Since the stern, swarthy face of our clan leader was never graced by even the hint of a smile, he gave people the impression of being very fearsome. But in reality he was a man who only ever thought of the well-being of his people, so he was respected by all.
When that swarthy face came in through the door of our home, Mother and I leaped up in a flash to offer him the seat of honor, but without saying a word he motioned for me to come outside. Like a servant, I bowed my head and followed him. When we had gotten far enough away that Mother couldn’t hear us, the clan leader turned suddenly and said, “Boy, your father’s killer is in my house at this very moment.”
My heart began to pound intensely, and I had to keep swallowing my saliva.
“But the man is my friend. I trust that you won’t cause any problems.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he took off without giving me the chance to respond.
I had heard that my father’s killer was the leader of the clan from across the river. He was brave and brutal. He had killed many people, but not once had he paid the price for it. My father had relied on stealing to make his living; apart from the meager renown that came with being called a brave lad, he didn’t have a thing to his name. In the winter that I turned nine, Father crossed the frozen river to go steal from the clan on the other side. Unfortunately, he fell into their hands, and after subjecting him to unimaginable torments, the clan leader himself killed my father and threw his body onto the river ice. Since my family was so poor back then, people felt bad that such a terrible thing had befallen us and everyone consoled and helped us as much as they could, especially our clan leader. He went across the river again and again to seek compensation and did his very best to look after my mother and me. But by the time I was fifteen or sixteen, we still hadn’t received any compensation, let alone taken revenge for my father’s murder, and as a result I became a target for mockery and abuse. More and more people began to openly insult me. “The father was a meat-eating vulture, but the son’s a shit-eating crow,” they said. It got to the point that I couldn’t hold my head up among the young men of the clan.
Ah! Were the Dharma protectors looking out for me today, bringing the lamb to the mouth of the wolf’s den? Or was it to be the day that I followed in my father’s footsteps? Either way, if I didn’t grasp an opportunity like this with both hands, I’d have no right to call myself my father’s son, and I’d be even more frozen out of the community.
“The look on your face! What did the clan leader say to you?” As soon as I came back inside my mother seized my hand with an anxious expression.
“Nothing. It’s nothing. He just asked me to help him with something,” I said, picking up the worn-out knife from where it hung on the side of the tent. Removing it from its sheath, I began to sharpen it vigorously on the grindstone. Mother became even more agitated, praying desperately to the goddess Tara while beseeching me, almost in tears. “There’s definitely something going on. If you won’t tell me what it is, I’ll go ask the clan leader myself!”
It looked like I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. I stopped sharpening the knife and told her the truth. Much to my surprise, Mother calmed down. “Oh, there really is such a thing as karma! Your dear old father used to say that you’ve got to be brave when that crucial moment arrives, and you’ve got to be even more quick-witted. Remember that well. That’s all I have to say.” She then began to chant the “Ode to Tara” as though nothing were the matter.
I sharpened the old knife until it was like a razor, then stashed it in my sleeve. With all my might I tried to suppress my madly pounding heartbeat, and adopting a calm and collected air, I entered the home of the clan leader. The first thing that appeared before me was a woman making tsampa. The white tsampa flour was piled up almost three inches high all around the blue millstone. Sitting carefree atop the stove was a powerful-looking man whose braid, face, neck … well, in short, whose whole body radiated a glossy sheen as though he’d been sprinkled all over with oil. This was surely the man who had killed my father.
May the deities and the Dharma protectors come to my aid tonight! With this prayer in my mind, I rushed forward and plunged the knife as hard as I could into the right side of the man’s chest. Without pulling out the blade I drove it further in, and from his insides I could hear the cracking sound of either flesh, muscle, or bone splitting apart. As the man’s eyeballs bulged, he gradually fell back onto the floor. Then, withdrawing the knife and grasping the handle with both hands, I continued to stab him indiscriminately. Blood spurted from each of the wounds like a fountain and covered my entire face in a shower of droplets, turning it warm.
At that moment I heard a piercing cry. Turning around, I saw the woman who had been making tsampa scurrying out of the door on all fours.
I continued to stab the knife into his body—or corpse—over and over, just like I used to aimlessly stick my spade into a pile of fresh dung when I was a child. Eventually I no longer had the energy to pull the knife out and was panting so hard I could barely breathe. A searing pain raged in my head, and I felt nauseated. The earth was shaking and the sky was spinning, and I had no choice but to stop. It turns out killing someone is more painful than being killed, I thought.
Leaning my weight on the handle of the knife, I breathed heavily. When I looked at the man—the corpse—before me, all I could see in his wide-open eyes was glistening white, not a hint of black at all.
His sleek, oily braid, his face, his neck—his whole body was now completely covered in blood. Now that I thought about it, the first time I stabbed him I must have hit his heart or severed an artery, since the whole time he hadn’t even reached for the knife hanging at his waist, let alone unsheathed it.
As I wiped the blood from my eyes and staggered out the door, I caught a blurry glimpse of the killer’s blood seeping into the white tsampa by the millstone, turning it red and causing it to drip down the side. Just then the clan leader returned home. His swarthy face surveyed the entire room before he calmly proceeded over to the body, where he briefly checked the killer’s pulse like a doctor examining a patient. “How could someone who killed one of my people ever be my friend?” he said as he closed the man’s eyelids.
This was nine years after my father’s murder, in the winter of the year I turned eighteen. The clan leader had some men come to take the killer’s body and throw it on the frozen river. I felt like a man who’d just been released from prison.
Ever since then, I’ve had the respect of everyone in the clan, so much so that when important clan business is being discussed I always get called to the meetings. The sad thing is that my thoughts have begun to weigh heavily on my mind, to the point that I can hardly get a good night’s sleep. From what I’ve heard, my father’s killer had a nine-year-old son. Now I am his father’s killer. I should get married as soon as possible, so that when I die by his knife, I’ll have someone to take revenge for me.