by Chi Zijian
‘If I let another man look at my chest, I wouldn’t be able to look Viktor in the eye,’ said Lyusya.
As for me, I didn’t believe that ice-cold, round metal thing could diagnose my illnesses. In my eyes, the wind and the flowing waters and the moonlight can hear what ails me.
Sickness is a secret flower hidden in one’s chest. All my life I’ve never been to a clinic to see a doctor. When I’m depressed, I stand in the wind for a while, and it blows away the gloomy clouds in my heart. When I am vexed, I go to the riverside to listen to the waters flow, and they soon bring serenity to my heart. I’ve lived to a ripe old age and that proves I didn’t choose the wrong doctors. My doctors are the cool wind, flowing waters, sun, moon and stars.
After the doctor listened to Yveline’s heart and lungs, she asked him hoarsely: ‘How long do I have?’
‘Your heartbeat sounds weak and you have murmurs in your lungs. When you were young did you like to eat raw meat?’
Yveline opened her mouth with difficulty, and bared her teeth. ‘The Spirits gave me good teeth. Wouldn’t it be a pity not to use them to chew raw flesh?’
The doctor said she might have tuberculosis and left her a packet of pills. Yveline took the pills, and leaning on her walking stick, she tottered over to Nihau’s. ‘In the future you won’t have to perform the Spirit Dance to exorcise illness any more. Look, here’s something to cure disease!’
Yveline revealed the packet of pills in her palm. ‘From now on, your children are safe!’ Her words brought tears to Nihau’s eyes.
But Yveline didn’t feel compassion for everyone, and she still treated Kunde unfeelingly.
When the season of fluttering, falling leaves arrived, the majority of roaming Evenki hunters in several clans drove their reindeer down to the Jiliu Township settlement. After Uchiriovo, this was our second historic, large-scale relocation to a permanent settlement. The government not only built houses for us there, it also built a school, health clinic, grain store, shops and a purchasing station for the goods we obtained through hunting.
From then on we didn’t have to go to the supply cooperative in Uchiriovo to trade.
I didn’t move to Jiliu Township and Vladimir didn’t either. He told me that taking Maikan down from the mountain would be like placing a spotted deer in amongst a pack of wolves. The prettier Maikan grew, the more anxious he became.
Lyusya was caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, Andaur’s death stiffened her husband Viktor’s resolve to relocate to the settlement. But on the other, her father Puffball was accustomed to the good old days and roaming in the mountains with the reindeer was the only thing that felt right for him. In the end, Lyusya chose Viktor. Viktor was drunk so frequently that he needed looking after.
Luni’s family didn’t go either, and Nihau predicted that those who went to Jiliu Township would eventually come back one by one. For the aged like Ivan, Yveline, Kunde and Hase, their health grew worse with each passing day, so moving to the settlement was inevitable. Still hopeful that Zefirina might become pregnant, Dashi placed his trust in the doctors at the clinic, so he felt compelled to relocate too.
My daughter Tatiana was nineteen that year, a young lady keen on pursuing a modern lifestyle. ‘The only way to know if a new way of living is good or not is to experience it,’ she said to us. Valodya also went to Jiliu Township on account of Tatiana and his clansmen, but I knew he’d return.
A few days before they left, we allocated the reindeer. By that time we had more than one hundred head. We split them into bucks, does and fawns, and we let those who were leaving take a few of each down the mountains. It’s not that we were mean – we just feared the reindeer couldn’t adapt to the new environment.
I had my grandson An’tsaur remain at my side because I knew that in a crowded place with a large population, a simple-minded child would be subjected to other children’s ridicule and pranks. I didn’t want him to be humiliated like that. In the mountains, his simplicity was in harmony with the surroundings where mountains and water are simple by nature. A mountain remains seated in the same place, and water always flows downstream.
During the days when Valodya and Tatiana weren’t around, An’tsaur was my lamp. He was very tranquil. He did whatever you told him to do without a fuss. From his earliest days he adored reindeer. If he heard cries of joy and laughter in the camp, he didn’t react in the slightest. But if he heard the sound of reindeer bells coming, he ran out excitedly from the shirangju to greet them. He put salt in his palm, knelt down and fed the reindeer like a devout believer kowtowing before the Spirit he venerates.
He liked to follow me as I did my chores. His tongue was slow but his hands nimble, and he mastered his chores very quickly. At six he could milk reindeer, and at eight or nine he could set a charka to catch squirrels. He was so content when doing his daily tasks – I’ve never seen a child like him.
Valodya and the others left in the autumn but when winter arrived I had an inkling he’d return soon. So when we moved camp, I chopped the tree markers myself. On some of the markers I attached a piece of birch bark and drew a sun and crescent moon on it. One end of the crescent hooked towards the sun, as if hailing it. I believed that if Valodya saw those pieces of birch bark, he’d understand how I longed for his return.
And so Valodya came back with the fourth snowfall. He had cut his long hair and was considerably leaner, but his complexion was ruddy and he looked much younger.
I asked him, ‘Why did you cut your long hair?’
‘My clansmen have basically all moved to Jiliu Township. There’s a Township Head there, so the position of Clan Chieftain should be abolished.’
I laughed. ‘Who abolished you?’
He lowered his head. ‘Time.’
He said many of his clansmen cried when he cut his hair. Each of them picked up a few strands to store them away, and said he would always be their Chieftain.
I feared he was hurt so I teased him. ‘Did any women pick up your hair?’
‘Of course.’
‘Now, that’s not right. I’ll have nightmares.’
‘Other women collect my hair, but the strands are dead,’ said Valodya. ‘The living things are growing all around you.’
His words were filled with such tenderness that we were especially intimate that night. When Valodya and I saw off that surge of tender wind-sounds, we discovered An’tsaur seated erect by the hearth, his head reflecting the red flames.
‘Why aren’t you sleeping?’
‘The sound of a big wind woke me up,’ he said. ‘Is Até a Wind Spirit?’
The day Valodya returned, Luni, Vladimir and Puffball came over to greet him but left soon after. They probably wanted us to enjoy the reunion by ourselves. But the next day they came quite early to ask Valodya what Jiliu Township was like, and enquire about those who settled there and how the reindeer were faring.
Valodya said there was a Party Secretary for the township, a Han surnamed Liu, a friendly fellow in his forties with a fat wife and two very skinny children. The Township Head was Qigede, a former Headman of another Evenki clan in the mountains where we lived. Of the other two Deputy Township Heads, one was Han and one was Evenki.
Valodya said the day after they arrived at the settlement, the township leaders held a meeting for everyone. ‘Now that you’ve come to live in the settlement,’ said Party Secretary Liu, ‘unity is the number-one priority. No one should cause conflicts or disagreements between clans. We’re all living in one big family now.’
When Party Secretary Liu finished, Viktor, who was stinking drunk, asked: ‘If we’re all one big family, can we swap wives?’
His question almost spoiled the meeting because everyone was so busy laughing that no one listened any more to the Party Secretary or the Township Head. Secretary Liu also said that everyone should keep an eye on their rifles and drink moderately. And even if drunk, they shouldn’t fight. They were to be ‘New-style Socialist Hunters’ behaving in a polite and civilised ma
nner.
Valodya said there were two families to a building in Jiliu, an improvement over the first settlement at Uchiriovo. Poplars, common in that region, were planted around each house. Cotton-padded quilts were provided for each bedroom, but everyone felt suffocated sleeping under them so they stuck with their animal skins.
During the first few days after their arrival no one could sleep. They slipped out of their houses and wandered like sleepwalking ghosts. And it wasn’t just the residents who did this; so did their hunting dogs. They were accustomed to guarding shirangju in the mountain forests, and those houses laid out in rows seemed unfamiliar, so the hounds lingered in the streets along with their masters. When strangers encountered strangers, they didn’t speak. But when unfamiliar hunting dogs encountered one another, they weren’t so restrained, barking and sometimes tearing into one another. So at the beginning of their time in the settlement, no creature knew peace in the middle of the night.
Valodya said Tatiana, Yveline and Kunde lived together, and Dashi’s family and Viktor’s family were in the same house. But Ivan was the beneficiary of special treatment by the government, so he had one house all to himself. Even the Party Secretary had heard tell of how Ivan fought the Japanese devils, and labelled him a ‘Founding Hero of New China’.
The men continued hunting in the mountains, sometimes returning the same day, sometimes after several days. Managing the reindeer was still the women’s main chore, but the reindeer didn’t like to return to Jiliu. They preferred to stay in quiet, more open places, so the women enclosed a large space two or three li from the township where the reindeer could rest, and each day they had to carry some dried food for themselves and go and count the reindeer. If any were missing, they’d go out searching for them as in the old days.
‘That cadre who came last time – didn’t he say that in Jiliu Township the reindeer could eat hay and tree branches?’ said Puffball. ‘From what I hear, it seems they’re living the same way as before.’
Valodya said when they had just arrived the reindeer were corralled on the shores of the lower Uldihitt River, west of the seat of the township government. The vet surnamed Zhang from the township’s Veterinary Station, who wore a long blue robe and a pair of spectacles, stayed with the reindeer each day.
‘Zhang wouldn’t let them out and just fed them fodder and manufactured bean pellets,’ recounted Valodya. ‘But the reindeer didn’t care for that stuff, and except for licking a bit of salt and drinking a little water, they preferred to go hungry.’
Watching the reindeer grow thinner right before their eyes, the hunters stopped cooperating. ‘They cursed that devilish vet, and some even wanted to give him a beating. When the township leaders realised the hunters were enraged, and the state of the reindeer wasn’t good, they agreed to everyone’s suggestions. So the reindeer won back their freedom.’
‘But when the moss in that area grows sparse the reindeer will go elsewhere to search for food. In less than two years, those houses will be vacant again,’ I said to Valodya. ‘Because those houses are dead. They can’t move like our shirangju, which are alive and can follow the reindeer.’
That winter the large-scale exploitation of the Greater Khingan Mountain Range began, and even more forestry workers were stationed in the mountains. Many logging sites were set up, and even more new roads were opened up to transport the timber.
The din of tree felling grew louder. The number of squirrels in the forest dropped and Valodya said this was because pine trees were being chopped down. Squirrels like to eat the nuts that mature on the pine, so each pine tree that was felled meant that much less food for the squirrels. People flee famine, and squirrels are no different. No doubt they raised their bushy tails high and escaped to the Left Bank of the Argun.
After two years, like migratory birds heading homeward, people from various clans who had resettled in Jiliu Township did return to the mountains, one group after another, on account of their reindeer. It seems that the old lifestyle was our eternal spring.
In our urireng, some members returned but others remained in Jiliu Township. Dashi and Zefirina were unwilling to come back because they still sought treatment in the hopes of having a child. Ivan’s rheumatism was so bad that he now moved only with difficulty. His heart yearned to return but his body wouldn’t permit it. And Lyusya had no choice but to stay behind on account of Viktor, and September who was already in primary school.
Those who did come back were the elderly Yveline, Kunde and Hase. They returned with reindeer that had not been well cared for and appeared as spiritless as these three.
Among the returnees only one was full of vigour, and that was my daughter Tatiana. With her ruddy face and a gentle light rippling from her eyes, she possessed a special beauty.
She brought gifts for each woman in the camp: for Nihau and me, blue headscarves, and for Berna and Maikan, a colourful handkerchief each. The night she returned she told Valodya and me that two men had requested her hand in marriage. Whose request should she accept?
One of her suitors was an elementary school teacher in Jiliu Township named Gao Pinglu, a Han who was six years older than Tatiana. The other was one of us Evenki named Suchanglin. He was the same age as Tatiana, and known in his clan as a superb marksman.
‘Gao Pinglu is tall, on the thin side, fair-skinned, pleasantly tempered and educated. He has a stable income and plays the flute,’ she said. ‘As for Suchanglin, he’s middling height, neither fat nor thin and muscular. He enjoys a good laugh and loves to eat meat raw.’ And like us, he herded reindeer and hunted for a living.
‘You should marry the one who eats raw meat,’ I said.
‘You should marry the one who plays the bamboo flute,’ said Valodya.
‘So whose words should I obey? Eni’s or Ama’s?’
‘Listen to your heart,’ said Valodya. ‘Wherever your heart beckons, that is where you should go.’
Tatiana came back in the spring looking as happy as a little bird just out of its cage. She said she wasn’t at all keen to return to Jiliu Township. Living in a shirangju was better after all.
Then in the summer she announced to Valodya and me: ‘Eni, Ama, I’m going to marry the one who likes raw meat.’ We rushed to prepare her dowry and just two weeks later Suchanglin married Tatiana and took her away.
The day that Tatiana left the camp Valodya emitted a long, weighty sigh. I understood that he was not just feeling sad because Tatiana was leaving us; he also felt regret about the fellow who played the flute.
Just after Tatiana left, several guests arrived in the camp: a guide, the Deputy Jiliu Township Head, the vet from the Veterinary Station, and Gao Pinglu, the primary school teacher who courted Tatiana and played the flute.
Each visitor had his own goal. Deputy Head Chen came to conduct a census and register each family. The veterinarian came to check the reindeer for disease, and he said he also wanted to collect semen specimens to breed better reindeer, which earned him guffaws.
When Deputy Head Chen introduced Gao Pinglu, he said Gao was a scholar taking advantage of his summer vacation to collect Evenki folk songs, so he hoped we would sing for him often. The first thing Gao asked about was Tatiana, and when we told him she had just married and moved away, he said that was fine but looked very disappointed.
As soon as Vladimir learned that Deputy Head Chen had come to conduct a census, he tried to frighten Maikan. ‘The people who want to take you away have come at last. You’re not allowed to take a step out of our shirangju. Otherwise, you’re dead!’ Maikan gave her word.
But the sound of singing and dancing in the camp that night was too tempting, and Maikan slipped out of her shirangju and found her way among the dancers around the bonfire. Already as lovely as a dew-drenched lily, the seventeen-year-old maiden drew the gaze of all the visitors with her nimble and graceful dancing.
Maikan’s sudden appearance was a bright crescent moon jumping out into the night, a rainbow rising over the mountains after the
rain, a young fawn standing by the lakeshore at dusk. Her beauty took your breath away.
Deputy Head Chen rubbed his eyes. ‘She wouldn’t be a fairy, would she?’ The vet gaped as if witnessing a dream. As for Gao Pinglu, at the start he was recording lyrics by the light of the fire, but when Maikan appeared, his head rose, pen stopped, and notebook fell into the fire and fused with the flames. Though he said nothing, his eyes helped him speak and tears flowed. Those tears made us believe he was no longer aching over Tatiana, because a cloud named Maikan had floated into Gao’s heart and begun to stir up wind and rain.
When Vladimir realised that Maikan had come out, he shook with anger. If she was a sparkling pearl now, then Vladimir was the pearl’s owner left grasping an empty jewellery box. Utter desolation and misery were written on his face. So while Maikan’s legs spun happily, Vladimir’s shoulders twitched painfully like a bird whose wings have been injured.
‘This young lady isn’t an Evenki, is she?’ Deputy Head Chen asked Valodya. ‘She’s so beautiful and dances so well. In the future I must introduce her to the Arts Troupe. What a pity it would be for her talent to be buried here in the mountains!’
‘She was abandoned and Vladimir raised her,’ Valodya confided. ‘She is his eyes; without her Vladimir would go blind.’
Deputy Head Chen straightened his neck, said ‘Oh’, and didn’t speak again.
That evening a succession of tearful noises emanated from Vladimir’s shirangju, first Vladimir’s, then Maikan’s. The next morning we discovered they were gone. Everyone understood that Vladimir considered those men wolves, and he had taken Maikan to seek a ‘safe haven’.
And our assumption was correct. On the third day after our visitors left, Vladimir brought Maikan back. From then on, Maikan rarely spoke, and she didn’t play with Berna any more either.
Each day at dusk, Maikan would begin singing softly. Her song was plaintive and melancholic. Valodya said Gao Pinglu had come to collect folk songs, and Maikan’s song was certainly for him. She sang the same song each day. We became familiar with that melody, but the lyrics remained vague. It was only when Berna took flight that autumn and Maikan sang that song again, then the lyrics floated to the surface of the water like tadpoles.