The Gray Earth Read online

  A little later the animal is back. This time it senses my plan as soon as my right hand reaches for the pebble in my left one. There—the mouse is gone! I position myself for another attack and wait once more, my left arm stretched out, aiming for its target, and my right arm lifted, ready to hurl the pebble. For quite some time the coward stays away. When it finally returns, I immediately fling my pebble, but miss again. Enraged, I curse myself: “May my eyes go blind and my hands lame! I’ll never hit a marmot, let alone a mouse. Try something better!” Next, I take all the pebbles into my right hand. However, I don’t want to rely on any old number. There must be exactly thirteen pebbles. Holding them close to my lips, I breathe into them and implore, “May you each be a shard of the stones of the Altai’s thirteen ovoos, and may you all carry their holy spirit!”

  Then I straighten and ready myself to hurl them. My right arm is up, its hand clenched in a fist. And so I wait until my arms, neck, back, and legs are paralyzed and almost numb. At long last, the wretched creature reappears. I fling my fist forward with such force that it jerks my body forward as well and I stumble a couple of steps. By a hair’s breadth I miss knocking myself over, but I have hit my target. I see, I hear, and I know I have hit the beast. It is dead.

  Feeling very calm, I sit down. Tiredness envelops me like fog. I fall asleep and some time later, still aware of my circumstances, curl up on the ground like a dog and succumb to the sweetest dream I have ever been granted in my whole life.

  I am awakened by a light but do not rise. Instead I let the person, whose steps I hear, come close and pull me up. Above me, I see a tall yellow-faced man in a short white cape. He looks at me sternly.

  “Did you pee?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take a shit?”

  “No.”

  “Did you steal anything?”

  “No. But I did take four sugar cubes.”

  “Did you eat them?”

  “No.”

  I take the four sugar cubes from my breast pocket: “Here they are.”

  I try to hand them over, but he does not take them. Instead, he closes my fingers around them and gives me a glance. I quickly put the sugar cubes away again.

  He walks ahead, and I follow. We walk through two doors and climb a number of steep steps in between. At the top, on the ground, the stout man with horsefly eyes from the day before is waiting for us. He says something I don’t understand, but because he gestures with his head, I realize I am to follow him. The other man stays behind. His face with its yellow hair radiates something I feel on my back for a long time—something filling me with warmth and light. He must have followed me with his eyes and thought words he could not say to me.

  I feel his gaze on my back as intensely as the sun, which now burns brighter than ever ahead of me in the southern sky, blinding my eyes. I am curious where exactly the prison is located and what it looks like from the outside, but I am scared the horsefly eyes will keep peeking at me, and so I dare not turn. Besides, the man is moving so fast I have to struggle hard not to fall behind.

  Children stop their play and scatter as we pass. Each child moves alone, and they all look down and avoid us. But I can hear them whispering behind our backs.

  One says, “There’s the runaway,” and another, “Looks as if he’s been beaten.” And a third one says, “From the cold, dark hell into the bright white one.” Maybe the man really does not understand Tuvan, I think hopefully.

  Some time later my mind must have stopped working. All of a sudden I see in front of me a woman who, with her hair twisted and piled high, seems to have two heads. She must be the one who just dragged me across the doorstep. From her manner I recognize her as the woman with the shrill voice from the day before. Strangely, now I understand everything she carps on about. When I realize I am sucking on one of my fingers, I quickly take it out of my mouth, let my hand drop, and press it, like the other one, on my hip. Then I try to get my bearings: I am in a room with many different red colors and a mirrorlike finish. High up on the walls hang satin banners the color of lungs and as wide as the span of a hand. They display white letters and frame the room. Below them, large-faced and clean-shaven men look out from square frames of various sizes.

  Brother Dshokonaj sits behind a large table, writing. Besides the woman and the man who brought me here, two other men are in the room; in contrast to the first two, these other two men and the woman all wear lawashaks. But all four wear the same narrow black boots that gleam like mirrors, and all four remain standing even though there are benches. They face Comrade Principal and wait for him to stop writing.

  At long last he lays down his quill pen, looks up, and casts a quick but thorough eye on each of the four. He says something, and everyone sits down. Only now does his gaze fall on me, and it is as if a whirling storm were blowing toward me. Yet instead of letting myself get blown away, I stiffen my neck and hold my ground. Or rather, I quickly gather the breezes inside me and send my wind to battle his storm because I hear that voice inside again: Stand up for yourself!

  Immediately the storm breaks and a warm veil appears in the gap. “What’s happened to you? Has someone beaten you?” Brother asks. I am unprepared for this. My wind falters, I lower my eyes, and tears well up.

  Enraged, Brother Dshokonaj snaps at the stout man. As if stung, the man jumps up. His horsefly eyes pop even more and shine as he glares at me and yells in the coarsest Tuvan, “Did I so much as touch you? Hey! Speak up, boy, loud and clear, so your brother and the comrades can hear!”

  I shake my head.

  Apparently that does not satisfy the man. He charges at me, inspects my head close up, and, pausing on and off, goes on to list all my bruises and scars, and even the grains of sand clinging to my head. He concludes in Tuvan, “Boy, you have been beaten black and blue!”

  I whisper more than speak, “I don’t know.”

  “You do know!” shouts the principal. “Was it the old man in the bath shed?”

  “Yes,” I say with a loud sob. Someone is sent off and returns with Fox-face. In the meantime, I have a chance to compose myself because they ignore me while conferring with one another. They sound agitated and seem to be of one mind.

  Comrade Principal turns to Arganak and speaks down to him as if from a great height. His face is rigid and his voice strained. Arganak must have seen it coming because he immediately lets rip. He talks loud and fast and steps up his efforts until he screams and stammers as if he is being whipped. At the same time he waves his right hand wildly, his thumb wrapped in a thick white bandage. Brother seems unimpressed and listens, his face impassive. When he tries to interrupt, Arganak gets even wilder, throws himself at me, grabs my lawashak and lifts its bottom. Through it all, he continues to jabber.

  Later I learn what he said. Since I did not have any underwear of my own, he said, I had refused to return the State’s pair. Dutiful Party member that he is, he tried to reclaim State property. At which point I bit into his thumb. The story of the underpants impresses everyone. They immediately seem to turn against me.

  Fox-face harps on for a while. Darga is the one word in his tirade I can pick up now and again, and I know what it means. Barricaded behind his desk, Comrade Principal shrinks before Comrade Arganak. In the end, little is left of Comrade Principal’s rigid face and strained voice. Having first ordered him to appear, Comrade Principal now respectfully asks Arganak to leave. And in the end, the man leaves without having calmed down. He turns around at the door, waves his hand some more, and points his heavily bandaged thumb at the principal. The gesture seems threatening.

  The people left in the room now speak Tuvan, apparently because of me. The people who forbade any use of their native tongue now violate the rule. From their speech I gather which tribe each comes from: the stout man and the man next to him with the narrow light-skinned face and the bushy eyebrows are Ak Sayan; the woman is Hara Sayan; while the quiet man with the broad shoulders who went to get Fox-face is Gök Mondshak, like B
rother.

  “Listen carefully. This is all about you and your future,” Comrade Principal says to me. He has repositioned himself behind the desk and gone back to his rigid face and strained voice. “That we are both sons of one mother,” he adds, “is now irrelevant. This is the Teachers’ Council, and the Council will decide your fate. The Council has the right to make decisions on behalf of the school, and hence of the State. In its decision the Council may or may not consider what you have to say and how you conduct yourself.”

  Then he changes into the official language. What he says is short. I take it to mean: Now it is your turn to talk, and ours to listen.

  The woman demands to know why I fled. I don’t know what I could possibly tell her and remain silent. When they all press me to answer, I say, “I don’t know.”

  “Were you ashamed?”

  “I think so.”

  “Don’t you like going to school?” asks the stout man.

  “I don’t know.”

  They all get edgy and exchange glances and words.

  The light-skinned man asks, “Don’t you think that one day you’ll want to become a teacher like the rest of us, or even a principal like your big brother?”

  What can I say when what I really want is to become a shaman. So I ask, “Can a teacher be a shaman?”

  Buttocks shift nervously in seats, and again glances and words fly.

  “What’s that? Are you actually thinking of becoming a shaman?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Silence descends.

  Brother’s eyes glare threateningly and his cheekbones twitch. But it seems to happen somewhere far away, leaving me strangely unaffected.

  The silence spreads to the walls and corners of the room, blanketing everything with an invisible veil of ice. I feel chilled, and when the broad-shouldered man breaks the silence, I can hear a soft clinking.

  “I understand you are a boy who loves to sing,” he says. “Is this true?”

  “It’s true.”

  But the man with the light-skinned face interrupts: “You did say shaman, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Comrade Principal slams his fist on his desk and jumps up. “Nonsense. You’re a snot-nosed little squirt. Don’t you lie to us.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  I can say that with complete peace of mind and look him in the eye to remind him: You have seen me with your own eyes. But I worry about the others. Will they believe me? Hardly. Then I remember my shaman’s pipe. Once they see it, they will realize I’m not lying. I bend down and pull the pipe from my boot.

  “See? This is my pipe. I smoke it before I shamanize.”

  I can tell everyone is shocked. For a short moment, Brother forgets he is the principal. He looks helpless and swallows. Then he pulls himself together, marches up to me, and waves his right hand, his index finger as stiff and pointy as a raven’s beak: “And to top it all off, you’re a smoker? You spoiled-rotten fool!” And with these words, he rips the pipe from me. “What else do you have?”

  “My scarf.” I slip my hand into my breast pocket and pull it out. Something hard falls out in the process—a sugar cube.

  “Where did you get that?”

  I pause, stutter, and then admit: “In prison.”

  “Well, well, well! Do you have more of them?”

  My hand slips back into my breast pocket and fishes for the other three: “These are all I have.”

  “Put everything over here.”

  I put my scarf and all four sugar cubes on his desk.

  “What else do you have?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There’s no point in trying to hide. Don’t even think about it. We’ll strip you and check everything.”

  “I don’t have anything else.” By now I can no longer help myself. With a trembling, tearful voice I say, “Everything I have said is true, dearest Brother. I really don’t have anything else.”

  But I am questioned and scolded further.

  The stout man asks, “Were those sugar cubes perhaps lying under the gravel in your prison?”

  “No. They were in a box.”

  “And did they jump into your pocket on their own?”

  “No.”

  “How did they get there?”

  “I took them.”

  “Wrong. You did not take them. What you have done is called something else.”

  “I put them in my pocket?”

  “Try again.”

  “I stole them?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what you did. You stole them! And so you are a thief.”

  The light-skinned man lists my misdeeds: “So you disrupted the assembly, you bit and injured a man, you are underage and you smoke, you want to become a shaman, and you have committed theft. Do you know what all that adds up to?”

  Because I don’t know what to say, I wait and remain silent.

  The stout one summarizes: “You have violated five State laws. What do you have to say?”

  I still don’t know what to say.

  The woman concludes: “These are more than enough reasons for the school to expel you.”

  It dawns on me suddenly that I may not need to go to school after all.

  “Do you realize what that would mean?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well I do. If we don’t admit you, you’ll always be a primitive nomad, like your father or any man who tends his flocks, hunts marmots, and gathers dung.”

  This prospect does not frighten me in the least. Quite the opposite, in fact: I am relieved. If that is all there is to it, I will go home singing. Now that I have tainted his reputation, Brother will have to take me back across the river.

  But the stout one pipes back up: “That would be much too easy. Everyone in this room is a State schoolteacher. We all fight for the cause of the Party and the State, and some of us wear the blood-red membership booklet over our heart. So I don’t see how we can possibly avoid reporting your case, which—to me, anyway—appears to be very grave indeed.”

  “That’s right!” the light-skinned one interrupts. “And if we report your case—and I think we have no choice—you will go to the colony. You do know what the colony is, don’t you?”

  I do not know.

  “It’s a prison for youth. People like you are sent there. Young people who have broken the law. You won’t find bright, warm rooms like this one in there. Or teachers like us, who plead with you and explain. No, my young friend, in there it’s all barbed-wire fences and massive stone buildings, as hard as iron and heavy with rock. Nothing but truncheons, sharp spears, and loaded guns.”

  This sounds like a pretty big deal. I need to know more: “How far away is this prison for youth?”

  “Very, very far. If your father wanted to visit you, he’d have to ride his horse for months just to get there.”

  I am very impressed. Hadn’t I already thought of going away on my own?

  “Is that in Ulaanbaatar by any chance?”

  “It is. But don’t kid yourself and imagine you’re going to be sightseeing. You’ll be a prisoner, and prisoners aren’t allowed to take in the sights of our glorious capital. You will be taken there blindfolded, in a prison on wheels, and you’ll be thrown into a concrete-and-iron cell. You won’t see anything but a dark brick wall and a fence with barbed wire on top.”

  It still sounds intriguing. I ask if prisoners are allowed to acquire knowledge.

  “Sure,” the man replies offhandedly. But then he adds ominously, “In there you’re not just a student. First and foremost, you’re a prisoner who has to pay for his misdeeds.”

  This does not scare me. With the world of the unknown opening in the distance, I feel a longing to go there. “All right,” I say, “then I shall pay for my misdeeds.”

  Brother, who has silently watched as if none of this has anything to do with him, finally speaks: “So you think this is going to be easy, eh? In that case we’ll do something different: we’ll send your father or mother to
prison because they have raised you poorly, and keep you here instead. You’ll have to study and spend your spare time in our local prison, serving the balance of your sentence.”

  Now I am shocked: Father or Mother sent to prison because of me! Good heavens! Brother must have observed me closely because he continues: “Now you’re getting it. Your father or mother will go to prison unless you repent your bad deeds and ask the Teachers’ Council for forgiveness. And you must promise to be obedient in the future.”

  At last I understand what I am expected to do. But to my own detriment something inside me hesitates to give in to the pressure, for I fear making a promise I may be unable to keep.

  The teachers remain seated, and I remain standing. Nothing new is said. What was said before gets repeated. It is the same as circling a rock: standing still or walking makes no real difference. Eventually someone notices it is late. Everyone agrees. And then the meeting is over.

  Before they leave the room, the light-skinned one has another go at me. “Do you know why you drown if you fall into a river?” he asks as he walks past. I do not know. “Because you’re fighting the current,” he says, not sounding unfriendly. I know what he means: I am stubborn.

  “It’s a pity you’re not in my class, my dear. Every day I’d pound you and make you a little softer. You and your stiff neck.” He laughs as he grasps the back of my head. His grip is rough, and I feel as if he is going to rip my head off. But I stand firm and clench my teeth, pressing my tongue hard against them. “Still,” he adds before letting go, “I hope we’ll bump into each other from time to time.”

  That evening, I get dragged through another meeting. Sister Torlaa, who now insists on being called Dsandan, chairs what she calls the “Council of Siblings.” Brother Dshokonaj makes no comment. What is worse, I don’t even know if he is listening. He lies on his bed and stares at the poles supporting the yurt’s roof. Brother Galkaan, whom we are now to call Gagaa, is a quiet, attentive listener. He limits himself to regular if brief affirmative responses.

  Sister really takes off: “Brother Dshokonaj has acquired that most valuable of all treasures: knowledge. He is the first in our clan to have come this far. Our clan, supposedly rich with herds, children, and fame, was in reality caught in darkness and as ignorant and pathetic as everyone else. Not every clan can produce a teacher, and not every teacher becomes a principal. Our brother has achieved both. We should be proud of him and pleased with his success. Pleased, in particular, because as the eldest he shows the rest of us the path to knowledge.