The Age of Ice: A Novel (48 page)

All the while, famine was squeezing the city. One day Yar Mohammed decided to relieve Herat of hundreds of Persians: the starved, frail, and crippled rabble of those, I assume, who were no good either as hostages or as slaves. When the throng of refugees streamed out of the gate, we, the nobodies, were made to follow it. We were strung by the necks to a single rope and surrounded by a convoy, and as the refugees took everyone’s attention, we were directed to head north. To a slave market. We were on our way when a rider galloped in from the city gate, just when sarbazes in the trenches—misguidedly—fired at the refugees. The garrison on the walls responded; the refugees started darting around, caught in crossfire. The rider overtook us and pointed at me, barked something
to the convoy’s leader, rode up and cut my noose off. Then he pushed me in the back with his foot, “Go! Go to Persians! Tell their Ouruss general that Kamran Shah saved you. Tell he is a friend! Euler Agha is a friend!”

Ahead of me, muskets fired and people dashed about, wailing, but I started running. I ran headlong over the trench-ridden field, with the rest of the refugees who had no choice but to cross it, and screamed, as the rest did, “Don’t shoot!”

• • •

To go or not to go to the Russians?
There I was, sitting in the main square of the Persian camp—one of the refugee crowd. The wretches drew to the pits where flatbread baked just as the French soldiers had drawn to the warm huts back in 1812. Before long, sarbazes were clubbing them with sticks to impress order on them, but the delirium of deliverance ran its course. Besiegers and besieged cussed, laughed, wailed, hugged, bandaged each other, bartered their belongings, gathered in groups to hear and tell tales. On the perimeter of it, Afghani heads ripe with decay listened in, leaning this way and that on their poles.

Observing all this “Middle Eastern barbarism,” a civilized ethnographer’s smug pity on their faces, were two neat, clean-shaven, freshly uniformed Russian officers.

To call or not to call to them?
One word of my genuine, accent-free Russian—and I’d be whisked to a clean, secure hut with a table and chairs, perhaps even a bed; I’d be fed, given a mug of hot tea, clean clothes, a bath. I’d be marveled at, doted on. All I had to do in return was tell my story—adventures unraveling back to—what? What was my identity? An amateur explorer caught in a vise of war? A spy on a fact-finding mission? What was my name? Where was my home?

My stomach knotted, my head burned. Tell them I was a messenger from Kamran Shah, the king of Herat? Or was I? Oh, the twisting, furling identities—pick one, but you have to, you cannot walk into safety without one, it is your price for a mess of pottage; you can be any one of the fools, survivors, explorers, deserters, spies out there—but you cannot be Prince Alexander Velitzyn, a limber ninety-eight-year-old. And that’s not all: the bigger the lie you tell about yourself, the harder it’ll hit you if—when—it collapses—once they take you back to Russia.

You can only enter Russia as a man of no importance at all. As an orphan with no memory to count on other than slavery.

But I could, couldn’t I? Present myself as a slave who had been captured
and sold as a child. They may not even query me too hard about my other fellow countrymen slaves—where, how many. But what next? Start another life in the same old snowy field of my country? Pay for a coach on Sundays to sneak a peek at my old mansion, my first life—and slowly go mad over it? Or settle close to the border, in the Caucasus, attach myself to some garrison and in a decade proudly earn a rank of a Feldwebel or a sergeant, provided I didn’t die on my own or by a hand of some mutinous Chechen tribesman—

But what if I stayed in the game?

Could I become an interpreter to these very people and help pull the regally slow though irreversible dredge of the Russian Empire as it dug into the bottom of one adjoining “barbaric” state after another in the name of peace, order, and security? Just as the British Empire had been doing. Just as Goutte urged me to—

I did not want to take sides.

But when the Russian officers headed away from the square I sneaked after them.

• • •

There really was an encampment, a wall of clay and straw, huts and tents with a Russian flag over them. When the officers were about to clear the guard post and enter behind the wall, I called, “Gentlemen! May I join you?” The officers whipped around. Cossack guards flung up their rifles. But the rest of the reception was just as my imagination painted it.

Oh, I told stories all right. I treated Count Simonich, the Ouruss elchee, to the full picture. The starvation and dysentery. The repressions against the city’s Persians. The fear of Russian guns. I introduced myself as Alexander Szwerin, an adventurer down on his luck, and said I knew Kamran Shah’s physician, Dr. Euler. I had thought hard about the next, and I made a choice. The city’s rulers were divided, I said. Kamran Shah would not continue this senseless standoff if not for his bloodthirsty wuzeer, Yar Mohammed, the man who’d thrown me in jail. If His Excellency the envoy allowed me—if he only supplied me with modest means of self-protection and sustenance—I’d go back, I said. I’d go back to Herat and communicate to Kamran Shah that his interest in peace was known to His Excellency the Russian envoy, and that it was time to seal the wuzeer off and dispel his air of being—unconditionally—supported and enabled by the British.

The wily count listened with great interest—but did not hurry to send
me back to Herat. “Alexander Szwerin” ate, slept, and socialized, but kept his beard unshaven. He learned that there was no Russian army here, only the same old regiment of deserter Cossacks that had been at the shah’s service all along, plus the contingent of Simonich’s diplomatic mission. The general opinion of the mission’s officers about the siege was that it was a spectacle of ineptitude and barbarism; the enlightened pitied the sarbazes, and the unenlightened made fun of them. On occasion, Mr. Szwerin listened to “God Save the Czar” rolling over the Russian camp and caught echoes of “God Save the King” wafting over from the Britons. The music of both anthems sounded peculiarly similar.

The game went on. After hearing my story, Simonich went to Mohammad Shah, the Persian king, and told him that the British envoy, Sir John McNeill, had only pretended to negotiate peace while in reality he urged Yar Mohammed to hold on just a wee bit longer. Mohammad Shah, enraged, passed the accusation to McNeill. On June 7, McNeill, slighted, broke relationships with Persia, packed up the mission, and left the camp. No more of the Union Jack flying over the “Little Britain” made of Persian clay and straw. Simonich had the Persian king’s ear all to himself. Ten days after McNeill’s departure, the Persians started bombing the city anew, and on June 24, the army launched an attack.

It failed. A Russian would tell you that failed logistics, idiocy, and the arrogance of mid-level command were to blame. How else could the leading contingent in the attack that almost took the largest breach spend two hours there sitting around, waiting for a new commander to be appointed, and finally retreating?

A Persian would say they did all they could but the Afghans held on like roots of the earth and fought like lions—swords against bullets.

An Afghan would add that if only the garrison had cannon, they would’ve ground the enemy to dust.

A Brit would opine that both sides lacked basic understanding of siege warfare, but still, the city would have fallen if not for one man: at the moment of the greatest peril, when the biggest breach was well-nigh taken, the defenders wavered, and even Yar Mohammed crumpled to the ground in despair—the young Eldred Pottinger
yanked
the despot up by the arm and appealed to his honor—
three
times! Thus pushed and prodded by the Angleesh, Yar Mohammed in turn pushed and prodded the fighters, who fell on the Persians if only to avoid the wuzeer’s wrath.

I did not see the battle, so I cannot add anything. I was a mile away in
the camp, worrying. A week later, Count Simonich summoned me. His frustration filled the room to the ceiling. He crumpled and tossed some papers. He ranted about the barbaric backwardness, laziness, and false pride that ruined the best of plans. Then he stepped in close to me and demanded, “Who is this—this wuzeer-whisperer, this—
Pottinger
? Why is he still there, Mr. Szwerin, would you care to explain? Why is it that His Majesty the Persian king would not hear about a peace negotiation with Herat unless it has expulsion of a measly English lieutenant as the top demand? And why do Afghans cling to him like burrs?”

I tried to be careful with my explanation, but Simonich fixed me with a stare as heavy as fate and said, “Mr. Szwerin—I suggest you do as you have proposed. Return to the city and use whatever means to
neutralize
this nuisance, for Christ’s sake! You will be provided with the necessities and rewarded with more if successful. However, if any part of your business plan fails, be prepared to stand alone. You are not acting on behalf of the Russian government, remember that.”

I did not remember
proposing
anything of this sort. But after a quick calculation, I accepted. I had lasted another month—sleeping well and eating my full—and got a fighting chance to last a few more. There was a price to pay for this luxury. But Mr. Szwerin was on it, thinking hard. And Alexander Velitzyn—Eskandar Agha—wanted nothing more than for the siege to lift.

I received money. I received pistols—a set of two thick-barreled .44-caliber made by a British manufacturer in Calcutta. I got a new
khalat
robe, a new shawl for a belt, under which I tucked a fine
yataghan
knife. Boots of Russian leather replaced my straw slippers. I had a letter that was to serve as a pass to get me through. It was a resealed old piece written by Pottinger to McNeill. A messenger who had carried it had been caught and strangled by the Persians.

• • •

The city was moribund. Parts of it seemed dead already, others on the brink. The stench—refuse and corpse. At eleven o’clock on the night that I entered the city, I knocked on the door of the
kala,
the compound that housed the Angleesh. Two Afghan sentinels let me in—the letter worked its magic. God, they didn’t even try to frisk me!

Pottinger was up, seated at a small field desk. He had been writing. A pistol was on the desk before him, and he put his hand over it when I made my entry. I said, “Good evening, Mr. Pottinger,” which greeting he
met with an expression of pained surprise on his face, as if he expected all news to be bad news. He was skinnier than I remembered. I noted he did not wear his boots inside, Mussulman-style, so I too pulled off my boots. This made him take his hand off his weapon.

“I am Alexander Velitzyn,” I said. “I have been in this city since the onset of the siege. Two months ago I almost called on you. But Afghans put me in jail. You may of course know that already.”

“I do not,” he said. “I had no part in it. I am sorry to hear you’ve suffered.” He stood up. “How do you do, Mr. Velitzyn? It’s a surprise visit, I must admit. I suppose I should offer you to stay the night.”

“I’d like to speak with you. Now, if I may.”

“Well . . . all right. I see you carry a letter.”

“It’s one of your own. It’s been taken from your messenger, a while ago. I used it to get here.”

He took the letter from my hand. He stared at the new seal, not his, broke it, and briefly examined the contents; one corner of his mouth twitched. “Did Count Simonich send you?”

“No one sent me. Let’s say I stole it. I am returning to you what’s yours.”

“What do you want?”

“I want this siege to end.”

“On what terms?”

“It’s over. The British mission has left. You are alone. Why do you want this city to stand?”

“Why do you want it to fall?”

“I did not say that. I said, end the siege. Make peace.”

Still standing, he folded his arms and picked at the beard on his chin. “Mr. Velitzyn, you can tell Count Simonich or any other Russian agent you are connected with that a fair peace settlement is everybody’s goal. If you intend to add your voice to the choir, I can help you get the attention of the wuzeer, and I suggest you start there.”

“I told you I do not represent Russians. And I am here not to do diplomacy but to name things for what they are. You have the wuzeer’s ear. Tell him to make peace. ”

Pottinger made a wince of a smile. “Within my means—which are limited—I am doing just that, I can assure you.”

“No, you are not. You help the defenses to hold. The Persian shah thinks you are the only obstacle between him and Herat. My jailers thought so too, and so did the city’s Persians, who had tried—and failed—to tell you
about the abuses they suffered from Yar Mohammed. You are aiding and enabling a despot, Mr. Pottinger, a despot and a torturer.”

“Against another one just like him.”

“Then why are you doing it? For glory? Thrill? So that British broadcloth is sold in the Afghani bazaars instead of Russian broadcloth? Or is it a mission to bring this corner of the world into the enlightenment of civilization as exemplified by the British Empire? Or maybe you are merely following orders, is that it?”

“This is quite beyond anything I may consider reasonable to discuss with you, given that I don’t have the privilege of knowing who you are, nor am I answerable to you.”

“You are answerable to your conscience!”

He clenched the edge of his desk and glared at me. “Nor are you my conscience.”

“May I?” I sat down on his rug even as he said, “I’m afraid not.” He remained standing.

“My name is indeed Russian. But I haven’t been to Russia in decades. My wife and son are dead. Do you know who taught me English? A great friend of mine by the name Martin Sawyer, who lived most of his life in Russia but had to leave because of the Blocus. Once upon a time, he and I had spent a winter in Siberia cooped up in a tiny hut with two other companions—a Royal Navy surgeon and a German doctor. Mr. Robeck, the surgeon, told us about India. We dreamed of the heat. That is what I’ve been doing here: I’ve been trying to get to India.