Part 15 (2/2)

Gunga wondered where her daughter had got to. She had her suspicions.

A neighbour nodded to her, wis.h.i.+ng her good morning. Gunga nodded back. Her eyes were becoming weaker, rheumatism had begun to gnaw at her hips, and a poorly set broken femur from three winters ago ached. Gunga's dog padded over to be scratched behind the ears. Something else was wrong, too, today.

She ducked back into the warmth of the ger.

'Shut the b.l.o.o.d.y door!' bawled her husband.

It was good to transmigrate out of a westernised head. However much I learn from the non-stop highways of minds like Caspar's, they make me giddy. It would be the euro's exchange rate one minute, a film he'd once seen about art thieves in Petersburg the next, a memory of fis.h.i.+ng with his uncle between islets the next, some pop song or a friend's internet home page the next. No stopping.

Gunga's mind patrols a more intimate neighbourhood. She constantly thinks about getting enough food and money. She worries about her daughter, and ailing relatives. Most of the days of her life have been very much alike. The a.s.sured dreariness of the Soviet days, the struggle for survival since independence. Gunga's mind is a lot harder for me to hide in than Caspar's, however. It's like trying to make yourself invisible in a prying village as opposed to a sprawling conurbation. Some hosts are more perceptive about movements in their own mental landscape than others, and Gunga was very perceptive indeed. While she had been sleeping I acquired her language, but her dreams kept trying to smoke me out.

Gunga set about lighting the stove. 'Something's wrong,' she said, to herself, looking around the ger, half-expecting something to be missing. The beds, the table, the cabinet, the family tableware, the rugs, the silver teapot that she had refused to sell, even when times were at their hardest.

'Not your mysterious sixth sense again?' Buyant stirred under his pile of blankets. Gunga's cataracts and the gloom of the ger made it difficult to see. Buyant coughed a smoker's cough. 'What is it this time? A message from your bladder, we're going to inherit a camel? Your earwax telling you a giant leech is going to come and molest your innocence?'

'A giant leech did that years ago. It was called Buyant.'

'Very funny. What's for breakfast?'

I may as well start somewhere. 'Husband, do you know anything about the three who think about the fate of the world?'

A long pause in which I thought he hadn't heard me. 'What the devil are you talking about now?'

At that moment Oyuun, Gunga's daughter, came in. Her cheeks were flushed red and you could see her breath. 'The shop had some bread! And I found some onions, too.'

'Good girl!' Gunga embraced her. 'You were gone early. You didn't wake me.'

'Shut the b.l.o.o.d.y door!' bawled Buyant.

'I knew you had to work late at the hotel, so I didn't want to wake you.' Gunga suspected Oyuun wasn't telling the whole truth. 'Was the hotel busy last night, Mum?' Oyuun was an adept subject-changer.

'No. Just the two blondies.'

'I found Australia in the atlas at school. But I couldn't find what was it? Danemark, or somewhere?'

'Who cares?' Buyant rolled out of bed, wearing a blanket as a shawl. He would have been handsome once, and he still thought he was. 'It's not as if you'll you'll ever be going there.' ever be going there.'

Gunga bit her tongue, and Oyuun didn't look up.

'The blondies are checking out today, and I'll be glad to see the back of them. I just can't understand it, her mother letting her daughter wander off like that. I'm sure they're not married, but they're in the same bed! No ring, or anything. And there's something weird about him, too.' Gunga was looking at Oyuun, but Oyuun was looking away.

''Course there is, they're foreigners.' Buyant burped and slurped his tea.

'What do you mean, Mum?' Oyuun started chopping the onions.

'Well, for one thing, he smells of yoghurt. But there's something else too... it's in his eyes... it's like they're not his own.'

'They can't be as weird as those Hungarian trade unionists who used to come. The ones they flew in the orchids from Vietnam for.'

Gunga knew how to blot out her husband's presence. 'That Danemark man, he tips all the time, and he keeps smiling like he's touched in the head. But last night, he touched my hand.'

Buyant spat. 'If he touches you again I'll twist his head off and ram it up his a.r.s.ehole. You tell him that from me.'

Gunga shook her head. 'No, it was like a kid playing tag. He just touched my hand with his thumb, and was gone, out of the kitchen. Or like he was casting a spell. And please don't spit inside the ger.'

Buyant ripped off a gobbet of bread. 'A spell, spell, ah yes, that must be it! He was probably trying to bewitch you. Woman, sometimes I feel it was your grandmother I married, not you!' ah yes, that must be it! He was probably trying to bewitch you. Woman, sometimes I feel it was your grandmother I married, not you!'

The women carried on preparing food in silence.

Buyant scratched his groin. 'Speaking of marriage, Old Gombo's eldest boy came round asking for Oyuun last night.'

Oyuun stared steadily into the noodles she was stirring. 'Oh?'

'Yep. Brought me a bottle of vodka. Good stuff. Old Gombo's a buffoon horseman who can't hold his drink, but his brother-in-law has a good government job, and the younger son is turning into quite a wrestler, they say. He was the champion two years running at school. That's not to be sniffed at.'

Gunga chopped, and the onions made her nostrils sting. Oyuun said nothing.

'It's a thought, isn't it? The older son is obviously quite taken with Oyuun... if she gets Old Gombo's grandson in the oven it'll show she can deliver the goods and and force Old Gombo's hand... I can think of worse matches.' force Old Gombo's hand... I can think of worse matches.'

'I can think of better ones,' said Gunga, stirring some noodles into the mutton soup. A memory pa.s.sed through of Buyant visiting her in her parents' ger, through a flap in the roof, just a few feet away from where her parents were sleeping. 'Someone she loves, for example. Anyway, we've already agreed. Oyuun will finish school and, fate willing, get into the university. We want Oyuun to do well in the world. Maybe she'll get a car. Or at least a motorbike, from China.'

'I don't see the point. It's not like there are any jobs waiting afterwards, especially not for girls. The Russians took all the jobs with them when they left. And the ones that they left the Chinese grabbed. Another way foreigners rip us Mongolians off.'

'Camels.h.i.+t! The vodka took all the jobs. The vodka rips us off.'

Buyant glared. 'Women don't understand politics.'

Gunga glared back. 'And I suppose men do? The economy would die of a common cold if it were healthy enough to catch one.'

'I tell you, it's the Russians-'

'Nothing's ever going to get better until we stop blaming the Russians and start blaming ourselves! The Chinese are able to make money here. Why can't we?' Some fat in a pan began to hiss. Gunga caught a glimpse of her reflection in her cup of milk, frowning. Her hand trembled minutely, and the image rippled away. 'Today is all wrong. I'm going to see the shaman.'

Buyant thumped the table. 'I'm not having you throwing away our togrugs on-'

Gunga snapped back at him. 'I'll throw my togrugs anywhere I please, you soak!'

Buyant backed down from this fight he couldn't win. He didn't want the neighbours overhearing, and saying he couldn't control his woman.

Why am I the way I am? I have no genetic blueprint. I have had no parents to teach me right from wrong. I have had no teachers. I had no nurture, and I possess no nature. But I am discreet and conscientious, a non-human humanist.

I wasn't always this way. After the doctor went mad, I transmigrated around the villagers, I was their lord. I knew their secrets, the bends of the village's streams and the names of its dogs. I knew their rare pleasures that burned out as quickly as they flared up, and of the memories that kept them from freezing. I studied extremes. I would drive my hosts almost to destruction in pursuit of the pleasure which fizzed their neural bridges. I inflicted pain on those unlucky enough to cross my path, just to understand pain. I amused myself by implanting memories from one host into another, or by incessantly singing to them. I'd coerce monks to rob, devoted lovers to be unfaithful, misers to spend. The only thing I can say for myself is that after my first host I never killed again. I cannot say I did this out of love for humanity. I have only one fear: to be inhabiting a human at the moment of death. I still don't know what would happen.

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