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The afternoon was waning, and the sun was descending, red as a shield of incandescent metal, when we reached Tien-Hó. The black walls rose to the south beside a torrent roaring among rocks; to the east, the livid, dusty plain stretched to the hills where a vast Catholic mission showed white; and, far beyond, the purple mountains of Mongolia seemed like clouds eternally suspended in the air.
We lodged in a fetid shed that bore the ironic name Inn of Earthly Consolation. They reserved the noble room for me, opening onto a gallery supported by stakes. Paper dragons hung by strings from the rafters, and the slightest breeze set them swaying in rhythm with the dry rustle of foliage and a grotesque, supernatural life.
Before nightfall I went to see the town with Sá-Tó, but I soon fled from the stifling smell of its alleys. Everything appeared black to me: the hovels, the muddy ground, the drains, the starving dogs and the poor population, whom I judged abject. I returned to the inn, where Mongolian muleteers and lice-infested children stared at me in astonishment.
- All these people seem suspicious to me, Sá-Tó - I said, frowning. - Your Honour is right; they are rabble! - the interpreter agreed. He added, however, that there was no danger: before our departure he had killed a black cockerel, and the goddess Kaonine ought to be satisfied. - Your Honour may sleep safe from evil spirits; would you like tea? - he asked. - Bring it, Sá-Tó - I replied.
After tea, we returned to the great plan: the next morning I would bring joy to the hut of Ti-Chin-Fú's supposed widow. I would announce to her that the millions I intended for her were already deposited in Peking. Afterwards, in agreement with the Mandarin governor, we would distribute rice in abundance and end the day with illuminations and dances, as at a public gala. - What do you think, Sá-Tó? - I asked. - The wisdom of Confucius dwells on Your Honour's lips; it will be grand, it will be grand! - he exclaimed.
Weary from the journey, I soon stretched out on the heated brick platform that served as a bed, wrapped myself in my fur coat and made the sign of the cross. I fell asleep thinking of the general's wife's white arms and her green mermaid eyes.
It may already have been past midnight when I awoke to a slow, muffled noise surrounding the shed, like a strong wind in woodland or a heavy sea beating against a breakwater. The sorrowful moonlight of the Asian autumn entered through the open gallery, giving chimerical shapes to the hanging dragons. I rose, already uneasy, when a tall, agitated figure appeared in the band of light. - It is I, Your Honour! - murmured Sá-Tó's terrified voice.
Crouching beside me, he said in a hoarse rush that word had spread through the town of a foreigner, a 'foreign Devil', arriving with luggage full of treasure. Since the beginning of the night, Sá-Tó had glimpsed sharp faces and avid eyes prowling around the inn like impatient jackals. He had then ordered the bearers to barricade the door with the baggage carts, arranged in a semicircle according to the old Tartar custom. The crowd had grown little by little and, according to him, the whole population of Tien-Hó was now growling around the inn. The goddess Kaonine had not, after all, been satisfied with the black cockerel's blood. He had also seen a black goat recoil at the door of a pagoda, an omen that foretold a night of terrors and reminded him of his distant wife in Peking, 'the bone of his bone'.
- And now, Sá-Tó? - I asked. - Now... Your Honour, now... - he stammered without finishing. Thus his thin figure appeared to me, trembling and crouched like a dog crawling beneath the lash.
I pushed the coward aside and went out to the gallery. In the deep shadow of the opposite awning there was indeed a dark, compact crowd. At times a figure crawled into the lit space, peered at the carts and sniffed around them, but, feeling the moon upon its face, withdrew and melted into the darkness. Because the awning roof was low, the iron of a lowered spear flashed for an instant in the moonlight.
- What do you want, you rabble? - I shouted in Portuguese. A growl answered from the darkness; a stone pierced the oiled paper of the lattice beside me and, a moment later, an arrow whistled and lodged in a beam above my head.
I went quickly down to the kitchen, where my porters were squatting on their heels, their teeth chattering with terror. The two Cossacks accompanying me smoked impassively beside the hearth, with their bare sabres across their knees. The old innkeeper with glasses, the ragged old woman whom I had seen in the courtyard flying a paper kite, the muleteers and the children had disappeared; only an old man intoxicated by opium remained in a corner, slumped like a bundle. Outside, the crowd was already shouting.
I ordered Sá-Tó, who was close to fainting against a beam, to wake the Mandarin governor, tell him that I was Camilloff's friend and Prince Tong's guest, and summon him to disperse the crowd in the name of the sacred law of hospitality. In a voice as faint as a breath, Sá-Tó declared that, in his opinion, the governor himself was directing the attack. From the authorities to the beggars, he said, the fame of my wealth and the legend of the carts laden with gold had inflamed every appetite. Prudence commanded, like a holy precept, that we abandon part of the treasure, the mules and the boxes of provisions.
- And remain in this accursed town without shirts, money or provisions? - I protested. - But with your precious life, Your Honour! - Sá-Tó replied. I yielded and told him to offer a generous distribution of cash coins if the crowd returned home and respected us as guests sent by Buddha.
Trembling, Sá-Tó climbed to the balcony and began to harangue the crowd, waving his arms and hurling out words with the violence of a barking dog. I opened the travelling case and passed him packets and bags of coins, which he flung out by the handful with a sower's gesture. Below, the rain of metal provoked a furious commotion, followed by a slow sigh of satisfied appetite and then by a suspended silence waiting for more.
- More! - Sá-Tó kept murmuring, turning anxiously towards me. Indignant, I handed him more packets, rolls and bundles of half-real coins threaded on strings, until the travelling case was empty. The crowd roared, insatiable. - More, Your Honour! - Sá-Tó pleaded. - I have no more, man; the rest is in Peking! - I shouted. - O holy Buddha, we are lost! - Sá-Tó cried, dropping to his knees.
The townspeople still waited in silence. Suddenly a savage howl tore through the air, and the mass of people hurled itself against the carts defending the doorway in a semicircle. At the impact, all the timberwork of the Inn of Earthly Consolation creaked and swayed.
I ran to the balcony and saw a desperate mêlée around the overturned carts, while axes came flashing down upon the lids of the crates. Countless hands slashed open the leather of the cases with knives. Beneath the awning, the Cossacks struggled and howled under the cleavers' blows. Torches wandered around the shed, scattering sparks; the uproar made dogs howl in the distance, and fresh shadows ran from every alley, brandishing pikes and curved sickles.
I then heard the crowd invade the ground floor through the shattered doors and assumed it was looking for me because it believed I was carrying the finest part of the treasure, precious stones and gold. Terror drove me frantic: I ran to a bamboo screen facing the courtyard, knocked it down and leapt into a bed of coarse weeds steeped in an acrid smell of filth. My pony was neighing, tied to a beam and tugging furiously at its halter; I threw myself onto it and seized its mane.
At that instant, a horde burst through the forced entrance to the kitchen amid lanterns, spears and a delirious clamour. The pony, startled, leapt over a ditch; an arrow whistled past me, one brick struck my shoulder, another hit me in the lower back, another struck the animal's haunch, and a fourth, larger one tore my ear open. Clinging desperately to the mane, gasping, with my tongue out and blood dripping from my ear, I was hurled into a furious gallop along a black street. Suddenly I saw before me the wall, a bastion and the closed town gate.
Delirious, with the crowd roaring behind me and abandoned by all human aid, I needed God. I believed in Him, cried out for Him to save me and drew from the depths of my memory fragments of prayers, including the Hail, Holy Queen, to offer Him. Turning to look back over the colt's haunch, I saw a flare of torches appear at a distant corner: it was the pursuit. I raced along the wall, which streamed beside me like a vast black ribbon furiously unrolling, until I saw a breach bristling with brambles and, beyond it, the plain asleep beneath the moon like an immense stretch of still water. I hurled myself towards the opening, jolted by the pony's bounds, and galloped for a long time across the open ground.
Suddenly the pony and I rolled over with a dull thud: it was a pond. Putrid water entered my mouth while my feet became entangled in the soft roots of the water lilies. When I managed to rise and steady myself on the ground, I saw the pony already running far away like a shadow, with its stirrups flying in the wind.
I then began to cross that solitude, sinking my feet into the muddy ground and forcing my way through thorny scrub. Blood from my ear dripped onto my shoulder, my soaked clothes chilled me to the skin in the bitter cold and, at times, I thought I saw beasts' eyes glinting in the darkness.
At last I found an enclosure of loose stones where, beneath a black shrub, lay a heap of yellow coffins abandoned in the fields, with bodies decaying inside them. Exhausted, I collapsed upon a coffin, but an abominable smell weighed upon the air and, as I leant on it, I felt a viscous liquid seeping through the cracks between the boards. I tried to flee, but my knees refused to obey and trembled. Trees, rocks, tall grasses and the whole horizon began to spin around me like a swift disc, while blood-red sparks quivered before my eyes. I felt myself falling very slowly from a great height, like a descending feather.
When I regained consciousness, I was lying on a stone bench in the courtyard of a vast building resembling a convent, surrounded by deep silence. Two Lazarist priests were slowly washing my wounded ear. Cool air circulated, the pulley of a well creaked slowly and a bell was ringing for matins. I raised my eyes to the white façade, barred windows and cross above; in that Catholic cloister's peace I thought I had recovered a corner of my homeland, shelter and consolation, and two silent tears rolled from my eyelids.