The Last Quarter of the Moon

by Chi Zijian

  If you asked me how many soul-stirring moments have there been in my life, I’d tell you that the sight of Dashi proposing to newly widowed Zefirina on his knees, right there at the site of the fire-burial, that is my most unforgettable moment. At that instant, meek Dashi was the very incarnation of a mighty warrior.

  All present were stunned except the fire’s flames. The longer they burned the more vigorous they grew, and a strange odour penetrated our noses. Everyone realised that was the smell of Jindele’s flesh being consumed by fire.

  Maria stared blankly ahead a good while, and then suddenly came to herself. ‘Dashi! Dashi!’ she shouted, hugging her son. ‘You’re drunk. Wake up! Zefirina is much older than you, and she has a crooked mouth. She’s a widow now. Are you out of your mind? Don’t be a fool!’

  Dashi said nothing and pushed Maria away. Still kneeling before Zefirina, he looked tenderly at her like a swallow watching over its nest.

  As for Zefirina, she was shocked by the sudden twist of happy fate that Dashi’s proposal represented. She stopped wailing, and looked at Dashi like a parched blade of grass beholding long-awaited rain, bursting with yearning and gratitude.

  Just when everyone had fallen silent, Nihau began a Spirit Song. Accompanying her was the pipa-pipa crackling of the fire.

  Fear not the black night

  You whose soul has gone far away.

  For here burns a fire

  To illuminate your pathway.

  Pine not for those close to you

  You whose soul has gone far away.

  Upon your arrival there shall sing

  The moon, stars, clouds and Milky Way.

  The light of the fire grew faint and died. The wizened tree and Jindele were reduced to ashes, and the night turned its head and returned. We made our way back to the camp. The bonfire for the marriage ceremony was a wilted blossom, and an air of sadness wafted through the campground.

  Yveline wept, Maria wept, and I didn’t know whom to console. Dashi was walking next to me and I quietly asked him: ‘Will you really marry Zefirina?’

  ‘I intend to do what I said.’

  ‘Do you really love Zefirina?’

  ‘Jindele didn’t want her but she has married into our urireng, so she’s one of us now. She’s a widow, and a crooked-mouthed one at that. If I don’t marry her, who will? I can’t bear to see her tears. She’s so pitiful.’

  Dashi’s words made my eyes moist too, but he couldn’t see my tears. There was no moon that evening, and the stars were dim. In a night as dark as that, you become the night’s darkness.

  Our shirangju was closest to Jindele’s, and the night he died wave after wave of Yveline’s cries radiated from there. At first I thought that Kunde blamed Yveline for Jindele’s death and was teaching her a lesson. I threw a coat over my shoulder and prepared to dissuade him. But as I approached, I heard Yveline shouting: ‘Kunde, I don’t want to. It hurts! It hurts! I don’t want to!’

  Kunde said nothing, but I could hear his heavy, hurried breathing and a wind-sound like someone being lashed. It seemed as if he were firing bullets – Da! Da! Da! – at Yveline’s body. I understood what means Kunde was using to chastise Yveline.

  I returned to my shirangju and found Viktor, who had been sleeping, now awake and adding kindling to the fire. ‘Eni,’ he said, ‘it seems like there are wolves howling. We’d better make the fire fiercer to scare them away. Otherwise, if the wolves come in and snatch Andaur, what’ll we do?’

  The next morning, Ivan told everyone to pack their things and prepare to transfer to our autumn campsite. I understood. He wanted to leave this campsite that had broken our hearts as soon as possible.

  In just one night, Yveline had visibly lost weight. The rims of her eyes were red and puffy, and she walked with a bit of a limp. We all looked at her sympathetically except Maria who cast a hateful gaze at her. This was understandable, for deep in her heart, she blamed Yveline. If she hadn’t forced Jindele to take a maiden he didn’t love as his wife, Jindele wouldn’t have died; if Jindele hadn’t died, Dashi wouldn’t have pitied Zefirina and the idea of marrying her wouldn’t have entered his head. Trying to get Maria to accept Zefirina was like forcing her to cross a frozen river barefoot.

  ‘If you really want to marry Zefirina, you must wait for her to complete three years of mourning for Jindele,’ Maria said to Dashi.

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘Zefirina still belongs to Yveline’s family. During these three years, she’ll have to live with them.’

  Yveline and Kunde didn’t say anything, but they looked Zefirina up and down.

  ‘I’ll return to my urireng to live,’ Zefirina said to Dashi. ‘If you’re still willing to marry me in three years, come and find me. But if you don’t come, I won’t blame you.’

  ‘I’ll come!’ said Dashi.

  While we relocated to the autumn campsite, Dashi escorted Zefirina back to her urireng. They rode together on one horse.

  Although Ivan had told Dashi the direction in which we were relocating, Luni was still worried, and so as we went along he hacked markers with an axe. At the outset Maria was unconcerned, but towards dusk, when the mountain valleys and rivers were bathing in the golden light of the setting sun, Maria lost control and began to cry.

  Just then Luni was chopping a marker on a big tree, and Maria charged over and snatched the axe. ‘I don’t want Dashi to find us!’ she shouted. ‘Let him go where he likes. Just don’t make me see him again!’

  Her voice reverberated in the mountains and valleys. The echoes were so melodious that they didn’t seem to have been uttered by Maria. Those penetrating sounds must have softened as they collided with the breeze, the clouds and the trees.

  ***

  In the autumn of that year, I began to do rock paintings on cliffs by the river.

  If it weren’t for Ivan’s iron-forging, and for the fact that – like the iron itself – the soil where iron is forged is also smelted, I wouldn’t have hit upon the idea of using that soil as a pigment for paint.

  And if I hadn’t made those rock paintings, Irina, who loved to accompany me when she was young, wouldn’t have learned how to paint. Then her youthful silhouette wouldn’t have floated down the Bistaré so early in her life.

  But I don’t feel there was any harm in those paintings. They helped me express my yearnings and dreams.

  Nowadays you all know about the rock paintings on the banks of the Onion River, a tributary of the Bistaré. You can see a patch of blood-red paintings on the weathered rocks of the cliffs overlooking the river. Our ancestors used the dark red soil there to sketch reindeer, kandahang, hunters, hounds and Spirit Drums.

  When I was doing my rock paintings, those at Onion River had not yet been discovered, even though they were there long before me.

  I left behind many rock paintings on the Right Bank of the Argun. But except for Irina, no one else knew where they were or what I painted. Since Irina is gone now, I am the only person who knows about those paintings. All traces have probably vanished, washed away by dust and rain. Those outlines are like petals that have fallen to the ground in the mountain valleys.

  I took the soil left after Ivan forged his iron, rubbed it into strips, placed them inside my shirangju and waited for them to dry. Then I used them as drawing sticks.

  The first time I did a rock painting was by the Imaqi River. It was a blue rock, so as soon as the reddish-brown lines showed upon it, it was like evening rays of sunlight against a faint sky. I’d never have imagined that the first form I painted would be a man’s figure. His head resembled Linke’s, and his arms and legs those of Nidu the Shaman, but his broad chest was unquestionably Lajide’s. At that instant, those three departed loved ones combined to assume the aspect of a perfect man.

  Then I painted eight reindeer around the man: one each to the east, west, south and north, and then one each to the south-east, north-east, south-west and north-west. They were like eight stars encircling the man.

&n
bsp; Ever since Lajide left me, my heart no longer contained the tenderness that nourished it. Yet when I finished my painting, once again my heart was flooded with the warm waters of desire, as if those pigments had seeped into my anaemic heart, giving it vitality and strength. A heart like that is surely a bud that will blossom again.

  That autumn Nihau bore her second child, a daughter. She named her Juktakan, which means ‘little lily’.

  Late at night you could still occasionally hear Kunde lashing Yveline. Yveline always shouted the same words: ‘Kunde, I don’t want to. It hurts!’ Yveline began to stoop, while Kunde’s back straightened.

  One time when he was drunk he confided to Hase: ‘Yveline must give birth to another Jindele for me. She has to come up with another child to replace the one she went and lost!’

  When the winter hunt began, the men were again summoned to the Kwantung Army Garrison for training. Yveline gnashed her teeth. ‘Let the Japanese keep them in the army for good and send them far away!’

  But Kunde and the others returned. The one who didn’t was Ivan.

  Dashi told us that one day when the regiment was marching Kunde kept making mistakes. When ordered to turn east, he turned west, and repeatedly fell out of formation. Suzuki was furious. He told Kunde to stand in the middle of the parade ground and unleashed a German shepherd on him. In seconds flat the dog charged over, knocked Kunde down, and gashed his face and arms with its paws.

  At first, like everyone, Ivan was dumbstruck, but then the sound of Suzuki’s cackling ignited his anger. Ivan raced over, grabbed the dog’s tail, twisted it tightly around his hand like a piece of rope, lifted the dog in the air and swung it around in circles.

  All you could hear was the German shepherd’s pathetic yelping, and its tail was soon severed from its body.

  The tail-less dog went crazy and lunged ferociously at Ivan who deftly caught it and stepped on it savagely. Just a few kicks and the dog was motionless, for Ivan’s feet, like his hands, were unmatched in their strength.

  Suzuki was dumbfounded, beads of sweat gathering on his forehead. He had watched, dazed, as Ivan took a perfectly healthy German shepherd and turned it into a dead rat in the twinkle of an eye.

  But when Ivan flung the dog’s tail against his chest, Suzuki finally reacted. He shouted for two soldiers who dragged Ivan away and locked him in a cell on the western side of the camp.

  That night the sound of a leather whip carried out from the cell, but no one heard Ivan cry. He must have endured the pain and refused to utter the faintest groan.

  That very night Ivan took flight. The door to the cell was firmly locked and there were bars on the window, but those iron-forging hands of Ivan snapped them. Like a bird freed from its cage, he easily distanced himself from the Kwantung Army Garrison. Two Japanese soldiers took their German shepherds into the mountains in pursuit, but they found no trace of him.

  While Dashi recounted Ivan’s misadventure, Kunde crouched next to the fireplace, ashamed. Yveline cast a glance at her husband, and then spat at him with contempt. ‘You can’t even stand up to one of those dogs the Japanese have,’ she said. ‘All you’ve got is a knack for standing up to women. What kind of a man does that make you?’

  Kunde kept his head down and put up no argument. All you could hear was the fire fizzing as his tears fell on it.

  We no longer heard Yveline’s pained cries at night in the camp. No doubt that pain had transferred to Kunde’s body. Yveline’s back became less stooped, and she spoke loudly and confidently once more. Like a branch under the weight of heavy snow, Kunde’s back bent again.

  ***

  With Ivan gone, we selected Luni as Headman.

  That winter we killed three bears. When Nihau performed the wind-burial for a bear, she always liked to sing a song of veneration. Henceforth this song was passed down among our clansmen:

  O Bear Grandmother

  You have fallen down.

  Sleep sweetly!

  Feasting on your flesh

  Are those black, black ravens.

  Reverently we place your eyes in the trees

  As if hanging Spirit Lamps!

  Not long after Dashi returned to the urireng, he went off on his horse to see Zefirina. Maria spent the whole day sighing. Yveline knew perfectly well the source of Maria’s heartache, but she insisted on goading her.

  ‘Don’t worry about Dashi’s marriage with Zefirina,’ Yveline said to Maria. ‘I’ll help you prepare her wedding gown.’

  The normally docile Maria couldn’t hold back her anger. ‘If he really does wed that crooked-mouthed maiden, I’ll thank you not to make the gown. How could anyone who wears your gown meet with good fortune?’

  Yveline laughed coldly and corrected Maria. ‘You’re wrong. It’s not a crooked-mouth maiden Dashi is marrying – it’s a crooked-mouthed widow!’

  Beside herself with rage, Maria charged over to Yveline and twisted her nose, swearing that she was a reincarnated wolf.

  Yveline kept right on smiling coldly. ‘Fine, fine. I should thank you for twisting my nose, you might even set it straight!’ Maria let go and turned away, sobbing. From that day forward this pair of confidantes were utter strangers.

  Another spring arrived, spring in the tenth year of the reign of the Kangde Emperor. That year we delivered twenty fawns next to a crystal-clear mountain stream. Usually a doe gives birth to just one fawn, but that year four does bore twins, and all the fawns were so good and healthy that it brought smiles to our faces.

  That nameless stream flowed in a dark-green valley, and we named it Rolinsky Ravine in memory of the Russian anda who had been so friendly. Its waters were refreshing and sweet. Not only did the reindeer love to drink from it, so did we. From then on, even if we didn’t go to Rolinsky Ravine each fawning season, we brought it up fondly in conversation like a distant loved one.

  Viktor, my first son, had become a big boy. He learned archery from Luni, and could easily bring down a hazel grouse that had just landed on a treetop. Luni firmly believed that our urireng had reared another fine hunter.

  My second son Andaur grew tall too and could play with Grigori. Even though Andaur was fatter than Grigori and a head taller, Grigori bullied him. Grigori was very naughty. He used to play and play with Andaur, and then out of the blue he would knock him down with a punch, expecting him to cry.

  But after he fell to the ground Andaur didn’t cry, he just looked up at the sky and reported to Grigori how many white clouds were up there. Grigori got so angry that he stepped on him for good measure, but Andaur still didn’t cry, he just chuckled. By this time Grigori was so angry that he himself began crying.

  Andaur got up. ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘I knocked you down. Why didn’t you cry?’ said Grigori. ‘Then I stamped on you. Why didn’t you cry?’

  ‘You knocked me down so I can see the clouds, and that’s a good thing,’ said Andaur. ‘What’s there to cry about? I itched all over and you stepped on me. Weren’t you just trying to make me laugh?’

  Since his childhood people have said Andaur was feeble-minded, but I adore him. My Andaur resembles his father, Lajide, a lot.

  Andaur and Grigori adored the young reindeer. When the antler-cutting season arrived the fawns could already run about on their own and eat grass. We feared that wolves would attack fawns that separated from the herd, so we tied the slow ones to trees back in the camp. Andaur and Grigori liked to untie them and lead them down to Rolinsky Ravine. Before they went they stuffed their pockets with salt. They put the salt on their palms to get the fawns to lick it.

  One day I went to Rolinsky Ravine to wash clothes and discovered Andaur crying there.

  ‘Andaur said since fawns like to eat salt and drink water too, wouldn’t it be better to sprinkle the salt in the stream and let them drink it like that?’ Grigori.

  Grigori told him that once it was in the water, the salt would flow downstream with the current. But Andaur didn’t believe him. He sprinkled all the s
alt in his pockets into the water and watched the twinkling white droplets dissolve. Then he put his head down to the surface of the stream and stuck out his tongue. But when he couldn’t taste the salt, he began to howl. ‘The water is a cheat!’ he cursed.

  From then on Andaur refused to eat fish because he was sure that they contained evil spirits. Once you swallowed them, they’d bite your stomach and leave it filled with holes like a fishnet.

  That summer the ‘Yellow Sickness’ spread in the mountains. The Japanese cancelled training at the Kwantung Army Garrison and didn’t force the hunters to leave the mountains. The epidemic won the hunters their freedom for a while.

  The footprint of the Yellow Sickness extended into three or four urireng. The skin and eyeballs of the sick turned as yellow as frostbitten leaves. They couldn’t eat or drink anything, their bellies swelled up like a drum, and they couldn’t walk. Luni heard tell that in those urireng infected by the Yellow Sickness, no one took the reindeer out to graze, and their losses were great. The injections administered by the Japanese doctors stationed in those urireng didn’t result in any improvement, and many people had already died.

  No one in our urireng had caught the epidemic, so Luni would not allow anyone to leave the mountains. He wouldn’t even permit anyone to go to neighbouring urireng for fear they’d bring back the disease.

  During the period when the Yellow Sickness danced in the wind like locusts, Maria was excited. She would have been only too pleased for the epidemic to reach Zefirina’s urireng. If the Spirits carried away the crooked-mouthed maiden, then Maria would have good reason to seek another match for Dashi.

  But Dashi was genuinely worried for Zefirina. More than once he announced to Luni that he was going to ride over and visit Zefirina, but Luni wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘As the Headman, I can’t risk your bringing back the Yellow Sickness,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll wait until it’s over and then return,’ said Dashi.