Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [59]
I shook hands as firmly as I could, but doubted I inflicted any damage.
“Sit and have a drink with us,” the Rotmistr said.
I nodded my agreement. The rotmistr looked like one of those people it was easier to say “yes” to than explain why you didn’t want to have a drink with him.
The rotmistr ordered a round, and as we waited, the conversation took on a familiar form—we compared places of birth and length of service (I decided not to lie too much and pegged mine at six months, which provoked gales of laughter). The rotmistr in his thirties and the cornets in their twenties were clearly not old enough to had participated in the Patriotic War of 1812 —they had not even been born—and regretted it. Yes, they had traveled abroad—mostly to pacify whatever natives protested the construction of the railroads or somehow found themselves unhappy the empire’s influence had reached them. And wherever it was, there were these friendly, loud, drunk men on horseback, ready to burn houses and do unspeakable things. By the time four glasses filled with vodka arrived, I felt that I needed a drink.
I had seen people drink before, and I tossed my shot back rather confidently and took a quick bite of one of the thoughtfully supplied pickles to keep from coughing.
They asked me about my life and I answered truthfully that I traveled with a friend—an Englishman, I hinted, of considerable importance. I was his local guide but said I could not tell them more.
They nodded that they understood, and I could almost see the ideas forming in their skulls, the slow, laborious movement of minds used to only the simplest of operations—they saw my uniform and heard the word “Englishman,” and assumed I was on a secret mission of a great military and governmental importance. In fact, I was. In any case, I was grateful to be spared any additional lying. They started talking about their squadron—Rotmistr Ivankov was their leader— and I, relaxed by alcohol and warmth and fatigue, let my mind drift.
I thought of my conversation with Jack and wondered if I had been too harsh with him. If, really, one could not help but take the side of one’s country. And then I thought of the letters to the queen written by Commissioner Lin, and I felt so angry—one of the passages Chiang Tse quoted to me from memory spoke of sameness, of how essentially alike the Chinese and the English were. It was the English and the Russians who kept denying the similarity, and instead they found Professor Ipatiev and others like him who wrote stupid books about beastliness of everyone who was not them.
The word “Turkestan” caught my attention and brought me back to the table. My new friends spoke of their impending departure to that distant province, and lamented the fact it would take the cavalry so much longer to get there than the train.
“We’ve been there before,” the rotmistr told me, his voice made soft and intimate by alcohol. “You won’t believe what it’s like there, lad—steppe, yes, but also a desert. Not a single tree as far as the eye can see, just golden dry grass and red clay ringing under the hooves and the blue mountains on the horizon.”
One of the cornets (I had forgotten which was which) leaned on the table with both elbows and whispered to me, “I wonder sometimes, what right we have . . . The Turks who live there, they live on horseback and always move around. They take their yurts with them, and they just go—Turkestan, Mongolia, China-land . . . all the same to them. And there’s such beauty all around, I wonder why we have to take it and call it ours.”
“That’s empire building,” the other cornet said, without any noticeable trace of irony. “If the tsar-emperor wants it to lay a railroad through, then he can take it. Not like those people are doing anything with that land anyway.”
“Commissioner Lin was sent to Turkestan,” I slurred, both my memory and my tongue getting away from me. I felt his hurt, his puzzlement: If you know it is poison, why are you bringing it to us?