Winter Pasture

by Li Juan

  Perhaps others weren’t as churlish as Cuma, but their attitudes were strikingly similar: an average question received an average answer; a pointless question, a pointless answer; and a nonsensical question received, of course, a nonsensical answer.

  In an environment like this, I was always in a passive position. Not that that was a problem; on the contrary, I depended on being passive. In such an unfamiliar environment, I relied on going with the flow. I had to avoid standing out and avoid causing conflict to gain their trust and feel a sense of security.

  * * *

  BEYOND NOT UNDERSTANDING each other, there were many other frustrations.

  In order to faithfully record all I saw and heard, I borrowed a camcorder. But no matter what, the tape would get stuck after less than ten minutes of recording (might have had to do with the low temperatures). After taking out the tape, knocking it around a little, then reloading it, the camcorder managed to record for another ten minutes. But by then, I’d already missed everything.

  Even more unfortunate was the fact that when I wanted to shoot the building of the yurt, they told me to watch the baby. When it was time to slaughter the horse, I was sent to haul snow. When I wanted to capture the dismembering of the sheep, they made me hold the bloody hooves, which occupied both of my hands—none left to hold a camera.

  At first, a hi-tech toy like a camcorder earned Cuma’s respect. But once it had been put to a side, it quickly became a joke to him. On several occasions, he offered to trade Plum Blossom for it, listing all the perks of having a cat. When he saw that I wasn’t interested, he offered his binoculars instead, going so far as to point out their similarities: both had pieces of glass on the front.

  At least my compact camera didn’t have any problems. And it was run on AA batteries, which saved the trouble of charging. The only annoyance was how quickly the batteries drained in cold weather; that, and the broken battery cap, which had to be secured with tape every time the batteries were changed. If the tape was too loose, the batteries would spring out. But if the tape was too tight, some of the buttons jammed. It was frustrating … even the herders seemed skeptical of my taped-up gadget. Sometimes when I took my camera out to photograph them, they took one out to photograph me back—and their cameras were much better!

  These one-thousand-yuan point-and-shoots required a lot of light. A little too dark and you end up with a blur. Out of politeness, I didn’t want to use the flash. And everyone was generally most animated at night. After a busy day, the family relaxed under the dim solar-powered light bulb, dancing, embracing, eating meat, playing with the cat … I couldn’t capture any of it.

  * * *

  THOUGH I WAS THERE physically, sometimes I still felt like I was a world away. On our way home with sacks of snow on our backs, Kama and I noticed a caravan of camels resting quietly in the desert to the southwest of us. The lead camel was crouched in the snow, sleeping, while a scattered flock of sheep grazed nearby. We dropped our sacks to observe for a while. Kama suddenly said, “There are two families traveling together, herders from Dopa village.”

  I didn’t know how she could have known that.… I asked, “Why are there no people? Where did they go?”

  She pointed to the direction of our burrow in the distance and said, “They’re all having tea at my house! Two of them rode horses, two of them rode motorcycles.…” I still didn’t how she could tell. I didn’t see any horses or motorcycles. A moment later, she added, “One of the ones on horseback is a girl.” I still didn’t understand.…

  During those long, quiet midday hours, everyone spent a long time quietly drinking tea. Without a word, Cuma suddenly got up, grabbed the horse’s mask, filled it with corn, and walked out. I followed him out and observed from the top of the sand dune to our west. A stranger was bringing back our horse. Cuma approached to greet them. He fastened the mask on the horse before equipping it with the halter, saddle, and girth. I continued to stand in the distance, watching his every move. It was windy and quiet. Where would he be going at a time like this, and what would he be doing.… I felt indescribably far away.

  One day, Sister-in-law brought out a parcel from the bottom of her suitcase that was wrapped in a headscarf. She unwrapped it, and inside were strands of light-green grass that didn’t look quite like tea leaves. She said to me, “Medicine.” She gestured for me to smell it. From one whiff I knew that it was lavender! At first I smelled nothing, but the moment I brought my nose close to it, the whole room was instantly filled with the fragrance. I could smell it for days.

  Cuma had a cough. Sister-in-law poured hot water on the lavender like she was brewing tea. Once steeped, she added two spoonfuls of milk and handed the bowl to him. Noticing my fascination, she ladled me half a bowl too. I tasted it, and well, it wasn’t bad.

  Once, I got sick and lay in bed all day with a fever. In the middle of the night, Sister-in-law nudged me awake from the black pile of bodies clustered around the television and handed me a bowl of that same medicinal soup. When I took the bowl from her and gulped it, I felt both grateful and sad. As all the beautiful and romantic feelings associated with the lavender seeped into my miserably ill psyche, my mood instantly improved. Which at the same time made me feel distant.

  Whenever the “Black Horse Trot” was playing through the speakers, Cuma couldn’t stay still. Sitting cross-legged on the felt mats on the bed, he began to dance, arms gracefully bouncing to the rhythm. Kama gently swayed her shoulders back and forth. Sister-in-law clapped along and encouraged me to join the dance. My heart itched but I resisted the temptation. I sat there with a smile, motionless, afraid to reveal too many feelings. I was in a strange land; calling it pride would have been less accurate than calling it fear.

  I used a black leather notebook to record everything that was happening in front of me. At the same time, I seemed to have used “recording” as a way of emphasizing something to everyone—a way of keeping my distance. I realized that I was never interested in writing when I was happy or excited. When I was happy or excited, I didn’t even want to touch that notebook; touching it would have been an interruption—in those moments, I was only interested in the life in front of me. It was only during the awkward and lonely moments when I felt blue that I would reach for the notebook. I used it to write down all the happy and exciting things that had recently occurred.

  * * *

  LATER, I BEGAN TO OBSERVE the relationship between the moon’s trajectory and its phases. I noticed that during the waxing crescent, the moon rose in the evening and did not drop beneath the horizon until daybreak. Then, as it continued to wax, the moon rose earlier and earlier in the day. By full moon, it was rising in the morning and descending at night, following almost the same schedule as the sun. As the moon waned, it rose earlier still. By waning crescent, it rose in the middle of the night and fell in the afternoon. Following that were two moonless days and nights.

  I noticed that on dark, moonless nights, the sky exploded with stars. But as long as there was a moon—even if it was only a sliver of a crescent moon, the Milky Way faded into darkness.

  I also noticed that since entering the wilderness, the sun no longer moved me, but the moon—it felt closer than ever before.

  I also paid close attention to the reading on the thermometer. But after about a month, Panda Dog, bored, chewed a piece off the thermometer that was hanging in the passage outside the burrow. Luckily, the section that remained still worked, unless the temperature rose above seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. But a month later, another section was angrily bitten off by the big black cow (we’d brought her newborn calf inside the burrow). This time, the thermometer could only read temperatures below negative fourteen degrees, making it quite useless.

  There were always challenges, followed by more challenges. After a day of work, my muscles felt worn out, my stomach craved food and water. But after eating, I still felt hungry and thirsty. It was hard to tell what part of my body was lacking what … yet, when I really was thirsty�
��waking up in the middle of the night out of thirst, throat dry as smoke, I went outside to sit in the cold air for a moment before lying back down to ride it out in silence. After an hour or two, the discomfort eventually passed and I drifted off to sleep. By the time I woke up in the morning, the thirst was gone. Did the water in the body move from one place to another? The inside of my body had become confused; it was impossible to make any sense of it.

  Plum Blossom had an upset stomach. For two days, the kitten left diarrhea wherever he went, including one particularly large pile on the rugs in front of the television. I crumpled up a sheet of newspaper to clean up the mess while Cuma laughed: “How did it know Li Juan sleeps there?” Everyone else laughed but I was distraught. I wiped the spot again and again and hoped that the cat would feel better in the evening. But in the evening, though he didn’t violate my bedding, he continued to moan “ugh, ugh” all night a foot away from me on the manure and dirt ground near the TV. At the time I thought, I’ve had enough of this.…

  But I had no intention of “retreating.” Where would I go? Isn’t life like this anywhere you go?

  During that period, I must have unconsciously shown too much of my frustration, because everyone noticed. At breakfast, Cuma said to me, “Last night, I forgot to take a bowl of butter out before freezing the whole block in the yurt. Now it’s too hard to scoop, so no butter to eat today.” He added, “The rest of us eat tallow when there’s no butter, but poor Li Juan doesn’t eat tallow.…” As he spoke, he scraped up the last of the butter and threw it into my bowl.

  On the eve of the Chinese New Year, I told Cuma that tomorrow was the Han “New Year.” He didn’t say anything, but started skipping from one song to the next on the stereo. Eventually, he reached a Mandarin song by Cai Yilin. He stayed on the track and said to me, “Every day is our song, now we play your song, a Happy New Year for Li Juan!” What more could I say?

  I kept watching, kept on tirelessly discovering and witnessing. Every morning, I saw Kama refusing to climb out of bed. She complained that her own bedding was too cold and snuggled into her mother’s. When her mother woke up, she immediately snuggled into her father’s. When Cuma got out of bed, he told her to hurry, calling, “Child! Child!” again and again. Kama pretended like she couldn’t hear.

  Cuma pretended to be shocked. “Is she dead, has Kama really died?”

  Eyes closed, Kama shouted, “That’s right, I’m dead!”

  Cuma leaped on top of her, squishing her, while shouting, “In that case, Dad is dead too!” Father and daughter rolled into a ball, refusing to move.

  Squatting by the stove, Sister-in-law poked at the embers, while warning, “Koychy! Get up now!”

  * * *

  I WATCHED NURGÜN slowly maturing out of childhood. She was reaching the age when she should start learning the feminine arts. But in the process of learning, she made a mess of everything—the ram’s horns turned into a crab’s claw. The pattern-weaving stripes turned into dead snakes. All day long, she was mercilessly admonished and ridiculed. But no matter how many insults she received, the girl never gave up. She continued to put in the effort, fearlessly trying her best, and often with a smile—it was a self-deprecating giggle that was meant to appease. But even a smile like that made her mother angry. She’d say, “No smiling!” in such an angry tone that it sounded like she was going to stab her daughter with a needle. Even Karlygash was at risk of being drawn into the furor—in a tense moment like that, a baby couldn’t cry. Crying would have provoked her mother’s wrath.

  I observed that nine-year-old Nurgün was Kama’s only bestie and confidant. When the two chatted, you could hardly tell there was a huge age difference. Kama didn’t speak as if talking to a child, and Nurgün didn’t sound like a child either. Their conversations moved from embroidery to hairstyling, school stuff to village stuff, and even after an hour they still had more to say. At the height of camaraderie, Kama grabbed her purse and took out her treasures—they were nothing more than a few old hairpins and a rusty bracelet—and introduced each item to Nurgün, what this one was for, who had given it to her, how much it was worth, and where she’d bought that one, on what occasions she had worn it, and with what clothes … sharing the secrets and joys of womanhood.

  For an outsider like me, looking in on such an intimate scene felt bittersweet. Oh, vicarious pleasures! I thought to myself, enough, that’s enough. But I couldn’t get myself to turn away.…

  In a moment like that, a camera would have been a barbaric intrusion! My eyes captured the scene with more detail and vibrancy than any lens possibly could—the last of the nomads, the most quiet and remote way of life! But there was already much about the family that was no longer traditional; there were already the television and the trendy pop songs.

  I saw the young boy Zhada begging his parents to buy him a computer, and further, suggesting that they install internet at the permanent encampment. I saw Sister-in-law sweep the floor, then put the litter directly into the stove—she no longer thought of it as an offense to the fire; this ancient taboo had long been abandoned.

  But at the same time, I saw Kama, a young woman humming pop songs, walk in the dusk light, pick up a horse skull from the sand, walk to the metal tripod at the top of the dune, and rise on her tiptoes to hang the skull as high as she could … another ancient tradition, because an object as noble as a horse’s skull must not be trampled upon, therefore it should be placed high up.

  I also noticed that whenever Karlygash was going to be tied up in her crib, Sayna would first take out her lighter and wave a small flame over the bed to ward off evil spirits. This was also tradition.

  And after washing her hair, the beautiful Kama melted a spoonful of sheep tallow to massage into her hair to make it oily, smooth, and glistening. What an interesting aesthetic, as well as method of hair care.

  * * *

  ON ANOTHER ONE OF those evenings beneath a perfectly round moon, a great southeastern gale filled the world with howls and hisses. But beneath the earth, it was as quiet as the bottom of the ocean, except for the occasional flapping sound made by the flimsy plastic covering the high window. Cuma drank his tea in silence. During those in-between moments when she wasn’t serving tea, Sister-in-law embroidered. Zhada stared at his phone. Then, the door opened and Kama came lumbering in holding an unweaned calf across her waist … those moments profoundly triggered my curiosity. I wanted to know everything, but I didn’t know where to start. I was only an outsider.

  Whenever a curious visitor talked about me, they would ask Cuma, “What is she here to do?” Cuma’s explanation always took thirty seconds or more, leaving the listener gasping in amazement. Then they’d ask, “How much longer is she staying with you?”

  Cuma said whatever he felt like. “Probably another five months.” The visitor let out an even more amazed gasp.

  I swiftly corrected him: “Rubbish, I leave next month!”

  It was true, I was leaving next month. What did that make me? How was I different from any other “cultural tourist”? They usually had a weeklong experience or a month at most. In that respect, I seemed to have them beat, having experienced a whole winter. But the difference was only marginal … I was still just a passerby.

  Besides, just because someone has more experience with this way of life doesn’t make them more knowledgeable. Quite the opposite: my confidence in what I understood only grew weaker with time. As time went on, I became more hesitant, more doubtful, and less courageous. After all the days and nights together, the thousands of feelings felt, the accumulation of shared moments … the more I thought I knew, the more I realized I didn’t know. “Knowing” and “not knowing” grew out of one another. The world was opening up from both sides. When I thought the world was a tiny seed, the world turned out to be an apple; when I thought the world was an apple, it turned out to be an apple tree; when I thought the world was an apple tree, I looked up and saw the world around me—there was an apple orchard stretching forever in all
directions.…

  Even if I did catch a glimpse of the fate of the nomads and the desert, and learned to understand the basics, I still struggle to articulate it with my unwieldy and anxious tongue. The more I try to make sense of the big picture, the more I’m tripped up by the details. What’s worse, the more I want to point out the most barbaric moments, the more I want to turn around and forgive human nature, especially forgive myself.… I really am no use. How I loathe my powerlessness. But at the same time, I would prefer to suffer this powerlessness … so, let’s leave it at that for now. To be continued.

  The horse skull that Kama found and that was perched on the steel tripod, the highest point on the dune

  31.

  Everything Disappears Quickly

  CUMA ALWAYS STAYED OUT on the pastures until dark before returning home, to allow the sheep to graze a little farther and eat a little more. The neighbors were not nearly as fastidious. Our flocks appeared near the burrows as soon as the sun set beyond the sand dune marking the horizon. This made Cuma very angry, but he couldn’t bring it up openly. So he offered the following hint: when it was his turn to herd, he came back later and later until everyone began to wonder if something bad had happened in the darkness. He waited until people’s imaginations began to get the better of them. Eventually, the neighbors took the hint.