The Gray Earth. Galsan Tschinag

staff. I am left behind with him and have no idea how this or future nights will unfold.

      Later he says, “If you want to get ahead in life, you must first promise to learn.”

      Then he asks if I understand.

      I nod.

      “How can I know if you really understand?” he says.

      I think about it for a while. Then I say, “I promise that starting tomorrow I’ll do everything I’m asked to do.”

      THE ONSET OF WINTER

      Already at the beginning of the last month of autumn we get snow that stays. It starts snowing while the sun is still up and continues late into the night. The next morning the Altai lies transformed, a brilliant flaming white. Only the caves and crags and the river stand out black against the sea of white. The air is still and the sun shines mild and timid. Around noon the surface of the snow begins to melt, and soon the Altai is barely visible beneath a layer of fog.

      But the sun is not warm enough to break through the snow cover; the day is too short, and soon the sun abandons the earth to the night. Everything cools off and freezes. The snow forms a crust of ice over the mountain and steppe. Any wind would be too late now. It would only further seal the cover of snow.

      Rumors, mostly bad, abound. The snow is said to have had a bluish tinge first and a greenish one later. I saw neither a bluish nor a greenish gleam, but later I remember that there were grains of sand in the snow I scraped off the roof of our yurt.