The Gray Earth Read online

  “We’ve already covered the mother,” snaps the teacher.

  “The father . . . the father . . . leads . . .”

  No matter how much she stutters and pulls at her nose or her chin, nothing but stupidity comes out. The teacher sneers.

  Someone has to help out: “ . . . the horse by its lead.”

  “To lead is the root of the leader,” explains the teacher. “Comrade Lenin is the leader of all progressive mankind.” He writes the sentence on the blackboard and makes the class repeat it aloud several times. The name is hard. The students tend to pronounce it either Lelin or Nenin. I fail two or three times before I divide the word into halves: Le-neen. For many of the students, his name remains unpronounceable. But none of them could have guessed at the time that their difficulty in pronouncing Comrade Lenin’s name was but a foreshadowing of the insuperable obstacles his name would cause for years to come.

  So who is this Lenin? The teacher tells us a lot about him. Lenin hated the rich and loved the poor. That is why the Russian emperor, who is called the Czar, first threw him into prison and then sent him into exile. But Comrade Lenin was strong and triumphed over the Czar. He smashed up the Czar’s evil empire and in its place created a kind empire in which all people now lead happy and contented lives.

  I have heard many similar stories of heroes. But in those, the noble young hero is a warrior and not a comrade. And he ends up as a king, not a leader.

  During the break, we enter the staff room in groups of five, in order to look at Lenin’s portrait. I am surprised and even shocked at the sight of the foreign-looking warrior. Unlike our warriors, who slay the huge eighty-five-headed black monster, the person who triumphed over the Czar and broke up a whole empire is just a bald old man.

  It is true, though, that he has a warm and dreamy expression. And really, he must have been something. The five of us are crowding around like the five fingers of a hand, gawking at Lenin’s picture, when Brother Dshokonaj joins us and stares rapturously at the leader. “Any time you feel like drawing strength from the luminous presence of the great leader,” he says, “you may come in here. He loved children more than anything and always had a simple message for them: Go ahead and learn!”

  After the break the teacher gives us more names to use in sentences.

  “Stalin!”

  “Stalin, too, is a leader.”

  “The sentence isn’t exactly wrong. But it’s not a good one. Comrade Stalin is not a mere leader. He is the Great Leader.”

  “Teacher! Who is greater, Lenin or Stalin?”

  “Lenin, of course.”

  “Stalin is the lesser leader?”

  “You can’t put it that way. Stalin was Lenin’s student. That’s how we put it.”

  “Was Lenin a teacher? Like you?”

  “Not like me, no. But he made knowledge available to ordinary people and showed them the path to happiness. That’s why we call him our teacher. And that’s how he was Stalin’s teacher. Comrade Stalin continued his teacher’s work, and today he is the leader and teacher of all peoples.”

  “Who is ‘all peoples,’ please?”

  “The Mongolians are one people, the Russians another, and the Chinese still another. That alone makes three different peoples.”

  “Are there many other peoples beyond those three?”

  “Oh yes. Many, many more.”

  “Don’t these other peoples have their own leaders?”

  “They probably do. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, if Stalin is the leader of all peoples ...?”

  “Of course Stalin is the leader of all peoples.”

  “Are the Kazakhs and the Tuvans peoples, too?”

  “No. They are minorities.”

  “Do minorities have leaders?”

  “No, they don’t. Let’s move on to the next name: Mao Zedong.”

  No one knows how to make up a sentence with this name. The teacher comes to the rescue: “Comrade Mao Zedong is the leader of the Chinese people.”

  How about that? Even the Chinese have a leader—and we don’t!

  The teacher is moving on: “Choibalsan.”

  “Is he the Marshal?”

  “Of course. Who else could it be?”

  “Teacher! Why does that man have two names when all the others have just one?”

  “Don’t ever call him ‘that man,’ all right? He is our Sunlike Leader. By the way, ‘Marshal’ is not a name but a title. He is our commander-in-chief. The other leaders, Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin, have additional names, too. We’ll get to them later. Let’s stick with Choibalsan for now.”

  “You said he is our Sunlike Leader. Who does ‘our’ refer to?”

  “‘Our’ refers to the Mongolian people. Kazakh or Tuvan doesn’t matter—we all belong to the Mongolian people. That’s why today we’ll learn this complete name and title: Marshal Khorloogiin Choibalsan.”

  A murmur goes through the class. His name is getting longer! Khorloogiin reminds me of Torlaa.

  “What’s Khor . . . loo . . . giin? Is it his patronymic?”

  “His mother’s name was Khorloo.”

  “What was his father’s name?”

  The teacher pretends not to have heard the question. Together the class keeps shouting the difficult name until we are able to pronounce it correctly.

  No one has ever heard the next name: Rym. Again the teacher has to explain. Rym is the leader of our province, and a Kazakh. The following name is Dugurshap. Many of us know him because he is the leader of our district and also a Tuvan—more precisely, an Ak Sayan. In his case it is easy to come up with the correct sentence. But then someone asks a question that has been on the tip of my tongue as well.

  “Teacher! You said the Kazakhs and Tuvans have no leaders. But these two are a Kazakh and a Tuvan, and they are leaders.”

  “Well, that’s not quite right. They are not the leaders of the Kazakhs or the Tuvans; they are the leaders of the province and the district.”

  I have often heard that acquiring knowledge is hard. It must be. I am getting very confused.

  “All right. Who is the leader of our school?”

  Everyone knows that the answer is Comrade Principal. I have to admit I feel flattered. I am the youngest brother of a leader.

  “Who is the leader of our class?”

  The leader of our class is not the teacher but the student Baatar, whom everybody calls Semisek, or Fatty.

  “Right,” the teacher says. “And which girl is leader of the class?”

  “Ishgej.”

  “Right. Put it this way: Comrade Ishgej is the girl leader of the first grade of the State School of Tsengel Khayrkhan District.”

  Another murmur goes through the class. Ishgej, the girl leader we whisper about with envy and admiration, shyly lowers her head and her round black eyes. Her embarrassment is charming and her round cheeks are glowing. I suddenly feel the desire to reach out and stroke her.

  Then the teacher reveals something both amusing and shocking: Comrade Choibalsan, who needs no father, is father to all of us—and so also, by the way, is Comrade Stalin. In need of clarity, I raise my hand and ask: “Is Comrade Choibalsan my father’s father, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “That would make him my grandfather, wouldn’t it?”

  “No, he is your father.”

  “I don’t understand. And another thing: no foal or calf has more than one father. I would’ve thought it’s the same with human beings.”

  “It is the same.”

  “But based on what you’ve said, we all have three fathers.”

  Another murmur goes through the room. The class is getting restless. At first the teacher is embarrassed and then suddenly he is angry.

  “You’ve been a bad egg from the start. Now I can tell you’ll always be one.”

  “You said we should ask if there’s something we don’t understand.”

  “But your questions are wrong!”

  How can they be?
I wonder. I begin to worry and decide to say nothing.

  The teacher is still upset.

  “Wrong questions don’t get answered, understand?”

  Now I understand how it works: never ask a question the teacher can’t answer. Before I could say anything, Gök jumps in.

  “Teacher, how can we tell if a question is right or wrong?”

  Oh dear, that was dumb. Too late now. Gök can be stubborn. Once he gets his teeth into something, it is hard to pull him off. Because he is left-handed, he had to sit in class with his left sleeve tied in a knot at the beginning of the year. During that time he started to wet his bed, and since then he has learned to write with his right hand. He still prefers to use his left hand for everything else, and he still wets his bed.

  The teacher explodes, screaming, “Learn to raise your hand and stand up before becoming such a big mouth, Son of Hunashak.”

  Gök stands up slowly. I can make out a tiny suppressed grin in his narrow face.

  “Teacher! You’ve just said ‘Son of Hunashak.’ But shouldn’t you have said ‘Son of Stalin’ or ‘Son of Choibalsan’ instead?”

  “Shut up,” the teacher screeches. “Just shut your face.” He shakes his fists, struggling to contain his rage, fearing what will come out of his mouth. At last he is able to croak that this is another wrong question.

  Slowly regaining his composure, he whispers ominously, just loud enough for us to hear, “Wrong questions don’t get answered. Wrong questions get reported.”

  That’s it! I think, suddenly alert. I know this word, and so does everyone else. You don’t have to go to school to learn it. It is one of those words that surrounds us from the moment we enter life—like gales, cold, or lightning. By now everyone knows to be on guard. But here is Gök, this left-handed son of a bitch, scrawny, bed wetting, foolishly brave, and even now he can’t stop rattling away!

  “Could it be, Teacher,” Gök continues, seemingly calm, “that only fatherless people choose a stranger as their adoptive father, or at least as some sort of substitute father?”

  As a result of this question, the whole class is paralyzed with fright, especially because only the day before Big Lip Uushum told everybody that the teacher had no father and that his father-in-law was related to Gök’s mother. The insolent implication of this cheeky relative’s question takes the teacher’s breath away. His eyes rolling, he makes several attempts to say something, but while his mouth stays open and keeps twitching, no words come out. When he finally gets his voice back, the whole class hears the punishments: Gök is to be stripped and dragged through all the classrooms, I am to stand in front of the blackboard and hold the teacher’s stool above my head, and the rest of the class is to stand with their arms raised.

  Though he has been looking shorter and stouter by the day, the teacher is very strong. He quickly breaks the spirit of the tough, skinny little Gök by boxing him on the ears and punching him with his fists. Soon Gök is crying. Gök undresses down to his long underwear. Then the teacher slams him against the door, which flies open with a bang, and follows Gök into the hallway.

  The rest of us, having started serving our sentences without the slightest resistance, are left behind.

  With the door wide open, we can hear everything that happens in the hallway: the floorboards creak, a door opens and shuts, the teachers talk, the door opens again ...

  Anxious and obedient, we continue to serve our sentence. The crude larch-wood stool is heavy. I strain against its weight with all my strength, but soon my shoulder joints hurt, the skin on my underarms burns, and the tips of my fingers go numb. Bit by bit the stool sinks, until the seat bears down on my head and two legs hang in front of my face. For a short while I feel some relief, but then my neck starts feeling stiff. While I am fighting the stool’s weight, I see in front of me that the arms of the students no longer reach straight up. They are bent, sagging at the elbows. My classmates’ faces show enormous strain. But we carry on without complaint, and the room remains silent.

  Again the door at the end of the hallway opens, and the floorboards creak. Instantly the elbows straighten and the arms shoot back up. I, too, brace myself anew against the weight. The stool goes up but does not stay where it should. Instead, it swings sideways, pulling me with it. I stagger and slam into the blackboard. The fright brings me to my knees, and I fall on my bottom before getting pulled farther sideways by the stool. Oddly enough, I hang on to the heavy stool through all this. Then, with a loud bang, it crashes against the edge of the square tin stove.

  As I tilt to one side on the floor, I notice that the students’ feet in front of me, next to the teacher’s pointy black boots, are naked and frozen blue. My eyes instantly fill with tears, but before I get up I clench my jaw so that only a whimper escapes. Now I see what has happened to Gök. He is shaking like a leaf, crying silently, and tears streak his face and neck, then run right down his front to the underwear he is holding up with both hands. On his shoulders and back the skin has turned a dull blue color, spotted by dark-red patches shaped like hands with spread fingers.

  I feel paralyzed, but I try to gain control over the tears gushing from my eyes. Should I grab the stool, which I left lying next to the stove, and thrust it back over my head? Should I wait and rest until I am forced to continue? Because the teacher is rushing around the classroom whacking bent arms straight with his pointer, I decide once more to tackle the stool’s weight. But my arms are numb and no longer obey me. What if he turns around and beats me with his pointer? I am as scared as a hare with an injured spine, crouching and staring at the approaching hunter, my eyes big and helpless.

  Something unexpected happens next. The teacher tells me to go to my seat and join the others. Relieved, surprised, and ashamed, I follow his order. It seems unfair that Gök, who basically did nothing but defend me, gets punished so severely while I, the main culprit who started it all by asking a wrong question, am allowed off the hook before he is.

  My guilt lingers. It begins to subside only when I decide to befriend the boy who took my punishment upon himself. Instead of going straight home after school then, I follow Gök. As soon as I get a chance, I get right to the point: “It was my fault.”

  “How’s that?” he asks. His eyes red from crying, he quickly turns away.

  “If I hadn’t asked that stupid question, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened.”

  Gök shakes his head fiercely. He looks as if he wants to be left alone, so I get to the crucial question: “Do you want to be friends?”

  He looks at me again, longer this time. In spite of his swollen eyes, his gaze is bright and clear.

  “I don’t know,” he replies, softly.

  “I do,” I say decisively. “The time will come when you need help, and when it does, you can count on me.”

  Gök says nothing. He looks into the distance, with a look suggesting that my words matter to him. Then we part ways.

  The next morning Gök has run away. When the teacher tells us, his voice is unusually gentle. Later the principal enters our class without knocking. We learn that the search party has returned. Gök never made it home and there is no sign of him. Now the whole school is to go and search for him.

  The four teachers take their classes in the four main directions. The north falls to us. All twenty-seven students of our class surge forward in a floating row, the teacher at the center. We are told to look for tracks and for shapes in the distance, and to report anything unusual.

  The wind is rough and short of breath as it blows across the hills and snow-swept hollows. The snow has hardened into shining blue ice that stretches to the edge of the mountains. Every so often a slender column of snow rises into the air, collapses, and trails off like a flaming bright mane. In spite of the gusting wind, the glass-clear hoarfrost from the previous night sticks to the skin of the steppe. Like interwoven threads of silk, its tiny snow crystals submit to the slightest pressure. We recognize all sorts of tracks, reading the steppe like our textbo
oks, rich as it is with the lives that defy the deadly cold. But there is no sign of Gök. At sunset we return home, chilled to the bone and exhausted, only to find that the other classes have returned as well, and the futile search aborted.

  Later in the evening I stumble upon Gök. He has been waiting for me, and he emerges quietly just as I am fetching onions from the shed. When I see him I utter a cry of surprise. For a moment I believe it his soul wanting to be close to his friend while his frozen body lies undetected in a fold of the Altai. But when I feel his moist warm breath in my face, I realize it is Gök himself, and he needs my help. I quickly pull him into the shed and take his ice-cold hands in mine. They feel lifeless, shrunk to mere skin and bones.

  “The whole school is looking for you,” I whisper.

  “I know,” he whispers back. “I need something to eat.”

  I feel for the bag of aarshy: “Take as much as you want.”

  He takes a generous helping and fills his breast pocket.

  “Where are you? I’ll bring more tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be close. I can’t tell where exactly.”

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “No. I think my feet got frostbite.”

  “Take my felt soles. They are new and warm.”

  I take off my boots, pull out the insoles, and put them into his hands.

  From over in the yurt, Sister Torlaa is yelling, “What on earth are you doing? Are you glued to the onion bag?”

  “Coming!” I shout, then whisper to Gök, “Watch out, or you’ll freeze to death. Keep moving. Don’t stop.” I hear Sister’s scolding faintly. It worries me that the aarshy for my friend, who is already so cold, is hard as a rock and as cold as ice.

  The next morning my own feet get terribly cold, and my soles are numb before I get to school. Once in class, I take off my boots and rub my feet to warm them. The other students say my soles are so white they must be frostbitten. Sürgündü reaches into my boots and says, “Pretty clear why! No insoles!” Then she hands me her quilted mittens. As my feet rest on their softness and warmth, I fall into a solemn, joyous trance, which is deepened by the fact that the class talks only about the vanished Gök. Each student reports what he or she has seen. The general consensus is that the boy cannot possibly be alive still. Yet the search continues. Today it is the district clerks’ turn to go out and help, and when school is out, teachers and students will pick up the search again. I just listen, rub my feet against Sürgündü’s mittens, and watch the teacher. He is even more gentle than the day before.