Slavomir Rawicz - The Long Walk

We sat, rather awkwardly in such unusual surroundings, on the benches. The Circassian — either designedly or perhaps forgetfully, he never gave us his name and we never volunteered ours — addressed himself to me again. The first question startled us.

‘Are you armed?’

‘No, none of us is armed,’ I answered.

‘Have you nothing even to chop wood with, for instance?’

‘Oh, yes. We have an axe and a knife between the six of us, unless you count the sticks we carry.’

‘Is that all? It isn’t very safe to travel in this part, you know.’

I was puzzled. ‘I don’t understand you. We have met with no trouble up to now.’

He paused a moment, looking us over. ‘Have you seen any Chinese? I mean armed Chinese, Chinese soldiers.’

‘No, not a sign of one.’

Then he got up and went from the room. Smith leaned over to me and urged me to find out some more about the mysterious Chinese.

He came back in about five minutes. I think he had been out to give instructions about the preparation of a meal. He listened gravely to my question.

‘I thought it right to warn you,’ he said, ‘that Chinese troops occasionally pass through this village. Sometimes they buy fowls from us. They seem to be exploring the area, although this is Tibet. I have seen them go off to the south in the direction of Lhasa. Since you speak only Russian they would be suspicious of you. If you see them it would be best to stay out of their way.’

It was well-meant advice and I thanked him for it, but we never did run across any Chinese soldiers.

Within half-an-hour of our arrival we were being regaled with tea and oaten cakes. Nobody spoke much until the food had gone. We were too busy filling our empty stomachs. Then our host produced a pipe and a bowl of tobacco and handed round the bowl. Soon the place was a haze of blue smoke which drifted out through the open door.

‘So you are going to Lhasa,’ he said between puffs of his pipe. He said it politely as a conversational gambit. I do not think he necessarily believed it.

‘Don’t forget,’ he warned us, ‘that the nights are fiercely cold, especially on the heights. You must never be tempted to seek sleep without adequate shelter. You must never be too tired to build yourselves a fire. If you go to sleep unprotected on the mountains you will be dead in the morning. It is a swift death and you will never know it is happening to you.

‘You are going in the right direction for Lhasa. There is a track from here for the next stage of your journey which you will find easy to follow. Tonight you must all stay here and in the morning I will show you how to go. These tracks can be confusing and in following them you must keep your sense of direction. Some of them lead only from village to village in a small area and you would waste a lot of time on them. They are almost family affairs, trails beaten out over centuries.

‘If you come across any village towards nightfall, stay there until the morning. You will always have a roof over your heads and be given a meal. No one will ask you for payment.’

‘Our trouble,’ Mister Smith broke in, ‘is that we do not know the language.’

Our host smiled. ‘That is not such a handicap. If you bow to a Tibetan and he bows back, no other introduction is needed. You are accepted as a friend.’

In the early evening we were treated to a meal of roasted mutton which one of the Circassian’s elder sons had killed soon after our arrival. While we ate, the father cut off strips of meat for the younger children and they ran out through the door with the meat in their hands. Salt was produced in a bowl to help our eating and I fear I ate a lot more of it than a thoughtful guest should have done. It was a delight to savour its sharp piquancy again.

After the evening meal half-a-dozen men neighbours joined the party, packing the room to its limits. The hard-working Tibetan wife produced more tea. Each of the visitors produced proudly a fine wooden bowl of the kind which the lone shepherd had shown us five days before. Here again it was evident that these were precious possessions.

‘What is so precious about these bowls?’ I asked our host.

‘Do you know,’ he replied, ‘that a man will sometimes trade two yaks for one of those?’

‘But why are they so precious?’

‘Because they just cannot be made in these mountain districts. They are fashioned with great skill from a special kind of hardwood which does not crack. Age increases their polish and their value. One of the reasons they are kept in linen bags is that the cloth improves the shine by constant rubbing against the wood.’

The men drank tea from their bowls and when they had finished the bowls were taken away and washed. Although they all looked alike to me, each man knew his own, and they were affectionately stowed away in their linen bags before the pipes were brought out and the tobacco handed round. Smoke was puffed out in great clouds and the Circassian was kept busy translating the busy talk between us and the neighbours. In this community he was obviously of great eminence, much respected for his gift of tongues and knowledge of matters of the big world outside the valley. He was human enough to enjoy his role, but carried it off with dignity and modesty.

As the place warmed up, the lice began to stir from their hideouts in our clothes. My body began to itch and so did my conscience. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the others reaching inside their fufaikas for a furtive scratch. I sidled over to the Circassian and spoke quietly.

‘I think my friends and I should sleep outside tonight. We have picked up a lot of lice on our travels and can’t get rid of them.’

He laid a hand lightly on my shoulder. ‘Please set your mind at rest. Lice are no strangers to us. Tonight you all sleep under my roof.’

The others asked me what the talk had been about. I retailed it to them. They smiled their relief. It seemed I had not been the only one to have worried about our uninvited camp-followers.

The neighbours bade us goodnight and went their way. They went like men who have had a rare and enjoyable evening. I could imagine that we had provided them with material for many a reminiscent talk to brighten their uneventful lives. We had told them only a fraction of what they must have wanted to know, but they would have fun filling in the blanks. Many of their questions had been about Kolemenos. This fair-haired big man from another world intrigued them mightily. We told them he came from a Western country near the sea. Kolemenos added the word Latvia, but it meant nothing to them.

We slept in bunks — our first night under a roof since our escape. How the family disposed themselves for the night I do not know. There was some makeshift arrangement behind the stone partition for the Circassian and his wife but I think the children must have been taken in by other villagers. For the first time I felt able to relax. I had a glorious, warm feeling of complete safety. I slept a deep, refreshing, untensed sleep and only half-woke at the urging of the rising sun. They let us lie on until the day was a few hours old. The household had long been astir and two of the younger children were peering in at us as we sat up in our beds. They ran out and I heard them chattering to their father.

Our benefactor came in with some squares of thick homespun linen over his arm. ‘Perhaps you gentlemen would like to wash?’ he inquired with a smile.

‘This is real hotel service,’ Zaro joked. ‘Just lead us to the bathroom.’

The Circassian joined in the laugh. ‘It is at the end of the village — nice, clean, flowing water.’

We went down to the stream. The morning air was sharp but we stripped to the waist, immersed our heads in the water, gasped, splashed and rubbed vigorously. We were tempted to wash our jackets and fur waistcoats but decided that we should have to wait too long for them to dry. We felt fine and chuckled at some spontaneous clowning by Zaro on the way back. The inevitable following of curious children enjoyed his antics even more.