Tibet, I spent half a year in the struggle to live and to escape.

And as he spoke I recalled the mystic picture of the noted painter Vroubel. The same nude mountains with the violet and purple robes of Satan, whose face is half covered by an approaching grey cloud.

Mongolia is a terrible land of mystery and demons.

Therefore it is no wonder that here every violation of the ancient order of life of the wandering nomad tribes is transformed into streams of red blood and horror, ministering to the demonic pleasure of Satan couched on the bare mountains and robed in the …

“

There is very much unknown in Nature and the skill of using the unknown produces the miracle; but the power is given to few.

I want to prove it to you and you may tell me afterwards whether you have seen it before or not.”

But in vain, for I shall never sit on the Holy Throne of the highest priest in Lhasa nor reach that which has come down from Jenghiz Khan to the Head of our yellow Faith.

I am no monk. I am a warrior and avenger.

”

“The Khan’s widow and son were saved but Jagasstai has ever remained merciless. During the journey over this pass one must always be on one’s guard.

The demon of the mountain is ever ready to lead the traveler to destruction.

”

We did not even discover any yurtas along the way. The Mongols had also concealed all their movable homes in the folds of the mountains out of sight and away from the reach of the strong winds.

Nomads are very skilful in choosing the places for their winter dwellings.

I had often in winter visited the Mongolian yurtas set in such sheltered places that, as I came off the windy plains, I felt as though I were in a conservatory. Once we came up to a big herd of sheep.

but evidently one of the would-be robbers was forced to retreat with a bruise on his head from the handle of the Mauser.

Wolves and eagles are the servants of Jagasstai, the Mongol very seriously instructed us.

However, this does not prevent the Mongols from hunting them. Once in the camp of Prince Baysei I witnessed such a hunt.

Nor could we shake the thought that some horrible invisible spirit was following us from this scene of terror. “The devils of disease?” “The pictures of horror and misery?” “The souls of men who have been sacrificed on the altar of darkness of Mongolia?”

An inexplicable fear penetrated into our consciousness from whose grasp we could not release ourselves.

Only when we had turned from the road, passed over a timbered ridge into a bowl in the mountains from which we could see neither Jahantsi Kure, the dugun nor the squirming grave of dying Mongols could we breathe freely again.

One of the Cossacks fell into one of these but we had just time to save him. He was forced by his ducking in such extreme cold to turn back to Khathyl. Our horses slipped about and fell several times.

Men and animals felt the presence of death which hovered over them and momentarily threatened them with destruction.

At last we made the farther bank and continued southward down the valley, glad to have left the geological and figurative volcanoes behind us. Ten miles farther on we came up with the first party of refugees.

“We have now seven Colonels, who all want to be in command and are all quarreling among themselves. They all ought to be pegged down and given good sound thrashings.

The one who could take the greatest number of blows ought to be chosen as our chief.

”

This was soon left without inhabitants, for the Mongol is a nomad who cannot live in artificial cities.

The plain is his house and the world his town.

For a time this town witnessed battles between the Chinese and the troops of Jenghiz Khan but afterwards it was forgotten.

… and dressed in a European suit, some Lamas came running to announce that divine service had begun and that the “Living God” must take his place on the altar to be prayed to but he had gone out from his abode and was playing cards!

Without any confusion Pandita drew his red mantle of the Hutuktu over his European coat and long grey trousers and allowed the shocked Lamas to carry their “God” away in his palanquin.

Besides the surgeon-poisoner I met at the Hutuktu’s a lad of thirteen years, whose youthfulness, red robe and cropped hair led me to suppose he was a Bandi or student servant in the home of the Hutuktu; but it turned out otherwise.

In and out among these mounds the greyish-yellow or brown animals ran in all sizes up to half that of an average dog. They ran heavily and the skin on their fat bodies moved as though it were too big for them.

The marmots are splendid prospectors, always digging deep ditches, throwing out on the surface all the stones.

In many places I saw mounds the marmots had made from copper ore and farther north some from minerals containing wolfram and vanadium.

. . . Another white man will become your friend. . . . Before the fourth day you will lose your acquaintances. They will die by a long knife. I already see them being eaten by the dogs.

Beware of the man with a head like a saddle. He will strive for your death.

”

flocks of the salga partridge whistled by; while on the mountain side not far away the wolves lay basking and turning in the lazy warmth of the sun, whining and occasionally barking like playful dogs.

Nature knows only life. Death is for her but an episode whose traces she rubs out with sand and snow or ornaments with luxuriant greenery and brightly colored bushes and flowers.

What matters it to Nature if a mother at Chefoo or on the banks of the Yangtse offers her bowl of rice with burning incense at some shrine and prays for the return of her son that has fallen unknown for all time on the …

“Now I shall tell you about myself, who and what I am!

My name is surrounded with such hate and fear that no one can judge what is the truth and what is false, what is history and what myth.

Some time you will write about it, remembering your trip through Mongolia and your sojourn at the yurta of the ‘bloody General.’”

It appeared, turned back the wheel of progress and blocked our road to the Divinity. Revolution is an infectious disease and Europe making the treaty with Moscow deceived itself and the other parts of the world.

The Great Spirit put at the threshold of our lives Karma, who knows neither anger nor pardon.

He will reckon the account, whose total will be famine, destruction, the death of culture, of glory, of honor and of spirit, the death of states and the death of peoples. I see already this horror, this dark, mad destruction of humanity.”

“Oh, no! One hundred thirty days yet and it is finished; then . . . Nirvana!

How wearied I am with sorrow, woe and hate!

”

Did you notice that the birds did not fly, the marmots did not run and the dogs did not bark? The air trembled softly and bore from afar the music of a song which penetrated to the hearts of men, animals and birds alike.

Earth and sky ceased breathing. The wind did not blow and the sun did not move.

At such a moment the wolf that is stealing up on the sheep arrests his stealthy crawl; the frightened herd of antelopes suddenly checks its wild course; the knife of the shepherd cutting the sheep’s throat falls from his hand;

the frightened herd of antelopes suddenly checks its wild course; the knife of the shepherd cutting the sheep’s throat falls from his hand; the rapacious ermine ceases to stalk the unsuspecting salga.

All living beings in fear are involuntarily thrown into prayer and waiting for their fate.

So it was just now. Thus it has always been whenever the King of the World in his subterranean palace prays and searches out the destiny of all peoples on the earth.”

In this wise the old Mongol, a simple, coarse shepherd and hunter, spoke to me.

Mongolia with her nude and terrible mountains, her limitless plains, covered with the widely strewn bones of the forefathers, gave birth to Mystery.

Her people, frightened by the stormy passions of Nature or lulled by her deathlike peace, feel her mystery. Her “Red” and “Yellow Lamas” preserve and poetize her mystery. The Pontiffs of Lhasa and Urga know and possess her mystery.

“In Agharti the learned Panditas write on tablets of stone all the science of our planet and of the other worlds. The Chinese learned Buddhists know this. Their science is the highest and purest.

Every century one hundred sages of China collect in a secret place on the shores of the sea, where from its depths come out one hundred eternally-living tortoises.

On their shells the Chinese write all the developments of the divine science of the century.”