Love In No Man's Land

by Duo Ji Zhuo Ga

  LOVE IN NO MAN’S LAND

  Duo Ji Zhuo Ga

  Translated by Hallie Treadway

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

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  About Love in No Man’s Land

  The land is vast, its people few.

  Ringed by snow-bright peaks, the Changtang Plateau sits at the heart of Tibet. Its inhabitants, like seven-year-old Gongzha and his family, live as centuries of their ancestors have done – hunting and herding, sheltered only by their black yak-hair tents.

  But it is 1967 and the Cultural Revolution is devouring China. The new order has no time for the old ways – not even the roof of the world will be spared.

  As the Red Guard systematically loot and destroy Tibet’s monasteries, Gongzha helps hide two treasures belonging to his local temple: an ebony-black medicine Buddha and a gold-inscribed scroll of The Epic of King Gesar. The repercussions of his act will echo across the decades.

  With his way of life under siege, Gongzha will be taken far from home, to mountain crests and subterranean labyrinths. He will lose love, he will find it. He will confront man, beast and his own nature as he struggles to find his way in a changing world.

  Set amid the desolate beauty of Tibet’s heartlands, Love in No Man’s Land is an epic story of family, identity and endurance, of a way of life imperilled, of a people trying to find their place as the world changes around them.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Love in No Man’s Land

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  PART TWO

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Translator’s Note

  Glossary

  About Duo Ji Zhou Ga

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Cuomu looked radiant. Her multiple tiny plaits were studded with turquoise, she wore four red coral stones on her forehead, and her dark brows gleamed. She had exchanged her fur-lined robe for a light silk dress patterned with pale-blue flowers. He had given it to her last summer when he came back to visit his family, saying that all the women in Lhasa were wearing them.

  The dress was useless against the biting cold, quite unsuitable for a herder who spent her days driving yaks and sheep across the plain, but it was beautiful, hugging her figure beguilingly, and as smooth as milk to the touch. It could turn men’s hearts as soft as the white clouds above.

  Cuomu tingled with anticipation as she stroked the fabric at her waist. He said that when she wore this dress she was as lovely as the celestial maidens on the snow mountain’s peak. She wanted to look her prettiest for him. Standing in a moonbeam, dress billowing, silhouetted against the light as she waited for her man, she was a sight to behold.

  His leave only ever lasted a month. Thirty days. Thirty sunsets and moonrises – their happiest days. When those days came to an end, Cuomu would lock the dress in her clothes chest, keep her beauty under wraps for another year and begin the long wait for his next homecoming. There was no one else out there in the wilderness worth looking beautiful for, no one else for whom she would endure so many lonely nights.

  But this time he wouldn’t be going back, that’s what he’d said. He would stay home for good. She had put up with their long separations for so many years, and now she would marry him, no matter how much Ama objected. She had been set on marrying him ever since she was a girl, had only ever wanted him.

  As she thought about their future together, about how they would never be apart again after today, she was so overcome with happiness that she mixed the sheep and yaks’ milk together. The other herder women laughed and teased her, saying she was mad to miss a man so much when he was away.

  ‘You all have men waiting for you at home every day, so of course you don’t miss them. I only see my man once a year. How could I not miss him?’

  Cuomu straightened up from under the sheep’s belly and giggled, the light, clear sound rising to the heavens like a skylark. Like every woman in love, her whole being was filled with the pleasure of it; her face glowed and she wanted to announce her happiness to the world. What did it matter if they weren’t yet married? Her heart and body already belonged to him.

  He was coming back. He was finally coming back. From now on, her tent would have a man. This was the only thought in Cuomu’s head. On star-filled nights, she would no longer need to toss and turn with longing or worry that the men who came dog-driving would force their way into her tent to be with her.

  Dog-driving was another term for courting. Every tent had a dog, a mastiff. Whether chained up or free to roam, the dog guarded its territory faithfully, aggressively chasing off intruders. If a man wanted to slip into the tent of a woman he liked under the cover of night, he first had to drive off the family dog. Over time, these night-time liaisons came to be known as ‘dog-driving’.

  Every young woman with a first tent of her own had a dog to guard her door through the night, alert to the shadows flitting by and whether they belonged to men who were in or out of favour. The dogs loved it when their mistress’ suitors tried to appease them with a hunk of mutton or yak meat, and then, with their mistress’ tacit approval, the dog would turn a blind eye. They hated it when, as the nightly visits got more serious, their mistresses grew up, made a choice and eventually left them, entering a strange tent and raising a new dog, with no more use for their protection.

  Cuomu’s dog crouched next to her, the wind gently ruffling his fur in one direction. He gazed intently at the movement of his mistress’s hands, her long fingers sliding over the sheep’s teats as gracefully as if they were dancing across the strings of a zither. Out there on the grassland, dog and woman made a perfect picture.

  After she’d finished milking, Cuomu asked if she could go, then went home to get ready. She untethered the horse she’d prepared, cracked her whip and galloped off along the side of the lake. She was going to meet him. She always rode out to meet him; that was her custom.

  She stopped to check her reflection in the lake and adjust her plaits. She’d grown them for him for nine years; nine years’ worth of maidenly tresses that now reached her waist. Admiring herself in the water, Cuomu smiled broadly, laughed, spun around and let her long plaits swirl. The grass on the plain had turned brown, plot by plot, then green again, plot by plot, year after year. She’d grown taller and her hair had grown longer, but her heart had not moved on from its first love. She turned, got back on her horse and began to sing his favourite love song:

  ‘The stars in the sky

  Are like Brother’s eyes

  Watching Sister’s silhouette.

  The butter lamps ablaze all night

  Cannot see your eyes, Brother,

  As they fall inside the tent

  To light up Sister’s heart.’

  Cuomu’s high, clear voice was as expansive as the vast grassland. Every son and daughter of the g
rassland, brought up in the wind and the rain, could sing of the sun and the moon, of mountains and rivers, of life and love. Their voices soared skywards with the breeze and the clouds, pure and untarnished by even a speck of dust.

  As she thought back to his first time home on leave from soldiering, Cuomu’s heart churned. She had ridden out to meet him then too. Catching sight of him on the mountain road, it had been as if a pack of wild asses had thundered across her heart. They were running still.

  Seeing the distant figure of a woman on horseback, he had frozen momentarily, then cantered over. She had leapt off her horse and flown into his arms. When he kissed her lips, her face was wet with tears. It was as if her heart had suddenly woken from a trance; like a lake in summer, it could not be stilled. Her yearning for him filled the grassland right up to the sky.

  She still burnt when she thought of what had followed that first time. He’d lifted her onto his horse and the two of them hurtled across the grassland. As she repeatedly turned to embrace him, the wind howled in their ears, the snow mountain dropped away behind them, and the two young hearts boiled. Reaching a ravine, they had rolled together in the thick grass, he holding her tight, pressing her to him, his gaze intense and unwavering, his rough hands lightly caressing her face. She had stared at him tenderly, stroking his short, bristly hair. In three years he’d got taller, broader and more deeply tanned. He had left the grassland a youth and returned an eagle soaring into the blue.

  The snow mountain was behind him. Against its graceful peak, her beloved seemed even more handsome and rugged. Cuomu had laughed lightly. Rolling over again, she’d taken off her thick white leather chuba and, smiling, had lain down on top of it, her black hair fanned out around her, setting herself out like a sumptuous feast for the man she loved. He had immediately covered her body with his, their hearts beating as one.

  That afternoon at the foot of the snow mountain towering over the vast wilderness, they had composed the opening verses of their passionate love song. The song had lain in their hearts, a beautiful memory, there for replaying. And now at last, after days and months of waiting and watching, they could continue with their music, from today until the end of time.

  Lost in her reveries, Cuomu was distracted and failed to see the brown bear with a white circle on its forehead and two cubs by its side. As the bear reared up threateningly in front of her, Cuomu’s mind went blank. She had no time to react and no time to calm her frightened horse, which bucked, neighed loudly and threw her to the ground. The horse thundered off, leaving Cuomu defenceless in the grass.

  As she rolled, Cuomu drew her knife. Herders didn’t usually have to worry about bears on the grassland. Bears generally avoided people, so they rarely came face to face. But if they did encounter each other and the mother bear was with its young, then the battle was on: the bear would launch a ferocious attack to protect them.

  The distant memory of a bear cub felled by a gunshot flashed through Cuomu’s mind.

  Before Cuomu had time to struggle to her feet, the mother bear was already looming over her, roaring. Cuomu rolled to one side and reached back to stab its foreleg. With a snort of pain, the bear lunged at her dress. Dazed, Cuomu rolled again, ripping herself free of the silk dress with her knife. She scrambled up and ran for her life.

  Again, a gruesome memory filled her head, of a hole in a bear cub’s neck, its blood gurgling out as the clear young eyes slowly shut.

  The mother bear howled now, splayed its paws and bounded after her.

  How could a woman outrun an angry bear? Cuomu had not run ten metres when the bear caught her in its mouth. With a single snap of its jaws, Cuomu’s shoulder shattered with a terrifying crunch. Blood gushed out as if from a spring. Dizzy with agony and shock, Cuomu waved her knife weakly behind her, but struck nothing.

  The bear swiped its paw at Cuomu’s waist. There was a brittle ‘crack’, like the snapping in two of a blade of dried grass, and her broken body was tossed to the ground. Still Cuomu yelled and lashed out with her knife, driving it into the bear’s shoulder. With a furious roar, the bear retaliated, pawing at her chest and shredding the remnants of her thin dress with its sharp claws. Then it stepped onto her soft stomach.

  Beneath the blue sky and its white clouds, the bear’s roars echoed across the grassland, reverberating in Cuomu’s every vein and nerve-ending.

  ‘Gongzha!’ she cried to the heavens. The pitiful sound pierced the clouds, bounced across the wilderness and disappeared between the mountain ridges.

  A horse came pounding towards her from afar, dust and chaff swirling in its wake. The man astride it howled despairingly. ‘Cuomu!’ His cry rang out across the plain. Before he even reached her, his knife flew through the air and buried itself in the bear’s foreleg. The bear dropped Cuomu and sprang back. It knew it was no match for this man. It turned tail with a roar and lumbered away with its two cubs.

  Gongzha leapt off his horse, with no thought of chasing the bear. He gathered Cuomu in his arms. Her stomach had been ripped open by the bear’s paw; her intestines and blood spilt over him. She was dead.

  ‘Cuomu!’ Gongzha howled, pressing her rapidly cooling body to his chest. ‘I’ve come back – your man came back. Oh, Cuomu, have you not been counting the days till my return? I’m here now – wake up! Wake up! Wake up and look at me, Cuomu.’

  Gongzha cried and cried, his tears falling as heavily as snow in an avalanche.

  The weather on the grassland could change in an instant. What had started as a few blades of grass waving in the breeze became a wild storm within minutes, the wind wailing hellishly and hailstones battering the ground, rolling back and forth and giving off a terrifying white light. Sky and earth became one.

  Gongzha threw his head back, stared into the heavens and with a long cry shouted, ‘Cuomu!’ Then he picked up his woman’s body and walked deeper and deeper into the gloom. His route was marked in blood. ‘Kaguo, I will find you!’ he yelled. ‘You took my woman’s life, and I will take yours!’

  Part One

  1

  The Changtang Plateau lay between the Tanggula and Kailash mountain ranges, 4,500 metres above sea level on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. It was the gateway to northern Tibet. Snow peaks were as numerous as trees in a forest and the air was thin, its oxygen content half of that at sea level. Plants cowered close to the ground, their life cycle limited to one hundred days. Known as the Roof of the World, the plateau was hostile to humans. And yet, since ancient times, people had forged routes across it, connecting the highlands beyond the edge of the world to the rest of humanity. The Qinghai–Tibet Railway, the Qinghai–Tibet Highway and the Heichang Highway – these routes across the plateau must have seemed like grand ideas when they were first dreamt up, but actually constructing them proved an immense challenge.

  The high, borderless plains were so barren that every living thing had to fight for survival. The land was vast, the people few. People of the plateau were no longer the tough warmongers of old. On the grassland, there were no distinctions between high- and low-class people or rich and poor: the wind and rain battered one person as they did the next. Those who wanted to stay there, who wanted to continue their family line for generations to come, had to adapt and endure, becoming as much a part of the highland environment as a grain of sand or a blade of grass. Despite the forbidding conditions, human activity persisted. War rarely raged in this wild place and its people were neither materialistic nor ambitious. They simply herded yaks and sheep, migrating each season with their livestock, impoverished but free.

  Gongzha’s family lived on the Changtang Plateau near the shores of Cuoe Lake. A single black tent, which could be relocated with ease, was all that contained them and their hopes and dreams. Today, the adults from the encampment were hunting wild asses and Gongzha was joining them. When most children were still throwing tantrums in their mothers’ arms, Gongzha was already trekking through the mountains with his father, Lunzhu. He was the eldest child and Lunzhu had begun i
nstructing him in the essentials of grassland survival as soon as he could, teaching him how to use the shape of a mountain to navigate, how to identify animals by their tracks and droppings, and which part of which animal to aim for if he wanted to kill them with a single shot. Life on the grassland was tough and dangerous, and Lunzhu knew that he could easily have an accident, come to grief in one of the plateau’s savage storms, or be mauled by a wild animal. If he were to die, it would be down to Gongzha to look after his mother and siblings.

  During the winter, when food for their livestock became scarce, the Cuoe herders always moved their animals down to valley pastures. A couple of days ago, while some of the herders had been at the pasture, getting it ready for the winter, a herd of wild asses had turned up there. They reported this back to the rest of the encampment and it was decided that each family should send a hunter; meat supplies were, after all, running low.

  Meat was the staple food of the herders of northern Tibet. Tsampa, noodles and rice were fine for snacks or drinking food, but there was no way the men could subsist on that for three meals a day; they wouldn’t have the energy to ride and hunt in the wilderness. Life on the plateau required a lot of energy: what flowed in their veins was not just blood but bravery and a determination to survive.

  There were already people at the hunting ground when Lunzhu and Gongzha arrived on horseback, Gongzha sitting behind his father. Some of the young men immediately came over to ask Lunzhu’s advice. His skills as a hunter were legendary: he’d been on countless hunts, was highly knowledgeable and made good decisions; above all, he had a natural affinity with animals. He always made wise use of his vast experience, and his name, which meant ‘Heaven-Made’ in Tibetan, reflected that.

  ‘What do you reckon, Lunzhu, which ones should we kill today?’ a young man in a lambskin hat asked quietly, rubbing Gongzha’s forehead affectionately as he did so.