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PLATE 39: A RUSSIAN SPY IS CAPTURED. Bindon is absolutely beside himself with excitement at the prospect of travelling to the marsh country in search of the now shamanized Peter Hesselbach. “By Janey, imagine that! A ruddy shaman!” exclaims Bindon through yet another slobbering portion of boiled mutton. Just as we are packing our gear and readying ourselves to leave, a messenger arrives with a startling piece of news: a Russian spy has been captured by shepherds in the hill country and brought into the village. A search of his belongings reveals him to be a member of the dreaded secret police. When he is found to have been surreptitiously making maps of the area, the implication becomes obvious - the NKVD is planning a large-scale roundup of Buryat shamans and landholders. This accomplished, collectivization will be enforced on the Buryat people, destroying their way of life.
Several days later we attend a divination ritual performed to reveal when and where the Russians plan to make their attack. When Westcott suggests that the prisoner be given a good up-yer-chops beating to loosen his tongue, the Buryat laugh - what heavy handed notions white devils have! Rather, the contents of the prisoner’s head will be revealed by sorcery. The divination ends up being a chaotic, confusing affair. The spy, who has been drugged and tied to a post, mutters to himself incoherently. The ritual contains three distinct parts whose relationships to each other did not seem obviously related.
1) Many stoats, sacred animal of the shaman, are sacrificed to Ishi, the god of war.
2) A shaman lays out many flat talismans with crude pictograms on them on a blanket. He goes into a trance and, when the spirit enters him, leaps up and with an ear-splitting shriek and pierces one of the talismans with his ritual horn. (The pierced talisman at once weakens the enemy and reveals aspects of his plans. The accuracy of these ambiguous revelations depend on the skill of the shaman interpreting them: for instance, a pictogram of a horse may indicate that the enemy will attack on horseback, or that the battle will take place in a meadow where horses graze.)
3) A shaman plays a pootsck, a sort of primitive lute used for divination. This peculiar instrument has two sound chambers, one a thin metal tube, the other a yak-skin bladder; sinew strings joining the two compartments are plucked by the shaman to produce a loud, rasping whine. These solemn, almost perverse, vibrations make the hair stand up on my arms - these were not natural frequencies, at least not in the West. The player, Balog tells me, is a great master of sound, and as such can kill that which lives and reanimate that which is dead. While he plays his instrument and interprets its noises, a shaman of the top-hatted sect mesmerizes the prisoner by simultaneously producing an erratic staccato drumbeat while whispering incantations into his ear. The prisoner’s eyes begin to take on an orgasmic glow; Balog explains that the man�s hekura is being seduced so that it will reveal the man�s secrets. Of all the shamans, I most fear the top-hats; they make my skin crawl.