Mother was always ready for an argument, and she was no less equipped with sayings than Father. So she countered him with another saying: “Dogs hate to see you with a cane in your hand, and people hate to hear you with the truth in your mouth!” Grandma cleared her throat, which was a sign that she too wanted to say something. So everybody waited, and the argument that had just got going came to a halt. Grandma took her time, and what she eventually said was this: “Silk is precious; wear it if you can afford it. But what if you needed a particularly useful cleaning rag and took silk instead?”
You often had to search for the meaning in Grandma’s words. That seemed to be the case now. Father and Mother were silent and reflective. The conversation died down, and the argument disappeared. It had come to an end.
I learned to count the sheep. Some days I did it twice, in the morning when the flock still lay in its hürde, and in the evening when it returned from pasture. Grandma taught me the numbers. She had ten fingers, five on each hand. I had just as many, although mine were quite different from hers. If you added all of our fingers together plus an imaginary one, since we had no more fingers, that’s how many sheep we had. Two were wethers. They were big and fat, and we called them Grandma’s two thumbs. They were thought to be getting on, even though they were born more recently than Brother and Sister, who were still only children. Maybe Aunt Galdarak was right when she said: “You’ll never get this world figured out!”
When an animal was getting on, it had to be slaughtered. Rather than letting it get really old and perish, it would be used to feed the people who had raised and kept it alive all its life.
It was the same for our two wethers. First the older one was slaughtered. It happened in late autumn when a number of animals were slaughtered with an eye toward winter supplies. Grandma said the two of us should be self-sufficient: Why else did we have our own flock? I repeated her words often and to many people. To prove what I was saying, I would point first to the live wether and then to the frozen block of meat made up from small animals, which was clearly the biggest block of its kind: “Th se are the winter supplies for Grandma and me.”
As for the other wether, I will talk about him later. So far, twenty sheep were left. Twelve of them were ewes. All of them would lamb, and all their lambs would thrive. One or two of the ewes might give birth to twins. And one or two of the ewe lambs might already lamb themselves next spring. Such things did happen, sometimes. And so I calculated. My head was full of numbers. They were good, glorious numbers because they were obedient and always ran in the same direction, just as lambs always run toward their mothers. They complemented each other and complemented our flock. For the numbers were lambs, always lambs, stumpy-eared Blackface twin lambs, yearling lambs, second-birth lambs, and even lambs received as gifts. Yes, it was not unlikely that a daaj or a güüj would give me a little lamb as a present, and so might a neighbor or a friend or … oh, all this, all of it, was possible because it did happen often—did it not?—that lambs were given as a gift. Sometimes only tiny little kids were given, but of course I would prefer a lamb. Other times, the gift was a little yak calf or even a foal, but I’d be happy enough with a lamb, a tiny little lamb….
The numbers were elusive, sometimes worse than foals who quickly learned to evade the lasso. But I went after them, stubbornly and tirelessly, until they eventually fell into line like a herd of trained, tamed, and tired animals. I looked into the future, pushed ahead like the planners of the Party, and discovered ever more resources—I noticed in all sorts of places little lambs I might lure into my flock.
You have already heard of Grandma’s gray mare; I imagined her to have offspring, too, even though she was, relatively speaking, as old as Grandma.
I raced ahead of time and was determined to have no less than forty animals in my flock by early summer of the year when my second wether was still alive.
Spring came, and the ewes lambed. But there were no twin lambs and no yearlings. Instead, I got four gift lambs, which was more than I had counted on. But they all came from the same hürde.
That same spring something incredible happened: The gray mare, who was no longer gray but white, foaled and had a foal as colorful as a magpie! A few days later, though, it got eaten by wolves. Neither Grandma nor I ever got to see the pretty foal. The first joyful and then sad news remained for us but a rumor, a dream with a rude awakening. Grandma calculated that the mare must have been twenty-one years old by that time. For a horse, that was a very old age indeed. And yet she would live for another two years. Which means I waited two more times, to no avail, but she never foaled again. I would have preferred to keep waiting, but Father and Mother gave me no peace. They thought the animal might die and end up unclean and useless, so I let them talk me into giving her up for slaughter. It was called something else, though: “to fill the kettle.”
By the way, I gave up my mare for free, without exchanging her for some other animal, as I would when one of my sheep had become too old and had to be slaughtered or sold. During one such trade of one sheep for another, Mother said to Father: “He’ll follow in Stalin’s footsteps. You’ll see!” Note that Mother was not talking about the Georgian Dzhugashvili’s son, who had made it into the Kremlin. She meant a diffe ent one, namely the Tuvan Lobtschaa’s son, who stayed in the Altai Mountains all his seventy-seven years and now rests in the Altai soil. He was the oldest and the most powerful of my six daajs and had many distinctive traits, good ones and bad, and when Mother made that remark, I think she meant his greed. Why was I now suddenly so generous, and with a mare at that? Maybe because I had rarely seen the mare. She had not found her way into my heart like the sheep, whom I saw and counted each morning, and with whom I lived day in and day out. Or maybe I was related to the nitwit who trains his eye on so many crumbs that he can’t see the lump. Or maybe this mare was something like the scaffold of my dream since she had promised me a foal—a mount-to-be for the man-to-be—and now that the scaffold was to be cut down and my dream bound to fade, my pain was too great for me to think of such trifles as a replacement?
The mare was worn out. And as for the one she had served, her time was coming, too, to go and to leave to someone else the space her life had filled. But that time had not quite arrived. Grandma was still alive, and she still crouched next to me. She watched me and took delight in seeing me thrive. I asked her a thousand questions a day, and she never tired of explaining to me all the things I came across and didn’t understand, just as she never tired of telling her stories. She had much to tell, had lived for a long time, and had maintained an open mind. She knew no haste and would dwell on some stories for days. If I asked, she told many of them over and over. Her memory was good, like a well-ordered bookcase. She never had to search but seemed to keep her stories handy, each bound like a book, titled, and likely numbered as well. With her, details mattered, as did every word.
Often I asked for the story of the Dökterbej Mother.
Th ugh I found it hard to believe, it must have been true since Grandma said so: She, too, had once been a child. One day, she was herding the flock of sheep. It was early summer, and each day was longer than the one before. That particular day seemed especially long and boring to her, so she decided to visit a yurt on the other side of the steppe. She left the flock to graze and rode off. Because the distance was considerable, she rode quite hard. As she approached her destination, the yurt’s dog ran out to meet her. She slowed her horse to a walk, and only then noticed that it had begun to sweat. She was horrifi d. What if the person who was about to step out of the yurt and restrain the dog was a grown-up? He would immediately see that a horse had been ridden into the ground when the rest period for fattening had already begun!
An old woman stepped out of the yurt. Grandma, or rather the child she then was, recognized her immediately and was even more horrifi d. The woman was dreaded: everybody called her the Black Hag, and some mothers used her name to scare their young children. Th se who felt kindly toward t
he old woman called her the Dökterbej Mother. Dökterbej was her son. Most of the stories that were told about her were terrible.
The old woman was indeed very black. Her face and her hands were smeared with soot, and her clothes were jet-black.
Out of habit, the mount went up to the yurt. Had it been up to the rider, they both would have fled. But there on the yurt’s sunny side the child now sat in her saddle, having ended up in front of the Black Hag, and the young Grandma was too scared even to say hello. The old woman looked at her, grimly it seemed, and said: “Your horse is sweating as if it’s been ridden by the devil himself, and you’re still sitting there above it as if you can’t even get off by yourself—now how’s that?” Her voice sounded hoarse and mocking but not, by and large, malicious.
The child dismounted, prepared for the worst. The worst were a few slaps on the bottom or somewhere on the shoulders. But nothing like that happened. Instead, she was served porridge. The porridge had sat in a wooden bowl for a while, tasted of creamy yak milk, and contained finger-thick lumps which fell apart all on their own and melted as soon as the tongue pressed them against the roof of the mouth. I had eaten porridge quite a few times myself and cream as well, with yellow butter, and once even with ground sugar. But the porridge Grandma had that day was very special, was even better. Every time I listened, the story made my mouth water. And I felt sorry for not coming earlier into this world while the old woman who was not evil and who prepared such wonderful porridge was still around. If I had, I would have gone to her yurt instead of Grandma, or better still, together with her.
One day Mother, who was also listening to the story, gave us pause to think: “But Daaj! In spite of it all, the Dökterbej Mother must have been a witch. People all over talk about her, and each story is scarier than the one before!”
Grandma slowly lifted her head, which she had kept bowed as she always did after finishing a story. And with her mild eyes aimed at Mother, she said in a voice that was a bit deep for a woman’s and sounded gentle, yet firm: “Have you met her?”
Mother had not met her.
“That’s it,” Grandma continued gravely, “you have never met her, but I have. And the woman I met was not a witch but a human being. An old woman, as my mother was and yours is, as I am now and you will be.” Mother said nothing in return, and she never again interfered with the story, no matter how often it was told.
Most beautiful were the winter evenings. The stove would drone or hum, and the sound would travel and make the kettle resonate while the meat bubbled inside, and the smell would flow from the kettle and would, moment by moment, grow denser until it seemed to send out its tendrils and blend and become one with everything we could see in the flickering light. In these moments I believed I could sense life itself. The sensation was as corporeal and palpable as if I stood in a river and felt the prickling, cooling water on my skin. Grandma crouched in front of the stove door. Father worked on the remains of a yak hide, and we could hear him pant as he always did when he had to work hard. Mother busied herself with a piece of clothing. And the children were playing, throwing gashyk. One moment Grandma would appear in the light, only to disappear in the dark in the next. The düüleesh flared up quickly but burned down just as quickly, and more had to be added to the fire all the time. We were all gathered around the oil lamp, and the conversation was quiet, harmonious, unhurried. We took turns speaking. Mother and Father usually reported what had happened during the day. Grandma added explanations and time and again developed them into stories. Nobody interrupted her, nobody interrupted anybody, everybody got rid of what was on his or her mind. And nobody interrupted what they were busy doing, either.
Everybody listened to the conversation, including the children, who were throwing gashyk and wished for so many horses to be revealed—and who saw that so many horses were revealed—and they loved it. It felt so good to play. Yet the children never lost track of the conversation even though they would not butt in unless they were asked a question. Everybody took part in everything. Sometimes there was a longer pause, but nobody ever rushed to break it. Rather, we would let it last and muse upon it. This way everybody seemed to be getting prepared for the night’s rest.
Sometimes Grandma rested. Then Sister and Brother had to take turns crouching in front of the door of the round sheet-metal stove and tending the fire. It must have been hard work since whoever was crouching there at any given moment would plead with the other that it was time to switch places. At such moments, I was an outsider. I was the lucky onlooker who was above Brother and Sister’s trials but offered commentary whenever it pleased me. After all, I was not only the youngest child, I was also the scalded child. Whenever I felt like it, I would flaunt my scalding. And was I ever able to do so convincingly! Maybe Mother Nature had added a small portion of acting talent before she dropped me in solid form into life and left me to live and die. But even when we were deeply engrossed in our games, I would never forget to slip quickly over to Grandma, whether she was up or in bed, and stroke her bald head or gently pull at her ear lobes, which felt strangely cool and hung low, weighed down by the heavy silver earrings all grownup Tuvan women wore in those days.
Grandma was always attentive. Even in her sleep her hand would reach out for me and stroke my hair or my cheeks, and whenever my head happened to get under her nose, she would sniff it and make a muffled, gurgling sound, like a sleeping mare who senses her foal close by.
Grandma stayed as old as she had been before, and just as nimble and useful. Only her eyes grew older, as you could tell when she was sewing. When she lost the needle, she had to finger the quilted mat with both hands until one of her fingertips happened across it. Mother would shake her head and say: “But Daaj, haven’t I told you it’s time you stopped sewing!”
Grandma would reply cheerfully: “It’s not that I should stop—it’s that my eyes should stop being so lazy. And they will, once I’ve rinsed them with the water of my little one.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Already I stood in front of her with my pants down to my knees.
“Shall I, Enej?”
“Can you?”
“Oh yes.”
Grandma held out her cupped hand, and I peed into it.
“Is that all?”
“For now.”
“Don’t stop halfway through, I’ve told you that’s no good. But I don’t need any more, a handful is plenty.”
“No, Enej! What a waste to pee on the ground. I’d rather you have it. You must rinse your eyes carefully.”
Grandma let me talk her into holding out her cupped hand a second time. Then she said: “That’s enough. Let it all go.”
I had nothing left anyway. It was fun. And it felt good to know that I was doing something useful for Grandma.
One day Grandma’s teeth had grown old as well. And when they could get no older, they began to fall out. She pulled the last ones herself. She had to wrench them quite a bit. It was better, more comfortable this way, she said.
Grandma’s teeth were different from ours, they were yellowed and worn at the tops but very long and strong at the roots, and seemed to be made of stone. Arsylang would not eat them. No matter how often I wrapped them in wether tail fat, he always let the tooth drop while he flattened and relished the slice of fat on his tongue before swallowing. Never before had he rejected any teeth that had been thrown to him wrapped in fat. Both Sister and Brother had lost tooth after tooth, all of which had been wrapped in a thin slice of fat and thrown to Arsylang, always with the chanted plea: “Take the old tooth, give a new one back!”
Sister and Brother actually did get all their teeth back. And I wanted desperately for Arsylang to take at least Grandma’s last teeth and replace them with new ones. But he wasn’t willing, and so it happened that Grandma never did get new teeth.
So I had to help her chew as well. Whenever I thought of it, I chewed pieces of dried curd cheese and filled Grandma’s wooden bowl with them. And each time she would p
raise me: “The curd’s been chewed so well again, so smooth and juicy!”
I had various dreams for the future. The most important one was a yurt of my own. I wanted to live in it with Grandma. And grazing around the yurt would be a large flock we would own together. That I would also need a wife, and have children with her, had not yet crossed my mind. Grandma was to be with me, next to me, for me—why would I need a wife?
Yet something made itself felt that made me think, or rather worry. And sure enough, one day Grandma said the time had come for her to go home.
“But you are home, Grandma!” I called out in surprise.
She smiled and thought about it. Then she said: “I have to go. Everybody has to, at some point. There is no other way.” And after a pause she added: “But I will come back.”
“When?”
“When you’re as big as your father is now.”
“But that’s too long. I won’t let you go, Grandma.”
“All in good time. You mustn’t rush me. Otherwise I might lose my way and come back to somebody else instead of you.”
“But you must come back to me, Grandma. Me! I’ll live in my own yurt, and the flock will have grown.”
“Of course I’ll come back to you, my little squirrel.”
“Try not to get any older, Grandma. Otherwise, who knows, maybe you’ll lose your way. And don’t forget to rinse your eyes with pee more often. I hope you’ll find a boy there like me who’ll give you his pee. But woe betide you, Grandma, if you decide to stay with that boy for good!”
“I won’t get any older. Rather, I will grow younger, ever younger and smaller, until I am a baby again. Once that has happened, I’ll hasten back, back to you.”
This seemed strange and frightened me: Not Grandma, but somebody else? A little baby, of all people? “But I don’t want anybody else, I don’t want a baby, I want you back, Grandma.”
“But the other one, the baby, that will be me, darling.”
The Blue Sky Page 4
