The Gray Earth. Galsan Tschinag

This means Comrade Principal is the leader for all four teachers, one hundred students, one man cook and one woman cook, and finally for Arganak, janitor. Thus Brother Dshokonaj is the leader for all in our state school.

      Soon I would be overflowing with the knowledge that had been poured into me, but this cold morning it had not yet come to that. At this point I was still an empty vessel, a dumb creature. I stood at the threshold, marking the end of my world and looking ahead helplessly to what was coming.

      Sister stands in front of me, staring directly at me as if I were a dog about to attack her. She yells something that pounds on my eardrums and makes me pull a face. I understand nothing and feel even more intimidated. And I wonder: Why is Sister Torlaa showing up only now, when I haven’t seen her since the summer? Why, instead of holding my head in her hands and sniffing my cheeks and whispering “Bitsheldej! Dear little one!” in her gentle voice, why does she have to yell at me in a foreign language? And where is Brother Galkaan? Where have the two been hiding since yesterday, while I have been looking and listening for them all that time? I am crushed.

      Quickly I turn to run away. But a burning sensation awakes in my hips and, like a fire caused by lightning, races in opposite directions through my flesh and sinews. Nevertheless, I hobble away, dragging behind me my poor leg, which is numb with the sharp pain of my wound. I scream with pain and fury. I am enraged because, hobbling toward the gate in the sky-high fence, I already know people will catch me and lug me back like a mangy lamb. Covered with tears and snot, I will be made to stand again where I stood before.

      This is exactly what happens. I get caught before I even reach the gate. Nothing helps, though I fight with what little I have. They already took my dagger and its sheath. The bone pipe, which would have come in handy as a weapon, was left behind in one of my boots. The ground beneath my feet is no longer like the steppe it once was: there isn’t a single rock I could pick up. The only weapons I can draw on are my voice and my tears. I use them as best I can. I call upon Father and Mother, upon the Blue Sky and the Gray Earth, and I call upon my spirits: the Reddish-Brown Eagle with the Whistling Feathers, and the Stone-Gray Polecat with the Flaming Carnassials. May they come to free me from the fangs of the violent! And if that is impossible, may they come and sever the red thread of my life, freeing me from this wrong, from this neither-life-nor-death.

      But no one comes, and nothing helps!

      Dressed to kill, I am sweating. As if to mock me, my snappy clothes are so tight I can barely breathe, let alone drop to the ground. I want to roll in the dust of the steppe like an asa rolling in the ashes before shifting shape. But here the steppe is swept bare and trampled colorless, and two tall boys grab my arms and carry me off like a sacrificial lamb. Squished between the boys, both as unyielding as larch posts, I am drowning in snot and tears. Although I have given up hope, I can’t stop fighting and screaming, stabbed and spurred on by the human herd that seems to relish my pain and shame, like a stick teasing an animal before hunting it to death.

      Sister Torlaa has beaten a retreat and blended into the sea of people behind her. Brother Galkaan is glued to the spot, but he looks pale, bleak, and bewildered. I can just make out a twitch in his cheek muscles. Like a flayed animal, I think of vengeance and can almost taste the bittersweet satisfaction.

      Suddenly Comrade Principal shouts something over the tops of the heads. Row after row, the human snake backs away. Coarse, with shades of gray like yak-hair rope—it winds its way back until it slithers into the dark jaws of the school building.

      Ropes of animal hair, if they are left in still water for seven-times-ten days, become snakes. The thought makes me shake with nausea. When the end of the snake’s tail has disappeared and the door has been shut behind it, Comrade Principal springs back to life. He turns in the opposite direction. Just before the fence he veers sharply to the left and heads straight toward the house I was in earlier that morning, where my old clothes lie in a corner, rolled into my lawashak. The two boys follow him in lockstep. They continue to hold me as tightly as before, even though I no longer fight or scream but cry with abandon.

      Comrade Arganak’s fox face shows no trace of surprise when he sees us coming or, for that matter, when he sees me in such a state. He must have heard me shout and scream, and he probably watched from his window. Comrade Principal hastily starts to bellow, and then quickly disappears. One word sticks in my ear: shorung, prison. Comrade Arganak and the two boys, who let everything wash over their bowed heads, stay behind with me. The boys finally let go of me but continue to stand at attention, while Comrade Arganak nods toward the little pile that sits in the corner as I left it. His nod and subsequent short hiss reveal contempt and a touch of malicious pleasure. But this is another insight I will gain only later.

      I stand there motionless, thinking about my situation. The man hisses in Tuvan, “Stop standing there like a dummy. Are you expecting others to undress and dress you because the principal is your brother?”

      I start to undress, but his scolding continues: “A worthless dog’s stomach can’t even digest yellow butter, people say.” Why yellow butter, I wonder, while I struggle to free my foot from the narrow boot. Yellow butter is melted butter and therefore has more fat, I conclude, and turn to the other foot.

      I am not the least bit sorry to give up my new clothes. To the contrary, I am relieved. In my old familiar clothes I’ll be able to move again with ease. But I wonder whether to keep the white long underpants. The fox eyes pursue me, and I get caught as I try to throw my lawashak over the underpants.

      “Pants off!” he hisses. And then comes an even more threatening, murderous hiss. For one leg of my underpants is stained with blood.

      “Look at it: beautiful, brand-new underpants and he’s already made a mess of them.”

      The underpants are pushed under the boys’ noses. Both boys start back with anxious disgusted expressions. “This is a matter of state property. I am accountable to the People and the State. And I couldn’t care less who happens to be your brother. I shall report your case and make sure the State gets compensated.”

      With these words Comrade Arganak throws the underpants in my face. I wait a bit before I pick them up off the floor. A little later, assuming I have wrecked them so badly I will have to replace them anyway, I try to put them back on. But they are so brusquely ripped from my hands that I expect a thrashing as well.

      So I button up my lawashak and reach for my belt.

      “Aren’t you going to wear underpants?” the man asks, a bit more gently this time.

      “I don’t have any,” I say quietly.

      “You have no underpants!” the man hisses, craning his thin neck. His skin is wrinkled and flabby. He further screws up his already narrowly slanted eyes. They have a yellowish-green gleam. He tiptoes toward me.

      I remain silent and look at the floor, embarrassed in front of the boys. I hate this man so much that if I had a cup of steaming-hot tea in my hand, I would fling it right in his face.

      The man turns to the boys: “This is the son of Shynykbaj and the grandson of Khylbangbaj, and he is not wearing underpants. Do you know what that shows? It shows miserliness. And it is precisely miserliness that makes a baja and distinguishes him from other people.”

      Turning toward the slighter of the two, he continues: “You’re Tenekesh’s son, aren’t you? I thought so. You have ears like a summer hamster and a bony nose with sunken nostrils like a thirsty goat. That tells me whose child you are. Your grandfather Güsgeldej was one of Khylbangbaj’s many laborers. Ask your father if I’m right. He will tell you. And tell your father that today a grandson of the famous baj has shown up with a bare ass, and that Arganak, the grandson of the have-not Sidikej and the son of the have-not Dojtuk, has given him a pair of underpants.”

      With these words he turns to me and dangles the underpants in front of my nose as if teasing a dog with a bone. His left thumb and index finger seize such a tiny corner that it looks as if he’s about to let go.

      I stand there motionless.

      But when I feel one of the underpants’ legs