Stanley Stewart - In the Empire of Genghis Khan - A Journey Among Nomads

Sadly the belief, then current in the West, that Sartaq was a Christian turned out to be an ill-founded rumour. He was happy to receive gifts from Christian envoys, William reports on reaching his camp, but when the Muslims turned up with better gifts, they were immediately given precedence. ‘In fact,’ William confesses, ‘my impression is that he makes sport of Christians.’ Unsure how to deal with his visitors, Sartaq sent the friars on to his father, Batu, who was encamped on the Volga.

Batu was already migrating toward his winter pastures in the steppes to the east of the Volga, when the friars caught up with him. ‘I was struck with awe,’ William wrote on seeing his encampment. The vast sea of tents had ‘the appearance of a large city … with inhabitants scattered around in every direction for a distance of three or four leagues.’ At its heart stood the great pavilion of Batu, its tent flaps open to the sunny and auspicious south.

William’s first audience with Batu proved an interesting moment in east-west relations. When they were led inside the tent by their escort they found the grandson of Genghis Khan seated on a broad couch, inlaid with gold, amidst an assembly of attendants and wives. For a moment no one spoke. The friars stood, slightly intimidated by the grandeur of the pavilion, while the Mongols stared. Here were the envoys of the King of the Franks: two fat monks, barefoot, bareheaded, clothed in dusty robes. Itinerant peddlers would have presented a more respectable appearance.

William was not in the best of moods. This was his third Mongol audience in less than three months; each was as inconclusive as the one before. Further irritated by being obliged to kneel before Batu, he waded straight in with the hell and damnation. He would pray for his host, the friar said, but there was really little he could do for him. They were heathens, unbaptized in the Christian Church, and God would condemn them to everlasting fire.

When William had finished his introduction, you could presumably have heard a pin drop. At this point the friar carefully edits his own account and does not record Batu’s response. But the reply of the barbarian khan, the harbinger of chaos and darkness, has passed into folklore. We find it in the records of one Giacomo d’Iseo, another Franciscan, who relates the story of the encounter as described by the King of Armenia. It was a lesson to the westerners in a civilized discourse.

Surprised by William’s aggressive manner, Batu replied with a parable. ‘The nurse,’ he said, ‘begins first to let drops of milk fall into the infant’s mouth, so that the sweet taste may encourage the child to suck; only next does she offer him the nipple. Thus you should first persuade us in simple and reasonable fashion, as (your) teaching seems to us to be altogether foreign. Instead you threaten us at once with everlasting punishment.’ His words were greeted with a slow hand-clap by the assembled Mongols.

Despite Batu’s disapproval, he invited William to sit by him and served him with a bowl of mare’s milk. He wished the friars well and would be happy for them to remain in Mongol territories, he declared, but unfortunately he could not give them the necessary permissions. For this they would have to travel to the court of Mongke Khan, Lord of all the Mongols, who resided at the capital Qaraqorum in Mongolia itself, almost three thousand miles to the east. William’s journey had only just begun.

A month later a guide arrived to escort them eastward. He seemed a trifle tetchy about being assigned two fat foreigners, and was obviously worried that they would not be able to keep up. ‘It is a four months journey,’ the guide warned them. ‘The cold there is so intense that rocks and trees split apart with the frost … If you prove unable to bear it I will abandon you on the way.’

By day some life returned to the lobby of the Hotel Volgograd. The receptionist was awake and the ancient lift operator loitered by the door. All they lacked were guests.

The Intourist office located just off the lobby exuded the solid respectability and feminine good sense of a Women’s Institute, circa 1957. It was staffed by a phalanx of charming middle-aged matrons, dressed in twinsets and pearls. I dropped by in time for afternoon tea.

In the past most tourists to the city came from the former Communist countries of eastern Europe as well as from West Germany where former Panzer officers were curiously keen to revisit the scene of one of their more spectacular defeats. Few of the former could afford the trip now, and the latter were dying off. In the absence of other tourists, travel information had rather dried up. The planetarium, boat trips on the Volga, Kazakh visas, all were a mystery to the women of Intourist. I asked about train tickets; I had spent much of the morning in the railway station trying to purchase a ticket to Kazakhstan. Offering me a scone, Svetlana, the English speaker, admitted that train travel was beyond their remit. In the genteel atmosphere of the tourist office, beneath posters of Volgograd’s factories, my enquiries began to seem impolite, and the conversation turned to a series of Tchaikovsky concerts to which the office had subscribed.

Into this civilized circle Olga descended like a one-woman barbarian horde. I heard my name, a head-turning shriek from the lobby, and suddenly there she was pushing through the glass doors of the office and limping towards us, still in the heels and hooker’s uniform of the previous evening.

‘Master Stanley,’ she called, waving and smiling with the excitement of a fond reunion. Looking up from their tea, the Intourist women gazed at this advancing apparition with horror. Then, as one, they turned their shocked expressions to me. I felt myself blushing, compounding the impression of guilt. There was a moment of dreadful silence as the irrepressible Olga stood before us.

‘Hellooo,’ I said feebly.

‘Master Stanley, I am looking everywhere for you,’ Olga said. ‘You are not in your room.’

The wide eyes of the Intourist women narrowed as they swung back from my red face to a closer inspection, from the feet up, of Olga – the torn fishnets, the bulging figure in the cheap tight dress, the fat cleavage, the heavy erratic make-up. Then they turned their gaze to one another, a circle of smug disapproval framed by raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

Amidst their condescending censure some instinct for civility finally surfaced in me, and I rose to offer Olga my seat. She did not take it. A change in the set of her shoulders signalled her recognition of the women’s disdain.

In the lobby Olga said, ‘You want train tickets?’ The hotel grapevine had already informed her of my visit to the railway station.

‘I am trying to get a ticket on the Kazakhstan Express,’ I said.

‘I can get for you,’ she announced. ‘No problem. Don’t waste time with Intourist peoples.’ She made a face towards the glass doors. She didn’t seem to like the company I kept.

Volgograd was the unlikely setting for an international festival of contemporary dance which coincided with my visit, and in the evening I went along to a performance by the Be Van Vark Kollektivtanz from Berlin. The principal piece, Orgon II + III , was based on the work of Willem Reich, the Austrian psychoanalyst, whose guiding principle was that mental health depended upon the frequency of sexual congress. He went so far as to recommend the abolition of the nuclear family which he identified as a deterrent to regular orgasms.

The Berlin avant-garde held no surprises for me since the evening I had taken my mother to a performance of a Handel opera at the Riverside Studios in London. My mother was very fond of Handel and I had booked seats in the front row which at the Riverside meant that you were more or less part of the action. I had not registered that the visiting company came from the cutting edge of German performance art. It was Handel all right, but not as we knew it. When the cast fluttered onto the stage after a lilting overture I was startled to see that they wore nothing more than one or two strategic fig leaves. The performance was in the Reichian mode and for the next two hours and forty-three minutes, unrelieved by anything so old-fashioned as an interval, the cast members cavorted carnally and orgasmically in our laps. I remember it as one of the worst evenings of my life, and cursed myself for balking at the ticket prices at Covent Garden. My mother however was delighted, and never tired of telling people about the production. ‘Such energetic performances,’ she would say.