Winter Pasture

by Li Juan

  Further, camels were supposed to be masters at enduring thirst and hunger, but that’s not what I saw. On our journey south, the camel bull calves without nose pegs always looked like they were starving. They stopped to eat every little clump of grass bigger than a thumb, constantly falling behind, forcing me, the chief organizer, to work my butt off the whole way! Only the pack-laden lead camel knew how to behave, never stopping to eat or drink all day, keeping onward as always.

  On the journey south, I was responsible for the camels. For some reason, the lead camel was always grumbling and grim. It had a special trick, which was to shut its mouth and let out a deep rumble from the back of its throat. Even though it was clearly right next to you, the sound it made seemed to come from miles away.

  * * *

  ANOTHER OF THE CAMELS’ mischiefs was to crowd into the middle of the flock of sheep. Especially during the busiest hours of dusk, the wild bunch would try to force their way into the sheep pen! They may have liked the sheep, but the sheep clearly didn’t like them. As the sheep filed orderly inside in a line, they were suddenly disrupted by this “death from above” and chaos ensued, wool stood on ends. The camel tried to play dumb; the more you tried to shoo it, the more comfortably it sat, blocking the entrance to the pen. When you tried harder to push it out, it simply rolled onto its side, playing dead, refusing to budge.

  Even though the camels were terrible, they still had their cute side. Specifically, these gargantuan camels had the tiniest ears!

  * * *

  WHEN THEY ATE SNOW, the cattle twirled their tongues around, the horses chomped properly with their teeth, but the camels were most impressive of all, lowering their long necks until the bottoms of their chins lay on the ground, then pushing forward like snowplows, instantly plowing up whole mouthfuls of snow! Then they shut their mouths, swallowing it all in one gulp. My guess was that somewhere among their ancestors, there must have been the genes of the Platybelodon.

  Whether cattle or sheep, if it was male, the time would come when it had to be gelded. Even a giant creature like a camel could not escape such a fate. One golden dusk during the coldest days of January, it was our bull calf camel’s turn to suffer the misfortune! Nose peg secured, four hooves bound, it was pushed to the ground with a crash, where its balls were removed. The surgery was simple—after removing the testicles, the wound was stitched up, washed with a potassium permanganate solution, then cauterized with a red-hot pickax. I watched from afar as they stood over the struggling victim. There was blood everywhere; I didn’t dare go any closer to look. But afterward, I examined the balls that had been removed and learned that they were olive-shaped!

  When the deed was done, Sister-in-law cut a hole in the center of a felt square that she slipped over the poor fella’s tail and sewed it onto its blanket to provide the wound with a little protection from the wind. After the final stitch, Shinshybek loosened the ropes and removed the nose peg, and the camel bolted.

  * * *

  UNLIKE THE REST OF the livestock, the horses always ranged free. I never fully understood horse husbandry, only that every evening the mount received a treat—a corn-filled face mask. In addition to the mount, the feeble Young Pioneer and the dairy cow also had face masks tailored to the sizes of their respective faces.

  The horse was always highly cooperative while I tied the mask on. If I fastened it askew, the horse would lean its head to one side to inform me: the right side is too loose!

  It was such a large horse, but every time, it was only given a tiny amount of corn. Cuma said that it was a good year for grass, so we should save what we could. Suppose there was another bout of disastrous weather; the four bags of corn that we had brought with us might not even be enough!

  Cuma also said that, if lost, a herder would loosen the rein to let the horse find its own way home. And why do horses always know where home is? Because they miss the corn! Therefore, whenever a horse returned home, it was fed corn so that it would never experience disappointment. Besides, the horse had worked hard; herding would be impossible without it.

  As Cuma explained, horses have no rumen, they digest food quickly and need to eat constantly. The horses’ main job was to “eat,” which meant they could wander as they pleased. It was amazing how a camel could vanish without a trace after only a day of wandering about, while a horse could spend a whole month unsupervised and still be there.

  The mount that the families rode every day ranged free at night as well. Come morning, retrieving the horse was the job of the family whose turn it was to rest. The strange thing was, under the vast sky, with eight directions to choose from, the horse retriever always walked in the same direction. I would have first stood somewhere on high ground to look around before setting out.

  Every once in a while, Shinshybek would bring all the horses back. At which point, both families leaped into action, standing on the sloped open terrain by the sheep pen, forming a human net to intercept the horses. Due to my diminutive stature, Cuma told me to wave a polyester sack in the air while shouting at the top of my lungs. When the horses were surrounded, we softened our voices and gently guided them into the sheep pen one by one before shutting the gate. It was unclear why we did this. It didn’t seem like it was a body count or health check.

  Horses enjoyed the most freedom, running wherever they pleased. Often, horses from other pastures would grace our burrow settlement with their presence. One evening, in the murky twilight, a pretty band of horses emerged on top of the dune ridge to the west, drawing praises from everyone. Though they varied in size, the claret horses all shared the same dark red hue. Their coats were flawless and glistening. Long, white ribbons were tied around their manes and tails as if they were uniformed soldiers at a victory parade—simply dashing.

  Just then, our Panda Dog was lying beside a frozen clump of blood not far from the horses, gnawing it with abandon. Nothing would have come of it, except the dog turned and noticed me approaching, so she decided she should fulfill its canine duty. She dropped the frozen clump of blood and charged at the horses, barking furiously. The horses were naturally startled and turned to run. But one foal didn’t flinch. It turned toward Panda Dog and took two steps forward, staring menacingly. Panda Dog’s ferocity was instantly cut down a notch, but noticing that I was still looking at her, the dog bolstered her courage and barked even more vehemently. At that point, the other horses had also seen through the paper tiger, so they regrouped around the foal. Together, they glared at the dog, very much as if they were forming a united front. The dog turned to me once more, but I shrugged my shoulders in response: I’d love to help, but … She instantly extinguished its fire and went back to licking the frozen blood in defeat.

  What a brave little horse! The air of a prince, not to mention the long, flaccid penis it dragged on the ground.

  * * *

  FINALLY, ON TO THE SHEEP. But what is there to say about sheep? They may lie at the heart of pastoral life, but they seemed to be relegated to a supporting role, forever patient and silent. About sheep, Cuma had this to say: “Goats are pregnant for five months, sheep for six. Sheep sell for up to a thousand yuan each, goats only five to six hundred.” That was all.

  Also, sheep are short, so inevitably, they are shortsighted. When they move as a flock, those at the center never know what’s going on; they only follow those around them. Only the outermost sheep have a clear view of the situation. Even so, the outermost sheep still insist on squeezing their way into the center. They’re all perfectly happy to follow blindly, as if the safest thing in the world is to disappear among the “majority.”

  Only goats had guts, always leading ahead.

  As Plum Blossom’s horizon, so to speak, expanded beyond the burrow, he turned his attention from Panda Dog and the neighbor’s leopard cat onto the sheep flock. Every evening, while we ushered the sheep into their pen, he anxiously charged up and down the flock as if he, too, was lending a hand.

  The horse stands, waiting for its treat and bloc
king the doorway.

  16.

  Walking in the Wilderness

  BEFORE I LEFT FOR THE winter pastures, my mother wasn’t worried about the hardship I might face. The thing she worried about was that I might be bored. Her suggestion: in addition to clothes, pack a few dozen pounds of yarn and knit sweater vests. At fifty yuan a sweater, a winter’s knitting should be enough to buy a goat. The knitted vests with colorful wavy patterns flew off the shelves at my family’s store. Every time my mother finished one, it sold right away. Supply couldn’t keep up with demand.

  Cuma was also worried about my getting bored, so he recommended that I open a mini-mart in his home. He’d already thought of the name: “Li Juan’s Burrow Retail Store.” He even made a list of the products I should carry: ten boxes of cigarettes, one case of liquor (for the man himself, no doubt), twenty pounds of sugar, ten bottles of soy sauce, ten bottles of vinegar, fifty pairs of batteries, twenty pairs of socks, twenty pairs of gloves, ten packs of playing cards, and fifty candles. All I would need to do was send a message and my mother could ask the vet to deliver the goods.

  It was a modest proposal. However, only twenty-some-odd families lived in the tens of thousands of acres around us. It was such a tiny market.…

  So, it seemed that, for the winter, idleness was a foregone conclusion. The sheep were combined into a single flock and the men took turns herding them. Sister-in-law managed the home and cleaned out the pens. As for me, aside from finding and collecting snow, following the movement of the calves, sewing, and sweeping, there really seemed to be little to do.

  But really, there was no need for anyone to worry. Of the many things I feared, boredom wasn’t one of them. This thing called “idleness” was something I could never have too much of. I woke at seven thirty in the morning and was back under the covers by ten at night. Of the fourteen hours in between, two were for drinking tea, one was for sweeping the burrow and organizing the kitchen, two were for collecting snow, and one was for helping either Sister-in-law or Kurmash usher the animals into the pen. Aside from the two hours of embroidering and two hours lazing in bed, studying Kazakh, and listening to everyone’s chatter, there were only three hours left, during which an aimless stroll was enough to kill the time.

  There is no better phrase than “aimless wandering” to describe my slow ambling through the wilderness! Were I in the city, the “aimless” part would have been impossible because of all the traffic lights and the parades of buses, not to mention pickpockets.

  Here, wind swept across the open terrain. At noon in January, the temperatures rarely rose above fourteen degrees, like in a freezer. And when your world is a big freezer, your thick layers are your citadel—scarf, hat, gloves are all but indispensable. Invincibly clad in the cold, bright air, I walked safe and free, especially considering how there were no wolves in the daytime.

  I wandered the wilderness and there was nothing in my way. When I came across Kurmash on horseback, he asked me if I’d seen the camel calves. I said hadn’t. Just then, two young camels cropped up from the dune behind me—but it was only a minute ago that I had passed through there. Impatiently, Kurmash spurred his horse to corral them. Yup, to wander aimlessly means to worry about nothing at all.

  Soon, my aimless wandering acquired a new purpose: to collect pebbles. Although the surrounding dunes were made of sand, where the terrain dipped, there were pebbles. The pebbles were tiny, rarely larger than a pea. But they were always smooth, speckled, and vividly colored. Close up, some were semi-translucent, like agate. Their beauty could not be fully appreciated in a single glance. One must study them carefully, quietly, and for a long time. In this monotonous, silent world, the beauty of even a single pebble could send a person into a reverie.

  At first, I only collected the white pebbles. The whitest were so white that they would even stand out against the white snow. Then, I found the translucent pink pebbles and yellow pebbles more and more attractive, so I carefully selected a few of those. Finally, I began to collect the colorful, porcelain-like pebbles. When I put them all together, they were as pretty as a handful of jelly beans.

  Later, I turned my attention to the variety of landmarks across the terrain.

  The largest landmark was the road. Even the shallowest, most inconspicuous road had the power to orient the world—wherever the road pointed was the way forward.

  Beneath the broad, empty sky, sand dunes and flat desert scrub were woven together as far as the eye could see. Scanning the land from the peak of a dune, the human body seems no bigger than a leaf. But how can people possibly be considered small in a world like this, where signs of human activity are what leave the deepest marks? Human presence—even when you are still far away from someone’s home, you already begin to sense their presence. You notice the tracks of animals becoming cluttered, anxious. The hoofprints become denser and denser until they coalesce into paths. The paths gather from all directions, becoming more and more defined as they close in on their location. Everything leads to them; everything races relentlessly their way. Indeed, the whole world orients itself around them. They are the master of the wilderness.

  * * *

  LAST YEAR’S RARE BLIZZARD resulted in this year’s rare lushness. Not only the herders, but the mice too enjoyed the abundance. The open plain was full of their holes, one every few steps. Like our burrow, a passage sloped into each, which on closer inspection, reached deep into a quiet ball of darkness.

  Clearly a cautious bunch, in spite of the many holes I saw, I never once saw a mouse. It couldn’t have been easy for them, digging holes in the sand at the risk of their whole world collapsing in.

  The mouse tracks usually began at the entrances of their holes. After meandering through sand and snow, they eventually led to a distant, mysterious place. To us, the place was nothing but an ordinary tuft of dry grass.

  Compared to the delicate precision of a single set of tracks, two sets of intersecting tracks immediately conjured a sense of bustling excitement. Where the tracks crossed, you could almost see how one critter had just greeted another. Often, one set of tracks coming from the entrance of a hole made its way to the entrance of another. A neighborly visit perhaps? Sometimes, a set of tiny tracks circled around the mighty hoofprint of a cow. Just when it appears to have left the hoofprint behind, it returns to circle around it a few more times. The little thing must have discovered something interesting indeed.

  A busy traffic route was one that was an inch wide, consisting of dense prints sunken into the snow. Where there was only one set of prints, it was a quiet back road.

  The horses, cattle, and camels, on the other hand, left tracks that were rude and brazen.

  The tracks of a flock of sheep were a wide, messy stretch that stampeded across the grasslands. Yet from afar, the sheep looked like a fine line, marching in an orderly advance.

  And there was another animal, I don’t know what it was, with four petals for prints, the front two large, the back two smaller, that seemed to move with a sturdy stride.

  Birds appeared ephemerally through spatters of claw marks. Though they belonged to the sky, I rarely spotted them overhead.

  As mice leave prints on the ground, the birds leave squawks in the air. In the wilderness, when there is a sudden cacophony of birdcall, a person feels transported to a forest at dawn. But when you look around, there are no birds in sight. The only birds you see from time to time are the massive falcons that quietly land on top of the sand dunes. With their head turned to one side, they stare at you through one eye as you walk closer and closer. Only when you are too close will they spread their giant wings and erupt into the sky.

  * * *

  ASIDE FROM THE CHEE GRASS and the saxaul, I couldn’t name any of the other multitude of flora that sprinkled the wilderness. But although I didn’t know their names, I was deeply familiar with their shapes and personalities. One thick-bladed, pale green grass with a tip that curled endlessly (like instant noodles) I named “Clingy.” A long gra
ss that was elegant, wispy, and soft I named “Fickle.” One plant, full of light red and white spindly branches that spiraled upward with evenly spaced inch-and-a-half-long offshoots, I named “Tender.” Finally, the pale grass that was densely coated with fine thorns, alert and expectant, I named “Gloomy.”

  Walking across the sunlit land strewn with Clingies, Fickles, Tenders, and Gloomies, I couldn’t help but celebrate: thank goodness I didn’t spend this time knitting sweaters!

  In the evening, a pack of unfamiliar horses galloped across the wilderness beneath the crescent moon. Though the grasses looked withered, they showed no sign of surrender. Why did people call them dead plants? They were clearly still alive, every leaf and every branch intact.

  Underfoot, the sand was a faded yellow. But cupped in your hands and inspected in the light of the setting sun, individual grains gleamed a translucent pink or yellow. Imagine if every grain were a million times its size—what a shimmering reverie the wilderness would be!

  It was during that same sunset that I found, on the western face of the northeastern dune, a delicate but tough hedgehog carcass that was perfectly intact. The spines that shot out were as fine and smooth as jade, bearing no hostility. It didn’t feel like a carcass, but rather an old shell, lovingly left behind. When I was done admiring it, I placed it back on the sand so that it could continue to sunbathe quietly. Whenever I passed by it again, I couldn’t help but say, “Hello!”

  At times I wondered what it might be like if I actually opened a store. How at any given time, somewhere in our quiet yet spacious corner of the world, a herder and his wife would be waiting for the right day. On that day, he would wake early to make his long journey here on horseback. As he calculated in his mind all the things he would buy and say, he’d be feeling both hopeful and alone. So, he’d slow the horse to a steadier pace and start to sing.… But I never opened a store, never set our meeting in motion. I could only wish that he spent those moments in some other corner, making a happy lone march toward some other hope.