I am an old acquaintance of rain and snow, and I am ninety years old. The rain and snow look old to me, and I also look at them old. Nowadays, the summer rain is getting thinner and thinner, and the winter snow is thinner and thinner every year. They were like the furless roe deer bedding under me, and the thick fluffs passed away with the wind, leaving behind the scars of time. Sitting on such a mattress, I was like a hunter guarding an alkali field, but I was waiting not for the deer with beautiful horns, but for the wind wrapped in sand and dust.
As soon as they left, the rain came. Before that, for more than half a month, the sun came out every morning with a red face, and at night the yellow face fell, and there was no cloud on the body all day. The blazing sun licked the river thin, and the grass on the sunny slopes was also bent over. I'm not afraid of drought, but I'm afraid of Maxim's cries. Liusha would weep on the day of the full moon, and Maxim, as soon as he saw the earth dry and curved cracks, would cover his face and cry. It was as if the crack was a poisonous snake that would kill him. But I am not afraid of such cracks, for in my eyes they are the lightning bolts of the earth.
Ann Grass cleans the camp in the rain.
I asked AnCao'er, is Busu a place that lacks rain, and Xiban still has to carry rain when he goes down the mountain?
Ann Grass straightened her waist, stuck out her tongue and licked the raindrops, and smiled at me. As soon as he smiled, the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and cheeks followed—chrysanthemums came out of the corners of his eyes, and sunflowers on his cheeks. The rain poured down, and his flower-like wrinkles seemed to contain dewdrops.
We were the only ones left in Ulilen and Ancao' children, and everyone else was in the morning in a truck, taking their belongings and reindeer down the mountain. In the past, we also went down the mountain, went to Uqirov in the early years, and in recent years we have gone to the rapids township to exchange deer antler velvet and fur for wine, salt, soap, sugar and tea, and then back to the mountain. But this time they went down the mountain completely. The place they went to was called Busu, and Pazhig told me that Busu was a big town, leaning against the mountain, and there were many white-walled and red-roofed houses built under the mountain, and that was where they settled. At the foot of the mountain there is also a row of deer pens, which are blocked by barbed wire, and the reindeer will henceforth be kept in captivity.
I don't want to sleep in a room where I can't see the stars, and I've spent my whole life with the stars. If I had woken up in the middle of the night with a dark roof, my eyes would have been blind; my reindeer had not committed a crime, and I did not want to see them squatting in "prison." I must have been deaf without hearing the sound of the deer's bells like running water; my legs and feet were accustomed to the potholed mountain roads, and if I had been allowed to walk on the flat paths of the town every day, they would have been so weak that they would no longer be able to carry my body and make me a paralyzed; I had been breathing in the fresh mountain air, and if I had been asked to smell the "stinky farts" from Bussu's car, I would not have gasped. My body is given by the gods, and I will be in the mountains and give it back to the gods.
Two years ago, Dagiana summoned the people of Ullilen and asked them to vote on going down the mountain. She gave each of them a piece of white cut square birch bark, and agreed to put it on the drum left by Ni Hao. The sacred drum was soon covered with birch bark, as if the heavens had snowed heavily on it. I was the last to get up, but I walked not to the drum like the others, but to the fire pit, and I threw the birch bark there. It quickly turned to ashes in a golden burning. As I walked out of the Pillar of Hiron, I heard Dagjana's cry.
I thought that Sibano would eat the birch bark, he liked to eat the bark since he was a child, and he couldn't leave the forest, but he finally put it on the drum like everyone else. I think what Sibana put on the drum of God was his grain. He went with such a little grain, and sooner or later he would starve to death. I think Siban must have agreed to go down the hill for poor Radimi.
An Cao'er also put birch bark on the god drum, but his actions did not explain anything. Everyone knew that he didn't understand what everyone was asking him to do, he just wanted to get rid of the birch bark early so that he could go out and do his work. Ancao'er likes to work, and that day a reindeer's eye was stung by a wasp, and he was applying herbs to it, and Dagiana called him to vote, and Ancao'er entered the Shilen Pillar, and saw Thatxim and Sochanglin put birch bark on the drum, and he did the same. At that time he had only the reindeer's eye in his heart. AnCao'er is not like others respectfully placing birch bark on the drum, but when he walks out of the Pillar of Xilen, he spreads it out with his hands, like a flying bird, inadvertently leaving a feather.
Although the camp was just me and Ancao'er, I didn't feel lonely at all. As long as I live in the mountains, even if I am the last person, I will not feel lonely.
I went back to the Pillar of Shilen and sat on a roe deer-skin mattress, drinking tea from the fire pit.
In the past, when we moved, we always had to carry a fire. Dagiana they went down the mountain this time, but they left the fire here. The days without fire were cold and dark, and I was really sad and worried about them. But they told me that there was a fire in every house in Busu and that there was no need for fire anymore. But I think that the fire of Busu was not polished in the forest with a fire scythe against the stone, and there was no sunlight and moonlight in the fire of Busu, so how could such a fire make people's hearts and eyes bright!
The fire I'm guarding is as old as I am. Whether it was a strong wind, heavy snow or heavy rain, I guarded it and never let it go out. This fire is my beating heart.
I'm a woman who's not good at telling stories, but at this moment, listening to the rain of brush brushes and watching the throbbing firelight, I especially want to talk to someone. Dagiana is gone, Sibban is gone, Liusha and Maxim are gone, to whom is my story told? An Cao'er herself does not like to talk, nor does she like to listen to others. So let rain and fire listen to my story, I know that this pair of wrongdoers have ears like people.
I'm an Evenk woman.
I am the woman of the last chief of our nation.
I was born in winter. My mother's name is Damara and my father's name is Link. When my mother gave birth to me, my father hunted a black bear. In order to get the best bear bile, the father found the tree hole of the bear's "squat barn", teased it with a birch pole, provoked the hibernating bear, and then raised his shotgun to kill it. When the bear is angry, the bile is strong, and the bear bile will be full. Father had good luck that day, and he had two things: a rounded bear bile, and me.
The first sound I heard in the human world was the cry of a crow. But that wasn't really the crow's cry. Since the bears were hunted, the people of Ullilen gathered to eat bear meat. We worship bears, so when we eat them, we have to cry out like crows for a moment, so that the souls of bears know that it is not people who want to eat their flesh, but crows.
Many children born in winter often die of illness due to severe cold, and this is how my sister died. When she was born, it was snowing heavily, and her father went in search of the lost reindeer. The wind was very strong, and the Xilen Pillar that my mother had built for childbirth was lifted by the fierce wind, and my sister suffered from the wind and cold, and only lived for two days before leaving. If the fawn had left, she would have left the beautiful hoof prints on the woods, but her sister walked like the wind that had eroded her, and for a moment she was silent. The sister was packed in a white cloth pocket and thrown on the sunny hillside. It made my mother sad. So when she gave birth to me, my mother made the animal skin of the Hillenburg tight, for fear that another cold wind would stick out its cannibalistic tongue and take away her child.
Of course, these words were told to me by my mother when I grew up. She said that the night I was born, the people of all Ullin lit a bonfire in the snow and danced with bear meat. The Neddus shaman jumped into the fire, his deerskin boots and roe deer coat stained with Mars, and he didn't hurt at all.
The Nidu shaman is my father's brother, the patriarch of our Urilen, and I call him Egduama, which means uncle. My memory begins with him.
In addition to my dead sister, I have another sister named Lena. That fall, Lena fell ill. She lay on the roe deer bedding of the Hillin Pillar, with a high fever, no food or drink, and was asleep, talking nonsense. The father built a four-pillar shed in the southeast corner of the Hillin Pillar, slaughtered a white reindeer, and asked the Nido shaman to come and give Lena a jump. Egdu Ama was a man, but because he was a shaman, he had to dress like a woman. When he jumped, his chest was also raised. He was very fat, and after putting on a heavy cloak and hat, I thought he wouldn't turn around. Yet he
The beating of the drum is so light. He danced and sang, searching for Lena's "Umai", the soul of our little children. He began to jump from dusk until the stars came out, and then he suddenly fell to the ground. The moment he fell to the ground, Lena sat up. Lena asked her mother for water to drink and said she was hungry. When the Nedhu shaman woke up, he told his mother that a gray reindeer boy had gone to a dark world in place of Lena. In order to restrain the reindeer who are reluctant to return to the camp because of their mushroom gluttony, we often tie the reindeer cubs to the camp in the autumn, so that the reindeer will remember to return. My mother took my hand and walked out of the Pillar of Shirren, and I saw in the starlight that the little reindeer, who had been alive and jumping before, had fallen motionless to the ground. I clasped my mother's hand and shivered deeply. The first thing I can remember is this chill, when I was about four or five years old.
The house I grew up seeing was an umbrella-like pillar of Shilen, which we also called the "Pillar of the Immortals." The pillar was easy to build, cutting twenty or thirty larch poles, sawing them into a two-man-high shape, peeling the skin, sharpening one end so that the tip pointed toward the sky and gathering together; the other end of the pine pole was attached to the ground and spread evenly, like countless dancing legs, forming a large circle, and the outer side was built with a fence to ward off the wind and cold. In the early days we used birch and animal skins to make fences, and later many people used canvas and felt.
I like to live in the Pillar of Hiron, which has a small hole in its spire, which naturally becomes a passage for the smoke exhaust of the fire pit. I often look at the stars through this little hole at night. There are only a few stars to be seen from here, but they are unusually bright, like oil lamps on top of a pillar.
Although my father did not want to go to the Nidu shaman, I loved to go. For in that pillar of Helen dwells not only man, but also God. Our gods are collectively called "Maru", and they are packed in a round leather pocket and enshrined directly opposite the entrance to the Pillar of Hiron. Before the adults go out hunting, they often prostrate themselves in front of the idols. This made me curious, always begging the Nidu shaman to untie his leather pocket and let me see what God looked like. Does God have flesh on him? Can God speak? Does God snore like a man in the middle of the night? Every time the Nido shaman heard me say this to him about the god Maru, he would pick up the drumstick he used to jump the god and blast me out.
The Nido shaman and my father were not at all like brothers. They rarely talk together and never travel together when hunting. The father was very thin, but the Nedhu shaman was fat. His father was a master hunter, but the Nido shaman often returned empty-handed when hunting. Father loves to talk, and the Nido shaman, even if he summons the people of Ullilen to discuss things, will only say a few words. It is said that on the day of my birth, he was extremely pleased with my birth because he had dreamed of a white fawn coming to our camp the night before, and drank a lot of wine, danced, and jumped into the campfire.
Father loves to joke with mother, and he often points at her in the summer and says, Damara, Ilan is biting your skirt! Elan is the name of our family hound. "Elan" means "light" in our language. So when it gets dark, I especially like to call out Ilan's name, I thought it would carry light when it ran over, but like me, it was just a shadow in the darkness. My mother is too keen to wear skirts, so it seems to me that my mother is looking forward to summer, not to the flowers in the forest to bloom early, but to wear a skirt. As soon as Elan heard that she had bitten her skirt, she would jump up in the air, and then her father would laugh triumphantly. My mother liked to wear a gray skirt with green seams on the waist, the front seams were wide, and the back seams were narrow.
Mother was the most capable of all the women of Uglilen. She has round arms and strong legs. She has a wide forehead, always smiling and squinting when she looks at people, and she is very warm. Other women wear a blue turban around their heads all day long, and she has her hair bare. She twisted her thick black hair into a bun with a hairpin made of moon-white deer bones.
Damara, here you come! Father often summoned her in this way, as he summoned us. The mother walked slowly to him, and the father would often just laugh and pull on the hem of her clothes, then pat her on the buttocks and say, It's all right, you go! The mother kept her mouth shut, didn't say anything, and then busied herself with her work.
From an early age, Lena and I learned from our mother how to cook skins, bacon jerky, make birch-skin baskets and birch-skin boats, sew roe deer boots and gloves, burn glean cakes, milk reindeer, make saddle bridges, and so on. When my father saw that Lena and I were flying around our mother like two butterflies inseparable from flowers, he said jealously, Damara, you must give me a Ute! "Ute" means son. And Lena and I, like the other girls of our nation, were called "Unaggi." My father called Lena "Big Unagi", and I became "Little Unagi".
Late at night, there is often the sound of wind outside the Pillar of Xilen. Winter winds are often mixed with the cries of wild animals, while summer winds often include the cries of owls and frogs. In the Pillar of Shilen, there is also the sound of the wind, which is mixed with the wheezing of the father and the whisper of the mother, this special sound of the wind is made by the mother Damara and the father Link. Mother Ping su never called her father's name, and in the middle of the night when they made a wind-like sound, she always called out eagerly and tremblingly, Link, Link. Father, like a dying monster, gasped heavily, making me think they were seriously ill. However, when they woke up the next morning, they were busy with their own work with a rosy face. In the midst of this wind, my mother's belly grew bigger day by day, and soon my brother Rooney was born.
After the father had his own Utter, even if he returned from hunting and found nothing, his gloomy face would become pleasant when he saw Rooney's smiling face. Damara liked Rooney too, and she could have put him in a birchkin rocker when she was working, but she didn't, she carried Rooney on her shoulder. At this time, Damara's deer bone hairpin can not be worn, Rooney always reaches out to grab, grab it and put it in his mouth to nibble, the hairpin is pointed, Damara is afraid of pricking Rooney's mouth, so he does not wear it. And I like the way my mother looks with a hairpin.
Lena and I liked Rooney too, and we rushed to hold him, and he was chubby, like a cute little bear, babbling and drooling into our necks, as if we had burrowed into a caterpillar, itching and panicking. In winter, we like to sweep Rooney's face with the tail of a gray rat skin, and he giggles every time he scans. In the summer, we used to carry him to the river and catch dragonflies in the grass on the shore for him to see. Once my mother fed salt to reindeer, and Lena and I hid Rooney in a large birch-skinned bucket of grain outside the Pillar of Shilen. Mother came back to find Rooney gone, panicked, she looked around, there was no sign of Rooney, asked me and Lena, we both shook our heads and said I don't know, she cried. It seems that Rooney and his mother are connected, and he has been quietly basking in the sun in a birchbar bucket before, and when his mother cries, he also cries. Rooney's cries were laughter to her mother, and she followed the sound, picked him up, and reprimanded me and Lena. That was the first time she had lost her temper with us.
Rooney's appearance made Lena and I change the way we called our parents. It turned out that we were like other children, calling our mother "Ernie" and our father "Amma", because Rooney was so spoiled, Lena and I became jealous, and privately called our mother Dharma and my father Link. So when I mention them now, I can't change them. Please God forgive me.
The adult men of Ulilen have women around them, such as Link with Damara, Hasha with Maria, Kunde with Evelyn, Ivan with blue eyes and yellow hair with Nadeshka, but the Nido shaman is alone. I think the god of the roe deer pocket must be a goddess, otherwise how could he not want a woman? I don't think it's okay for the Neddur shaman to be with the goddess, but it's a bit of a shame that they can't give birth to children. In a camp, if there are fewer children, just like the trees are short of rain, they always look less energetic. For example, Ivan and Najeshka, who often teased their sons and daughters, Girant and Nala, and laughed, and Kunde and Evelyn's children, Jinde, although not so lively, he also brought shade to Kunde and Evelyn like a cloud in the middle of summer, making them feel at peace. On the contrary, Hashe and Maria always had clouds on their faces because they did not have children. Once Lorinsky came to our camp, what he brought to Hashe's Pillar was not only tobacco, alcohol, sugar and tea, but also medicine. But after Mary took the medicines to treat infertility, her stomach was still the same, and she was so anxious that Ha xie was like a moose hunted, and her face always showed a dazed look, not knowing where the way out was. Mary often covered her face with a headscarf and bowed her head to the Nidu shaman's Shilen Pillar. She went to see not man, but God. She hoped God would give her children.
Evelyn is my aunt and she loves to tell stories. The legends about our people, and the feud between my father and the Nidu shaman, were all told to me by her. Of course, the legends and stories about the nation were heard when I was young, and the love-hate feud between the adults was told to me after the death of my father, after the death of my mother and the Nedhu shaman, who was about to become Victor's mother.
I've seen too many rivers in my life. Some of them are narrow and long, some are wide, some are curved, some are straight, some are fast, and some are calm. Their names are basically named by us, such as the Delpur River, the Aoluguya River, the Bistia River, the Bertz River, the Imin River, the Taria River, and so on. Most of these rivers are tributaries of the Erguna River, or tributaries of tributaries.
My earliest memories of the Erguna River are related to winter.
That year, the camps in the north were covered in snow, the reindeer could not find anything to eat, and we had to move south. On the way, due to not catching his prey for two consecutive days, the lame Darcy riding on the reindeer cursed the men with long legs as useless things, claiming that he had fallen into a dark world and was about to be starved alive. We had to get close to the Erguna River and cut open the ice with ice to eat.
The Erguna River is so wide that it looks like someone carved out a snow field. Ha xie, who was good at fishing, chiseled three ice eyes and waited next to him with a harpoon in his hand. The big fish that had long avoided the ice thought that spring was back, so they shook their heads and swam towards the ice eyes that revealed the light of the sky. As soon as Hashe saw the ice eye swirl up the water vortex, he quickly threw out the harpoon, and soon poked up one fish after another. There are pikes with black spots attached to them, and there are also stingers with fine patterns. Every time Ha xie caught a fish, I would jump up and cheer. Lena didn't dare look at the ice eyes, nor did Girant and Jinde, and the steaming ice eyes must have been like traps in their eyes, and they avoided them from a distance. I liked Nala, who was a few years younger than me, but as bold as I was, and she bent over and poked her head into the ice eye, and Ha xie told her to stay away, saying that if she fell into it, she would feed the fish. Nala took off the roe deer hat on her head, shook her head, and stomped her feet in a swear oath and said, Throw me in, I swim in it every day, you want fish, just knock on the ice, call Nala, I will break the ice and send you the fish! If I can't do it, you'll let the fish eat me!" Her words did not frighten Hashe, but frightened her mother, Najeshka, and she ran to Nala, drawing a cross in her chest. Nadeshka was a Russian, and with Ivan she not only gave birth to a child with yellow hair and white skin, but also brought catholic doctrine with her. So in Ullilen, Nadeshka both follows us in worshipping the god Maru and worshipping the Virgin Mary. Aunt Evelyn looked down on Nadeshka for this. I don't resent Nadjeshkado's belief in a few gods, which were invisible to me at the time. But I don't like Nadeshka's cross on his chest, which is like holding a sharp knife to cut out his heart.
At dusk, we lit a campfire on the Erguna River and ate grilled fish. We fed the dogfish to the hounds, cut the large stingings into pieces, sprinkled with salt, put them on with birch branches, and put them in a campfire and swirled them around. Soon, the aroma of grilled fish wafts out. The adults ate fish and drank, and Nala and I raced on the riverbank. We were like two rabbits, leaving a dense string of footprints on the snow. I remember when I ran to the other side of the river with Nala, I was called back by Evelyn. She told me that you can't go to the other side of the river casually, that's not our territory anymore. She pointed to Nala and said that she could go, that was her hometown, and that sooner or later Najeshka would take Girant and Nala back to the Left Bank.