The Gray Earth Read online

  One day he shows us his feet. They are swollen, raw, and blood-red. The color, he explains, comes from the medicine. A hundred thousand ants are madly racing about in his feet.

  We ask if he realized what was happening to him. He did. Why didn’t he leave his hideout? At first he was afraid he would get caught and punished worse than before, this time with his underpants down. Later, when he tried, he could no longer move.

  What did he think about during all that time? About home, his parents, his brothers and sisters, the animals, and about the mountains. Sometimes about us, too. Then he hoped we would find him.

  The teacher asks me to teach Gök the lessons we cover in class each day. I have a great time playing teacher, perched on a stool beside my friend’s sickbed. Kinder and more devoted, I don’t seem to be a bad teacher, and Gök, a skinny boy who did poorly in class in the past, now makes good progress. But the teacher and the other students don’t know this until Gök returns to class.

  One Saturday, while we are in class, we hear an unfamiliar clatter in the hallway, and shortly after a tentative knock on the door. Then Gök stands in front of us, shy and flushed, on his two crutches. Something like a hiss from a gigantic chest cavity escapes the class. Gök has just been discharged from the hospital, and he wants to see his friends before classes finish and the students scatter. For the teacher, too, it must have been moving to see the student he had put to flight on two healthy legs return on crutches. Since that fateful day the teacher has become milder, and now he looks as embarrassed as a dog that has accidentally been attacked by a dog from its own pack. I, too, am filled with ambivalent feelings. Seeing Gök on his crutches, I can’t help but feel shamed and dejected, as if I destroyed him. But immediately afterward I notice the glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes in his narrow face, and I take satisfaction in having saved him. Eventually a third thought will sink in and brighten my kidneys and warm my bones: I am his friend and his teacher.

  But that will take time. Now, Gök is simply presenting himself, but soon he will prove himself to everyone in the class. For not only is the teacher a changed man who now expects only the best of his charges; Gök, this formerly puny, stubborn, left-handed bed wetter, is transformed as well. He has fully caught up with the lessons and participates right away. But that is not all. With his forked willowbranch crutches under his armpits, he moves confidently through the classroom, the school, and even across the yard, affectionate and delightfully cheeky wherever he goes. In all he does he radiates softness and light. And as Gök improves, classes are better, and the other students grow closer.

  Sürgündü begins to call this boy who returned from the brink Bitshi, Little One. “Watch out, Bitshi, don’t hurt yourself. Stay and tell me what you need, Bitshi, let me get it for you. Bitshi, my dear, I know I’m stupid, but remember, I have lived on this earth longer than you have, and I can do things that you can’t . . .”

  Little by little others begin to use this term of endearment as well; even students as old as Gök and others shorter than he is now call him Bitshi.

  One night our Bitshi tells the students at the dormitory the fairy tale of Bitshi Gök Güsge, the Little Blue Mouse. And from then on Gök is called Bitshi Gök Güsge. Bitshi Gök Güsge, how are you? Bitshi Gök Güsge, how are the ants? Bitshi Gök Güsge, please let me pass. Let me ask you a question, Bitshi Gök Güsge. Oh, it’s you, Bitshi Gök Güsge!

  Day after day we evoke the Little Blue Mouse. These three words form a magic spell; they alone count while the rest can be replaced or left out. More sung than said, each is cradled on the tongue until it almost melts before the next word’s turn, and when the whole name has been uttered, one pauses the way the old storytellers pause, as if bowing before the spoken words.

  This is how Gök becomes the baby of the class. Even I, a youngest child who never shared this privilege with anyone, gladly let him be. For the first time ever I feel older than someone, and less in need of protection. And while I’m not sure whether I have always been a pleasant youngest child, Gök certainly is.

  He knows many more stories than just the fairy tale of the Little Blue Mouse, but because that one is short and a little different from other fairy tales, he tells it often: Once upon a time, there was a little blue mouse. It was a restless, hungry little thing. No wonder one day it fell into a trap—and oops, it got stuck! A young boy came along. He had all his baby teeth, a thin neck, two protruding ears, and a tousled head. His first hair had not yet been cut, that’s how young he was. He was much bigger than the little blue mouse, though, and he was already a hunter. He carried a club for beating his prey to death and a knife in its sheath for skinning it afterward.

  The hunter wanted to kill the little animal, but the little blue mouse did not want to die. So the mouse said, “Dear hunter, please do not kill me. I am so young, my skin is thin, and I have hardly any flesh on my bones. Wait till I have grown into a big fat mouse.”

  The hunter was astonished to hear an animal, and a tiny little mouse at that, address him in a human voice and in Tuvan. No animal had spoken to him before. Everything he had caught in his trap was mute. He paused before slaying the animal, and the little blue mouse had a chance to slip in one more plea: “It would make me terribly sad to die.”

  To the hunter this seemed even stranger. He simply could not imagine a creature that lives in a hole in the ground being sad. He wondered aloud, “You talk as though you think you are big and important, don’t you?”

  The little blue mouse replied, “Do you believe a creature that is smaller and of less value to a hunter has a smaller and less valuable life?”

  The hunter laughed and replied, “Of course. How could it be otherwise? Everything around us is either big or small. Just as my body is many times bigger than yours, so must my life be incomparably more valuable than yours.”

  The little blue mouse asked the hunter, “Have you ever met a bear?”

  No, the little hunter had never met a bear.

  The little blue mouse thought about his answer and said, “There you are. You are young and you haven’t seen much of the world. Because you are so small and weak among the other hunters, you have no greater wish than to grow into a big strong man as quickly as you can. And maybe one day you will. But it is also possible that you will die before you become a big strong man. So let me ask you: Would dying now while you are small and weak be any easier than dying later, when you are big and strong?”

  The little hunter became frightened and quickly asked, “What makes you think, Little Mouse, that I could die soon?”

  “You have your own hunters,” the animal said calmly. “Cold and heat, floods and storms, evil spirits, diseases, wars ... the list goes on and on. Sooner or later one of them could catch you, and then you won’t be any different from me right now.”

  The hunter thought about what the mouse had said, and realized it was true. So he let the little animal out of the trap and said, “Go and try to grow into a big fat mouse. I will try to grow into a big strong man. May we both succeed. And may we meet again. Who knows what we will have to tell each other then?”

  With these words, the hunter and the little blue mouse parted. To this day they have not met again. And they will not meet again for many more years, for both are still growing.

  This is the story. Gök cannot remember who told him. He may have dreamed it or made it up . . .

  I ask him why he wouldn’t tell me where he was hiding, even though I was his friend.

  “My great-grandfather, my mother’s grandfather, had a fluttering white beard down to his belt,” he tells me. “While you and I grow taller each year, he grew shorter the longer he lived. When he turned ninety-nine, he was the size of a ten-year-old child. At that point he said it was time for him to return home, and that is what he did. But before he left, over one long summer he taught me how to tell stories. He taught me some other things too, and one day he explained that every human being needs to have a little secret. People without secrets are lik
e riverbeds without water or stoves without fire.”

  I remember hearing about Gök’s great-grandfather. My Grandmother with the Shaved Head told me all about him. She always said he was wise, but in her description his white beard reached his chest and not his belt, and he died at eighty-eight instead of ninety-nine, by which time he was the size of a thirteen-year-old and not a ten-year-old. According to her, his name was Erekej and he looked like a gnome. I offer this memory up for Gök.

  He listens and calmly replies, “I can tell no one has taught you how to tell stories. All right. Everything was the way your grandmother said. But that’s not important. What’s important is that he was a very old man, he had a white beard, and he was short. You mentioned a gnome, and in truth he did look like one. I will remember that the next time I tell the story of my great-grandfather. As for his name, this is the first time I’ve heard it. It’s probably true. But in our clan no one is allowed to say -er, little man; we say -ool, young lad. I have always called my great-grandfather Dag Eshem, Mountain Grandfather, and I will continue to do so.”

  It hits me hard that according to Gök my Grandmother with the Shaved Head didn’t teach me how to tell stories. Because I am still not sure why people need secrets, I get straight to the point: “If you’d told me where you were hiding, your feet wouldn’t have got frostbite, would they?”

  Gök sinks deep into thought and then tries to downplay his bad luck: “Are feet so important that we have to talk about them now? The doctor said they will heal. All I have to do is grow new skin. It would have got really bad if you hadn’t found me that day and I’d been left there all night. Then I would have frozen to death. Every day I wonder what good spirit made the teacher think about a stinky place.”

  I am very tempted to tell him what happened that morning, but just then the spirited youngest child inside the melancholy Gök bursts forth: “Do you think the left-handed ill-tempered bed wetter ever would have turned into Bitshi Gök Güsge if he hadn’t got a bit of frostbite in his stupid feet? Not in a million years!” He roars with laughter, and his clear beady mouse-eyes shower me with sparks. This hits me even harder. Something breaks inside me, and the pain lasts until I decide to live with my little secret.

  One day the teacher invites Gök and me to visit him at home. Such an invitation is not to be rebuffed, particularly if you are Gök and live in a dormitory. Students in the dormitory are infamous for roaming and addicted to eating elsewhere, even if it is only milkless tea and unbuttered flatbread. So we head off to the teacher’s yurt. By the way, while the teacher’s official name is Önörmönk, no one calls him that. Instead, he has countless nicknames; people call him whatever comes to mind, and the strange thing is, everyone knows right away who is meant.

  We are recognized from a distance, which is not surprising given Gök’s crutches. A girl who is about four years old runs up to us, takes me by the hand, and whispers a secret: “Mother is kneading noodle dough because Father said to feed you well.”

  The yurt shines with mirrors and framed pictures that completely fill its dör. Intimidated, we wait close to the door before sitting down in the lower half of the yurt even though both adults invite us to move further up and take the seats for honored guests. The teacher’s wife is nice and beautiful; her face is bright, her bearing healthy and upright. She talks with us, even speaks Tuvan. At home the teacher is strikingly kind, and his little girl is very attached to him. We are fed until we are ready to burst, and included in the conversation as if we were adults. Both the teacher and his wife ask me all sorts of things about where I am from, since neither knows the Black Mountains. I tell them what I know.

  “How is the winter there?”

  “Hard.”

  “And the spring?”

  “Harder still.”

  Suddenly I remember what my aunt said recently. I relay it word for word: “This time the dragon will come to us backward, wagging its tail upon arrival. The tail will hit not only the Black Mountains and the High Altai, but the whole of Mongolia.”

  Everyone in the yurt is impressed and looks frightened.

  Later the teacher’s wife asks me more directly: “Our daughter has been sick with diarrhea for days. What shall we do, dear child?”

  I have heard many questions like this one and know how to handle them. First I ask what happened. I am told she ate too much.

  “You must take her to the doctor,” I advise.

  “We’ve already done that, but the medicine hasn’t helped,” the woman says. “There must be something else.”

  I am not surprised that someone—even one who is grown up and elegant and doesn’t herd animals—might need help. But that they would turn to me of all people is incredible. The teacher must have talked about me at home.

  I have to think back. My Grandmother with the Shaved Head used to treat diarrhea with aragy and salt, whether it was a person or an animal that was sick. So I may know how to help the little girl.

  “Do you have any aragy?” I ask.

  “Of course.”

  “Fill a small bowl and warm it up. Put in a lump or two of red rock salt, stir to dissolve it, and make her drink it.”

  As I watch, the solution is prepared and given to the girl. Not surprisingly, she pulls a face and chokes. The lukewarm brine tastes awful. Even animals fond of sour and bitter flavors refuse to drink it. But it always helps, and in the end the little girl finishes the bowl.

  The longer we stay, the nicer the wife becomes and, at least in my eyes, the more beautiful. She is so beautiful I am too intimidated to call her “Aunt” as Gök does. This kind, beautiful woman now asks us to come again, and often! She says it mostly to me, and it was me both adults focused on. Bitshi Gök Güsge, who is normally the center of attention, was given less than his fair share, and I feel a bit guilty. I must admit, though, it feels wonderful, really wonderful, to bask in other people’s goodwill—and more wonderful still to have a beautiful woman hang on your every word. And when we leave, Gök’s and my pockets are bursting with flatbread and sweets.

  Before we have gone far, I am struck by something else in their hospitable shining yurt. The teacher, who day after day filled us with dread, seems to be such a quiet, kind man at home. “Teacher doesn’t get to say much,” I say to Gök, who replies with a story. He tells me how his mother once scolded her niece: “Scandalous woman! To treat your husband like a Kazakh herding boy!” To which the niece replied, laughing, “It wasn’t me who courted the son of the yellow-green Hawa. It was he who had the cheek to court me. He’s made his bed and now he must lie in it.”

  But before we talk more about this, Gök shares his latest insights and beliefs. “Now I know who saved my life,” he says with a nudge. I play dumb: “It was the teacher, of course, after he nearly drove you to your death.”

  “No!” he says. “It was you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re the shaman.”

  “Says who?”

  “Uushum.”

  “Big Lip says that? Then you might as well forget it right now.”

  “The darga said it, too. When you first arrived.”

  “Maybe he did. But remember what else he said. And don’t tell anyone.”

  My warning is more lighthearted than serious. It is wonderful to live with a little secret, but more wonderful still to have other people try to discover it.

  Gök and I stay friends. But we never get another chance to talk about this question. Nor do we ever go back to the teacher’s yurt. One day I run into the teacher’s wife on my way home. She recognizes me right away, comes up and strokes my cheek. “Your medicine helped, dear child,” she says, and invites me to come home with her. I would love to go, even if just to walk next to her for a while, but I am too shy and quickly decline. When she looks at me surprised and disappointed, I make up a few lies. Having to lie disappoints me, too, and then we go our separate ways.

  This occurs on a cold but brilliantly sunny day. As I walk on, memories come flooding ba
ck, and I become increasingly aware of my situation: even amid my brothers and sister and my friends from school, I am lonely. Worse, I always have to be on guard, pretending and playing the role of a child or student. I trudge on inconsolably, hanging my head like a tired horse.

  The winter drags on mercilessly. Each day the steppe rings more brightly, until it almost clangs like iron. The white mountains rise from the earth like flames, sharp-edged along their ridges and bluish in their shadows, just as they did the morning after the great snowfall. The news reaching us from far-flung families speaks of hardship. In many places people have been forced to change winter camps, and families and herds are on the move. The Black Mountains lie covered beneath an icy-gray armor. Some days the sunshine illuminates them so brightly that we can no longer distinguish the valleys and hollows in the endlessly large icecap. In the mornings, on our way to school, we can just make out a tiny black spot with two bright dots on the slope beyond the far end of the steppe. It is our big winter camp, with the flock of sheep on the left and the yurt on the right. Somehow Father and Mother are managing to stay. But we receive no news from them.

  The doctor who sends people to the hospital has news for Gök, and it is not good. In order to find grass for their animals, Gök’s parents had to leave their winter camp in one of the sheltered folds of Ak Dag, and move to the exposed steppe in the foothills of Oogar. The news unhinges him. “They can’t do that!” he cries. “Mother goes blind in the snow.” Then he falls silent. The next morning he has wet his bed again. From then on, the mishap occurs nightly, leaving its trace on Gök’s soul as well as his mattress. Even his classmates’ acceptance and undiminished love cannot keep the unlucky boy afloat. The youngest, funniest child of the class, Bitshi Gök Güsge, goes back to being the stubborn, tight-lipped Gök.

  Still many years later I would not know how he felt toward me in those days. As for myself, I can say in good conscience that even then I felt as drawn to him as to my brothers and sister, although, I must admit, his presence was sometimes hard to bear. But at the time I was devoted to him like a dog to its master, and would have endured anything for his sake.