The Gray Earth. Galsan Tschinag

faces look alike at first glance.

      The tubby man with his burning-green eyes lifts the stick, points at the white squiggles on the black board, and says something. A few hands fly up. The elbows stay propped on the desks, the lower arms stand up straight, and the hands above look like bright wings in mid-flight.

      The green eyes aim at the back, and there is a shout: “Sarsaj!”

      The boy next to me jumps up and calls out words like san-sam or sar-saj or maybe saj-sar. His eyes follow the tip of the stick wandering sideways along the tracks. Is he identifying or explaining them?

      After a sharp ssuh followed by a jerky signal from the stick, the boy sits down. Ssuh, I whisper, wondering what it means—sit down, perhaps? Whatever its meaning, the word flows through me like ssug, the word I know for water.

      The stick is put aside. Again the green eyes aim at the back row, but this time they focus on me. The man says something. I don’t know what to reply, so I keep quiet. He repeats himself, but he could repeat it a hundred times and because I don’t understand, I keep quiet, wondering what he wants from me. Then a few words slip out of my mouth: “Dshüü didri ssen aan?” What did you say?

      Hearing the agitation in my own high-pitched voice makes me want to cry. The herd bursts into raucous laughter—mockery has won out over fear. But their delight is short-lived: the man with yak-bull hair and horsefly eyes shakes his fists and yells something that sounds like a grown bull plunging his horns between a young challenger’s ribs. The neighing dies in the throats. Everyone twitches and shrinks. The mockers implode and cower frozen in their seats. I, too, am terrified, but because I haven’t yet learned the rules, I don’t shrink back from the man with the yak-bull head and the waving fists. Instead I plead and try to explain that I honestly don’t understand him, calling him höörküüj Aga, dear Brother.

      The man listens. But instead of answering he makes the girl who had taken my hand and led me to my seat stand up. She translates: “The teacher says he asked you for your name.”

      I quickly give my name: Dshurukuwaa, Fur Baby. The girl’s lips hint at a smile, and a tiny bright light flits across her round, bright-red cheeks. The ducking heads and bent backs in front of me quiver. I learn that we must not speak Tuvan at school. The girl translates: “The language itself, like your Tuvan name, is behind the times and cannot be written. For that reason, both must remain outside the fence. We must leave behind everything that is backward. Instead, we must learn the civilized Mongolian language, which will lead us to the bright pinnacles of learning.”

      Finally, I learn not to address anyone as Brother or Sister, for here we are teacher and students.

      At that moment a rumbling starts up as if a horse were farting after eating its fill. I jump with fright, but the others come alive with anticipation. At first deep and hoarse, the sound slowly becomes a high-pitched wail. It lasts a full breath before fading away and dying out.

      The students rise, but wait for the teacher to leave the room before following him row after row as if tethered to a rope. When it is finally my turn and I am about to walk to the door, some have already snuck back in. They nudge me into a corner.

      They want to know everything: Why have I arrived only now, when school began a whole month ago? What year was I born? What do I have in my breast pocket? Since they all talk Tuvan with me, I am relieved: so speaking Tuvan is allowed after all, at least sometimes. “My leg is injured,” I tell them obligingly, and point at the offending dagger I carry in a sheath on my right thigh. The half circle between me and the door lets out oohs and aahs of admiration. I give my year of birth as the Year of the Horse and am told I could have easily waited another year. Most of the students here were born in the Year of the Snake if not the Year of the Dragon.

      To show them what I have on me, I pull my head scarf from my breast pocket. As I do so, my pipe drops on the floor with a thud and gets picked up quickly. This time the circle around me groans with even louder oohs and aahs. Carved from a sheep’s shoulder blade, my pipe has turned yellow and is worn along the edges.

      “Do you also have tobacco?” The boy who wants to know is so tall that I attribute him easily to the Dragon, or perhaps even to the Rabbit or the Tiger.

      “I don’t,” I say. “But I have erwen.”

      “Are you a shaman?” a weedy boy snickers.

      I ignore him and add, “Erwen, mixed with rabbit dung.”

      “Of course. Rabbit dung tastes best, much better than horse manure,” the tall boy agrees. “But erwen, well ...” He purses his lips and pretends to swallow his spit.

      “I’ll tell the teacher,” announces a boy whose big head sits atop a skinny neck and body.

      “Don’t you dare, you tiny pup of the Widow Deshik. Or have you forgotten about this one?” The tall boy raises his fist to brag and threaten the skinny guy.

      Someone else wants to know where precisely I have my injury—apparently in an attempt to throttle the imminent fight. Eager to help, I open my lawashak and show my wound. It is the size of a palm and has a blood-red edge. Another round of oohs and aahs wells up, and in the eyes around me I discover a fear born from admiration. I feel faintly proud.

      At that moment a girl’s voice I had never heard before calls out from the door. The witch must only just have pushed her stupid head through the door, along with her prying eyes and her shameless, merciless, and bungling tongue. When the conversation had turned to the pipe, the students pulled the door shut and made sure it stayed.

      But there it is, her high-pitched, deadly loud voice: “The boy isn’t wearing any pants!”

      Everyone jumps, most of all me. I quickly drop the seam of my lawashak and turn toward the voice. A tall girl with a sallow face and long heavy braids stands at the door and grins. Her head is tilted sideways and her mouth is half open. Later I will learn she is called Sürgündü and was born in the Year of the Tiger. She is a bit slow, and her round tongue cannot pronounce the s. Soon my sharp tongue will repeatedly and mercilessly bring tears to her dark-green, good-natured eyes.

      But it has not yet come to that. We have only just met and are sizing each other up, her fox eyes filled with ignorance and scorn, my calf eyes with shame and despair. In a corner of my heart I am hoping that the group, or at least the boys with whom I have had such a manly, naughty conversation, will stand up for me. With that in mind I turn to the tall boy whose ready fists hold such power to terrify and control. He’ll show the girl once and for all. She’ll never again poke her nose into other people’s pants.

      What happens instead floors me. The tall boy turns his bull’s eyes on me: “First a pipe and a sheathed dagger, and now a bare ass—boy, you are some character!”

      Laughter rings out and swells to a roar, taking my breath away.

      “Weirdo, weirdo, weirdo!”

      “Fur Baby, Fur Baby! Fur Baby goes to war!”

      “What a man! A snotty brat with a bare ass!”

      They pat and paw me all over. I don’t resist. Blindly I stare at a spot somewhere above their heads. Too bad I haven’t gone deaf and numb as well. Or maybe I have. I no longer feel shame rage under my skin and torment me like a bunch of wild fire ants. Instead I feel hurt and disappointment, killing me bit by bit.

      “Don’t you realize you’ll get your pants pulled down and your skin torn off? You have it coming!” Big Head pipes up. “Teasing the principal’s little brother will really get you into trouble.”

      His words hit home and the room falls silent.

      The principal is my brother? I wonder and pause, but I don’t feel relieved. Instead, I am inconsolable. Suddenly I see what has been done to me. I am a stone that has been moved. I cannot possibly return to the place where I was dropped, when I first began to be.

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