The Last Quarter of the Moon

by Chi Zijian

  ‘I won’t be a star. I want to be a blade of grass so I can kiss the lotus blossom and smell its lovely fragrance.’

  An’tsaur chose names for the twins left behind by Yolien. He named one Beriku, and one Sakhar. ‘Beriku’ is a basket carried on the back, and ‘Sakhar’ means ‘sugar’ in our tongue. It seemed that An’tsaur was totally immersed in the fantasy in which Yolien became a lotus blossom, and he paid their real-life offspring no heed. So responsibility for raising his twins fell on my shoulders.

  In 1980, thirty-year-old Maikan became pregnant out of wedlock.

  Maikan’s tragedy was directly related to Vladimir. No matter who came to request Maikan’s hand in marriage, Vladimir always replied that she was still a child.

  More than once Nihau and I advised him: ‘Maikan is almost thirty. If she doesn’t get married, aren’t you wasting her precious time? She was an abandoned child and her life has been a sad one. She should be permitted a bit of happiness.’

  But Vladimir’s answer never varied: ‘She’s still just a child.’

  And if Maikan herself implored him and said she yearned to be like other young women who marry and have children, then Vladimir would have a big, noisy cry. This delicate and charming blossom named Maikan faded as the days passed by amidst Vladimir’s wailing.

  After Gao Pinglu’s repeated proposals were rejected, he stopped coming to document our folk songs, and had long since taken a wife and had children.

  When Vladimir heard that Gao Pinglu had married, he said to Maikan: ‘Don’t you see? Affection. Romance. Which one is real? They are all just clouds and smoke that float past your eye! And what about that Han teacher? Didn’t he go and get married too? Everyone will abandon you – except your Ama!’

  By that time Maikan had learned how she had been abandoned in the stable at an inn in Uchiriovo, and she cried.

  ‘Ama, if I marry one day,’ she said when her tears stopped, ‘then it will certainly be with an Evenki!’

  During the spring of her thirtieth year, Maikan suddenly disappeared. Vladimir normally watched over her very closely and never let her go out alone. She’d never even been to Jiliu Township. She was the loneliest flower blooming in the deepest of ravines.

  And yet in its thirtieth year this flower suddenly transformed into a butterfly and fluttered out of the valley. Vladimir just about went crazy with anxiety.

  Luni and Suchanglin each led a band of men to search for her. One group went towards Jiliu Township, the other towards Uchiriovo, while Vladimir waited back in the camp, crying until his eyes nearly dried up. He didn’t eat, drink or sleep for several days running. He simply sat next to the hearth, his eyes bloodshot, his face a sickly yellow, crying out Maikan’s name despondently.

  Nihau and I were very concerned that if Maikan didn’t return, Vladimir couldn’t go on living. But on the fifth day of her disappearance, before the search party that had taken the route to Uchiriovo returned, Maikan came back by herself. She looked very calm and was dressed in the same clothes as when she left, but there was something new in her hair, and that was a pastel-coloured handkerchief that tied her hair back.

  ‘Where have you been?’ asked Vladimir.

  ‘I lost my way.’

  Vladimir just about fainted out of anger. ‘You lost your way? How come there’s not a tear in your clothes but you’ve got a handkerchief in your hair? Where did you get it?’

  ‘I picked it up on the path when I lost my way,’ she replied.

  Vladimir realised she was telling him a tall tale, and he cried. In reality, he had no more tears to cry, so he just bawled.

  Maikan knelt down in front of him. ‘Ama, I won’t ever leave you again. I will remain with you in the mountains for ever.’

  Not long after her return, Maikan began to vomit. At first it didn’t occur to us she might be with child, but her pregnancy became evident in the summer. Vladimir, who had just calmed down, was beside himself with rage.

  He beat Maikan with a birch branch, cursed at her and interrogated her: what man did that thing to her?

  ‘He’s Evenki, and I was willing.’

  ‘You’re still just a child. How could you do such a shameless thing!’

  ‘Ama, I’m not a child,’ she said, her voice quivering. ‘I’m thirty years old.’

  During that period Vladimir seemed to be under an evil spell. Each day he went to beg Nihau to perform a Spirit Dance and rid Maikan of the child in her body.

  ‘I only save people. I don’t kill them.’

  Left with no choice, Vladimir ordered Maikan to do heavy manual tasks, praying it would cause a miscarriage. But the child was very sturdy and survived. When winter arrived, she gave birth to a boy and named him Shiban. At two, Shiban could already eat meat and khleb, and he looked exceptionally strong and healthy.

  Maikan weaned her son. Then she jumped off a cliff.

  Only then did we comprehend that Maikan had found a substitute for herself to accompany Vladimir. She had probably long since lost the will to live, but fearful that Vladimir would be lonely with no one to look after him, she had a child. Shiban was Maikan’s very last present to Vladimir.

  Maikan’s death just about made Vladimir go blind from crying. From then on his vision was fuzzy. He often wailed in pain when he was drunk, as if someone were trying to cut his heart out with a knife. Meanwhile, we looked after Shiban for him as he grew day by day.

  ***

  My granddaughter Irina attended school in Jiliu Township, but during winter and summer vacations Suchanglin brought her back. She was a clever and lively girl. She loved the reindeer, and during one summer she pleaded with Suchanglin to let her follow them into the mountains in the afternoon and return with them early next morning. So Suchanglin had little choice but to take his roe-deerskin sleeping bag and camp with her under the sky. Whenever Irina came back we rarely lost any reindeer, for she was like a Reindeer Guardian Spirit.

  Now twelve or so, Irina came back again for her summer vacation. At that time our urireng was hunting on the move along the banks of the Argun, and one afternoon I brought along my painting sticks made of red ochre clay, led her to a patch of weathered cliffs along the river, and taught her to paint.

  When the figure of a reindeer appeared on the bluish-white cliff face, Irina began to jump about. ‘So a rock can give birth to a reindeer!’ she exclaimed.

  Then I painted flowers and little birds, and she started jumping again. ‘The rock must be soil and sky. How else could flowers bloom and birds fly on it?’

  I handed her a painting stick. First she drew a reindeer and then a sun. I was surprised at how vivid her rock paintings were. The reindeer I painted was subdued, but hers was playful. Her reindeer leaned its head, lifted its front hoof and tried to kick the bell around its neck. Its horns were asymmetrical, with seven prongs on one side and just three on the other.

  ‘How come I’ve never seen a reindeer like the one you’ve painted?’ I asked her.

  ‘This is a Spirit Reindeer. Only a rock can grow a reindeer that looks like this.’

  From then on, Irina became fascinated with painting. When she went back to school in Jiliu Township, she became exceptionally keen on her painting class. And when she returned to the mountains, she brought a pile of her pencil sketches.

  Those sketches featured people as well as animals and scenery. The people she drew were all rather curious; if they weren’t tilting their heads and gnawing on bones, then they were dangling a cigarette butt as they tied their shoelaces. Her animal drawings were mainly of reindeer. Among her drawings of scenery, one type was mainly houses and streets in Jiliu Township, and another was bonfires, rivers and mountains. Even though they were all grey pencil drawings, I felt as if I could see the orange-red hue where the bonfire burned hottest, and the bright light radiating from the waters of the moonlit river.

  Each time Irina returned she confided that she missed the riverside cliffs. Painting on them was much more fascinating than on paper. So I’d p
ick a fine day for us to go rock painting.

  ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ she asked after each painting.

  ‘Let the wind be your judge, for the wind’s eyes are sharper than mine.’

  Irina smiled. ‘The wind says: “One day I shall blow the cliff apart, and your painting will become grains of sand in the river!”’

  ‘And how do you answer the wind?’ I asked.

  ‘Fine. They will turn into grains of sand in the river, and the sand will become gold!’

  But Irina’s return meant Maksym wouldn’t be happy. He was also over ten, but each time Luni took him to school in Jiliu Township, he would run back to our urireng. He said the sight of books made his head hurt. So when Irina returned, Maksym was very annoyed because Irina liked school. They furtively competed to win the support of the other children.

  Back then Sakhar, Beriku, Shiban and Soma were all still very young. When Irina was absent, Maksym exercised total hegemony – whatever he ordered, they did. Maksym liked to speak our people’s language, so he used only Evenki with other children. But Irina spoke Han quite fluently, so when she came back she taught them to speak it.

  This angered Maksym. ‘If you learn how to speak Han, your tongue will rot,’ he said to frighten them. But except for Shiban, they didn’t believe Maksym and continued to learn Han from Irina.

  Maksym developed other means to assert his dominance. He’d take a pile of woodblocks and whittle human figures, so naturally the kids were delighted and hung around with him.

  But Irina was not one to admit defeat easily. She’d grab a pencil and sketch a portrait of one of the children, and they’d be under her spell again.

  Irina’s portraits brought us a lot of joy, too. Take Soma, for instance. When she saw her likeness on white paper, she thought she was facing a looking glass. She pointed at the paper and said: ‘Mirror! Mirror!’

  Since the twins were identical, Irina drew just one portrait for Beriku and Sakhar. They fought over it endlessly, each claiming the person in the drawing was himself. Being a wee bit naughty, Irina would add a few strokes here and there to make it look like the boy was taking a pee. Then each of the twins would argue that wasn’t him.

  It was when Maksym was whittling wooden figures that we discovered Shiban’s penchant for eating bark. He stripped the bark off the woodblocks, put it in his mouth, and chewed it with gusto. He loved to munch on birch and poplar bark because they are both moist and sweet.

  From then on, Shiban chewed on bark every few days. He grasped the trunk of a birch or poplar, tilted his head and gnawed on the bark like a young mountain goat.

  Vladimir treated Shiban very coldly, as if he was the one who pushed Maikan off the cliff. But once Shiban took to munching on bark, Vladimir gradually grew fond of him. ‘That Shiban is really something. His food grows on trees, so famine won’t bother him!’

  Like Maikan’s, Shiban’s origins were a mystery. I once thought such riddles would never be solved, but the year that Irina passed the entrance exam for a Beijing art institute, Tatiana and I accompanied her to Jiliu Township to see her off, and Maikan’s origins were revealed.

  When Irina finished middle school, she went to Uchiriovo, now known as Qiqian in Heilongjiang Province, for high school. Then she passed the national university entrance exam, the first university student ever produced by our branch of the Evenki tribe of reindeer-herders. The fact that Irina gained entrance to a fine arts institute in Beijing attracted the attention of the world at large.

  A reporter in his early thirties named Liu Bowen came all the way from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, just to interview her. Afterwards, he mentioned he was also going to Qiqian to enquire on behalf of his father about a baby girl abandoned there over three decades ago. Liu Bowen didn’t bring up the subject intentionally, but Tatiana and I immediately thought of Maikan.

  ‘What year was the baby girl abandoned, and how old was she at the time?’

  ‘Back then my grandfather was a well-known landlord in Jalannér. His family owned many houses and lots of land, and employed many long-term hired hands. During the land reform when they held “struggle sessions” against landlords, Grandfather hanged himself.

  ‘Grandfather had two women and my father was the son of the first wife, but Grandfather also had a concubine of jade-like beauty. His concubine was pregnant when Grandfather ended his life. After she gave birth in nineteen fifty, she threw herself into a well. But before she committed suicide, she entrusted the infant to my grandmother, and instructed her to give the infant girl away. It could be rich or poor, but it must be a kind-hearted family that could ensure a quiet life for her.

  ‘My grandmother took out a gold bracelet she had hidden away, gave the baby to a horse trader and entreated him to find a good home for her. He had travelled widely and was worldly wise, and he reckoned that since Uchiriovo was a remote location the locals were plain, kind people. So with no regard to the distance involved, he took the infant to Uchiriovo and abandoned her in an inn’s stable.

  ‘When he passed by Jalannér later, the horse trader told my grandmother that he’d left the infant in Uchiriovo and heard that a kindly Evenki had taken her into the mountains. Before my grandmother died, she held her son’s hand and told him to go in search of his sister who was twenty years younger than him. After all, they shared the same father.’

  After I heard Liu Bowen’s story, I knew the person he sought was Maikan. ‘There’s no need to go to Qiqian because that girl jumped off a cliff years ago. But she left a son named Shiban. If you want to see someone, go see Shiban.’

  Tatiana and I recounted Maikan’s story to Liu Bowen and he cried. Then he followed us into the mountains.

  When I told Vladimir that Maikan was Liu Bowen’s aunt, Vladimir took Shiban tightly in his arms. ‘Shiban isn’t Maikan’s son. He was abandoned and I raised him.’

  I understood that for Vladimir Shiban and Maikan were the same. Shiban was his pair of eyes, and losing him would be like going blind.

  Liu Bowen stayed two days and took photographs of Shiban, and then Puffball escorted him out of the mountains. Luni had originally arranged for Suchanglin to do so, but Puffball volunteered. At that time Lyusya’s son September had his own son, July, and Lyusya often left the mountains to see the two, but Puffball rarely had such an opportunity to visit his grandson and great-grandson.

  Puffball might be an old man, but his legs were still limber and his marksmanship just as sharp.

  By that time there were more and more tree farms and logging stations in the mountains, and the pathways for moving the logs were increasingly interconnected. Wild game, however, grew more and more scarce.

  Each time he came back from a hunt empty-handed, Puffball cursed those logging stations. ‘They’re like tumours growing in the mountains that scare off the animals.’

  Puffball loved to drink on the road. He said that walking and drinking allowed you to appreciate both the scenery and the liquor. Puffball drank continuously as he escorted Liu Bowen down the mountain.

  ‘We left early in the morning and had walked fifteen kilometres by noon, when we reached an extension of Mangu Road that was just three or four kilometres from Jiliu Township,’ recalled Liu Bowen.

  ‘There were a lot of logging trucks on that road. When Puffball saw the unloaded trucks entering the mountains he had no reaction, but the sight of the long trucks loaded with logs rumbling by got him all riled up. He pointed at them and swore: “Sons of bitches!”

  ‘But as luck would have it that day a slew of trucks were leaving the mountains. As soon as one passed another followed right behind. When the fourth logging truck went by with its load of larch, Puffball finally lost control. He raised his hunting rifle, aimed at the tyres and sprayed them with bullets. His aim was spot on. Several tyres punctured immediately, and the tilting logging truck came to a halt.

  ‘Out jumped the driver and his assistant. The driver charged over and grabbed Puffball’s deerskin overcoat. “Drunkard! Are you lookin�
�� to die?” he cursed.

  ‘His assistant, a young fellow, delivered a punch to Puffball’s head. “You savage in animal clothes!” he shouted.

  ‘That punch left Puffball reeling. “You . . . savage . . .” he repeated forlornly. He staggered a few steps, dropped his rifle, and then he collapsed.’

  We knew that Puffball didn’t care for noisy places, and we intended to bury him in a secluded spot, but Lyusya didn’t agree. ‘Puffball died on the way to visit the younger generation, so he should be buried in Jiliu Township where September and July can regularly make offerings to his soul. Places that seem secluded now will probably be less so in a few years, so it would be better for him to return to the side of his relatives in Jiliu Township.’ So we buried him next to Ivan and Viktor.

  People of my generation had just about all departed for another world. As the nineties began, time seemed to fly. Beriku and Sakhar were adults now and frequently left the mountains. Sakhar loved to drink, and if he didn’t go and smash store windows, then he damaged desks and chairs in the school, or else he went and punctured tyres on government vehicles.

  September told me that as soon as Sakhar appeared in Jiliu Township, everybody at the police station would get nervous. They informed the owners of the bars that he frequented: ‘Sakhar’s come down from the mountains, so keep an eye out.’

  Beriku liked to go to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia and visit Irina. He loved dancing and dreamed that one day she’d help him join the theatre troupe and he could become a performer and travel with them.

  By that time Irina had graduated from the fine arts institute in Beijing and was working as a production artist for a publishing house in Hohhot. She married a worker in a cement factory, but got divorced one year later.

  After Irina divorced, so did Liu Bowen. ‘They live together,’ Beriku told me. ‘But they argue a lot.’

  ‘What do they argue about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But each time they finish quarrelling, Liu Bowen smashes things and Irina gets drunk.’