by Chi Zijian
But in the end Nihau draped herself in the Spirit Robe that was certainly heavier than a mountain. She donned the Spirit Headdress that was certainly woven with thorns, for her head was covered with scars. And the Spirit Drum that she brandished was certainly forged of red-hot iron, for it scalded Nihau’s hand. While Puffball was carried into the shirangju, his breath as airy as gossamer, and Nihau began her dance, Luni was already on his way to find Juktakan.
Typically, the Spirit Dance cannot be performed before the sky has turned dark, so it would be very difficult for the Spirits to descend. Although it was almost dusk, the summer sky was still bright. To fabricate darkness, Nihau had animal hides normally for winter use placed over the shirangju’s thin birch-bark covering to keep light out. The entrance that faced the east was tightly bound to hinder anyone’s entry or departure, and the fire in the hearth was extinguished. In this way, the only natural light was the slender beam streaming down from the very top of the shirangju.
Valodya and I remained inside. His hands were soiled with fresh reindeer blood. When Nihau decided to save Puffball, Valodya had quickly seized a fawn that remained in the camp and sacrificed it to the Malu.
Once Nihau began her Spirit Dance, she was no longer herself. Her air of vulnerability disappeared, and she looked full of passion. When the drum began to sound, my heart beat along with it. At first we could also hear Puffball groaning, but eventually the drum drowned him out. When Nihau rotated to the centre of the shirangju, that beam of natural light illuminated her. She became a colourful candle, and that ray of skylight was the spark that ignited her.
After Nihau had danced for about two hours, a gale from the netherworld suddenly began to swirl inside the shirangju. It moaned like the midwinter northern wind. The light streaming down from the top of the shirangju was no longer white, but dim yellow, as the sun had dropped behind the mountains.
At the beginning that strange wind floated everywhere, but then its moaning massed in one place: around Puffball’s head. I had a premonition that this wind would blow the bear bone out. Sure enough, when Nihau put down the Spirit Drum and stopped dancing, Puffball suddenly sat up, yelled ‘Aaagh!’ and coughed up the bone.
The blood-tainted bear bone landed right in the centre of the shirangju. It looked like a rose cast down from the sky.
Nihau stood with her head drooping while Puffball whimpered. Nihau was silent for a moment, and then she began to intone a Spirit Song. But she wasn’t singing for Puffball who was back from the dead, she was singing for her prematurely wilted lily – Juktakan.
The sun to slumber has gone
And there is no light in the forest.
The stars have not yet emerged
And trees murmur in the wind.
O, my lily
Autumn is not yet upon us
Countless summer days await
Why scatter your petals now?
You’ve fallen
And the sun has descended too.
But still your fragrance wafts
And the moon will yet rise!
When Nihau had finished her Spirit Song and we followed her out of the shirangju, we saw Luni with Juktakan in his arms. Behind was Lyusya, weeping.
While Lyusya was picking blueberries she kept Juktakan with her. But later she discovered a thick patch of the fruit and forgot herself. Just when it was that Juktakan wandered away, Lyusya didn’t really know.
Eventually Juktakan’s plaintive cries interrupted Lyusya’s fruit picking. She followed the sound and discovered Juktakan on the forest floor. She had run smack into a big wasps’ nest hanging from a birch branch, and wasp stings had already rendered her face unrecognisable. Beyond the birch stood an enchanting cluster of red and white lilies in full bloom. Juktakan must have been galloping towards them.
Wasps in the forest are bigger than your typical honeybee, and their tail ends feature a poisonous sting. Undisturbed, they amuse themselves flying in and out of their nest and collecting nectar; but if by chance you damage their nest, they will swarm and exact revenge. It never occurred to Juktakan that a tiger lay between her and those pristine red lilies. The wasps’ nest bumped Juktakan right up into the Heavens.
By the time Luni found them, Lyusya was on her way back, struggling to carry Juktakan in her arms. The venom had already begun to take effect throughout Juktakan’s body and she was experiencing wave after wave of shivers.
When Luni pulled her close, Juktakan smiled faintly, called out ‘Ama’ weakly, and shut her eyes for good.
That night grief shrouded the camp. Nihau pulled the poisonous stings from Juktakan’s face, washed her wounds and changed her into pink clothes. Luni picked a bouquet of those eye-catching red and white lilies near the wasps’ nest, and placed them in her crossed arms. Only then did he put her inside the white cloth bag.
After Nihau and Luni each placed a final kiss on Juktakan’s forehead, Valodya and I lifted that white cloth bag. As we walked towards a sunny slope, Juktakan seemed as light as a bundle of clouds in our hands.
The moon was still in the sky when we set out, but it was raining upon our return. ‘Tell Nihau not to name her child after a flower in the future,’ Valodya said. ‘How can a flower have a long life here on the earth? If she weren’t named Juktakan, perhaps the wasps wouldn’t have stung her!’
My heart filled with loathing. If it weren’t for Puffball’s bad behaviour, Nihau wouldn’t have saved someone so worthless, and Juktakan wouldn’t have died. ‘The flower that was Juktakan withered on account of your clansman,’ I said sullenly. ‘If you hadn’t arranged for a layabout like Puffball to stay with us, we’d all be safe! I don’t want to see that disgusting creature again!’
I stood crying in the rain. Valodya reached out to me, his hand so warm. ‘I’ll arrange tomorrow for Chirala to take Puffball into their urireng,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see my woman in tears.’ He pulled me over and caressed my hair.
But before Valodya could enact his plan, Puffball won our forgiveness through an act of self-mutilation.
The day after Juktakan’s death, the sky cleared. Early in the morning we heard Lyusya crying. Valodya and I thought it must be Puffball venting his anger on his daughter again and we ran over to dissuade him.
But we were astounded by what we found. Puffball lay on his roe-deerskin blanket, his legs crossed and his face a sickly green. His trousers were unbuckled, and blood had dyed his crotch a purplish black. Next to him were a few shrivelled mafenbao. It looked like he had ripped them open to use their cottony floss to staunch the flow of his blood.
When Puffball saw Valodya, he made an effort to grin, but his smile gleamed with an icy light. ‘Getting rid of those things is a relief,’ he said. ‘I feel less burdened and confused now.’
At the crack of dawn Puffball had castrated himself with a hunting knife. Thereafter he became best friends with Vladimir, and Luni and Nihau no longer felt he hadn’t been worth saving.
A period of peace and tranquillity followed in the wake of the Puffball incident. We continued to go down from the mountains during the spring and the autumn to trade our furs and deer products for manufactured goods.
In the spring of 1948, Nihau bore another child, and it was Ivan who named her Berna. Nihau had just given birth when Ivan came riding into our camp on horseback. His garb had changed, and now he sported a military uniform.
‘The map that Dashi gave me was no ordinary map,’ Ivan told us. ‘It didn’t just show the names of mountains and rivers. Some military installations built by Japan’s Kwantung Army were marked too. Using the map, we located a cave where tanks and ammunition were stored.
‘Two Japanese soldiers at the cave were still resisting, and they had no idea that their emperor had already conceded defeat.’
The People’s Liberation Army had embarked upon a clean-up operation targeting bandits who had taken refuge in the mountains. Ivan had stopped by to inform us that there were both anti-communist bandits and Kuomintang deserters in t
he mountains. If we discovered them, we should report them promptly and not release them.
Ivan also brought a piece of shocking news: Wang Lu and Ludek had been arrested and charged with treason. If convicted, they could be executed!
We couldn’t understand why. Luni in particular expressed himself with great intensity. ‘Wang Lu and Ludek didn’t help the Japanese do bad things. One of them knows Japanese and the other knows the lie of the land, and that’s why the Japanese made use of them.
‘If you insist that they did wrong, then Wang Lu’s crime was his tongue, and Ludek’s crime was his legs. If they have to be punished, isn’t it enough to cut out Wang Lu’s tongue and sever Ludek’s legs? Why chop off their heads?’
Perhaps we only saw superficial things about Wang Lu and Ludek, cautioned Valodya. ‘Maybe we were kept in the dark about what else they did for the Japanese, and what they got in return.’
Luni was very unhappy with Valodya’s speculations about Wang Lu and Ludek. ‘If you define a traitor like that, then Vladimir is no exception! Didn’t he stay behind in the garrison and play the mukulén for Yoshida?’
No sooner had Luni spoken than Yveline’s long mute mouth opened to speak. ‘Vladimir did play the mukulén for Yoshida, but didn’t his tune sound the defeat of the Japanese?’
Her voice was remote, like an ill-wind blowing towards us from a distant canyon. Startled, we gazed at her, but she continued sewing her leather socks without even looking up.
Luni was a bit displeased with Ivan because of the news about Wang Lu and Ludek, but since Luni had just become a father again, he still felt Ivan was a bearer of good tidings, so he asked Ivan to choose a name for his newborn.
‘Why not call her Berna?’ said Ivan after a moment of reflection.
Yveline opened her mouth again. ‘Ivan has never been able to keep a woman at his side. If he names a girl, that girl is lost for sure.’ She kept her head down, busy with her handiwork.
Ivan sighed, and Luni felt a shiver run down his back. ‘This name doesn’t count,’ Ivan said. ‘You and Nihau give her another name.’
‘She has been named,’ said Luni. ‘We haven’t used the name a single day. How can we discard it just like that?’ ‘Let’s call her Berna.’ But even as he said this his voice was tinged with foreboding.
Ivan stayed just one day and departed. Everyone gathered and said their goodbyes and watched him ride his horse down the mountain. Only Yveline, sitting slumped over next to a sapling and playing with a hunting knife, remained unmoved. When the sound of the hooves grew distant like a gurgling stream, she sighed. ‘We don’t have a blacksmith any more. In the future when our spears and ice picks are broken, and our machetes and axes dull, who will forge them for us?’
Yveline’s words reminded me of the ‘paint sticks’ I had kept, the ones made from the red-ochre soil where Ivan forged iron. That balmy afternoon, I tucked a few of those dried sticks of pigment in my pocket and walked a few li to a tiny tributary of the Bistaré. There, I found a stretch of weathered white rock and painted a Spirit Drum with a fire pattern on one side, and seven reindeer fawns circling the Spirit Drum. The Spirit Drum was the moon, and the seven reindeer surrounding it were the stars that comprise the Plough
That stream had no name. But ever since I left a painting there, in my heart I call it ‘Untuung’, ‘Spirit Drum Creek’. Today, like Rolinsky Ravine, it has dried up.
That was the most satisfying painting I ever left by a waterway. Spirit Drum Creek was so limpid, and as I stood barefoot in the water, looking towards the white rock face and painting, I could feel tiny fish lightly kissing my ankles. They had never seen two white stone columns standing like that in the middle of the water. Some fish were playful and curious and tried nibbling on me, but when they realised I was not a stone, they swam away with an audible shrug – paa – that rippled the surface of the water.
I painted until the sun fell into the mountains. By the time the setting sun draped the rock and water in gold, I had already hoisted a full moon and seven stars for the night that was soon to come.
During those years, I believed that a pair of moons shone upon Untuung, one in the sky raised by the Spirits, and one on the rock held up by my dreams.
The moon rose and I returned to camp, and Valodya was standing outside our shirangju anxiously awaiting me. The instant I saw him, I had a sensation of being reunited after a long separation. I couldn’t help myself and cried, because the two scenes – on the weathered rock and now in reality – both touched me. I didn’t tell him where I’d been, because I felt that what I’d done was a secret between me and the rock.
Valodya didn’t ask me anything. He just handed me a bowl of warm reindeer-milk tea. A good man never enquires where his woman has been.
That night Valodya held me ever so tightly, and Tatiana’s gentle snoring echoed in the shirangju like a spring breeze. I merged with Valodya as naturally as a fish in water, dew drops on a flower, bird calls in a cool breeze, and the moon in the Milky Way.
And it was then that Valodya chanted in a low voice a song that he made up for me. His was different from Nihau’s Spirit Song, for it was very comforting:
Morning dew wets the eye
Midday sun warms the back
Evenfall reindeer bells refresh the heart
And night birds wing home forest-bound.
Valodya patted my back softly as he sang the last line. This little pat made my eyes water. Fortunately it was night-time and he couldn’t see my tears. I buried my head deep, deep in his embrace like a bird snuggling in its warm nest.
***
Ever since Zefirina’s miscarriage she had not become pregnant again. She often went to Nihau’s, her cheeks sallow, knelt before the Malu, and prayed earnestly. This scene recalled a younger Maria. Didn’t she often go to Nidu the Shaman’s to beg the Spirits to grant her a child? The difference was that Maria wrapped her head in a handkerchief, while Zefirina wore nothing on her head, not even a barrette.
Zefirina was probably sensitive about her imperfect mouth, so when she combed her hair she always coiled it towards the side of her mouth that wasn’t crooked. Her hair looked a thick cloud beside a crescent moon, covering her defect and endowing her entire face with a certain dignity.
Maria probably regretted forcing Zefirina to do away with her child back then, and when the antler-cutting season arrived and she saw fresh blood oozing from the reindeer horns, Maria’s tears cascaded onto the ground again.
In 1950, one year after the founding of the People’s Republic, a supply cooperative was established in Uchiriovo. The Han anda Xu Caifa managed it with his son Xu Rongda. The cooperative acquired products such as pelts and antlers, and supplied us with items like rifles, bullets, iron skillets, matches, salt, cloth, grain, tobacco, liquor, sugar and tea.
Vladimir brought an abandoned child back from Uchiriovo that summer.
After he and Dashi exchanged goods at the cooperative, they spent the night at a small inn. The next day they took breakfast and were about to set out when Dashi told Vladimir he wanted to ask Xu Caifa to help him get some medicine for Zefirina. Vladimir understood that Dashi was going to seek drugs to treat his wife’s infertility.
Bored, Vladimir decided to go out for a stroll. As he passed by the stable next to the inn, he heard an infant’s giggle. Vladimir wondered how the innkeeper could be so careless as to allow his child to crawl into the stable without realising it. What if a horse kicked the child!
Vladimir turned around and entered the inn. ‘Your child has found its way into the horse stable. Shouldn’t you be looking after it?’
‘My son’s old enough to help run the inn,’ smiled the innkeeper, ‘and my daughter’s fourteen. So what child would that be? Sure your ears aren’t fooling you?’
‘No way. It sounded like a baby’s giggle.’
‘You must have heard wrong,’ argued the innkeeper. ‘The last few days none of our guests has been travelling with an infant! If there’s real
ly a baby in the stable, that child must be God, and that makes me God’s Father. So what am I doing working like a dog running this inn?’
But Vladimir insisted his ears couldn’t be wrong.
‘Fine,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Let’s go and take a look. But if there’s no child, you forfeit your leather jacket to me!’ Vladimir agreed.
When they entered the stable, they were mesmerised by the scene: an infant in swaddling clothes lay on the straw, and a silver-grey horse was licking the baby as if washing its face. It tickled so much that the baby kept giggling loudly.
The child was wrapped in a quilt with white blossoms against a blue background. Its face was a tender pink, and its jet-black eyes rolled about. One of the baby’s hands had fought free of the swaddling clothes, and seeing people peering towards it, the baby waved and laughed even more energetically.
Vladimir said he fell at once for that child, because it was just too beautiful and adorable.
The innkeeper said the baby must have a defect, otherwise why would someone have abandoned it? First they inspected the infant’s eyes, ears, nose, throat, tongue and hands, and found nothing abnormal; then they opened the swaddling clothes to see if any part of the body or limbs were incomplete. But a glance revealed everything was normal. It was then that they realised this was a little girl.
‘Evil-doers!’ cried the innkeeper. ‘Such a bright and vivacious child. How could anyone not want her?’
‘I want her,’ said Vladimir.
‘It looks like she’s just a few months old; she should be breast-feeding. How will you keep her alive?’
‘I’ll feed her reindeer milk.’
The innkeeper had heard about Vladimir’s emasculation. ‘If you want her that would be perfect. It seems she’s a gift to you from the Lord above. Raise her as your daughter and she’ll look after you in your old age. Wouldn’t that be a blessing?’
Hearing that someone had abandoned a child in the stable, the innkeeper’s wife put aside her chores and came running. She said last night when she got up to relieve herself, she had heard the pounding of hooves stopping right outside the inn.
