Ma Jian: Stick Out Your Tongue

Four months ago, he’d sent a letter to his family telling them that he would visit them during his summer holidays. But when he arrived in Mayoumu last month, he found that the letter was lying still unopened in the village headquarters. The officer in charge told him that his family had moved their herd to the Yara valley in spring. Sonam travelled to Yara, but when he got there, the nomads gave conflicting reports of his family’s whereabouts. In the end, he’d decided to follow his uncle Kalsang’s advice, and come to look for them here on the hills near Lake Drolmula. When he arrived here five days ago, Old Tashi warned him to stay away from the lake. He said that Goddess Tadkar Dosangma goes there to meet her lover, the Mountain God, and that anyone who sees them making love is doomed to lose their sight.

Last night, Sonam sensed that his family were not far. He reached a hill where a tent had just been removed. The upturned earth was damp and the soil below the fire pit was still dry. He even found the piece of apron that his father used as a saddle lining. The embroidery looked very familiar — he was certain that his mother had stitched it.

He remembered Dawa’s coloured apron. She has grown up now, he thought to himself. In fact, she was already quite grown up when he left for Saga two years ago. She would no longer undress in front of him, and would always run ten steps away from him before crouching down to piss. He thought of the smell of sour milk on Dawa’s body.

Yesterday, when he reached the hill, he turned round to the black horse and said, ‘Look, look! Here they are! That’s their yak hair carpet!’ He fell to his knees and smelt the earth, then he picked up a sheep’s hoof that he presumed his family had tossed from the cooking pot, and turned it in his hands. He looked up and said, ‘I’ve been searching for you for a month. Why are you still sitting down, Dawa? Get up, get up. Come to me! I’ve bought you shoes, made in Beijing. I’ll tell you where Beijing is. There are so many people there. More than all the yaks in Mayoumu. My school in Saga has lots of windows, and stairways that go round and round.’ Then he paused and looked around him. The breeze blowing from the grasslands smelt of yak shit and sheep bones. At his feet he saw maggots wriggling through a pat of yak dung. He watched the dung puff up, and then slowly sink again.

Tonight he was standing on the high plateau in the pitch dark, the mosquitoes biting into his face. He walked on for a while and saw pale, mauve ripples drift across the surface of the lake. That’s where the Goddess pisses, he muttered. He lay down on the ground and gazed into the distance. The Goddess leaves the lake in the winter to join the Mountain God. The lake is her urine. The shore is rimmed with white crystals. That’s where she pisses, over there, over there … He closed his eyes and slowly dropped off to sleep.

When he woke again, he found himself bathed in the red light of the morning sun. He wanted to return to his dream. Gradually his mind cleared and he sat up and looked back at the route he had taken. He knew that his food and water had run out, that his horse had run away, and that if he didn’t come across any nomads soon he would not survive another day. He rose to his feet. As soon as his legs stood firm, blood rushed to his head and his heart started to beat wildly. He was weak with hunger. The black horse must have escaped down this path yesterday, he thought to himself. The slope isn’t steep, and the ditch on the left would have been too wide for it to jump. If the horse had run down here, it would have had the wind in its face. This was the only path it could have taken if it had wanted to escape the gadflies.

He gazed at the lake. It was perfectly still. The white salt crystals lay on the shore like a long prayer scarf. Below him, in the brilliant sunlight, a pool of water sparkled like ice. Mounds of wild herbs carpeted the distant marshes. There was no living creature in sight, not even a fly.

He trudged slowly onwards. When he finally reached the lake, he turned right and began walking along the shore. It was as though he thought that, by doing so, he would eventually come across something. He walked for hours, but all he saw were banks of dry grass poisoned by the saline crystals. He tried to drink some water from the lake, but the taste was so foul he had to spit it out. A fire burned through his stomach. My piss tastes better than that, he muttered. Then he looked up and saw the lake smiling at him. That’s just how Dawa used to smile, he thought to himself.

As the sun began to sink again, he stopped and stood still. The Gangdise Mountains were wrapped in mist. The light on the summits grew clearer, then dwindled, left the mountains and hovered for a moment in the sky. A few seconds later, everything went black.

A gust of wind blew into Sonam’s face. When it died, his family suddenly appeared before him. First, he saw the tent, the flickering fire and the cooking pot with the aluminium lid. His mother was standing behind the steam, dropping lumps of yak butter into the pot. He could smell the warm butter tea and fried cheese. Then he saw Dawa, or rather, Dawa saw him. She yelped with joy, raced over to him, dug her head into his chest and slapped his shoulders. He laughed and followed her into the tent.

Inside, nothing had changed. The same yak hides covered the ground. His father was leaning against the central pole, as usual, enjoying the warmth of the fire. The yak butter pouch that his mother had used all her life still hung from the same hook.

Sonam placed beside his father’s feet the white bucket that he’d brought with him from Saga. He said that this was the bucket the black horse had run off with. Ngawang, his youngest sister, walked in. She hadn’t grown at all, and still had the same foolish smile that she’d worn the time he’d wiped coal dust over her face. Dawa looked down at the fire, broke off a lump from the tea brick and threw it into the pot. Sonam presented her with the bag of fine grain salt that he’d brought with him. She had grown up a lot. As she bent over to take the bag of salt from him, her breasts jerked forward and wobbled a little. Immediately he thought of the school sports field where he played football after lunch. Next to the field was a large pond, and behind that was his school. When you looked at the school reflected in the water, its whitewashed walls seemed very clean.

He pulled off his rucksack. Didn’t the black horse run off with this too? he asked himself. He opened the sack and took out a neatly folded shirt wrapped in cellophane and gave it to his mother. His two sisters shrieked with delight. They pounced on the sack and started pulling things out. He told them to wash their hands before they touched anything. His father walked over to take a look. He’d had a lot to drink already, and was as weak as Tashi’s nephew had warned. He looked like an old butter churn as he leaned down over the sack. The barley wine in his wooden bowl splashed onto his hands each time he lifted it to his mouth.

Sonam felt a chill run down his back, and moved towards the fire. Although it was summer, at night it got so cold, his legs would go numb. Outside, he could hear the sheep huddling together for warmth, stamping their feet from time to time and clashing horns. The warm steam and the smell of yak dung in the tent slowly seeped into his body. He took a few sips of butter tea and checked the taste. The butter was fresh but the tea hadn’t brewed long enough and tasted a little of mould.

He wanted to speak. ‘Ask me whatever you like,’ he said. ‘Have you seen the big building I live in? It’s very tall. There are rooms on each floor.’ He thought about the cinema near his school and said, ‘One day we could all be in a film.’ He looked at their blank faces and explained, ‘There are many kinds of films: dramas, documentaries, foreign films.’ Seeing that they were still confused, he added: ‘It’s a bigger world outside. But of course, there aren’t so many mountains as there are here.’