Love In No Man's Land

by Duo Ji Zhuo Ga

  ‘Zhuo, it’s obvious you have no idea how moody a snow mountain can be,’ Cuomu said, standing up and shaking the snow off her robe. ‘This is avalanche season, and if we do get caught in one, we won’t have a hope – it’ll be enough to bury ten people, not just the two of us. And even though this mountain looks silvery-white and empty, do you know how many wolves, how many bears are behind that ice watching us? Did you not see all those bears this morning?’

  ‘Then why did you come with me?’

  ‘My life without Gongzha is no life – I may as well be dead. Besides, you’re my best friend and our grassland’s most honoured guest. How could I watch you risk so much and not care?’ A bitter smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. She rarely smiled properly these days, this once open and high-spirited grassland girl.

  The weather on the mountain followed no discernible pattern. It could be bright and sunny and as warm as spring and then in the blink of an eye crow-black clouds could mass into a pile, causing snowflakes to fall. Cuomu put on her leather chuba and buckled her belt. ‘Let’s go. We’ve come this far, we should go up to the top and have a look.’

  The snow was knee-deep. They trod cautiously, one slow, careful step at a time, never knowing how deep they were going to sink. Eventually they reached the ledge.

  The ledge was as large as a football field and neatly angled; it looked as if someone had built it that way. The snow up there was deep but no longer up to their knees.

  ‘Where’s the chain?’ Zhuo Mai pushed at the snow with his feet and used the fork of his gun to try and clear it away, throwing it up in clouds as he searched.

  ‘There’s no hurry. Let’s look slowly,’ Cuomu said, using her boots to kick up the snow. ‘I’ve heard the chain is on a large boulder – they say it’s as if it’s actually coming out of the boulder.’

  ‘It looks like there’s a boulder over there.’ Zhuo Mai pointed at the side facing the lake and dragged the gun over; the fork of the gun traced two wriggly lines through the snow.

  Cuomu walked over with him.

  There really was a large black boulder, standing about a metre proud of the ledge. Zhuo Mai climbed up, and suddenly his eyes widened. ‘Come here, Cuomu! Quick!’

  Cuomu clambered up.

  A jet-black chain lay motionless in the snow.

  Zhuo Mai brushed most of the snow off the boulder and stood beside the chain; when he saw that four lines of stones radiated from the round boulder in four directions, he was dumbstruck.

  ‘Look at this boulder, Cuomu, and think about that symbol the bears stamped out this morning. This is the same, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re right, it’s very similar. No, it’s exactly the same! How odd.’

  ‘This chain really does look like it grew out of the boulder.’ Zhuo Mai squatted on the ground and used his knife to pick at it. ‘Strange. What’s it made of? It’s not iron and it’s not copper, but it’s still so heavy.’

  ‘It’s not iron?’ Cuomu crouched down and pulled at the chain with both hands, but it didn’t budge.

  ‘It’s not iron. Iron wouldn’t be this heavy. Also, it hasn’t rusted at all, and it’s quite shiny, and the snow hasn’t settled on it. It’s all very odd.’

  ‘My uncle said that this is what King Gesar used to tether the Wolf Spirit. He was afraid the wolves would bring disaster to the grassland, so he brought the wolves’ ancestor here to control them.’

  ‘That’s just a myth, Cuomu.’ Zhuo Mai looked at the black chain. It seemed to be naturally connected to the boulder. The links were so tightly forged that even a blade of grass wouldn’t fit between them. He racked his brains but couldn’t work out what such an obviously manmade thing was doing on the summit of this snow mountain. When was it installed and who put it there? What purpose could a chain in a boulder on the top of a snow mountain possibly serve?

  ‘People say that it’s been here ever since our clan came to Cuoe Grassland. But no one knows how it got here,’ Cuomu said and stood up. From the look of the sky, the clouds weren’t going to disperse and the snow was actually getting heavier. ‘Don’t worry about it. Let’s go back down sooner rather than later; if the snow gets any thicker, we might not be able to get back.’

  ‘Alright,’ Zhuo Mai said. ‘Let’s go down this way, it’s not as steep.’

  The two slid down from the side of the boulder. They hadn’t gone more than five steps when they heard a series of cracking noises coming from the peak.

  ‘Avalanche! Stand still and hold on to me,’ Zhuo Mai said, instinctively grabbing Cuomu. He’d been through an avalanche in Ngari and he knew to spread his arms and feet wide and to bend his back a bit to create as much space as possible. As long as there was air to breathe, the two of them should be able to climb out of the snow.

  There was a roar from the peak and the snow thundered down like a mountain crashing into the sea.

  The whole earth-shattering process was over in less than two minutes.

  Zhuo Mai wriggled his right shoulder and packed the snow around it, creating a hole to work in. Then he scooped and packed the snow along his arm, and dug through to Cuomu.

  ‘Don’t worry, we can definitely get out,’ he said, and pulled out his bag of dried yak meat. He felt for his meat knife, cut off two pieces and put one in Cuomu’s hand. ‘Eat something. We’ll dig our way back up along the boulder.’

  They didn’t say anything else, and their snowy chamber echoed with the sound of them nibbling and breathing. Eating was a good tranquilliser – it restored their strength and quieted their hearts. When they’d finished, their bodies felt stronger and their minds clearer.

  Zhuo Mai began using his knife to dig towards where he thought the boulder had been. The avalanche snow was soft, which made digging through it fairly easy work. If he could locate the boulder, there was hope for them, because the boulder was only a metre high.

  ‘I’ve got a lighter, Zhuo. What if—’

  ‘No, no, no, Cuomu. The flame will use up the oxygen and if there’s no oxygen, we’ll die faster. We’ll just dig like this, going in one direction.’ But Cuomu’s mention of the lighter reminded him that he’d brought the little torch he used for surgical procedures. He hurriedly fished it out and turned it on.

  He clenched the torch between his teeth and scooped at the snow, throwing it behind him. The two of them advanced like this bit by bit. They’d been digging for a while when suddenly Cuomu cried out in surprise, ‘Zhuo, there doesn’t seem to be any snow on my side. I think it’s empty!’

  ‘Empty?’ Zhuo Mai stuck his hand out along Cuomu’s arm. There really was nothing in front of them. He quickly took the torch from between his teeth and looked through the hole. To his surprise, he saw there were walls of broken rock to either side and empty darkness ahead.

  They swiftly pushed away the snow around them. Cuomu carried the meat bag and Zhuo Mai did not forget his gun. They stared stupidly at one another, neither sure what to do. After a little while, Zhuo Mai turned the torch up and shone it ahead of them, but there was nothing for the light to bounce off, only darkness. He looked at Cuomu. ‘What should we do?’

  Cuomu shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never heard of a cave up here.’

  *

  Gongzha had already followed the pair’s footprints as far as the snow hole they’d slept in the night before. When he saw the tiny space, Gongzha’s heart tightened. As he faced the snow mountain, his heart beat fast and loud. He knew he could not lose Cuomu or allow anyone else to share her affections.

  He couldn’t bear to look at it any longer, so he turned away. As his gaze swept the valley, his eyes suddenly alighted on that strange and exaggerated ¤ symbol. It was as if he’d been struck with something heavy, and he began to feel very anxious.

  The smooth ¤ on the black Buddha’s back, the ¤ that Zhaduo had unconsciously drawn on the sand and the ¤ he’d seen on Kaguo’s forehead during the wolf attack all rushed into his mind. Why would the same symbol also appear in this
snowy valley, so far from any sort of human life? Gongzha couldn’t suppress his surprise and excitement. He slithered quickly down the slope, rolling and scrambling as he went, and was covered in snow by the time he landed in front of the image. The ¤ was very regular; the four lines extending out were of exactly equal length and width, as if they’d been drawn using a ruler.

  Gongzha walked around examining the image, sometimes stooping down to scrutinise its edges. They were ragged and revealed muddled footprints, as if some kind of animal had stamped it out with its feet. He raised his head and scanned both sides of the valley; eventually he found a line of tracks on the right side.

  He didn’t need to look carefully to know what animal had left them. Any grassland hunter who couldn’t recognise a bear track was a fool.

  He followed the tracks with nervous excitement. He even forgot why he’d come up the mountain – he just followed the tracks instinctively as any seasoned hunter would. It would have been impossible for Cuomu and Zhuo Mai not to have seen that the bears had drawn that strange symbol in the snow. The valley bore no trace of a struggle and that at least told him they were safe. He gave a sigh of relief and climbed carefully, still following the tracks.

  At a cliff on the north side, the tracks suddenly disappeared. ‘Strange!’ Gongzha looked over the clifftop; it was high, and its face was covered in glimmering, unmarked snow. ‘How could they just disappear?’ he muttered as he sat on the ground. He looked at the crisscrossing bear tracks in front of him. Up until this point, the tracks had been neat and orderly; here they became disordered. It reminded him of standing in front of a tent and walking around in circles while waiting for someone to come to the door. A door…? Gongzha’s curiosity mounted.

  He scrambled up and searched carefully all around him. He found two clear prints going up the left side of the slope and disappearing by a thicket of red bushes. The ground around the prints looked as if something had rolled over it. Gongzha bent down to look more closely and picked up two silver-brown hairs. ‘Strange, why would they roll on the snow? What are they trying to hide? Could there be cubs inside?’ He knew that when cubs couldn’t leave a den, the mother bear would find a way to mask the entrance for fear of another animal finding and hurting them; she’d take a circuitous route back for the same reason.

  Gongzha went a few steps closer. Squatting in front of the red bushes, he pushed aside the thick branches and discovered that there was indeed a cave behind them. The mouth was just large enough to allow a grown bear to enter. These bears were really very clever: they hid the mouth of the cave under bushes and deliberately crossed their tracks so that when the wind and snow came it would be well hidden. He looked back at the tamped-down snow and laughed. Who said bears were stupid? Every time they left or returned to their den, they made the last two bears cover their tracks. While one bear stood at the bottom, another rolled down from the top. When the last bear returned to the cave, it cleared away the tracks of the bear before it. Once Gongzha had figured this out, he had even more respect for them.

  He turned round, climbed to the mouth of the cave and sniffed. The faint foul odour that greeted him proved that bears had been there, but the fact that it was faint told him that the cave was very deep and that the musky smell was just a trace left by one of the bears on their way in or out. Gongzha was not there on a bear hunt and had no interest in the cubs; he was there to find Cuomu and her safety was much more important. Now that he knew where the mouth of the cave was, he could come back any time.

  Just as he was turning to leave, he saw that above the entrance there was a tiny ¤, etched so faintly that you could only see it if you were looking closely or your eyes were used to the dark. As soon as he saw it, his stomach began to churn; he wrenched out his torch and crawled in without a second thought.

  The cave was deep and tunnel-like and he had to wriggle his way in. After two or three metres, it began to slope downwards. There was no room to turn round, so he had no option but to carry on. He gripped the torch between his teeth and began to crawl on all fours. By the weak light of the torch, he saw that niches had been cut into the tunnel walls. He didn’t think too much about it, just used them as handholds as he continued edging his way down it. When he finally reached the bottom, he found that the tunnel started to climb again, and there were more niches on either side. Gongzha was a brave man and he continued on without worrying about the consequences.

  He finally reached the highest point and emerged into a small stone chamber. The floor was level and there were rocks on either side, like seats. On the walls were paintings of bears, in all kinds of poses. Some were playing, some were breastfeeding, some were catching small animals.

  ‘Kaguo…’ Gongzha was looking at the bear in the centre; there were two bear cubs by her side, one with a black circle on its forehead, the other with a white circle.

  Could this be the cave of the Buddhist ascetics? Gongzha slowly shifted his feet as this idea began to take hold. His father used to say that there were ascetics living on Mount Chanaluo, but he’d never seen them. Gongzha searched the chamber with his torch. When he found that a passage had been opened on the right and that on the roof of the passage had been painted the Kalachakra mantra, he became even more convinced that this was the Buddhist ascetics’ cave. Kalachakra was an advanced tantra. But if it was an ascetics’ cave, why would the bears come in? Unless the ascetics had died and the bears had made it into their den? What did the painting of the bears on the wall mean? And that mysterious ¤ symbol? There had to be a thread connecting all the different places he’d seen it – in the valley, on the black Buddha’s back, drawn by Living Buddha Zhaduo in the sand, on Kaguo’s head, on the entrance to the cave – even if he had no idea what it was.

  Without thinking, Gongzha followed the passage. He was a curious person and now that he’d discovered this place, he wasn’t going to leave until he’d understood it. The passage was easily wide enough for one person but would have been a squeeze for two people walking side by side. The walls had clearly been worked by human hands and every few steps there was a small niche containing a butter lamp. Gongzha pulled out his lighter, flicked it a few times, and lit one of the lamps. The passage quickly became much brighter.

  He continued along the rock-hewn corridor, lighting more lamps as he went and following the passageway as it twisted round a number of bends. Eventually he came to another chamber, about twice the size of the last one, very regularly shaped, and also with paintings on its walls. The mural on the right showed people transporting wood on the mountain; in the one in front of him they were building walls; and the one on the left showed a group of monks in red reading scriptures in front of a dazzling temple.

  That temple… that temple, particularly the exterior of the large hall in the centre with the prayer flags, red edges and yellow walls, why did it seem so familiar? Gongzha walked a little closer and looked carefully at the painting. The image of Cuoe Temple’s main hall flashed before his eyes; it was just that there were many more buildings surrounding the Cuoe Temple in the picture than there were in the temple as he knew it – they almost covered the mountain.

  Gongzha frowned; if Cuoe Temple had looked like that when it was constructed, why were none of the other buildings there now? Had they been destroyed or never even built?

  What connection did this cave have with Cuoe Temple? Why were there pictures of Cuoe Temple’s construction on the walls? That black Buddha, said to be Cuoe Temple’s greatest treasure, why did its back have a ¤ like the one on Kaguo’s head?

  A string of questions popped into Gongzha’s mind. Each one was enough to cloud his brain and mist his eyes, and he couldn’t answer any of them. As he contemplated this, he suddenly heard screams – Cuomu’s screams. They were coming from another direction. Without a moment’s hesitation, Gongzha turned and rushed into the tunnel that opened out from across the other side of the chamber.

  *

  ‘Cuomu, are we inside Mount Chanaluo?’ Zhuo Mai rubb
ed the stone wall, unwilling to believe his eyes.

  They had no idea where they were. It was like a maze down there, with one tunnel leading to another tunnel and then another and so on. They didn’t know which was the route out or where the end of the tunnel system was.

  ‘We must be. Strange, I’ve never heard of Chanaluo having a cave like this,’ Cuomu said, using a lighter to light the butter lamps on the wall.

  Zhuo Mai glanced around – they’d been in the cave for hours.

  Every tunnel ended in a small stone chamber, each of which had four painted walls and a lamp. In one chamber, they even found some tsampa in covered stone bowls, but it had stuck together in clumps and had clearly not been moved in a long time.

  The people of the northern Tibetan wilderness weren’t in the habit of eating tsampa; their staple food was meat. The presence of tsampa in the cave didn’t chime with what Cuomu had first thought, that this was a cave for local Buddhist ascetics. In Tibet, there were lots of hermit ascetics. They sought out somewhere remote, far from other people – deep in the mountains, in the old forests, where other men would never come – and stayed there for many years, communicating only with the Buddha. The caves they sheltered in were always small and basic, and as soon as the ascetic left, the cave fell into decay. But this cave was clearly not the work of a single ascetic – it had multiple chambers connected by passageways. The whole network was very well preserved, especially the murals: the colours were vibrant, as if they’d been painted yesterday. The space was far too big for a solitary Buddhist ascetic, it was large enough to house scores of people, more than a hundred perhaps.

  Zhuo Mai peeled off the sleeves of his leather chuba and tied them round his waist. Suddenly he cried out as if he’d just thought of something. ‘The mountain cave, the mountain cave…’

  ‘Zhuo, you’ve gone crazy!’

  ‘No, Cuomu, I… I remembered, the mountain cave, the mountain cave.’