Love In No Man's Land

by Duo Ji Zhuo Ga

  The wolves were extremely well organised. There were wolves that concentrated on attacking: as long as they could stop a dog or a human, they cared nothing for their own safety. There were wolves that concentrated on biting sheep, killing them in a single snap of their jaws. And there wolves that were responsible for moving the sheep, dragged them off one by one, forcibly pushing them out of the pen. The sheep bleated pitifully and jostled each other as they tried to crowd together, making it easier for the wolves to pick them off.

  The sandstorm strengthened. The fires the herders had lit to help drive off the wolves smoked and didn’t catch and didn’t appear at all threatening to the wolves. Shida took a bowl of burning yak pats and threw the smouldering droppings into the fray. Gongzha turned his gun on the wolves streaming into the pen. But one man and one gun were no match for an entire pack.

  A gunshot sounded from another side of the pen. The shooter was good – killing one wolf with one shot – a worthy partner for Gongzha. As the two began to coordinate their fire, they temporarily stopped the wolves’ attack on the large pen. But the other pens were in a bad way: the sheep’s pained bleating was continuous.

  In situations like this, failure to act only made things more dangerous. The herders without guns used their fists or their knives to open a close-range battle with the wolves. They paid no heed to their wounds and had no idea if the blood on their bodies was the wolves’ or their own. Cuomu was with the rest of the women, beating pans as big as her face, shouting encouragement to the men. With each second that passed, things got more desperate.

  Occasionally, one or two short sharp howls rose from the ranks of the advancing pack, upon which the wolves either quickly re-formed, increased the ferocity of their attack or replaced the wounded or tired animals with fresh fighters. Gongzha climbed onto the wall of the pen to look for that lead wolf. He knew the others would scatter once it was dead.

  The other sheep pens were in a state of emergency, so the centre pen started to send people to help them. Cuomu ran behind her younger uncle towards the lower pen. When the wolves realised the humans’ plan, the short sharp howl sounded again and some of the wolves raced over to attack.

  Because he’d been using one eye and keeping the other shut for a long time, the left side of Gongzha’s face was tired. After beating another wave of wolves into retreat, he lifted his head to give his face a rest. As he did so, he noticed a white circle among the wolves. Kaguo? He opened his eyes wide and in the yellowish moonlight could just about discern that four straight lines radiated out from the white circle, creating the familiar ¤. He watched Kaguo dart into the wolf pack, snatch a sheep from a wolf’s jaws and run away, her grey figure disappearing in a matter of moments.

  There was another short, urgent howl and the wolves surged forward. Thinking no more about the marking on Kaguo’s forehead, Gongzha looked around and discovered that the sound was coming from an insignificant-looking wolf that had been keeping its head low. This was an experienced wolf: it had hidden itself deep in the pack, neither too near the front nor too near the back; it kept its head down and its hind legs set back, but its ears were raised. In this position it could attack or retreat with ease and without attracting attention.

  Gongzha moved the muzzle of his gun. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, the wolf raised its head and flashed him a cold glance. Perhaps because it sensed its own death, it had a look of despair on its face. As Gongzha stared at it, his heart softened a little. How many years of bloody battle had it endured? His sudden burst of sympathy made him unwilling to shoot. But he had no choice; in this, he was no different from the hungry wolves. The gun sounded and the chilly light in those two eyes went dark. Two teardrops the size of beans welled in Gongzha’s own eyes.

  Just at that moment, Cuomu’s screams rent the air. Gongzha raised his head and saw that she had a wolf to either side of her and they were closing in. Other wolves had surrounded them and were eagerly joining the fray.

  Gongzha was so frightened he felt his heart would burst. He shouted to Cuomu and aimed his gun at the wolf in the back. At the same time, a gunshot from elsewhere took down the wolf in the front.

  ‘Cuomu, don’t worry! Gongzha, cover us!’ Zhuo Mai’s loud shout came from the other side.

  Zhuo Mai jumped down from where he’d been standing and used the butt of his gun to open a bloody path. Gongzha used his bullets to stave off another wolf and covered Zhuo Mai as he ran over and dragged Cuomu away.

  Without the directions from the lead wolf, the rest of the pack dispersed to east and west. They didn’t re-form or organise another attack as they had earlier and before long they’d scattered like chaff. The herders followed behind, chasing them and yelling, driving them far away.

  Finally it was quiet.

  Gongzha was at last able to jump down off the wall. He wanted to wrap Cuomu in his arms but discovered she’d long since been hauled away by her mother. Zhuo Mai was leaning on an old gun, staring into the distance; who knew what he was thinking.

  The corpses of wolves and sheep lay all around in the gloomy moonlight. Sheep that had not yet died continued to bleat. All that for a full belly. To survive on the grassland, sometimes it was necessary to pay a price ten times higher than elsewhere. When hungry people pointed their guns at other animals, they were no different to wolves.

  The following day, as they cleaned up the battleground, they counted the cost. The large pen had lost twenty sheep and the two small pens had suffered even worse: one lost eighty-two sheep and the other seventy-six. There were more than thirty dead wolves. The herders sighed, skinned the wolves and gave the meat to the dogs. They did not eat it themselves, both because the taste of wolf-meat was too strong, and because after years of warring with the wolves and seeing them go to battle for their stomachs, they had some sympathy for them in their bones.

  The sun rose and extended its golden rays across the grassland, the yaks and sheep bounded out of their pens and scattered, the herders cracked their whips and sang, and the horses began to prance once more. It was as if the previous night’s tragedy hadn’t even happened.

  *

  After the wolves had gone, life on the grassland settled down once more. The loss of the sheep made things a little harder in the early spring. The men started looking towards the other grassland animals: wild asses, antelopes and even bears. Now, no matter the usual rules, if they encountered one and could take it down, they would bring it back.

  Still, difficult times had no impact on weddings and funerals, and Ciwang’s family began preparing to marry off their daughter, Yangji. It was rare to see a smile on Yangji’s face and that afternoon there were the sounds of a fight coming from her family tent. People bent their heads and turned their ears to the rumours: it was said that Yangji had cut her hair and was going to be a nun.

  A crowd gathered in front of their tent. Ciwang was standing outside yelling at his daughter, Ciwang’s woman sat inside weeping, and Yangji sat on the bed, her hair haphazardly chopped. The crowd whispered among themselves: some of them were there out of nosiness, others loved a scene. Ciwang, once one of the most feared people on the grassland, had lost his power in the blink of an eye, and the herders’ respect for him had gone with it. To them, a powerless Ciwang who could neither hunt nor herd was less lovable than even a government official.

  Hearing the herders’ chatter and especially seeing Dawa’s disdainful face in the crowd made Ciwang even angrier. That woman, who’d given herself to him in exchange for her man’s life, that woman, whom he’d possessed – she too had come to see the joke. He shot her a hateful glance. Unexpectedly, she met it with a smile. It was intolerable: the smile, the way her mouth lifted at the corners, the contemptuous expression that was like a dull blade scraping at his heart. Ciwang snatched up the tongs used to gather yak pats, charged into the tent and thwacked his daughter around the head.

  Blood streamed from the top of Yangji’s forehead and Ciwang’s woman darted over to her, wailing. The
crowd outside began to stir. Two men pushed through, went into the tent and dragged Ciwang outside. Dawa looked at him, standing there with his head hanging, gave a cold laugh and strode off.

  This whole thing had come about because Yangji was pregnant, and the child was Shida’s.

  Becoming pregnant before marriage was nothing to lose face over on the plateau. Visiting tents was the most popular form of nocturnal entertainment. Of course, such entertainment had a consequence, which was that the woman could fall pregnant. Since everyone saw these nocturnal activities as a kind of game, they also had to respect its rules; if there were consequences, everyone had to bear them. The woman who had the child would bring it up herself, and the man would give some yaks and sheep in compensation. These were the rules. Their ancestors had done it this way and the current generation followed suit.

  Ciwang asked Shida’s parents to come and discuss the question of compensation for the baby in Yangji’s womb. He also asked the clan elder and Team Leader Danzeng to attend. The family agreed to give two yaks and twenty sheep. And so, in less than fifteen minutes, the fate of Yangji’s baby had been decided, and it hadn’t even been born yet. Was that strange? On the grassland, it wasn’t the least bit strange.

  The grasslanders had their own moral code. The most important thing was that life was to be respected. No matter whose line a life came from, it was a grasslander, a member of the next generation of herders, and of course it should have sheep and yaks like its peers. It didn’t matter whether the child knew its father or not; it was enough to have a mother. A mother’s back was the child’s cradle. Look at the animals on the grassland: which of them had been raised by their fathers?

  Yangji’s marriage was postponed; they had to at least wait until after the child was born. If she wanted to, Yangji could take the child with her to the marriage; her man would not abandon it. Or she could leave the child with her parents to raise. As long as the souls of the grassland had meat to eat and water to drink, they would grow as soon as they felt the wind; in just a few years, they would be running all over the place tending the yaks.

  However, Yangji did not want to get married, which had made her father angry and sparked this round of conflict between them.

  As Yangji’s stomach grew, so Shida became increasingly troubled. He was conflicted. His heart longed for Cuomu, but his body was irresistibly drawn to Yangji. Even though he’d half expected to find himself in this situation one day, when it came to it, he still didn’t know what to do. When the game became reality, when a bit of fun turned into love, it was difficult for either party to extract themselves. Now, whenever he caught sight of Yangji, he either went out of his way to avoid her or quietly ran off. He hated seeing the resentful look on her face. That look could break a person’s heart.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Yangji had cornered him round the side of a tent, blocking his escape route. ‘What don’t you want me?’ she asked in a faint voice.

  ‘It’s not… It’s… You’re already betrothed!’ Shida looked at the tips of his boots. His voice was so low, it fell straight to the ground.

  ‘If you want to, I can ask Aba to break the betrothal any time.’

  ‘No, no, no. Yangji, don’t… Ah… If you break the betrothal, your parents will be incredibly angry.’

  ‘So you’re afraid of my parents being angry? Shida, I still don’t know what you’re thinking. You want to make Cuomu your woman, but she is the snow lotus of the snow-mountain peak; how can Shambhala’s celestial maiden go to your tent?’ Yangji glared at him and her tone was sharp. She had loved this man as soon as she understood the meaning of the word, and she had spent forever waiting for him to speak up, waiting for him to send someone to discuss a betrothal, waiting, waiting, right up until now, when the child in her belly was getting bigger by the day. And he still tried to escape at every opportunity. Might he actually be one of the grassland’s stones? Could she really not warm his heart with her body?

  Her words cut to the most tender part of Shida’s heart. His face changed. Raising his head to look at Yangji, he said, ‘My family has already given your family yaks and sheep. What else do you want? Who I want to marry is my own affair – what does it have to do with you?’ When he was finished, he swung his arms and left.

  Yangji was so angry, tears sprang from her eyes. She took out her slingshot, bent down to pick up some stones, and shot them right into Shida’s back.

  Feeling the stone strike his back, Shida turned and stormed over, breathing heavily. ‘What are you doing, Yangji? Don’t assume I wouldn’t dare hit you just because you’re pregnant!’

  ‘Go on, hit me. I don’t want to live anyway.’ Yangji cocked her head and stared at him, a resolute expression on her face.

  ‘You…’ Shida stared back at her tear-streaked face, but after a while he turned and hurried away.

  Watching him disappear around the side of the tent, Yangji went limp and sank down on the sandy ground. Her tears fell uncontrollably. From time to time she wiped her eyes with her hand and after a while her face was smudged as if she were a character in an opera. She was heartbroken. No matter what she did, he was unmovable. Could they really not be together? Was she really not good enough? Up until she became pregnant, he’d always acted the same as when he came visiting. His behaviour then and his behaviour now were as different as water and sand.

  Even sheep developed an affection for their masters after their masters had taken care of them for a long time. She had used her body to care for him for many years, so why was he not even the slightest bit moved? The more she thought about it, the more it hurt; in the end she opened her mouth and wailed.

  Shida hadn’t got far, he was only at the back of the tent, and Yangji’s cries rang in his ears. Listening to her sobs, he crouched down and held his head, wishing he could find a tent to hide in. He thought about Yangji’s affection for him through the years, how it had slowly gathered force, as pure as the white clouds in the sky and as beautiful as the wildflowers on the grassland. Had he only seen her as someone to visit? Then why did he feel so upset when he heard her cry? Should he marry her? She was carrying a child, his first child; if he married her, the child would call him Aba.

  So Shida stood up with a cry and strode back. He would tell Yangji that he wanted to marry her, that he wanted her to be his woman, that he wanted the child to call him Aba. But Yangji was gone.

  The next day, when Yangji’s mother woke up and discovered her daughter’s bed was empty, she thought Yangji must have gone to draw water, so she lit the stove and poured the rest of the water into a pot. When the water had boiled but Yangji still hadn’t come back, she began to suspect that something wasn’t right. She went outside and searched around but couldn’t find her. She hurried back to the tent, turned out the clothes chest, and discovered that all of Yangji’s clothes were gone. She shook her man awake and told him that Yangji had disappeared. Ciwang looked at her strangely, thinking she was joking.

  ‘She’s really nowhere to be found and her clothes are all gone. You should get up and see if the horse is still here,’ his woman urged, her tears falling.

  Ciwang turned over and climbed out of bed. Draping his chuba around himself, he went out to take a look, then came back and sat on the bed. ‘The horse is gone.’

  When his woman heard this, she went limp and had to sit down on the pile of dried yak pats.

  So Yangji vanished from the grassland. Her family kept searching but found no news of her. A pregnant woman wandering through the night across a plateau hungry with wolves and leopards – where could she have gone? On the fifth day, some people in No Man’s Land found Yangji’s headscarf; it was covered in blood. That night, Ciwang’s woman cried until dawn. That night, Shida rode his horse back and forth across the grassland in a frenzy.

  9

  The weather slowly warmed up. Having suffered through the harsh winter, people and livestock alike began to stretch their limbs and show sparks of life. It was spring, time to cut awa
y the sheep’s thick woolly winter coats and free them from their burden. They emerged freshly lightened from the fold and fattened up quickly on the nourishing new grass.

  It was a mild day and the men and women of the encampment would have been getting on with their chores had it not been for Dawa’s pitiful screams coming from the sheep pen. Her head and face were covered in blood and she looked as if she was about to keel over. Baila stood frozen by her side and the sheep that had caused all the trouble had run off and disappeared.

  Baila had been holding a ram as she stood alongside Dawa, who was stooped over, tending to one of the sheep. As Dawa had raised her head, Baila’s leg had suddenly given way for some reason and the ram had sprung away from her. It caught Dawa with the sharp point of its horn, stabbing her forehead and making her yell out in pain as blood poured from her wound.

  Ciwang happened to be standing by the two of them at the time and quickly went to Dawa’s aid, keeping her upright. He shouted at Baila, who was too shocked to move, ‘Baila, you’re really too much. Your man visits her tent, that’s all – do you have to try and kill her?’

  ‘No… It wasn’t…’ Baila looked at Dawa’s bloodied face and was too frightened to talk sense. ‘I didn’t… The ram itself…’

  ‘I saw you throw down the ram with my own eyes and yet you won’t admit it,’ Ciwang said. He picked up Dawa and pushed his way through the crowd. They ran into Danzeng at the gate and Ciwang fixed him with a fierce stare. ‘Your woman is really too horrible, treating a woman with no head of the household like this. How can you let this carry on?’

  Seeing Dawa covered in blood, Danzeng was dumbfounded. When his woman ran over, crying, he raised his hand and slapped her. Baila cried even louder and scurried off to her tent.

  Cuomu didn’t know what had happened, but she quietly tugged Shida’s arm and urged him to get someone to go to the army base and ask Dr Zhuo to come as soon as possible. Then she hurried after her mother.