The yurt is full. The neighbors, the teachers, and the dargas have all come. Deldeng and Dügüj are busy in the kitchen half of the yurt, and look as if they have been crying.
The pot is as full as the yurt. Hastily dried pieces of meat, as big as piles of yak dung, jut from the fatty broth. As I look at the glistening chunks and breathe in their heavy smell, I wonder if all the meat we have left is now in the pot.
To begin, we are poured milk tea and reminded repeatedly to help ourselves to the fried flatbread and aarshy piled high on platters decorated with sugar cubes and candies. We drink and we eat, pausing only to report how, right after reaching the edge of the steppe, we found that slightly elevated, flat and sunny spot. The first one tells the story, the next confirms it, and the third one repeats it. The people around us listen attentively, remarking briefly how good it was that it all came off so easily.
Then people tell stories. Each guest has one, and most are about our big brother, whom they all refer to as the poor soul. They all have nothing but praise for him. Occasionally, this also touches on the three of us. More than Galkaan and me, it is Torlaa who is praised for having taken care of her brothers like a true mother. If it hadn’t been for her forceful interference, they say, who knows what might have been inflicted on the poor soul! Terrible! But she knew to defend her older brother even after his death, like a raptor defending her young.
More people arrive, and we squeeze together until the yurt is filled to bursting. People pass their snuff bottles to Father and Mother with words of consolation and, as often as not, a few bills. Amysa da höl ishtindeegi ödürek siler jong, many say; you are still ducks on a lake. Father and Mother sit with their heads bowed, silently accept what is offered, and return the snuff bottles. Once or twice they pass them on to us. We sniff at the loosened stopper and sneeze, which results in no small amusement. We are surrounded by people who eat, drink, and tell stories, and who strive to be good company.
Having eaten the meat and had another round of tea, our guests leave. Some time later, Father departs with Torlaa and Galkaan, who, we are told, have been promoted to the next class and excused from the end of the semester. Mother stays behind with me. Over the next days, people continue to come and see us. Some bring milk from their animals, others goods from the store. Dügüj comes often, and twice she stays for the night. When there are no visitors, Mother and I try to keep one another from crying.
On the seventh day, Mother asks one of the men to climb up a nearby hill and have a look. He returns and says it is still there. The next morning Father arrives with a camel and a lead horse. The teachers come with a few students to help dismantle and remove the state yurt. Brother Dshokonaj’s possessions are loaded on the camel, together with the rest of our possessions. The load is so small a horse could have carried it. Before setting out, we cleanse the ground. Mother pours water on the burned spot where our round stove used to stand and then, addressing the Sky, sprinkles the spot with milk: Now this stove has gone out.
In days to come, different people
May light fires in this place.
May their lives’ fires burn
For a long, long time
Using our front coattails, Father and I carry gravel to spread on the circle where the yurt and our feet have left the steppe bare and scarred. We work in advance of the wind and the rain, which will once again erase all traces of the yurt and its people.
DEVOURING THE STONE
Summer proves to be hot and murderously dry. A rustyred sun rises in the morning and radiates first dust and later flames. Its whole path across the sky glows with fire. Sparks rain down and flames rush at the earth until the spring grass and flowers wilt. For a few days they falter and stand shy and timid. Then their edges grow charred. Finally they crumble beneath the hooves of the flocks, turning to dust and ashes. The sparse meadows between the boulder fields lie black and dead and torn up.
From one day to the next the streams in the valleys vanish into the ground. The puddles left in hollows in the riverbed are soon lapped up by passing flocks. Then the springs dry up. The water table drops and on one sunny afternoon disappears beneath the black stringy clay. Over the course of the following day the clay hardens into rock.
The yurts move up the mountain valleys, struggling to get closer to the glaciers. It is said that the glaciers themselves are disappearing, but at the Alban-Oruk ovoo on the northern slope of Haarakan, where our clan has moved along with the flocks and herds, the ice cap stretching across the saddle between the peaks remains as thick as ten yurts stacked on top of each other.
Although the animals produce less milk than in other years, we have more than enough aragy. The crowds of roaring riders that in other times traveled night after night from ail to ail and yurt to yurt, knocking back whatever drink was available in exchange for a song, are nowhere to be found. Now the ail people themselves are drinking. Every yurt that distills aragy sends someone with a steaming-hot sample for Father, the head of our clan. Invariably the aragy arrives in a smoke-stiffened leather flask, accompanied by a half-dried chunk of cheese the size of the palm of a hand.
So Father has no choice but to drink, often early in the day. He drinks merely to slake his thirst, which means he drinks slowly without interrupting his work. The more he drinks, he says, the more he has to move and sweat, and indeed everything inside and around our yurt stays very tidy.
Often Father’s younger brother gets his share of the gift of honor, but Uncle Know-It-All throws his head back and downs the contents of the bowl in a single gulp. “You aren’t drinking,” Father rebukes him, “you’re putting it away like a Russian or a Kazakh.” Our uncle takes the reprimand with a smile and a wink, says nothing in return, and does not change his nasty habits. Instead, he falls asleep as soon as he has had a drink, dropping wherever he happens to be and staying on the ground as long as his bladder will allow.
Even the women are drinking. In the past, Mother only drank at celebrations. Now she drinks more often, and women who never drank before keep up because they have to. They gather around the eldest among them in what appears to be unheard-of harmony.
Mother cries when she drinks. It is something we all dread. Sister Torlaa would love to take every bowl of aragy away from Mother, and one day she actually tips one out. But she gets rebuked for this, and so she drinks the next one herself rather than let Mother have it.
“Let her drink, dear girl,” says our shaman aunt.
“There’ll be nothing but tears again,” replies Torlaa.
“So what? Let her cry. She needs to.”
“What if she cries herself to death?”
“Not even a bitch whose puppies have all been clobbered to bits would cry herself to death. The more her tears flow, the more the corrosive and deadly salt gets washed away. Let my sister-in-law cry and dissolve in tears for a summer or two. One day she’ll realize that she’s following an arrow that has long left the bow, and that she must come back to you. You’ll see. She’ll start a new life and live twice as long!”
Again the following night, we find no peace. Standing at the edge of the ail, almost within reach of the sacred mountain, Mother is drunk. She howls at the sky and at every rock on the mountain. I lie fully awake beside Father, who got drunk as usual toward the end of the day, and who has been panting and snoring exhaustedly for hours. Disgusted by his sour breath, I noisily turn away from him and listen to the sounds outside, where Mother’s voice has gone hoarse. Her howling and wailing merge in a chorus with the barking of the dogs, the rushing of the wind, and the groaning and grunting of the herds.
“E-eej, you deaf and aged mountain! You have the ice and the snow of tens and hundreds of thousands of years to melt and run off your sides. Is that not enough? Why do you need the tears of my eyes and the blood of my heart to water the cracked earth and its thirsty creatures? A-aaj, you quivering ancient stars! You have the great flaming sun to heat the sky’s cold and infinite space. Is that not enough? Why did you have to
set fire to my meager innards? O-ooj, you hundred hungry spirits in the east and thousand thirsty spirits in the west! Did you slaughter my child to satisfy your hunger with his flesh and slake your thirst with his blood?”
First Galkaan goes outside, then Torlaa. Both try to stop Mother from crying and bring her back into the yurt, but they fail. Later the shaman goes and shouts at her. Through sheer force and cleverness she eventually drags Mother back to the yurt. With bated breath I listen to their exchange:
“Stop cursing, woman. Let people and animals get some rest.”
“Ooj, my dear, how can you talk of resting when my bones burn and my blood boils?”
“Don’t brag about your pain. It’s as earned as the happiness you used to enjoy privately, like those yak cows over there.”
“Are you suggesting I deserve this? Then tell me, how?”
“Don’t ask me. Ask the Blue Sky.”
“The Blue Sky no longer listens. He must have gone deaf from old age.”
“Stop talking nonsense. You forget you still have children.”
“Oh yes, my children, my chicks, my bright little suns—oh my rich Altai!”
“See? You just said yourself you’re still surrounded by bright suns.”
“I am. But the best of them has gone out. Now it is dark inside me.”
“It’s a good thing those who still shine can’t hear you. There are no such things as better or best. Show me your ten fingers and tell me which one to chop off.”
“You’re right, Sister-in-Law. But it’s true that the Sky no longer listens.”
“Do you think the Sky listens to the one who screams the loudest? The one who shouts at the top of her lungs and whines and whimpers like an injured dog?”
“Are you telling me I should be whispering instead of shouting?”
“Maybe. The blue above us is only part of the Sky, which anyone can see. The greater and deeper Sky, the true Blue Sky, is inside you and will not put up with loud noise.”
“I know. I must have heard that before. But if you’re born blind, it is hard to see the Sky. By the way, dear shaman, was it an arrow that hit my boy?”
“What a question to ask when I’m sober and don’t have my tools. If you really want to know, come see me shamanize on the twenty-ninth. I hope you’ll have the courage to ask your question at that time.”
Then the door opens and our aunt quietly calls: “Torlaawaj, my dear, light a candle. Sister-in-Law is going to rest now.” I watch Mother stagger through the door on our aunt’s arm. Mother’s hair is disheveled, her eyes are swollen from crying, and she is sobbing. Torlaa helps our drunken mother out of her clothes while the shaman stands nearby and fixes them with her eagle-owl eyes. She orders a full bowl of aragy as a nightcap and holds it to Mother’s lips. Undressed, Mother drinks greedily, choking after the first swallow. Then, finally, we have peace and quiet.
The twenty-ninth of the middle month of autumn brings a particularly dark and humid night. A foglike veil clouds the steaming peak of our mountain. It approached with the setting sun and now presses down on the ail. The shaman starts briskly. Soon the spirits appear and with them many new verses that give me goose bumps.
On the southern slope of Saryg-höl
I lie and wither.
A rumen of bortsha
On the northern slope of Haarakan
I walk and wither.
A package of bortsha
This, I feel, I do not deserve . . .
The burning juniper crackles. When we helped cousin Dshanik pick the bluish-green branches the previous day, we checked the stems for dryness and the berries for juiciness to make sure they would crackle and burst with a pop. Sister Torlaa is responsible for tending the fire in the stove through the night, and she shows herself to be a proud and eager stoker. As always when his wife shamanizes, Uncle Know-It-All tries to meddle. First he complains that the heat is killing him, then he laments that the perfectly good juniper his children labored to collect is being burned to ashes because of the madness of his trickster wife. But like everyone else, Torlaa knows better than to listen to what comes out of his mouth at a time like this.
You are not the only one parched.
The earth is aglow,
The storm has risen.
Too late the question
Who or what is deserved ...
In the flickering light of the fire our faces look as if blood and milk were pouring over them. Fear is lodged in the flames that dart back from each pair of eyes.
Tea, dark as night
Slake my thirst . . .
Aunt Buja, who is responsible for the sacred tools, quickly fetches the red wooden bowl with the thick, steaming, milkless tea concentrate, ladles of which she tossed at the roof ring only minutes before. She dips a small bunch of juniper branches into the tea and shakes it at the corner of the bed’s headpiece, where once a bright-red bag and later the dark-red cloth with the sacred tools used to hang. Uncle Know-It-All, who was the only one trying to sleep, complains, “Ouch, you’re scalding me! Do you think I’m one of those dumb thirsty spirits that comes rushing as soon as this madwoman calls upon them, sprinkling them with saltless tea concentrate?” But Aunt Buja knows to ignore the stupid prattle of her younger brother, who turned out badly but is harmless.
“This year even the asalar are so parched that nothing can slake their thirst,” the shaman says, breaking off her chant. She sits down with her back to the fire. Her head and upper body gently sway from side to side, shaking the shawyd made up of only a few, mostly white and blue strips of fabric. It is time for her listeners to ask questions. Everyone addresses her with the traditional greeting: “Eej tümen eej dshajaatshy! Oh, you ten thousand spirits!” After each question the shaman lifts her hand, putting the mirror up to her forehead and holding it above her closed hand. Then she resumes her chanting, swaying, and shaking. Mother asks her about our future paths. Will sunshine fall on them, or shadow?
Go outside and try to make out
The shadow cast over
The whole of the Altai . . .
Your two born earlier
Will ebb and flow
With the lakes and oceans.
But the one born last
I will carry in the corner of my mouth
To his destination ...
More questions follow, and more answers. The fire keeps burning, and Uncle keeps snoring. The yurt seems hotter than ever, and our aunt’s shamanizing better than it has been for a long time. Normally she wears a cap embellished with eagle-owl feathers and a multitude of pearls, corals, and cowrie shells, along with the fangs and claws of wolves, bears, and snow leopards. But today she is wearing a simple red cotton bag with black fringes and few buttons and small owl feathers, and using that miserable shawyd. Suddenly she interrupts her chant again and says, “Dshuruunaj, my dear little one, come help me!”
Shocked, I look at Father and Mother. They nod in assent. So I leap up and lightly touch the shaman’s back. Holding her shawyd in her right hand, she puts her right arm around my waist, pulls me down on my knees, and makes me sway with her. I can feel the shawyd rhythmically slap my back and my belly like small waves crashing on pebbles, and a soft heaviness bears first on my neck and then on my eyelids, making me drowsy.
“Shut your eyes!” I sense the mirror against my forehead and hear the next command: “Hold it.” I obey and feel transported. “Tell us what you see.” No matter how hard I try, I cannot see anything. Or maybe I can. Something seems to shimmer. It must be very far away. Something shimmers in the distance, and it appears to be coming closer.
“A cloud,” I call out.
“Maybe a mountain?”
It is a mountain. But it can’t be from the Altai. High above the clouds in the sky, the mountain is a brilliant white, and every so often it gives off sparks.
“A huge white mountain. Very white and very huge.”
“There you are. Hang on to everything. Now run over to the mountain and address it.”
The next moment I feel the tightly braided handle of the shawyd in my right hand, and so I rise and run, or rather fly, until I stand before the mountain.
E-e-ej-eej ewej-im
E-e-ej-eej eshej-im ...
I never would have expected such a powerful voice to erupt from me. It awakens and shakes the mountain, and the mountain replies with a manifold echo. Suddenly I realize that I am a shaman the same way each of the stones around me is a stone, and each of the blades of grass between them is grass. And because I am a shaman, I am a stone where a stone lies, and I am grass where grass grows. I am a child of the White Mountain, and I stand before it now.
Great Father, Grandfather,
My original flesh,
My original bones:
I long to open myself to you
As you open yourself to me.
My nine tender springtimes
Are my nine gifts to you.
Let me ripen for three more
Winters, summers, and falls.
Then I will fly, a meteor,
Across mountains and oceans,
And I will carry you, my child,
To the far reaches beyond,
To the heights above.
When I turn eighty-eight
I will alight and return to you,
At last a stone again ...
Some time later I feel a soft hand on my shoulder and wake from my trance. There is our aunt’s familiar voice, surging and rising to a chant. As the chant soars, it carries me back to the mountain, which has become an enormous white flame in the sky, casting its light into all corners and recesses inside me.
The east turns blue and dawn arrives.
Everything awakens that is now or will be one day.
The Gray Earth Page 21