GENGHIS KHAN: Yes, yes, I remember. BORTE: That digit has grown and seems to have turned into the thumb of Jochi. And that child without a thumb, that image that has come to me a lot recently. GENGHIS KHAN: This is probably because the more years a person accumulates, the more they are inclined to remember the past. (He puts the thumb to his forehead again.) BORTE: It is all in vain. You cannot wash away the crime committed by putting a severed thumb to your forehead. A rumour has spread among the people that Jochi was bitten by angry onagers, but no, it was not the onagers who killed him; it was you who killed him, his own father. Yes, his own father. When you were young, you and your little brother, Behter, born of Yesugei by his second wife, played out in the wild, and then you killed him with a bow, and now you have killed your own son by breaking his spine. To hide the crime, you made sure to kill him where the onagers graze, and you ordered them to throw the body in the same place – it was all you! After these words of his wife, Genghis Khan, unable to control himself, twitches as if having a fit. GENGHIS KHAN: You… To me… To the Great Kagan? A mere woman? Your hair is long, but your mind is short. Genghis Khan reaches to the wall to remove the sabre hanging next to him and take it out of its sheath. Seeing how badly his hand is shaking and cannot cope with this matter, Borte comes up and, taking his sabre out of its sheath, holds it out to Genghis Khan. BORTE: All your life you wanted to take off my head, and now the hour has come. My fault came from telling the truth. I can’t help but tell the truth. The smarter the head, the more it sacrifices for the truth; and I can tell now my already old head is no good for you. You know it’s strange, for the convenience of cutting off the head the Creator implanted a neck between the head and the chest. Just look at how convenient it is. After all, my neck
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