Leaving Mother Lake (9 page)

“Why? Is there a special occasion?” I asked with some excitement, meaning to ask whether my father was coming to visit.

“No,” Zhema said. “No special occasion.”

“Is someone sick?” my brother Ache inquired in turn. “No, no one is sick,” Zhema answered, as she continued to husk the corn. “Do you see the Daba anywhere?” she added with a little laugh.

Ache made a face. There had to be a reason for Ama to kill the rooster. It was not every day that we ate chicken or indeed meat of any kind. We killed chickens when we had guests, or as offerings to the gods and the ancestors during the healing rites. And then we needed to invite the Daba to conduct the sacrifice. The lamas are Buddhist and they cannot kill animals. They do not even eat meat.

“No,” Zhema repeated. “No one’s sick and there’s nothing special. Ama said that the rooster was getting too old and if we didn’t eat him soon, the meat would be too tough.”

My sister was a big woman now. She wore a long skirt, and a turban around her head, and a thick gold bracelet on her wrist. She had her own bedroom. And her grown-up smugness, and the fact that she was always in my mother’s confidence, were constant sources of irritation to me. But right at this moment, I was delighted at the thought of eating chicken.

“Zhema, will you let me have the skin?” I asked.

My sister grabbed another corncob and said, “I’ll let you have the skin if you let me have the legs.” And on second thought, she added, “I’ll give you the bones back. What do you say?”

I said nothing. I needed to think about it. My sister was a big woman and she was often too smart for me.

Zhema laughed again. “It’s funny that you like bones so much. Have you ever thought that maybe you were a dog in a previous life?”

But before I could think of something to say about Zhema’s own past lives, Ache called our attention and pointed to the gates.

There was a man standing there, just outside our yard. He was wearing a pair of large black trousers and a black jacket, and over his shoulders, a felt cape. His head was wrapped in a gray turban, from the top of which his black hair escaped in a small tuft. He was of the Yi nationality and no one we had ever seen before, and he had no doubt come from a long way away. He seemed to be waiting for my sister and me to stop bickering.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” I called out.

But Zhema cut me off. “He’s come here to beg. Don’t talk to him.”

I looked at the man. He was so thin, it seemed that his skin was all that was holding his face, which was otherwise black and dirty, and there was an expression of such deep sorrow in his eyes that I felt like I was looking into a dark pit — the sort of pit they had put Grandmother into. His eyes made me call out to him.

“Come in! Please come in!”

But he did not move, and he said nothing.

“Stop it, Namu,” Zhema whispered. “He looks weird. Maybe he’s sick, or mad. There is a ghost hanging about him.”

“No, there isn’t,” I retorted. “He’s just afraid of you.” Once more I turned toward the man. And now I thought that maybe he did not speak because he couldn’t, because his lips were horribly cracked and bleeding and it would surely have hurt him to move them. But as I looked at his eyes again, I suddenly understood his desperate silence. He was hungry. Not just hungry for meat, but hungry. Really hungry.

“Do you want something to eat?” I asked, putting my fingers to my mouth in case he did not understand our language.

The man bowed his head slightly and lifted a foot to step through the gate but the effort was too much. He swayed and then he fell.

Zhema screamed and ran to him.

I ran inside the house. Near the cooking stove, on the floor, there was a whole pot of rice already cooked for our dinner, and there was the chicken stew. I grabbed a bowl and scooped rice into it, then I scooped some chicken stew, a little breast meat and a wing — and then a leg, and on second thought, the other leg. After that I sliced some salted pork — a thick slice of yellow fat. Outside, Zhema and Ache had helped the man onto a low chair.

“Please eat,” I said, as I put the food on his lap.

My sister nodded encouragingly at first, but when she saw the two chicken legs and how much rice I had put into the bowl, she glared at me. Whether the man saw the angry expression on her face, I do not know. All I remember is that the smell of the food revived him almost immediately.

“Thank you.
Kashasha. Kashasha,
” he whispered through his bleeding lips.

Perhaps it hurt him to eat as well as to talk, because he ate everything very slowly. At least, such were my thoughts at the time, because I had never suffered enough to know that this is the way you must eat when you have been starved. Chewing forever on each tiny mouthful, the Yi man ate half the rice and half the chicken. And he left all the pork.

Zhema eyed the chicken leg he had left on the side of his dish. “Have you had enough now? Don’t you like our
bocher?
” she asked a little rudely.

“Oh, yes, I like everything. Thank you.
Amisei,
” he answered, this time in Moso. “I want to keep this for my daughter. She’s waiting for me at home.” His voice was stronger now and his face had regained a more human expression. And although he was frightfully thin, he was striking. His nose was aquiline, and his eyes, in spite of their being sunken, seemed almost fiery. He wore a silver earring with a large piece of amber and a little bright red coral hanging beneath it. The man was a Black Yi, a member of the old aristocratic caste the People’s Liberation Army had defeated in 1956. Only the suffering of his starving daughter could have persuaded him to come to our village and ask for help, for Black Yi are the proudest people in the world.

“Oh!” Zhema exclaimed, suddenly ashamed at her callousness.

“We can give you more,” I said. “Don’t worry, eat everything!” And I ran into the house again.

When I came back with a bag of rice and a bamboo box filled with salted pork, Zhema had fetched water for the man to drink.

“Kashasha, kashasha,”
the man said as he grabbed at the copper ladle and drank eagerly.

But now, on seeing his dirty hands on our copper ladle, Zhema had gone pale and again she lost her heart. When she handed me the ladle, she whispered, “You better get it clean before Ama comes home.”

So I went into the house and scrubbed the ladle. It took me a while to get the dirty, greasy imprints off, and when I returned to the yard, the man was gone. He had got back on his horse, with the bag of rice and the bamboo box and half his dinner.

Zhema looked straight into my eyes, and she did not need to speak for me to know what she meant. I had given away half of the rice and about half the chicken to one stranger, and five of us had to feed on what was left. And we ate rice only twice a week. The other days, we ate millet and corn. And we ate chicken only when we had a guest or when the Daba came to cure the sick. And of course, I’d given him the chicken legs as well — and on purpose.

“But this man, wasn’t he a guest? Wasn’t he sick?” I asked Zhema.

“What’s Ama going to say when she comes home and sees that we have no dinner?” Zhema snapped.

Our Ama came home at dusk, carrying yet another basket filled with corncobs, on top of her head. She looked very tired but Zhema did not waste any time before she called out: “Ama! A dirty Yi man came here to beg and Namu gave him our dinner!”

Our Ama put her basket on the ground and said: “Yes, I heard. Their crops failed because of the hailstorms this summer.” Straightening her vest and tightening her sash back around her waist, she added, “Strange to think that in my youth, when the Yi fell on hard times, they came to rob us. Now they come for help. The world really has turned over. But you did right, Namu. I hope you gave him some tea as well, and that you made sure he took plenty home with him.”

At these words, my sister’s face went bright red. Ama had not reprimanded Zhema directly, but by complimenting me at her expense, she had meant to teach both of us a lesson about generosity and hospitality. Of course, I felt triumphant. I had done something right, and my mother approved of me. What was more, she approved of me and disapproved of my big sister, who was always in her confidence and a grown-up woman.

Now, I was just a little girl who had not as yet learned the merit of humility (and to be honest, humility is an art I still have not entirely mastered), but pride and self-righteousness and sibling rivalry were not all there was to my triumph. Because my mother was always working, her approval was as rare as her attention. And when it came to me, her approval felt almost as good as being told that my feet were like my father’s feet.

Into the Mountains

I
was perhaps eight years old when my mother sent me to live in the mountains with my uncle. He had come to visit us in the fall, as he did every year, to help with the harvest and repair whatever needed fixing in the house.

Uncle lived in the mountains between Qiansuo and Zuosuo, where he took care of the yaks for the village people, just as Great-Uncle had done. This is a hard life, especially in winter. It is so cold at these altitudes that the waterfalls freeze on the side of the cliffs — as though time itself would stop. Herding is also a job with great responsibilities. In Grandmother’s village, every family had at least one yak, and yaks were very expensive. We say that if someone loses a chicken, she will cry for half a day, but if she loses a yak, she will cry until she gets a new yak. Besides, the herdsman must not only make sure that the animals stay healthy but also deliver fresh butter to the villagers every lunar month. Butter is very important to us. It is a sacred cosmic thing, an alchemy of Heaven, Mountain, Sun, Water, and Earth. We use it to make tea, of course, but also to offer to the gods in our ceremonies, to fashion intricate sculptures for temple display, and to anoint the foreheads of newborn babies and the bodies of the dead.

Aside from being a responsible herdsman, my uncle was a very good carpenter who made furniture and repaired houses and knew how to carve and paint birds and clouds and lotus flowers in wooden doors and windows. All the doors and windows in our house were decorated with my uncle’s colorful carvings, and I remember sitting quietly next to him, watching him work, fascinated by his little pots of paints. But until I went to live with him in the mountains, I had never once had a conversation with my uncle, or indeed heard him say very much more than a few words to anyone.

My uncle’s silence was due to a great sadness he carried with him. Sometime before he became a herdsman, he had walked to the house of a woman whom he loved dearly and who loved him in return. In the summer, only a few weeks before she was to give birth to her first child, she set off with a group of villagers to collect wild mushrooms in the mountains. She slipped on the mud because she was wearing brand-new shoes and fell into the ravine.

After his lover died, my uncle never walked to another woman’s house. He became very quiet, and after his brother disappeared on the road to Lhasa, he went to live with Great-Uncle in the mountains. When Great-Uncle, who suffered from rheumatism from years of living in cold and dampness, grew too old and creaky to herd the yaks, Uncle began working alone. In truth, my mother’s brother liked living all by himself in his tent. He liked tending to the yaks, to his memories, and to his sadness, and he liked to have no one to talk to. But even a sad lonely man cannot take care of a herd of yaks without help.

Now, my sister Zhema could not have gone to live with Uncle. She was a grown woman and my mother needed her help — to lock up the animals at night and to tend to the fields and to cook and help take care of my little brothers. Besides, Zhema needed to sleep in her own bedroom. One day she would become pregnant and she would help grow my mother’s family. As for my big brother, Ache, of course he could have gone to live with Uncle because he was not quite a man yet and not very useful at home, but Ache did not want to go and live in the mountains with only Uncle for company.

I did not mind going to live in the mountains. I liked Uncle. Above all, I liked the idea of living alone with someone who did not speak and who would not tell me what to do.

WE WALKED A WHOLE DAY
before we reached the meadow where the tent was pitched. If he had done the journey on his own, Uncle would have been home much earlier. Our two little horses, with their supplies of rice and salted meat and my little bundle, were not overly loaded. But I was not used to riding a horse, and by midafternoon I was too sore to sit on the saddle, and I was still too young to walk very far or very fast. As well, since we rarely left our valley, I was not used to the altitude. In the high mountains, where you feel as though, if you could just stand a little higher, you could grasp at the stars, your breath shortens, and it is hard to walk and easy to feel dizzy.

The moon was shining round and full amid the myriad stars when we heard the soft thudding of copper bells dangling from the yaks’ necks. We heard the bells, and then we smelled the smoke trailing from the tent.

“We’re home,” my uncle said. “You can eat and rest soon. Can you see your great-uncle?” And he pointed under the bright light of the moon at the dark shape of a man standing outside a circular tent between what seemed like two smallish cows but that, on closer look, turned out to be huge, hairy black dogs.

Although this was the first time I was to camp in the mountains, I knew what sleeping in a tent was like because in the summer we had camped at the foot of the mountain goddess Gamu. We had also stayed in a tent another time, when we had gone to visit Aunt Yufang after Grandmother’s funeral. Moso tents are made of yak skin and are just like Mongol tents. The fireplace is a small pit in the middle of the tent, encircled by rocks. Like the fire in the house, however, it is sacred and we must never allow it to die out. Whenever we go out, we put the root of a tree in the middle of the fire and cover it with a thick pile of ash. If it is a very big root, it will burn so slowly that it will still be red-hot at the end of the day.