"Sky Burial, An Epic Love Story of Tibet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Xue Xinran)

3 ZHUOMA

Wen gently cleaned away the grime to reveal a face with a warm, terra-cotta-colored complexion and sun-scorched rosy cheeks. It was a typical Tibetan woman’s face, Wen realized-dark almond-shaped expressive eyes, a sensual mouth with a full lower and thin upper lip, and a straight, broad nose. But its youthful features seemed to have been ravaged by some terrible ordeal or illness-the eyes were bloodshot and listless, and from the sore and blistered mouth, the woman could only utter an exhausted slur of indecipherable sounds. She couldn’t possibly have been involved in the recent night killings-a thought that had crossed Wen’s mind-because she was barely alive.

A soldier passed Wen a flask of water, and she poured its contents, drop by drop, into the woman’s mouth. Her thirst quenched, the woman muttered two words in Chinese: thank you.

“She can speak Chinese!” a soldier yelled out to the assembled crowd of onlookers.

Everyone was very excited: this was the nearest to a Tibetan they’d ever been, and she spoke Chinese too. Immediately they all began to wonder whether she’d be able to help them prevent any more attacks, maybe by offering protection of some kind. Wen spotted the company commander glancing over in her direction as he conferred with officers from the other trucks. She supposed they must be discussing what to do with the Tibetan woman.

The commander walked over to Wen. “What’s the matter with her? Will she be any use to us?”

Wen realized that the woman’s life was in her hands. After taking the woman’s pulse and using her stethoscope to listen carefully to her heart and chest, she turned back to the commander.

“I’d say she’s just suffering from extreme exhaustion-she’ll soon recover.”

It happened to be the truth, but Wen knew she would have said the same thing even if it weren’t. She didn’t want to see the Tibetan woman abandoned.

“Get her onto the truck, then let’s go.” The commander climbed back on board without another word.

Once on the road, the Tibetan woman fell into a dazed sleep and Wen explained to her fellow soldiers that she probably hadn’t eaten, drunk, or even slept for several days and nights. She could see that the soldiers didn’t really believe her, but still everyone squeezed up to give the Tibetan woman as much space as possible.

Wen stared in fascination at the woman’s necklaces and amulets rising and falling with her labored breathing. Her heavy gown, though coarse and covered with dust and dirt, was in places finely embroidered. This was no peasant woman, Wen thought. And then she smiled to herself as she suddenly realized that every soldier in the truck, some open-mouthed, couldn’t take their eyes off this exotic creature.

WEN THOUGHT that day would never end. The road became increasingly rough and broken up as they slowly made their way through several precarious mountain passes. The wind gained so much strength that it rocked the trucks from side to side. At last they set up camp for the night in the shelter of a jutting rock. The commander suggested putting the woman close to one of the campfires-first, to give her the warmth she still needed but, more important, to deter the killers who had probably continued to follow them. They all settled down to a very uneasy sleep.

In the middle of the night, Wen heard the Tibetan woman give out a low moan. She sat up.

“What is it? Do you need something?”

“Water… water.” The woman’s voice sounded desperately weak.

Wen gave her some water as quickly as she could, then a generous portion of flour paste from the supplies. Earlier in the day, when they had first found the woman, Wen had only managed to give her a very small amount of food from her own rations, but now that they had set up camp and the provisions had been unpacked, she managed to put aside some more. Gradually the woman began to come back to life and was able to speak.

“Thank you,” she said. “You are very kind.” Although the woman spoke Chinese clearly, her accent was strange.

“I’m a doctor,” said Wen, searching her mind for the Tibetan word for “doctor,” which Kejun had once told her. “Menba. I can take care of you. Don’t talk. Wait until you feel better. You’re still very ill.”

“There’s nothing seriously wrong with me, I’m just exhausted. I can talk.” With great effort, the woman shifted her limp body closer to Wen.

“No, stay there, I can hear you. What is your name?”

“Zhuoma,” the woman said weakly.

“And where is your home?”

“Nowhere. My home is gone.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears.

Wen was utterly at a loss for words. After a brief silence, she asked, “Why can you speak such good Chinese?”

“I learned Chinese as a child. I have visited Beijing and Shanghai.”

Wen was amazed. “I come from Suzhou,” she said, excitedly, desperately hoping that the woman would know her hometown. But in an instant, Zhuoma’s face was animated and full of anger.

“Then why have you left it to come and kill Tibetans?”

Wen was about to protest when suddenly the woman cried out in Tibetan. The men, who were already on edge, leaped to their feet. But it was too late: yet another soldier was dead, stabbed through the heart with a Tibetan knife. Shots and shouts rang out as a temporary madness descended over the soldiers. Then a terrifying quiet returned, as if a hideous fate were hanging over the first person to produce the tiniest sound.

Out of the silence, a soldier whipped around and pointed his gun at Zhuoma, who was still too weak to stand.

“I’ll shoot you dead, Tibetan! Shoot-you-dead!” he screamed. He made as if to pull the trigger.

With a courage she didn’t know she had, Wen threw herself between Zhuoma and the soldier.

“No, wait, she hasn’t killed anyone, you can’t murder her!” Her voice was trembling but firm.

“But it’s her people who are killing us. I-I don’t want to die!” The soldier looked as if he were about to explode with panic and fury.

“Kill her, kill her!” More and more soldiers joined in the argument. They were all on the side of the man with the gun.

Wen stared at the commander, hoping he’d come to her rescue, but his face remained stony.

“Good menba,” Zhuoma said, “let them kill me. There’s so much hatred between the Chinese and the Tibetans, no one can make things right again now. If killing me will bring them some sort of peace, I’m happy to die here.”

Wen turned to face the crowd. “You hear that? This woman would sacrifice herself to you. Yes, she is Tibetan, but she likes us, she likes our culture, she’s been to Beijing, to Shanghai. She can speak Chinese. She wants to help us. Why should we take her life just to make ourselves feel better? What would you think if people killed your loved ones for revenge? What would you do?” Wen was close to tears.

“The Tibetans have killed us for revenge,” one soldier blustered.

“They have reasons for resentment and so do we, but why must we make things worse and create new hatreds?” As soon as the words were out of Wen’s mouth, she thought how pointless it was talking to these uneducated soldiers who knew only love and hate. Wang Liang had been right: war drew clear lines of love and hate between people.

“What do women know about enemies? Or hate?” shouted a voice from the crowd. “Just shoot the Tibetan.”

Wen spun around to face the voice. “Who says I don’t know about enemies? Or hate? Do you know why I left Suzhou and traveled thousands of miles to this terrifying place? I came looking for my husband. We’d only been married three weeks when he went to war in Tibet and now he’s disappeared. My life is nothing without him.” Wen burst into tears.

The soldiers fell silent. Wen’s weeping was accompanied only by the rustling and popping of burning wood. Dawn was beginning to break and a little extra light was illuminating the camp.

“I know what it is to hate. If my husband is really dead, dead at the age of twenty-nine, I’m here for revenge, to find his murderers. But don’t you think the people here hate us too? Haven’t you wondered why we haven’t seen any people here? Don’t you think that perhaps it has something to do with us?”

Wen looked around at her silenced audience, and continued more slowly and deliberately.

“All this death over the last few days is a warning to us. I’ve been thinking about it a lot: I’m just as afraid, as full of hate as you are. But why are we here? Have the Tibetans welcomed us? We’ve come to liberate them, but why do they hate us?”

“Company, fall in!”

The commander interrupted Wen. As the soldiers got into line, the commander whispered to her, “I understand what you’re saying, but you can’t talk to the soldiers like that. We are a revolutionary army, not a force for oppression. Get into line and await orders.” The commander turned to the soldiers. “Comrades, we’ve found ourselves in a very complex and serious situation. We must remember the army’s Three Great Regulations and Eight Principles, and the Party’s policy on minorities. We forgive the misunderstandings of the Tibetan people, strive for their cooperation and understanding, and work as hard as we can for the liberation of Tibet.”

The commander glanced over to Zhuoma and Wen.

“If we want to liberate Tibet, we need the help of the Tibetan people, especially Tibetans who can speak Chinese. They can lead us out of danger, win over the locals, and resolve misunderstandings. They can help us find water and places to camp, and teach us about the culture and customs of the Tibetans. The leadership has decided to take Zhuoma on as our guide and interpreter.”

Everyone was stunned by this unexpected announcement, none more so than Zhuoma. Confusion was written all over her face. She plainly found it difficult to understand the commander’s heavy Shanxi accent or what he meant by the army’s regulations and principles, but she realized that the soldiers had stopped looking at her with such fierce hatred. With no further explanation, the commander dispatched soldiers to bury their dead comrade, light the stoves for breakfast, put out the campfire, and check over the weapons store. Yet again the murdered man had been a driver, and so another truck had to be abandoned. The remaining trucks were now more crowded than ever. Before the convoy set off, the commander arranged for Zhuoma and Wen to sit together in the cab of the truck, where he usually sat. He said it was to allow the soldiers “a bit more room,” but Wen knew he wanted to give her and Zhuoma an opportunity to rest safely.

For the first part of the journey Zhuoma drifted into a long sleep, her head on Wen’s shoulder. When she woke up, Wen was pleased to see that life had begun to return to her eyes. Wen made her eat a little more flour paste, and as Zhuoma’s cheeks regained some color, she saw how young and beautiful she was.

“Where is your family?” asked Wen. “Where were you going?”

Zhuoma’s eyes were filled with sadness. As the truck jolted along, she quietly told Wen the story of her life.

ZHUOMA WAS twenty-one. Her father had been the head of an important, landowning family in the Bam Co region, a fertile area just north of Lhasa that was one of the gateways through the mountains, providing access to the north of Tibet. He presided over a large household with extensive lands and many serfs. Zhuoma’s mother had died giving birth to her, and her father’s other two wives had not produced children, so she had been her father’s greatest treasure.

When she was five years old, two Chinese men in military uniforms had come to stay in their household. Her father said that they had come to research Tibetan culture. It was only later that Zhuoma learned that they had been envoys sent by the Nationalist government in China to research the arts and customs of Tibet. The two Chinese had taken a great shine to her and, in their halting Tibetan, had told her many fascinating stories. The older of the two had preferred stories to do with Chinese history. He had told her about how five thousand years ago Da Yu had stopped the Yellow River from flooding by dividing it into two branches; how Wang Zhaojun, one of the Four Beauties of Chinese history, had brought peace to the north of China by marrying a barbarian king; how the principles of political power were contained in a book called The Three Kingdoms; and how Sun Yat-sen had founded the modern state of China. The younger man had entranced her with Chinese legends and stories of female daring. He talked of Nu Wa and how she had held a stone up to a hole in the sky when she saw it was broken, the Monkey King, who had challenged the authority of the heavens, and the young girl Mulan who had disguised herself as a man and joined the army in the place of her father, remaining undetected for many years.

Zhuoma had been enthralled by these tales, which were utterly different from anything in Tibetan culture. She pestered the two men endlessly, until they began to tell everyone that Zhuoma asked more questions than there were stars in the sky. With their encouragement, she learned to read Chinese characters, although she hadn’t wanted to write them herself, intimidated by the difficulty of copying the many pictures. The men had returned to China the year Zhuoma turned fifteen, taking with them many scrolls in Tibetan and leaving behind for her a huge pile of books, as well as a great loneliness and yearning for China.

As she was growing up, she would constantly beg her father to let her visit China, but he always said no, arguing that she was too young, or that it wasn’t a convenient time. But when she heard her father telling people that he was planning to emulate other landowners and send her to study in England because of the historic links between the two countries, she threatened never to marry if he did not let her see Beijing. Her father relented and allowed her to accompany an estate owner from a neighboring region on a trip to China. Since she could speak Chinese, this man had agreed to take her along, on the condition that she obey the sacred Tibetan law not to speak about what she knew and not to ask about what she didn’t know.

And so the young Zhuoma went to Beijing in springtime.

“The people and the traffic terrified me,” Zhuoma told Wen. “I’d thought of Beijing as another great grassland, like Tibet, with a different language and culture, of course, but no more than that. It was a huge shock. I couldn’t believe how much the Chinese talked. Their faces seemed so white and clean, completely unmarked by life. There were no horses, no grass, no space, only buildings, cars, people, streets, and lots of noise. And Shanghai shocked me even more. I saw creatures with golden hair and blue eyes-like the ghosts you see in Tibetan paintings-just walking along the streets. Our Chinese companion explained that they were ‘Westerners,’ but I didn’t know what he meant and couldn’t ask because I had to keep my promise not to ask about ‘what I didn’t know.’”

When Zhuoma returned to Tibet, she was dying to tell people about all the strange and exciting things she had seen, but no one understood what she was talking about. Her father seemed to have something very serious on his mind. His permanent anxiety and gloom robbed him of all interest in what she had to tell him, while his two wives never talked to Zhuoma anyway. To compensate for his neglect, her father began to send his groom to keep her company and listen to her stories.

“My father couldn’t bear to see me so lonely, but all he could think of doing to help was to send me one of his servants. It never entered his mind that I might fall in love with the groom.”

A shadow of anguish passed across Zhuoma’s face.

“My father was furious when he found out. He told me that what I was experiencing was not love but simply need. All I knew was what I felt: that I wanted to be with this man all the time, and that I loved everything about him.

“In my area of Tibet,” Zhuoma continued, “love between a noble and a servant is forbidden. It is the will of the spirits, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. But we are all creatures of emotion, and emotions are not so easily circumscribed. Because of this there are certain rules in place. If a male servant and a noblewoman fall in love, then the only option is for the man to take the woman far away. If he does this, she loses everything: family, property, even the right to exist in her native place.

My father knew I was stubborn so he took the advice of the family retainer, who had been his counselor since he was a child, and sent me back to Beijing with a group of servants.”

The man who had first taken Zhuoma to China had Chinese friends in Beijing and the seventeen-year-old Zhuoma went to stay with them. Soon afterward her servants were ordered home. They could not cope with their alien surroundings. To them Beijing seemed not to belong to the human world at all. They felt surrounded by demons. No one spoke their language or ate their food. Without temples or monasteries they were completely unprotected by the spirits. Zhuoma, on the other hand, thrived. She enrolled at the Central Institute of Nationalities-a university set up by the Communist government specially to educate young people from China’s minority territories. There the groom was soon replaced in her young mind by her love of Chinese culture.

“I loved meeting people so different from Tibetans,” Zhuoma confided to Wen. “I loved Beijing, with its huge Tiananmen Square. At the institute, my Chinese was already much more fluent than that of most of the other minority students and I progressed well in my studies. At home I had never traveled beyond the confines of my father’s land and I was excited to learn that the various regions of Tibet had many different customs and many branches to its one religion. When I graduated, I decided to stay on as a teacher and translator of Tibetan.

“But it was not to be. Just as I was in the process of moving from the students’ to the teachers’ dormitory, I received a message that my father was seriously ill.”

Zhuoma described how she had set out for Tibet that same evening, traveling as fast as she could day and night, first by train, then by horse and cart, and finally on horseback, whipping on the horse in her haste to return to her father’s lands. But when she arrived at the foot of the Tanggula mountains, servants, who had been waiting for her there, broke the news that their lord hadn’t been able to hold out for a last sight of his daughter. He had died seven days earlier.

Overwhelmed by grief and disbelief, Zhuoma made her way home. She could see in the distance the prayer flags fluttering from the hall where her father lay in state. When she came nearer she heard the chants of the lamas who would send her father’s spirit to heaven. Inside the hall, her father was already wrapped in a shroud, with his two wives kneeling silently to his left. On his right was a portrait of Zhuoma’s dead mother with the jade Buddha amulet she had used while alive. The gold-embroidered hassock Zhuoma used to pray on had been placed beneath the golden statue of the Buddha that sat at her father’s head. He was surrounded by offerings to the spirits, white khata prayer scarves, sacred inscriptions, and other objects brought as tributes by friends, relatives, and the household and farm serfs.

“I was my father’s heir,” Zhuoma explained. “As a young woman, I had never thought about my father’s duties as the head of such a large estate. Nor had he ever talked to me about such matters. But now, after the forty-nine days of burial rites had been observed, my father’s retainer took me aside and explained to me the heavy burdens that had been my father’s in the weeks before he died.

“He showed me three letters. One was from another local governor urging my father to support the Army of Defenders of the Faith and rise up against the Chinese. It said that the Chinese people were monsters and were bringing shame upon the lands of the Buddha. The letter told him to contribute silver, yaks, horses, cloth, and grain to the army and to poison the water sources to deprive the Chinese of sustenance.

“The second letter was from a Chinese general named Zhang who wanted my father to help ‘unite the motherland.’ He said that he hoped my father would help him to avoid bloodshed but that, if he did not, he would have no choice but to send soldiers onto his land. He told my father that I was being well cared for in Beijing.

“The third letter was from my father’s fourth brother. It had arrived just before my father died. My father’s brother advised him to flee west with his family, saying that in his region fierce fighting had broken out between Tibetans and Chinese. All the temples were destroyed, the landowners slaughtered, and the serfs fled. He had heard a rumor that I was being held captive in Beijing. He hoped his letter would arrive in time. He himself was awaiting his fate.

“On reading these letters I was thrown into confusion. I did not understand why there should be so much hatred between my homeland and my dreamland. I realized that my father’s death must have been caused by his great anxiety. He was caught between threats from both the Chinese and the Tibetans. He would not have been able to bear the scenes described in my uncle’s letter. Religion is the lifeblood of the Tibetan people.

“For hours I thought about what to do. I had no desire to help the Army of Defenders of the Faith kill Chinese people, nor did I want the blood of my own people to pollute the land. My property and my role as head of the estate meant little to me any longer. And so I decided to walk away from the fighting in the hope of finding freedom…”

Zhuoma went on to describe in a quiet voice how she had dismantled her estate. Having sent her stepmothers away with great piles of gold, she let the household servants go free and divided much of her property among them. The ornaments and jewels that had been in her family for generations she concealed in her clothing, hoping they would protect her and allow her to buy food in days to come. Then she opened the granaries and distributed their contents among the serfs. She sent the household’s precious golden Buddha and the other religious objects to a monastery. All the time she was conscious of being watched by her father’s retainer. He had been with the family since her father was three and had begun to learn the scriptures. Three generations of her family had benefited from his wisdom and resourcefulness. Now he was forced to witness the destruction of the household.

When all was done, Zhuoma walked through the house surveying its empty rooms. It was dusk and she carried a flaming torch. Before she left, she intended to burn the house down. As she was about to set the building alight, her retainer approached her, his head bent.

“Mistress,” he said. “Since in your heart, this house is already burned to ashes, will you leave it to me?”

Zhuoma was taken aback. It had never occurred to her that this servant would ask such a thing.

“But there is nothing here,” she stammered. “How will you live? The fighting is getting nearer…”

“I came here with empty hands and I will leave with empty hands,” said the man. “The spirits will direct me. Here I was received into the Buddhist faith. In life or death my roots are here. Mistress, please grant my request.”

All the time that he was speaking, he did not raise his head.

Zhuoma looked at him. She realized that this man was not the lowly servant of her childhood. His face was utterly changed.

“Very well,” she said, feeling the gravity of her words. “May the spirits protect you and bring you your desire. Raise your head and receive your home.”

With this, she passed him the torch.

Zhuoma led her horse to the gateway of the courtyard, counting each step as she went-599 in all. When she reached the gate, she turned around and, for the first time in her life, realized how imposing her childhood home was. The two-story decorated archway was resplendent with bright colors; the workshops, kitchens, servants’ quarters, stables, storehouses, and granaries to either side were beautifully maintained. Far off in the distance, her father’s retainer stood like a statue, illuminated by the torchlight.

She turned out of the gatehouse and in what was left of the daylight noticed a man and a horse, the horse heavily laden with baggage. “Who’s that?” she asked in surprise. “Mistress, it’s me,” came the reply. The voice was familiar.

“Groom? Is that you? What are you doing here?”

“I… I wanted to be a guide for my mistress.”

“A guide? How do you know where I want to go?”

“I know. I knew it when my mistress came back from Beijing and told me stories.”

ZHUOMA WAS so moved she didn’t know what to say. She had never thought the groom was a man of such feeling and passion. She wanted to see his expression, but he spoke with a lowered head.

“Raise your head and let me look at you,” she said.

“Mistress, your groom does not dare…”

“From now on, I am no longer your mistress and you are no longer my groom. What is your name?”

“I have no name. I am simply ‘Groom,’ like my father.”

“Then I will give you a name. May I?”

“Thank you, Mistress.”

“And you must call me Zhuoma, or else I will not have you as my guide.”

“Yes… no,” the man mumbled in confusion.

ZHUOMA SMILED as she told Wen how she had named the groom Tiananmen after the great square that had so impressed her in Beijing. But her expression soon turned to sadness as she described what had followed.

As she and Tiananmen were preparing to ride away from the house, Tiananmen suddenly pointed to the sky and cried out.

“Mistress, a fire! A great fire!”

Zhuoma turned to see her house ablaze and, in the courtyard, her family retainer howling prayers as he burned. The tears ran down her face. Her family’s loyal servant was immolating himself in the house to which he had sacrificed his life.

Wen held her breath as she imagined what it must be like to lose one’s family like that. As Zhuoma continued with her story, she was barely able to hold back the tears.

Zhuoma and Tiananmen had traveled east, toward China. Tiananmen was a good guide, taking them away from the usual routes and avoiding the conflict between the Chinese and the Tibetans. They had plenty of food-dried meat, barley, some butter and cheese. The rivers gave them water, and there was wood for the fire. Although they had to cross several high mountain passes, Tiananmen always knew where they could seek shelter. During the long journey, Tiananmen put his heart and soul into looking after Zhuoma: finding water, preparing food, collecting firewood, laying out the bedding, keeping watch at night. He overlooked nothing. Zhuoma had never before lived out in the open and didn’t know how to help him. As she sat beside the leaping campfire or jolted along on her horse, she drank in his silent love. Despite their desperate situation, she felt hope and happiness. But then the weather changed. A great wind came over the steppe, bringing with it a blizzard that rolled up into itself anything it found before it. The horses were struggling badly, and Zhuoma and Tiananmen could only inch forward. Realizing it was too dangerous to continue, Tiananmen laid out a place for the exhausted Zhuoma to sleep in the lee of a huge boulder. He then positioned himself in the path of the gale to shelter her.

In the middle of the night, Zhuoma was awoken by the howling of the wind. She shouted for Tiananmen but there was no answer. She struggled to stand up but could not keep her footing in the gale, and instead crawled about searching and shouting. Lost in the pitch darkness, she lacked any landmark by which to orient herself. Finally she fainted and fell over a mountain edge into a rocky ravine.

When she came around from her stupor, the sky had been washed bright blue. Zhuoma was lying on the stony slopes of a gully. There was no sign of Tiananmen, his belongings, or any of their luggage. The blue heavens watched in silence as she wept; several vultures soared over her head, echoing her cries with their own.

“I shouted Tiananmen’s name over and over again until my throat was hoarse,” Zhuoma said. “I had no idea what to do next. Fortunately, I was unhurt, but I didn’t know where I was or which way to go. I am the daughter of a nobleman: I am used to being looked after by servants. All I knew about east and west was the rising and setting of the sun. I walked for days without meeting a single person. Then I collapsed with cold and hunger. Just as I thought I was going to die, I heard your trucks and I prayed to the Lord Buddha that you would see me.”

THERE WAS a long silence in the cab of the truck. Wen didn’t know how to speak to Zhuoma after all she had heard. In the end it was the driver of the truck who spoke first. Although he had appeared to be concentrating on the difficult road, he had heard every word.

“Do you think Tiananmen is still alive?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” replied Zhuoma. “But if he is, I will marry him.”

THAT EVENING, everyone was afraid to sleep. Around the campfires, the exhausted soldiers sat back to back, with one group of men facing toward the fire, the other keeping watch over the darkness. Every hour they swapped places.

As they sat there, Wen remembered something. She turned to Zhuoma.

“When we were attacked this morning, you shouted something in Tibetan. What did it mean? How did you know the Tibetans had come?”

“I heard them whispering the ritual words that Tibetans utter as a signal to kill. I wanted to tell them not to do it, that there was a Tibetan in the group…”

Wen was about to ask more when Zhuoma cried out again, a piercing, desolate shriek that made everyone’s hair stand on end.

As the cry died away, the people in the outer circle could see black shadows moving toward them.

Instinct told Wen that no one should move, that anyone who moved would be dead. Within a few seconds, countless Tibetans armed with guns and knives had surrounded them. Wen thought the end had come. Then a sorrowful song floated up into the air. The tune was Tibetan but the words were Chinese:

Snowy mountain, why do you not weep? Is

your heart too cold?

Snowy mountain, why do you weep? Is your

heart too sore?

Everyone watched Zhuoma as, continuing to sing, she slowly stood up and walked over to the leader of the Tibetans. Having first performed a Tibetan greeting, she drew an ornament from her gown and presented it to him. The sight of the ornament had an immediate effect on the Tibetan. He gestured to his men, who all took a step back. He then returned Zhuoma’s greeting and started speaking to her in Tibetan.

Wen and the rest of the company had no idea what was being said, but they were sure Zhuoma was trying to work out a way to save them. After many tense minutes, Zhuoma returned. The Tibetans, she said, wished to punish them. On its way westward, the People’s Liberation Army had extinguished the eternal flames in the monasteries and killed many of their herdsman. The Tibetans believed that 231 herdsman had been lost and they intended to take double that number of Chinese lives in compensation. Though Zhuoma had tried to negotiate with them, they refused to be merciful, arguing that to release the Chinese would allow them to kill more Tibetans. However, the Tibetan leader had said he would give them a chance if they agreed to three conditions. First, the Tibetans wanted to take ten Chinese as hostages, to be killed if the Liberation Army killed any more of their people; second, they wished the Chinese to return to their lands in the east and never to take another step westward again; third, the Chinese must leave behind all their weapons and equipment, including their trucks.

The radio operator argued that having to walk back with no food or water was no different from dying. Zhuoma told him that the Tibetans were prepared to leave them some dried meat.

All this time, the company commander had been very silent. Now he asked Zhuoma to return to the Tibetans and request permission for him to hold a meeting with his men. It was not long before Zhuoma came back. “They agree,” she said. “You are to put your weapons on the ground and stand over there.”

The commander unbuckled his gun belt, gently laid it on the ground, then turned to address his men.

“All Party members put their weapons on the ground as I have, and then follow me over there for a meeting. The rest remain here.”

Twenty or thirty soldiers left the silent crowd, watched by the Tibetans. Several minutes later, some of the men returned to the ranks but twelve remained by the commander. The commander asked Zhuoma to tell the Tibetans that, although they had requested ten hostages, twelve Party members wished to live and die together. They would therefore provide an additional two hostages. Clearly moved by the self-sacrifice of the two extra hostages, the Tibetans gave the departing Chinese not only the promised meat, but a few waterskins and knives.

The two women remained behind with the Tibetans. Wen had told Zhuoma something of her search for Kejun and her desire to head north toward Qinghai. Through Zhuoma’s influence, the leader of the Tibetans had agreed to let them accompany his men westward. When the time came for the women to go north, he would give them a guide. As Wen sat behind Zhuoma on one of the Tibetans’ horses, clinging to her waist for dear life, she asked how Zhuoma had managed to negotiate with the Tibetans. Zhuoma explained that her ornaments identified her as the head of an estate. Although Tibetans were divided into many different groups, each with its own culture and customs, they all made sacrifices to Buddha, and all leaders had identical ornaments, which were a symbol of their power. The leader of the Tibetans had immediately recognized her superior status. She was glad to have been able to use her power to help Wen, because she owed the Chinese menba her life.

The group journeyed west for four and a half days. The leader then came to Zhuoma and Wen and told them that if they still wished to go to Qinghai, it was here that they should head north. They had just stopped to pack food and water for the women when three messengers on horseback came flying toward them reporting that the Chinese cavalry was up ahead. The Tibetan leader immediately ordered his men to hide their horses in the undergrowth nearby and Zhuoma guided their horse to follow.

In the thicket, Wen could not help being excited at having come across Chinese forces so unexpectedly. Perhaps Kejun would be among them. Her elation was soon quelled by the fury on the faces of the Tibetans, and the sight of the twelve Chinese hostages being led into a mountain pass. Terrified, she watched as a large unit of Chinese cavalry pursued and killed the few Tibetans who had not hidden themselves quickly enough. Gunfire was all around. Men fell from their horses, spouting blood. Wen grasped Zhuoma’s hand, trembling at the gruesome scene. The Tibetan woman’s hand was clenched.

Light drained from the sky. When the Tibetan leader finally gave the order that it was safe to move on, it was pitch-dark. Wen could feel the anxiety in Zhuoma’s body as she urged their horse to keep up with the rest. But the wind and the darkness conspired to separate them from their companions. As they struggled onward through the gale, the horse suddenly gave a long, frightened whinny and threw them from its back. Seconds later they heard a thud as its body hit the bottom of a ravine. By throwing them, it had loyally saved them from certain death. Stunned, they sat with their arms around each other in the wild wind, hardly able to believe they were still alive. Wang Liang’s words flashed through Wen’s mind: “War gives you no time to study and no chance to adapt.”