The Gray Earth. Galsan Tschinag

images change as quickly as in a dream. I see yurts pushed into a clump like chased lambs. These yurts are so dark that if they were real lambs, they would belong to the Kazakhs. Black with soot, they are stooped from having been put up long ago. Other snow-white yurts glow and form a straight line. A hill separates the dark from the white flock of yurts. Four lines of smooth rocks gathered from the steppe form a square around each flock.

      At one corner of each square, four posts lean toward each other to form the corners of an equally square if cockeyed shed. Standing out bright against the dark steppe, the sheds’ bottom halves are patched together with plywood and cardboard, while a strip of sacking is stretched around the sheds’ upper parts. A tousled head peeks out above the upper edge of one of the sheds, and soon Rabid Buura, also called Blue Tooth, comes limping around the corner, his lawashak of bright-yellow silk flung wide open, his hands on the string holding up his pants.

      Here and there I see a few dogs, but none barks at us. Sniffing the rocky ground, they slink around busily but soundlessly. The few people I see look sluggish and drowsy. They stand or crouch in front of the yurts, yawning and stretching. Occasionally someone walks to another yurt.

      At the far edge of the bare rock-strewn steppe stands a lone horse. Apparently tethered, it must have grown tired of searching for occasional blades of grass and fallen asleep. Its head, mane, and tail hang lifelessly. I can see no herds, and no other living beings, in this endless graybrown barrenness.

      But here, now, begins the district center of which I have heard so much. I see houses. A house is bigger than the biggest yurt and more beautiful, I suppose, since it is square and has an equally square shining eye between the two corners of each wall. The eyes reflect us and the horse.

      I am in awe of the people who have created all this and who dismantle and put it all up again with each move. These dargas must have countless strong camels to carry off even one house. And there are so many houses!

      Here even the fence is powerful and altogether different from our fence of interwoven willow and birch branches that staggers like a drunk in a bumpy circle around our haystack. Here, young larch trees stand dead straight in a row, tightly nailed together and mowed level at the top.

      Our horse stops at one of the fence corners. “We’ve arrived,” says Brother.

      “Is that true? Is this the school? It’s huge!” I prattle on as I get off the horse.

      Brother maintains the silent composure he assumed as we approached the settlement. I notice a man walking toward us. Brother has descended and waits with the lead in his hand instead of tying it to the fence as I would. The man hurries so much he almost breaks into a run. When he reaches us, he takes the lead from Brother. I hear him pant and talk, but cannot understand anything besides “Comrade Principal.” He speaks in a foreign language, probably Mongolian.

      Brother first asks a lot of questions. Then he continues without interruption, loud and fast and for a very long time. His head tilted, the man twists and kneads the lead, listening carefully before he turns to me. When he realizes I do not understand, he asks me in Tuvan whose child I am.

      I am so intimidated I lower my eyes and scratch my neck. Then I reply: “I am Ish-Maani’s son.” I use Father’s nickname because I dare not say his real name.

      “I understand!” the man replies quickly, stroking a tuft of hair that pokes out where my head scarf has slipped. His voice is quiet and reverent. Brother grabs my hand and says something I can only guess at. Most likely: “Shall we go?”

      With a burning throat, my hand limp and powerless in his, I hobble along beside Brother. As we walk through a gate, I realize that the world I have known is about to end once and for all. The gate is so tall even a fully loaded camel could pass. A moment later I enter the school yard and with it an entirely new world. This is the square world that I have only had inklings of. And from here on out, I will encounter it in ever more polished versions.

      Seen from inside, the fence seems even taller and very steep. It pierces the sky that silently looks down on this impudent world, pausing over all that has come about or is still to come. Three houses, covered with clay and whitewashed, aim for each other in a triangle, while a small fourth one, made of wooden boards and lacking a roof, is shoved into the southwestern corner. Although there is not a soul to be seen, the sight of the little house reminds me of Rabid Buura with his wide-open coattails and his hands on his string belt. Now I, too, feel the urge. But I know that for now I must try to ignore it, and probably other urges as well.

      So I hobble on, towed by the hand that clasps my fingers ever more tightly. We hasten toward the northwestern house, where I climb my first stairs to the doorstep, a larch beam thick as a thigh that countless feet have worn thin in the middle and hollowed in places. A cave opens up in front of me, square and surrounded by steep walls, and before I can make sense of the echo of our steps across the creaking floorboards or the tinny female voice ringing from the end of the hallway, I feel as if I hear the beats of my heart no longer coming from my chest, but from one of the walls.

      “Take off your scarf and don’t shuffle so loudly,” Brother urgently whispers into my ear. “Class is in session.” His words make me unsure of myself and nervous I might slip and stumble on the shiny creaking boards, and so I no longer dare to bend my knees.

      By then we have reached the end of the hallway. There are light-colored doors on both sides. The woman’s voice now sounds even shriller and more threatening. When Brother drums with the back of his bent index finger against the upper half of one of the doors, the loud bangs startle me. Footsteps ring out and the door opens.

      I see a man who looks frighteningly like Brother. Behind him, children’s heads sit frozen in straight rows. They all look in the same direction and are set in the same position. Instinctively I pull back. Were it not for the hand that holds mine, I would take off and run at the sight. But instead the hand jerks me into the room, and the flock of children jumps up and stands with trembling nostrils and shining eyes, swaying lightly like a forest. Brother yells a longish word, and the children answer in a booming chorus with a shorter, more impressive word. Standing in front of them, Brother looks as grand as a fully grown larch tree in front of saplings. He casts a quick scrutinizing glance at the children and shouts something else. In response, the human forest noisily crashes down as if mowed by a storm.

      Brother talks with the man. Even though I don’t understand what they say, I know it affects me. Indeed, a moment later a name is called out and a girl leaps to her feet, walks to the front of the room, and grabs my hand. She leads me to the back row, pushes me into an empty seat, and says something. I quickly sit down and, because the girl walks back to her seat, conclude that I didn’t do anything wrong.

      Later I will learn that the girl, Ishgej, the oldest student in the class, has just assigned me a seat and that I do not have the right to exchange it for any other seat unless I have her and the teacher’s permission. Brother leaves the room, and the lesson continues.

      The man drags a white stone over a square black board. The stone leaves behind white tracks, which the students copy into their exercise books. They are funnylooking tracks, not at all like the animal tracks I know, of fleeing rabbits or playing squirrels. I would like to join in and draw tracks myself, as well I could if I had an exercise book and a pencil. Already my right index finger is copying on my desktop the white stone’s movements on the black board.

      It must be envy and admiration I sense under my skin like a warming, though it feels more like caustic fire when I squint at my neighbor laboring over his exercise book. He has fat lips in a moon-shaped face. The pencil in his round, brownish-black fist struggles to scratch back and forth on the white paper and leaves behind shaky black tracks. Will I ever succeed at this?

      The man at the front stops drawing, grabs a willow branch from atop the board, steps aside, and watches the students copy his tracks. I furtively study him and wonder how I possibly could have thought he resembled Brother. The man has a stocky roundish figure with a fleshy head, while Brother is long and slight. The man’s bulging eyes are suspicious and spread a greenish tinge across his face. But it was his hair, shaggy like a yak bull’s, along with his clothes—the