The Gray Earth Read online

  It takes an eternity before Galkaan finds the matchbox he put on the stove lid only so recently, pulls a match out, and drags it over the strip on the side of the box with just the right amount of pressure so it catches fire. And then finally, he lights the candle.

  That very moment we hear behind us a quiet drawn-out exhalation, which breaks off abruptly. Torlaa leaps back, pulling me with her; Galkaan jumps to join us. Trembling and mute, we stand there clinging to each other. Then we turn around slowly. Torlaa looks scared. She stares at Galkaan and pushes him forward. He resists, but extends his arm to hold up the candle.

  Brother Dshokonaj is still there, but he seems to be asleep. Sister is the first to start calling, quietly but urgently: “Aga . . . Aga . . . Dshokonaj Aga!” Brother Galkaan and I follow her example and call across, sending him different and increasingly louder calls. “Odun, agatshaj—wake up, please, dearest Brother,” slips from my mouth.

  Again Sister is the first to burst into tears. Galkaan and I follow, and before long the three of us are screaming at the top of our lungs. I wail and screech, call upon the Sky and the Earth, call out their names to call them close, and demand to know why they have robbed us of our brother, our protector, and why they have harmed us weak, defenseless children. Then I am shouting: There were four of us

  Whole and complete,

  Like you, Sky,

  With your four directions for the light and the winds;

  Like you, Earth,

  With your four seasons.

  Now you have robbed us

  Of the sunny east

  And the warm summer,

  And sentenced us

  To a sorrowful life as cripples.

  Our wailing awakens the nurse on the other side of the clay-covered wall of larch trunks. She staggers into the room and, realizing quickly what has happened, thunders at us to be quiet and to leave the room and go home. She says she will prepare the body for transport, which is required in order to determine the legal cause of death.

  Sister Torlaa goes wild. She lifts her arms and spreads her fingers, flings back her head and bares her teeth, and hisses: “How dare you, daughter of Sumashak! You’re an old spinster and your father is seventy-times-seven a thief and a liar! How dare you! First you fall asleep until you’ve killed the patient in your care—you slovenly slut!—and then you can’t prepare his dead body fast enough. He’s not a piece of meat to be dressed for a feast! You vulture! Nothing but a dead body yourself! You’d like to steam or cook or fry our brother, wouldn’t you? Huh? Maybe you think I am just a girl—well, I am a girl. But that doesn’t mean that I’m stupid or meek! There’s a growing wolf bitch inside me, a devil determined to defend our brother’s mortal remains tooth and nail. You touch him, and I will let you have it. You won’t know what’s hit you. I will scratch your face to shreds, poke out your eyes, and bite through your throat!”

  The nurse is speechless with shock. As Sister Torlaa pelts her with words as hard as rocks, she backs into a corner, where she now stands as white as a sheet. Her mouth is open and twitching, but she seems to have lost her ability to speak.

  “And as for you two,” Sister says, turning to Galkaan and me. “Run home and get the new felt mat from behind Brother’s bed, the green bolt of fabric from the left chest, and the sewing box from the case beneath our stack of clothes.” We leave as soon as she has finished and trot through the dim light of early dawn, across the rocky steppe. Howling like young dogs, we finally reach the yurt in the ail and fight its stubborn lock, and we don’t stop howling even when we return to the hospital, just as daylight bursts across the sky. Today we are allowed to howl, I think in my sweet-bitter trance; today we can howl no matter where we are and how things go.

  Sister is alone when we return and it looks like she has calmed down and even done some work. Our big brother looks shorter now that he rests under a sheet. “For everything there is a time and a measure,” she reminds us. “Too many tears, and they’ll add to the ocean that Brother has to cross. Stop howling and crying and give me a hand. Now that it’s happened, we have to complete the tasks Brother has left us. He must know that we are here for him, and that we will not let the unworthy play with his body.”

  We help silently. Sister cuts a disk the size of a grown wether’s rumen out of the felt mat. Then she cuts a piece off the bolt of fabric to make a tube with the same diameter as the disk. Using the darning needle and some sheep-wool yarn, she sews a bag, making her stitches as wide as a finger and leaving the ends of the yarn unknotted. Then she slips the bag under the sheet and pulls it up over Brother’s feet toward his head.

  The bag is too short. “Come help bend his legs,” she says. We hurry to help her. As we touch the bag, we feel his shins lying together under the fabric, and push them away from us against the pressure caused by Sister, who is pushing the neck deeper into the bag. The head tilts and finally disappears into the bag.

  “One of you, come and help me,” she orders. Galkaan rushes to her side and pushes the head down while I push the feet up. I groan and tremble with the strain as Sister sews the bag shut. It looks like an overstuffed rumen by the time we all manage to lift the bag off the bed and place it on the felt mat in the corner.

  It is midmorning when the doctors arrive with the militiaman, apparently brought over by the nurse, who must have reported the death. The nurse herself approaches cautiously, waiting at the door the way a startled animal hovers at the edge of the flock, anxiously glancing in all directions. Stunned by what they see, the men stop in their tracks, shake their heads, and quietly whistle through their teeth. Finally the militiaman speaks: “This won’t work, children. We must first examine the body.”

  “There’s nothing to examine,” snarls Sister. She runs to the corner and stands in front of the bag, as if to defend it with her body. A pair of black scissors flashes in her hand, its white edges gaping wide. “Our brother is not a sheep with a belly to open and a fleece to skin. We won’t let you do it.”

  The doctor interrupts. “I beg your pardon? I am the professional here. It’s my job to examine the body, determine the cause of death, and fill out the papers. And no one here is going to stop me.”

  Sister stomps in place on the floor. A cloud of dust rises around her, and the boards creak and clatter. “You’re a scavenger!” she shrieks. “Do you think he is hiding in the bag to escape prison? Do you need to stab and hack him up to make sure he’s dead? You’re a butcher! There’s no way we will let you get near our brother. If you try to use force, well, we have more than these scissors. We have the rocks of the Altai, and our teeth and our fingernails, don’t we?” With her last words she turns to Galkaan and me.

  “We do!” we yell, stomping along with her.

  The other doctor tries to intervene. “Besides,” he mutters, “the District Administration won’t let Comrade Principal be thrown to the vultures and foxes in this pathetic bag after yesterday’s victims were all buried properly in civilized coffins.”

  “Ha!” Sister flares up. “You know what a coffin is? It’s a prison for eternity. Now that you can no longer take him to prison alive, you want to squeeze him into a prison dead. Our brother is guilty, but not in the way you think. It’s because he violated Mother Earth when he was alive that he doesn’t deserve to be taken into her womb now that he is dead. If we go ahead and put him into the earth anyway, we’ll hurt the earth on his behalf and make his trespass even worse.”

  By now Galkaan and I are beside Torlaa. We continue stomping and screaming like two young beasts of prey.

  The men give up and leave. Neighbors who heard the news begin arriving, and asking when the burial will take place. Torlaa says only that once the body has been undressed and put into the bag, it must be taken away as soon as possible. A few people leave to get a horse and maybe a basket. Waiting for help to arrive, the three of us guard Brother, who has become a bag, as round and as heavy as a rock.

  Then I see Father dismounting next to the hitching post. At f
irst I can’t believe my eyes, but then I see Mother riding up behind him. “Father and Mother!” I whisper, my voice failing, and leap through the door. As I burst into the brilliant wide world of summer, with its noisy birds and boisterous sheep and goats, I collapse into loud weeping and wailing. Torlaa and Galkaan must have followed on my heels, for I can hear them right behind me. We all huddle right there, a tiny, shivering group.

  Entering the scene so noisily gives us a temporary advantage: Father and Mother spend the first few minutes trying to calm us down. They tell us to stop crying immediately, lest our tears create an insurmountable obstacle for the one who has to leave. Tears stream from their eyes as well, but they both know how to cry silently. When we step in front of the bag on the felt mat, Mother somehow manages to ask which kind soul lent a hand to prepare the bag. She utters a little cry and weeps even more when she hears that it was us. Father is standing behind her, and every so often he gives her a gentle nudge. Sister Torlaa describes Brother Dshokonaj’s last hour, repeating word for word everything that was said. Father groans several times. Suddenly he makes a sharp banging noise, drops to his knees, and beats his head with his fist. Bright round tears run down his face, drop from his nostrils, and dissolve in his reddish mustache.

  Then Mother composes herself and glances at Father with what looks like blissful gratitude. Meanwhile, a number of people appear at the door, some of whom were there before. Sister Torlaa alerts Father, and he gets up and goes over to them.

  “How are we going to do it?” someone asks.

  “I will carry him across my saddle,” says Father.

  “It wouldn’t take long to get a camel and two baskets,” someone suggests.

  “No.” Father’s answer is clear. “We’ll follow his last wish.”

  Someone mentions the need for milk and juniper, and Mother says she has brought some.

  “How did you know? Did someone bring you the news?”

  “No one did,” Mother says. “But for days I have had troubling dreams of the poor man. And then last night, just as I was falling asleep, I saw him lying on the ground bleeding. Around midnight I got a fever, and I could hear him cry and whimper like a young child. He was calling for me. I said to my husband that something terrible must have happened; and if you don’t believe me, I said, stay here, but I have to go right now. He said to wait until daylight.”

  Then someone lights a thick bunch of juniper and holds it up high. Beneath its crackling fire and wavery smoke Father carries the bag and the felt mat out of the building and over to the hitching post, where his white horse is standing still, drenched with sweat. Father gives the bag to one of the two men who have followed, mounts his horse, and sits behind the saddle. The bag and the mat are lifted up and put in place in front of him. The other two men go over to their horses, and one of them says, “We need one more person to come with us so we won’t return an uneven number. We can take the sister’s horse.”

  Sister Torlaa makes the decision: “Galkaan, you go.”

  But Galkaan protests: “Dshuruk, you’ve earned it more. He was your bosom brother.”

  I obey wordlessly, run over to Brother Dshokonaj’s horse, and jump into the saddle. I cast a quick glance at the people who are staying behind. Short and squat, Mother stands half a step in front of Torlaa and Galkaan, swinging her round leather bag from side to side with both hands. I hear her recite, “Huraj—huraj—huraj, leave behind the blessings of all your riches . . .”

  “Don’t forget to say ‘and of your knowledge’!” I shout.

  Sister Torlaa is annoyed: “Of course we won’t! Now hurry along or you’ll be left behind.”

  I catch up with the riders and stay behind Father, who is between the other two men. The sky hangs low, weighed down by mountains of dark-blue clouds that totter and teeter, pushing against each other’s bright edges. Up there, storm winds collide, while down here the dying breezes blow thin dust clouds behind the horses’ hooves. One moment the air is fragrant with wormwood, the next with fringed sage or saltwort. But all I can see are sparse bluish-green blades of grass and stunted shrubs with hardened gold-glinting bark at the bottom and delicate dark-green crowns at the top. Sparrows chirp around us, but I can’t see them either. Instead, I see swallows shoot through the air like pebbles catapulted from slingshots. Ravens, kites, and crows float above them, their unhurried mute shadows soaring across the steppe. From time to time a lizard flits across the blue-black gravel or the yellow-brown sand, flickering shadows that emerge from nowhere and return to nowhere. The horses hang their heads as if in a shallow slumber while their hooves move steadily and stubbornly forward, step by step, carrying their riders closer to the edge of the steppe. No one speaks.

  Fully alert, I recall the words Brother Dshokonaj said the day we heard of the marshal’s demise. Now I truly feel that one of the world’s lights has been extinguished, and some of its stuff carried away.

  Sometime later the drifting ocean vanishes, and the shimmering air stands still in places. The edge of the steppe appears in front of us as distinctly as a ditch. Behind it the foothills rise like ramparts with their sandy slopes and dark craggy peaks. On our left, Saryg-höl, the Yellow Lake, lies at the bottom of a deep wide basin, surrounded by tufts of feather grass and mounds of rock salt, like a teary eye in an old furrowed face.

  We arrive at last. The men dismount, hurry to help Father, and take the bag as it slides from his horse. Holding it between them at the level of their bellies, they wait for Father to dismount, hobble his horse’s front legs with the lead, and turn toward them. Then Father takes the bag and carries it over to a small mound, where he first spreads out the felt mat. He gently places the bag on the mat, as if putting an offering on a plate at the altar.

  I, too, get off my horse and stand, with the lead in my hand, next to the other two men. We watch Father crouch before the bag and bow repeatedly, saying his farewell solemnly and loudly: You were a son to me,

  A rock of my mountain.

  I was allowed to see you

  Or not see you at times.

  From this hour onward

  You will be sky and earth.

  You can do with me now

  What you felt like doing at your end.

  Whatever awaits me

  I will repay what I owe

  To her who gave life to you,

  And to those who came after you ...

  He rises, takes the agate bottle from his breast pocket, and shakes a pinch of snuff onto a flat piece of slate the size of a plate, which rests at the head end of the bag. Then he steps back and turns to me: “Go bow before your big brother, and ask him for his blessing.”

  I step forward slowly, unsure what to do or say. Suddenly I feel as if the bag is coming toward me. I realize then that Brother, who was tall and straight and full of life at this time yesterday, now lies crooked and stiff in his bag. And that as soon as we ride back, he will be alone, left to the vultures and ravens and to the wolves and foxes, to the wind and the rain . . .

  Something inside me rises up. Sinking to my knees, I speak quietly, as if to myself: “My dearest, most beloved mountain of a brother . . . forgive me for not being able to keep you alive . . . I am stupid and cowardly . . . so I may well deserve to be left orphaned in this unfathomable life . . . like a post in the steppe . . .”

  Then my voice grows louder and my words become verse: With you, oh my Brother,

  I was a yurt in a valley,

  Sheltered from the winds by the mountains.

  Without you, my protector,

  I am a tent on the steppe,

  Naked and exposed to the storms ...

  I rise to my feet and stand there swaying. My head throbs, my guts burn, my bones are hot and hurt, and I feel as if I am dying. I scream and try to defend myself from whatever is besieging me: Mine was

  The arrow

  That hit you,

  Mine is

  The fire

  That will cremate you.

  Here
is the path

  You will take.

  May your flesh decay,

  Your bones fall asunder,

  Your soul drift away,

  Your spirit rise.

  Only then will you become

  The sky that stretches out blue,

  The earth that springs up green

  Through countless millennia . . .

  I feel the need to breathe juniper smoke but find out we did not bring any. This disappointing news makes me increasingly anxious: how can we possibly dare to bring a body, its life extinguished, back to Mother Earth without the comfort and offering of warm juniper smoke?

  Father comes over, takes my hand, and leads me away. Enough, he says; now the others get their turn. The men keep it brief: each bows three times before the man in his bag, and each moves his lips as he silently pleads with Mother Earth and gives his good wishes to the Earth Child. The bodies of mother and child will once more rest side by side.

  Afterward we walk around him once clockwise, with the horses on their leads. Then we walk away a good long distance before we mount them and head back. We ride at an easy trot, talking as we go. Nine of us had left, we say, but just eight return.

  I mull over what just happened, and the words that passed my lips: Mine was the arrow—did I really say that? If it were true, I would be my brother’s murderer. The thought gives me a jolt. And what a pity we didn’t have any juniper. If we had burned juniper, a chant that no one, not even Father, could have interrupted would have emerged. I would have been shamanizing long and well, to be sure. Brother so deserved that I accompany him to the other side.

  The smoke that we failed to create in the steppe is swirling above the yurt and blowing toward us. Brother Galkaan is waiting for us next to the yurt, holding a water jug in his hands. We dismount without saying a word, hitch our horses to the yurt, and walk over to Galkaan, who has been watching us attentively. We each wash our hands and faces and rinse our mouths. Galkaan is shaking as he pours water over our clasped hands. My turn comes last, and I fear he will ask a question, but he doesn’t, and I manage to stay silent as well, even though I would like to know who has gathered in the yurt. As I untie my belt and dry my hands and face with its wide, fluttering end, I feel more grown up than Galkaan, who stands next to me, the water jug still in his hands.