The Gray Earth. Galsan Tschinag

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 Brother.

      “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