The Gray Earth Read online

  Gök announces that he is going home during the second quarter break. “I don’t care where our yurt is or how I get there. I’m going,” he says. “I’ll find them.” He practices walking without his crutches, using my shoulder as a substitute. I keep close to stop him from falling. Often he is in terrible pain, and though he says nothing, I can feel cutting into my own flesh, which only increases my compassion and admiration for his courage. The day he manages to walk all the way from the dormitory to the school and back without crutches, he is as excited as a child taking its first steps. After this success we smash his crutches and burn them in the stove. “You miserable son of Hunashak!” he scorns himself. “Now you must rely on yourself.”

  The end of the quarter is approaching, and with it final grades. Any student with a Five will receive an award. I already know what the awards will be because Sister Torlaa has won one at the end of each quarter, and Brother Galkaan won one, too. They got sweets and exercise books, crayons and a little toilet box containing a white face-and-hand cloth, a bar of red soap as smooth and heavy as a stone, a toothbrush, and a round box with tooth powder. This time the award is rumored to be a complete school uniform!

  The news makes my heart race. I remember the miserable rags I was given when I first arrived. I’d be much happier with a little toilet box, but I am not allowed to say so. Sister has made the decision for me: “Under no circumstances will you pass up the State’s gift again. It’s already clear I’ll get another award. Brother Gagaa should win one, too. What an honor—and what a relief—for Father and Mother to see all of us rewarded!”

  Then we hear that before everyone leaves for the holidays, the whole school will celebrate jolka, the Russian New Year. We will have a fir tree and perform the story of the dear Old White Man, who will come with his animal brothers to deliver gifts. Because jolka is still so new, no one other than Brother Dshokonaj really knows what to expect. Still, the news creates a stir. The senior students spend many afternoons with their teachers in the building of the District Administration, preparing the club room for jolka. The younger students color paper to make chains, bags, and animal masks. Everyone in town watches, makes guesses, asks questions, and gets infected by our burning fever. By the same token, watching the people around us preparing themselves for our jolka fans our own zeal, driving us on.

  We learn that on the second-to-last day of the year, the day before the holiday, the top student in the first grade will get to light the jolka light. But even more awards are waiting for the lucky one. The District Administration will provide an escort to take the student home, and at the end of the holidays that same escort will pick him or her up again—as if the student were a State employee! The anticipation only grows, particularly for Gök and me, for we have done equally well at school.

  “It’ll be you of course,” Gök says. “You’re a better student anyway. You’ve even been my teacher.” It is sweet of him to say so, but it is also simply honest. I do think of myself as a better learner than Gök or any of the others, and precisely because this makes me feel good about myself, I have a selfless and noble idea: since his yurt is farther away than ours—in fact, he doesn’t even know where exactly it is these days—the State horse and escort would do him much more good than me. And so I disagree: “No way. I am not half as good as you at telling stories. Besides, you are our Bitshi Gök Güsge, and the whole class would love to see you light it.”

  He rejects the honor; I reject it in turn. As a result, we both get praised by the teacher and admired by the class. Afterward we take dictation. Dictation is not a small thing, but as usual I am doing so well that I know I have done well even before I hand it in. Do I really want to light the light and ride home on horseback with an escort while Sister Torlaa and Brother Galkaan walk behind me? What a dumb idea. Quickly I slip two mistakes into my text, resulting in a grade of Four.

  Happy with myself and my grade, I don’t care about the consequences. The worst rebuke comes from Gök. “You’re dishonest,” he says. “If I’d known you’re such a sly fox, I would have added two more mistakes to my one honest one.” With its single mistake, his work received a Five minus.

  The class is delighted, and I feel good knowing my generosity has caused their joy. Without too much trouble we talk Gök, who is more embarrassed than angry, and the teacher, who is slightly stunned, into adding a mouse to the Old White Man’s four-legged companions. We sketch out a role and plan a suitable mask and costume for our little blue mouse, taking the character itself from the fairy tale: the hungry little thing that flits about in all directions, trips, sniffs, and slips, and falls into the trap. The other animals arrived in high spirits, but are very discouraged about the little blue mouse’s sudden mishap. Then the dear Old White Man comes to the rescue. He frees the little mouse from the trap and carries it once around the fir tree we have decorated with ice and snow. Bitshi Gök Güsge will play the mouse, for by then he will have just lit the light. The teacher likes what we have come up with and promises to include the scene in the jolka celebration.

  Jolka turns out to be even more beautiful than anyone anticipated. Everyone gets praised, above all Brother Dshokonaj and Bitshi Gök Güsge. The Comrade Dargas appear to have forgiven Comrade Principal for at least some of his indiscretions, as later that night the District Administration will award the school a Certificate of Honor. When Gök goes up on the stage, several people in the audience start crying. The mouse boy makes a big effort not to limp, but unfortunately the trap, stuffed with thick cushioning to make it less effective, springs shut with full force. The victim cries out and makes a gesture of such unbearable suffering that many in the audience call for the Old White Man to help. Gök plays his part fantastically well. Bouncing more on his hands than on his feet, his act looks very different from those of the four-legged animals played by his more able-footed peers. In fact, he is the only one whose performance is entirely convincing. We spur him on: “Keep going, Bitshi Gök Güsge!”

  The next morning the whole school is in motion. Some students get picked up by their parents or older brothers or sisters, some ride home on horseback, some skate, and others walk. Torlaa, Galkaan, and I are among the last to leave. Along with many other students on foot, we swarm out toward Ak-Hem and the Black Mountains.

  I don’t see Gök that day because we all leave so early in the morning. Our journey is exciting and wonderful. It would have been a little faster with an escort and a horse, but otherwise it couldn’t have been any better. I only hope that Gök and his escort riding the scrawny State horse—there are no fat State horses—left on time. And that he finds his yurt and gets picked up again when the time comes.

  We walk across the frozen river. Some students attach flat stones to the soles of their boots to skate on. Galkaan and I have to do what Sister says, and so we can only skate on our flat leather soles. But we are content. We all carry sticks as long as our arms, as do most who travel on foot in the winter. If a rutting male camel or a rabid dog comes charging at you, we are told to simply grab the middle of the stick and push it straight into the animal’s gaping mouth. We are pretty sure we won’t encounter any dangerous animals, but carrying a thick stick and the very thought of an attack give us goose bumps.

  Bigid and Gümbü leave us after our group has passed the island in the lake formed by the merging of Homdu and Ak-Hem. They plan to continue downstream to the next tributary, Terektig, and then to walk upstream on its ice. They have the longest journey ahead, and they will have to hurry in order to reach Hara Dsharyk before nightfall. Their yurts should still be at Hara Dsharyk, unless their parents have not also been forced to move. “What if they’re no longer there?” asks one of the other students.

  “Then we shall look for them,” replies Gümbü, the elder of the two cousins many mistake for brothers. The students whose yurts are in the river valley and who can already see and smell the smoke rising from their homes give Bigid and Gümbü what food they have left. Both boys accept the gifts with ou
tstretched hands and tuck the food into their breast pockets. Then, wordlessly, they go on their way.

  This is how Gök, too, will be looking for his yurt, I think as I follow the two boys with my eyes. But it won’t be quite as bad with an escort on horseback. I am suddenly overjoyed to have let our Bitshi Gök Güsge have the honor of first place and the right to an escort with a horse.

  Soon afterward, Torlaa, Galkaan, and I leave the group and the frozen river and turn toward the mountains. At this hour our Black Mountains, like the entire Altai, are ablaze with the scorching white light of the noon sun. We storm up Gysyl Shat relentlessly. Panting and sweating, we skip from one boulder to the next as nimble and surefooted as goats. The closer we get to the familiar world of home, the more we long for it. Already we are clambering up the rocky slope of Doora Hara, the soot-black mountain that rises steeply from its surroundings like a barrier to our path. Once we are above the grass line on the aweinspiring mountain, we finally stop to catch our breath. For the first time we turn and look back at the world of river and steppe we have left behind. It is a restless, busy world, so different from the calm world of the mountains. Steam rises from the mountains above, smoke from the steppe below. Nestled along the bends of the great, darkgray river, the Kazakh yurts and graves stand out like warts on the back of a hand.

  “Do you recognize the island where Bigid and Gümbü left us?” asks Brother Galkaan. Of course I do. It looks like an overstuffed rumen with hardened, bluish veins. “Do you know what it’s called?” I know that, too: Eshem-Ortuluk, or My-Grandfather-Island.

  “That’s what we called it when we were little.”

  “Does it have another name?”

  “Oh yes. It’s called the same as our big grandfather with the limp.”

  Brother looks at me, pleased he knows more than I do, and says what I have been expecting him to say all along: “Admit it, you don’t know.”

  “I know the answer, but I’m not going to tell. That way you can enjoy yourself a bit longer.”

  The simpleminded Galkaan wants to make sure he comes across as smart: “Hey, you’re a student, but you don’t know the name of your own grandfather? How’s that?”

  “What’s the word for the hair of a male yak?” I ask, feigning innocence.

  “Khyl,” he says, realizing only then that I have tricked him. “Man, you’re smart.”

  Sister, who has been listening to our conversation quietly, finally opens her mouth: “Just to set you straight: these days the island is called something different again—Sara Ortuluk, Yellow Island, and it’s not just because we aren’t allowed to say the name.”

  I don’t have to wait for what is coming. “Grandfather was a kulak. He was so rich he owned the whole island. Today, nobody’s supposed to remember.” I am not the only smart one here, I think. My heart beats faster and harder as I gaze at the hilly island that gleams yellow in the snowcovered ocean of ice. The island looks abandoned and lost, but also invincible and out of reach. Once upon a time it belonged to us—or so the story goes—and was as real a possession as a sheep with its flesh and its fleece.

  We scale the mountain’s steep, slippery scree as if charging into battle, climb the next mountains with unflagging stamina and courage, and reach home while it is still light, overcome by joy and exhaustion. Sister and Brother and I are thrilled to find our yurt where we had expected it to be. Day after day we had thought about where it ought to be at this time of year. But then we hear what it has cost our parents to keep the yurt in its place and to grant us this joy. The flock is emaciated and already diminished even though this is only the middle of winter and the endlessly long, indescribably difficult spring is still to come.

  Even Brother Galkaan, the weakest in our team of three, has managed to finish the quarter with a final grade of Five. Father and Mother are speechless with joy at our achievements, and they have tears in their eyes as they watch us unpack our three sets of awards.

  “Knowledge is the flock that each of you has to pursue,” Mother says. “While a flock outside remains forever vulnerable and can be hurt in all sorts of ways, a flock of knowledge gathered in your head can never be hurt. Not by heat nor cold, wolf nor thief—not by anything.”

  Father picks up where she left off: “There are times when a man’s bones feel exhausted and his belly is gripped with the fear that his flock might perish, his quota not be filled, and he vanish off to prison. In those moments he may lose heart and wonder, Why not fetch at least one of the children so someone will stand by him? Now I see we have done the right thing by sending you all away and onto the path of knowledge.”

  The face-and-hand cloths we have won are strung up along the yurt’s lattice wall; our little toilet boxes are stacked on one of our chests, and the sweets are displayed in a large bowl, next to the butter lamp like an offering. If people come to visit, Father and Mother explain, they will see that we have won awards. But for as long as we are at home, absolutely no one comes to visit. When we have to leave, the awards remain in place beneath a fine layer of soot and dust.

  It is beyond wonderful to walk the paths and do the tasks we are familiar with. From morning to night Sister bustles around the yurt, washing and scrubbing, sewing and mending, cleaning dishes and cooking. She keeps her eye firmly on Galkaan and me, orders us around, praises and scolds us, and decides when we can rest and when we should get moving again. Father and Mother seem to find it appropriate that their eldest child has a good handle on the younger ones.

  We learn that on the twenty-ninth day of the most recent month, Father stayed away for the night to attend Aunt Pürwü’s shamanizing. Again she foretold hardship for the country and its people. Father repeats what she said: two tears—one carried on the wind, the other welling up from the eye’s socket—will meet at the rim of the eyelid when the spring storm begins.

  Tending the little flock, I decide to shamanize and smoke a quick-acting, acrid mix of erwen and blue-tobacco stems. I get confused when a whirlwind approaches and the flock huddles together. Scared, I interrupt my chant and try to flee from the storm that is now spinning like a drill. The whirlwind ends up racing past us, but more squalls come through and the day turns stormy and cuttingly cold.

  Nine days later we must return. This time the journey goes mostly downhill and we have the wind behind us while the sun is up. Brother Dshokonaj welcomes us in a good mood because he has received much praise while we were gone.

  Classes start the following day. Some students are absent, mostly the Ak Sayan students, who have the longest way to come. We feel sorry for anyone who has not returned because being back together is such fun. Then we get news that cuts through our hearts’ sunny joy like the lash of a whip. The escort who took Gök home on horseback had searched for a full three days before finding Gök’s yurt. Gök’s mother, he said, was bedridden and determined that no one was to come back and pick up her boy. She was the one who gave birth to the child, she was the one who would make the decisions, and she would keep him right there where his eyes, hands, and legs were desperately needed.

  One by one the absent students return, and Gök is not among them. Again his nickname repeatedly comes across our lips, like a wish, an addiction, or a prayer. Sürgündü sobs: “I know I’m old and stupid. And because I’m old and stupid, I can do what I like, when I like, any way I like. I am sick with longing for our Bitshi Gök Güsge!” Then she weeps even more loudly, while the others drop their heads silently, hiding their shining, teary eyes.

  Stories are told about him. I add a few, some of which I make up. Made-up stories are always nicer than true ones. Each time I tell a made-up story, it feels as if the story were about someone long gone, someone whom I never want to let go of again, not for anything in the world. Soon we can no longer distinguish between the true stories and the made-up ones, but they keep the class united and in good spirits when otherwise we would have crumbled after waiting in vain too long. In telling stories, I relive in increasingly brighter light the hours o
f our friendship. We still have each other as friends in spite of, or maybe even because of, the untold secret. I conjure up thoughts and send them on their way to the friend I miss as I would miss the air and the light: We are men now, Bitshi Gök Güsge. We must keep our word and get back together, dear one!

  In fact, however, we would never see each other again. Worse, not a single word about him, let alone from him, would ever reach me.

  In the end, tired of waiting and weak, I begin to think that maybe there never was a Gök. Maybe Bitshi Gök Güsge was a fairy tale from the start, or a dream dreamed by many.

  THE BLACK TAIL OF THE WHITE RABBIT

  “The White Rabbit is timid,” Bajbur said when he last shamanized. “She might just leave the tail end of the year to the Dragon. Her year has already been one to remember.”

  In this, the last month of winter, the freezing winds blow these words from ear to ear. Though no one would claim that old warty-nosed Bajbur amounts to much as a shaman, everyone is puzzled by the meaning of his words. The Altai remains buried beneath a layer of white, and no one with open eyes would think the Rabbit was on her way out. Just the opposite, in fact. It looks as if the Dragon, no matter how powerful, will have to wait for the Rabbit’s snow to clear out before summer begins.

  Nevertheless, preparations for shagaa are well under way. The more the moon wanes in the sky, the more work gets done in yurts everywhere. Noodles get stuffed with meat and cooked, piles of flatbread fried. The dormitory students are welcome wherever they go because they lend a hand with the extra work. Wood gets chopped, water lugged, and mats beaten.