Love In No Man's Land

by Duo Ji Zhuo Ga

  ‘Yes, I’m the same. I don’t want to leave my man either. Just wait till I catch him – I won’t let him leave. Ha ha ha…’

  Feng laughed too and the two women chatted on until the sun began to sink in the west. They were interrupted by the shrill sound of a whistle from a distant mountaintop; looking up, they saw several faint male figures near the summit. Feng automatically clasped her clothes to her chest. The other woman stood up unconcernedly, beads of water hanging from her buttery skin. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and issued a piercing whistle in reply. Then she picked up her black robe, put it on and fastened her belt. She looked at Feng and said sincerely, ‘Hey, I’m going. Do you want me to help you find your man?’

  ‘Thank you, but no. I believe the Buddha will help me find him.’

  ‘Alright then, I’m off.’ She bent down and quickly ripped away the clothes Feng had been holding in front of her chest. Feng shrieked and slipped back beneath the water.

  ‘If you ever need any help in No Man’s Land, you can come and look for me; my name is Sega.’ She laughed loudly, threw Feng’s clothes down beside the pool and ran off towards the valley she’d come from.

  Feng laughed too. As she watched Sega get further and further away, her long, damp hair flying out behind her, Feng suddenly came to her senses and called out, ‘Hey, Sega, have you seen a man looking for a bear in No Man’s Land? He’s called Gongzha!’

  But all she could hear by way of response was the vanishing sound of drumming hooves.

  When Feng was satisfied that the men on the mountain peak had also disappeared, she climbed out of the water, put on her clothes and left the valley.

  *

  That night Feng stayed at the government guesthouse, in a mud-walled room of around twenty square metres containing a scattering of iron and wooden bedsteads. A floral drape hung from the ceiling, but it had clearly not been changed for many years and looked like it would rain dust at any minute. It wasn’t such a bad set-up, though; certainly preferable to sleeping outdoors, as she had on other nights, in sheep pens or by tumbledown walls. Compared with that, being out of the wind in a place with four walls and a roof was a luxury.

  Junsang slept in the car as usual. He said he needed to watch over it because of all the supplies they were carrying.

  Very early the next morning, someone in a herder’s outfit turned up and said that his brother had seen Gongzha in some valley, although he couldn’t say exactly where. Junsang told Feng to wait in the town while he went and found out more. Feng wanted to go with him, but, mindful that someone needed to keep an eye on the car, she stayed put. She reminded herself that she was now in Tibet and that Gongzha was only just ahead of her, in some unknown place; she would see him soon – the Buddha did not play tricks on those with a sincere heart.

  There was a well in the courtyard and local residents came by frequently to draw water. Feng leant over the side of the well and stared at her reflection, reimagining it with the bearded man reflected alongside her. She had no control over her emotions: her longing was like a spider’s web and she was the insect trapped inside it, unable to free herself however hard she struggled.

  A silver-haired old woman arrived carrying a deep wooden bucket on her back. When she saw Feng, she smiled compassionately. Feng smiled in return and turned to help her. She lifted the bucket off the woman’s back, tied it to the well rope and helped her fill the bucket. Then she copied the old woman and placed the bucket strap around her own forehead to bear the weight on her back more efficiently. The old woman watched Feng but made no objection, only helped Feng push her long hair out of the way. Then she took Feng’s hand and they walked out of the courtyard together.

  When they arrived at her home, the old woman called her granddaughter and said something in Tibetan, pointing to the mountain behind the house.

  ‘Granny says the bearded man you’re looking for was here several days ago,’ the little girl said in halting Mandarin. ‘He carved a picture up there.’

  ‘He carved a picture?’ Feng couldn’t quite imagine that. Gongzha’s large hands were adept at handling a gun, but could they draw as well? The idea was highly entertaining.

  ‘Yes.’ The little girl nodded earnestly. She pulled Feng outside, pointed at the nearby mountain slope, and said, ‘Up there. There are lots of pictures on those rocks.’

  ‘Can you take me there?’ Feng asked, giving the girl a pleading look. Just the words ‘the bearded man you’re looking for was here several days ago’ had been enough to make her heart leap.

  ‘Granny says she’ll watch the car for you,’ the little girl said, and pulled Feng outside.

  The crushed stones that littered the ground gleamed darkly in the sunlight. Feng looked at her outdoor sports watch; it was three in the afternoon. In northern Tibet, this was when the sun was at its strongest. She pulled up the hood of her windcheater and fastened it tight around her forehead. She didn’t want Gongzha to not recognise her, and a woman had to look good for the one she loved. But when she thought about that some more, she realised it didn’t matter. During their days together, she’d been so ill, she’d almost died; her face had peeled and her lips had been chapped. He’d already seen her at her worst, and surely she looked a lot better than that now?

  The mountainside she’d thought looked so near actually took two hours to climb. ‘It seemed so close, but it’s three kilometres away.’ Feng’s watch tracked distance; she could hardly believe it.

  ‘Many things here look near but take a long time to reach,’ the little girl said.

  ‘That’s true enough.’ Feng nodded, gazing up at the snow peaks and mountain ranges in the distance. The air in northern Tibet was crystal clear, which made it seem like you were looking through binoculars the whole time because you could see things in such detail. ‘Where are the pictures?’

  ‘On these rocks!’ The little girl pointed at the boulders scattered across the slope.

  ‘On the rocks?’ Feng dipped her head and began to search.

  The mountainside was covered in broken rocks, large, small, thin and thick, their surfaces burnt black by the sun. There were quite a few ancient rock engravings on the larger ones. Rock engravings? When Feng realised what she was looking at, she got very excited. The pictures were simple outlines etched with stones and all of them depicted scenes from the lives of ancient peoples: herding, making tea, hunting, and singing and dancing.

  Feng picked up a stone and tried scratching a rock herself. The rock was very hard; it wasn’t easy to leave a mark. She could tell it had been very difficult to make these pictures. No wonder they were still visible, despite having endured thousands of years of wind and rain.

  ‘Where are his pictures?’ Feng was stooping down to examine each one.

  ‘Here.’ The little girl squatted in front of another rock.

  Feng flung down the stone in her hand and hurried over. Sure enough, there was an image on the rock. It had obviously been engraved with a knife. In the middle were two Tibetan antelopes, with two people alongside them. Below were engraved four characters: Bao bao, Bei bei.

  ‘Baobao, Beibei…’ Feng murmured, kneeling down. Those were the antelopes they’d rescued; they had to be quite big by now. Were they still with him? Gongzha, Gongzha, where are you? Do you know I’m here? Do you know I’ve come thousands of kilometres to find you?

  Her tears flowed. When they hit the rock, they dried in an instant.

  She pulled out her Swiss army knife and used all her strength to carve her words:

  I still remember my first glimpse of you,

  Your face weathered by wind and frost.

  The grass was young, the flowers bloomed,

  The clouds were light, the wind was soft.

  I want to take your hand and never part,

  I long to see my love set deep in your heart.

  My heart is steadfast,

  The sky is my witness, and so is the earth,

  My love endures

  Though
days and months may pass.

  ‘Is he the one you’re looking for, Sister?’ the little girl asked as she watched Feng finish.

  Feng nodded, wiped away her tears, and raised her head with a satisfied smile. Gongzha the tough mountain man had a soft side. He hadn’t forgotten her – why else would he have engraved that picture?

  She had never felt so happy. She stood up and impetuously hugged the little girl. ‘It’s him, it’s him. Gongzha. He’s the only who knows Baobao and Beibei.’

  ‘Is Gongzha your man, Sister?’

  ‘Yes, he’s my man,’ Feng said firmly and with absolute certainty, as if she were telling the whole world.

  When the girl saw Feng’s smile, she smiled too. ‘There are lots more paintings over there, Sister, do you want to have a look? Granny says they were all drawn by the Buddha and are very interesting.’

  Feng nodded and picked her way through the rocks, holding the little girl’s hand.

  That part of the slope was covered in broken black rocks. There were ancient rock engravings on almost all of the bigger ones. The rough outlines had obviously been made by something with a small circular point; some were deep, some were faint. The clumsy execution had a kind of ancient beauty.

  Feng looked at one and took a photo. If she got the chance, she’d try and get an archaeologist to come out and have a look. Sparsely inhabited though the area was, it certainly wasn’t lacking in evidence of human activity.

  On one of the rocks, she saw a troop of horsemen fighting. In the next picture a group of women were walking, and she could tell from the slant of their bodies it was an arduous journey. Yaks, asses and horses were all carrying bundles. In the third she saw a herding scene; there were many Buddhas above it.

  ‘Are they moving pasture?’ Feng asked.

  ‘No, Granny said this shows the Nacangdeba and the Jialong of Cuoe Grassland fighting. When the Nacangdeba knew they couldn’t win, they sent the women and children to hide in No Man’s Land.’

  Cuoe Grassland? Gongzha’s home territory? The thought flashed through Feng’s mind, but she turned her attention to the pictures. Gongzha had mentioned that battle, as well as that mysterious cave. The Nacangdeba had had no choice but to leave, and the women and children were the grassland’s last hope. She thought of the Buddha the Swiss man had left behind, which Gongzha had said belonged to Cuoe Temple. She’d reported it in Lhasa and had later heard that the police had found the Buddhas and returned them to the temple.

  As Feng looked at the rather large Buddha in the middle of the engraving, it suddenly seemed familiar. It reminded her of the blue-black Buddha Gongzha carried with him, that Medicine Buddha of unknown material. There was another circle below the image, with some intricate lines in the middle. In the centre lay two people with their torsos raised, as if they were swimming. On either side of them were two yaks and two sheep. Yaks and sheep swimming with people? Feng was taken aback. Those ancients really did have vivid imaginations.

  They descended the mountain to find Junsang waiting for them. He had a herder with him called Cirensangzhu, or Sangzhu for short. Sangzhu had seen Gongzha a week ago when he was in No Man’s Land searching for a yak.

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘He was in a valley. This is the map I drew.’ Junsang drew a notebook from his chuba. ‘Going by what he said, it’s not far from Yongxi’s pasture.’

  ‘Yongxi’s pasture? There’s pastureland in No Man’s Land?’

  ‘Yes, sure, No Man’s Land has good pastures, though not many people live there. I think I remember that Yongxi had a grandmother, and they’ve always lived in No Man’s Land.’

  ‘Have you met her?’

  ‘I met her once when I went looking for a yak.’ Junsang closed the notebook and put it back in his chuba. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to find the place myself, so I’ve asked Cirensangzhu to take us.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Feng nodded her approval. ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Good.’ Feng was delighted and nodded at Cirensangzhu. Then she reached into the car, pulled out two packets of chocolates and gave one to the little girl and one to Sangzhu.

  Sangzhu took his, copied the way the girl unwrapped one of the chocolates, and put it into his mouth. He quickly frowned and spat it out, giving the rest of his bag to the girl. The other three laughed loudly.

  *

  Feng couldn’t sleep a wink that night.

  She’d thought about Gongzha day and night for the last three years and had even convinced herself that seeing him again was nothing more than a pipedream. So she was surprised to discover that now she was so close to finding him, she was nervous. It felt a bit like having been away for a long time and getting apprehensive at the prospect of returning home.

  When she realised that she wasn’t going to get to sleep, Feng got up and began to organise her things. She took everything out of her bag and repacked it. But when she checked the time, not even an hour had passed. She shook out her sleeping bag, rolled it up neatly, and put it in her bag, but that used up only twenty minutes. Now what could she do? She stared out at the bright moon, sighed, got up and went outside.

  The moonlight was strong – it was almost as bright as day. It was only in Tibet that Feng realised there was truth to that phrase. She walked down the stone stairs and saw that someone was lying in the courtyard. It was Sangzhu, the herder who was to be their guide. He lay snoring on the sandy ground, wrapped in his sheepskin chuba. Feng didn’t find that at all strange. When they were in the wilderness, Gongzha had slept that way every night. He said grasslanders saw the earth as their bed and felt unsettled when they didn’t sleep on the ground.

  She tiptoed out of the courtyard and sat on a boulder outside. Some wild dogs who were nosing through the nearby rubbish heap for scraps stared at her and barked a couple of times but didn’t come over.

  In front of her stretched a white salt lake. In the past, herders from all over the north Tibetan grasslands used to come there to collect salt. But now they didn’t need to, because processed salt came in on the Sichuan–Tibet and Qinghai–Tibet highways. As people lost interest in natural salt, the once busy salt lake quietly slipped out of the herders’ lives.

  The grey snow mountain loomed in the distance. Without the sun glinting off it, it looked soft and lovely. The stars were clear and bright and seemed as if they’d been stitched into the sky with just the right distance between them.

  Resting her elbows on her knees, Feng cupped her chin in her hands and stared out into the night. She wondered if, somewhere out in the wilderness, Gongzha was sitting like her, sleepless and stargazing.

  It was hard to wait until seven o’clock. If she’d been in the city, the streets would already have been bustling with people. But in this frontier town, it was as quiet as if it were the dead of night. Feng couldn’t take it; every minute seemed as long as a year. She went back to the courtyard and woke up Junsang.

  Junsang climbed out of the car, rubbing his eyes. He woke up Cirensangzhu and then started the car so it could warm up.

  Cirensangzhu stood up reluctantly, walked groggily to the well, drew a bucket of water and washed himself splashily. When he was finally more awake, he put his chuba on the roof of the car. Junsang gave him two biscuits; Sangzhu tucked them away, took out some dried meat and began to eat it.

  When the people living round the courtyard heard the car running, they all got up to see them off. After two days together, they were all quite reluctant to say goodbye. The little girl who’d taken Feng to see the rock engravings came out with her grandmother and they gave Feng a box of curds. Feng refused them – she didn’t want them – but the old woman didn’t care and put them in the car. The town cadre brought some dried meat; another auntie brought some steamed momos. Feng was so moved that her eyes welled with tears.

  When they got to the pass above the town, Feng made Junsang stop the car. She stood there, in the place where heaven and earth met, gazing at th
e fluttering prayer flags, listening to them snapping in the wind. As she walked, the flags brushed across her body and face.

  She remembered him that day, how he’d turned away amid a scene much the same as today’s. The wind had been just as strong and the flags had fluttered just as wildly. He’d said he could only take her that far, that she would be safe there.

  Her body had been safe, but she’d left her heart in No Man’s Land.

  A goshawk swooped down suddenly and Feng instinctively brought her palms together to greet it. Spontaneously and for no reason, she howled at the mountains: ‘Gongzha…’

  As her cry echoed through the mountains, tears began to pour down her face. She was lost in a sea of memories and her body had become as weak as clay.

  ‘I have climbed to the highest of places, just to find you,

  I have travelled over mountains and rivers, in search of you.

  Oh, eagle, where will you fly?

  Have you seen the one I love as he wanders,

  Has he grown thin, has he grown weary, is he hurt?

  Please tell him I am here, under the white clouds,

  Hoping to follow him as he wanders,

  To follow him wherever he roams.

  Let love calm the pain,

  Plant love in your heart,

  Let there be two hearts in one tent,

  So that, no matter where they wander, they will find their way home.’

  24

  Gongzha was making his way through an unnamed valley, accompanied only by his horse and his gun. He was used to being alone, on his own in the wilderness, a lone wolf on the wild plateau. It was where he belonged; he could be himself out there.

  He stopped every so often to dismount and look around. The smell on the wind and the marks on the ground told him whether or not he was going in the right direction. A hunter used a hunter’s methods, whatever he was searching for.

  Kaguo, you will not escape, Gongzha repeated to himself as he narrowed his eyes and scanned the mountain ridges ahead of him. The wound in his chest hurt faintly. He reined in his horse and jumped down. Spreading his chuba on the ground, he sat down cross-legged, undid the bandages and examined the wound. It was red around the edges. Gongzha frowned. It wasn’t good that it had become infected; he needed to find a doctor and get it treated. He surveyed his surroundings. He wasn’t far from Rongma and could be there in two days at most.