Love In No Man's Land

by Duo Ji Zhuo Ga

  The sight that met them was equally shocking. This time the door didn’t take them into an enclosed chamber but instead opened onto blue sky, white clouds and the rippling vastness of Cuoe Lake beyond. Ten steps away from them was the edge of a cliff, below which they could hear the sound of water relentlessly pounding against rock. Ice clung to the rocks around them, but on a nearby ridge seven snow lotuses bloomed and a light, clean scent drifted over on the wind.

  To the left, a path wound down the mountain.

  Both Gongzha and Zhuo Mai could almost see Zhaduo standing there solemnly in the void, in his tattered robes, looking at them compassionately. They both recalled his words: ‘Five and a half thousand metres up Chanaluo Snow Mountain grow the best snow lotuses in our area. Only seven of them grow each year. You must pick them when the Rigel star rises, so that their healing effects are at their strongest. When Rigel appears, the shadow of the large black boulder will point due south; that long shadow will be the Buddha pointing the way for those who are lost.’

  The two men looked at each other and smiled. ‘We won’t leave until Rigel rises.’

  Gongzha opened the door a little wider so they’d be able to see if there was any movement outside. Then they took out the dried meat and the three of them sat on the ground and started to refill their empty bellies.

  The distant snow mountains looked a bit like a troop of soldiers ranged in order of height, and below them the clear dark blue lake rippled with wavelets. Cuoe Lake was not one of northern Tibet’s most famous lakes, but it was still an impressive sight. Anyone standing there facing the vast, misty body of water couldn’t fail to be awed by the mysteries of its creator: the pairing of the snow mountain with the lake’s unique and complementary beauty made a truly harmonious picture.

  ‘The interior of the cave complex is so perfectly preserved,’ Zhuo Mai mumbled indistinctly through a mouthful of dried meat, ‘it seems no one else can have been there apart from the bears.’

  Gongzha glanced up at the blue sky and said thoughtfully, ‘We’ve still got some time before nightfall, so why don’t you take a good look at the notes Living Buddha Zhaduo left. I suspect he has other things to tell us in addition to the medical stuff.’

  Cuomu cut the meat into pieces and laid them on a handkerchief on the ground. All the men had to do was put it in their mouths.

  Zhuo Mai pulled the box out of his chuba and set it on his thigh. He used the point of his knife to twist the disc as before and again the wooden box sprang open. The box was divided into sections and the first thing Zhuo Mai did was to carefully lift out a bag from between the sections. ‘If we hadn’t opened the box properly, the bag would have been damaged and the liquid inside it would have spilt out and destroyed all the notes.’

  ‘He can’t have gone to all that trouble just for the Four Medical Tantras and his notes,’ Gongzha said. ‘They’re of no use to people who don’t understand medicine. And even if someone did take them, it wouldn’t have mattered much to the grassland.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Zhuo Mai said. ‘It would be bad if these notes fell into the wrong hands. They contain the details of many lost medical practices, including prescriptions for making people unconscious and recipes for poisons.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I never understood why Zhaduo was so keen for me to memorise the names of all your mysterious Tibetan plants or why he wanted me to learn to read Tibetan plant books. I thought my Tibetan was good enough, perfectly sufficient to read normal books and the newspaper. But now that I see his notes, I can see that he decided very early on that he would give these to me one day.’

  ‘I think you were the only suitable choice. You studied medicine and you’re interested in these things.’

  Zhuo Mai picked up the last page and read: ‘“To the person who acquires these books: your destiny must be connected to my Cuoe Temple. When the grassland has become quiet again, please return these medical notes to Cuoe Temple. No matter how you got in, please do not look back. There is a route out running from the left side of the stone chamber by the lake; turn right at the second intersection and you’ll be able to get out if you keep going up. After you exit the cave, turn the upright stone to close the stone door. Once you’ve left, please forget everything you saw here and don’t tell anyone else about it.”’

  ‘There’s nothing else?’ Gongzha raised his head to look at Zhuo.

  ‘There’s one more sentence. “When Rigel appears, the shadow of the large black boulder will point due south; that long shadow will be the Buddha pointing the way for those who are lost.”’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Gongzha took it and looked at the last line.

  Zhuo Mai shook his head.

  ‘We’ll find out once we’ve left, won’t we, if we go and look at the boulder when Rigel rises?’ Cuomu said.

  Zhuo Mai and Gongzha looked at one another. ‘You mean the large black boulder he mentions is that boulder up there?’

  ‘Of course. Where else is there a big black boulder?’ Cuomu said lightly as she cut up some more meat.

  Zhuo Mai and Gongzha laughed at the obviousness of her comment.

  Cuomu handed them each a piece of meat. ‘I’m surprised the cave wasn’t discovered by the Jialong.’

  ‘There are too many riddles here – we can talk about it once we’re out,’ Gongzha said. He put the meat in his mouth but kept his eyes on the door. He fully expected the mother bear to appear at any time and take revenge for the killing of her cub. Until now, though, apart from that chorus of growling, the cave complex had been eerily quiet, which was very odd. Every grasslander knew that a mother bear would defend her cubs to the last. In most circumstances, bears did their best to avoid people and rarely attacked them. But if cubs were involved, a mother bear would ignore any threat to her own safety and do battle, even if it cost her her life.

  By the look of its teeth, the bear cub Cuomu had killed was not even two months old. Its curiosity had been its downfall. The mother bear must have been nearby and had presumably only run off at the sound of the gun, for fear of more bullets.

  The longer the quiet continued, the more unsettled Gongzha became. Many years of hunting experience told him that some animals were smarter than humans and had very clear ideas as to when an attack would be most successful.

  The sun finally sank behind the snow, leaving just enough light to make the sky glow.

  Rigel eventually appeared in the blue curtain overhead, sparkling and splendid.

  Suddenly there was the smell of dust in the air and mixed in with it was a faint whiff of something more unpleasant. Gongzha opened the door wide and snatched up his gun, shouting, ‘Zhuo, the bears are coming! Remember, you have to shoot to kill. Otherwise there’ll be trouble if they attack again.’ As he spoke, he set up the forked gun stand, lay on the ground and gripped the trigger. ‘Cuomu, crouch down by the side wall and don’t move!’

  Zhuo Mai had been studying the notes. He closed the box, stuffed it in his chuba, dragged his gun over and set it up, all the while keeping watch on the door with narrowed eyes.

  Before long they could hear the thud of running paws, followed by a long, cold, piercing howl. Several bears appeared in the passageway across from them. Gongzha took down one with a single swift shot. Zhuo Mai toppled another at the same time. The other bears froze, then quickly turned and lumbered off. Everything fell silent again.

  There was no time to take a closer look. Gongzha stood up, shouting, ‘Cuomu, shut the door.’

  She pushed the rusted iron door shut with a clang. ‘There’s no lock,’ she yelled. ‘What shall we do?’

  Zhuo Mai and Gongzha carried over a rock from the edge of the cliff to close it.

  Through the door came the sound of more bears arriving, and then their pounding and snarling rolled like thunder around the stone chamber.

  ‘Zhuo, go and pick the snow lotuses – we need to go!’ Gongzha called, holding the door.

  Zhuo Mai ran up to the little ridge and used his
knife to dig away the stones around the roots of the snow lotuses. Heeding old Zhaduo’s instructions, he only dug up six and left the last one for the Mountain Spirit.

  ‘Go!’ The three of them raced off: Cuomu in front, Zhaduo in the middle, and Gongzha last.

  The snarling bears finally pushed open the iron door and bounded after them. Because the way was very narrow, they could only run in single file. Gongzha fired the occasional shot, but all that did was frighten the bears temporarily and hold them at bay for a little while longer.

  As they were rounding a bend, one of the bears got close enough to sink its teeth into Gongzha’s leg, ripping open his flesh. Gongzha didn’t think about the pain, just instinctively took out his knife and stabbed down. The bear opened its jaws, and Zhuo Mai took advantage of Gongzha’s turned body to fire a shot, at the same time ordering Cuomu to support Gongzha at the front. He would take the rear.

  At last there was a thread of light ahead. Gongzha and Cuomu raced to the cave mouth. ‘Zhuo, left or right?’

  ‘Right!’ Zhuo Mai fired another shot into the darkness.

  Gongzha had already turned the smallish upright stone as Zhaduo had instructed, and stones of all sizes now began to fall from above the cave exit.

  ‘Run!’ Gongzha yelled. Pushing Cuomu, he ran out and Zhuo Mai followed.

  Just after all three had exited the cave, they heard a thundering noise from inside. The whole cave mouth, including the snow-covered rocks above it, collapsed. When they glanced back, it looked no different from the rest of the mountain face.

  After their near-fatal encounter with the bears, the three of them were very shaky, but they could all clearly see where they were: right at the upper part of the ledge, not twenty metres from the peak. Half of the ledge had already collapsed, and although the mystical large black boulder still stood steady, a lot of snow had fallen on it. The dark chain was buried beneath the piled snow but still emitted a faint light. The Rigel star was now right over the peak and it shone so clear and bright that the large black boulder cast a long shadow pointing due south, towards the lake.

  Gongzha walked over, squatted down, took up the chain and stared at it. ‘Zhuo, do you know how this was done?’

  ‘I don’t. All I know is that it’s neither copper nor iron,’ Zhuo Mai said. He slung his gun across his back and surveyed all around them. The layers and folds of the snow mountain were just as they had been before, and in the starlight the lake down below had lost none of its mystery. It was only the ledge that had changed its appearance. But if they hadn’t seen what had happened, they would have put that down to the normal shifts that happened high up on any mountaintop. No one would have guessed that under this ledge lay a mysterious series of caves or that the ledge hid so many enigmas.

  ‘Come here! Quick!’ Gongzha was looking down at the lake and waved them over urgently.

  The other two climbed swiftly to the top of the large black boulder and squatted down beside him.

  ‘Look at the surface of the lake,’ said Gongzha, his eyes not leaving it.

  Cuomu and Zhuo Mai followed his gaze and they too stared in silent, slack-jawed amazement.

  On the rippling surface of the lake appeared an extraordinary sight.

  There was a valley encircled by three mountains, with a steaming lake at its centre. Several naked elders were floating on the lake, their legs and arms paddling idly. On the lakeshore were horses, sheep and yaks. A few stone huts were scattered across the mountainside and from their roofs hung strings of prayer flags. Monks bustled along the mountain tracks, carrying things.

  ‘It’s a mirage!’ Zhuo Mai said.

  ‘“When Rigel appears, the shadow of the large black boulder will point due south; that long shadow will be the Buddha pointing the way for those who are lost,”’ Gongzha reiterated.

  ‘Shambhala!’ Cuomu’s eyes widened as she gazed eagerly at the mystical apparition on the lake.

  Before long, the apparition disappeared and Cuoe Lake was covered once more in dark blue ripples, as mysterious as ever.

  The three of them continued sitting and staring at it.

  The moon was straight ahead of them, the contours of its blazing surface unclear.

  *

  When their three figures appeared halfway down the mountain, the group who’d been waiting at the bottom for a day and a night burst into tears. Shida put his fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, and they all hugged each other and pounded one another on the back. The hearts that had worried for so long could finally rest.

  Danzeng’s youngest brother, Duoji, and two other young men ran up the mountain and took the things from the adventurers’ backs. Duoji squatted down and put Gongzha, who was so injured he could barely walk, on his back.

  When they returned to the encampment, Cuomu had her younger uncle take Gongzha straight to her own tent. Just like a young wife, she nursed her injured man with great tenderness. She no longer cared about her mother’s rolling eyes or the sidelong glances of the other grasslanders. She had chosen her man and she would not be parted from him again.

  After this adventure, Gongzha and Cuomu’s relationship was back on track. Danzeng was delighted: he liked Gongzha and didn’t want to see the two youngsters repeat his own mistakes. Baila still bore a grudge, but there was nothing she could do. After all, Gongzha had taken an injury for her daughter – what more was there to say?

  Gongzha, Cuomu and Zhuo Mai agreed not to tell anyone else about the cave. Subconsciously, none of them wanted the fallen heroes to be disturbed again.

  Because of Gongzha’s injury, Zhuo Mai extended his leave by ten days and remained on the grassland. When he had nothing else to do, he stayed in the tent the team had prepared for him, its door flap shut tight, and studied the medical book and notes that Living Buddha Zhaduo had left for him. Occasionally he went out to pick large bunches of herbs and then made broths or medicine balls. He tried them himself, and if they didn’t make him nauseous he gave them to his patients. He cured many ailments that had not been cured before, and herders came from tens of kilometres around to be treated by him. Slowly the herders began spreading stories, saying that the Han doctor Zhuo must have met King Gesar’s doctor on Chanaluo and had the mystical art of Tibetan medicine transmitted to him for he’d turned into an expert overnight and was now the most famous miracle healer on the grassland.

  Zhuo Mai did not explain; he just kept his head down and ministered to his patients or studied the herbs he’d gathered.

  When Gongzha’s injury had marginally improved, he went with Zhuo Mai and Cuomu to find the clan elder and began talking in a roundabout way about the old stories they’d heard.

  The old clan elder Wangjiu sat on the couch, leaning against a pillow. ‘At first, our grassland was occupied by the Jialong, and they practised the Bon religion. The Nacangdeba came from elsewhere and they practised Buddhism. To escape the heavy taxes levied by the old government, they led their people to Cuoe Grassland and drove off the Jialong. The grassland was already barren at that time.’ He began coughing and broke off for a while, then resumed. ‘It is said that Cuoe Temple was built after the Nacangdeba came, so afterwards the people recognised a Nacangdeba clan elder as the first living Buddha. It is also said that the Nacangdeba were good at training bears, but no one ever saw proof.’

  ‘Put that way, we’re also from elsewhere.’

  ‘Of course. We were originally from the Mount Tajiapu Shuanghu area. One year a great snowfall made the mountain inaccessible and many yaks and sheep starved to death. The clan elder led the migration here, but it was difficult and many people died on the way. My father was only two at the time. Some people say that the Nacangdeba were the original ancestors of Tajiapu; others say that we have nothing to do with the Nacangdeba and are actually the descendants of the Jialong.

  ‘Bola, does Cuoe Temple really have one of King Gesar’s Medicine Buddhas?’

  Wangjiu seemed shocked by Gongzha’s question. ‘Are you looking for
it too?’

  ‘I’m just curious. There’s a saying on the grassland that if the Medicine Buddha appears, the people’s hearts will find peace.’

  ‘What does the peace of the people’s hearts have to do with the Medicine Buddha? They need to find it for themselves.’ Wangjiu stared past Gongzha at the vast grassland outside. In the distance, yaks grazed, their heads lowered, while the herders sat to the side rolling balls of yarn.

  ‘You don’t believe in that saying?’

  ‘Gongzha, you’re a good hunter and a good hunter always relies only on his own judgement. I’ve seen that Medicine Buddha. There’s a strange symbol on its back and I don’t know what it means. Zhaduo always looked after it himself. I once heard my aba say that the statue came from the sacred lake in No Man’s Land. He said that the sacred lake welcomed all living beings as equals, and whether they were animals or humans, if they went into the lake, they all floated on its surface.’

  ‘The statue came from the sacred lake in No Man’s Land?’ Gongzha repeated.

  ‘I don’t know the details. I’ve just heard the elders say that.’

  ‘Before we moved here, did anyone herd on Cuoe Grassland?’

  ‘Yes, but very few. There were many wolves. When we first came here, the hunters spent three months clearing this area round the lake. This vast grazing land that we have was all ripped from the wolves’ mouths.’

  ‘What about the monks at Cuoe Temple? Did they all come later?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s said that when we arrived there were two monks in the temple but no living Buddha. Our people rebuilt the temple and asked the great lama to come and conduct the ceremony to search for the living Buddha’s spirit in a child. In the end they identified Zhaduo. Zhaduo suffered a lot for the peace of the grassland!’

  ‘Suffered a lot? What do you mean?’

  ‘There was a plague on the grassland and many people died. Zhaduo went off to pick herbs in No Man’s Land and disappeared for more than three months.’

  ‘The living Buddha disappeared for three months?’

  ‘Yes. He said he wanted to go to No Man’s Land to pick a herb that could heal the plague sickness. He took three disciples with him. There was a blizzard and he and the disciples got separated. The clan sent out several search parties, but they couldn’t find them. We all thought the living Buddha had gone to Shambhala. We didn’t expect that three months later he would come back on his own, in high spirits and bringing with him many medicine balls for healing the plague.’