Love In No Man's Land

by Duo Ji Zhuo Ga

  They needed to cross the snow mountain.

  ‘How much longer do we have to walk?’ Feng asked listlessly. She fiddled with some strands of hair around the brim of the hat and raised her head to look at the sun.

  ‘About two hours.’ Gongzha wound the reins around his hand twice so that the horse would stand closer.

  ‘Can we rest for a bit? I’m so tired.’

  Gongzha glanced back at her. ‘Not yet,’ he said lightly. ‘We need to cross the mountain before the sun reaches its full height, otherwise it will be too warm and there might be an avalanche.’

  ‘My face hurts.’ Feng pushed up her sunglasses and shook the snow from her leg.

  ‘Your skin’s peeling. It’ll be fine in a few days.’

  ‘I’m peeling? Really?’ Feng unconsciously touched her hand to her face.

  Gongzha didn’t reply.

  ‘It’ll be so annoying if it tans unevenly,’ Feng complained. ‘How will I face people when I get back?’

  ‘Oh, you Han women! What’s more important: your life or your face? Look around the grassland – all the women have patches on their faces. That’s the gift the sun gives our women. Having that gift is what makes her a grassland woman.’

  ‘The gift the sun gives to your women? That’s interesting.’ Feng laughed. ‘But the problem is that I’m not a grassland woman. I’m from Shanghai, a large, sophisticated city. I couldn’t possibly walk into my office building wearing the sun’s gift.’

  Gongzha glanced back at her in amusement. ‘Your work involves your face?’

  ‘There’s no direct connection, but it would affect my mood.’

  ‘The place you’re from sounds strange.’

  ‘Maybe you just don’t like beautiful women?’

  ‘As long as they’re healthy, I’m happy!’ Gongzha said.

  ‘Healthy like your grassland women, with their deeply tanned skin and sun-scarred faces, who laugh loudly when they’re happy? No, Gongzha, Shanghai wouldn’t tolerate that sort of woman. What Shanghai requires is fashionable, cultivated women.’

  Gongzha stayed silent. Shanghai – that was a world he didn’t understand. Zhuo Mai used to say that you could buy anything there for money, except for the love he sought. Gongzha thought about how his own love had floated off with Cuomu’s spirit to Shambhala. What about Zhuo Mai’s love? He had never married. His love must still be on the grassland.

  ‘No Man’s Land is so vast,’ Feng said, searching for something to talk about, ‘how will you find Kaguo?’

  ‘Eagles drop feathers when they fly overhead; bears leave prints when they walk,’ Gongzha replied.

  ‘But this place is so big!’

  ‘I’m a hunter. I know the kinds of places bears like to go.’

  ‘But even if you kill your bear, it won’t bring Cuomu back.’

  Hearing Feng’s comment, Gongzha stiffened, stood straighter and lengthened his stride, ignoring Feng as she scampered along behind him, huffing like a cow.

  Feng regretted her words as soon as she’d said them. Cuomu was a very deep wound in Gongzha’s heart and she should have kept well away. How could she have exposed his hurt like that? She hurried after him, yelling, ‘I’m sorry, Gongzha, I didn’t mean to say that.’

  The two of them walked on in silence after that. The only sound in the vast wilderness was the crunch of their feet on the snow.

  Finally they came to a pass. Fresh, cool air rushed in on the wind. Beneath them, at the foot of the mountain, a valley stretched into the distance. Because it had snowed the day before, mist was still rising off it, and a blanket of vividly coloured flowers extended in all directions, laid down between the mountain and the valley. A small, misty lake occupied the centre of the valley, like a piece of fine jade hanging just so on a young woman’s pale neck.

  Feng widened her eyes in excitement and shouted, ‘It’s gorgeous! Is this really No Man’s Land? I’ve never seen such a beautiful place, Gongzha. Look at that lake – how can it be that beautiful? Heaven put the most stunning scenery on earth where almost no one can see it – it’s so unfair!’

  Gongzha narrowed his eyes and gazed down at the base of the mountain, but he didn’t say anything. A gust of cold air blew his long hair behind him.

  ‘Are you still angry? I’ve already told you I didn’t mean to say what I did, but let me apologise again. I’m sorry.’ Feng looked at him, standing expressionless on the snowy ground with the reins in his hand, and she very deliberately made a deep bow, all the way to ninety degrees.

  ‘I’m not angry.’ Gongzha looked away. ‘Let’s go!’ And he led the horse onwards.

  Feng stuck out her tongue and made a face behind his back. His words really were precious like gold dust.

  When they got to the shore of the small lake, Gongzha unloaded the supplies off the horse, took off the reins and slapped the horse’s rump, leaving it to walk away swishing its tail.

  He took up his gun, looked around and saw that there were several deer in the distance. ‘There are quite a few dried yak pats around,’ he said. ‘You collect some.’ Then he walked off with his gun in a different direction.

  Feng stared after him in incomprehension. Was he going hunting? But the deer were in the other direction! She took off her windcheater and put it on the ground. Wearing only her grey polo-neck sweater, she began to collect yak pats. In the last few days, she’d learnt quite a few things about wilderness living from Gongzha, including how to distinguish between the pats of wild and domesticated yaks.

  Feng carried some pats back, threw them down next to their luggage, and then went back to gather some more. She had soon collected quite a large pile and saw that she had enough. She sat down on the black pebbles of the shore and turned to watch Gongzha in the distance. He’d crouched down and was slowly making his way along a low ridge towards where the deer were playing, stopping every few steps. The deer occasionally looked up cautiously at him, but when they saw that he wasn’t moving, they lowered their heads again. Feng didn’t dare laugh; after all, he was an experienced hunter and must know what he was doing.

  A shot sounded and a deer fell to the ground. The other deer immediately fled.

  A short while later, Gongzha returned, carrying the deer. Feng went smiling to meet him and helped with the deer’s hind legs. ‘Your aim was spot on, Gongzha! You really are a crack shot.’

  Gongzha smiled thinly. He laid the deer down on the shore, got out his knife and began to skin it. He made an expert job of it and in barely any time had cleaned off the meat. Then he used the flint hanging from his waist to strike a spark and light some oily paper, which he held to some dry grass he’d collected. After he’d piled on the yak pats, the fire slowly began to take hold. Once the flames were hot enough, he pulled out the bag of salt he always carried, put it to one side, speared the meat on his knife and roasted it, adding salt every so often. When he’d finished, he handed the meat to Feng, whose mouth was watering. She took it and stuffed it into her mouth like a ravenous wolf.

  Finally, Feng patted her belly and shook her head, saying, ‘I don’t want any more! If I eat another mouthful, I’ll explode. You go ahead and eat.’

  Gongzha stopped the roasting and began cutting off hunks of raw deer meat and putting them straight into his mouth, not even adding salt.

  Feng willed her roiling stomach to settle, but her brow furrowed. ‘Do you always eat meat that way?’ she asked. After the first night, when she’d thrown up from watching him eat, she’d got into the habit of going elsewhere during his meals, but now she’d got to the point where she could watch, albeit with discomfort. It had been a painful process.

  ‘Meat is supposed to be eaten this way,’ Gongzha said, putting another piece of raw flesh into his mouth.

  ‘But… it’s very unhygienic!’

  ‘Unhygienic?’ Gongzha looked at her with amusement. ‘The meat grows on the deer and is protected by skin – how could it not be clean? If you remove the meat and put it into water, you’re
adding any bacteria that are in the water; and when you roast it, you’re adding ash. It’s only unclean after it’s been exposed to different pollutants. That’s what your Dr Zhuo himself said.’

  Feng thought about it. There was a logic to what he said. Fresh meat was clean to begin with but became unclean as soon as it passed through human hands.

  ‘When you eat it like that, with no flavouring, does it taste good?’

  ‘Meat has a naturally good flavour. If you add other things, it doesn’t taste good.’ Gongzha’s Mandarin had got much more fluent in these last few days and he now rarely made mistakes with his word order.

  ‘You’re… you’re just like one of the wild wolves!’ Feng suddenly said, looking at Gongzha’s full beard and his eyes deep as lakes.

  Gongzha laughed and wiped his mouth. ‘A wild wolf… I suppose so. Look around you – there are no humans out here, but a wolf can live quite well.’

  Feng looked at Gongzha and her heart fluttered. This wild man represented a real challenge to her way of looking at things, and even to the way she led her life. Were the things she had always taken for granted really so unassailable? Like that you couldn’t eat raw meat, or that you couldn’t touch food unless you’d washed your hands, or that only a pale face wearing a lot of make-up was beautiful? She even found him handsome. Did a man need to be in a suit and nice shoes and wearing a few drops of cologne to make him attractive? How could this tanned and dusty man who ate raw meat, expressed happiness when he felt it and kept silent when he did not, not be attractive?

  Gongzha withdrew his gaze from the wilderness and saw that Feng was staring at him. ‘What is it? Did I say something wrong?’

  Feng beamed, then blushed and turned her eyes to the rippling surface of the lake. A pair of wild geese were chasing each other across it. ‘No. Quite the opposite.’ She didn’t know why, but when he looked at her, her heart raced.

  18

  Deepest No Man’s Land. It had no name and no sign to identify it. The entire region looked pretty much the same: there were blue skies, snow mountains, plains, lakes.

  As the sun shone warmly upon it, all was still and quiet, so apparently lifeless that it hardly seemed part of the human world.

  Gunshot! A battery of gunshots. Gunshots that seemed inappropriate in such a tranquil place.

  ‘You two go over and block the right side. If a single antelope gets away, you’ll lose a finger,’ Jijia said icily to the two men next to him. They were standing on a slope, watching the now surrounded antelope herd below.

  The men acknowledged him and turned their horses to the right. They fired two shots, driving the antelopes who were straying back to the holding area.

  Jijia stared contentedly at the frightened, bleating animals. A cruel smile hung on his lips: it was as if he was watching an enormous pile of gold accumulating in front of him.

  A male antelope suddenly darted out from between the two horses on the right, its long horns dancing in the sun. Jijia opened fire. Ping! The antelope didn’t even get twenty metres before it fell to the ground, blood bubbling from its neck.

  Jijia rested his gun on his shoulder and fixed the two horsemen below him with a chilly stare. The men looked up with bleak faces; when they met Jijia’s gaze, they blanched, and large beads of sweat appeared on their foreheads. They slowly drew their knives, a cold light glancing off the blades, and their little fingers fell into the dust with a thump.

  Jijia twitched the corner of his mouth in satisfaction, shivered and looked away. Holding his gun in one hand, he fired the first shot at the antelopes desperately seeking a way out of the poachers’ ring. That was the signal for the real slaughter to begin.

  Without missing a beat, the men positioned on the surrounding slopes took aim and let off a volley of gunfire. As the shots popped and sizzled like so many frying beans, the entire herd fell. Not a single Tibetan antelope escaped.

  The cloying stench of blood drifted on the breeze and vultures began to circle overhead.

  Three baby antelopes bleated beside the body of their dead mother, tragic and helpless. Jijia lifted his gun and nonchalantly fired at one of them. It tumbled onto its mother’s body before it could make another sound, its large eyes still wide open.

  The men cheered with excitement and the air was shrill with wild whistles as they cantered their horses back and forth. For a brief time, that bloody valley in the depths of the northern Tibetan wilderness was as terrifying as hell.

  The wind picked up, and the sand began to whirl and dance in vortexes.

  *

  As the evening sun reddened the sky, two figures stood staring at the blood-soaked ground and the litter of skinned antelope corpses.

  ‘How can they be so cruel? These were living creatures!’ said the woman in the yellow windcheater, her long hair streaming out behind her.

  ‘Human greed knows no limits.’ The bearded man watched as the rays of the setting sun lit the skinless antelopes; his face betrayed no emotion.

  ‘And no one cares what they do?’

  ‘I hear the government is drafting a law to protect wild animals. When I was small, there were many herds of Tibetan antelopes on the grassland. Now there are fewer and fewer.’

  ‘Ohhh…’ The woman walked over to the two baby antelopes; their frail bodies were trembling and they looked around with fear-widened eyes. ‘Can we take them with us?’

  The man nodded, took one and walked off, the woman following behind.

  *

  In another valley with mountains on three sides and a lake on the fourth stood a scattering of tents. Several horses rambled between them, occasionally lowering their heads in search of one of the rare blades of grass. The place looked beautiful because of the mountains, tents and horses, but it also looked odd because there was no sign of human activity.

  Several yak-skin boats were travelling across the lake, getting closer and closer. When it became clear that the men in them had cheerful expressions on their faces, the women came darting out of the tents.

  ‘They’re back! Do you know how many they killed?’

  ‘According to Qiangba, they got quite a large herd.’

  ‘This time I’m going to get my man to buy me a pair of gold bracelets. Tell Yangji to quickly stew some meat – the men will be starving.’

  Another woman poked her head out of a small tent, and a lovely graceful young girl followed close behind. The woman was Yangji, Ciwang’s daughter, from Cuoe Grassland, and the girl was her daughter. The girl had her mother’s face and Shida’s eyes.

  Yangji glanced at the far side of the lake and then at the shore, where the men and women were laughing excitedly together. She frowned, turned and walked over to one of the large tents. Inside, a great pot was steaming on the sizeable stove. She threw several yak pats onto the fire, then ladled the boiling tea water into the tea churn. Taking several large lumps of butter from a bamboo basket, she dropped them into the churn and began to mix the tea. She did all of this with practised hands and an expressionless face. She’d been doing that sort of work for a long time.

  Everyone on Cuoe Grassland had assumed Yangji was dead, likely eaten by wolves. Shida, feeling responsible, had left the grassland out of guilt, unable to forget her. Yangji had indeed encountered a pack of wolves when she fled the grassland in the middle of the night all those years ago. She lost her way and stumbled into No Man’s Land. But, luckily, Jijia had rescued her just in time. He’d taken a crew into that area to kill antelopes and had heard the wolf howls. Because Yangji had no desire to return to Cuoe Grassland and see Shida, she’d gone with the shadow hunters back to their encampment and became their cook.

  A few months later, she gave birth to a daughter on the sandy shore of the lake. When she saw how much the child resembled a certain person, her tears rained down. She looked at the pale blue water of the lake and told the old woman who’d helped deliver the baby, ‘I’ll call her Dawacuo. I hope she’ll be as beautiful and healthy as the moon and the lakes.�
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  So Dawacuo was born in the wilds of No Man’s Land. No one knew who her father was and no one cared. Dawacuo turned out just as her mother had hoped: she was healthy and strong and grew more beautiful every year. All the men and women in the encampment liked her, not only because she was the first child born in the shadow hunters’ encampment, but also because she was pretty and lively, the sort of child people couldn’t help but be drawn to.

  Becoming a mother gave Yangji the courage to carry on living. She patched up her injured heart and put all her energy into bringing up her daughter. She had grown from a girl into a woman and from a woman into a mother. She had, as it were, lost two layers of skin. No longer the wilful herding girl of Cuoe Grassland, she was now a tanned, middle-aged, labouring woman.

  Laughing loudly, the men in the boats threw the ropes to the women who’d gone down to welcome them home. Once ashore, they playfully rubbed the cheeks or breasts of their women, then strode into the large central tent, sat down on the cushions and waited for the women to serve them baijiu. Raising their glasses, they toasted one another and knocked back their drinks.

  Yangji and three other women brought in platters of steaming meat, set them on the table and stuck small knives into the flesh ready for the men. The men began to eat, cutting off large hunks, tearing them into smaller pieces and cramming the meat into their mouths, fat dripping down their chins.

  Jijia sat at the head of the table on a chair piled high with antelope wool. A woman put a platter of lamb ribs in front him. He didn’t move, just downed one glass of baijiu after another. A strange emptiness engulfed him after every slaughter. The sight of fresh antelope blood splattered all around always gave him a wild thrill, but that was invariably followed by a long period of aimlessness.

  *

  The blue sky bore not even the wisp of a cloud, and the sun was strong enough to bake a person dry. On the side of a craggy slope, big-bellied Kaguo was flipping over stones in search of mice.