Winter Pasture

by Li Juan

  I couldn’t believe it!

  They must have faced great difficulties in the outside world to want to give the wilderness a try. To them, this must have seemed like a thoroughly isolated world (not far from the truth), a market that they could monopolize. In any case, their willingness to put themselves through so much trouble must mean that there’s some hope for them yet.

  * * *

  LATE ONE NIGHT, Shinshybek flew in the door with news: “Quick! Kama’s calling! Quickly!” Any delay might mean losing the signal.

  Husband and wife sprang up from the bed and ran out of the burrow before they had a chance to put on coats.

  Kama told them on the phone that Grandma was alone at Ciakutu township hospital, where she was recovering steadily. She was taking care of the cows and goats at home on her own, milking them daily, managing the housework. She added that she’d sold the sheepskins she brought home for a hundred and forty yuan each.

  Cuma and Sister-in-law discussed the phone call for days, savoring every word their daughter had said.

  Soon thereafter, the vet arrived with a package from Kama, packed to the point of impenetrability. It took the couple ages to open it. Inside, along with several baursaks and two pieces of raw sheep hide cut by Grandma, were two items that Cuma had long been dreaming about: a channel changer for the TV and the missing parts of the satellite dish.

  In that moment, the great silence was ripped asunder. We could watch TV!

  18.

  The Only Television

  EVERY MORNING, THE SUN ROSE in the southeast, and by four thirty in the afternoon, it set in the southwest. After a stingy, shallow arc across the southern sky, it considered the day’s work complete. One couldn’t help but be reminded of the phrase “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

  Short days and long nights—a proportion that I’m perfectly happy to entertain. Plenty of time to sleep eagerly! Every time I woke up, I found myself still enmeshed in darkness.

  But not everyone felt this way, especially Cuma; for him, idleness meant destruction!

  As a result, dinners always seemed never-ending. When the meal was finally over and the bowls and chopsticks were put away, Cuma would declare, “Tea time.” So out came the recently folded tablecloth and nan was cut, bowls were placed. It felt a little like the reluctant musician in the poem who had to come out for one encore too many. But how many more bowls of tea could we really drink at that hour? When Cuma finished his tea, he didn’t hand the empty bowl back to Sister-in-law but spun the bowl on the table like a top instead—as if to remind us how bored he was. Sister-in-law didn’t bother taking his bowl. When he grabbed the yogurt bowl nearby and started spinning that too, Sister-in-law simply ignored him. Then there was the butter bowl. And if she hadn’t put away the wooden spoon and pieces of nan … what a child.

  Then he returned to his newspapers. He had many newspapers. After he read them, as I mentioned, he used them to roll cigarettes. He not only had Kazakh newspapers but a few Chinese ones too. Although he generally didn’t use the Chinese newspapers to roll cigarettes because Chinese characters have too many strokes, resulting in lots of ink on the page. Smoking a paper like that would make you cough.

  Of course, Cuma couldn’t read the Chinese newspapers, but he could always pretend. Pointing to the sports page featuring photos of three gold-medal athletes, he explained to Sister-in-law, “This one, he’s just died. He did a good thing, everyone should learn from him. This one, also died after he did something good. And this one …” He scrutinized the photograph of a swimmer before finally declaring, “Inland is flooding, he drowned.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh: “Koychy!”

  Then he turned his attention to the doctor providing free medical checkups in the community: “This famous doctor inland works for free. Everybody went to see the doctor, and he told them all they’re sick. It’s free to get a checkup, but the medicine’s not free …” and on he rambled. But in a way, what he said had some truth to it. There really have been medical scams like that. Cuma must have been tricked once when he went into the city.

  Anyway, that was what life was like before television. But, if you ask me, I thought it was rather enjoyable. Those who wanted to concoct news stories could concoct news stories. Those who wanted to read books could read books. Those who wanted to write could write. Those who wanted to do laundry could do laundry. Once Cuma finished deciphering the newspaper, he pondered for a while as to what to do next, finally settling on turning on the stereo. He skipped one song after another until he found his favorite, then let it play while he lay in bed to rest. When the song finished, he got up and started skipping through the songs again. A lonely evening. I worked on my Kazakh exercise book for a while, drifted off for a while, flipped through the Chinese newspaper for a while, and lay down for a nap. I was the only one who didn’t mind doing that.

  Fortunately, we had neighbors. Cuma always waited until he couldn’t bear it anymore before letting out a final groan, throwing on some clothes, and running off next door to play cards. There were two other men there after all. And sometimes Sister-in-law would slip out with her spindle to go chat with Sayna. When both husband and wife were gone, Kama and I would put on a dance tune like “Black Horse Trot” and boogie to our heart’s content. At this point, Kama would gossip about the lives of the young people. In the end, she would suggest that I may as well marry a Kazakh man. All the sheep and cattle and horses I could want. What could be better!

  But in mid-December, when Kama left, I started to feel like the slow, dark nights really were getting “slow.” Think about it: every day, the world was dark for twelve hours!

  And before long, Kurmash left the wilderness as well, leaving Shinshybek as Cuma’s sole companion. How interesting can a two-person card game really be?

  * * *

  THAT WAS THE SITUATION until our second month in the wilderness, when, having returned to the banks of the Ulungur, Kama asked the vet to deliver the channel changer and missing parts for the satellite dish. It was the day Cuma had been waiting for. He quickly set up the mesh satellite dish (which had previously hung haphazardly on top of the burrow) and connected it to the black-and-white television inside (until then I thought it was just for decoration). He then cut open the wires of the TV and of the receiver and twisted them to the two terminals of the battery (we had no sockets). Then, while one of us was on the roof adjusting the dish, the other kept an eye on the signal strength on the screen inside. We fiddled and fiddled until eventually, we had access to two Chinese-language channels! The signal was weak, a mere 20 percent, and the image kept freezing, but we were already very happy.

  Ay, I’d really lucked out! I never thought that I would be living in the only burrow in the whole winter pasture with a working television set! It was probably because most of the herders were simple people. The clever and ambitious ones like Cuma had long run off somewhere to do business and make their fortunes. He was the only one left on the pasture cleverly tending to his flock. He had nowhere else to make use of his cleverness, so he ended up contriving a television. To watch TV in a burrow—how extravagant! Watching TV in the desolate wilds was nothing short of surreal … how lucky that I would never get a good night’s sleep again.

  We huddled together in front of the box and watched until the battery ran low and the image flickered, turning white, but we kept on watching. We watched until the image became blurry and shrank, but we kept watching. When all that was left was a postcard-sized rectangle displaying a scrambled mess, we kept watching. Even when the postcard was gone and the screen turned black, leaving only the sound, we kept watching—no, listening, listening as if it was a radio drama. We listened until the solar battery began beeping its warning before we finally felt that it had been enough and turned the thing off. But that wasn’t the end! After that came a round of tea and a rehash of the plot until eventually, we cleared the dastarkhān, brushed the bed, and laid out covers for bedtime. How infuriating.
/>   * * *

  IN THE EVENINGS, the Shinshybek family would come over, carrying Karlygash, to watch TV. When the kids were home for winter break, the bed platform was so crowded that there was no room to lie down for a nap. Besides, I had an important job to do, so dozing off was out of the question. I was responsible for explaining the programs to Cuma. In turn, Cuma explained them to everyone else.

  Mostly though, they weren’t interested in the plot but rather the visual details. For example, a pretty girl is weeping because of a broken heart, a Japanese imperialist is slapped across the face, a group of villains step on a landmine … these were the scenes that everyone savored, evoking sighs and laughter.

  Everyone felt sympathy for the girl from Beijing sent to the northeast to herd sheep (an “educated youth”) because of her beauty and her misfortune. However, one thing that confused the audience was that if she’d been sent to herd, why were there no sheep from beginning to end? At last, during the next evening’s episode, there came a shot—the girl holding a lamb, gazing into the distance. With a collective “ooh,” the audience felt their skepticism alleviated. They waited for the frame to zoom out or pan so that they could see even more sheep. But the director let them down. Clearly, due to their tight budget, the production had only rented the one little lamb.

  Watching these trashy TV shows in the city is a fine way to kill time while you digest dinner. But in the wilderness, they failed to pass scrutiny before their attentive audience. The scenes showing snowstorms were so fake that even Karlygash could see through them—only handfuls of snow sprinkled in front of the camera lens, while the actors who struggled against the storm didn’t have a flake on them!

  In another scene, the lead character’s horse broke a leg, stranding both horse and man in the middle of a blizzard. Everyone felt terribly sympathetic. But soon after, another man rode the same horse to save the stranded man. They all cried out, “The leg’s fixed!” Silly director, he didn’t think to cast a different horse.

  To poor city folks, all horses look the same. But for a herder, the difference between one horse and another is as obvious as the difference between two people.

  * * *

  IN SHORT, THE TV had brought the outside world into the wilderness, tearing asunder its tranquility. And while TV allowed the herders to marvel at that outside world, it also made that world seem laughable. There were the commercials for snacks that despite their attractive packaging, still seemed like nothing special compared to our freshly fried baursak. When I tried to translate a commercial, it was met with a series of “Koychys.” TV brought the outside world into the wilderness, but as a result it made the wilderness even more isolated.

  How unrealistic! The capricious love and hate, friendship and animosity, the lies as clear as day, the crocodile tears and gratuitous intrigue, the budget-busting deus ex machina … even the herders in their tiny little world had to grumble, “Change the channel!” As for me, sheer boredom and despair: TV is like a tractor rumbling along, tearing up the land, leaving a mess in its wake. There’s always the same trash on every program, as if that’s reality.

  It couldn’t have been further from our reality. We put one foot in front of the other, never missing a beat, slowly but surely traversing the seasons. We heeded the laws of nature and rules of tradition; like newborn calves, we understood nothing, worried about nothing, nothing other than growing up, for which strongheadedness was everything. And yet, who is to say which reality is more fragile?

  When Cuma returned after a day on the pasture, Sister-in-law, who was preparing dinner, asked, “Should we have some tea first?” His response: “Tea’s unimportant. Let’s see how Qiao Haiyang is first!” Qiao Haiyang is the male protagonist of a series we were watching. An enjoyable series to be fair, even if the plot was all over the place. But the most incredible thing about it was that from age eighteen to over forty, the main character lived in a perennially snow-covered world, supposedly the country’s northeastern territory. Cuma asked me, “Why is it winter every day?” I said, “TV shows are filmed quickly! They finished shooting in one winter so they never got around to summertime.”

  After watching one series set during the War of Resistance, everyone managed to learn a Japanese song, “Sakura, Sakura …” They sang it in the morning and sang it at night, breaking into a dance whenever the song was sung. Kama (she had returned with her brother Zhada for winter break) pulled me around the room, jumping up and down, while Sister-in-law danced with Karlygash, her hands holding the infant’s little arms, and Cuma with Plum Blossom, gripping on to the cat’s paws. Those were happy times.

  There was another program called Two-Gun Li Xiangyang. When Cuma was fixing his saw, he suddenly grabbed two triangular pieces of wood, one in each hand, and strafed left to right, up and down, and front to back, “pew pew pew …!!” terrifying the little girl Nurgün. From next door, both of Shinshybek’s older children had arrived for winter break as well.

  After having watched three Communist-revolution-themed series, everyone seemed to have grasped the tropes. Around the breakfast tablecloth, Cuma assigned each of us a role. I was from the Eighth Route Army, Kama was a guerrilla soldier, Zhada was a little Japanese invader, Cuma was a Kuomintang officer, and Sister-in-law was the officer’s wife. Only Sister-in-law couldn’t figure out the scene, refusing to play along, but the rest of us threw ourselves into role-playing and were carried away by our performance.

  * * *

  MERCIFULLY, WE WEREN’T stuck with only trash to watch. There was, eventually, a genuinely interesting show, My Brother Shun Liu.

  What’s more, we began to receive signal from the Kazakh-language channel, and there were Chinese subtitles, so everyone was happy. Everyone was mesmerized by the series and we all loved the character Shun Liu. I’d seen one or two episodes before and knew certain elements of the plot. When I told everyone that Erlai dies in the end, they scolded me for talking nonsense.

  Sadly, the solar-powered battery was limited. With the incessant ads, we could only watch half an episode at a time.

  The situation was as follows: after fully charging the battery, we could watch for three hours on the first day; after charging it all day the second day, we could only watch for two hours; the third day, the charge would only last one hour; on the fourth day, we had to take a break; that way on the fifth day, we could to watch for two hours again. If we rested for two consecutive days, then on the sixth day, we could watch for three hours. At any rate, it was bad. And that’s upon the premise of having no cloudy days. That, and that Sister-in-law didn’t make a mistake wiring the battery—which she often did, because in the absence of plugs and sockets, all the appliances had to connect to the two terminals, above which hung coils upon coils of wires. Each set of coils presented the possibility of having its negative and positive ends mixed up … it was a real head-scratcher. There were times when even I couldn’t work it out.

  In order to save electricity, the moment the commercials started, we removed the wires from the battery. We waited in the dark (lights would waste electricity too), then reconnected the wires after five minutes. If we did that, at eight thirty we could watch an episode and half of Shun Liu!

  Turning on the light before eight thirty was not allowed even if there was an emergency. We all sat in the dark, chatting about this and that. The children huddled beside the stove’s faint light to make shadow puppets. When Kurmash played music on his phone, the children danced and sang, taking turns to perform.

  In those final moments of power, shrouded in darkness, the room silently listened to the radio drama. If anyone dared to speak a word, they were immediately reprimanded.

  Everyone felt deep a sympathy for Erlai’s fate, talking about him nonstop during the day. But in the end, we never saw the finale. It had been snowing for days, always overcast, giving the battery only enough electricity to power the TV for thirty minutes. We were so disappointed.

  The neighbor’s boy couldn’t let go. He fashioned a wo
oden gun with a strap and a twisted-wire scope that he carried with him all day. Every so often, he dropped to the ground and positioned the gun for an ambush. If I ran into him, he would hide his weapon behind his back and gradually retreat, an embarrassed smile on his face. He was determined not to let me see his treasure.

  Before long, the gun ended up in Cuma’s hands, and he brought it home for us to see. We all took turns holding it and aiming it for a good laugh. The next morning, suited up and ready to head to pasture, Cuma went to his horse, grabbed his whip, and then, on second thought, decided to sling the gun solemnly over his shoulder before mounting. We laughed uproariously.

  Even Kama sank into a quixotic mood. When the two of us went to haul snow, she suddenly charged down the snowy slope to secure advantageous terrain. Behind cover, in a prone position, she fired pistols from both hands like a consummate soldier, while adding sound effects, “Puchka! Puchka!”

  Sadly, when Shun Liu ended, there were no more shows like it. They were all abysmal, but we had no choice. We watched whatever was on. Annoyingly, this often happened: we would spend an hour watching something terrible, then a Jet Li action flick would come on for thirty minutes. Of course, just when it got good, the battery would die, sending Cuma into a rage. Had he known, he would’ve skipped the first hour.

  19.

  Rahmethan and Nursilash

  ONE FINE EVENING in early January, the setting sun was exceptionally bright. Even halfway hidden beneath the horizon, you couldn’t look straight at it. It was unlike the sun of previous days, soggy, placid, like—to use that tired cliché, duck egg yolk.

  We were about to head out to round up the cows for milking when Cuma, back from fetching the camels, opened the door before us. The moment he was inside the burrow, the man started his griping, complaining that the ten camels had run off in five different directions, forcing him to chase them everywhere until he became an icicle! Sister-in-law wasn’t one for honeyed words, so she simply held the poor man’s head for a kiss, “mwah,” on his forehead, before returning to the task at hand. Like that, Cuma’s weariness evaporated. Happily, he took off his hat, his coat, and lay down on the bed to rest.