The Gray Earth Read online

The birds skip off to the side. They hold bones with stringy bits hanging off them in their beaks. One of the bones has a hole the size of my palm in the middle, and the hole is picked clean. I recognize the bone as a pelvis and wonder if it is from a wether or a man. The felt mat, so brilliantly white at the time, is now dark brown and stained with what must have been some sticky liquid. Brother Galkaan won’t let me get close to the mat. He seizes it by a corner and starts beating it. But no matter how much he slaps the mat against the ground, the stain won’t go away. Pleased and heartened to find that the dorsuk is almost full when I grab it, I catch sight of something round that a kite is rolling in front of itself. It turns out to be the skull, picked clean all the way into the sockets.

  I feel like turning to the puffed-up bird with its sunnyred feathers and questioning it to get some clarity. But that very moment I notice Galkaan holding the felt mat in his right hand and moving his lips. Although we are only a few steps apart, I can’t hear what he says. Instead I hear Mother’s voice: “Please watch over these children, dear Brother.” Bagshy’s voice replies, “Don’t think I’d forget them even for an instant, dear Sister. But I can assure you, they are cared for by better protectors than me.” He continues after a brief pause: “Do you remember how loaded down with stuff a lama was when he arrived for a lüüdshing in the old days? And how much trouble he had to go to? It was almost like going to war. Now look at me. Though I am shamelessly called Bagshy, as a lama I am bare-naked. And yet the results don’t seem to be any different. This is the thing: the cloak, the Sutra, the drum, the bell, the bowls for the butter lamps, and all the rest of it—they’re all hidden inside me. Such are the times. But much as kings without crowns or thrones will begin to rule the physical bodies of men, so too will shamans without shawyds or mirrors and lamas without drums or bells rule the souls of men.”

  When Galkaan and I return, we find the three deep in conversation. But while I see their lips moving and their eyes paying vivid attention, I can’t hear them. It’s as if I’ve lost my hearing. Only when Bagshy turns to the two of us can I suddenly hear again.

  Galkaan takes off the leather bag he had tied around his waist, and Bagshy smiles and slides the felt mat under his crossed legs: “From time immemorial, the mat has been the only reward for the lüüdshing. In fact, it’s very valuable. If you put it under the saddlecloth, it will quickly heal a festering wound on the horse’s back.” The dorsuk with the aragy gives him scarcely less pleasure. But then he asks us to do something unusual: Galkaan and I are to empty a half-filled bowl each. Hesitating and blushing at first, we are encouraged by Mother and Aunt Buja. And so, choking and coughing, we drink it down.

  “What were the two of you thinking about when you were over there?” asks Bagshy.

  “I thought,” Galkaan says without reflecting, “about how I will always need to keep myself alive, mostly for Father and Mother’s sake.”

  I add immediately after him: “I didn’t have any time for thoughts of my own because I felt I was hearing voices.”

  “Did you recognize them?”

  “Oh yes. First it was Mother’s and then it was yours, Grandfather. And in the end I could hear our big brother.”

  “What did your mother say?”

  “She wanted you to watch over us.”

  “You heard that?!” Mother starts, alarmed.

  “And what did I answer?” Bagshy jumps in.

  “You talked a lot. I can’t remember. Actually, wait, I can. Something about kings without crowns, shamans without shawyds or mirrors, and lamas without drums or bells.”

  “He said that when you were standing right next to him, dear child,” our aunt says quickly.

  “And what did your brother say?”

  “‘She and I were enemies in an earlier life. I came back to her as a baby, in order first to grow attached to her heart but then to die and tear it apart. My revenge will be complete when I have destroyed her altogether.’”

  Everyone stares at me. Mother looks shocked, Aunt Buja trusting, Bagshy incredulous. I overheard the bit about the child and its revenge one day, when I was listening to wise man Dilik Gulak have a go at someone who kept dissolving into tears after having lost a child.

  Whether it is the result of feeling guilty or of drinking aragy, I can’t tell, but I do feel like eating more meat. Brother Galkaan joins me. Having another dorsuk with drink, Bagshy is at it again, too. I notice he is chewing now. Between noisily eating and smacking his lips and uttering dull grunts, he turns to Mother: “You’ve just heard the message your youngest child has brought you from your eldest. Now you know how things stand. You don’t believe that all we are doing is drinking aragy and eating meat, do you? We are drawing your tears from you and devouring the stone that bears down on you from inside.”

  Just as I begin to feel full and to wipe my greasy fingers on my bootlegs, I realize that I must not stop. So I carry on and force down a piece I have torn with grim zest off a lower arm, breaking it into chunks. The meat is as crusty and hard as wood, and it tastes of the sun. I can tell from looking at him that Galkaan, too, has grasped what needs to be done. He struggles with a neck bone, and chomps with tensed muscles on a piece of jaw and neck. My tongue is dry and tired. Why aren’t we offered more aragy? Can’t they see how hard it is to have to eat meat dried and coarsened by the sun without anything to wash it down? Don’t people say that a two-legged creature mustn’t stop after a single drink? If only they would pass me another bowl of aragy. I’d drain it in a flash. I’d gladly do so—if that meant I would gulp down and consume for good the transformed tears of our mother. Day after day I would gorge myself on meat, piles and mountains of meat, to devour the transformed stone pressing so hard on our mother’s heart and kidneys.

  I am choking, but I am determined to do whatever it takes to release Mother from her sorrow. Like a young wolf, I tear from that wretched lower arm its last strand of sinewy muscle meat and the thick spongy skin attached to it. And I whet my gaze on one of the three remaining chunks of meat—dull, black stones with lighter veins—that wait to be devoured.

  GLOSSARY

  Aarshy dried chunks of cheese, used for provisions in the winter

  Aga brother or uncle; used to address an older male

  Ail settlement consisting of several yurts

  Ak Sayan minority tribe of the Tuvans, living in the mountains and known for their hunting skills

  Aragy strong, colorless spirit distilled from fermented milk

  Asa, plural Asalar spirits that may become dangerous

  Baja wealthy man, a prince; traditional,deferential address for a man of higher rank

  Bortsha air-dried meat

  Darga supervisor, head, person in position of authority; modern address for a man of higher rank

  Dör north side of the yurt, opposite the entrance, considered the place of honor

  Dorsuka smoked-leather bottle used to store liquids

  Dshenggej sister-in-law; address used only for an older brother’s wife

  Erlikbej a diminutive form of address for Erlik, the Lord of the Land of the Dead, which gives equal rank to the speaker

  Erwen herb smoked by shamans

  Gök Mondshak majority tribe of the Tuvans

  Hara Sayan minority tribe of the Tuvans, living in lowlying areas and increasingly adopting Mongolian ways

  Jolka Russian New Year celebration

  Kulak Russian for “fist”; peasant in Russia wealthy enough to own a farm and hire help, also applied to wealthy Mongolian herders

  Lawashak long, coatlike summer dress

  Lüüdshing lama who takes people on their last journey

  Mala set of Buddhist paryer beads, typically made of 108 beads

  Örtöö thirty-kilometer distance; traditional term for a way station for horses

  Ovoo cairn of sacred stones, erected for the spirits of the respective location and used for offerings and other religious ceremonies

  Shagaa lunar New Year celebration
/>   Shawyd whisk or bundle made from strips of fabric; used by shamans to evoke the spirits

  Sükhbaatar founder of modern Mongolia

  Ton long, coatlike winter dress

  Udarnik honorary title awarded with a medal and a financial reward to the most efficient laborer

  GALSAN TSCHINAG, whose name in his native Tuvan language is Irgit Schynykbajoglu Dshurukuwaa, was born in the early forties in Mongolia. From 1962 until 1968 he studied at the University of Leipzig, where he adopted German as his written language. Under an oppressive Communist regime he became a singer, storyteller, and poet in the ancient Tuvan tradition. As the chief of the Tuvans in Mongolia, Tschinag led his people, scattered under Communist rule, back in a huge caravan to their original home in the Altai Mountains. Tschinag is the author of more than thirty books, and his work has been translated into many languages. He lives alternately in the Altai, Ulaanbaatar, and Europe.

  KATHARINA ROUT teaches English and Comparative Literature at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Her translations of contemporary German literature have been acclaimed widely.

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  Milkweed Editions, a nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from Emilie and Henry Buchwald; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Foundation; the Dougherty Family Foundation; the Ecolab Foundation; the General Mills Foundation; John and Joanne Gordon; William and Jeanne Grandy; the Jerome Foundation; Robert and Stephanie Karon; the Lerner Foundation; Sally Macut; Sanders and Tasha Marvin; the McKnight Foundation; Mid-Continent Engineering; the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; Kelly Morrison and John Willoughby; the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act; the Navarre Corporation; Ann and Doug Ness; Jörg and Angie Pierach; the RBC Foundation USA; Ellen Grace; the Target Foundation; the James R. Thorpe Foundation; the Travelers Foundation; Moira and John Turner; and Edward and Jenny Wahl.

  The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  The translator thanks Galsan Tschinag for his support and her husband Jonathan, her friend Kathryn Barnwell, and in particular her editor, Daniel Slager, for making this a better translation than it otherwise would have been. She also wishes to acknowledge the asistance of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

  Interior design by Rachel Holscher

  Typeset in Anziano

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  Printed on acid-free 100% post consumer waste paper

  by Friesens Corporation

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  © Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig, 1999 © 2010, Translation by Katharina Rout

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.

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  Published 2010 by Milkweed Editions

  Originally published as Die graue Erde by Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig, 1999.

  Please turn to the back of this book for a list of the sustaining funders of Milkweed Editions.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tschinag, Galsan, 1943-

  [Graue Erde. English]

  The gray earth / Galsan Tschinag; translated from the German by Katharina Rout. p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-571-31812-1

  PT2682.S297G7313 2010

  833’.914—dc22

  2010040470

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.