As her face got darker and darker, he really felt as if the end of the world was nigh.
‘Buddha, I beg you, save her. If this is some kind of punishment for her, let me bear it instead, don’t torture her any more.
‘Samu, Samu, where are you? Hurry up and come! Hurry up and save her!
‘Feng…! Feng, my woman, open your eyes and look at me. Haven’t you spent years waiting for me, don’t you want to come back to the grassland with me? Open your eyes and let me take you back to the grassland!’
‘Aaaaah!’
As Gongzha’s crazed howl filled the air, two crimson figures slipped quickly down the mountainside towards him. It was Samu and an elder whom Gongzha didn’t know. They hurried straight into the lake, paying no heed to their robes getting wet, and immediately bent over Feng’s floppy form, the older man pulling up her eyelids and lifting her crow-black fingers. He sighed deeply, shook his head at Samu, and turned back towards the shore.
‘Master, is there really nothing you can do? Think again, please! We can’t watch her die like this. We’ve never had any of our patients die, Master.’
But the old man didn’t turn round; he just walked on, his back hunched and his steps agonisingly slow.
Samu looked at Gongzha, who was still pressing down on the wounds, and said bitterly, ‘You can stop that now. There’s nothing more we can do.’
‘No, that can’t be right. She wouldn’t leave me like this. It can’t be right…’ Gongzha continued pressing, tears rolling down his tanned face, tears that were all the more pitiful and unexpected because of who he was: the strong man of the wilderness, a man who’d lived with wolves for companions and hadn’t batted an eye; a man who always stayed calm in the face of danger. But now, seeing that he was about to be abandoned by his beloved all over again, he was distraught, riven with despair.
Was heaven playing with him? Was the Buddha sleeping?
‘Take her back to the stone house, Gongzha. Let her go in peace.’ Samu couldn’t stand to watch, so he turned to walk away.
‘Is there really nothing we can do? I thought you were the best doctor in the wilderness, Samu?’ Gongzha shouted. ‘There must be something else you can try.’
‘She’s taken in a poison that doesn’t have an antidote. Unless the Medicine Buddha appears, there’s nothing we can do,’ Samu said. ‘My master taught me everything I know. He’s never come down the mountain before, it’s always been me that’s treated people, but today he came down and even he couldn’t save her. There is truly nothing to be done.’
‘The Medicine Buddha? The Medicine Buddha! I’ve carried his image with me every day, but where is he now? He won’t even protect my woman. What good is he to me?’ Gongzha yelled in despair. He yanked Zhaduo’s statue of the Medicine Buddha out of his chuba and hurled it onto the broken stones by the beach. It landed with a clang.
Samu scrambled after it. He picked up the Buddha and looked around in amazement, laughing loudly.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Gongzha said unkindly.
‘Your woman can be saved, my son!’ Samu said with a huge smile. ‘Your woman can be saved. And not only can she be saved, everyone else can be saved too – all of us who live here!’ He raised the statue high.
‘You’re crazy!’ Gongzha stopped listening to him, picked up the unconscious Feng and carried her up the bank.
‘Really, I’m telling you, she can be saved, the girl can be saved,’ Samu repeated over and over, and with great excitement. Then he shouted towards the houses on the mountain, ‘Come out, all of you. The Medicine Buddha has appeared! We no longer have to fear the scorpions!’
People started pouring out of the houses in twos and threes. Men, women and children were running down to the lakeside. When they saw the Medicine Buddha in Samu’s hand, they knelt together on the bank and began continually prostrating themselves.
‘They… what are they doing?’ Gongzha asked.
‘It’s a long story. Let’s go back to the house first. We need to move quickly if we want to save her.’
Raising the Buddha high, Samu passed through the crowd and returned to the house at the foot of the mountain. Everyone followed him. When they looked at the Buddha, their eyes flashed with a fervent light.
Samu’s master was waiting for them in front of the house, along with three elders. When they saw Gongzha, they put their palms together and bowed. Gongzha didn’t understand why they were treating him with such respect, but he was certain they had a strong connection with the Medicine Buddha. Because he had Feng in his arms, he couldn’t make the palms-together gesture in return, so he simply nodded at them.
Once Gongzha had gone inside, one of the elders made a sign with his hand. Those waiting outside sat down and watched the stone house quietly.
Gongzha laid Feng on the couch, covered her with his chuba and turned to Samu, who gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Don’t be afraid, child. She will be saved.’ As he spoke, he handed the Buddha to his master. ‘Master, it is for you to open!’
Master Zhamu took the Medicine Buddha with both hands and placed it on a shelf. He looked directly at it and prostrated himself three times. Then he stood up, took the knife that Samu handed to him, traced the edge of that strange ¤ with the knife and prised it up.
The ¤ snapped open and revealed a small hole in the back of the Buddha, out of which the old man carefully lifted two pieces of paper. He unfolded them and examined them carefully. Tears sprang from his eyes.
The other elders wept too.
‘This piece of paper contains the formula. We’re only short of one ingredient. I’ll send someone to get it.’ Master Zhamu rolled up the two slips of paper and put them into his monk’s bag. Perhaps because he’d not spoken for a long time, his voice was a little raspy and uneven. ‘Take her to my house for now.’
Samu nodded and Gongzha scooped up Feng and went out with the old man.
When the people sitting on the sandy ground outside saw them come out, they all stood up and watched them silently, preparing to prostrate themselves in front of the Buddha image.
Master Zhamu lifted up the gleaming black statue. ‘Go back home for now. We need to save this woman first. Come out again when the stars have risen and we will venerate the Medicine Buddha!’
The people did as he’d instructed and stood hand in hand watching them make their way up the mountain.
‘It’s been many years since anyone was allowed into my master’s house,’ Samu said as he walked beside Gongzha. ‘Even though he taught me medicine, that was all done elsewhere.’
Gongzha hesitated, then finally asked, ‘You… what kind of people are you?’
‘The last soldiers of Nacangdeba!’ Samu said proudly.
‘The last soldiers of Nacangdeba? There are some of you still living?’
‘You know about the Nacangdeba?’
Gongzha nodded. ‘I’ve been to that cave.’
‘That explains it… Is that where you found the Medicine Buddha, in the cave?’
‘No, Living Buddha Zhaduo gave it to me.’
‘No wonder he never came back,’ Samu muttered to himself.
‘He’s dead now,’ Gongzha said. He thought back to that extraordinary period, when people had tried so hard to outdo one another with their political zealotry, when everyone was so unsettled and no one felt safe. Ama’s eyes, Danzeng’s wounds, Ciwang’s arrogance, Zhaduo’s calmness – all of that was now long in the past. It was like when the spring rains came to the grassland and turned the ground to mud, erasing all scars. ‘Living Buddha Zhaduo came here?’
‘Yes, many years ago, when he was very young. He came to No Man’s Land to pick medicinal herbs. He was caught in an avalanche and Master saved him.’
Gongzha thought back to what the clan elder had told him all that time ago, about how a plague had come to Cuoe Grassland and Zhaduo had gone to No Man’s Land with some disciples to look for herbs to cure it; but they got lost in a snowstorm. Things were suddenly st
arting to make sense to Gongzha, and he was about to ask for more detail when Samu announced that they’d arrived. ‘This is where Master Zhamu practises; no outsider has ever been allowed here before.’
It was a solitary peak, and it contained just a single courtyard house. Two snow-white dogs were crouched by the door, the fur on the backs of their necks bristling as Samu and Gongzha approached. Master Zhamu signalled to them and the dogs obediently lay down again. Then he gestured Gongzha and Samu inside and indicated that Gongzha should lie Feng on the cushion by the window.
Zhamu produced a small bag wrapped in yellow silk and drew out several black needles of differing lengths and some thin blades. He told Samu the name of a herb, and Samu went out to search for it.
Then Master Zhamu turned to Gongzha. ‘Help me hold her still; don’t let her thrash about.’
Gongzha nodded and sat on the cushion as instructed, holding Feng against his chest.
Zhamu took up a black, razor-thin knife. ‘Before the antidote is given, I need to release all the poisoned blood.’
Gongzha nodded again. He knew from Living Buddha Zhaduo that letting blood in this way was an ancient practice of traditional Tibetan medicine. It involved making an incision at a specific spot with a specially made blade in order to release the bad blood. Tibetan medicine held that when someone had been poisoned or had become ill, there was a particular stage when the good blood and the bad blood in their body would separate. If you drained the bad blood and kept the good, the patient would recover. But if you did the blood-letting before the good and bad blood separated, not only would the patient not be healed but they’d be subject to a secondary illness. An experienced doctor would check the nasal cavities, mouth and anus. If the blood was fresh, then it was good blood. If there were white bubbles or it had become yellowed, then it was bad blood. If the good and bad blood weren’t mixed together, that meant it was time to do the blood-letting.
Zhamu used the knife to make a small cut in Feng’s nostril, and a stream of rotten-smelling black liquid flowed out. He dipped his finger into it and wafted it under his nose. Then he quickly lifted her right leg and supported it on his own leg. He made small incisions on the front of her calf and her thigh, and more black liquid streamed out.
Feng’s face appeared lifeless and she lay unmoving in Gongzha’s embrace.
Feng herself felt extraordinarily light, as light as a feather; the slightest exhalation and she would float into the sky. The sun was so beautiful, with its thousands of golden rays, and her entire body was bathed in its radiance, inside and out. She heard Gongzha softly calling her and felt his tears dripping onto her face. She wanted to tease him: you’re so tough, you can stare down a pack of wolves without blinking, so how come recently you’ve been crying at the slightest thing?
Then, suddenly, without any warning, all of the pain came clawing at her: her shoulder hurt, her chest hurt, her leg hurt. Everything swirled in her head: Shanghai, the grassland, Zhuo Yihang, Sega, Jijia, Gongzha…
‘Oh, it’s killing me, I’m going to die from the pain. I can’t stand it, Gongzha. Gongzha, I can’t stand it!’ She wept, shouted and struggled.
Gongzha didn’t know how to comfort her. She carried on struggling, even though she was dripping with sweat, and Gongzha felt her pain as if it was his own. ‘You’ll get through this, Feng. Buddha will make sure of it. You’ll get through this, Feng, I know you will.’ Apart from continually wiping the blood off her and holding her flailing arms, there really was nothing else he could do.
Zhamu glanced at Feng’s face and began using strips of cloth to bind the cuts he’d made. ‘It’s good she’s awake. She took in so much venom that she can only last another four hours now, after the blood-letting, before the poison in her system starts taking hold again. May the Buddha allow Samu to return soon.’
Gongzha didn’t know what to say. If he could, he would have given his life to bring Feng peace.
Zhamu watched Feng slowly settle down, then he picked up the Medicine Buddha and went to another room.
Gongzha held Feng in his arms and leant back against the cushion, covering her with his chuba. As he stared out at the sky-blue lake, he began to sing, without even realising it.
‘Today I must go to a faraway land
When we parted you said, “Please don’t forget me.”
Our promise hangs high in the sky
Those white clouds, those stars, that moon
Bear witness to our promise that in the next life we will meet again
And never forget each other.
‘Beautiful shepherdess, I love you
No matter how the world changes, you are forever in my heart.
Beautiful shepherdess, your laughter echoes under the blue sky
And deep in my heart.
‘Oh, give me a tent
I want to take your hand and live together free of pain.
Oh, give me some land
I want to dance with you there, slowly and forever.
‘Shepherdess, sweet shepherdess
When will you return and make our love run smooth?
My greatest hope is not to be separated
Has our love in this life already scattered?
Could it be that loving you brings only despair?
Every day without you is a tragedy.’
He sang with great feeling.
‘You won’t leave me, will you, woman?’ he murmured softly to the sky, oblivious of the tears running down his face. One deathbed farewell was enough for any man.
Feng smiled at him through her tears. ‘Promise me,’ she whispered, ‘that whatever happens, whether I live or die, you’ll take me back to Cuoe Lake. If I live, I’ll be with you, but if I die, I still don’t want leave you.’
‘You’re not going to die. Samu’s gone to prepare the antidote. Do you remember the Medicine Buddha, the one I’ve carried with me everywhere?’ Gongzha held her closer. ‘They found the formula for the antidote in his belly. You’re not going to die.’
‘If I do die, Gongzha, just take me to the grassland you love so much. Don’t give me a sky burial; bury me by the side of the lake. I want to always be with you.’ Feng stroked his face.
Gongzha gazed into her eyes and his tears flowed uncontrollably. ‘I promise we’ll never be apart again. Wherever I am, you’ll be there with me. I’m not leaving you ever again and I’m not going to make you wait for me ever again.’
Feng smiled, and it was a contented smile.
27
In the flat-bottomed river valley out of the wind, the air was warm and the grass plentiful. At dawn, when the sun had only just shown its face, its golden rays shone low and gentle over the rocky wilderness. It had rained the night before, and the air was clear, the colours even more vivid than normal, lending an extraordinary beauty to the distant snow mountains and the nearby lakes.
Yongxi darted out of her tent, fastening her dress as she walked. The rhythm of her days echoed the rhythms of the barren earth beneath her feet and the mountains encircling her; the sun above and the shadows below were her timekeepers. She didn’t need to think about what to do when; her brain automatically directed her hands and feet.
The yaks were round the other side of the tent, lying scattered in ones and twos across the sandy ground. The dog was with them, stretching, its face to the sun; it barked casually twice, and the yaks lumbered to their feet one after the other, dislodging a small flock of sparrows, who rose into the air in a whirr of wings.
In recent days, many antelopes had arrived at the valley to have their young, and their prints were all over the riverbank. Vultures circled high overhead and a lone wolf drifted in the distance – sure signs that the first antelope calves had been born. Antelopes gave birth rapidly and as soon as the baby’s fur had dried, the calf could stand up and walk around.
Just as the antelopes came to the valley each year to give birth, Yongxi came each year to pasture. When she saw the mass of hoofprints, she was delighted, as if a
friend she hadn’t heard from in a year had suddenly returned. She stood with her back to the sun and smiled happily at the sunny slope busy with large-bellied mothers and their newborn calves. Despite the effort it required to get there, they came back year after year because the valley was far from human interference and the safest of hideaways.
Yongxi never tired of watching the calves being birthed or seeing the mother antelopes again, that bit older each year. Sometimes she thought she and the antelopes were fated to be together. They met once a year and parted soon after, the antelopes heading off with their young, she driving her yaks, each going their separate ways. The following year, without prior arrangement, they reunited in the same place.
The male antelopes keeping watch from the heights turned to look at Yongxi, the contours of their bodies accentuated in the morning light, their long horns resplendent. On the western slope, newborn calves bounded and romped, exploring their world with curiosity. The young antelopes born the year before were much quieter, either grazing quietly alongside their mothers or raising their heads and looking nervously around.
Antelopes were easily startled and even the tiniest disturbance could cause them to scatter as if their lives depended on it. During the breeding season it was dangerous: a pregnant female could lose her foetus if she ran too quickly, and if the whole herd was startled, newborns could be trampled in the stampede. Yongxi was careful to watch her band of old friends quietly, a reassuring smile on her lips.
The antelope Beibei and the dog wandered over and stood to either side of her.
After a long while, Yongxi withdrew her gaze, undid the long rope that tethered all the yaks together, and signalled for the dog to drive them towards the river valley. She went back to her tent, helped the newly wakened Tajiapu put on his tunic and boots, and set him on the ground. Then she began to boil tea water. Beibei was lying beside the tent and Tajiapu darted out and began to play with his long horns.
It was a quiet morning, like every morning. Yongxi got on with her usual chores, humming a grassland love song as she went.
Ping!
Yongxi didn’t even raise her head – she thought Tajiapu was throwing stones. But the sounds kept coming, one after the other, until the air was thick with them.
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