Love In No Man's Land

by Duo Ji Zhuo Ga

The snow mountain’s shadow fell across the plain and the sunbeams cast a golden road through the valley. As the lovers sat whispering to each other, the whole world seemed to stop turning.

  8

  For several days it seemed as if Cuoe Grassland had gone mad. In the mornings, a beautiful sun shone overhead and clouds drifted across the blue sky. In the afternoons, before the sun had passed the mountain peak, the wind howled and blew the sun back, black clouds piled one on top of the other, and the grassland was shrouded in a cloud of sand. The wind demons dragged a swirling vortex in a wild dance across the plateau. Women used thick scarves to cover their eyes and noses, but still their mouths felt as if they were full of sand. When the herders returned home, all you could see were two eyes moving, the rest of their face was smothered in dust. Everyone was cursing it – ‘The weather is crazy!’ they said – and the old people talked of a mad demon wandering the grassland trying to make it lose its true nature.

  There was not a drop of water in the air. It was if the heavens wanted to suck the moisture from every living thing, from the people and the land. The Tibetan antelopes suffered especially badly; when the sand blew into their large eyes, they became infected, and the antelope went blind and starved to death. More and more antelopes were staggering around aimlessly, bleating piteously. The wild asses hid in mountain crannies, nibbling at the yellowed grass stalks. When the yaks and sheep that had been out at pasture all day returned to the pen, their bellies were empty. The elders’ faces grew increasingly solemn. They feared that the windstorm would be followed by another disaster.

  That winter, when the first wolf howl came, the herders had just returned to their tents and were preparing to eat and sleep. The howl pierced the sky and startled everyone. Taking up their knives, meat and bowls and with their children in their arms, the men and women came out of their tents one after the other, scanning the skyline for signs of where the howl had come from.

  They were used to fighting the elements and they were used to fighting other animals. As their ancestors had lived, so would they. When the elders heard the wolf howl, they shook their heads, sighed and went back inside. The women stared in alarm at a spot on the mountain and turned to each other, their faces white. The children clutched at their parents’ robes and gazed in fear at the scary grassland.

  The experienced herders knew that the first wolf howl would be followed by three howls, then four, then a wave of them. When that wave of howls came, trouble would follow. Sure enough, in the middle of the night, there was more howling, and it was getting closer. Danzeng called the head of each family to the team headquarters for a meeting about how to defeat the wolves. A wolf attack would be catastrophic for the encampment, but there was also a quiet anticipation among the herders. Their blood was up and as the sandstorm raged around them, they prepared themselves excitedly.

  As he stared up at Mount Chanaluo, Gongzha remembered Zhaduo’s story about the chain on the top of the mountain that tethered the Wolf Spirit. When the chain stretched, the wolves descended to the plains to wreak havoc; when the chain became taut again, calm was restored. Had the chain stretched? Some of the herders said it had, which made people alarmed.

  The grassland was the herders’ barn, and the livestock was the grain they stored there. If anything happened to that stash of food, the following year would be hard. This was especially true for the newborn children: if their mothers had no milk, how could they survive the harsh winter?

  For the wolves, competing with humans for food was an enormous risk. As long as their usual prey, the smaller wild animals of the grassland, were not forced into their holes by snowstorms or sandstorms, the wolves had no need or inclination to bother the livestock. But sometimes it was a question of survival. Experience had taught them that in those circumstances they were better acting in packs; they would sacrifice some members of the pack so the rest of them could carry on. Humans were not the only ones who got desperate.

  Gongzha began to clean his old hunting gun. It had been passed down to him from his grandfather. Even though such guns were rarely used on the plateau now, he was reluctant to give it up. Looking at it was like looking at his father or seeing his elders galloping across the grassland amid the wind and clouds. He feared losing the traditions that his elders had passed down, so when he went hunting he took this old gun to remind himself that the grassland was not his alone, that all lives had to share the gifts of nature.

  He sat on the grass, adjusting the balance of the forked stand. This kind of gun had to be unique to Tibet; it was utterly unlike the guns they used in the army. The fork was made out of two antelope antlers and supported the barrel of the gun. When he was out in the wilderness, no matter what the terrain was like, he could balance the gun on the fork and his aim would be steady and accurate.

  Gongzha lay on the ground and slowly turned the muzzle of the gun. He set his sights on a distant Tibetan antelope. He was only taking aim; he didn’t plan to shoot it. Hunting such an easy target didn’t interest him. He preferred going after bears, yaks, snow leopards and even wolves – fierce animals that gave him a sense of accomplishment.

  He continued adjusting his gun. Beneath the blue sky and white clouds, he watched as Cuomu and Zhuo Mai came towards him, Zhuo Mai wearing his white doctor’s coat. The silver snow mountain was behind them and in the distance there were two black tents, one of them with smoke rising from it. With his sophisticated bearing and her beauty, Zhuo Mai and Cuomu looked like the perfect couple. It made Gongzha’s eyes hurt.

  ‘Gongzha!’ When Cuomu saw him, she sped over, her multiple tiny plaits flying out behind her.

  ‘You’re not wearing your hair net, Cuomu!’ Gongzha stood up. As he watched her running over to him with the sun behind her, he made himself smile.

  ‘Well, I don’t like it. This is much better!’ Cuomu smiled and spun round, her turquoise-studded plaits swirling around her. She giggled and posed in the sunlight. ‘Am I not beautiful, Gongzha?’

  ‘You are. Of course my woman is beautiful!’ Gongzha glanced at Zhuo Mai and deliberately emphasised ‘my woman’.

  Cuomu twirled happily into his arms and kissed his face.

  Gongzha noticed that Zhuo Mai had stood to one side and was looking at them with interest. He felt a bit embarrassed, scratched his head and asked Zhuo Mai with a smile, ‘I heard her uncle took you to birth some more lambs?’

  ‘He did – I’ve become Cuoe Grassland’s full-time doctor!’

  ‘Full-time vet!’ Cuomu looked at Zhuo Mai and laughed loudly.

  ‘No, that’s only part-time!’ Zhuo Mai gave a dry laugh.

  ‘The herders say you once saved a child’s life, Zhuo,’ Gongzha said, his arms around Cuomu’s waist. He was afraid of mispronouncing the doctor’s first name, so he used only his last name.

  ‘Yes. There was an avalanche and his parents and brother died. So I took him in and brought him up, and now I’m getting ready to send him to school in the interior.’

  ‘You are our grassland’s lucky charm. You’ve brought us health and happiness – we all like you.’ Cuomu spoke from the heart as she leant against Gongzha.

  ‘And I like the grassland! When I retire, I’ll get myself a tent and grow old here.’ As Zhuo Mai looked at Cuomu’s lovely face, the image of another long-haired young woman urging her horse forward flashed through his heart. The two of them really were very similar, especially when they showed their teeth and laughed, so pure and light. He wondered how she was. It was three years since he’d left Chamdo; she must surely have become a mother by now. Did she still miss the Han doctor who used to pick mushrooms and collect yak pats with her? The memories of the two of them walking hand in hand through the dusk on that narrow path would stay with him forever; they could never be erased.

  Gongzha watched Zhuo Mai’s face as he stared at Cuomu; at times his gaze was unfocused and at others appreciative. It made Gongzha uncomfortable. Had this Han man who spent all day hanging around the grassland taken a fancy to C
uomu? Did they spend a lot of time together when he wasn’t around? Had they developed feelings for each other? Had he visited Cuomu’s tent?

  ‘Do you want to stay on the grassland?’ Gongzha asked meaningfully.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Zhuo Mai smiled. He thought of Chamdo’s high mountains and deep valleys, and the fields halfway up the mountainside. She used to drive her flock of sheep towards him with an open, happy smile. Those had been his most blessed and contented days.

  ‘Do you want to marry a herder?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Zhuo Mai nodded. He’d wanted to marry her so much, to stay together, to live at the foot of the snow mountain and never leave her.

  ‘Good, good!’ Cuomu said loudly with a smile. ‘We have so many young women here on Cuoe Grassland, and since you arrived, they’ve all been coming to see you. Zhuo, you could have your pick of any of them.’

  Seeing Cuomu’s smile, Zhuo became downcast again. ‘Too alike,’ he muttered to himself. ‘They’re really too alike.’

  ‘What?’ Gongzha and Cuomu asked in unison. Neither of them had understood what he said. ‘What’s too alike?’

  Zhuo Mai did not have time to reply. From a distance they heard Cuomu’s mother Baila calling.

  ‘Cuomu, Dr Zhuo – the meat’s ready, come back!’ When she saw Gongzha, her expression changed and she snorted in disgust.

  Cuomu made a face at Gongzha and walked off with Zhuo Mai towards her family’s tent.

  Gongzha frowned again as he stared after them.

  The howl of a lone wolf pierced the air and the grassland lost its colour in the dusk light. Gongzha scowled and looked up at the mountains. They’d waited anxiously for several days, but the wolves had not come. There was only that occasional howl.

  *

  People were getting tired of waiting. But long experience made Gongzha fear that tonight would not be peaceful.

  He caressed his gun as if he was caressing his lover. His heart shivered with anticipation. During all his years in the army, he’d mostly gone hunting only when his seniors had asked him to accompany them. He’d fired the occasional shot but hadn’t enjoyed it. He was longing for the day when he could return to the grassland fulltime, take up his old forked gun, mount his horse with his beloved woman behind him, and, like his father before him, gallop across the mountains and plains, savouring the life of a Cuoe herder.

  A good hunter could not rely on experience alone; instinct was equally important. As his brothers were cutting up their meat that evening, Gongzha warned them that the wolves might come that night. He told them they should take it in turns to sleep, keep their boots on and get Ama to set the dog loose. Everyone nodded in agreement. Even though Gongzha was hardly ever at home, he was still the centre of their world, still the calm older brother who’d cared for them when they were younger.

  The sandstorm continued to rage.

  The exhausted herders watched anxiously from their tents, as if the grassland might not be there anymore once the night was over. The men were always the calmest. They comforted their women and children, restored peace to their tents, then made sure their guns and knives were within easy reach. They needed to reassure themselves they were ready, whether or not anything happened.

  The wolf howls began to come one after another, sparking terror in people’s hearts. But after midnight the howling suddenly stopped. The night-watch breathed a sigh of relief.

  Gongzha took his gun and went to the sheep pens with his three brothers. They found a hollow to shelter in about fifty metres from the enclosures. The wind continued to scream as madly as ever and the sand still swirled. The four brothers did not speak. They pulled their fox-fur hats low and concentrated on watching the far edges of the grassland.

  Gongzha’s nostrils flared imperceptibly, as if he wanted to smell the stench of the wolves. He flattened himself even closer to the ground and signalled for his brothers to go to the pens and alert the night-watchmen. They headed off, their backs bowed. Gongzha adjusted his position again, and under the faintly stirring brim of his fox-fur hat fixed his eyes on the darkness in front of him.

  The tension increased as everyone prepared for battle, but still the wolves did not appear.

  Gongzha was in no hurry. He knew they were coming. He could even picture what they were doing right then. They wouldn’t be running, for fear of alerting the night-watch. They would be drawing close stealthily, padding along carefully as if they feared snapping so much as a blade of glass. The howls of the previous ten nights or so had been a distraction, meant to lull the herders into thinking they wouldn’t actually attack. When he was younger, Gongzha and his father had fought many wolves together and he knew their habits as well as he knew his own. They were the smartest animals on the grassland and they knew how to keep their losses to a minimum.

  Slowly, a few black dots became visible through the sandstorm. They were a long way off, but he could still see them creeping forward. Someone less observant might have mistaken them for little mounds of earth, but Gongzha did not – the shape of this land had been in his bones since he was small.

  More and more dots materialised and grew into a dense pack.

  Gongzha still didn’t move. He watched silently.

  The pack gradually split into three groups and fanned out slowly towards the three sheep pens.

  Gongzha knew he couldn’t stay hidden any longer. He would have liked to, because the closer the wolves came, the more of them he could kill and the more chance he’d have to show off his hunting skills. But the three sheep pens contained the herders’ food for a whole year. The army had taught him that acting like a hero must not come at the expense of the collective good. So he lifted his gun, took aim at the front-most wolf in the centre group and gently pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot was heavy and short, and the wolf fell almost immediately.

  The other wolves came to a standstill and glanced around in fear. But the pack didn’t break formation. Gongzha couldn’t help respecting them for that, but he didn’t stop. Within moments, his gun had sounded again, and another wolf fell.

  The pack began to lose cohesion. A few wolves even pulled back their necks and loped off. Then a long howl went up from somewhere. The scattered wolves quickly rearranged themselves and continued their advance towards the enclosures.

  They weren’t cautious any longer. Now they bounded towards the pens, legs fully extended, truly wild as they raced freely across the plain that should have been theirs. Even the moonlit night was wolf-like. It was as if the entire landscape was there for the wolf pack. The manic wind continued to hurl sand and ruthlessly attack the plants. It shrieked as if it wanted to grab the earth by the throat and strangle it. In this hopeless night, the human inhabitants and everything they possessed seemed to be the weakest of the weak, suitable fodder for the wolves in their desperate attempt to regain control of the grassland. By the light of the desolate moon, the wolf pack seemed magnificent: they would fight to the death, undaunted and fearless.

  Gongzha couldn’t stay lying down any longer. He stood up, raised his gun and shouted heroically, ‘Come on then!’

  Bullets flew like drops of freezing rain trying to douse the consuming fires of the wolf pack. Gunshots resounded from all around. The raging wolf pack had fanned the flames of anger in the men. Bullets and hearts burnt fiercely in the screaming wind.

  From inside tents near and far, women and the elderly banged loudly on pans, bowls and anything else that would make a noise, yelling their declaration of war against the approaching wolf pack at the tops of their voices.

  The harrowing noise of battle echoed through the night. Gunshots, dogs barking, the clanging of metal, children’s cries, adults cursing, the bleating of sheep… It was both terrifying and defiant, pitched against the competing howls of the wolves and the blood-curdling shrieks of the wind. Man versus beast, the wind versus the plants – it was an elemental struggle for dominance, for the right to survive.

  The gunshots got closer together and the clas
hing of the pots grew sharper. The herdsmen’s defence had brought the attack to a temporary halt.

  The wolves lay on the ground together, their inscrutable eyes occasionally shifting from side to side.

  The wind blew on, and the sand continued to swirl.

  Nights like this were really not suitable for hunting. The sand made the hunters’ hands tremble and lose their accuracy. But could this even be called hunting? Hunting was one man against one beast; it was calm, unhurried. Here there was a pack of wolves, a pack of wild wolves, a pack of starving, wild wolves! The herders were defending themselves against an invasion.

  A short howl and the wolves began to move again. This time they avoided Gongzha, who was directly in front of them, and separated into groups. Their actions seemed unplanned, but they were advancing in coordinated units.

  Gongzha fired two shots and took down two wolves, then swiftly ran over to the largest sheep pen. But the wolves were surprisingly quick. Gongzha had only just climbed onto the wall of the pen when the sounds of bleating sheep and the alarmed shouts of herders began coming from the other two pens. No matter how powerful a gun was, it could take only one life with one shot. It seemed the wolves were ready to sacrifice the majority of their pack in order that a few of them could live. ‘Sacrificing the self, supporting the collective’ – this was not a phrase invented by the human race. In the face of danger, wolves were the most collectivist of animals. The wild wind and the freezing cold had driven them to a point from which there was no retreat. Set against the surging, desperate wolf pack, human strength seemed frail indeed.

  Wolf after wolf was killed, dog after dog was hurt, sheep after sheep had its neck snapped. The wind blew without let-up, and the gloomy moonlight was torn to shreds by wolf claws. Wound after wound was ripped open, life after life was lost. Sheep’s blood, wolves’ blood, dogs’ blood, human blood – the gritty air was thick with the stench of it. The strange, dry taste of sand mingled with salty blood made the herders vomit.