by Chi Zijian
‘Your Ama won’t run into trouble, now, will he?’ she asked me feebly.
‘Why would he be in trouble?’ I said. ‘It’s just another rainstorm. He’s seen plenty of them.’
Mother relaxed noticeably. ‘That’s right,’ she reassured herself. ‘What hasn’t Linke been through?’
Rainbows appeared in the sky after the rain. The first was hazy, but then another appeared, distinct and brightly coloured. When the second rainbow emerged, the first grew vivid too. The two rainbows were curved and gaily hued, like a pheasant flaunting a pair of kaleidoscopic feathers: reds, yellows, greens and purples were all on show. The entire urireng came out to view the rainbows, and everyone was enchanted.
But even as we watched, the colours of one rainbow suddenly paled and vanished. The other, although still complete, aged abruptly and lost its vivid colours; it seemed as though dust had flown into it, rendering it murky. The rainbow’s altered hues changed the colours of our faces. Everyone knew this was an unfavourable omen, and Mother went back to our shirangju ahead of the others.
Only when the virtually black rainbow vanished did she come out again. Teardrops hung from her face. She was already mourning for Father.
Ilan came back at dusk. When he saw mother, he put his paws on her lap, eyes moist. His forlorn gaze convinced mother that Father was gone. She patted the hound’s forehead roughly. ‘Ilan, what did I tell you? How come you didn’t bring Linke back with you?’
Father was struck by lightning while passing through a dense pine grove. Two big, muscular trees were also hit. They were split in two at the waist, and there were scorch marks at the point of cleavage.
It was already deep in the night when Ilan led us to the scene of the accident. Father’s body was hunched over, laid out against a severed tree stump, head and arms dangling as if he had grown tired of walking and was resting. The night sky was exceptionally bright after the storm, and the moonlight lit up each tree, and Father.
I cried and Mother cried too. I called ‘Ama’ over and over, while Mother wailed, ‘Linke, oh my Linke!’
Nidu the Shaman was in the pine grove throughout the night where he selected four big trees at right angles to one another, chopped a few poles, and placed them on branches to construct Father’s wind-burial platform especially high up. Nidu the Shaman said that the Thunder Spirit took Linke away, and since thunder comes from the Heavens, it should be returned there, so his grave had to be a bit closer to the sky.
In the early morning we wrapped Father in a white cloth and raised him up to his final bed. Nidu the Shaman cut two shapes from birch-bark – a sun and a moon – and placed them on Father’s head. I suppose he intended for Father to have light in the other-world. Even though the reindeer that remained with us were few, Nidu the Shaman still had Hase bring a reindeer and slaughter it. I think he wanted Father to have a reindeer to ride in the other-world. Father’s clothing, hunting knife, tobacco case, hanging pot and flask were also placed with him for his wind-burial.
But before the burial, each of these objects was damaged by Luni according to Nidu the Shaman’s instructions: he bashed the hunting knife against a stone to make the blade crooked; he poked a hole in the birch-bark tobacco box with a tanning knife; he cut off the collar and cuffs of Linke’s upper garment with scissors; and he used a stone to smash an opening in the pot and kettle. It is said that if these things are not done, those who live on will meet with disaster.
These defective objects made me immeasurably sad. If his clothing lacked collars and cuffs, wouldn’t Father’s neck and arms feel cold? If the blade on his hunting knife were bent, how would he skin the game he caught? If his hanging pot and kettle leaked, what would he do when he cooked meat and the soup dripped, putting out the fire? When it occurred to me that none of the things Father was taking with him was still intact, I really wanted to cry. But I stifled myself, because I was afraid if I cried then Mother would lose herself in tears.
Ilan was Father’s most beloved hunting dog, and it seemed he wanted to depart with Father. He kept using his paws to scrape the forest soil as if to dig his own grave. But when Nidu the Shaman steadied Ilan and was about to put his knife to the dog, Mother stopped him. ‘Leave Ilan for me,’ she said. Nidu the Shaman put away his knife.
Mother took Ilan and left Father before the wind-burial began. Nidu the Shaman feared Mother would take her own life, so he told Yveline to follow her. Afterwards, Yveline told everyone that along the way back to camp, Tamara walked and played like a little child; when she came upon a butterfly she caught it, when she came upon a bird she imitated its cry, when she came upon wild flowers she stuck one in her hair. So when she arrived back at the camp she had a basketful of flowers on her head.
She refused to enter our shirangju. Instead, she sat down and sobbed, and called out Father’s name. ‘You’re not here any more. I won’t go in, it’s cold and lonely inside.’
Father was gone, taken away by thunder and lightning. From then on, I liked to listen to the thunder’s rumble on dark, rainy days. It felt like that was Father speaking to us. His soul was surely hidden there, emitting earth-shaking thunder and blinding rays of light.
Father was not only unable to trade for the bucks of which he dreamed, he also took Mother’s laughter and dresses away with him. Before, Tamara so loved to laugh and dress up, but after he left, these pleasures vanished from her person. She still liked to milk the does, but she’d squeeze and squeeze and then her hand would stop abruptly, and she’d be lost in vacant thought. When she cooked khleb, tears splattered on the hot stones that baked the bread. She didn’t wear her deer-bone pin any more and her hair became a frizzy mess. When winter came her hair had the chilly ambience of winter cold. Not just dry and coarse, but also much whiter than before.
***
Mother was elderly now, but Luni and I had grown up. Shouldering the repeating rifle and Berdanka that Father left behind, Luni often went hunting with Ivan and Hase. He really was Linke’s son, hitting his target with virtually every shot.
Our urireng had two big harvests that winter. One was a bountiful hunting season. We exchanged our many pelts for flour, salt and bullets, and also for twenty reindeer to replenish our troop with much needed fresh blood. The reindeer bells that we had saved from the time of the plague came in handy, and once again the bells accompanied the reindeer in song among the rivers and valleys.
The other harvest: Maria gave birth to a son at last. He was very lively, and Hase and Maria did name him ‘Dashi.’ Little Dashi loved to laugh and brought us much happiness.
After Father departed, Nidu the Shaman was a changed man. His chin used to be covered in stubble, but now he shaved it as smooth as silk. Before, he dressed like a woman, but now he resumed his manly appearance. ‘Seems your Egdi’ama doesn’t want to be a Shaman any more,’ Yveline said sarcastically to Luni.
Besides his changed looks, the formerly reticent Nidu the Shaman took to inviting everyone to his shirangju to discuss even the pettiest matter. This was a big departure from his former style of deciding everything on his own. But Mother didn’t like going to his abode, so if there was something to talk about, I was the one to go.
At those times Nidu the Shaman would ask me: ‘Why doesn’t Tamara come?’
‘Why must she be the one who comes?’ I’d ask him in return.
Ever since Linke’s departure I felt an indescribable antipathy towards Nidu the Shaman. After all, if he hadn’t brought the reindeer plague back with him to our urireng, Linke wouldn’t have gone to trade for reindeer and wouldn’t have been struck by lightning. Thinking of Nidu the Shaman’s power to make a fawn die, I even wondered if he had beckoned that day’s thunderbolt. He had always envied Father, so perhaps he made use of his Spirit Power to eliminate him with the arrows and knives of thunder.
When we moved camp Nidu the Shaman often trailed behind Mother. I think he secretly wanted to watch her back. In his eyes, perhaps Mother’s backside was the sun and the moon. Ot
herwise, why was he forever pursuing her?
Reindeer don’t always move at the same pace, and sometimes his would catch up with hers. As soon as Nidu the Shaman’s reindeer came alongside Mother’s, he’d cough, and he could even cough himself red.
‘Nidu the Shaman, why don’t you ride facing backwards?’ Yveline said once. ‘If you ride facing backwards the wind won’t make you cough. But of course, then you’d be looking at me and not Tamara.’
Nidu the Shaman and Tamara got flustered, and Tamara gave her reindeer a kick, urging it forward, while Nidu the Shaman stopped straight away and filled his pipe with tobacco. It was then that I had an inkling perhaps something was going to occur between Mother and Nidu the Shaman. When I recalled the wind-sounds that Tamara and Linke had made in our shirangju, I felt very wary of Nidu the Shaman. I certainly didn’t want mother and him to kick up wind-sounds like that.
Those two years we moved camp especially frequently, and I wondered if that wasn’t related to Nidu the Shaman’s pleasure in watching Tamara’s backside. Gradually, I realised just how important Tamara was to Nidu the Shaman. One time we were just about to pick up camp – we’d even disassembled our shirangju – when Mother lightly voiced a lament about the scenery: ‘The flowers here are truly beautiful. It makes you hate to leave!’
Nidu the Shaman decided then and there to remain camped until those vibrantly coloured flowers had wilted.
One day Mother and I were milking the reindeer and she told me she had dreamed of a silver hairpin. Blossoms were engraved on the hairpin, and it was absolutely lovely. So I asked her: ‘Is it as lovely as a hairpin made from deer-bone?’
‘Many times over!’ she said.
Nidu the Shaman, who was removing the halter from the reindeer next to us, overheard our conversation. ‘What do we see in our dreams that isn’t lovely?’ he asked.
Even though he teased Tamara like that, on Rolinsky’s next visit to our camp Nidu the Shaman told the anda to trade us a silver hairpin. I knew Nidu the Shaman had Tamara in mind. But ever since Lena’s death, Rolinsky never brought women’s goods for us, and each time he left in a rush.
‘If you’d like to barter for a silver hairpin,’ he answered good-naturedly, ‘you should look for another anda, because I don’t handle women’s finery any more.’
His reply enraged Nidu the Shaman. ‘In that case you needn’t bother coming again to our urireng!’
Rolinsky didn’t get angry, he just breathed a long sigh. ‘That’s fine, just fine. When I come to your urireng nowadays, I always feel very sad. My heart doesn’t want to come, but when I remember you need to trade and we’re old acquaintances, my legs bring me here. Beginning today, I don’t have to come again, and my heart won’t ache so.’
Everyone understood that it was Lena who made his heart ache. Just like that, an invisible silver hairpin pushed our most trusted anda away from us.
From then on, Turkov entered our lives. He was also a Russian anda, and behind his back we called him dahé, meaning ‘catfish’. Not just because his mouth was big like a catfish’s, but his temperament was also similar – his entire body seemed to be coated with a slippery gel.
For the first two years, the enthusiasm that Nidu the Shaman devoted to Tamara elicited no response whatsoever. But the appearance of a bird-feather skirt changed Tamara’s attitude towards him. I discovered that, face to face with an object she loves, a woman finds herself hard-pressed to resist the temptation to possess it. But when she accepted that skirt, it was equivalent to accepting Nidu the Shaman’s affection, and our clan does not permit that sort of relationship. Thus they were fated to go mad from the torment.
None of us had noticed that whenever Nidu the Shaman ate pheasant he carefully selected feathers from those he had plucked. He collected them, and quietly sewed a skirt for Tamara, and his handiwork was exquisite.
The skirt lining comprised several pieces of coarse, dark-blue cloth, and it was shaped like a lily, with a tight waist and wide hemline. The size and colours of the feathers were not uniform, but they were all sewn with the quill pointing upwards and the pointed tip of the feather downwards. The thread used to set the feathers in place was made of fine kandahang tendon.
Nidu the Shaman first wrapped the thread around the shaft at the centre of each feather, and then stitched it onto the cloth so the feather itself was completely unharmed and intact, giving it a soft and delicate appearance.
Nidu the Shaman was a master at positioning the feathers. Smaller ones with finer barbs and subtle grey tones were placed at the waist; next came mid-sized feathers that were mainly green set off by wee bits of brown; and down where the skirt widened and at the hemline, he employed lustrous blue feathers speckled with yellow.
So the skirt comprised three parts: a grey river at the top, a green forest in the middle, and a blue sky at the bottom. When Nidu the Shaman presented it to mother, you can imagine her amazement, joy and gratitude. She held the skirt out in her arms and said this was the prettiest thing she had ever seen.
At first she laid it out on top of her bedding, gently caressing it. Then she carried it outside and hung it on a white birch, stood back from it and then went near, gazing at it all the while. The warm spring sun illuminated the feather skirt, and it was truly magnificent.
That sort of beauty can make a woman’s heart flutter and her flesh tingle. Tamara’s face reddened. ‘Your Egdi’ama has a pair of magical hands. How could he ever have fashioned such a beautiful skirt?’
Mother was a squirrel racing about with its bushy tail held high. Nidu the Shaman was a master hunter, and that feather skirt was the charka he laid to snare her.
Deep in my heart I was glad that the skirt was created just for her. Her long-departed youthfulness and vitality reappeared, rendering her incomparably elegant and noble. But I still replied icily, ‘You’ll look like a big pheasant with that on!’
Mother’s face went white. ‘Am I really so unpresentable now?’ she asked meekly. I gritted my teeth and nodded.
Tamara cried all afternoon and finally stored the skirt away in the evening. ‘Let’s keep it for you to wear when you get married. In another few years you can probably put it to use.’
Although Tamara never wore that feathered skirt formally, from time to time she would hold it in her arms, utterly enchanted for an instant, and her eyes would look so very tender.
She often hung about Nidu the Shaman’s shirangju, perhaps unwittingly. But if he suddenly came out, she’d utter a frightened ‘Oh!’ and turn to run away. Only a woman whose heart has been conquered by a man fears the very sight of his shadow.
Tamara painstakingly crafted two items for Nidu the Shaman: roe-deerskin beri – gloves – and a kabtuk, a tobacco pouch.
Back then we wore mittens that were easy to make. But what Tamara crafted for Nidu the Shaman were five-fingered gloves of short-furred roe-deerskin. She spent half a month executing the needlework, embroidering three circles at the wrist: one contained fire, one water, and one clouds. I still recall the one in the middle was fire, while water was above and the clouds below.
When she finished, she asked me what I thought of the patterns. Since I knew she was making them for Nidu the Shaman, I ridiculed her: ‘Clouds and water together makes sense, but where on earth can you find water and fire together?’ My words turned Tamara’s face pale, and she said ‘Ow!’, as if she’d been pricked with a needle.
So when she next handcrafted a kabtuk, she didn’t apply any pattern. The pouch was made from the skins of a pair of roe-deer legs in the shape of a calabash. She sewed trimming onto the opening and seams, and a sac containing a flint dangled from it.
At first Tamara tied one of Father’s flints to the kabtuk, but when Luni and I discovered this, we stole it, so in the end the tobacco pouch Tamara gave to Nidu the Shaman had no flint.
It’s strange to say, but that winter when Nidu the Shaman put on those roe-deerskin gloves, his fingers became very nimble and he shot two animals that are
tough kills, a fox and a lynx. Their pelts are the most valuable and this made him unspeakably happy. He treated that tobacco pouch like a talisman and always hung it from the right side of his waist.
More than once I told Yveline that I hoped Nidu the Shaman and Tamara wouldn’t end up together in the same shirangju. But Yveline always replied that that would be impossible, because they could not live together. ‘Nidu the Shaman is Linke’s elder brother. According to our clan’s customs, if your elder brother dies, you can take his widow as your wife. But an elder brother cannot marry the widow of his younger brother.’
Yveline gave me an example: if Nidu the Shaman died and Linke were still alive, then Linke could marry Egdi’ama’s widow.
‘But Egdi’ama doesn’t have a woman, so if Ama wanted to marry the woman his brother left behind, it would have to be a Malu in the deerskin pouch! But how could Ama father a child with a Spirit?’
It turned out that like me, the matter of Nidu the Shaman and Tamara had also troubled Yveline, but my words made her burst out laughing. She rubbed her crooked nose, chortled ‘Aiyo, aiyo!’ and called out my name repeatedly, as if trying to retrieve my soul. ‘You’re old enough to get married but you still talk like a child!’
Yveline didn’t usually talk about Linke, but when Tamara and Nidu the Shaman began to gaze at each other, she began to mention Father when everyone was sitting together discussing affairs. How Linke learned to shoot a bow when just five, how Linke could make snowshoes when just nine, how Linke was faster than a squirrel, or how he caught a hare on foot when he was ten.
Then she’d turn towards Mother and say: ‘Tamara, if you’d seen Linke when he was young, you would have wanted to grow up as quickly as possible so you could marry sooner!’ Mother would cast a doleful glance at Nidu the Shaman, and he’d lower his head as if he’d done something wrong.
Gradually Nidu the Shaman and Tamara stopped sitting together, for they sensed everyone’s hostility towards their affection. From then onwards, each time Tamara opened up the bird-feather skirt, she’d break out in waves of odd laughter.
