“I hope so,” Jake said. “I sure to God hope so,” and he squinted northeast and told himself not to worry. But he also told himself to keep his yellow hair covered, and not to stray.
He supposed he was still in China. But he had wandered much, and several days were missing from his memory. This might be India, or Pakistan, even Afghanistan. Or Tibet. Or the Congo, for Chrissake, what difference does it make?
There are no wolves or leopards, he decided, or these people would bear arms. He had fallen among people who did not need, or did not care, to carry weapons. Only the short knife that men and women alike wore in a skin sheath at the belt.
At sunset the tribe gathered. All of them, it seemed. They gathered before the tent where hides were stored and tanned. The stench was rich.
In the fading light, the man in the blue skullcap and the big-boned womanly woman led four young rams through the sorrowing crowd. Or wethers; Jake could not tell. The people raised their hands high, and a brassy tinkle sounded. Beside Jake the Doctor too made music: Jake saw tiny finger-cymbals. A low lament arose.
Blue Hat led the sheep to a stout wooden frame. One by one he dumped them on their sides and tied their hind legs with rawhide. Still the clash and wail filled the twilight.
Blue Hat lifted the bound sheep while the woman knotted rawhide over a bar. When all four sheep hung dangling, their backs to the tribe and their ears twitching as they bleated, the lament grew louder, the clash of cymbals quickened, and the nomads shuffled in place, a sad dance of death. Quickly Blue Hat drew the long, curved knife and cut four throats; quickly women darted forward with bowls to catch the blood. The Doctor called, Well done.
The brassy jingle ceased, and the wail.
The sheep died, and hung still. They bled out while the tribe mourned. Four men set to cleaning and skinning.
The Doctor stared up at the evening star, and Jake thought he was asking pardon. Jake remembered the camel-pullers, who would not leave a shred of meat because the sheep had given his all; and the nomads who must not shed blood, the Buddhists who lived on meat; and something of the nomads’ sadness swept over him: that we eat what we love, destroy what gives us life, betray the helpless. Everything eats everything else, and the strongest is man, and he dies, and feeds the weakest.
By now it was dark, and fires pricked out the night. The Doctor urged Jake to the main tent, and the people were laughing again. The Doctor jabbered happily, and Jake almost understood: there was to be another assembly and another fine meal. Good. This mountain air sharpened a man’s appetite.
Slices of meat rose in stacks. From an iron pot the smell of liver floated. A shepherd was unsealing earthen jugs. In the general chat and chuckle there was much patting. Reassurance, or approval, or just affection. On the shoulders, the head, the belly, the fanny. They patted the children, and the children patted back.
In time everybody was seated with a bowl of meat and a bowl of beer and one or more barley cakes. Outside, a wind had risen, but the fire blazed and warded off winter demons. The Doctor spoke and a small cheer went up.
One of the shepherds stood. Hastily he swallowed meat and barley cake, washing it down with long gulps of beer. Faces shone greasy in the firelight. This was one of Jake’s two shepherds. He spoke, and the others were still, and the wind sang softly in the small silence. The shepherd swigged again, and began.
He told the story of the yellow-haired stranger in his cave of snow. Faces bloomed at Jake. Jake drank and listened. He heard only sounds, not words, but he understood. A blizzard, and the sheep not yet down. The two men herding them close, into a small bowl, and settling them for the night, sleeping among them for warmth. And the end of the storm, and the sun rising. And the sheep breaking through a thin wall of snow, and there lay the stranger.
The shepherd bowed at the ovation, and sat down; he made hungry sounds, and sent his bowl to be refilled. It was an intermission. Everybody’s bowls were refilled, and reed baskets of barley cakes made the rounds.
Jake was a great celebrity tonight and enjoying the party. He waved to his fans, and smacked his lips over the yak and beer. The tent was full of hilarity and fondness. It was warm, too, and some of the men and some of the women were doing without their undershirts. Seeing women’s breasts Jake felt pleasure and not lust; but lust too.
The second rescuer rose. He cleared his throat, delivered a short prologue, and took up the tale.
They came close to the stranger, who was close to death and harmless. They examined his feet, and rubbed them. The man was not frozen, not close to death after all, only weak and tired. Too tired to carry his own burdens. They had talked him to his feet and started him down the mountain. He sang. “Beh-seh-ma, beh-seh-ma.” Jake guffawed and applauded. The tribe made gleeful cackle.
And now something Jake had not known: they had lashed him across the backs of three sheep, and the sheep had carried him down the valley.
A cheer for the sheep.
Jake hoped none of the three had just been slaughtered.
A round of beer. The shepherd sat, and conversation grew general. Jake felt that he ought to turn to somebody and make small talk about the price of wool. Men and women patted one another. The children were busy collecting bowls. Some of them were preparing pipes, and Jake was surprised to find tobacco here.
The woman beside him touched his arm, and he turned to look down at her: she was offering him a softball and a small knife. He took both, and sniffed. It was not a softball but a cheese. He thanked her with a bob of the head, cut a chunk of cheese and passed along the ball and knife. He stuffed cheese into his mouth and then, on impulse, patted the woman’s shoulder. “Ah ah,” she said, and patted his leg. Mellow, he patted her breast, and then pulled away, uncertain. The others paid no mind, and the woman patted his leg again. He tugged his undershirt off and sat beaming foolishly.
Soon the pipes were lit, and passed around. The small children did not smoke. The pipes were long, of wood but with stone bowls, and were decorated with small blue stones and narrow brass circlets. Jake took a deep drag. It seared. Desperately he tried not to cough. This was not tobacco. He pointed to the bowl and looked the question. The woman beside him said, “Charas.”
That meant nothing to him. It was not opium. There was a pipe for every two or three people; they smoked, passed the pipe, smiled hazily. A sweet languor dulled Jake. He tried to warn himself, but against what? They were all smoking. They would not harm him. They had celebrated him tonight.
He plied the jug, and sent it on.
The Doctor rose and called for silence. Blue Hat also rose, and his woman.
The Doctor spoke. He seemed to wait for an answer, or an objection, and none came. He applauded. He pointed at Jake, and waved a command: Come over here.
Jake bumbled to his feet, blinking. This was maybe an initiation, or he was to be given a new name. Well, thank God he was already circumcised.
Carefully, as the room ebbed and flowed, he made his way among the seated people. He stood before the Doctor. He nodded to Blue Hat and the woman. Firelight flickered, reflected in her dark eyes.
Blue Hat’s hand went to his belt. Jake did not flinch; he no longer believed in trouble. These were people who patted, and who did not enjoy slaughtering sheep, goats or yaks. Firelight glowed and faded, glowed and faded, like daybreak and nightfall.
Blue Hat removed the belt, and the long knife in its long scabbard, and handed them to the Doctor. He removed the necklace of silver and turquoise, and handed that to the Doctor. Then he removed the blue skullcap and set it on Jake’s head.
A low roar of pleasure greeted the act. Jake touched one hand to the hat. Speech seemed called for: “I hope the previous occupant was not lousy,” he declared, to another chorus of approval.
The Doctor spoke, and hung the necklace on him. He offered Jake the belt and the knife.
Jake understood that this was a solemn moment. Unfortunately, he was full of roast yak, barley cakes, beer and something called c
haras. He accepted the belt and the knife. He raised one hand for silence. The Doctor clapped twice.
“Now hear this,” Jake said. “I’m glad to be aboard. I run a taut ship but you’ll find that I’m a fair man. Keep your weapons clean and no grab-assing on the chow line. The smoking lamp is lit.”
The shouts and applause were music. All these people seemed so happy. Nothing like a little charas after dinner. They were clapping and hollering so loud he hardly noticed that the Doctor was giving him Blue Hat’s woman.
But then he did notice, and he prickled hot and cold. Her dark eyes and full lips smiled up at him, and streaks of red make-up gleamed in the firelight.
At first the world spun and shimmered, and he lay like a hog, clutching at her, fetching her breasts tightly against him and breathing slow, beery gusts. She clutched his buttocks, and moaned in turn; in the dark he could not recall her face. He embraced the hot bulk of her, rolled on his back tugging her with him, and stroked her flanks. His little corporal seemed a man apart, soft and polite, drugged and drowsy, until he surged up to suck at her heavy breasts. She exhaled a hoarse whine and jolted toward him, pressing his head tighter against her; her nipples swelled, came alive. His little corporal was a big sergeant then, and the pangs of desire were a murderous affliction, an infinite grief, sweat starting on him and the sweet, unending ache like a fever.
He rolled them over and hung above her. He eased her legs higher until her calves pressed on his shoulders, and he slipped into her sweetly, found his motion then, his pace, slow strokes, and a joy built up in his heart, his belly, his loins, a great pressure of joy; he thrust faster and she bucked to meet him; he slowed, and moved in a tender circle. Her hands drew his head down; he kissed her, and licked her face, and she too licked, their tongues met, caressed, dueled; lips sucked lips. She purred; he blubbed at her like an animal. Her purr throbbed, and she drove at him, and he felt the heat building in her; her pussy clenched on his old dog, her breath pounded.
She whimpered then, and whined again, a long thin keening whine that broke to a sob; and all the pain and sorrow and loneliness, the hankering and love welled in him, and tears too, and he cried, “Aaaaah,” and came in a scalding rush, and came, and came, and came; and lay panting then into her mouth, and she into his, and they lay guggling and mewing softly, like animals; and like animals they slept.
38
His duties, and the woman’s, were these:
To slaughter, so that no other in the tribe would have to kill.
To herd the goats, milk the does, lance any abscesses.
To gather dung. Yak dung was like cow pies. Goat and sheep dung fell in clusters of small pellets. Jake passed some of his days with a large, floppy bag slung across him like a paperboy’s bag. The children too gathered dung, and bore it to Jake.
To dump the dung at the wetter end of the pile, and to take shovelfuls from the drier end. These shovelfuls were pitched into wooden forms. Jake and the woman tamped them down, and tamped again, and set heavy stones, trimmed to the size of the form, to compress the dung further. There were one hundred and eight wooden forms, and each day eight of them yielded bricks of fuel.
To be faithful, one to the other.
The woman’s name was Tha-shi. She instructed Jay-kha. To slaughter he must wear the hat, and use only the long knife. He must wear the necklace at all times. He was not to touch her from sunrise to sunset, but at night nothing was forbidden.
The goats’ milk was slightly chalky but not unpleasant. Jake hung hide buckets of it on a yoke and carried them to the tent of the woman Lakh-nuban, in charge of the manufacture of cheeses. Jay-kha naturally thought of her as the Big Cheese. Lakh-nuban’s man was called Amila, a round, jolly man, a sheep doctor and good cook.
The pleasure of milking amazed Jake. Here again, Tha-shi instructed him. He squatted beside the doe and stroked the full udder, smoothing off loose hairs. He set the hide bucket beneath the doe and took a full, warm teat in each hand; firmly and quickly he squeezed the milk down and out, alternating, squeezing and not pulling; it shot into the bucket and frothed.
Tha-shi was custodian of the dung shovels. She took care of them as a butcher would his knives or a carpenter his tools; in sparsely timbered country dung was life itself, warmth. The shovels were of metal, with wooden hafts, the metal shaped from a sheet of iron—bought, no doubt, from a caravan, like the knife blades, like all metal. The knives were bone-handled, except the slaughterer’s. This was wooden-handled, and the blade was of shaped steel, sandwiched into the handle by crude rivets and circlets of brass, like the circlets on the charas pipes. Jake wore the slaughterer’s knife all day. He gave his own to the former Blue Hat.
Only the yak dung stank. Sheep and goat dung was almost clean. Jake learned to stoop and scoop quickly, popping a yak pie into his bag, or using his left hand to crowd fifty sheep pellets onto the shovel. He reckoned two hundred pounds on a good day, and never too much: fires burned in nine tents always.
Tha-shi loved his body. He had not before known a woman like this, who fucked not for money or in duty or curiosity, but because she loved fucking, as she loved the buttery tea, or a good lean goat chop, or beer and charas, who loved it as she loved sunshine, or milking, because it was a natural and necessary part of her life, and life was good. Jake was at first shocked by the direct good cheer she brought to bedtime. “Aaah!” she breathed, wrapped her arms about him, rubbed her face in the hair of his chest, fondled the cock as she fondled a lamb. “Mm-mm-mm,” she hummed, peaceful and unhurried. She cultivated his body like a gardener. Here again she instructed him.
Jake was Blue Hat now, dealer in death, collector of pellets and pies. Blue Hat and Tha-shi, being special, lived in a small tent set apart, and Jake was grateful. In the larger tents there was, he knew, no embarrassment or modesty. A man loved his wife or wives, grunting, exclaiming, giggling; or two men loved their one wife, and there were humorous arguments over priority. In time Jake could have liked that, but for now he enjoyed the privacy.
He learned from Tha-shi. Learned to please her by holding back, or to come with a rush—anywhere, anyhow—without apology and without shame. She loved to make him come. She loved to come. “Ah, good! Ah, good!” Each come was a triumph, an offering to the gods and a reason for living. Slowly Jake learned not to think, not to plan, not to fret: only to do what his body asked, to do it tenderly and do it often—and to say a little something now and then. To whisper or hum or sing out. “Ah ah ah ah,” he sang down the scale, or “Ee-ee.” Or in English, and she understood; in the firelight she grinned and licked at him as he said, “Oh yes, oh yes my fat girl. Oh yes I love your breasts and belly.” Tits, he said once, but not again: goats had teats.
Mong-chen and Khu-lat, his two rescuers, pampered him. He was their mascot, their poor deformed baby, plucked from the blizzard. Mong-chen showed him an abscess, and taught him to lance it with the red-hot tip of a knife. Khu-lat taught him to trim an overgrown hoof. They explained that in spring certain yak calves went blind in the second month; it was the will of heaven, and those were eaten.
Jake was grateful and made magic for them: he brought out his binoculars and patiently, by doing, not saying, instructed them. The shepherds were astonished and almost fearful. They conferred with the others, men and women. The Doctor meditated this miracle for some days and Jake, impressed by the power of novelty, regretted his brashness. He had altered the life of the tribe.
The Doctor ruled: this demonic necklace would be hung in the main tent, and used morning and evening to locate stragglers, search for omens or yetis and confirm the absence of malevolent influences. It was forbidden to the children.
Jake himself used the glasses at dawn, noon and sunset, to scan the northeast approaches.
He was now the owner of a whetstone, a dense, grainy stone, and a jug of oil, rendered animal fat he supposed, and each night after milking, whether or not he had slaughtered that day, he was expected to perform a ritual sharpening of the long,
curved knife, and to film the blade lightly with oil before he tucked it away.
He cleaned and oiled his weapons also.
Tha-shi gossiped, and he was proud. One night he sat her up on him, and lay still while she impaled herself, riding, wiggling, laughing aloud. “Oh boy,” he said. “Oh boy oh boy oh boy.”
“O boi,” she said, “O boi o boi o boi,” and some nights later, passing a tent, he heard the hoarse groans of love and a woman’s answer: “O boi o boi.”
Jake the bringer of fire: forever and ever in this tribe that would be the o boi position. He was proud; his cup ran over.
When Tha-shi was in flux she slept alone and untouched. Jake understood, and spent those four or five nights in purification; it seemed right. He worked at it, remembering sin, lies, pain inflicted and lives taken. He asked the mountains for forgiveness. Or the stars. Or the windy demons that prowled the star-strewn winter sky. All these were old man God; and they were a better God than he had ever known; and in time they forgave him.
Tha-shi relished food as she did love, as she did all the day’s doings and rhythms. She smacked her lips fatly over barley cake and yak butter. With the joy of an artist she chopped a yak calf’s fourth stomach into small pieces, and covered them with brine in an iron pot; this had to do with the making of cheese, and after some weeks the liquid was poured off and presented to Lakh-nuban. Tha-shi hummed while she worked a sheepskin. Tha-shi spun yarn, or sat at a simple loom, and her whole body entered the work. She smoked charas also with the whole body, sucking in tremendous breaths of it, rolling her shoulders, rocking on her hips, grinning, squeezing her own breasts with the joy of it all.
One sunny, freezing day Tha-shi and Jake watched a hawk sail over the valley; her eyes shone, and she raised her arms to the bird, and Jake saw for the first time how beautiful a hawk could be, the sailing and soaring, the oneness with air and light.
The Chinese Bandit Page 26