by Chi Zijian
‘How could I be lucky enough to shoot a pregnant doe?’ replied the old man. He was just collecting astragalus root to take to a herbalist in exchange for a meal. ‘Now that the Japanese have come, getting food is even tougher.’
‘Are the Japanese really going to wipe out blue-eyed Russians?’ Hase asked.
‘How would I know? But as soon as the Japanese show up, the blue-eyed people all start running!’
Hase related his encounter with the old man to everyone over supper. Nadezhda’s eyes filled with alarm. She wolfed down meat and began to hiccup, but she continued stuffing herself. His meal unfinished, Jilande left looking preoccupied.
Watching Jilande’s back as he walked away, Ivan sighed. ‘He doesn’t look at all like my son. Not a defiant bone in his body!’
Yveline had always doubted Jilande’s parentage. ‘Hmph,’ she snorted contemptuously. ‘Jilande’s eyes are so blue, of course he doesn’t look like your son!’
Nora resented Yveline speaking that way about her brother. ‘You shouldn’t “hmph” so much,’ she said. ‘Your nose is already crooked, and if you keep snorting at people like that, it will bend all the way over to the Left Bank of the Argun!’
Everyone laughed heartily. But Yveline was so angry she jumped up and said, ‘Even if my nose is bent, it won’t bend all the way to the Left Bank. It stinks of your piss over there, and I wouldn’t want to dirty my nose! I’d rather my nose bent to the right, all the way into the Sea of Japan!’
Back then whenever anyone mentioned the word ‘Japan’, Nadezhda reacted as if she’d heard a thunderclap. Yveline’s words made Nora storm off, but Nadezhda remained seated right where she was, wolfing down one huge mouthful of meat after another.
The sight of her eating like that spooked Ivan. ‘Nadezhda, you’ve only got one stomach!’
Nadezhda just kept bolting her meat. Perhaps Yveline realised she had gone too far. She sighed, stood up and left.
That night two sounds could be heard intermittently throughout the camp. One was Nadezhda vomiting, and the other was Nora screeching ‘Ya! Ya! Ya!’, like a raven. Those were the last sounds they left behind in the camp.
The next day Ivan behaved as usual, taking an early-morning breakfast and then going out on the hunt with Hase and Luni. That evening when he returned to camp he discovered his shirangju was vacant. The deerskin bedding and quilts, usually piled haphazardly, were neatly folded; his cigarette case was full of tobacco and placed next to the fireplace; and his mug was at his bedside, sparkling clean and free of thick tea stains. This unusual orderliness gave Ivan the jitters.
He realised something was not right, and he went to look at the buckskin bag for storing clothes. Half the contents were missing. Only one of the pink cloths that Nora had dyed remained, and most of the jerky stored in the bucket was gone. It looked like they’d fled with food and clothing in tow.
I had actually seen Nora at the riverside that morning when I was washing my face. She rolled some grass together to serve as a rag, and was using fine grains of sand from the riverbed to wipe clean the mug.
‘Why are you scrubbing it?’
‘There’s a lot of tea stains,’ said Nora, ‘so the brewed tea doesn’t look transparent.’
When I had washed my face and was about to leave, Nora suddenly spoke. ‘My batiks are so pretty. Why doesn’t Luni like any of them?’
‘Didn’t you call Luni an idiot? It’s no wonder an idiot doesn’t appreciate beauty!’
Nora pursed her lips. ‘How can you say Luni’s an idiot?’ she said. ‘Of all the people in our urireng, he’s the cleverest!’
Nora asked me which of her dyed cloths I liked best. ‘The pink one,’ I said. ‘When that one appeared, we all thought the sun was setting right in our camp.’
As for the pink cloth that Nora left behind, I do believe it was intended for me. After I left the riverside, it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to ask: ‘We didn’t eat bear meat last night, so why were you imitating a raven’s call?’
That night when we gathered round the bonfire for dinner, Ivan came all by himself, head bowed. His footsteps were very heavy.
‘Nadezhda and the children?’ asked Maria.
Ivan sat down in resignation. He rubbed his face with those massive hands of his, let them fall, lifted his head a bit, and said forlornly: ‘They’ve made their escape. You shouldn’t go looking for them. There’s no holding back someone who wants to leave.’
All who heard the news kept dead silent, except Yveline.
‘Ya!’ she exclaimed. ‘Just like I said long ago, sooner or later Nadezhda was bound to take her children back to her homeland! That woman is black-hearted! She took both the children, but she should have left one for Ivan. Maybe it was fitting to take Jilande. But Nora – she’s definitely Ivan’s child. Only a whore could be so vicious!’
‘If anyone dares call Nadezhda a whore, I’ll rip her tongue out!’ roared Ivan.
Yveline shuddered and shut her trap.
I returned to our shirangju and told Tamara the news about Nadezhda’s flight. But she surprised me by laughing. ‘Good for her! How fine it would be if everyone in our urireng ran away!’
‘You should run away too!’ I said, to get her goat.
‘If I ran away, I’d go to Lake Lama! There’s no winter there, and lotus flowers bloom all year round. How nice that would be.’ Then she tore a lock of grey hair from her head and cast it into the fireplace. Her crazed look made me extraordinarily sad.
I went to Nidu the Shaman’s. ‘Nadezhda has run off with Jilande and Nora. You’re our Headman. Aren’t you going to go after them?’
‘Chasing after something that has run away is like clutching at the moonlight,’ he said to me.
I looked down on this Headman who, because his own romantic ardour had been snuffed out, had no compassion for others.
‘If we pursue them, we can catch them and bring them back!’
‘You’ll never bring them back!’ said Nidu the Shaman.
Ivan didn’t search for Nadezhda. It was Hase, Luni, Kunde and I who did. We struck a big tree with a wooden club so the reindeer roaming nearby would realise that a task awaited them. Six or seven reindeer soon returned to camp. We chose four that were in good shape, mounted them and set out.
We knew that Nadezhda was fleeing towards the Argun, so the direction of our pursuit was certain.
Under the clear autumn night sky, a blue glow floated above the mountains, and a milky glow above the river. Since we were searching for her in great earnest, as we started out I yelled ‘Nora!’ and an owl perched on a tree took off in flight, spooked by my shouting. It flew right past us, its eyes tracing two luminescent lines like shooting stars. Those inauspicious rays of light pricked my heart like a needle.
‘When travelling at night you shouldn’t speak loudly, you’ll disturb the Mountain Spirit,’ Kunde said. ‘Besides, Nadezhda is trying to escape, and if they hear our calls it’ll just drive them further away.
‘They aren’t riding reindeer, so they’ll need at least two days to get to the Argun. And even when they arrive, they might not be able to find a ferry. They’ll have to wait on the bank.’
At the outset we were a group of four. But after we crossed one mountain, Hase said there was a shorter path to the Argun, and although it was a hard route to follow, with reindeer to forge the trail it shouldn’t be a problem. So we separated, Hase taking Luni while I went with Kunde. It was agreed that if Kunde and I couldn’t find Nadezhda and her children, we’d return to camp at dawn and Hase and Luni would press on to the Argun.
As soon as they left and we had put a mountain behind us, Kunde spoke up. ‘Nadezhda and her children have already walked for one day and they’ll be very hard to overtake. We’d better head back. Hase and Luni will keep searching for them anyhow.’
‘Maybe they haven’t gone so far,’ I said. ‘Nadezhda might regret leaving, and there’s no saying for sure that they aren’t hiding somewhere!’
‘Since we’ve come this far, we should search a bit longer.’ Kunde didn’t respond, but he wasn’t enthusiastic, and kept the reindeer moving at a very leisurely pace.
Looking for someone in the forest is a daunting task, like fishing for a needle. We were both drowsy as the night drew on. Kunde came to a halt, wanting to have a smoke to perk himself up, and I needed to relieve myself.
‘I’ll be right back,’ I said. Kunde knew what was on my mind and reminded me not to go far away. He and the reindeer would stay put.
I jumped off my mount. My legs felt sore and weak. At my back I heard Kunde grumbling. ‘The tobacco’s so moist, it’s sure to rain tomorrow. That Nadezhda is a load of trouble!’
In the silence of the night the slightest sound is amplified. I was worried Kunde could hear me peeing, so I walked deeper into the dense forest. It was a towering pine grove, and I could hear the light breeze brushing against the branches, mimicking the wind relieving itself.
I walked until I was certain Kunde was out of earshot, and then I crouched down. I hadn’t slept enough, and I lost my bearings with the act of crouching and rising. When I stood up again, I felt the earth spin, my eyes blur and I tumbled back on the ground.
But when I rose again my feet took the wrong direction. I walked for a moment in a daze, but when I didn’t see any sign of the reindeer, I realised I was in trouble. I glanced at the moon. It seemed to make sense to walk towards it, because as we rode here our campground was at our backs. To the west, that is.
But it turned out this too was a mistaken conclusion. At first I had gone a little off course, but now I was actually walking in the opposite direction to the path that brought us here.
I walked for a long time but still didn’t see Kunde, so I yelled his name. Later I learned that after Kunde had finished his smoke, he lay down on his reindeer and dozed off. Otherwise, when he realised I hadn’t returned after such a long time, he’d have gone looking for me. But then, if he had found me, I wouldn’t have encountered Lajide.
If it weren’t for the gusts of chilly wind that roused Kunde, he might have kept on sleeping. There were already rays of light in the sky when he awoke. He discovered I wasn’t there and knew I was in trouble. He fired his rifle and yelled out my name, but by that time I was further and further away from him and couldn’t hear a thing.
After I’d passed a dreadful night, I was greeted by a dawn without a sunrise. Thick lead-grey clouds covered the sky. Without the sun, I was even more clueless about which direction I should take. I began to look for a path, one of those snaking paths we and our reindeer tread. If you follow those paths, you’re bound to happen upon signs of human habitation.
With no food on me, I picked some mushrooms to ward off hunger. Having lost my way, the thing I most feared was confronting a wild animal. Except for the time Linke took Luni and me kandahang hunting, I had no experience dealing with them.
I hadn’t walked long when it began to rain, and I rushed to take shelter under a tawny boulder with green moss growing on it. The shapes formed clouds and trees, rivers and blossoms – like a painting.
The rain had no intention of stopping, and I felt that if I remained under the rock to avoid it, my situation would only worsen. I began to search for one of those pathways again. At last, in the middle of a thicket I found a small winding path. It was like seeing the sunrise, and I went mad with joy. But my joy was uncalled for, because the path vanished at the foot of a mountain.
Now I was desperate. I wanted to cry, but the tears didn’t come. I struck my leg with my fist, and facing the mountain forests, I cursed Nadezhda and Kunde, Tamara and Nidu the Shaman. They were the ones who had pushed me into this hopeless situation!
Curiously, when I finished cursing them the panic in my heart had largely subsided.
I stood up and decided to go looking for a river. If I could only find a river, I’d follow its banks and find a way out of my predicament. First I found a stream and took a drink, and then I followed the water forward, reckoning the stream would eventually feed into a river. Full of confidence, I walked the sky till it was pale, but I suddenly found that the stream terminated in a lake, not a river. Struck by raindrops, the surface bubbled like a pot of boiling water. I wanted to throw myself in.
Many years later, Valodya, who loved to read, pointed at a circular symbol in a book. ‘That’s a full stop,’ he said. ‘If someone in the book has finished a sentence, they draw this symbol.’
‘When I lost my way in the mountains I saw a symbol like that,’ I said. ‘It was written in the forest, the lake that I saw. But the full-stop lake didn’t draw an end to my life.’
I was afraid of encountering a wolf or a bear in the darkness, so I sat all night on the shore, imagining that if one appeared, I’d dive into the lake. I would’ve preferred to be swallowed by the lake than have a wild beast drink one drop of my blood.
The rain stopped and stars appeared, and I was soaked, cold and hungry.
It was on that night that I happened upon two deer that had come for a drink. One adult and one young, they appeared on the opposite side of the lake. The fawn was gambolling in front as its mother followed at a leisurely pace. The fawn drank playfully, lapping the water and then insinuating its head between its mother’s legs. In reaction, the doe turned and licked her fawn’s face.
At that instant a burst of warmth began to flow at the bottom of my heart. I longed for someone to lick my face so tenderly. My breathing quickened and my cheeks flushed, and the pale world before my eyes suddenly shone brightly. When the two deer left the lake, one behind the other, my heart brimmed with joy and happiness. I told myself: I haven’t yet experienced the sensation of being licked by someone who loves me. I can’t leave this world – I have to keep on living!
The sky lit up and the sun rose. I picked some button mushrooms and a few handfuls of red love-peas as a makeshift breakfast and climbed a ridge to survey the land below, but I was disappointed. A string of mountains stretched before me like a series of burial mounds, and this put me in a desolate state of mind. How badly I yearned to see the silhouette of a sparkling silver-white river!
Descending the ridge, my legs felt even feebler. With no path or river, which direction should I take? I looked to the sun for guidance. One moment I thought I should walk towards the rising sun, but then I thought I should walk where the sun would set. My brain buzzed like a bee snared in a spider’s web, circling frantically to no avail.
Suddenly, I heard ‘ka-CHA ka-CHA’ ahead. I thought I must be hallucinating so I stopped to listen carefully. Yes, it really was the sound of a tree suffering under the impact of an axe. Delirious with excitement, I raced towards the noise.
Sure enough, there was a clearing ahead. A few pine trees with trunks as wide as the mouth of a bowl were piled there. I charged towards the clearing, but all I saw was a black shadow uprooting a sapling. Its furry body made me scream in terror. This was no human being – it was a black bear!
Hearing my cry, the bear turned around, lifted its two front paws, stood erect and walked towards me just like a human. The way that black bear walked made me believe what my father had once told me: the ancestor of the bear was a human being, but because the bear had done wrong, the Spirits transformed it into a beast on all fours.
But at times it could still behave like a human, stand erect and walk. I watched it approach step by step, as if it were taking a stroll and enjoying the scenery, its head rocking smugly to and fro.
I suddenly recalled something Yveline had told me: a bear wouldn’t harm any woman who bared her chest. I cast off my upper garment. I felt I was a tree, and my naked breasts were a pair of pom-pom mushrooms sprouting on it thanks to the rain’s nourishment. If the bear truly wanted to devour these mushrooms, I had no choice but to sacrifice them.
So the first being in th
e world to set eyes on my breasts wasn’t Lajide, but a black bear.
The bear stopped for an instant, startled, as if recalling something. Then it quickly put its front paws down, took a few steps on all fours, turned around and continued uprooting trees.
I realised that the bear had abandoned me, or I should say, abandoned my breasts. I wanted to flee as quickly as possible, but I couldn’t take a single step. I just stood there in a daze, watching it uproot the saplings one by one. Only when it detached the third tree did strength return to my legs, and I left the clearing.
At first I proceeded very slowly, but then the sense of terror assaulted me again. I feared the bear would start following me, and I began to run. I remembered what Father had told me: when you’re dealing with a bear, above all don’t run against the wind, or else the wind will blow open the hairs on the bear’s eyelids and improve its vision. So I halted, gauged the wind’s direction, and then began to run with it.
When I could run no further, the sun was in the middle of the sky. I fell to my knees in a thicket, and then I realised my breasts were still exposed. I’d forgotten to grab the top I’d taken off. But even if I had it I wouldn’t have dared put it on again, for how could I be sure I wouldn’t encounter another bear?
Lajide later told me that bears have a habit of creating a clearing where they can amuse themselves. Personally, I think they have no other outlet for their great strength.
Remembering the bear, I decided to continue moving with the wind. At least I could avoid becoming food in a bear’s mouth. In that season the wind blew from the south-west, so I proceeded towards the north-east.
I walked until the sun set in the mountains when I, weary and famished, finally discovered a path. I followed it and suddenly found myself before a kolbo.
Virtually every urireng constructs a kolbo in the mountains, as few as two or three, or as many as four or five. To build one, you need to choose four pine trees of similar thickness at the right distance from one another, break off the branches, sever the tree crown, and use the four tree trunks as ‘pillars’ for the kolbo. Between the pillars, a base and a rectangular frame are constructed with pine poles. We cover the frame with birch-bark and leave an opening at the bottom for storing and removing goods.