understand him. He did not chew his trigger-thumb, until she did. This was not her Yesugei.
Temujin was jubilant: a month’s journey, just him alone with his marvelous father.
Bagtor ground his nose in how grown up he thought he was, to be engaged to a girl. To upset him Bagtor talked nastily, filthily about girls and then laughed at Temujin’s disgust. “I don’t know you’re armed for this, Temujin, honestly I don’t.”
Bagtor hadn’t been given a children’s engagement. In front of them both Hoelun told him, “Your father left you your freedom, Bagtor, since he had the liberty, in your case. At a festival, at a games, you’ll meet a girl, and you’ll be very glad, believe me, Bagtor, then, that you have your freedom. Temujin has to suffer for his rank.” It is the chiefly families who always go outside the tribe for wives: to keep the bones interconnected, the bones of the great Mongol skeleton. But Bagtor only felt he didn’t matter enough to have his father choose his wife; Bagtor only knew his mother was a slave and that disqualified him. He didn’t grumble to his father – at fifteen he was a man but he wasn’t man enough for that – however, he had begun to blame his mother; he had begun to scorn his mother and to be sarcastic with her. The nokor Arash, who had been a father figure to him (a father of his own) most unfortunately had lost his life in feud.
Bagtor and Belgutei were black-haired and dark-eyed, so that the wife’s children and the slave’s children were as distinct as Ulun Ghoa’s two sets of sons. Like Ulun Ghoa, the Mother of the Mongols, Hoelun made no distinction: her husband’s get was what was important to her, not who came from her womb; she loved Yesugei in them, and her love was equal. To Temujin she talked about clans. “Society runs on two wheels, two systems side by side. In one wheel your father is at the hub, in the other he is a spoke. It is a load off, he tells me, at a clan meet, to sit down in the row and misbehave himself like a kid brother (he says, although in actual fact he doesn’t). Your father has much responsibility and that weighs. The wheels mayn’t always run in a way we think ideal. I can criticize clan structure, where Bagtor and Belgutei have to sit down the row from my children. But then I balance that with your father’s experience. Carts don’t run on one wheel, and that’s for the wheel’s sake, not only for the cart’s. You and Bagtor have to strike a balance: he is your senior in age, your junior in the clan. I can point to no more smoothly-running model than Yesugei and Mengetu.”
Temujin doubted that Mengetu ever mimed to set Yesugei’s hair alight or stuff embers in his mouth, to see whether he were proof, to see whether he were heavenly. For these fire incidents Temujin had thought up his answer (the day Bagtor thought unoriginal he’d think unoriginal too) – “Why don’t you try dad?” It mightn’t be a great answer, but told him he was a coward. If he didn’t care he was coward, what do you do? From daddy’s boy the answer might only provoke, but you can’t worry about that. Temujin had consulted Jamuqa, who had bigger uglies to face in his grannies, and Jamuqa spoke on the look-them-in-the-eye approach. It deters an ugly, at times, or other times can aggravate them. Still, to turn tail is both dangerous and impossible to pride. “If I’m flogged to death before I’m fifteen, Temujin, I can tell you one thing: I never groveled.”
“Are you chief at fifteen?”
“I’m independent.”
“What are you going to do about them then?”
“Honestly? I don’t reckon I’m going to be magnanimous, Temujin.”
Magnanimous was Temujin’s mother’s word. She had ascertained, “There has been nothing physical?”
“No.”
“Speeches won’t hurt you. Where are we if we quarrel over speeches?”
“Uncle Mengetu did.”
“Temujin, that was another grade of speech. Bagtor feels hard-done-by, and perhaps he isn’t without a case? Try to be big, Temujin. Try to be magnanimous.” And she went on to equip him with an idea what this means.
“I wish he’d hit me,” said Temujin to Jamuqa.
“You’d have him up on charges, then.”
“How come Bagtor can’t lay a finger on me and your grannies can tear into you? None of this is fair. The day he hits me I go to dad. I don’t have to stand that, kid or no kid. He won’t, though.” Temujin avouched to his friend, “He won’t hit me, because he’s a coward, but if he saw a way to have an accident, at no risk of getting caught, he’d snatch his chance.”
Jamuqa, who felt half-dead at times, didn’t pooh-pooh this notion from him. “In my judgement, you have the luxury to despise him, Temujin, never mind what your mother tells you.”
An orphan on both sides, Jamuqa was bold, but Temujin had to mind what his mother told him.
For his engagement trip they took him out of Jamuqa’s clothes – unpicked at the seams to fit him, adjusted by his and Jamuqa’s hands, no other, inches short at wrist and ankle. “You won’t win a wife like that.”
“Dad didn’t fit into Toghrul’s. He was funny too.”
“My anda’s garments are laid in mother’s chest for precious objects. Your anda’s garments can lie with them.”
“While we’re away. When we’re home can I have them out to sleep with, even if I am engaged?”
Yesugei twitched his face at Hoelun, who was coiling Temujin’s hair-tails, before and behind his ears – the nape tail got off. Coils are a silly fashion; they bounce and distract your sights. Dad wore his five tails in greased tresses with bronze clasps or wound with wire. Even mother wouldn’t coax him into coils.
“Once in Ongirat your father is to shave you daily. And leave your hat on, like a young noyon.”
“Yes, mother.”
Onggor stuck up for him. He was senior first cousin, Mengetu’s son in his twenties, much-liked by the kids. “The hat’s a pity. Hats are a pity in general, and he’s an exhibit why. He’s different with his hat on and off. His skull’s his asset.”
Yesugei said, “Next you’ll have us dance about naked, Onggor.”
“I might, at that. I’ve got assets.”
“And you know where to keep them.”
“Sorry, uncle.”
“You’re not wrong on Temujin. He possesses a skull, and at home without his hat he isn’t such an eyesore.” His father winked at him.
“Your cranium indicates the inner features,” Onggor taught him. “Like a lamb in a sack, you see the contours, you see the faults and the strengths. You can tell a great deal about a man by the bone of the head. That’s why we cover up. – Is that why we cover up, Yesugei?”
“That’ll do.”
“We shave the upper head,” Onggor went on, “to have our intimate selves to offer to family and friends, to God and the spirits, or to our king. Whereupon you needn’t squirm, Temmy, you have a great head.”
“Shame about his mug.” That was his father.
“Yesugei.” That was his mother, who told him, “Don’t you listen to your father, who detects too much of himself in you. But you can do far worse.”
At setting-out, Hoelun, unlike her custom, didn’t walk by Yesugei’s horse with her hand on his knee, but by his. This froze Temujin with too much attention. But outside the gates Yesugei climbed down again; then they whispered and kissed with open jaws, as if he wasn’t there, which he was much more used to.
“Be obedient, Temujin, and stay at your father’s side.”
“Yes, mother.” The boy had no other idea in his head than to go at his father’s girth forever, and obey him.
On the trip his father taught him, hundreds of things throughout the day. Geography was a big subject, quite technical, with words for a hill by size, shape and situation – the ability to describe. Geology, biology: put them together, they are steppe science, or how to keep your animals alive. Horses have a trillion technical terms, less for sheep. In a camp Yesugei had him try his hand at a wether sheep for the pot, try his hand inside a wether, slide along and pinch near the heart, stop the blood. He felt the throb, the dammed-up blood, in his hand inside the sheep, which is spooky, but he was steady and
didn’t spook the sheep, who blithely bleated at him, grew sleepy and nodded off. After the organs and gut had been removed and the blood ladled out and gone to make blood sausage, Temujin watched his father hang the carcass from a branch and with quick slashes of a butcher’s knife pare or peel the flesh away from the bones. The operation left an intact skeleton, clean and white, and a single eiderdown quilt of meat. Temujin despaired. “It’s in the wrist. Helps you with the sword. Sword’s your second or third weapon but yet no idle art.”
“Can you whittle a Tartar’s flesh from his bones like that?”
“Why, do you want to eat him?”
Temujin gurgled.
“Now tell me the bones’ names, top to bottom. Give me a rhythm and I won’t demand bottom to top.”
Most of the time they traveled along water. Water has been up to the skies, goes between us and the skies. It must not be grossly tainted; dirty boys wash with skimmed tallow, with salt, with mineral muds that make you glow, but not with water; if you do, the lightning comes to tell you, Water is an Element of Mine. Go quietly through the life around you. Very bad boys thrash the heads off stalks for amusement. A boy is boisterous, but he disturbs his surrounds at his risk. The stalks of grass have a fate to be eaten by your horse – just as you have a fate to be eaten by beasts and birds, no ill fate, to feed life; but leave the grass to its existence, as you wish to enjoy yours. Never strike an animal,