The Gray Earth Read online

  I finally stand and, relieved because it really is his voice, walk toward him.

  Close up, I am hit by a wave of the sharp smells I recognize from the goods sold in the store. I take them in with relish and am reminded of sweets and especially the red-and-yellow striped candies I was once given as a present. I feast on the man’s smell as if it were exuding from crackling white candy wrappers.

  But then I stop and think again: the two hands touching my cheeks are cool and wet. Again I remember the figure in the water. He must have been wet and naked. The figure had trembled before it shrank into a rumen and then fell apart and dissolved.

  A cold shiver runs up my calves and spreads across my belly and my back, and I feel my hair rise and turn into awls piercing my skull through the skin.

  BROTHER

  “What were you doing?” he asks me.

  I think it better not to tell him. But when his gaze drills through the already tight skin at the top of my ringing head, I can’t hold back: “I was chanting.”

  He doesn’t reply. But once we are back in the yurt, he says what I dreaded hearing all the way home, limping behind him, ladle in hand. After putting the water pail down in front of the kitchen shelf abruptly, he lets fly: “Do you know why the rascal wouldn’t come home? He was shamanizing! Fooling around with the spirits!”

  Father and Mother wince as these words pelt them like rocks hurled at animals.

  “All the while you are sitting here, innocently thinking he’s too young for school,” he rages on. “He’s played the baby long enough—it has to stop. Anyone who makes rhymes on death and the devil and fills the sky and the earth with his shouting can learn a few measly letters and numbers.”

  Father and Mother cower in silence. I sit motionless, not saying a thing. Occasionally our eyes meet. See, their eyes say to me, that’s what happens when you don’t listen to us. At least be good now, please.

  I hold on a little longer, but my eyes ask, Where has he come from? And why?

  They do not know. I ask why they sent him after me. They did not, I read in their eyes. He went of his own accord. I should not have stayed out so long.

  It looks as if he wants take me with him right then and there. My eyes plead and cry, but neither Father nor Mother is able to resist. Instead, they want to know what they should prepare for me.

  They don’t need to prepare a thing, he announces. Everything will be provided by the school. Mother mentions the doctor, who will return the next day. No longer necessary, the brother growls. I will be taken for treatment today.

  Suddenly I realize I am not wearing any pants. To my annoyance I learn there is not a pair of clean pants around. Of course the doctor will not want to see me in the old dirty ones he had pulled off me with his own hands.

  I make a face and try to suppress the tears. It makes me deeply miserable that I am no longer allowed to do anything, not even shout and cry to my heart’s content. How I would love to jump and run around and yell until I wear myself out. But I feel so heavy and mortally cowed I can no longer find legs to run away. I have to accept that everything around me happens exactly as he, and he alone, decides. And so I have to put up with not having any pants to wear.

  What had to happen happens: he takes me away. As tiny as lice and as dumbfounded as I am, Father and Mother stand there stunned. All they can do is release me to go my separate way by sniffing my right cheek and leaving the left one for later, for our reunion. And talk about how I am to gain knowledge and how I must not cry when I am leaving for school with my big brother.

  I cry anyway. The milk I am allowed to sip for the farewell cannot wash away the salt that fills my throat.

  Father and Mother stay behind, along with our yurt and our flocks, the meadows and the bushes. I can see them blurred through the tears. Behind the saddle, glued to the horse’s back, which presses against my naked bottom as narrow and as hard as the back of a knife, I begin to grasp my situation. My threadbare lawashak barely covers my private parts as I stick to the horse like a tick and withdraw into myself, away from a suddenly incomprehensible world.

  I feel ambushed. No one ever said a word about my starting school this fall, and I have been treated without respect or love. How different everything was when Brother Galkaan and Sister Torlaa left for school: they looked dazzling, wrapped from head to toe in colorful brand-new clothes Mother had sewn throughout the summer. Father himself led them away. And how do I look? I am in rags. My head scarf is frayed and stained with squirrel blood and fish slime. And I am supposed to be the beloved baby? No one would believe it. Considering my lot makes me lose control, and I begin to sob loudly.

  Meanwhile we have reached the ford, and the horse starts wading through the river. The brilliant reflections and dull roar around me only make things worse: I feel abandoned and at the mercy of forces whose names I have yet to come up with.

  “Hey, what’s got into you?” Brother admonishes me. I sob louder in reply, whereupon this man who is said to be my brother, lording it in the saddle in front of me, goes wild. I feel him twitch and writhe on the other side of the stiff coat I desperately cling to. Then he hisses, “Stop right now or I’ll push you into the water!”

  His words hit like the crack of a whip, terrifying me. I shout for all I’m worth against the hiss and roar of the river: “Don’t, dearest Brother, please don’t. I’ll stop, I promise!”

  I whimper and dig my nails into his terribly stiff coat, which, no matter how hard I try, stays as unyielding as smoked leather. Experience has taught me never to look down when crossing a river, but I can’t help myself. Instantly our horse shoots upstream.

  Even more frightened, I try to look away from the seething current, but my stubborn gaze is as rigid as my body, and I can’t look away from the river’s whirling surface.

  Frozen with fear and wet with tears, I wriggle to brace myself against the rushing waters, like a cowardly dog who groans and cries just to stay alive and seated. If I had more courage and daring, I would rage and fight and drown, and then float away from the injustices hounding me so mercilessly and shamelessly.

  I crave a few comforting words—Don’t worry, little man, you don’t believe your big brother would push you off the horse, do you?—but they do not come. Instead I hear “Shut up, will you?” These words sound hardly less ominous than Brother’s earlier ones. I am stiff with fear, but I try hard to clench my chattering teeth and throttle the cries of pain.

  Below me, the water is rising. First my right boot feels wet and shortly after my left one as well. Then I feel the cold water at my calves, my thighs, and my bottom.

  The horse loses contact with the bottom and starts to swim. Lying at an angle, it floats like a piece of driftwood and no longer darts against the current.

  I remember Father once calling my big brother hard-hearted. While I cannot remember the occasion, I do remember that Mother did not like hearing it. She tends to quickly take offense because my big brother is her son by another man. Everyone knows it. It is why Brother has never lived with us. He used to come and visit from time to time, but he always quickly left again, like some distant relative. Eventually, we lost track of him. People say he’s pursuing the path to knowledge somewhere far away from us.

  Now he has returned, a bolt from the blue that has hit me like lightning.

  My suffering continues for what seems like forever, until at long last the vast wild water lies behind us and I can let myself slide down the side of the dripping-wet horse. I feel relief, even joy, at the feeling of solid ground beneath my feet. The sensation comes with a new awareness: from now on, if I don’t watch out for myself and my survival, in whatever place and by whatever means, no one else will. However, only later will this awareness become a conscious thought.

  Something confusing happens next that gives me cause for much thought. Brother steps close, wipes off my tears, and says, “Don’t cry, my dear little shaman. Now you don’t like what I’m doing, but one day you’ll be grateful for your new
life. At home you may be the baby, but you can’t be the baby the rest of your life. That’s why, sooner rather than later, you must take on the burden of what we call knowledge. Knowledge has been waiting for you. And unless you accept its burden, you won’t be able to carry it into the future. Knowledge is the fire that illuminates our darkness and destroys our backwardness. Now go and wash off your tears and snot, and dry your clothes. I have to dry mine as well. See? I got wet up to my belt. I should have gone to the ford rather than try to find a shortcut.”

  Half a pail of water pours out of each of my boots. I pull the felt lining out, wring them as best I can, and pull them over two narrow, pointy rocks. I keep on my lawashak and realize I have to stand still, arms and legs spread wide apart like a scarewolf’s, to make sure the bottom seam stays smooth and straight in the sun.

  Brother has taken off everything but a pair of briefs that barely covers his private parts. At first I glance at him quickly, but then I can’t help myself and keep peeking. His skin is as light as a newborn’s, but with a bluish tinge. Maybe this is what scares me. His feet, their long toes spaced apart, suddenly remind me of the figure in my ladle. His coat, spread on the ground next to his other pieces of clothing, attracts my attention: it could be the cape I saw. I try to calm my pounding heart: in the ladle I saw a bald pointy head not at all like his, which is shaggy and shaped like a yak bull’s. The difference strikes me as significant, and I decide it is his long and wavy hair that makes him so different from anyone else I know, and hence so unapproachable. Will I be allowed to wear my hair like his once I have acquired the knowledge everyone talks about? The idea shakes me, but also brightens and warms my inner world with vague hope for a future lying in wait behind the rust-colored eastern mountains. Today—so the voice I sometimes hear inside me whispers—some of that future may still be a large lake or a high mountain. But every day a part of that future will split off and become a bright, sunlit morning, and all these mornings will move toward me, facing an unknown path. And they will treat me well.

  My brother steps into the river, vigorously splashes himself with water, and equally vigorously rubs his wet parts with his palms. He crouches and then stretches his slender body so it sways and floats in the current like a piece of aspen trunk. I cannot take my eyes off him. He washes differently than we do. We avoid stepping into a river when we wash but remain at the bank, kneeling on the dry gravel and scooping up the water with our cupped hands. We always make sure the water we take from our great mother river to wet and wash our head, face, and hands never runs straight back into the current.

  Finally he stands up, puffs and blows, and steps out of the river. Dumbfounded, I stare at his briefs. Their bottom droops and water runs out of them in a bright stream. He goes over to his coat and pulls from its side pocket a piece of fabric that is folded into a square. With two fingers he pinches one of its corners and elegantly shakes it open. Then he dabs his face.

  The cloth is brilliantly white and gossamer-thin. I know such cloths from Brother Galkaan and Sister Torlaa; they are called handkerchiefs. I have heard that every civilized person carries one in his or her breast pocket. Brother and Sister are civilized because they attend school. Father and Mother and I are not. We are primitive country folk. Sister Torlaa said so, and Brother Galkaan confirmed it. Brother and Sister showed us how to use a handkerchief: you blow your nose into it. The three of us were speechless. Then Father and Mother decided they would rather remain primitive country folk. But when I tried to follow their example, Sister told me to shut up. One day I, too, would go to school. Later she gave me a square, blue-mottled cloth to practice with, so I wouldn’t be a calf trying to shit like a bull.

  Father and Mother bristled when they heard her say that. Father asked where she had learned such language, and Mother commented that the snot blown into a cloth must conjure up the shit that soils your mouth and other people’s ears. Their words did not stop me from carrying the cloth in my breast pocket and practicing with it for a while. I did it a bit differently, though, than I’d been shown. I blew my nose into the open steppe and then wiped my nose with the cloth. Until one day I lost it.

  And now another snow-white, gossamer-thin cloth! Brother slowly lifts it to his light-skinned, smooth forehead and dabs off each drop of water. Knowing the proper name for the cloth does not leave me any less fascinated. Maybe one day I, too, will pull a handkerchief out of my side pocket and even use it properly.

  THE WORLD BEYOND THE RIVER

  The images change as quickly as in a dream. I see yurts pushed into a clump like chased lambs. These yurts are so dark that if they were real lambs, they would belong to the Kazakhs. Black with soot, they are stooped from having been put up long ago. Other snow-white yurts glow and form a straight line. A hill separates the dark from the white flock of yurts. Four lines of smooth rocks gathered from the steppe form a square around each flock.

  At one corner of each square, four posts lean toward each other to form the corners of an equally square if cockeyed shed. Standing out bright against the dark steppe, the sheds’ bottom halves are patched together with plywood and cardboard, while a strip of sacking is stretched around the sheds’ upper parts. A tousled head peeks out above the upper edge of one of the sheds, and soon Rabid Buura, also called Blue Tooth, comes limping around the corner, his lawashak of bright-yellow silk flung wide open, his hands on the string holding up his pants.

  Here and there I see a few dogs, but none barks at us. Sniffing the rocky ground, they slink around busily but soundlessly. The few people I see look sluggish and drowsy. They stand or crouch in front of the yurts, yawning and stretching. Occasionally someone walks to another yurt.

  At the far edge of the bare rock-strewn steppe stands a lone horse. Apparently tethered, it must have grown tired of searching for occasional blades of grass and fallen asleep. Its head, mane, and tail hang lifelessly. I can see no herds, and no other living beings, in this endless graybrown barrenness.

  But here, now, begins the district center of which I have heard so much. I see houses. A house is bigger than the biggest yurt and more beautiful, I suppose, since it is square and has an equally square shining eye between the two corners of each wall. The eyes reflect us and the horse.

  I am in awe of the people who have created all this and who dismantle and put it all up again with each move. These dargas must have countless strong camels to carry off even one house. And there are so many houses!

  Here even the fence is powerful and altogether different from our fence of interwoven willow and birch branches that staggers like a drunk in a bumpy circle around our haystack. Here, young larch trees stand dead straight in a row, tightly nailed together and mowed level at the top.

  Our horse stops at one of the fence corners. “We’ve arrived,” says Brother.

  “Is that true? Is this the school? It’s huge!” I prattle on as I get off the horse.

  Brother maintains the silent composure he assumed as we approached the settlement. I notice a man walking toward us. Brother has descended and waits with the lead in his hand instead of tying it to the fence as I would. The man hurries so much he almost breaks into a run. When he reaches us, he takes the lead from Brother. I hear him pant and talk, but cannot understand anything besides “Comrade Principal.” He speaks in a foreign language, probably Mongolian.

  Brother first asks a lot of questions. Then he continues without interruption, loud and fast and for a very long time. His head tilted, the man twists and kneads the lead, listening carefully before he turns to me. When he realizes I do not understand, he asks me in Tuvan whose child I am.

  I am so intimidated I lower my eyes and scratch my neck. Then I reply: “I am Ish-Maani’s son.” I use Father’s nickname because I dare not say his real name.

  “I understand!” the man replies quickly, stroking a tuft of hair that pokes out where my head scarf has slipped. His voice is quiet and reverent. Brother grabs my hand and says something I can only guess at. Most likely: “S
hall we go?”

  With a burning throat, my hand limp and powerless in his, I hobble along beside Brother. As we walk through a gate, I realize that the world I have known is about to end once and for all. The gate is so tall even a fully loaded camel could pass. A moment later I enter the school yard and with it an entirely new world. This is the square world that I have only had inklings of. And from here on out, I will encounter it in ever more polished versions.

  Seen from inside, the fence seems even taller and very steep. It pierces the sky that silently looks down on this impudent world, pausing over all that has come about or is still to come. Three houses, covered with clay and whitewashed, aim for each other in a triangle, while a small fourth one, made of wooden boards and lacking a roof, is shoved into the southwestern corner. Although there is not a soul to be seen, the sight of the little house reminds me of Rabid Buura with his wide-open coattails and his hands on his string belt. Now I, too, feel the urge. But I know that for now I must try to ignore it, and probably other urges as well.

  So I hobble on, towed by the hand that clasps my fingers ever more tightly. We hasten toward the northwestern house, where I climb my first stairs to the doorstep, a larch beam thick as a thigh that countless feet have worn thin in the middle and hollowed in places. A cave opens up in front of me, square and surrounded by steep walls, and before I can make sense of the echo of our steps across the creaking floorboards or the tinny female voice ringing from the end of the hallway, I feel as if I hear the beats of my heart no longer coming from my chest, but from one of the walls.

  “Take off your scarf and don’t shuffle so loudly,” Brother urgently whispers into my ear. “Class is in session.” His words make me unsure of myself and nervous I might slip and stumble on the shiny creaking boards, and so I no longer dare to bend my knees.