The Gray Earth

by Galsan Tschinag

  I feel dizzy with embarrassment. Fortunately, just then the conch’s hoarse roar comes to my, or rather our, rescue. Sürgündü finally stops her whining and whimpering. She is doing me a favor by stopping, and as a result she gains a deeper and more solid presence inside me, as if in a small bright yurt. Moments ago, when I was fighting for her, I sensed her just inside the door; now I feel her presence in the yurt’s center, near the stove.

  This connection with Sürgündü brightens and warms me like a fire burning inside. But I still feel uneasy, not so much because of the poor girl but rather because of the premature statement that got away from me, worse than a fleeing foal. Recalling the disaster of the school uniform, I no longer want to go to Pioneers’ Camp. In fact, I don’t ever want to hear those words again.

  As if he has heard my unspoken wish, the teacher silently passes over anything that was said during the previous class, and instead gives us our summer homework. Everyone is to help his or her parents with the housework and the livestock, and to keep a daily record. Also, we all must collect twenty different sorts of grass, flowers, or tree leaves, and catch ten different kinds of butterflies. The leaves and the butterflies must be pressed between pages in a book, and we are to write down what they are called and where we found them. Each girl must dry ten kilos of mushrooms and pick five kilos of berries, and each boy must salt ten kilos of fish and pick five kilos of wild onions.

  “Bring all of it with you when you come back for classes on September 1,” says the teacher. “By then the root cellar will be finished so we can store all the food.” We want to know what the food is for. For the school kitchen, the teacher says. From now on the school will provide for itself in order to ease the pressure on the State and the People. We will form brigades, and we will go hunting. We like this idea a lot.

  “Will the girls come along?” The question makes everyone laugh. It comes from Eweshdej, whose real name is Shut-Up-And-Eat-Up because he never opens his mouth to speak. With his protruding ears he is an attentive listener. Now, on the last day of classes, Mr. Silent, as the teacher once called him, indulges us with the sound of his voice, and general merriment ensues.

  “Seriously! Will the girls go hunting with us?”

  “Why not?” The teacher enters the game. “They can cook and sew and wash. And they can wash out your mouth with soap and water!” Our sides are splitting with laughter. Names are mentioned, hints dropped. Having put the screws to us all year, the teacher is unusually lighthearted. His round plump face has settled into a kindly smile.

  Suddenly the smile vanishes, and a reddish-green sheen spreads across his face. Vestiges of the previous lesson have lingered in the air, and can now be traced across his face.

  “I have to tell you something.” He begins quietly. “When school starts again in the fall, you won’t have me as a teacher. I am leaving because I want to study at a higher school. I may not pass the entrance exam, though; it’s supposed to be difficult. But if I don’t pass, I’ll do some other work. I won’t go back to teaching. I know I am a bad teacher. I am simply not cut out for educating children.”

  His last words come out loud and hard. He scans the room the way he does when he is angry. His eyes narrow, and his face takes on the familiar bitter look. It scares us. Instantly we revert to being his anxious and obedient students, cowering like a flock of trembling starlings in a fold among the rocks. But this time there is more to it, and more in us, than fear. We are sad. In my belly I can already feel the loss that this clumsy, loud, often ill-tempered stranger will cause me by leaving. For better or worse, this oddly kind and understanding man has become part of my life. And now he wants to tear himself from it.

  “You obviously don’t want to leave anyone behind. One of you has even expressed a willingness to take her hand and carry her along, rather than have her stay behind. To my mind, that’s noble and so, out of respect, I want to leave you a gift: it’s called Sürgündü. Accept her. But I hope you all know that getting ahead with her in your class may well be a challenge. At that point some of you may think she’s dead weight that should have been dumped long ago. But that would be nasty. And another thing: the teacher who will take over your class may wonder and ask, Why didn’t she have to repeat first grade? If that happens, speak up and tell the teacher what happened. Show courage and explain who Sürgündü is: not just a fool with a lazy tongue, but a girl with ten nimble fingers and a kind heart.”

  His words put us back in a good mood, and soon our joy spreads to include him. He refers to himself as a man with a smeared face and a tainted name, but now does so jokingly. “Make sure they won’t paint me any worse than in fact I am.” Shortly afterwards he adds defiantly: “When I come back, I don’t just want to come with beautiful new feathers. I want to come back with more powerful wings, a hawk with feathers as bright as ice, even if it costs me half my life.”

  Later I hear Big Lip whisper that Gök’s father submitted a written complaint to the District Party Cell and that this is why the teacher is leaving.

  “How’s Gök?” I ask quickly.

  Suddenly she knows nothing.

  It is on this fifth day of the week, a windless day with low clouds and swarms of buzzing flies, that the school year ends for us. But we still have to spend both the half-good day and the all-good day doing community service. Though the mounts for most of the students have already arrived, Comrade Leader of the School Staff doesn’t budge. We have to do our share, if for no other reason than that the work is already weeks behind schedule.

  That night Brother Dshokonaj comes home late. He was at the pit where logs and planks have arrived for shoring up the walls and ceiling of the cellar. The work is to begin the next day. We have long finished dinner, and have kept his meal warm by wrapping thick layers around the green enamel pot.

  I unwrap the pot and serve up the thin slices of steamed lamb and the grainy rice in Brother’s small wooden bowl. With solemn pride I offer it to him. Sister Torlaa has given me this job because she wants me to learn how to serve our big brother. She also wants him and me to be close, and thus has decreed that from now on, I am to sleep only in Brother Dshokonaj’s bed so the two of us can maintain our skintight connection. It is important for both of you, she says, though I find it notable that Brother Dshokonaj is not present at the time. Later she explains to me that she, Galkaan, and I are already very close, but that our big brother needs to be brought into the fold. And as the baby, I am most likely to succeed in doing so.

  Brother Dshokonaj quickly reaches for his bowl. “Oh, my dear little one,” he says with gratitude. “It’s still hot, and you’ve filled my bowl!” I don’t reply, but I can’t help smiling and thinking how one must never offer older people a half-empty bowl.

  While our hungry brother tucks in, I tell him about my homework. “Isn’t that great?” he says with pride. “Soon the school will provide for itself.”

  Sister Torlaa sneers: “Be serious! You don’t really believe the students will bring back sacks of dried mushrooms and salted fish and jugs of gooseberries and sallow-thorn berries, do you?”

  He glances at her, hesitates, and then insists: “Sure I do. And I also believe that after thousands of years of moving around and being glued to the udders of their animals, our nomads will settle within the next ten or twenty years. They will become farmers, and they will milk the udders of the soil.”

  “Isn’t that nice?” She feins enthusiasm, then adds, “Maybe they will in ten or twenty years. But in three months, you won’t see much more than a handful of measly marmot skins and a few pressed blades of grass and butterflies.” Her tongue seems to give vent to her spleen, but Brother Dshokonaj does not react. I admire that and feel closer to him.

  Later, in bed, I tell him everything the teacher said. I haven’t told Sister Torlaa and Brother Galkaan, and so I whisper, snuggled into the crook of his arm, my face close to his. He remains quiet for a while, and then asks if we like our teacher.

  “At first we didn’t
, but now we do.”

  “I do too,” he says. “Especially because he isn’t satisfied with himself and wants to grind off his flaws and rough edges and start over. That takes courage.”

  A little later I add, “He had a difficult childhood.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “A bit. Mostly Big Lip did.”

  “Who’s Big Lip?”

  “Uushum.”

  “I see. Does she really have different lips?”

  “Oh no. She just talks all the time. She’s a know-it-all and a gossip.”

  “What did she say about your teacher?”

  “That he doesn’t have a father. And that his mother is poor.”

  Brother Dshokonaj holds his breath and then ends the silence with a barely perceptible groan. I feel sorry I said the bit about the father. To get him off the subject and distract him I say, “The teacher was far from home and very homesick. Was it the same for you?”

  Brother ignores my question.

  “At least he had his mother,” he says bitterly. “I only had Grandma, and she was old and frail. She had to eke out a living somewhere on the margins because the rest of the clan left her to her fate. Mind you, she probably brought it on herself, given her moodiness. At times it was hard even for me to get along with her. In some sense I only made it into school because I was born into such misery. Even today some people think sending a child to school is like having to fill a quota. At the time, everyone felt that way. As a result, the first victims were children who got dragged from the poorest, most helpless yurts. No one attended school voluntarily; all the students had to be forced to go. And that’s how it was for me as well.

  “Your teacher was sent to the provincial capital. Sure, his homeland is along the upper reaches of the Ak-Hem, a long way from here, three örtöö if not more. Then it’s another three from Tsengel to Ölgiy. All in all, that’s six örtöö from his home. For me, it was forty. Four days of riding and then four days of driving before you reached Arkhangay and its capital, Tsetserleg.

  “Was I homesick? Of course I was. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I didn’t really understand the language and was shy in general. So I just stood there like a lump, withdrawn into my shell, painfully aware that the other students thought I was a Kazakh. That went on for a few days. Then I understood enough to get by and knew I’d be able to survive. But the worst was the knowledge I’d been carrying with me from day one: I wasn’t as good as everyone else. Sure, you’re called a ward of the State. But what does that mean, really? So your father is the man with the angry eyes and pockmarked face, and the medals dangling on his puffed-up chest. But your mother? Where is she? What does she look like? And where are your brothers and sisters? Who are they? The boys and girls around you? Including the students who call you a Kazakh and mock your clumsy speech? It’s hard when you can’t find the answers . . .”

  I sense that Sister Torlaa and Brother Galkaan are lying there listening in the dör, swallowed by the darkness. My heart thumps against my ribs, the tip of my nose itches, and I snuggle up to my big brother’s shoulder.

  I don’t recall how much longer he spoke and what else he told me. A dream separates then from now. I don’t remember what the dream was about, but I know that the following morning I had much more inside me than I did the evening before. I can’t be sure what I was told and what I dreamed.

  It must have been in Hüpsug. Through the swaying amber heads of the tall, sparse autumn grass I can see the mountain steppe rise at an angle until it ends in a forest. A family of larch trees at the far side of the forest has lifted off the ground and is floating in the sky. Where the plain slopes downward on the opposite side of the mountain meadow, I see a lonely yurt. It looks dark and stuck awkwardly to the narrow end of a gentle mound rising like a breast from the surrounding plain. Grandma, stooped with age, is busy some distance from the yurt. Not far from her a bare-bottomed boy sits in the grass, rocking a baby in a wooden cradle resting on his outstretched legs. The boy is Brother Dshokonaj. I ask who the baby is. “That’s you,” he says, adding when he sees my surprise, “Grandma is old and on her own. She can’t do everything.”

  Sister Torlaa, Brother Galkaan, and I are at home playing with ankle bones. Mother has prepared milk tea and is pouring it from the cast iron pot into the brass jug. Outside the light is wintry and pale, and a storm begins to blow, making the yurt’s scaffolding creak and the flap on the roof flutter. I hear a dog bark and Father shout, “Hey! What are you doing here? Go home. It’s late.”

  “I’m looking for my mother!” replies the bright voice of a child. I jump up to run outside, but Mother says, “Stay put!” Then the boy somehow must have come inside. Wearing a heavy ton and a felt hat, he squats on the right side of the stove. Torlaa, Galkaan, and I huddle in front of the bed, to the left of the stove. We are all drinking tea. Mother takes a heart that was left as an offering in the dör, and cuts deeper into the slits that are already there. The heart falls into four pieces. She drops a piece into Torlaa’s, Galkaan’s, and my tea bowl and is about to give the fourth piece to the boy on the other side of the stove when I start whining: “Father always gives me two. I want both!” The stranger is accommodating: “Give him both. I’ll be fine with just the tea.” It is Brother Dshokonaj’s voice.

  Now we lie on our bouncy bed under our soft quilt and are chatting.

  “By the way, I accidentally let something slip today.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘If my big brother gets married next year ...’”

  “How would you feel if I actually did get married?”

  “But you aren’t.”

  “How do you know? Everyone gets married.”

  “True. Some time ago you said that someone might drop by the yurt.”

  “Did I? I probably meant Teacher Deldeng. I used to think she might become my wife.”

  “Why not? A family of teachers would be good.”

  “Things turned out differently. She said she’d marry me if I proved myself as principal and joined the Party. First I thought about it and agreed, but now I’ve chosen someone else.”

  “Jadmaj’s daughter?”

  “Oh no!”

  “It was just a joke! I know who she is.”

  “Who is it then?”

  “Dü . . . right?”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ll drop by her place tomorrow and address her as Dshenggej.”

  “Don’t you dare. I have to ask Grandma and Father and Mother first.”

  “They’ll all agree.”

  “You think so? A few minutes ago you said, ‘If my big brother gets married next year.’ But what if I got married this fall?”

  “I could move into the dormitory.”

  “There’s no way you’ll move into the dormitory. You’ll stay here, with me and your dshenggej. She’ll be kind to you.”

  “I just thought because . . .” I tell him about Sürgündü. But now I forget what he said about that subject.

  During the night it rained. Now the steppe looks washed and polished, and the air is soft and fragrant. Strong, sharp-edged rays come bounding to us from the sun’s orb. Equipped with spades, pickaxes, and crowbars we have marched across Eer Hawak to the meadow on the eastern bank of the Haraaty, where the reddish-green, whitecapped river crashes and hisses through its narrow curvy bed. As if fired up by the river’s powerful energy, we are full of bluster as we launch our attack on the Mother Earth’s body. We pry it open, drive our steel tools inside, poke around, and begin to dig a ditch. The tools are heavy, and the work requires a crazy mind. The wet light-colored stones we pull from the earth’s insides are like kidneys. The earth’s blood appears to be a few shades lighter than sheep or yak blood, but the kidneys we tear from its body look as quivery and helpless as the kidneys of any animal.

  Right next to its crashing and hissing artery, I feel as if I can hear the earth weep and wail. Before you touch the belly of a sheep or a yak with a knife and
slice it open to sever its throbbing thread of life, you have to tie a solid rope around the sheep’s ankles or the yak’s legs. Fettered and thrown on its back, the animal will twitch when the blade thrusts through its fur and into its flesh, and it will try to fight you with all its strength. By then it is too late, but at least the animal fought, reminding you that you are a murderer.

  The Mother Earth seems tamer and more helpless than even a badly injured lamb, for whom the otherwise cruel blade performs an act of mercy. Not even those lambs will lie still in that fateful moment, gathering whatever strength they have left and convulsing in spasms that only end with the last breath. The powerful Mother Earth, on the other hand, lies still, enduring its violation without a twitch.

  Or does it? If I stay very still and listen carefully, I believe I can hear the weeping and wailing behind the crashing and hissing, and I can also feel a quiet but persistent quiver coming from inside the earth. I can also feel something inside myself, something not unlike the feeling I got the day I examined the big belly of a squirrel I had killed. I saw some movement on the other side of the shaggy blue-striped fur, and then discovered the double rows of tits running from the squirrel’s lower belly up to its chest. They looked like eyes swollen and tired from crying.

  At that moment we suddenly hear many voices screaming in great distress. The cries seem to go on forever, wailing in anguish. We stop our work and look at each other bewildered. Then we run. As soon as we emerge from the high thorny caragana bushes, we see a cloud of red dust billowing above the steep slope of Eer Hawak. Right where the cellar is being built! Fearing a disaster, we race toward it.

  The distance is considerable. Soon the group stretches out as gaps open up between the runners. I tear off as if racing against my own strength. Struggling to catch up with those at the front and to escape from those pursuing me from behind, I pass one or two, but also get passed by two, three, four, and then many. I sweat and pant and cough, and I am gasping for air when I finally arrive at a scene that seems so unreal and so distorted that I cannot help but think I am dreaming.