The Gray Earth Page 7

  Oksum is the father of my classmate Orgush, and I have seen him before. I have also heard that Oksum is an udarnik. I am not sure what it means, but I believe an udarnik is a tireless worker. Some of the adults I know also work very hard, but they all get tired eventually. Oksum, on the other hand, is rumored to have worked nonstop for months and years. When his story made the rounds, Uncle Know-It-All burst out laughing and said, “We know Dugdurak’s boy, don’t we? As far as I remember, he used to eat, drink, shit, piss, slack off, and sleep just like the rest of us.”

  When he heard that, Father told off his older brother: “Let people say what they want. Better you don’t pay attention to what comes out of their holes. And keep your own shut. Or better still, act as if you don’t have one. Master that art, or you’ll end up in the Black Yurt.”

  The teacher who had kept everyone from entering the school building now rushes to the darga and his entourage. He catches up with them, leads them to the front of the assembly, and plants himself beside them. Indecisively, Brother Dshokonaj stands a few steps off to the right. The darga, his legs wide apart and his hands deep in his coat pockets, wearily lifts the lids over his slanted eyes toward the morning sun, blinks a few times, and then shouts sternly, “Comrade Dshokonaj, over here!”

  Brother hurries over and stops next to Arganak. Together with his fellow acolyte Oksum, Arganak has positioned himself half a step behind the darga and the teacher. Both are standing at attention. Not bothering to turn toward Brother, the darga grumbles, “I said, over here. Where I am.” Brother quickly moves forward. Only now does the darga take his hands out of his pockets and begin to open his bag. He undoes the clasp and pulls out a sheet of paper. His every movement is leisurely, but each gesture feels progressively more important.

  At long last he starts to speak. Although he holds the sheet of paper up, he does not read from it. I can’t hear anything he says, so I observe the five men in front of us that much more intently. They have lined themselves up like targets and almost made us—and themselves—freeze to death on this first winter morning.

  Oksum looks like the stone man of Akhoowu. He stands solid as a rock, with a dreamy smile and short straight nose in his round dark-reddish face. His eyes gaze into the distance.

  Arganak tries to imitate him, but he cannot stand still. His boots are worn down at the heel and falling apart, and the mere thought of his feet makes my own toes feel colder. No smile lights up his fox face; his skin is too creased. The only thing he manages to pull off is the wooden posture of his upper body. The light-skinned teacher and Brother jump at the same instant, one worse than the other. The teacher’s face pales and Brother’s reddens. Both men’s eyes fill with tears. In fact, everyone’s eyes brim with tears, but with these two it is different. The only person who does not appear to be freezing is the darga. During his talk, he warms his mouth and his hands, which he waves a great deal, and even after he has finished and called upon others to speak, he looks entirely comfortable. I can’t take my eyes off the bright steam rising from his gigantic nostrils.

  Oksum is the first to speak, and so he takes a step forward. He maintains his solemn and dreamy demeanor. “Dear children,” he says in Tuvan. “I am a simple worker. My heart may beat incessantly for the Party and the Motherland, but I am still an uneducated man. I don’t know any Mongolian. That is why, unfortunately, I can only talk to you in Tuvan.”

  I understand everything he says. He is a kind man, and powerful. In one year he accomplished work that would have taken others more than three years to finish. I’ll never understand how that was possible, but I always admired him for it.

  “Studying is work, too,” he continues. “For me, someone who studies hard is a school udarnik. I consider him or her my friend. Two of my own children are among you, but neither of them studies the w-w-way I had l-l-l-longed t-to.”

  He begins to stutter. Small giggles surface here and there. The teachers’ raised eyebrows are enough to silence them, but the speaker has noticed. “G-g-go right ahead and l-laugh, d-d-dear children. G-g-go and laugh. Yes, I d-d-do stutter at t-t-t-imes. Your p-p-parents g-g-gave me the nickname Stut-t-t-ter Oksum. But I d-d-didn’t care. I only worked harder. I am t-t-telling you: D-d-don’t worry if you have a nickname. Just s-st-study harder. B-b-become a s-school udarnik!”

  The udarnik seems to be coming to a rousing finale. All of a sudden he throws off his good-natured dreaminess and adopts a revolutionary spirit: “If you do extra well with your studies,” he shouts like any darga, “then you will, one d-d-day, study to b-b-become a t-t-teacher! Here in our magical c-c-c-capital, U-laan-baa-tar, or over there, in C-C-C-P c-c-country!” He first points east with his stretched arm, then redirects it north.

  Loud laughter erupts, first from the darga, who is quickly joined by the teachers. They are also clapping their hands.

  The next one to speak is Arganak. He talks in Mongolian. What I get from his speech is sahilga bat, discipline, because he says it at least ten times. I also pick up nam and ulus, party and state. All through his speech he waves his right fist. It saws back and forth through the air.

  Then it is Brother’s turn. He is nervous and his voice is small and shaky. I understand haer and itgel, love and trust, and then party and state again, and several times, discipline.

  The light-skinned teacher begins to take on the expression of a child who was forgotten when all other children were given presents. His forehead and temples are icy gray. While Brother is speaking, I watch the teacher closely. He presses his lips together and closes his eyes—he must be feeling dizzy.

  Everyone there seems thoroughly frozen, and impatient for things to end. Even the teachers, who are there to maintain order, stamp and drum their boots on the icy ground along with the students. The speaker must stop! But the darga won’t submit to the general longing to disperse. Stubborn and steadfast, he maintains his lofty pose, in stark contrast to his two shadows, who are now back in the second row and who have stopped acting their parts. The darga demands to see the undisciplined student. My heart jumps into my throat. My premonition was right! Brother yells, “First grade student Comrade Galsan, step forward!”

  I am startled, but immediately spring forward. My feet are numb, but I feel something like needle pricks on the inside of my thighs. Tears fill my eyes.

  “Are you learning Mongolian?” the darga asks. His face is blurry in front of me.

  “Yes I am.” My voice sounds weepy and thin.

  “Let’s hear what you’ve learned.”

  “The school, the teacher, the student, the desk, the chair, the book, the exercise book, the pencil, the blackboard, the chalk, to read, the teacher reads, to write, the students write ...”

  I reel it all off in one breath. If I had not been interrupted, I would have rattled off the whole textbook up to where we left it on page 113, right up to the sentence “Now it is noon, and the cows have come.” And I could have added all the words I absorbed by listening to the teachers talking to us and scolding us day in and day out. Like chunks of cheese set out on a board to dry on the roof of a yurt, their words and phrases are set out inside me one after the other, just as they came to me.

  “Well done. I can see you’re a bright boy. How are your grades?”

  “One Three, two Fours, and the rest, Fives.”

  “Not bad at all. And what do you want to become in life?”

  “A teacher or a darga.”

  The last bit slipped out. We are taught that all students should aspire to become teachers.

  I don’t understand at first what follows. The darga must have noticed something because he asks, now in Tuvan, “I understand you’ve wanted to become a shaman?”

  I realize quickly that this is important. I wait a moment and then say decisively, “No, I want to become a teacher.”

  But the darga presses on: “Have you wanted to become a shaman or not?”

  Furtively I glance at Brother. His lips are pursed, and his nose is even more crooked tha
n usual. Its tip is a ghastly white.

  “I may have said that at one time. But then I was just a country boy. Now I’m civilized. I’ve become a student and want to become a teacher.”

  The darga nods, but he still seems unsatisfied. “I’m warning you, you little shit! If you ever again blather on about shamans, I will single-handedly have you arrested. I am warning you. I’ll throw you into prison, and I’ll have you executed. You got that?”

  As he concludes his right hand reaches for his bag, and in this fraction of a second I remember that people say this man used to work for the Secret Police. If indeed he did, it means that he once carried a pistol right where his bag rests today. The thought scares me to death. I moan and whimper, “Dear Uncle, I don’t want to go to prison and get executed. I want to study in school; I want to study very hard for the Party and the Motherland!”

  He has reached his goal. Almost instantly he leaves me alone. He finishes with a broad smile on his sallow face with its sunken cheeks and bloated nose: “I’d like to believe you. But I have to warn you, little Comrade, the Party has eyes and ears everywhere.”

  With these words I am dismissed, and the assembly is finally over.

  Later that day something happens that fills me with wild joy. Brother Galkaan and Sister Torlaa leave the dormitory and move in with us. The four of us living together makes me think of the four directions and of the four legs of the steed Argymak in the old epics. I feel light and elated, as if I had the wings of the fabled horse. Something warm starts to sparkle in my throat and my heart. It must be the chants whose words can’t wait to burst from my chest as song or prayer to reach the sky and the earth and comfort man and beast. But I now know I must not chant again.

  In the evening, as we sit around the glowing stove, overcome by the yurt’s cozy warmth and the lingering smell of food, I learn why I must follow this rule and all the others from now on. As a result of Arganak’s report, the District Administration investigated Brother Dshokonaj and found him guilty on several counts. The uniform I was to wear as Student Number One Hundred was found to be an attempt to misuse State property for personal gain. Besides, making his two siblings reside at the dormitory even though the opportunity existed for them to stay in their brother’s yurt showed him fraudulently taking advantage for his kin. And the business with me wanting to become a shaman only incriminated him further. After all, how can a man unable to keep his family from religion possibly be entrusted with leading a school?

  The previous evening the District Administration had as good as decided to replace Brother with a Party member. But during the night something must have given them pause. For in the end Comrade Principal—as he was informed at the assembly—was not dismissed, but rather severely censured and warned to fundamentally change both the workings of the school and his own attitude toward State property. If he didn’t heed this warning, he would be dismissed.

  Brother Dshokonaj seems wide awake tonight. Leaning over a board, he draws endless lines in a thick exercise book. Plans, he explains. A job worth doing must be planned. From now on all work will be done properly. This applies not just to him but to all four of us. We are each a strand and together must become a strong cord, and the school with its one hundred cords must form a rope.

  “Mother’s mala has one hundred and eight beads,” I say.

  “Don’t ever mention the mala here again,” Brother Galkaan warns me. He will no longer answer to his own name and is busy cutting rolled-out dough into wide noodles. Discouraged, I swallow the rebuke. Shortly afterward I speak up again: “Everyone has one hundred and eight bones.”

  “Where on earth did you get that from?” asks Sister. She is bent over one of my boots, repairing its wornthrough sole.

  From shamanistic chants, I think, but judge it wiser to keep that information to myself.

  “I just know,” I say.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? You must have heard it somewhere,” she insists, piercing the raw yak skin with her awl. I have to come up with an answer. Brother Galkaan is faster: “Have you counted the bones in a corpse? If you have, you’ve got it wrong. Some ribs or back bones would be missing, or bits of the hand or the ankle joint. Birds and other animals always carry off some unchewed pieces.”

  “Stop it!” Sister Torlaa interrupts. “Your gruesome stories are scary.” Later, when he drops the noodles into the simmering broth, I whisper in his ear: “What else?”

  He has to think before whispering, “Vultures eat the bones,” he whispers.

  During the meal Brother Dshokonaj says, “I’ve been given six months. That should be enough time to change the school from top to bottom. But I need help, especially from the three of you. At home we are family, but at school we are superior and subordinates, principal and students. As your big brother and principal, I am now giving you my first important order: You must each get good grades. Now tell me if you will succeed!”

  Sister is sure of herself: “Of course. No question.”

  Brother Galkaan turns shy: “I’ll do my best.”

  I don’t know, and so I say I don’t know. But Brother Dshokonaj knows. I will succeed.

  “Starting tomorrow, you will bring home to this yurt one grade, and one grade only,” Brother-Principal says “From here on out it is nothing but Fives.”

  “Three top students under one roof!” Sister says longingly. “Quite a few of the Arganaks will burst with envy.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Little Sister,” Big Brother says, sounding conciliatory. “Do you know what the darga told me today? It was because of Arganak that Danish’s appointment as principal fell through. Arganak accused Danish of even worse offenses than mine, and lined up even more witnesses. The District Administration rewarded Arganak for being so loyal and vigilant for the Party and the Country by getting him elected as one of five members of the Bureau of the District Party Cell. Now it’ll be even harder to work and live with him, let alone go against him. On the other hand, I should ask myself—and you too, Dsandan—do I actually have to go against him? Wouldn’t it be easier to go along with him or, easier still, simply let him go ahead?”

  Sister pauses, turns half around, and appears to stare intently and with bated breath at her own shadow. Cast black and wide across the doorstep, her shadow suddenly jumps, becomes angular, and climbs up the right door jamb. She relaxes, looks straight at Brother’s face, and says with determination, “You’re right. Let the devil go ahead. He takes such pride in being a have-not, and after all, he has nothing but his Party membership book and the fox-face of a born snooper. Running ahead he’ll quickly wear himself out. But watch out. Make sure you don’t get hit when he flies to pieces.”

  “But Dsandan!” Brother begins, waving his right hand as if to fend off something. Sister is faster: “You always agreed when Father called me grandmotherly. Don’t turn around now and remind me I am still a child.”

  Our big brother tolerates her reprimand silently and sinks into deep thought. Meanwhile the younger of my two brothers is enjoying his food. He slurps and chews noisily. Sister, in turn, enjoys having been right once again. And I pretend that I neither heard nor noticed a thing, enjoying my food, the quiet warmth in the yurt, and my special rights as the youngest.

  In reality, however, I am a long way from enjoying myself. I am wide awake, pursuing a train of thought. Torlaa called Arganak a devil and she may well be right, but if so, what does that make her? A she-devil? The more I pursue these thoughts, the more restless and frightened I become. Yet I have to play the part of the dumbest, most carefree one—the youngest child, in short. So I say, “Brother Dshokonaj, may I sleep next to you again tonight?”

  Brother emerges from his thoughts and quickly says, “You’re always welcome. But maybe Dsandan and Gagaa would like to have you close for a change?”

  “You sleep in one bed with your big brother?” Sister sounds astonished. She looks meaningfully at Brother Galkaan. When I nod proudly, she turns to Brother Dshokonaj: “It’s t
ime you stopped pampering the boy or he’ll never turn out well. After all, who is to blame for the whole disaster? He’s eight years old, and he still thinks he’s the baby and can do whatever he likes.”

  Brother Dshokonaj gently demurs: “You may be right, Little Sister. But please don’t forget that even lambs and calves need some extra kindness when they get separated from their mothers and herds.”

  His words are music to my ears. The bridge of my nose starts to hurt, and the rims of my eyes turn hot. Succumbing to tears, I am flooded with bliss and vow to myself to improve. I will do better, if only for the sake of this man I misunderstood for so long. Not until last night’s storm did I recognize him for who he truly is: my brother and my protector. In the course of his life he has already grown from a pebble into a mountain.

  WRONG QUESTION

  “The mother . . . leads . . . the child by her hand.”

  “Good. Sit down. Any other examples? Who else leads?”

  This is pointless. No matter how often I raise my hand or how well behaved I am, the teacher simply will not call on me. I badly need the grade. I have not earned a single one today, but yesterday and the day before, I scored three of them. Once last week I managed to walk away with four in a single day. Every single one of my grades is now a Five.

  The teacher cannot make up his mind. His eyes scan the class from side to side. The gaze from his bulging eyes, bright and burning, passes over the students’ hands, held up in the precisely correct way next to their heads: elbows propped on desktops, fingers close together, stretched flat, like fixed bayonets. His gaze lingers and burns threateningly when it comes to the gap where the one hand has failed to rise from horizontal to vertical.

  “Sürgündü!” he finally hisses.

  Naturally. She gets called on about three times in every class, and each time she comes up with something stupid. The teacher says so himself. So why does he keep tormenting her? Sürgündü jumps up, groans, and stutters, “The mother . . . the mother . . .”