The Gray Earth Read online

  Soon Danish returns. He brings the bucket of lime solution and the principal. The principal delivers to Comrade Leader of the Labor Front a detailed report on why he had been unable to join the front previously. Arganak is unimpressed and replies: “You refer to Jadmaj, the Secretary of the District Party Cell, who apparently held you back. But let me evoke Marshal Khorloogiin Choibalsan. He lives on in my heart, and my heart belongs to the Party. For the marshal, an offensive by the School Collective without its principal is like a thrust from a knife without a tip.” Even the principal swallows Arganak’s harsh rebuke without responding. Worse, he simply nods.

  By now the first letters are rising from the steppe, like wheals on naked skin. Arganak wants them whitened with the lime. And for that we need a brush.

  “Why didn’t you bring one?” Arganak nags the teacher.

  “You only asked for lime,” he replies.

  “You knew what the lime was for. I thought you were educated. You thought my black worker’s hands could be used for any old job, didn’t you?” snaps Arganak.

  Danish is quick to reply. His voice sounds almost panicked as he turns his lambskin mittens inside out. “Maybe these will do?” he pleads in a thin voice.

  “Let’s see if it’ll work,” says Arganak casually.

  Danish promptly dips one of his mittens into the bucket, and brushes the solution on a rock with the dripping lambskin. It leaves the rock wet and shiny.

  “Couldn’t be better,” says Brother Dshokonaj cheerfully, and grabs the other mitten. The teacher and the principal work as if they were racing one another. In no time they’ve painted a letter the size of a yak bull. The upper edge of the first rock is beginning to dry and turns chalk white as the men move on to the next letter. After six letters the bucket is empty.

  “How many letters are there?” the principal asks Arganak. But he doesn’t know, so the students have to count. Thirty-six letters, two commas, and one exclamation mark, they report.

  “Impossible! It will take another six buckets or more. Can’t we shorten the slogan?”

  “Who is the leader here? You or me?”

  “The entire School Collective, including me as the school’s principal, stands united behind your leadership, Comrade Arganak.”

  “Then we do as I’ve said.”

  “Lime, Comrade Leader of the Labor Front, lime is hard to come by. We happened to find the first bucket at the hospital. But the hospital doesn’t have much left. At most three or four buckets.”

  “This is not about lime! What’s lime anyway? It’s made from dirt! Garbage! This is about educating and steeling the young, and the Party’s ideology. If the hospital doesn’t have enough lime, you will have to find it somewhere else.” Disheartened, the principal lowers his gaze.

  The next day, when school is out and we enter the school yard, we see white letters glowing on the western slope of Eer Hawak: “Here and now, we shall change your fac . . .” Barely visible, dark shapes that we cannot read follow. There was not enough lime.

  A few days pass. The half-finished inscription brightens the spot somewhat, and by now we know what the blind part reads: “ . . . e, Altai!” Arganak is in a state. Grandmother often used to say that the fastest horse can’t catch up with something that doesn’t exist, and it occurs to me now that she must have meant the kind of situation hanging over our heads these days. Brother Dshokonaj says he is trying every day to find more lime, but there is none to be had. Everyone knows that lime comes out of the ground. The problem is no one knows where. Until now, people brought it back from the provincial capital. But the capital is a long way away ...

  In his fury Arganak is driving the work on the excavation with an iron fist. From time to time even the youngest students take turns. As we work in pairs carrying earth on sackcloth to the far side of the rows of stones, the hole becomes a real pit. Dark and smelling of damp earth, it is deep and wide enough to hold several yaks. The plan is to make it even bigger.

  As the pit grows, so do the rumors. They started the day of our logging offensive and took off from there. All the stories are about Arganak, Dshokonaj, and Jadmaj and are embellished with true, partly true, and untrue elements. This is the main plot: the principal embezzled State property, and Arganak exposed him. When the principal fired him, Arganak complained to the Party Cell. A commission examined the principal’s work and attitudes, and determined that Arganak’s accusations were valid, at which point the position of principal would have been vacated were it not for the Party Secretary’s interference. Mainly he interfered because he was eyeing the young principal as a potential husband for his cross-eyed spinster of a daughter. The Party Secretary talked Arganak into withdrawing his complaint by promising to get the uneducated but power-hungry man elected to the Bureau of the Party Cell. Soon the school’s principal will marry the darga’s daughter, and Comrade Arganak will be awarded a medal by the Party and the State. Already the groom has courted the bride, and the receipt for the medal has been signed. The rumors grow as people talk of ambiguous dreams, unambiguous omens, and alarming predictions involving additional well-known names.

  One day we hear that Arganak has taken the post van to the provincial capital to get more lime. In his absence, work on the excavation site is supervised by the principal in the mornings, and by alternating teachers in the afternoons. Brother Dshokonaj seems impatient for Arganak to return. He personally goes to meet him when Arganak returns, and together they carry a heavy bag of lime. Finally the blind letters come to life and the inscription makes sense as it glows on the hillside. Each time I look at it, I feel better. I feel honored and affirmed in my sense of belonging to some larger purpose I cannot name.

  Toward the end of the fourth month something occurs that sends shock waves into every yurt and corner of the Altai. Two women and one man—Shalabaj, Ürenek, and Bajbur—are arrested. Uushum sees with her own eyes how Ürenek is taken away. A Kazakh in a green uniform with four stars on each epaulette arrives and tells Ürenek to put on warm clothes and come with him. While she gets changed, he ties black string both ways around both chests in her yurt’s dör, and seals the knots. No one is to touch them, he says, until the police come and check them. Ürenek is calm but tells her son Uvaj to sprinkle milk behind the man taking her away and to wish him a long life. The Kazakh must understand her instructions, for he says: “This is kind of you, Mother. I can see you realize I’m just doing my duty.” Then they both get into the car and leave. Ürenek’s son Uvaj does what his mother requested and tells the people standing around that his mother was waiting for this day for months. She knew it would come.

  All of a sudden the world seems to have fallen mute. As if a mute sun rose in the morning and a mute storm blew through the day. As if people were mute even when they talked, though their rumors grew louder and traveled farther and faster than ever. People gossip loudly but pray silently, secretly, fervently. Fears that were smoldering are now ablaze. Where people were arrested one by one over the past ten years, now they are taken away in droves.

  I live with the all-consuming fear I have felt since I first heard of the arrests. It is a quiet fear, so deep inside me I can almost hide it from myself. But people have taken me aside and warned me to be careful. First it was the teacher, who kept me back during recess, whispering, “Should anyone ask you what I did with you that day in the cellar, please tell them that I interrogated you and forced you to tell me where Gök was hiding. And if anyone asks about the fire, just say I used it to keep warm while I made you stand in a cold corner.”

  Next it was Sister, who asked me the following evening if I had been blathering about shamanizing again. I said no, I hadn’t. She looked at me sternly, and there was no mistaking the doubt in her eyes. Then she told me the story of a boy in Hentej District who, in contrast to me, could truly tell fortunes. “He was much younger than you are,” she said, “and still he got shot!” That night I had a nightmare. I was arrested and put in chains, and then shot, over and over again.<
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  One particular rumor seems to become more detailed, more frightening, and hence more convincing each time it is told. According to it, the four-star Kazakh will return to take away more people. When he left last time, there wasn’t any space left in his moving glass cubicle. Numbers and names are mentioned. The identity and overall number of people to be arrested is said to be fixed. First the number climbs from three to six, then by another three—people who did not meet their quotas, each known by name—and now settles at nine. The very first name on the list is our aunt’s. She is followed by the Party Secretary, which is surprising on one hand, since he is the most important person in the district. On the other hand, it makes sense given that previous arrests targeted mostly state employees. No one knows who the third name on the list is, but everyone knows that there is one. I find all of this terrifying.

  One day we see the glass cubicle roll in. My heart feels as heavy and tight as if the box were rolling through my chest. When we hear the next morning that it left without taking away a single person, I am hugely relieved. Until that evening, when I learn that a man wearing the same green uniform but with even bigger stars on his epaulettes called a meeting at which he gave our dargas a stern dressing-down. People in our district were clinging to their superstitions, he said. It was high time it stopped, or each and every one of them would feel the hard hand of the revolutionary law. “From now on, the Revolutionary Mongolian Militia will keep its eagle eye on your district,” he said. And next time he would come with a van and take away every single offender to eradicate all superstition, root and branch. These words are repeated first in our yurt by Brother Dshokonaj, and later, again and again, by our teachers.

  Dügüj shows up at our next assembly. Apparently she is no longer a mere office worker in the District Administration but rather a colleague and member of its Council. She tells us the story of the young Soviet Pioneer Pavlic Morozov, who denounced his own father for counterrevolutionary activities. The father’s accomplices took revenge on the boy and murdered him in a most cruel way. But the government of the Workers’ and Farmers’ State posthumously awarded the brave Pioneer the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Today, schools, streets, squares, and even army units carry the name of the fearless young fighter. “The District Administration believes,” adds the young woman whose brisk, pushy voice almost makes up for her tired triangular eyes, “that there are Pioneers in your midst who are just as heroic and dedicated, and just as willing to fight against superstition and for the revolution.” She asks us to report straightaway anything we hear about superstitious or counterrevolutionary activities that are out of step with the changing times. And if we lack the courage to do so publicly, we are always welcome to approach the District Administration and tell her or one of the other comrades of the Council. Also, we should drop by in the evenings to listen to the radio programs from Ulaanbaatar, and to learn new songs. She would be in every evening, and would love to see us.

  This is impressive. We listen carefully and decide to go find out about the radio programs that very evening. All we know so far is what our teacher has told us: a radio is a gadget that lets you listen to news from all over the world. In the evening we stand dazed in front of a pretty little box that drones and crackles. Dügüj gives us sweets, and explains things. After that evening, we befriend and visit her regularly. I don’t remember much of any denunciation.

  One evening she tells us not to come the next day. She has to ride out into the country as one of the District Administration’s delegates. Would we like to give her letters for our parents and brothers or sisters? None of us has ever written a letter and it sounds like fun. Because she offers paper and pencils, a few of us take her up on it. Once they sit down, though, they can’t think of anything clever to write. Embarrassed, several give up after a while. We’ve heard that letters soldiers send home are always written in stanzas and wonder if ours have to be written the same way. Dügüj says they could but don’t have to be that way, and decides to help Uushum, who by this time has become quite close to her. So she dictates to Uushum a few lines meant to be instructive for the rest of us as well.

  Under the many-colored blue sky live an infinite number of people I revere. Whom, of all these people, do I revere as much as I revere you, my dear Father? On the many-colored gray earth walk an infinite number of people to whom I feel obliged. To whom do I feel as obliged as to you, my dear Mother?

  At this moment, I would like to imagine with my mind’s eye that both of you, my dearest parents, and all my younger brothers, sisters, relatives, and friends from near and far continue to be well. I, your thimble-small daughter behind the three rivers and thirty-three mountains, am well. With a healthy body and a determined mind, I tirelessly climb the steep mountain of knowledge. A beautiful calm spring has arrived here at this settlement, with its dozens of fine State institutions and hundreds of sons and daughters of parents from all four corners. The store has many goods, though the people have less money ...

  We are all ears, and try to absorb everything Dügüj says. Her words sound superbly beautiful, and as we listen, she grows into a powerful educated comrade before our very eyes. Then she casually asks Uushum if her parents’ yurt contains any sign of religion. Uushum falters before admitting, “A yellow bone that looks like a large wooden ring.”

  “What kind of bone?”

  “Father and Mother say it’s our great-grandmother’s top neck bone.”

  “What’s it supposed to be good for?”

  “Riches will flow through it and into our yurt.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes, I do ... I mean I don’t know.”

  “You can’t be serious, Uushum! I thought you were a student, and a Pioneer. And what do you say when I call on you as a Pioneer: ‘Be prepared!’?”

  “Always prepared!”

  “There you go! Now, tell me, do you honestly think riches can flow through someone’s yellowed neck bone?”

  Uushum keeps her head lowered for a moment, then says, “No, I don’t believe so.”

  Dügüj strokes Uushum’s head and says gently: “You’re a good daughter of the new era. You will be such a good teacher.”

  Then she carries on with the dictation: Dear mountainlike Father and dear earthlike Mother, at the State School, your daughter is learning as well as other children. Most importantly, she is growing into a progressive citizen who is shedding her superstitious beliefs. Knowledge, bright as the fire of the rising sun, has taught me that everything about oracles and shamanism is a fraud. There are no spirits, nor is there a soul. And what the shamans and lamas say about the upper and the lower world is also a lie. There is only this one world, and this one life.

  Please give the old yellowed bone that supposedly once was a human neck bone to Sister Dügüj, who will deliver this letter to you. The bone will be destroyed under State supervision, together with all the other religious things people are handing in. Incidentally, the bone must not be kept in your chest for it may cause disease. Your daughter, not some old bone, will bring happiness and riches to your yurt.

  Bowing deeply before you,

  Your daughter Uushum

  While Dügüj dictates the letter and Big Lip struggles to swallow the steaming stew offered to her, I wonder what ceremonial objects from our yurt would have to be destroyed. I think of the matted strands of each child’s first hair; the strung-up pieces of animal ears; our brass butter lamps; and the kneecap—light as sandalwood and soft as birch—that we think belonged to a forefather who lived seven generations ago and was a famous wrestler. I decide not to write a letter.

  The next morning the district employees ride off in all directions. Brother Dshokonaj is among them. Later I learn that when he arrived at our shaman’s yurt, she was surly. Without returning his greeting, she said she was ready and pointed at the small pile waiting to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. It was sitting at the foot of her low wooden bed, and contained a brand-new sheepskin ton and equally n
ew boots with white felt lining. Brother Dshokonaj explained that he had not come for her but for her shamanizing tools. “What?” she exclaimed, astonished. “Even the asalar have gone soft in the head in these days of the big fist and the shrunken, sickened heart. They have deceived me!” Then she turned to the ail women who, having left moments earlier, rushed back when the barking dogs announced the approach of the rider. “And to think that you spent an entire sleepless night struggling with these half-raw hides!” And in the next breath, “Now, at last, with those feebleminded asalar and my empty hands, you have more than enough reason to leave me alone.”

  She looked at Brother and offered him her snuff bottle in the traditional welcome. Then, interrupting her own expansive gesture, she asked, “Or is this bottle one of the outlawed objects that has to be destroyed? If so, put it in your pocket and don’t bother with the ritual.”

  “Oh no,” replied the district delegate glumly. “Snuff bottles are not included.” He accepted the bottle with both hands, lifted the unscrewed top to his nose, and took a little sniff. Then he passed the bottle back with both hands.

  Over tea their conversation slowly got off the ground. “I know you won’t respond to what I am about to say,” said the shaman. “Still, I have to say it, even if just for the sake of your mother. My sister-in-law might feel hurt if I didn’t spell it out. I would have preferred that someone else come, even Hos Haaj, son of Höjük Dshanggy, or, for all I care, that scrawny fox-faced Arganak. The stories you hear about that man make your ears filthy. But it is what it is. It is you who has come, someone from our own family. The things you have been sent to collect are over there, in the chest on the right. I am not going to hand them to you like my snuff bottle and the tea bowl, but you can take them. You simply have to go over, lift the lid, and reach in.”

  The extended silence that followed was oppressive, until the district delegate broke it: “I’m not allowed to return without the objects, Aunt Pürwü.”