The Road to Samarcand. Patrick O’Brian

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ there twice as soon and at a hundredth part of the cost.’

      ‘I quite agree with you, Mr Ross,’ said Professor Ayrton. ‘It would be much better in every way. I can almost picture myself riding forth like Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde already, making the steppe tremble under my horse’s feet.’

      ‘There is one thing that I think I should mention, Professor,’ said Sullivan, ‘and that is that this route leads through some very troubled country. The war-lords are always at it hammer and tongs on the Mongolian border, and farther on there might be all kinds of trouble with all manner of people who are having little private wars.’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ replied the Professor, ‘I have read about it; but surely a peaceful scientific expedition has nothing to fear? The Chinese of my acquaintance are all intensely civilised; in fact, the whole nation seems to me to be most advanced, and I am sure that their influence will make the journey safe for us. And I have all the necessary papers.’

      ‘Well …’ said Sullivan, and Ross said, ‘Humph,’ but the Professor was far away already, thinking of the discoveries that he would make in that archaeological paradise.

      As Ross and Sullivan walked back to the ship, Sullivan said, ‘I wonder what kind of an idea Ayrton has of the Astin Tagh? Do you think he imagines a Chinese war-lord sits around sipping tea and composing verses to the T’ang Emperors?’

      ‘I’m sure he does. He should not be let out alone.’

      After a while Sullivan said, ‘It would be very hard travelling for a man of his age, quite apart from the likelihood of trouble on the way. I believe he thinks it’s going to be a kind of picnic, or a country walk where you look for jade images instead of birds’ nests. I don’t know that we should not stop him.’

      ‘We couldn’t stop him without tying him up,’ said Ross. ‘If we don’t go with him he’ll go by himself, taking Derrick with him. Or else he’ll pick up one of these rascally White Russians, who’ll have his throat cut the first day they are out alone in the Shamo Desert. No, we’ll get him through safe enough. D’ye not remember how we got that little old Frenchman out of Urga?’

      ‘Yes. That was a close call. I wonder if old Hulagu Khan is still in the Town of the Red Knight? We could do worse than get one or two of his men.’

      ‘I was thinking of that too. They are good fighters, those Kokonor Mongols.’

      ‘Then I was wondering about Derrick. But perhaps I am making too much of it altogether. He’s a tough lad, and anyhow a Mongol boy is reckoned a man at his age.’

      A few days later Professor Ayrton came aboard the Wanderer, and they sailed north along the coast to Tientsin. The voyage was uneventful, with prosperous winds, and the Professor, who had never sailed in anything but a liner before, came to understand their love for the schooner. He watched them for hours at a time, and he asked innumerable questions. Derrick noticed that he never asked the same thing twice, but each time he received a plain, clear answer he listened attentively, nodded his head, and stowed it away into his extraordinary memory, a memory that had never failed at any intellectual task but that of mastering what he fondly imagined to be the idiom of America.

      Among other things he astonished them by an adequate, if hardly colloquial, command of literary Chinese, and when Sullivan asked him where he had learnt this most difficult of languages, he replied, ‘No, I have never been in China before. My life has been very cloistered – from college to museum and back again – but I have been looking forward to this expedition for years, and I thought it wise to make a few preparations.’

      ‘You must have the gift of tongues, Professor: managing the Chinese tones is beyond most Europeans, unless they are born to it.’

      ‘Och, it runs in the family,’ said Ross. ‘Did you never hear young Derrick talking Malay, or using the string of Swedish oaths he has picked up from Olaf?’

      ‘Talking of preparations,’ said Sullivan, ‘did you ever think of learning to shoot, Professor? It is a very wild part of the world, you know.’

      ‘Shoot? Dear me, I had never thought of that. But I imagine that there will always be some practised person at hand who will be able to shoot all that is necessary for food.’

      ‘Food? Oh, yes. I was thinking … but it’s of no importance,’ said Sullivan.

      At Tientsin they berthed the Wanderer, laying her up in a mud-berth in the charge of an ancient ship-keeper whose family had done nothing but keep ships in that particular piece of mud since the time of the Ming emperors. The Malays were paid off, but Li Han and Olaf remained through the days of preparing the ship for her long repose in the mud. They grew more and more despondent as the preparations neared their end, and Derrick remembered uneasily that he had promised to ask whether they could go along with the expedition. He could not very well forget it, because Li Han kept reminding him, either by strong hints or else by unexpected delicacies, a shark’s fin, an unusually large sea-slug or a basket of loquats, all of which were intended to spur him on. One day as he was passing the Professor’s cabin he suddenly plucked up courage and went in. The Professor was reading: he looked up at Derrick and pushed his spectacles on to his forehead.

      ‘I hope I am not interrupting you, sir,’ said Derrick.

      ‘Not at all, not at all,’ placing a small stone seal on the page to mark his place. ‘No, no, not in the least. What were you saying?’

      ‘I hadn’t said anything, sir.’

      ‘Then you had better begin, you know. We cannot carry on a conversation if you will not say anything.’

      ‘I was thinking of saying –’

      ‘But, my dear boy, do you not see that such a dialogue would lead to no useful result? We should sit gazing at one another indefinitely. However, now that you are here, let me read you a most interesting account of Shin Mei’s travels in the Gobi – he was Ssu-ma’s grandson, you know.’

      ‘But, Professor –’

      ‘Ah, yes, I know. You are going to say that this has no bearing on the matter. But you are mistaken. It is about the Mongolian fashion of beginning a conversation. Listen …’

      Half an hour later Derrick was still listening.

      ‘There, you see?’ said the Professor at last. ‘Is it not extraordinary that just as I reached that point you should have come in with the intention of beginning a conversation too? Tell me, what was it to be about?’

      ‘I was going to ask if Li Han and Olaf could come on the expedition. Li Han is a very good cook, and he says he would come without any pay for the privilege of cooking for a – for a worthy philosophical scholar. Those were the words he used. But he hasn’t the nerve to ask. And Olaf is very keen, too. He is a wonderful seaman. Please could they come, sir?’

      ‘Olaf is the very large person with a voice like a bull in pain, is he not?’

      ‘Yes, that’s him.’

      ‘That is he, Derrick. And Li Han is the cook. Did he cook our dinner when first I came aboard the Wanderer, and all the wonderful meals since?’

      ‘Yes, sir. And he can read and write English as well as I can.’

      ‘Really, as well as that?’

      Derrick СКАЧАТЬ