The Gray Earth. Galsan Tschinag

      Stand? Boss!

      Turn? Äh-regh!

      Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

      Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

      Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

      We are doing drills. Uncle gives me orders, and I crouch, jump, and turn. Later I learn that Uncle’s name is Arganak; he is to be addressed as Comrade Arganak, and crouching, jumping, and turning is called obeying his commands. So I should say Comrade Arganak gives commands that I obey. However, I am still not saying it quite right. I am no longer really myself. I have almost become a student—as soon as I get out of here, I will be one. I should probably put it this way: Comrade Arganak gives commands the student obeys. Maybe I will even have to be addressed as Comrade Student?

      Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

      Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

      Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

      I am sweating. My leg hurts badly, but I keep going because Comrade Arganak will not stop. Why won’t he? Surely he sees I have learned his lesson ages ago. The man is unyielding. His thick smoker’s voice babbles on tirelessly, so I, too, keep going.

      Sshuuh—boss—äh-regh!

      I feel sick. I am hot in these clothes. But apparently I look nice. The uncle, Comrade Arganak, whistled through his teeth when he saw me dressed up. Then he knit his brow.

      Boss—sshuuh ...

      Why does the damned stuff have to be so tight? The skin over my wound is burning so badly I am scared it will burst. If only my brother, Comrade Principal, would come back!

      Boss . . .

      I can no longer stand it. Why won’t he shut up? I am just going through the motions anyway, no longer needing to be told . . .

      The grind started at sunrise, when Comrade Principal dragged me here and delivered me into the hands of this man. He talked to the man for some time and then left. Once I was crouching stark naked, my head shaved, in a huge trough of slimy black planks, Comrade Principal returned. With my bare hand I tried to protect my wound from the boiling-hot water that was poured over my twitching body. Comrade Principal touched me here and scrubbed me there, told the other man I don’t know what, and then left again. The man began to lather and scrub me from head to toe. I jumped and screamed when he scrubbed my wound, but he was unruffled. He pushed me to my knees and continued to manhandle me. The man was just a head with no ears and no eyes! Eventually he dried me off with a rough rag and dressed me in things I had never seen, not even in my dreams. At the time I did not have the slightest idea what they were called or what they were good for. Mainly they were a jacket and a pair of pants, both of Manchester corduroy the color of brown leather, and a pair of pointy black boots with long narrow legs.

      “Stop whining. Enough is enough!” Comrade Arganak wheezed again, and then again in Tuvan. “I hope he knows how nice he looks. And I hope he remembers that not everyone has a principal for a brother.”

      It was almost as if he was thinking aloud. He spoke more quietly now and in no particular direction. The triangular eyes in his wrinkled face gleamed inwardly, their light almost vanished.

      And now all these commands I obey. At long last Comrade Principal returns. I am about to crouch down for the umpteenth time, but I stop myself and remain standing even though I have second thoughts right away. His eyes sparkle and shine, and his hot face glows with joy. In a loud voice he offers to Comrade Arganak what must have been praise because a small trembling beam of light flits across the man’s gaunt, furrowed fox face. I don’t think Comrade Principal noticed. He turns to me and takes my hand, and I feel a heavy burden fall from my shoulders.

      My relief disappears quickly. As we walk away, I feel a leaden weight and a dull pain in my leg. Worse still, as soon as we step outside I am told not to limp nor stare at my new clothes. I find it hard to avoid doing either, but I try.

      Suddenly I am startled: a forest of people, straight rows planted in squares, rises in front of me. I recognize children’s faces, like countless little fires. At the far corner of each square, a few steps apart, stands a teacher. The teachers catch and hold my eye. Increasingly I have trouble keeping up with Brother, who walks even faster as the checkered crowd approaches us with blazing faces. I am aware of how badly I limp, but can no longer pay attention to my miserable leg. Brother’s strong hand pulls me forward like a horse pulling a sleigh. And so the man-horse storms toward the people-forest, breaks through between two teacher-larch trees, strides with undiminished speed past the inner edge of one of the squares, and comes to a stop at the upper end of the overall formation.

      Hanging on to my hand, Brother turns around with a jerk, quickly surveys the faces with their shining eyes and trembling nostrils, and shouts into the morning like four dogs barking all at once. The children’s eyes continue to shine and their nostrils to tremble, yet their bodies remain wooden and their faces stony, until suddenly they twitch and their mouths spring open. Out flies something like a short, roaring ssen, or “you.”

      Again it is Brother, or rather Comrade Principal, who barks in the same pinched voice though a little more quietly now, hurling a torrent at each face. He sounds like a long whip snaking out violently and breaking into hissing snippets. Finally, his hand lets go of mine, and briefly I feel some small relief. But then I get pushed forward. I try not to budge, but fail and end up that much more embarrassed. Now all eyes are on me. My face feels as if the faces across from me were flamethrowers, and my gaze wanders to flee from their intrusive eyes. I wish I could stop myself, but I can’t help noticing that none of the other children are in clothes like mine.

      At last Comrade Principal falls silent. The familiar sounds of life stop as the crowd reverts to an icy silence. But not for long. Steps disturb it, like a flattened club crashing down with long swings, making the morning air and the silently expectant crowd tremble and shake. Now I can see a figure step out of line and approach me. Its gait is strange: the head keeps flinging back toward the neck; the arms take turns flying up and down, and each time one arm flies up, a leg lurches up as well, only to whip down the next moment and pound the bare ground with the boot’s broad sole; at the same time, the upper body plumes and swaggers. The whole body moves with wooden stiffness.

      The figure approaches in a straight line, and then I recognize a tall girl. On her right shoulder I make out the broad strap of the square, light-blue bag swinging by her hip. The closer she comes, the more unpleasant, even scary, are her angular movements. They cause clouds of dust to balloon and merge with the sunshine and air to form a reddish dust devil. When she arrives before us, one of her boots smashes into the other with a dull thud. In this way she positions herself—not in front of Comrade Principal, but in front of me. I was already stiff with fear up to my neck, but now I am frightened nearly to death.

      In between these waves of terror, I can feel the bag I saw dangle next to the girl’s hip now hang off me. Out of nowhere I hear my sister’s voice. It startles me from my trance: Torlaa stands in front of me. But I come to understand what just occurred and what it was all about only much, much later.

      The school had ninety-nine students, Sister told me later. This fact struck different people differently. Some were happy because in their eyes ninety-nine was a sacred number. They were the backward and superstitious people. Or at least that was what other people thought, Sister said. These other people lamented that so little was required in order to bring the number up to one hundred, just a single head, even if it were to contain more water than brain, still ... Whoever held this view was of course progressive and modern.

      Then there was the question of the school uniform. At the beginning of the school year, each school was allocated one complete sample uniform. The sample was modeled on the uniforms worn in the capital, and all schools were asked to duplicate it as closely as possible, by handing out free uniforms to their special students.

      The special students—that is, the top students and orphans—have to get special treatment from the State and the People, always and everywhere. The State is embodied in our school, and the People in us, the students.