Deepest No Man’s Land. It had no name and no sign to identify it. The entire region looked pretty much the same: there were blue skies, snow mountains, plains, lakes.
As the sun shone warmly upon it, all was still and quiet, so apparently lifeless that it hardly seemed part of the human world.
Gunshot! A battery of gunshots. Gunshots that seemed inappropriate in such a tranquil place.
‘You two go over and block the right side. If a single antelope gets away, you’ll lose a finger,’ Jijia said icily to the two men next to him. They were standing on a slope, watching the now surrounded antelope herd below.
The men acknowledged him and turned their horses to the right. They fired two shots, driving the antelopes who were straying back to the holding area.
Jijia stared contentedly at the frightened, bleating animals. A cruel smile hung on his lips: it was as if he was watching an enormous pile of gold accumulating in front of him.
A male antelope suddenly darted out from between the two horses on the right, its long horns dancing in the sun. Jijia opened fire. Ping! The antelope didn’t even get twenty metres before it fell to the ground, blood bubbling from its neck.
Jijia rested his gun on his shoulder and fixed the two horsemen below him with a chilly stare. The men looked up with bleak faces; when they met Jijia’s gaze, they blanched, and large beads of sweat appeared on their foreheads. They slowly drew their knives, a cold light glancing off the blades, and their little fingers fell into the dust with a thump.
Jijia twitched the corner of his mouth in satisfaction, shivered and looked away. Holding his gun in one hand, he fired the first shot at the antelopes desperately seeking a way out of the poachers’ ring. That was the signal for the real slaughter to begin.
Without missing a beat, the men positioned on the surrounding slopes took aim and let off a volley of gunfire. As the shots popped and sizzled like so many frying beans, the entire herd fell. Not a single Tibetan antelope escaped.
The cloying stench of blood drifted on the breeze and vultures began to circle overhead.
Three baby antelopes bleated beside the body of their dead mother, tragic and helpless. Jijia lifted his gun and nonchalantly fired at one of them. It tumbled onto its mother’s body before it could make another sound, its large eyes still wide open.
The men cheered with excitement and the air was shrill with wild whistles as they cantered their horses back and forth. For a brief time, that bloody valley in the depths of the northern Tibetan wilderness was as terrifying as hell.
The wind picked up, and the sand began to whirl and dance in vortexes.
*
As the evening sun reddened the sky, two figures stood staring at the blood-soaked ground and the litter of skinned antelope corpses.
‘How can they be so cruel? These were living creatures!’ said the woman in the yellow windcheater, her long hair streaming out behind her.
‘Human greed knows no limits.’ The bearded man watched as the rays of the setting sun lit the skinless antelopes; his face betrayed no emotion.
‘And no one cares what they do?’
‘I hear the government is drafting a law to protect wild animals. When I was small, there were many herds of Tibetan antelopes on the grassland. Now there are fewer and fewer.’
‘Ohhh…’ The woman walked over to the two baby antelopes; their frail bodies were trembling and they looked around with fear-widened eyes. ‘Can we take them with us?’
The man nodded, took one and walked off, the woman following behind.
*
In another valley with mountains on three sides and a lake on the fourth stood a scattering of tents. Several horses rambled between them, occasionally lowering their heads in search of one of the rare blades of grass. The place looked beautiful because of the mountains, tents and horses, but it also looked odd because there was no sign of human activity.
Several yak-skin boats were travelling across the lake, getting closer and closer. When it became clear that the men in them had cheerful expressions on their faces, the women came darting out of the tents.
‘They’re back! Do you know how many they killed?’
‘According to Qiangba, they got quite a large herd.’
‘This time I’m going to get my man to buy me a pair of gold bracelets. Tell Yangji to quickly stew some meat – the men will be starving.’
Another woman poked her head out of a small tent, and a lovely graceful young girl followed close behind. The woman was Yangji, Ciwang’s daughter, from Cuoe Grassland, and the girl was her daughter. The girl had her mother’s face and Shida’s eyes.
Yangji glanced at the far side of the lake and then at the shore, where the men and women were laughing excitedly together. She frowned, turned and walked over to one of the large tents. Inside, a great pot was steaming on the sizeable stove. She threw several yak pats onto the fire, then ladled the boiling tea water into the tea churn. Taking several large lumps of butter from a bamboo basket, she dropped them into the churn and began to mix the tea. She did all of this with practised hands and an expressionless face. She’d been doing that sort of work for a long time.
Everyone on Cuoe Grassland had assumed Yangji was dead, likely eaten by wolves. Shida, feeling responsible, had left the grassland out of guilt, unable to forget her. Yangji had indeed encountered a pack of wolves when she fled the grassland in the middle of the night all those years ago. She lost her way and stumbled into No Man’s Land. But, luckily, Jijia had rescued her just in time. He’d taken a crew into that area to kill antelopes and had heard the wolf howls. Because Yangji had no desire to return to Cuoe Grassland and see Shida, she’d gone with the shadow hunters back to their encampment and became their cook.
A few months later, she gave birth to a daughter on the sandy shore of the lake. When she saw how much the child resembled a certain person, her tears rained down. She looked at the pale blue water of the lake and told the old woman who’d helped deliver the baby, ‘I’ll call her Dawacuo. I hope she’ll be as beautiful and healthy as the moon and the lakes.’
So Dawacuo was born in the wilds of No Man’s Land. No one knew who her father was and no one cared. Dawacuo turned out just as her mother had hoped: she was healthy and strong and grew more beautiful every year. All the men and women in the encampment liked her, not only because she was the first child born in the shadow hunters’ encampment, but also because she was pretty and lively, the sort of child people couldn’t help but be drawn to.
Becoming a mother gave Yangji the courage to carry on living. She patched up her injured heart and put all her energy into bringing up her daughter. She had grown from a girl into a woman and from a woman into a mother. She had, as it were, lost two layers of skin. No longer the wilful herding girl of Cuoe Grassland, she was now a tanned, middle-aged, labouring woman.
Laughing loudly, the men in the boats threw the ropes to the women who’d gone down to welcome them home. Once ashore, they playfully rubbed the cheeks or breasts of their women, then strode into the large central tent, sat down on the cushions and waited for the women to serve them baijiu. Raising their glasses, they toasted one another and knocked back their drinks.
Yangji and three other women brought in platters of steaming meat, set them on the table and stuck small knives into the flesh ready for the men. The men began to eat, cutting off large hunks, tearing them into smaller pieces and cramming the meat into their mouths, fat dripping down their chins.
Jijia sat at the head of the table on a chair piled high with antelope wool. A woman put a platter of lamb ribs in front him. He didn’t move, just downed one glass of baijiu after another. A strange emptiness engulfed him after every slaughter. The sight of fresh antelope blood splattered all around always gave him a wild thrill, but that was invariably followed by a long period of aimlessness.
*
The blue sky bore not even the wisp of a cloud, and the sun was strong enough to bake a person dry. On the side of a craggy slope, big-bellied Kaguo was flipping over stones in search of mice.
A gun barrel was protruding through the jumble of broken rocks and Gongzha was squinting through its sights. There were three dots and a line in his crosshairs, and at the centre was Kaguo’s hefty body. He placed his finger lightly on the trigger, ready to pull.
‘Gongzha! Gongzha!’ Feng stood barefoot on the plain below and yelled loudly up at him, holding four pink eggs.
Hearing the noise, Kaguo didn’t linger; she shook herself a couple of times, then disappeared into the rocks on the slope. Gongzha raised his head impatiently and shouldered his gun. Since he’d met Feng, the rhythm of his life had been disrupted. This was the third time she’d scared away Kaguo.
‘I’m sorry, Gongzha, it’s all my fault.’ When Feng saw Gongzha coming silent and glowering down the slope, she knew she was in trouble again. ‘I didn’t know you’d seen Kaguo. I’m so sorry. I thought you were hunting for food and I wanted to tell you that there are a lot of eggs over there so you don’t need to hunt today because we can boil them.’
It would be better to take Feng back to the town before trying to hunt down Kaguo, Gongzha thought, keeping his head low. They’d been making slower and slower progress the last few days. First Feng would say she was tired, then that she was hungry, which wasted more and more time. Yesterday, beside a pretty little lake, she’d said that her head really hurt and she needed to rest for half a day. And then she’d spent the time playing energetically with the two baby antelopes by the lakeside. So much for her terrible headache.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get her in the end,’ Gongzha said. He glanced at the eggs in her hand. ‘Those are from a ruddy shelduck. There’s a hot spring nearby and the water’s very hot.’
‘Let’s go and cook them then!’ Feng was delighted. She called loudly to the two little antelopes, who were standing a short distance away. ‘Baobao, Beibei, come back here! Let’s go!’ They bounded happily over.
‘They’re called Baobao and Beibei?’ Gongzha looked at the two scrawny grey antelopes in surprise. Giving them names as if they were pets in the city was really quite inappropriate.
‘They are! And they already recognise their names.’ Feng slipped on her shoes and followed Gongzha, who was carrying the luggage. The old horse followed Feng and the two antelopes walked beside her. ‘The taller one is called Baobao and the shorter one is called Beibei.’
When they got to the hot springs, Feng found a small pool and put the eggs in it. Then she slipped round to the other side of a travertine outcrop and found a larger pool. ‘I’m going to take a bath,’ she said loudly. ‘I feel dirty.’
Gongzha set the horse loose and sat cross-legged against the outcrop holding his gun. He closed his eyes and began to collect his thoughts.
Feng extracted her make-up bag from her backpack, stripped quickly and slipped into the warm water. In truth she wasn’t really that dirty, she just didn’t want to miss the chance to relax in the pure water of a hot spring out in the wilderness.
She lay at the edge of the pool, the warm water gently lapping over her. Her heart was suddenly full of an unnameable feeling. Looking at the clouds like puffs of cotton in the blue sky, her thoughts turned to what her colleagues in Shanghai would be doing right then. Zhuo Yihang would probably be sitting in that terrifyingly large office of his, wearily rubbing his forehead and planning some star’s new album. And Yang Fan? He’d be leafing through a thick stack of notes, racking his brain about how to present tomorrow’s pitch. She wondered if, after so much time off, she’d ever be able to readjust to normal working life again.
Baobao and Beibei lay by her side, occasionally nibbling her shoulder. The tickling sensation made her giggle.
Gongzha sat with his legs crossed, chewing on a blade of grass. As he rested his back against the rock, he lost himself in the white clouds moving slowly across the sky. Hearing Feng’s giggles from behind the rock made him smile. In the few days they’d spent together, he’d come to like this city girl. She was always scaring off his game, but she had a good heart; she kept begging him not to kill Kaguo because she was pregnant or asking him to wait until she’d had her cub; and if they came across an ass that had fallen into a gully or an antelope that had been blinded in a sandstorm, she always wanted to try and save it. It didn’t matter what sort of environment a person found themselves in, if they had a good heart, it would always shine through.
Gongzha scanned the surrounding mountains. They might be able to reach Rongma tomorrow. There were people there, and cars. Feng could finally return to her world. And him? Cuomu! Oh, Cuomu…
A little while later, Gongzha picked the eggs out of the hot pool and set them down on the ground. ‘They’re done.’
Feng got out of the water, dressed, and walked over barefoot. She sat down next to Gongzha, picked up one of the eggs, tapped it on the ground, peeled off the shell, and handed it to him.
He took it, and in a single bite the egg was gone.
‘There are ten in total, so that’s five each, to make it fair,’ Feng said. She peeled one for herself and took a small bite. For a brief moment her mouth was full of the egg’s light flavour. ‘I’ve never had such a delicious egg – did you say they’re from the ruddy shelduck?’
‘Yes. There are a lot of waterfowl by the lake and at this time of year their nests contain plenty of eggs.’
‘If I’d known they were this good, I’d have taken more.’
‘If you want more, there are plenty around.’
‘Really? Alright, if I see any more, I’ll collect them and we can boil them and take them with us.’ Feng smiled happily before peeling another and stuffing it in her mouth.
Gongzha also peeled one and put it in his mouth. ‘You won’t be able to eat them after a few more days.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’ve already started to develop. If you opened it and found a duckling inside, would you still eat it?’
‘No!’ Feng turned her head away. ‘Can’t you say something a bit more appetising?’
Gongzha laughed. ‘Eat up, we need to get going. We should reach Rongma tomorrow.’
‘Rongma, that’s the town closest to No Man’s Land?’
‘That’s right. Once you get there you’ll be safe.’
‘I’ll be safe?’ Feng said to herself as she looked at the towering mountains in the distance. ‘I can go home – back to Shanghai?’
‘Once you get to Rongma, you should look for the town cadres and they’ll help you find a way to get back to the county town.’
‘Alright.’ The thought of being back in the big city she knew so well made Feng happy. She couldn’t wait to stroll along its wide, neon-lit streets, couldn’t wait to drink a large glass of German stout, couldn’t wait to luxuriate in a spa and doze off with a moisturising mask on her face. ‘Let’s go now!’ she said. She put the rest of the eggs in her pocket and went over to pick up the luggage.
Gongzha saddled the horse and strapped on the bags. Then they set off, taking the two antelopes with them.
*
After passing through two valleys and crossing a fairly low snow mountain, Gongzha said, ‘By midday tomorrow, we should be there.’
‘Tomorrow midday, I’ll be safe?’ Looking at the grassland around her, Feng felt a sudden pang in her heart.
‘Mhm.’ Gongzha took the luggage off the horse and unpacked it, then quickly set up Feng’s tent. ‘We’ll stay here tonight and set off again tomorrow as soon as it’s light.’
Feng nodded and threw her sleeping bag into the tent. Gongzha picked up his old gun and walked off.
She was going home. She was finally going home. Feng lay on the grass in front of her tent and mumbled to herself as she looked at the nearby snow mountains. When she got back to the city, the first thing she was going to do was buy an enormous pile of fruit: apples, pears, grapes, watermelons… Then she’d go out for an expensive French meal, its food as delicate as flowers, so romantic and aesthetically pleasing. Her stomach had really suffered out here.
She turned over, stood up, went into her tent and dragged out her bag. She tipped everything out onto the grass, rolled up each item of clothing tightly, and put her cleansers and other make-up back into their little bag. In among her things was a small gold Buddha she’d got on Barkhor Street. She picked it up. She’d got it from a Swedish man called Nadal whom she’d met on her wanderings around Lhasa. The two of them had gone to a bar and he’d got blind drunk. When he’d finally stumbled out of the bar, he left a small white cloth bag on the table. Feng had looked inside, found the Buddha and chased after him, but he’d already disappeared into the swirling crowds. Frustrated, she’d kept the Buddha with her, hoping she might run into Nadal again and be able to return it. But she hadn’t had time to go back to Barkhor Street before coming to northern Tibet.
She stood the little Buddha in the grass. It looked and smelled ancient and would make a nice addition to a shelf of antiques; it was a shame it was so small. She didn’t look at it again, just closed her bag, picked up her dirty socks from the grass and walked over to a nearby stream to wash them.
Gongzha came back dragging a small deer. When he saw the Buddha in the grass, he froze. He bent to pick it up and turned it this way and that, squinting at it. When he saw a delicate ¤ scratched onto the Buddha’s outward-facing palm, his face darkened. He was sure it was one of the Buddhas he’d brought down from the cave complex on Mount Chanaluo.
When Feng came back carrying her clean socks, Gongzha greeted her with a sombre face.
‘What’s wrong? Didn’t you hit anything?’
‘This Buddha, where did you get it?’
‘I met a foreigner on Barkhor Street; he got drunk and left it behind. What about it?’
‘A foreigner dropped it?’
‘Yes. He said he paid 20,000 yuan for it. There were about five of them, apparently. I think he was tricked; if they really were antiques, he shouldn’t have paid less than 100,000 yuan for one of them.’ Feng laughed and laid her socks on the grass.
‘It is real!’ Gongzha said, sitting down cross-legged.
‘What?’ Feng turned her head in surprise.
‘It is real,’ Gongzha repeated in a low voice. ‘This is one of the Buddhas from the temple near my home, Cuoe Temple.’
‘You… you mean it’s a real… antique? A cultural relic?’ Feng went over and took the Buddha from his hand. She looked at it from every angle but could see nothing remarkable about it.
‘That’s right. Look at the symbol on its palm. That symbol is special – no outsiders know anything about it.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Kaguo’s forehead has the same symbol.’
‘Kaguo the bear?’ Feng asked cautiously.
Gongzha nodded and his face twitched with pain.
‘I’m sorry, Gongzha. Don’t… don’t think about it, alright?’
Gongzha kept silent and looked at the mountains, trying hard to control the pain in his heart.
Then, for the first time ever, he told an outsider about the cave on Mount Chanaluo, about his hatred for Kaguo, and about the learned Living Buddha Zhaduo. Finally, he said, ‘This symbol might be the symbol of an ancient clan of our grassland; the elder of that clan was skilled at taming bears.’
‘Wait, wait, Gongzha. Did you say that the English writing on the cave wall said “Sven Hedin”?’ Feng asked in surprise.
‘Apparently, yes. That’s what Zhuo Mai said. Afterwards we went to ask our clan elder about it; his father had actually rescued a foreigner called Sven Hedin many years before and led him out of the grassland.’
‘My goodness, it really is a small world! Nadal, the Swede I met, he said his grandfather was called Sven Hedin and that he’d been to Tibet and had gone to No Man’s Land.’
Gongzha was speechless with amazement.
‘He also said that the Cuoe Temple Medicine Buddha was a real treasure and very finely crafted. His grandfather told him that he had to find a way to get it.’
Gongzha looked at Feng, shaking his head, and for a while could not respond. ‘I brought this Buddha out of the cave myself and gave it to Basang, the monk at Cuoe Temple. How could it have got into Nadal’s hands?’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Basang must have sold the Buddha to Nadal,’ Feng said. Cultural relics and antiques were worth a lot, and the chance to earn a big stash of cash could have a transformative effect on a person. Feng had seen that a lot in her business life.
‘Basang… sold the Buddha?’ Gongzha looked at Feng in shock. How could he have done that? Basang had told him he was a disciple of the living Buddha; he loved the Buddha so much, used to pray morning and night – how could he have done such a thing?
‘Antiques like this are very valuable now. There are people who spend their whole time scouring Barkhor Street for a lucky find, people from all over, from other parts of China and even from overseas. They buy a statue and take it back home to resell, whether or not they believe in the teachings of the Buddha. Some people are just a lot more interested in the beautiful world of the here and now than in the world to come that they can’t see.’
‘He sold the Buddha?’ Gongzha couldn’t get over it. It was incomprehensible. Even though he himself wasn’t a devout Buddhist, he knew that to the believers on the grassland, images of the Buddha were incomparably holy. They usually venerated such images and protected them – how could one of them take the Buddha’s image and exchange it for money? He’d never heard of such a thing.
‘He’s not selling the Buddha, he’s selling the Buddha’s image!’ Feng took in Gongzha’s serious expression and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘It represents the Buddha!’ Gongzha said, looking at the statue.
‘That’s true. For those of you who believe, of course he represents the Buddha. But, Gongzha, for people who don’t believe, it’s just a very valuable object, something they can make a lot of money out of.’
‘But Basang is a monk – he was one of the living Buddha’s disciples.’
‘But the living Buddha isn’t here any more, there’s no one to control him.’
‘But Basang…’ Gongzha tried to make sense of what he’d just learnt. In the space of a minute, it had all become very confusing. The Buddha’s disciples would sell his image for money? If that was true, how could the light of Cuoe Temple’s Buddha ever shine on the grassland again?
Feng looked sideways at him. ‘Did you know Basang from before?’
‘No.’ Gongzha shook his head.
‘Did anyone on your grassland know him?’
Gongzha thought and then shook his head again. ‘I never heard of anyone knowing him.’
‘That makes sense. Gongzha, I think it’s safe to say that this person is almost certainly an imposter.’
‘An imp… imposter?’ Gongzha was even more surprised to hear that, so surprised that he couldn’t even speak clearly. Before the Cultural Revolution there’d been a lot of monks at the temple, many of whom he hadn’t known.
‘Yes. Think about it – if he really had been Living Buddha Zhaduo’s disciple, how come no one knew him? And…’
‘What?’ Gongzha saw that Feng was hesitating and looked at her inquiringly.
‘I can’t say for sure, it’s just a feeling…’ Feng said. ‘But from what you’ve said, Basang is quite old and has difficulty walking. How could he have taken the Buddhas to Lhasa to sell? I think he must be working with someone – and probably not just one person. They must have known you’d go and look for the Buddhas, which is to say they must have known you had a good relationship with Zhaduo, so they used the fact that the government had started righting the wrongs of the Cultural Revolution and they made Basang pretend to be a monk and come back to the grassland to trick you.’
‘Then… what if I hadn’t found the Buddhas?’
‘If you hadn’t found the Buddhas, they wouldn’t have lost much,’ Feng said. She could sense the thread of a thought twitching in her mind, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. ‘But if I’m right, would they really have gone to all that trouble just for those little Buddhas? They’re only worth a few ten thousand yuan. I’m not sure… It can’t be that straightforward. Let me think…’
Gongzha stared at the woman in front of him, quite stunned. Everything she’d said ran counter to what he’d always believed, and yet he instinctively felt that there was truth in her words. And the consequences of that were alarming.
As he lay dying, Zhaduo had made one last request of Gongzha. Had Gongzha lost the chance to fulfil that one request?
Feng was still furiously rubbing her forehead; her brain was whirring. ‘So… the Medicine Buddha. Didn’t you say that the Medicine Buddha was the temple’s most precious treasure, and that Zhaduo gave it to you? I think it must have been that statue they were really after.’
Gongzha looked at Feng again. ‘They were really after this…?’ From his chuba he took out the Buddha bundled in yellow cloth, unwrapped it and set it on the grass.
Feng looked at the Buddha in amazement. It was exquisite, a work of extraordinary beauty. Its colour was not pure black but rather the deepest of blues, like the depths of the sea or the heart of a sacred lake. It gleamed, too, as bright as Venus.
The Buddha’s expression was so serene, it matched everything she’d imagined about him. As she gazed at the statue, she couldn’t help being entranced; it made her heart and spirit feel so peaceful. She didn’t dare stare at it for too long, for fear that her mind would empty. She reached out, quickly wrapped up the Buddha again, and thrust it back into Gongzha’s hands.
‘Until we’ve resolved this, you can’t tell anyone you have this statue, Gongzha,’ she said, ‘otherwise your life might be in danger. Not everyone is as honourable as you. There are people who will stop at nothing if there is money to be made. Also, didn’t you say that Lobudunzhuo—’
‘Luobudunzhu, not Lobudunzhuo.’ Gongzha didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘And what do you think of this Luobudunzhu? Didn’t you say he’d pursued and harassed Living Buddha Zhaduo? I think that must have been because of this statue. Of course, I’m only guessing, and I don’t have any evidence, but I think you should be careful.’
Gongzha thought about the time, long ago, when he, Cuomu and Shida had upset Luobudunzhu’s plans to follow Zhaduo with his gang of men. And he remembered how Luobudunzhu and his men used to circle Zhaduo’s small tent. He couldn’t help but nod.
‘I still don’t understand what their connection is with Nadal.’ Feng shook her head. ‘It can’t be coincidence – there must be something else there.’
‘Once I’ve taken you to Rongma, I’ll go back to the grassland and see how things are there,’ Gongzha said, packing away the Medicine Buddha.
Feng picked up her small bronze Buddha and put it into Gongzha’s chuba. ‘Take this back with you too; it belongs to the grassland.’
‘You don’t want it?’
‘I can’t take it.’ Feng giggled. ‘It’s too valuable and I’m too greedy. If I were to take it, I might not be able to resist selling it.’
Gongzha laughed. ‘I thought you wanted to get rich!’ Feng had prattled on endlessly about how she would buy a villa in the Shanghai suburbs or a fancy car when she got rich.
‘I don’t dare. It’s a Buddha – if I sell a Buddha, I might get struck down!’ she said jokingly. She pushed her stray curls behind her ears and stood up. ‘So, Mr Gongzha, what about that meat? I’m starving.’
Gongzha stood up too, carried the deer in one hand over to the stream, got out his knife and skinned it. Then he brought out the salt bag and gave it to Feng, who was almost drooling in anticipation. He sliced the haunch into thin strips and passed some to her.
Feng sprinkled on some salt, stuffed a slice into her mouth and narrowed her eyes in blissful appreciation. ‘It’s really good. I never knew raw meat was this tasty.’
‘You’re not afraid of turning into a barbarian?’ Gongzha looked at her with a pleased expression and put a piece of meat into his own mouth.
‘Who said eating raw meat was barbaric? Don’t the Japanese eat raw fish? And that’s a famous dish!’ Feng dipped another slice into the salt and ate it.
‘You really are an unusual woman!’ Gongzha said. He cut off another piece of meat and passed it to her.
Feng sat up straight. ‘Does that count as praise?’ she asked in all seriousness.
Gongzha looked at her spirited eyes and turned his head away. Cuomu used to have eyes like that. Cuomu… His heart hurt quietly.
‘Are you blushing?’ Feng said. ‘Gongzha, would you ever come to Shanghai?’
‘What would I do there?’ He tossed a deer bone into the distance. ‘The city’s too big. I’d get lost.’
Feng laughed uproariously. ‘You’re so funny, worrying about getting lost. But I won’t lie to you, Gongzha, I get lost in the city too.’
‘When you see Yihang, don’t forget to tell him that he’s always welcome back on the grassland.’
‘I won’t. Yihang really respects you. He’s often told me that you’re the best hunter on the grassland.’
‘Haven’t you seen that for yourself? I’ve been that close to Kaguo three times and still haven’t killed her.’
Feng blushed. ‘I’m sorry, Gongzha. That’s my fault.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I still have time – she can’t stay on the run forever.’ Gongzha passed her some more meat.
Feng dipped it in salt and put it in her mouth. ‘But you really are a good hunter. You have so many principles: not killing a pregnant animal, not killing an animal with young, not killing anything strong.’
‘A hunter without principles isn’t a hunter, he’s a murderer.’
‘You’re right. Like those people who slaughtered the antelopes with absolutely no sense of shame; they’ll end up killing every last antelope in Tibet.’
‘You have a pretty strong sense of right and wrong.’
Feng giggled. ‘Is that another compliment?’
Gongzha noted the pleasure on her face and narrowed his eyes. ‘Is praise really so important to you?’
‘Of course.’ Feng frowned. ‘Who doesn’t like hearing kind words?’
She took Gongzha’s knife, pulled the napping Baobao and Beibei towards her and began scratching something onto their horns.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m scratching their names. Otherwise next time I won’t recognise them.’
Feng laughed as she tightened her grip on the necks of the squirming antelopes. With a straight face, she admonished them. ‘No sudden movements! My hands aren’t used to doing this, so if you move suddenly, I might cut your throats.’
Gongzha shook his head and laughed drily. Then he sprinkled some salt on the leftover meat and stashed it away.
After Feng was finished with her name-scratching, she sighed and stared contentedly at her handiwork. ‘Hmm… not bad. Now, wherever you go, I’ll be able to recognise you.’ She patted the antelopes on the back and watched them bound off. Then she followed Gongzha back to the tent.
The evening sun was already slanting over the plain, and the mountains glinted gold. Feng stretched out her legs and leant back with her hands behind her head. As she watched the sun set over the grassland, she let her mind wander. Gongzha stood beside her, gazing out into the wilderness. Baobao and Beibei were next to the old horse, staring fixedly at them.
Below them on the grassland, a fox was digging into a mouse hole, a stream of dirt flying out from between its hind legs. Every so often it raised its head to survey its surrounds. In the light of the evening sun, its red fur blazed like leaping flames. A herd of wild asses was grazing not far off, two foals gambolling at their mothers’ sides. Their carefree attitude made Feng envious.
‘It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?’ she said lightly.
‘Mhm.’
‘I’m going to come back to the grassland, Gongzha.’
‘Mhm.’
‘Will you be pleased to see me?’ Feng said quietly.
‘I…’ Gongzha paused for a moment and then said, ‘I’ll be pleased to see you.’
‘I will always remember these days we’ve spent together, Gongzha. I have so much to thank you for – not just for saving my life, but also for the wonderful experience these past few days have been for me.’
Gongzha stayed silent.
The sun set, and the wilderness fell quiet.
*
Feng lay in her sleeping bag listening to the sounds of the night. She couldn’t sleep. Gongzha had found a grassy hollow out of the wind and she pictured him in it, wrapped in his sheepskin chuba, holding that strange old gun, his eyes shut. Perhaps that great beard of his would be tinged with frost? And his long, wild hair, would it be stirring in the breeze? What sort of expression would he have on his face, she wondered. No, there’d be no expression – it would be impassive.
Feng turned over and faced the other side of the tent, her thoughts racing. Tomorrow they would say goodbye. Would he remember her? Maybe he wouldn’t. His heart held only one woman, and that was the long-departed Cuomu. To him, his time with Feng was just a strange episode during his travels in the wilderness; she was a guest who’d strayed briefly into his world. To leave was to say goodbye forever. What would be the point in remembering, for either of them?
Tomorrow she would be out of the wilderness; she would be safe. Logically, she should be happy. Why was her heart suddenly full of inexpressible sadness?
She went back over the last ten days: her initial terror, her despair, her relief at being found by Gongzha, and how her survival instinct had made her cling to him as if he was some sort of life-raft. She thought about watching him eat raw meat, how disgusted she’d been to start with and how she’d got used to it and was now eating it herself. He’d taken her to see wild yaks, had taught her to identify animal tracks and to use plants to tell direction, and he’d told her what to do when she encountered wolves or bears. She’d almost forgotten about the hectic city, forgotten about her tubes of make-up and her enormous stack of files; she’d even started to think that a permanent life in the wilderness could be quite desirable. To live there, to be with Gongzha, to watch the sun set and the moon rise, to mark the passage of the four seasons…
When she caught herself thinking along those lines, she was scared. A red wave washed across her cheeks. How could she possibly live out here, like a herder, wearing a sunburnt face and a heavy Tibetan robe, driving the livestock out every morning and back home every night, growing old before her time?
She turned over again. Would such a life be so bad? One tent, one column of smoke. She would stand in the evening sun, shading her eyes with her hand, watching for the figure of her returning man. If there was love, surely a quiet life would not be lonely? No, when she thought about it, it would not. There would be yaks, and sheep, and a man. When she pictured the returning man, it was Gongzha’s bearded face that appeared before her. It was a lovely picture, a picture that made her heart sing.
Feng sat up suddenly, pulled down the zip of her sleeping bag, put on her windcheater and left the tent. The night was calm and the clear cold moon shone low over the plain, like quicksilver.
Feng looked around and discovered Gongzha lying to one side in a nest of short grass, Baobao and Beibei huddled beside him. She crept over and crouched down next to him. Baobao and Beibei opened their eyes and glanced at her, then shut them again.
Gongzha had the classic face of a grassland man. His skin was as rough as a lump of ancient rock, his lips were worn and slightly cracked, and his nostrils were large. His dark, bushy eyebrows were like sharp swords and his forehead had two deep wrinkles like two mountain ranges. His beard was unkempt, ragged and dirty. He’d pulled his chuba up to his neck and some of its greying wool stirred gently in the wind.
Feng quietly leant down and kissed his forehead, then scrambled up and bolted back to her tent, zipped up the flap and sat inside commanding her racing heart to be still.
In the moonlight, Gongzha half opened his eyes, directed his gaze at the little yellow tent and stared at it with calm seriousness.
*
When their two figures appeared on the mountain pass above Rongma town, the people on the plain below could barely contain their excitement. Their shouts of encouragement in Mandarin and Tibetan filled the sky.
‘You really won’t come down with me?’ Feng asked in a hurt voice as the two of them stood there.
‘No,’ Gongzha said. ‘You go on down, they’re waiting for you.’ He handed her her backpack.
‘Don’t worry, as soon as I get to Lhasa, I’ll report the case. I won’t let Nadal take your precious Buddhas away.’
‘Mhm.’
‘Yihang says he wants to bring his father’s ashes back to Tibet.’
‘Mhm.’
‘I know you’re as comfortable in the wilderness as you are in your own home, but please do be careful out here.’
‘Mhm.’
Feng picked up her bag and started making her way down the slope. Her legs felt as if they weighed several hundred kilos. The two antelopes whinnied and followed her. Feng knelt down, petted their heads and spoke to them quietly. They looked round at Gongzha, then bounded back to him.
Feng looked at him too, wrinkled the corners of her mouth, turned and continued down.
Her travelling companions embraced her and spun her in circles, everyone talking at the same time, wanting to know what had happened and how she’d managed to survive out there for so long.
Feng glanced up at Gongzha astride his horse on the mountain pass. He was just turning to leave. A string of five-coloured prayer flags fluttered beside him, the sky so blue, the clouds so soft. His silhouette seemed as smooth as a mani prayer stone. A sharp pain pierced her heart.
‘Gongzha…’ she suddenly screamed, her voice tearful, ‘I’ll miss you!’
The figure on the horse straightened his back at the sound but did not turn round. A moment later he hunched low again; then his horse shot off like an arrow from a bow and disappeared over the ridge.
Beneath the blue curtain of sky, on the brown mountainside, only the prayer flags remained, flapping wildly.