Han Ma and Yang Yan were finishing up the handover of the jeep in Golmud. Han Ma had tied Kelsang to a tree in the courtyard before going inside to make arrangements. As he waited, Kelsang discovered that he had the ability to predict his own future. He watched Han Ma’s every move — the handshake, the goodbye. And then they left without even glancing his way. Kelsang was confused. It wasn’t possible. This was the very thing he had always worried about.
The noise of traffic drowned out the sound of Kelsang’s barking before Han Ma and Yang Yan even reached the street.
“Are you still thinking about that dog? I doubt he’s missing us,” Yang Yan said, walking ahead with his backpack.
“Hmm,” Han Ma replied. He quickened his pace, even though it was a while before the train would leave.
They crossed two roads in silence before turning into a busy street lined with stalls of roasting meat. The air was thick with smoke from the coals. Gradually, they began to notice that there was something different about the way everyone was looking at them. It was the very fact that everyone was looking at them that made them uneasy. At first they thought it was because of the way they were dressed. They were still wearing their expedition gear. But that seemed unlikely since this was the only route into Lhasa, and there were hikers everywhere with huge backpacks. The people of Golmud must be used to it.
Slowly they realized that people weren’t looking at them, but at something behind them.
Han Ma turned around. “The dog!” he exclaimed.
It was indeed Kelsang standing behind them, a rope trailing from his neck with a large tree trunk attached to it. He was silent apart from his violent panting, his rib cage rising and falling as he recovered from running to catch up to them. He looked intently at Han Ma, searching his eyes for answers.
When Han Ma had disappeared, Kelsang’s first reaction had been to bark madly in confusion. Then he suddenly stopped and put his energy into pulling on his rope instead. He pulled and pulled, and each time the tree shook, scattering a carpet of leaves on the ground but nothing more.
For the people standing in their doorways, it was like watching a machine performing a mechanical movement over and over again. But Kelsang wasn’t paying any attention to his surroundings. He was just stubbornly trying to break the rope so that he could find Han Ma. The onlookers sensed his urgency, and someone even tried to approach to untie the rope. He couldn’t bear to see the dog struggling. But the others stopped him. It would be dangerous to get too close.
When the tree finally came down — this time the rope was stronger than the tree — Kelsang nearly fell over, but he didn’t pause for more than a second before running straight out of the courtyard.
The crowd let out a sigh of relief, and some people even looked happy.
Kelsang took no notice. He was too busy desperately searching for Han Ma’s scent. As soon as he found it, he began to gallop. A couple of times, he feared he had lost the trail, but in his momentary despair he always found his lifeline again — the tiniest trace of Han Ma.
He bumped and crashed his way through a crowd of people, who parted, screaming.
An enormous dog dragging a tree trunk with a rope around its neck was running through the streets of Golmud.
Finally, Kelsang caught sight of Han Ma’s familiar shape and became calm. He tried to draw up behind him casually, as if nothing had happened.
“Come here,” Han Ma said.
Kelsang walked over to him and nuzzled his hot head against Han Ma’s chest, sticking out his dry tongue to lick his hand. This was Kelsang’s world now. He started whimpering and trembling uncontrollably, just like a little puppy.
“Look, it’s not that big a deal,” Yang Yan said. “Mastiffs can be shipped by train. Let’s go. We have time to make the arrangements before we leave.” He wasn’t used to being the center of attention and was getting nervous. A crowd had gathered, many of them chewing on Golmud’s famous meat kebabs as they watched to see what was going on.
Han Ma and Yang Yan rushed off in the direction of the train station with Kelsang in tow.
“You didn’t choose a spindly tree on purpose, did you?”
“Um…no, of course not,” Han Ma replied.
They boarded the train at Golmud.
Han Ma put Kelsang in a cage that was then lifted into the baggage car. Instinct told Kelsang to refuse to be put into this narrow space with barely enough room to turn around, yet something else told him to trust his master. He knew he was leaving the plateau, but his life on the grasslands was already so far behind him. The strange thing was he didn’t feel afraid or even sentimental. He trusted Han Ma. This young man was more important to him than the plateau.
Kelsang patiently lay down in his cage. The door closed, and the baggage car was plunged into darkness. He didn’t see Han Ma for the rest of the journey.
The attendant who came to feed Kelsang was terrified that he might break out of the cage and maul him. Each time he would slide the food and water through a narrow hatch before turning and running, locking the baggage car door as quickly as he could.
Kelsang could only tell when day turned to night and back again by the light that came through the crack under the door. His sense of smell was sharper in the dark, picking up on anything that made it through the crack. He could tell when they were passing a lake, or maybe a forest, by the smell of dampness that greeted his nose. He was especially excited when they pulled into a station, and a whole mix of new and strange smells invaded the baggage car. Each one was cross-referenced against his bank of known scents, providing him with enough entertainment to last for hours once the train was on the move again. He couldn’t see the world outside his car, but he knew that it was unusually rich in smells.
They had to change trains twice. People streamed through the crowded platforms, and even though everyone was busy trying to find their train, a glimpse of Kelsang was enough to elicit excited gasps. The passengers would find their seats, stow their luggage, then turn to the other passengers, exclaiming, “I just saw the most enormous dog!” Many journeys over those few days were spent discussing the fine black animal in the cage.
As evening approached, Kelsang entered a dream world where he could return to the pastures of his birth. Once he felt as if he was really clambering to the top of a pile of fleeces, his paws sinking into the softness, until he could keep his balance no longer and tumbled to the ground.
Suddenly a dazzling beam of light flicked across the baggage car. An even larger cage was carried in and placed beside Kelsang’s. This is how the nightmare began.
As the first rays of morning light shone through the crack at the bottom of the door, Kelsang saw that the cage beside him contained seven small dogs of a kind he had never seen before. They were slender, with short white fur, so short that the pink of their skin shimmered beneath it, and it was embellished with an even spattering of black spots. Their crystalline black eyes blinked at him, each pair matching the black spots, so that he had to look extremely carefully to distinguish between the two.
Of course, Kelsang couldn’t know that ever since the release of 101 Dalmations people had become obsessed with these cute dogs and had discovered that they made perfect pets. Their value had rocketed accordingly, and so it was that these seven puppies had one day found themselves caged and put on a train on its way to the city, where they would be sold.
But Kelsang didn’t give a hoot for these dogs.
Then the puppies began barking. It started with just one of them. Perhaps the cage was too crowded, and one puppy had stepped on another. Or maybe one had been on the receiving end of some misdeed by one of its identical friends, like having its face pressed up against the bars. The others were then somehow infected and began wailing in distress, the sound escalating within moments to a full-blown puppy chorus that filled the baggage car.
Once it started, it didn’t stop. The
puppies were yelping and wailing. They were so loud that as the train passed through stations along the way, people waiting on the platforms could almost imagine that the dogs inside were having a drunken New Year’s party. The puppies had first staged this performance when the door closed on them, and they were left in the dark. Kelsang managed to shut them up, at least temporarily, with a few fierce barks, only to discover seven pairs of fearful eyes staring back at him.
That was the end of Kelsang’s authority. After that, no matter how much he barked or crashed against the sides of his cage, the puppies continued to wail. This was an unimaginable torment. Their emotional state was infectious, and he, too, started to find the never-ending darkness unbearable. He began to hate his cage and started thudding against it, walloping against the bars that bore traces of the scents of other animals.
Luckily, he only had to spend a day in the company of the black-and-white spotty dogs. Before they knew it, they arrived at the last stop — Harbin. It was just as well. If the journey had been any longer, Kelsang would have gone mad.
After emerging from the baggage car, Kelsang’s excitement to see Han Ma was instantly dampened by what he saw around him. The station was full of people — men, women and children — people with all different smells. Of course, Han Ma and Yang Yan would have preferred to see the wilds of Hoh Xil bustling with antelope.
Kelsang had never in his life seen so many people. The variety of smells made him feel dizzy. He wanted nothing more than to press himself up against his master, and Han Ma tightened his rope. Having Han Ma with him dispelled his desire to bite and tear everything around him.
Kelsang had grown up near the snow-capped mountains of the Tibetan plateau in landscapes that could only be described as imposing and magnificent. But now, looking out at a completely manmade environment, he couldn’t help but feel respect. Buildings encased in glass reached up into the sky, their shiny blue skins reflecting its color in the evening sun, just like the snowy peaks. This was the only part of what lay before him that made him feel at home.
“He’s probably the first Tibetan mastiff ever to have made it to Harbin, wouldn’t you say?” Yang Yan said, lugging his huge backpack.
“Probably,” Han Ma replied.
They threaded their way through the crowds on their way out of the station. How Kelsang would react to all the people thronging at the exit like huddled sheep was anyone’s guess.
Kelsang had come to a conclusion while sitting in his cage on the train. A large, energetic dog like him needed plenty of space. Luckily, Yang Yan’s family lived in a villa with a huge lawn that the two men believed would make a perfect new home for him.
8
LIFE WITHOUT HAN MA
AFTER THE TIRING journey, Kelsang was pleased to find that the villa was situated on a large stretch of grass. As soon as his paws touched the soft green carpet, a spasm of pleasure shot through his legs. This was the real stuff — hot mud full of life — so different from the dusty rubber floor of the baggage car. Perhaps because he was distracted, or perhaps just because he was tired, he did not resist when Yang Yan replaced his collar and attached a new set of chains to it. And so it was that Kelsang moved into a luxury residential estate on the banks of the Songhua River in Harbin.
Kelsang sniffed at his kennel and detected the faint trace of another dog. It was all so new and strange. He stared at the long bridge that lay across the river. Since getting off the train at Harbin, he had seen things he never would have encountered had he stayed on the grasslands. On the first day, a train whistled across the bridge, and Kelsang ran toward it, barking. He had seen trains before, of course, but they had been stationary when he had been loaded in and out of baggage cars, and as far as he was concerned, he had essentially been housed in a series of storage rooms.
Yang Yan laughed at Kelsang’s childishness. But it only happened once. By the time the second train passed less than an hour later, he merely looked up from where he lay in front of his kennel. Trains were nothing special now.
“Hmm… never thought you’d get used to things so quickly,” Yang Yan said, thinking out loud.
But when the sun set, something happened that Kelsang couldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams. A steamship whistle blew into the silence. Kelsang exploded at the sight of the long, narrow object on the river and watched nervously as it went by, its decks filled with people looking out at the scenery. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Yang Yan standing on the balcony, and so he suppressed his instinct to howl — the only way he knew how to express his curiosity, fear and confusion.
The boat and the train were both large and noisy. Everything was so much more complicated than up on the plateau, and he was struggling to process it all. He watched attentively as the boat spurted steam across the surface of the water, now painted a bright red by the setting sun.
Kelsang was adapting well. It was the only way he would survive. This was what enabled mastiffs to live on the Tibetan plateau, what made them able to cope with the lack of oxygen and become an integral part of the grasslands.
Kelsang’s life was once again full of firsts — the first time he saw a bicycle outside the gate, his first bus, his first plane. The air was full of new smells, which took a lot of effort to categorize and store, and which he wasn’t always successful in placing. He tried to connect all these new experiences with Yang Yan, who had brought him here but now only seemed to appear when he drove his car into the garage at night. He tried to persuade himself that Yang Yan was now his master, and that he must obey this man who always came home with the strong, sharp smell of alcohol.
But Kelsang couldn’t make himself respect Yang Yan enough, let alone love him the way he did Han Ma. Kelsang still thought of Han Ma, the young man who had tended his wounds. The concept of “master” had never felt so remote, not since he left the grasslands, and even when he had been with Tenzin, he hadn’t really understood what it meant. He had only ever been playing the role that all shepherd dogs are supposed to. He hadn’t needed Tenzin.
A week passed and still Han Ma didn’t come. Kelsang began to wail in sorrow. Life had lost its meaning. All he did every day was lie in his kennel with the air-conditioning on and stare blankly at the cars that passed by every now and again. In the evenings, he paced, dragging his chains behind him. He drank, and he ate the finest imported dog food that money could buy.
Kelsang hadn’t exactly gone mad, but he had taken to barking at the empty street for over half an hour at a time. He fell into a simple, unchanging rhythm, so regular that it made people think they were listening to the turning cogs of a machine. For Kelsang, being trapped on these grounds was just like being tied up on the mountain. The only difference was that he now had an air-conditioned kennel that provided him with a cool breeze in the scorching heat.
Occasionally, Yang Yan would take Kelsang for a walk, but it was only so that he could show him off. The walks went no way toward satisfying Kelsang’s desire to exercise. In order to get some relief, he’d pull on his chains and pounce on imaginary enemies. The green grass in front of his kennel was quickly torn up as though a horse had galloped over it.
When Kelsang went out with Yang Yan, he was shocked to discover that there were a great many dogs in the neighborhood. He couldn’t imagine how they had possibly grown up here. Some of them looked like balls of fur. Others were sturdy, with extremely short hair. Kelsang was particularly intrigued by a Shar-Pei, its gray skin folded into deep wrinkles around its face as though it carried all the world’s worries. Yang Yan pulled him past, but he still kept turning around to look at it, attempting to find its eyes hidden among the folds of skin.
Han Ma usually came to visit once a fortnight. These days were grand occasions, almost like holidays for Kelsang. He could detect Han Ma’s footsteps from two hundred yards away, and he would leap out of his kennel in excitement and stand staring at the main gate. When Han Ma appeared, h
e would start jumping and yapping, and when he left, Kelsang wailed mournfully, already waiting for his return.
Kelsang was developing a real sense of time and somehow began to know instinctively when two weeks had passed. On days when Yang Yan found him spinning in circles in front of his kennel, looking up every now and then in the direction of the gate, he knew it must be Sunday — the day Han Ma was due to visit.
You could say that the reason Kelsang left the villa was because a dog shouldn’t have such an accurate body clock. For some reason, three months after his arrival, there was a three-week period in which Han Ma didn’t come. Kelsang thought he heard his master’s footsteps a few times one week, but the repeated disappointment turned him to hysterical barking and made him violent. His teeth began to itch, so strong was his desire to bite into something. In fact, the desire to sink his teeth into hot flesh swallowed up everything else.
One evening, as the sky grew dark, Yang Yan took Kelsang for a walk. He didn’t notice any particular change in the dog, who pulled at the leash as he always did. A successful young businessman was taking his mastiff to the local square and would then go back to his beautiful house. They walked around the patch of neatly trimmed grass in the square. Everything was as usual, right up until the sudden appearance of a Great Dane, that is.
Kelsang already knew about this dog. Sometimes, when he was barking on the lawn, he heard the sound of another dog barking along with him. It was a terrible bark, like someone striking a metal bucket with a stick. The noise alone told Kelsang that it came from an enormous dog.
The dog was indeed large, with black and white spots and pointy ears. It was being led by a plump man, who had obviously taken great care in raising it. Its long limbs raised it half a head above Kelsang. It was strong and arrogant, with a glossy coat.
The desire for a fight had been building up in Kelsang, yet he didn’t much feel like stirring up trouble. The Great Dane slowed as it caught sight of him and stared suspiciously. As the distance between them narrowed, it tried to run at Kelsang, pulling tight on its studded leash.
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