by Chi Zijian
The kandahang’s head was immersed in the water and only a corner of its body showed, like a bluish sandstone whose edges had been worn away. The moon next to it was full again, but was no longer silvery white; it had become a black moon, for the kandahang’s blood had dyed the lake’s centre night-black.
Recalling how just a moment before it had been leisurely chomping on jungu grass under the water, my teeth chattered and my legs shook. But Luni was in high spirits. I knew then that I would never be a true hunter.
We didn’t transport the kandahang back to the camp since it was too heavy. Linke rowed and whistled cheerfully as he took Luni and me back home. But when we passed by the tree that touched the skies, Linke didn’t dare keep whistling, fearful he would disturb Bainacha, the Mountain Spirit.
It is said that a long, long time ago a Clan Chieftain took his clan on a ‘surround hunt’. They heard all sorts of wild animal cries emerging from a big mountain, so they surrounded it. The sky was already dark, so the Chieftain ordered everyone to pitch camp on the spot.
Under the leadership of the Chieftain they tightened the encirclement the next day. Time passed very quickly, and at dusk he queried his kinsmen: ‘How many sorts of wild animals have we encircled? And how many are there of each sort?’
No one dared answer because guessing how many wild animals were surrounded in the mountain was like trying to guess how many fish are swimming in a lake.
Just when everyone remained speechless, a genial, white-bearded old man opened his mouth to speak. He not only stated the total number of wild beasts that were inside the hunting circle, he also classified them and specified the numbers of deer, roe-deer, hares and so forth.
When the hunt was over the next day, the Chieftain personally accompanied the others to count the number of beasts, and lo and behold, they numbered exactly as foretold! The Chieftain sensed the old man was someone unusual and went looking for him. He had unquestionably seen the old man sitting under a tree a moment ago, but now he’d vanished without a trace.
The Chieftain was amazed and dispatched people in all directions to search for the old man, but no one could find him. The Chieftain reckoned that the old man must be the Mountain Spirit who ruled over all the wild animals, so he carved his likeness – the Bainacha Mountain Spirit, that is – on the big tree under which the old man had been seated.
When a hunter is hunting and sees Bainacha carved on a tree, he must not only respectfully make offerings of tobacco and baijiu to it, he should also lay down his rifle and remove the bullets, and kowtow to pray for the Mountain Spirit’s protection. If the hunter has made a kill, he should smear the animal’s blood and fat on the image of the Spirit.
Back then in the forests on the Right Bank, numerous big trees sported a carving of the Mountain Spirit’s image. When a hunter passed by Bainacha he had to remain silent.
All along the way home I was lethargic, and Linke asked if I was sleepy. I didn’t answer. Even though a bullet hadn’t struck me, I was lifeless like the kandahang. After we returned to the camp, Father explained where we had killed the kandahang, and Ivan, Hase and Jindele left in the middle of the night to fetch it.
Like a hero justly recognised for his feat, Linke stayed behind to rest and must have been very content. Tamara and he made very passionate wind-sounds in the shirangju, and Mother called out his name again and again.
But in the midst of those wind-sounds, that round black moon flashed before my eyes. It tore apart my dreamland, and I fell into a heavy sleep only when light appeared in the east.
By the time I got up the sun was already high in the sky, and Mother was busy cutting the kandahang into strips on the wooden chopping block. I knew she was preparing to dry the meat. Those crimson meat-strips looked like red lily petals blown to the ground by the wind.
Because a kandahang had been killed, the campsite took on a joyful air. I saw Maria and Yveline cheerfully drying their meat-strips like Tamara. A smile hung on Maria’s face, and Yveline was humming a tune.
Yveline saw me from afar. ‘Come over,’ she yelled. ‘I’ve gathered shirimmooyi. Have a taste!’
Shirimmooyi are the fruit of bird cherry plants that grow in river valleys. Before deep autumn its fruit, hackberries, aren’t sweet. ‘I don’t like sour berries,’ I answered loudly and walked past her shirangju.
Yveline chased after me. ‘It’s the first time you’ve hunted with Linke, and you killed a kandahang. From now on we’ll dress you up as a boy and send you out on the hunt!’
I pursed my lips in contempt and said nothing.
I was going to Nidu the Shaman’s. I knew that when a bear or a kandahang was killed, he made offerings to the Malu. We would build a triangular shelter in front of Nidu the Shaman’s shirangju, remove the animal’s head, and hang it facing the direction in which we would next relocate our camp. Then we would take the head down and set it, along with the animal’s gullet, liver and lungs, before the Malu shrine inside the shirangju. From the right to the left, branches would be placed on top of the innards, and covered with an animal hide as if to block them from view and allow the Malu to enjoy them in privacy.
The next day, Nidu the Shaman would dissect the heart of the bear or the kandahang, taking out each of the Malu from the leather bag, smearing their mouths with blood from the animal’s heart, and then replacing them in the bag.
Afterwards he cut a few slices of fat off the hunted animal and threw them into the fire. When the fat sizzled and oozed oil, he covered the slices with kawaw grass. As its aromatic smoke suffused the air, he took the leather bag containing the Malu and swayed it repeatedly over the smoke, as if he were placing an item of clothing in a stream to cleanse it. Then he hung the Spirits back in their shrine, which was directly across from the entrance to the shirangju, and the memorial ceremony was complete.
Now we could divide and eat the animal’s heart, liver and lungs. Since Dashi’s eyesight was poor, the liver was generally given to him. He sliced it with a knife and ate it raw and bloody. The corners of his lips were soaked in blood, and his chin was soiled with bits and pieces of blood too. It was revolting.
The animal’s heart is distributed equally according to the number of shirangju, and it’s basically eaten raw too. I eat uncooked meat but I don’t eat organs raw, because they are receptacles for blood, so eating them is like sucking blood.
Many times I wanted to go and look at the Spirits inside the leather bag during a ritual, but each time I missed my chance. I wondered: after a Spirit’s mouth is smeared with blood, does it pucker like a human’s?
Since the women had begun drying meat-strips, it was obvious that the kandahang had been transported back to the camp last night, and the ceremony was over. But I went to Nidu the Shaman’s to try my luck anyhow.
An unfamiliar grey-white speckled reindeer stood outside his shirangju. It was fitted with a saddle, which meant someone had been riding it. It looked like a stranger had arrived in our camp.
All those who came in search of Nidu the Shaman were from neighbouring urireng, but they weren’t our clansmen. They had but one goal in seeking Nidu the Shaman: to request he perform a Spirit Dance.
Not every urireng had its own Shaman. Whenever someone became seriously ill, they would follow the tree markers until they found an urireng with a Shaman and entreat the Shaman to exorcise the illness. They came bearing gifts, like a wild duck or a pheasant, to be presented in tribute to the Malu. When a Shaman returned from performing a Spirit Dance, he typically brought back a reindeer, a gift of gratitude. Only rarely would a Shaman refuse.
In my memory, Nidu the Shaman had twice been requested to perform a Spirit Dance outside our urireng. Once was to treat a middle-aged man who had suddenly gone blind, and the other was to cure a child with scabies. To treat the man’s blindness he left for three days, but he came back the same day after dancing for the child. It is said that Nidu the Shaman restored vision to that man who been in darkness a dozen days; as for the boy, in the mi
dst of Nidu the Shaman’s trance dance, scabs formed over the blisters and the pus ceased flowing.
When I entered the shirangju, Nidu the Shaman was putting his ritual items in order. A big-mouthed man, stooped over, his face covered in dust, waited beside him.
‘Egdi’ama,’ I asked, ‘are you leaving to treat someone’s illness?’
He lifted his head and gave me a look but didn’t say anything about leaving to perform a Spirit Dance. ‘The kandahang you killed yesterday is very big, the meat is good and the hide will be fine too. I told your Aunt Yveline that after she tans the skin, she should make you a pair of boots.’
Yveline’s handiwork was the finest. The boots she made were both light and solid, and she embossed all sorts of eye-catching decorations on the bootlegs. It seemed he knew that I had gone kandahang hunting with Linke and considered my behaviour commendable, or else he wouldn’t have instructed Yveline to make me boots.
But I wasn’t interested in boots. I wanted to accompany Nidu the Shaman to another urireng and observe his Spirit Dance.
I watched him gather the Spirit Robe, Spirit Headdress, Spirit Trousers, Spirit Skirt and Spirit Cape, wrap them in a Tibetan-blue cloth, and place them together with the Spirit Drumstick, made from a roe-deer leg, in a leather bag.
When he took them outside, I spoke up. ‘Egdi’ama, I want to go with you.’
He shook his head. ‘The road will be long and it won’t be safe or convenient to take you. And I’m not leaving home just for fun. Some day soon I’ll take you to Jurgang. There’s lots to see there – shops and horse-drawn carriages and inns.’
‘I just want to watch you perform your Spirit Dance for someone. I don’t want to go to Jurgang.’
‘This time I’m not going to do a Spirit Dance for a person, it’s for some sick reindeer,’ he said. ‘Nothing worth watching. You stay here and help your mother make jerky.’
‘But Tamara has already dried the meat-strips!’ I said angrily.
Nidu the Shaman stared at me. He couldn’t believe that I didn’t address my mother as ‘Eni’, and called her ‘Tamara’ like Linke. ‘Did the kandahang you killed last night run off with your memory? Have you forgotten how to say “Eni”?’
His scornful tone irked me. ‘If you don’t let me go,’ I said spitefully, ‘no matter what Spirit Dance you perform, it won’t cure anything! It won’t cure anything at all!’
My words made the hand in which Nidu the Shaman held the leather bag quiver.
If you asked me if I have ever spoken wrongly in my life, I would answer that on that summer’s day over seventy years ago, I shouldn’t have cursed those sick reindeer. If Nidu the Shaman had cured them, perhaps the fate of Linke, Tamara and Nidu the Shaman might have been otherwise, and I wouldn’t find my recollections so painful.
Nidu the Shaman returned three days later. We all assumed the reindeer in that urireng had been saved, because the men who accompanied Nidu the Shaman on his return brought two reindeer to thank him. One was brown and white-spotted, the other grey-black.
The men told us that during the spring a yellowish snow fell around their urireng, and it was said that reindeer that ate such snow would catch a deadly infectious disease. The snow fell late at night when their herders were deep in sleep, so the reindeer – who forage at night – ate the tinted snow without their knowledge.
They feared the reindeer would grow sick and every day they prostrated themselves before Alung, the Spirit that protects reindeer, but the reindeer still took ill. After Nidu the Shaman’s dance, the reindeer that had been lying on the ground for days were able to stand up. Oddly, while the man recounted all of this, Nidu the Shaman’s face showed no joy.
At that time the reindeer had not fully moulted, so the fact that the two newly arrived reindeer had what looked like small scars on their backs didn’t arouse anyone’s suspicions, as some reindeer have such marks when shedding intensely.
Reindeer are naturally gregarious, and the next day the newly arrived reindeer went out with the others to forage, departing at dusk and returning at dawn. When they returned to the camp, their bodies carried a balmy scent of morning dew.
To ward off the mosquitoes and horseflies that harass reindeer, we lit a fire using fresh grass, which gives off a lot of smoke. Some of the animals lay resting on the ground while others licked salt. It was when Tamara fed salt to the reindeer that she discovered there was something amiss with the two new arrivals. Unlike the other reindeer, which licked the salt greedily like parched plants sucking up rain, the pair showed no appetite whatsoever.
Tamara thought that since the reindeer had just arrived they were being shy like humans, so she put her salted palm right up to their lips. Perhaps they didn’t want to disappoint good-hearted Tamara, and they stuck out their tongues and licked a bit, but very reluctantly. When they finished licking, they even began to cough.
Tamara sensed there was something odd with these two reindeer. ‘The new reindeer aren’t very lively,’ she said. ‘Let’s keep them in the camp rather than letting them go out with the others.’
But Linke joked with Tamara. ‘Those two bucks have been gelded. Now they’ve come and discovered all the lovely does here and it’s almost mating season but they can’t do anything. They’re nostalgic for their virility, so they’re a bit depressed.’
Tamara’s face turned red. ‘Do you suppose reindeer are like you, obsessed with such thoughts all day long?’ Father chuckled and so did Mother, and their laughs tempered their worries.
But not long after we discovered that most of the reindeer were shedding very heavily. Patches of scars appeared like a pot-holed road eroded by torrential rains. And they didn’t care to lick salt either. The time of their daily return was delayed until noon, and when they arrived back in the camp they simply collapsed on the ground.
One day, after it returned to camp and lay down, the white-spotted newcomer was unable to right itself again. And then its companion, the grey-black one, died. The departure of these two reindeer suddenly awakened us to the truth: they had brought the much-feared epidemic with them, and our reindeer were fated to suffer. Nidu the Shaman had not only failed to cure the reindeer in the other urireng, he had brought our lively herd of reindeer to the brink of death!
Overnight, Nidu the Shaman’s cheeks caved in.
He gloomily donned his Spirit Robe, Spirit Headdress, Spirit Skirt and Spirit Trousers, and began his trance dance to save our reindeer. My memory of this Spirit Dance is extraordinarily clear: Nidu the Shaman began as the first brushstrokes of black appeared against the sky, and until the moon rose and myriad stars filled the sky, his feet didn’t stop moving. Beating the drum, he raised his head and cried loudly, then lowered his head and moaned. He danced until the moon sank in the west and the east turned white, and then he collapsed.
He had danced for a full seven or eight hours, and his feet had stamped a big hole inside his shirangju. He collapsed in that hole, and no breathing could be heard. But not long after, a ‘wuwa wuwa’ cry rang out. From his wailing, we realised that our reindeer were doomed too.
That bout of the reindeer plague continued for almost two months. In front of our eyes, our beloved reindeer lost their coats, collapsed on the ground and died, day after day. The weather cooled, the leaves yellowed, grass dried and mushrooms appeared, but there remained only thirty or so reindeer capable of eating them.
Linke painstakingly selected those thirty head from among the sick. He herded them to a place bordered on three sides by mountains and one by water, restricting their activities to that area and isolating them from other reindeer. As for those that stayed behind in the camp, each and every one died. During that time, we buried reindeer virtually each day. To prevent the spread of the epidemic to other urireng, we dug deep, deep pits.
The ravens were extremely active. They circled above our camp, screeching, ‘Ya! Ya!’ Dashi released his hawk to banish those horrific creatures but they were too numerous. As soon as you drove away one
throng, another arrived. They were oppressive jet-black clouds. When Dashi saw us burying the reindeer, he wailed ‘ululu’ until teardrops criss-crossed his face. But no one heeded him, because our hearts were teeming with tears too.
During the reindeer epidemic we didn’t move camp or hunt. We didn’t move because we didn’t want the plague to spread and harm the reindeer of other urireng.
When Linke brought those thirty or so reindeer back among us, many of us cried, for Linke had managed to preserve the ‘fire source’ upon which our lives depended.
Those reindeer had already begun to grow their winter fur. Even though they looked frail after surviving the pestilence, they liked to eat salt again and could go out on their own to forage reindeer moss. Everyone treated Linke like a hero. He looked gaunt but his eyes were radiant, as if the gazes of the dead reindeer had gathered in his eyes.
But over the course of the epidemic Nidu the Shaman aged radically. Never fond of speaking, he became even more taciturn. When the reindeer were buried, he removed the bells from their necks, and they occupied two whole birch-bark baskets. He put them in his shirangju and often gazed absentmindedly at them. His eyes were spiritless, and those bells looked like spiritless eyes too.
Except for Dashi, no one reproached him. One day Dashi asked Nidu the Shaman: ‘Do you know why your Spirit Power has grown useless? I’ll tell you. It’s because you don’t have a woman at your side. Without a woman, how can you have power?’
Nidu the Shaman’s lips quivered, but he made no retort. Sitting right beside them, Ivan was very angry that Dashi could be so brazen. ‘You don’t have a woman either. Does that mean you are powerless too?’
‘Of course I have power,’ yelled Dashi. ‘I have Omolie!’
Ivan denigrated the hawk. ‘It survives off animals killed by others. All it knows how to do is open its trap and gobble up meat. It’s damn useless!’