by Chi Zijian
When we move camp, we store temporarily unused or extra items there, like clothing, hides and foodstuffs to retrieve as needed. Since this cache is way above the forest floor, wild animals can’t destroy it. But if you have a kolbo, you have to make a ladder too, because it’s as high off the ground as the height of a good two people combined. The ladder is generally placed flat on the ground in the woods nearby.
In earlier times, our kolbo were often raided by Siberian weasels and lynx that clambered up the pillars to pilfer food. Later, we stripped the bark from the trunks, and once they were smooth they weren’t easy to climb.
Still later, we wrapped each pillar with a thin sheet of iron and cut it so that jagged saw-tooth edges protruded. Even nimble thieves weren’t willing to injure their claws in the ascent. Except for bears that were able to move the ladder to reach the kolbo, other animals could only lick their lips and gaze longingly at that rich cache suspended in the air.
I found a ladder under a birch tree near the kolbo, stood it on end and climbed up.
Even in my earliest memories, I recall the grown-ups reciting two proverbs to us:
When you leave home you don’t take your house, and a traveller doesn’t lug his cauldron on his back.
Guests only enter houses with a warm hearth, and birds only alight upon trees with branches.
So we never locked our kolbo. Even if the kolbo you happen upon doesn’t belong to your clan, if you urgently need something, you’re free to take it. Of course, having removed something, you should return one later. But even if you don’t, no one complains.
There weren’t many things in the kolbo, just a few disused cooking utensils and bedding, and no valuable pelts. But there was a birch-bark basket of badly needed roe-deer jerky and two tins of snow-white bear fat. Recalling that a bear had just spared my life, I respectfully declined to eat it.
I chewed the dried strips of venison at first, but perhaps because of the rain, they weren’t very crisp and chewing was laborious. I began by eating slowly, but as I ate my hunger intensified and eventually I was wolfing down huge mouthfuls.
I knew I was saved. I not only had food, I also had a place where I could temporarily rest and shelter from the wind and rain. Huddled over, I sat there chewing on jerky and feeling like I was the most fortunate woman on the face of the earth. After I had finished eating I decided to nap first and then search for a campsite. I guessed that there must be people not far from the kolbo.
The sun had descended towards the mountains, and between the cracks in the kolbo’s pinewood poles I could still feel the cosy warmth of its afterglow. With a full stomach, I felt even drowsier. I lay down, bent my legs and prepared to sleep.
I heard a sudden crunch of footsteps, followed by a thud – the ladder hitting the ground. I reckoned that the clever bear had followed me all the way and intended to keep me cooped up in this kolbo for ever.
I stuck my head out for a look. But it wasn’t a bear. It was a man, and he was pointing his rifle at me and glaring fiercely!
That ‘he’ was Lajide, and this kolbo belonged to his urireng. He was passing by, spied the ladder, and hearing sounds coming from up above, thought it was a bear ransacking the kolbo. He dislodged the ladder to cut off its escape route, and was just about to kill it with a single bullet.
Who’d have imagined that when I popped my head out, my breasts would pop out for a look too? Lajide said his first sight of me left him breathless. My hair was dishevelled, and my cheeks and upper body had not only been scratched raw by branches, my skin was also swollen from insect bites.
But it was my eyes that touched him. He said they were limpid and moist. Just one glance won his heart.
Lajide could tell that I was in this pitiful state because I’d lost my way in the mountains. He didn’t ask me anything, but put the ladder up again and motioned for me to come down.
Once on the ground, I collapsed weakly into his embrace. I had long forgotten that I was naked above the waist. Lajide said that when my soft, warm breasts buried themselves in his chest, a feverish wave surged through his body. Since her breasts have found their way into my embrace, he said to himself, I can’t let them ever again be embraced by another.
It was then and there – at sunset, the most beautiful instant of the day – that the idea of marrying me germinated in his heart.
***
Luni and hase chased Nadezhda, Jilande and Nora right to the Argun, but they didn’t bring them back, for they had disappeared without a trace. I wonder if they found a birch-bark canoe and made it to the Left Bank, or were they carried away by the swirling waters while trying to swim across? After they left us, whenever we went to the Argun everyone was silent as if mourning lost relatives.
On their way back, Luni and Hase ran into Kunde and Yveline who were searching for me. They thought I must be dead since I’d lost my way for three days. But on the fourth day I returned not only safe and sound, but with a man too.
Lajide’s urireng was the biggest in their clan with some thirty-odd members, and his extended family numbered sixteen mouths. Besides his father, three elder brothers, two younger sisters and a younger brother, his elder brothers had each taken a wife and already had their own children.
The year we married, Vladimir, his youngest brother, was just three. Lajide told me his mother loved raising children, but she had died at fifty due to Vladimir’s difficult birth. After a glance at her wailing newborn, she died smiling. When I met Lajide, he had just completed the third year of mourning for his mother, or else our marriage would have been delayed.
I told Lajide I couldn’t leave our urireng because my mother had lost her senses and needed someone to care for her.
‘Then I’ll join your urireng,’ Lajide replied. ‘I have many brothers who will stay with my father anyhow.’
Lajide’s father was a kind old man. He not only agreed that his son could ru zhui – marry into the wife’s urireng – but on our wedding day he led an entourage to formally deliver Lajide to us. And he brought twenty head of reindeer as a marriage gift.
Yveline made my marriage gown in a rush. Ivan gave me the pink batik dyed by Nora as a present, and I asked Yveline to use it to trim my gown. The round collar of the long blue gown, the horse-hoof cuffs and waist – all were edged with that pink fabric. I wore that gown twice as a bride.
I still have it but I can’t wear it any more. I’m old and wizened, and the gown is too big for me now. The colours look old too, particularly the pink that aged faster than the blue. It is so faded that you simply cannot imagine its original lustre and enchanting aura.
Our marriage ceremony was a simple affair, just a gathering of two urireng taking a meal around a bonfire. The gathering lacked a festive ambience. Ivan got drunk and vomited his food and drink on the bonfire, and this left Yveline frowning. I knew she interpreted it as an inauspicious omen. Tamara and Nidu the Shaman appeared indifferent, and neither offered a blessing.
But I felt incomparably happy. That evening when Lajide and I embraced tightly in our newly constructed shirangju and we made our very own vibrant wind-sounds, I felt like the luckiest woman under the sky. I recall that a full silver moon was visible from the tip of our shirangju.
I buried my head in Lajide’s chest and told him I had never felt so warm. ‘I’ll make sure this warmth accompanies you for ever,’ he said.
He kissed my breasts, dubbing one his Sun and the other his Moon. He said they would bring him eternal brightness. That night he uttered the word ‘eternal’ many times, and that sounds like an oath, but oaths are rarely for ever.
***
Lajide liked to hunt, and in order to spend more time together I frequently went with him. Generally, it’s taboo for a woman to accompany a hunter, especially during her moon period, as it is thought to bring bad luck. But it wasn’t taboo for Lajide, and provided he was hunting near the camp, he would leave the others to take me along.
We crouched together by salt licks to await wild deer,
caught otter in their dens amongst shrubs, and shot lynx dead in pine groves. But when we encountered dormant black bears, I always advised Lajide to let them be.
Many people say the most cunning animal in the forest is the fox, but I reckon it’s the mountain cat. The lynx is shaped very much like a cat but much bigger. Its entire body is brownish-yellow with grey spots. It has a very short frame and tail, slender limbs, and two long tufts of fur extend from its ears.
Lynx are terrific tree-climbers and can reach a treetop in the blink of an eye. They prey upon hares, squirrels, pheasants and roe-deer. To launch an attack on these animals, the lynx typically uses a tree as a stronghold. Hidden in the tree, it leaps down on its quarry, severs the throat, sucks the blood and then uses its claws to rip open the skin and enjoy the flesh in a leisurely fashion.
I find their bloodsucking cruel, that’s why I despise lynx. But they’re not just cruel, they’re cunning too. If suddenly threatened by a black bear or a wild boar, the lynx quickly darts up a tree. And if the bear or boar rushes to the bottom of the tree, the lynx will unleash a stream of urine on its foe below. Stinking of piss, the animal is no longer in the mood to mess with the lynx, and slinks away, utterly defeated. So I’ve always felt that, like a human hunter, the lynx has bullets – its pee.
In winter, lynx like to stow their prey to allay their hunger when they haven’t made a recent kill. This creature always has something up its sleeve.
When Lajide hunted lynx, he rarely employed a rifle and bullets. He used the ancient bow and arrow. Just when a lynx was climbing a tree, Lajide, who lay in wait in the forest, shot his arrow, and virtually every time the arrow would pierce the animal’s throat, throwing it off balance and bringing it to the ground with a somersault.
One time we discovered a lynx climbing a tree in pursuit of a pheasant. Lajide, quick of eye and deft of hand, pulled back his bow and released his arrow. It was truly ‘One arrow, Two eagles’ – the arrow pierced both the lynx and the pheasant!
I believe that it was because of water dogs that I was able to become pregnant with Viktor, my first child. From then on, I never hunted them again.
Otters love to eat fresh fish, so their lairs are always connected to a waterway. If you discover a hole near a river and there are fish bones scattered next to it, the chances are you’ll find a water dog there.
These are very leisurely creatures. In the daytime they swim in the river and eat small fish, and at night they return to their lair to rest. Typically I located the lair, and it was Lajide who captured and killed them.
It was the third spring after I married Lajide that we discovered four pups whose eyelids were still closed. Lajide said that water dogs open their eyes very slowly, about a month after birth. We knew their mother must be nearby so we didn’t touch the pups.
At dusk an adult water dog swam back from the river to the lair, but when its shiny head surfaced and Lajide was about to shoot it, I stopped him. ‘These four pups haven’t ever seen their mother,’ I thought to myself, and if the first thing they see upon opening their eyes is mountains, the river and hunters pursuing them, they’ll be heartbroken.’
We let them go. Not long after, following three childless years, there were signs of a new life in my belly. This changed the way that Yveline looked at Lajide and me. During the first two years, Yveline noticed my stomach was always shrunken, and she often ridiculed us.
‘Lajide has the air of a tiger,’ she would say ‘but deep in his bones he’s as soft as a squirrel. Otherwise, why doesn’t his woman become pregnant?’
She even reproached me for hunting with Lajide: ‘How can a woman who hunts have a child?’
One night she couldn’t sleep and wandered about the camp. Suddenly she heard my groaning and Lajide’s huffing coming from our shirangju. The next day she pursed her lips, tweaked her nose to one side and asked me: ‘You two spend so much energy doing that sort of thing. How come no child comes of it?’ Her words made my cheeks blaze like coals in a fire.
After I became pregnant, I did stop hunting with Lajide.
Both in looks and temperament, Lajide closely resembled my father. Though lean, his shoulders were broad, his arms long, and his frame rugged. Unlike other men’s sparse eyebrows, his were very dense. This made it seem as if his eyes were veiled in a lush, dark forest, which gave him an air of serenity.
Like Linke, he liked to play jokes. In the summer, he stuffed ladybirds down my back. In the winter, he furtively grabbed fistfuls of snow and stuck them down my neck, chilling me so badly that I’d jump up. When I screamed ‘Aiyo!’ he broke out in laughter. I could stand the ladybirds, but snow was another matter. Whenever it snowed and I noticed Lajide coming into the shirangju with his hand closed in a fist, I giggled and rushed to take cover.
‘If you say something nice,’ he cajoled, ‘I’ll spare you.’ Since I hated the cold, I mouthed all sorts of sickly sweet things to melt the snow in Lajide’s hand.
Mother’s marriage gift to me was the live cinders of a fire, the very fire that I am watching over now. This flame is the one that Naajil’aya – my mother’s father – gave her when she was joined in marriage with Linke. She never permitted it to go out. Even after she went mad, when we moved camp she never forgot to bring the fire source with her. When she saw me put on the marriage gown sewed by Yveline and realised that I was going to be a bride, she touched my cheeks.
‘You’re going to have a husband of your own. Let Eni give you a fire.’
From the fire given her by Naajil’aya, Mother gave me a burning coal, and I embraced her and wept. I suddenly felt how pathetic and lonely she was! Perhaps we had been wrong to forbid the affection between her and Nidu the Shaman. Although we were abiding by our clan’s rule, in reality weren’t we extinguishing the flame in her heart? We rendered her heart completely cold, so even now when she watched over the fire her days were glacial.
Gazing at this flame that is even older than I, I see Mother’s silhouette.
Perhaps it was because Lajide so resembled Father that my mother loved to watch him – watch him eat, watch him drink tea, watch him polish his rifle, watch him play jokes on me. She seemed lost in reverie as she watched, contented. But after my belly grew big, she didn’t like to watch him any more and even displayed a certain loathing towards him. Yveline said that Tamara saw Lajide as Linke’s phantom. When she discovered that Lajide had got me pregnant, she felt Linke had been unfaithful to her, so she began to hate him.
It was shortly before Viktor’s birth that I learned of the bad blood between Father and Nidu the Shaman.
Lajide had built a separate delivery shed for me. We call it a yataju, and males are not allowed to enter. It’s also taboo for women to help deliver a baby, because it is said this may cause the early death of her husband. But when the labour pains hurt so badly that I began howling like a wild beast, Yveline came inside.
To pacify me, Yveline recounted two legends. She thought those wonderful tales would ease my pain, but they did just the opposite. ‘Those damn stories are a pack of lies!’ I yelled. The pain was torturing me so badly that I had lost my wits.
‘I’ll tell you a true story,’ Yveline said reluctantly. ‘But this is no tall tale, so don’t you dare scream again!’
As soon as Yveline began her narration, I stopped my howling, because it was a story about two men and a woman, and Linke, Tamara and Nidu the Shaman were the protagonists. I was enthralled.
It was a painful story, but it made me forget my own pain. When I had heard it all, Viktor was already safely born and his cry marked a full stop to the tale.
One summer, when my grandfather was still alive, he led his clansmen towards a new campsite. When they came to the banks of the Yuksagan River, they encountered members of another clan also on the move. The two clans halted and began revelries that lasted three days and three nights. All the hunters brought the game they had killed and surrounded the bonfire, drinking and eating, singing and dancing.
It
was there that Linke and Nidu the Shaman came to know Tamara. Yveline said Tamara loved to dance more than any other maiden in her clan, and clad in a long grey skirt, she danced from dusk to deep night, and then from deep night to dawn. She looked especially fetching as she danced and skipped wildly, and both Linke and Nidu the Shaman fell for her.
At almost exactly the same moment they told Grandfather that they liked that girl named Tamara, and wanted her hand in marriage. This was awkward for Grandfather. He hadn’t imagined that his two sons would fall in love with the same maiden.
Grandfather quietly raised the matter with Tamara’s father, intending that he ask his daughter which one she preferred. If she wasn’t keen on either, the matter could be easily resolved.
But the dance-loving maiden unexpectedly told her father that both of these fellows pleased her: the stout one appeared pleasant and faithful, while the thin one looked clever and cheerful. Either would do.
This put both Grandfather and Tamara’s father in a difficult position, but not Tamara. She had enticed the very souls of Linke and Nidu the Shaman, but she herself remained calm. She continued to dance her dance and even smiled sweetly at others at the end of each tune.
Grandfather eventually came up with a solution. He summoned Linke and Nidu the Shaman. ‘You are both my beloved sons. Since you have fallen in love with the same maiden, and she has said that either of you may be her groom, one of you must yield.’
Grandfather first asked Nidu the Shaman: ‘Are you willing for Tamara to pair with Linke?’
Nidu the Shaman shook his head. ‘Unless a thunderbolt transforms into a rope, ties itself around Tamara and places her before Linke, I will never agree.’
Then Grandfather asked Linke: ‘Are you willing to let Tamara be taken in marriage by your elder brother?’
