The Gray Earth Read online

  By then we have reached the end of the hallway. There are light-colored doors on both sides. The woman’s voice now sounds even shriller and more threatening. When Brother drums with the back of his bent index finger against the upper half of one of the doors, the loud bangs startle me. Footsteps ring out and the door opens.

  I see a man who looks frighteningly like Brother. Behind him, children’s heads sit frozen in straight rows. They all look in the same direction and are set in the same position. Instinctively I pull back. Were it not for the hand that holds mine, I would take off and run at the sight. But instead the hand jerks me into the room, and the flock of children jumps up and stands with trembling nostrils and shining eyes, swaying lightly like a forest. Brother yells a longish word, and the children answer in a booming chorus with a shorter, more impressive word. Standing in front of them, Brother looks as grand as a fully grown larch tree in front of saplings. He casts a quick scrutinizing glance at the children and shouts something else. In response, the human forest noisily crashes down as if mowed by a storm.

  Brother talks with the man. Even though I don’t understand what they say, I know it affects me. Indeed, a moment later a name is called out and a girl leaps to her feet, walks to the front of the room, and grabs my hand. She leads me to the back row, pushes me into an empty seat, and says something. I quickly sit down and, because the girl walks back to her seat, conclude that I didn’t do anything wrong.

  Later I will learn that the girl, Ishgej, the oldest student in the class, has just assigned me a seat and that I do not have the right to exchange it for any other seat unless I have her and the teacher’s permission. Brother leaves the room, and the lesson continues.

  The man drags a white stone over a square black board. The stone leaves behind white tracks, which the students copy into their exercise books. They are funnylooking tracks, not at all like the animal tracks I know, of fleeing rabbits or playing squirrels. I would like to join in and draw tracks myself, as well I could if I had an exercise book and a pencil. Already my right index finger is copying on my desktop the white stone’s movements on the black board.

  It must be envy and admiration I sense under my skin like a warming, though it feels more like caustic fire when I squint at my neighbor laboring over his exercise book. He has fat lips in a moon-shaped face. The pencil in his round, brownish-black fist struggles to scratch back and forth on the white paper and leaves behind shaky black tracks. Will I ever succeed at this?

  The man at the front stops drawing, grabs a willow branch from atop the board, steps aside, and watches the students copy his tracks. I furtively study him and wonder how I possibly could have thought he resembled Brother. The man has a stocky roundish figure with a fleshy head, while Brother is long and slight. The man’s bulging eyes are suspicious and spread a greenish tinge across his face. But it was his hair, shaggy like a yak bull’s, along with his clothes—the same pointy black boots with narrow tall legs; the same ash-colored suit with a snow-white shirt—that made two such different bodies and faces look alike at first glance.

  The tubby man with his burning-green eyes lifts the stick, points at the white squiggles on the black board, and says something. A few hands fly up. The elbows stay propped on the desks, the lower arms stand up straight, and the hands above look like bright wings in mid-flight.

  The green eyes aim at the back, and there is a shout: “Sarsaj!”

  The boy next to me jumps up and calls out words like san-sam or sar-saj or maybe saj-sar. His eyes follow the tip of the stick wandering sideways along the tracks. Is he identifying or explaining them?

  After a sharp ssuh followed by a jerky signal from the stick, the boy sits down. Ssuh, I whisper, wondering what it means—sit down, perhaps? Whatever its meaning, the word flows through me like ssug, the word I know for water.

  The stick is put aside. Again the green eyes aim at the back row, but this time they focus on me. The man says something. I don’t know what to reply, so I keep quiet. He repeats himself, but he could repeat it a hundred times and because I don’t understand, I keep quiet, wondering what he wants from me. Then a few words slip out of my mouth: “Dshüü didri ssen aan?” What did you say?

  Hearing the agitation in my own high-pitched voice makes me want to cry. The herd bursts into raucous laughter—mockery has won out over fear. But their delight is short-lived: the man with yak-bull hair and horsefly eyes shakes his fists and yells something that sounds like a grown bull plunging his horns between a young challenger’s ribs. The neighing dies in the throats. Everyone twitches and shrinks. The mockers implode and cower frozen in their seats. I, too, am terrified, but because I haven’t yet learned the rules, I don’t shrink back from the man with the yak-bull head and the waving fists. Instead I plead and try to explain that I honestly don’t understand him, calling him höörküüj Aga, dear Brother.

  The man listens. But instead of answering he makes the girl who had taken my hand and led me to my seat stand up. She translates: “The teacher says he asked you for your name.”

  I quickly give my name: Dshurukuwaa, Fur Baby. The girl’s lips hint at a smile, and a tiny bright light flits across her round, bright-red cheeks. The ducking heads and bent backs in front of me quiver. I learn that we must not speak Tuvan at school. The girl translates: “The language itself, like your Tuvan name, is behind the times and cannot be written. For that reason, both must remain outside the fence. We must leave behind everything that is backward. Instead, we must learn the civilized Mongolian language, which will lead us to the bright pinnacles of learning.”

  Finally, I learn not to address anyone as Brother or Sister, for here we are teacher and students.

  At that moment a rumbling starts up as if a horse were farting after eating its fill. I jump with fright, but the others come alive with anticipation. At first deep and hoarse, the sound slowly becomes a high-pitched wail. It lasts a full breath before fading away and dying out.

  The students rise, but wait for the teacher to leave the room before following him row after row as if tethered to a rope. When it is finally my turn and I am about to walk to the door, some have already snuck back in. They nudge me into a corner.

  They want to know everything: Why have I arrived only now, when school began a whole month ago? What year was I born? What do I have in my breast pocket? Since they all talk Tuvan with me, I am relieved: so speaking Tuvan is allowed after all, at least sometimes. “My leg is injured,” I tell them obligingly, and point at the offending dagger I carry in a sheath on my right thigh. The half circle between me and the door lets out oohs and aahs of admiration. I give my year of birth as the Year of the Horse and am told I could have easily waited another year. Most of the students here were born in the Year of the Snake if not the Year of the Dragon.

  To show them what I have on me, I pull my head scarf from my breast pocket. As I do so, my pipe drops on the floor with a thud and gets picked up quickly. This time the circle around me groans with even louder oohs and aahs. Carved from a sheep’s shoulder blade, my pipe has turned yellow and is worn along the edges.

  “Do you also have tobacco?” The boy who wants to know is so tall that I attribute him easily to the Dragon, or perhaps even to the Rabbit or the Tiger.

  “I don’t,” I say. “But I have erwen.”

  “Are you a shaman?” a weedy boy snickers.

  I ignore him and add, “Erwen, mixed with rabbit dung.”

  “Of course. Rabbit dung tastes best, much better than horse manure,” the tall boy agrees. “But erwen, well ...” He purses his lips and pretends to swallow his spit.

  “I’ll tell the teacher,” announces a boy whose big head sits atop a skinny neck and body.

  “Don’t you dare, you tiny pup of the Widow Deshik. Or have you forgotten about this one?” The tall boy raises his fist to brag and threaten the skinny guy.

  Someone else wants to know where precisely I have my injury—apparently in an attempt to throttle the imminent fight. Eager to hel
p, I open my lawashak and show my wound. It is the size of a palm and has a blood-red edge. Another round of oohs and aahs wells up, and in the eyes around me I discover a fear born from admiration. I feel faintly proud.

  At that moment a girl’s voice I had never heard before calls out from the door. The witch must only just have pushed her stupid head through the door, along with her prying eyes and her shameless, merciless, and bungling tongue. When the conversation had turned to the pipe, the students pulled the door shut and made sure it stayed.

  But there it is, her high-pitched, deadly loud voice: “The boy isn’t wearing any pants!”

  Everyone jumps, most of all me. I quickly drop the seam of my lawashak and turn toward the voice. A tall girl with a sallow face and long heavy braids stands at the door and grins. Her head is tilted sideways and her mouth is half open. Later I will learn she is called Sürgündü and was born in the Year of the Tiger. She is a bit slow, and her round tongue cannot pronounce the s. Soon my sharp tongue will repeatedly and mercilessly bring tears to her dark-green, good-natured eyes.

  But it has not yet come to that. We have only just met and are sizing each other up, her fox eyes filled with ignorance and scorn, my calf eyes with shame and despair. In a corner of my heart I am hoping that the group, or at least the boys with whom I have had such a manly, naughty conversation, will stand up for me. With that in mind I turn to the tall boy whose ready fists hold such power to terrify and control. He’ll show the girl once and for all. She’ll never again poke her nose into other people’s pants.

  What happens instead floors me. The tall boy turns his bull’s eyes on me: “First a pipe and a sheathed dagger, and now a bare ass—boy, you are some character!”

  Laughter rings out and swells to a roar, taking my breath away.

  “Weirdo, weirdo, weirdo!”

  “Fur Baby, Fur Baby! Fur Baby goes to war!”

  “What a man! A snotty brat with a bare ass!”

  They pat and paw me all over. I don’t resist. Blindly I stare at a spot somewhere above their heads. Too bad I haven’t gone deaf and numb as well. Or maybe I have. I no longer feel shame rage under my skin and torment me like a bunch of wild fire ants. Instead I feel hurt and disappointment, killing me bit by bit.

  “Don’t you realize you’ll get your pants pulled down and your skin torn off? You have it coming!” Big Head pipes up. “Teasing the principal’s little brother will really get you into trouble.”

  His words hit home and the room falls silent.

  The principal is my brother? I wonder and pause, but I don’t feel relieved. Instead, I am inconsolable. Suddenly I see what has been done to me. I am a stone that has been moved. I cannot possibly return to the place where I was dropped, when I first began to be.

  NUMBER ONE HUNDRED

  Sit? Ssuuh!

  Stand? Boss!

  Turn? Äh-regh!

  Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

  Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

  Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

  We are doing drills. Uncle gives me orders, and I crouch, jump, and turn. Later I learn that Uncle’s name is Arganak; he is to be addressed as Comrade Arganak, and crouching, jumping, and turning is called obeying his commands. So I should say Comrade Arganak gives commands that I obey. However, I am still not saying it quite right. I am no longer really myself. I have almost become a student—as soon as I get out of here, I will be one. I should probably put it this way: Comrade Arganak gives commands the student obeys. Maybe I will even have to be addressed as Comrade Student?

  Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

  Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

  Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

  I am sweating. My leg hurts badly, but I keep going because Comrade Arganak will not stop. Why won’t he? Surely he sees I have learned his lesson ages ago. The man is unyielding. His thick smoker’s voice babbles on tirelessly, so I, too, keep going.

  Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

  I feel sick. I am hot in these clothes. But apparently I look nice. The uncle, Comrade Arganak, whistled through his teeth when he saw me dressed up. Then he knit his brow.

  Boss—sshuuh ...

  Why does the damned stuff have to be so tight? The skin over my wound is burning so badly I am scared it will burst. If only my brother, Comrade Principal, would come back!

  Boss . . .

  I can no longer stand it. Why won’t he shut up? I am just going through the motions anyway, no longer needing to be told . . .

  The grind started at sunrise, when Comrade Principal dragged me here and delivered me into the hands of this man. He talked to the man for some time and then left. Once I was crouching stark naked, my head shaved, in a huge trough of slimy black planks, Comrade Principal returned. With my bare hand I tried to protect my wound from the boiling-hot water that was poured over my twitching body. Comrade Principal touched me here and scrubbed me there, told the other man I don’t know what, and then left again. The man began to lather and scrub me from head to toe. I jumped and screamed when he scrubbed my wound, but he was unruffled. He pushed me to my knees and continued to manhandle me. The man was just a head with no ears and no eyes! Eventually he dried me off with a rough rag and dressed me in things I had never seen, not even in my dreams. At the time I did not have the slightest idea what they were called or what they were good for. Mainly they were a jacket and a pair of pants, both of Manchester corduroy the color of brown leather, and a pair of pointy black boots with long narrow legs.

  “Stop whining. Enough is enough!” Comrade Arganak wheezed again, and then again in Tuvan. “I hope he knows how nice he looks. And I hope he remembers that not everyone has a principal for a brother.”

  It was almost as if he was thinking aloud. He spoke more quietly now and in no particular direction. The triangular eyes in his wrinkled face gleamed inwardly, their light almost vanished.

  And now all these commands I obey. At long last Comrade Principal returns. I am about to crouch down for the umpteenth time, but I stop myself and remain standing even though I have second thoughts right away. His eyes sparkle and shine, and his hot face glows with joy. In a loud voice he offers to Comrade Arganak what must have been praise because a small trembling beam of light flits across the man’s gaunt, furrowed fox face. I don’t think Comrade Principal noticed. He turns to me and takes my hand, and I feel a heavy burden fall from my shoulders.

  My relief disappears quickly. As we walk away, I feel a leaden weight and a dull pain in my leg. Worse still, as soon as we step outside I am told not to limp nor stare at my new clothes. I find it hard to avoid doing either, but I try.

  Suddenly I am startled: a forest of people, straight rows planted in squares, rises in front of me. I recognize children’s faces, like countless little fires. At the far corner of each square, a few steps apart, stands a teacher. The teachers catch and hold my eye. Increasingly I have trouble keeping up with Brother, who walks even faster as the checkered crowd approaches us with blazing faces. I am aware of how badly I limp, but can no longer pay attention to my miserable leg. Brother’s strong hand pulls me forward like a horse pulling a sleigh. And so the man-horse storms toward the people-forest, breaks through between two teacher-larch trees, strides with undiminished speed past the inner edge of one of the squares, and comes to a stop at the upper end of the overall formation.

  Hanging on to my hand, Brother turns around with a jerk, quickly surveys the faces with their shining eyes and trembling nostrils, and shouts into the morning like four dogs barking all at once. The children’s eyes continue to shine and their nostrils to tremble, yet their bodies remain wooden and their faces stony, until suddenly they twitch and their mouths spring open. Out flies something like a short, roaring ssen, or “you.”

  Again it is Brother, or rather Comrade Principal, who barks in the same pinched voice though a little more quietly now, hurling a torrent at each face. He sounds like a long whip snaking out violently and breaking into hissing snippets. Finally, his hand lets go of min
e, and briefly I feel some small relief. But then I get pushed forward. I try not to budge, but fail and end up that much more embarrassed. Now all eyes are on me. My face feels as if the faces across from me were flamethrowers, and my gaze wanders to flee from their intrusive eyes. I wish I could stop myself, but I can’t help noticing that none of the other children are in clothes like mine.

  At last Comrade Principal falls silent. The familiar sounds of life stop as the crowd reverts to an icy silence. But not for long. Steps disturb it, like a flattened club crashing down with long swings, making the morning air and the silently expectant crowd tremble and shake. Now I can see a figure step out of line and approach me. Its gait is strange: the head keeps flinging back toward the neck; the arms take turns flying up and down, and each time one arm flies up, a leg lurches up as well, only to whip down the next moment and pound the bare ground with the boot’s broad sole; at the same time, the upper body plumes and swaggers. The whole body moves with wooden stiffness.

  The figure approaches in a straight line, and then I recognize a tall girl. On her right shoulder I make out the broad strap of the square, light-blue bag swinging by her hip. The closer she comes, the more unpleasant, even scary, are her angular movements. They cause clouds of dust to balloon and merge with the sunshine and air to form a reddish dust devil. When she arrives before us, one of her boots smashes into the other with a dull thud. In this way she positions herself—not in front of Comrade Principal, but in front of me. I was already stiff with fear up to my neck, but now I am frightened nearly to death.

  In between these waves of terror, I can feel the bag I saw dangle next to the girl’s hip now hang off me. Out of nowhere I hear my sister’s voice. It startles me from my trance: Torlaa stands in front of me. But I come to understand what just occurred and what it was all about only much, much later.

  The school had ninety-nine students, Sister told me later. This fact struck different people differently. Some were happy because in their eyes ninety-nine was a sacred number. They were the backward and superstitious people. Or at least that was what other people thought, Sister said. These other people lamented that so little was required in order to bring the number up to one hundred, just a single head, even if it were to contain more water than brain, still ... Whoever held this view was of course progressive and modern.