Achmed Abdullah

“ Still, he consoled himself with the thought that the war would end some day, and then the heroes would no longer be heroes while he would still be a magistrate.
Then with utter suddenness had come the real catastrophe. The army was beaten. The western Allies were unable or unwilling to help. The Tsar was deposed. The revolution was no longer a frightening, pale dream, but a fact. It rolled on, from Moscow and Petrograd, north, east, south, west. It rushed Russia, across towns and villages, fields and steppes, like a sheet of smoldering fire, yellow, inexorable. ”

“ And so one Sunday, the first since the revolution, he mounted his pony and rode across the steppe to the Gates of Tamerlane to avenge himself, to mock at the dead Tartar Khans.
As he pulled up in front of the rocks he saw there a tall, broad-shouldered man standing, evidently deep in thought, looking up at the ancient Persian inscriptions. The man turned. It was the former governor-general, Prince Kutusoff, in a threadbare uniform, the cross of Saint Vladimir pinned over his heart. He smiled when he saw Serge Denikoff. ”

“ Always at midnight he rose and left. Occasionally he stopped in dark alleys and talked to frowzy, prowling girls with arrogant eyes and pathetic mouths. Once in a while he walked home with one of them. He knew no other women.
"A most loyal official," the governor-general called him in his yearly provincial report. And Serge Denikoff was loyal. There was no doubt of it. Loyal in word and deed.
But there were his thoughts.
He himself was never quite sure if he loved the Tsar, the government, the mighty in the land, or if he hated them. Power had always fascinated him. ”

“ Then, reading casually the ancient Persian inscriptions, the thought had come to him that here, with nothing left of past glory and prowess except the empty telling of their victories cut into the slate, were the spirits of the dead Tartar Khans who had once ruled from Pekin to Moscow, who had ruled the steppe and the valleys, the desert and the sown, Tamerlane, Ghingiz Khan, Iskandar Khan, Abdullah Khan, Ulug Khan, and a dozen others—where were they today? ”

“ On the outskirts of Samarkand he passed a company of Turkoman camel drivers, perched like monkeys on the humps of their great, silent, shuffle-footed beasts, holding insolently their paths through the narrow alleys. They were preceded by half-a-dozen stalwart ruffians on foot who cleared the way for the caravan with long, knotted whips, shouting insulting and defying words at everybody and belaboring with a democratic impartiality the backs and thighs of Christians and Moslims, Buddhists and Jews, merchants and peasants alike. ”

“ The army of Abdullah Khan obtained a victory so great that during a month blood ran on the river as far as Jilzakh. Let this be known to all passers in the waste, to all travelers on the steppe!"
Serge Denikoff would read the words aloud, smile, and shrug.
"Fools!" would come his comment, in Persian, deliberately, so that the dead Khans might understand. "Fools—weak, powerless—because you are dead! I am alive—and strong!" He would draw himself up. He was wizen, small-boned, with sunken chest, flabby muscles, and a bulbous head that seemed too heavy for his thin stalk of a neck. "Strong—I!" ”

“ And the comrades decided that we need men like you, strict judges who know the law and who are fearless if the people love or hate them. Still—" he smiled disarmingly—"I should not have suggested it to you. It was unkind of me. You are a Christian—a Tsarist—a Russian——"
"You are wrong!" calmly cut in Serge Denikoff.
"Wrong? How?"
"I am a Tartar, a Moslim, and my name is Jagatai Khan—as was my father's name before me!" ”

“ It makes these Russians happy—and it does not hurt us."
"But—the law——?"
"There are always laws. But there is also kindliness. We made a revolution—less because of the former laws than because of the unkindliness," came Mohamet Yar Khan's simple reply. "You are a valuable judge, comrade, but you must not be too strict."
But it rankled in Serge Denikoff's soul. Again it made him feel his haunting subconsciousness of inferiority. These men of the old régime were poor. Some of them cleaned shoes for a living, others sold newspapers or ran errands for Tartar shop-keepers and kosher butchers. ”

“ The first man whom he met, directly in front of the assizes building, was Mohamet Yar Khan, the livery stable keeper, wide-shouldered, moon-faced, his paunchy waist girded by a great crimson shawl, a wicked dagger dangling two inches below his left armpit, a rifle across his back. ”

“ I forgot that you are a soodya...."
"I was one—you mean."
"But you are still a Russian and a Tsarist. That's what I told the comrades when they suggested that I look for you and ask you to continue in your position as magistrate—of the Tartar Republic of course...."
"I—" stammered Serge Denikoff, taken aback, "I—a magistrate of...?"
"Forgive me. But you have always been a good judge. Harsh? Yes——"
"It was my duty!" interrupted Serge Denikoff stonily. "A judge is a judge!" ”

“ Serge Denikoff knew the chant well. He had joined in it often before he had become a Christian and an employee of the Russian government, before he had taken his present name—by special permission of the Tsar—and when he had still been known by his patronymic of Jagatai Khan, clearly indicative of his Moslim faith and Tartar origin.
Every Sunday, very early, he attended High Mass. ”