The children stood with open mouths and drooping shoulders, staring at the grown-ups, with little understanding of the events that were unfolding. By then Father was returning with a leather lead, one of the leads he had cut from the skin of the yak cow Saasgan Ala and tanned and softened during winter evenings. It was kept together with the other leads, the lasso ropes, and the three-legged stools in the buckskin bag beneath the two chests in the dör. Measured against the span of Father’s arms, the lead was one and a half fathoms long, felt velvety and always warm, and shone with a yellow glow.
This lead Father now wanted to give him as a present! We knew as much even before Father reached the guest with his leadless bridle and before anything was said. It was another one of Father’s quirks that he gave away pieces of leather he had dressed himself. The darga greeted Father curtly and in Mongolian, and got a reply in the same manner and language. But then he had to listen to Father lecture him with a story in Tuvan. We learned only years later why that happened and what it was all about, but its gist shall be offered here ahead of time.
The darga was not really a darga at all but rather a teacher. He was called Düktügbej, and was the son of Dandisch from the Hara-Sojan tribe. Once when Father was young, he and his herd of horses tried to escape from a snowfall which over the course of several days buried much of their pasture lands. At the end of their flight he found himself on the land of the Hara-Sojan people, whose herders did not—as he had feared they would—drive him away with his starving and exhausted herd, but instead gave him a friendly welcome and invited him to stay as long as his own pasture remained under snow. And the eldest of these friendly herders was Dandisch. Father would later seek his company whenever he got a chance. He stayed overnight in his yurt, drank from the same pot of tea and ate from the same kettle of meat as his family, and carried Dandisch’s children on his back and sometimes even let them ride his own horse. And Düktügbej was the oldest of Dandisch’s children.
Blushing, Düktügbej now listened to the story and watched Father take the reins from his hands, swing them over the pommel, and tie one end of the lead to the snaffle ring and the other to the band around the yurt.
That done, Father led the teacher into the yurt as if the head of the yurt, Uncle Sama, was not at home. Uncle Sama himself still crouched where he had earlier made himself comfortable, still in his tattered dshargak and now again on all fours like a child or a dog. He viewed the guest from bottom to top with tiny, sly-slanting eyes that were narrowed to two lines, and with an idiotic and yet cunning smile on his face that was also marked with two brown trails of sweat.
The teacher greeted him immediately in Tuvan, but the uncle replied in Mongolian, or at least in something meant to be Mongolian, and pulled the same face he pulled when he tried to draw his wife into a new round of fighting.
The children learned only later what happened next. No matter how long we lurked around the yurt and how often we slipped past its open door, we had to content ourselves with unintelligible shreds of the conversation carried on inside. It was an exciting conversation, though. The names of children from our ail popped up again and again, which naturally increased our curiosity and desire. How could anybody think of play, let alone of the calves that had to be herded? But sadly, sadly, the guest whom we still believed to be a darga—which is why our noses were so clean that even Marshal Choibalsan could have inspected them—spilled over into Mongolian whenever he raised his voice.
As we would later learn, he was actually a public school teacher in the process of recruiting children for his school. In the chrome-leather bag that he carried on a shining strap over his shoulders and that dangled next to his right thigh, he carried the names of all Tuvan children who the dargas at the sum center guessed might have turned eight.
Among them were six names from our ail, three of whom were children of Sama’s: Marshaa, Dshanik, and Tögerik. The first two were grown up: Somebody had courted Marshaa as a bride for his son, and Dshanik, the future sum elephant, had long ago joined the men who loaded the oxen whenever we moved. Until a year before, though, both had been considered seven-year olds, along with their younger sister, who actually might have been seven. And so it was entirely understandable that all three of them were now summoned to start school together. But Uncle Sama promptly declared the bride and the wrestler altogether too old for school, while his third child again stayed seven. Try as he might, the teacher had no luck.
The next two children in question—the girl Gökbasch and the boy Sambyy—belonged to Aunt Buja. Their father, Uncle Sargaj, had by now already twice greeted the man with the shoulder bag as a representative of the state, first in front of his own yurt and then inside Uncle Sama’s yurt, where both times he had stood to attention and had bowed deeply, demonstrating his reverence with broken Mongolian and repeated offerings of his lit brass pipe. He now eagerly agreed to all the teacher’s requests.
“Of course both children will attend school,” he said, nodding constantly.
“But last time when the sum representative and teacher was here, you were just as agreeable, weren’t you?” asked our visitor, the man who this year himself embodied the two roles he had just named.
“But, Comrade Sum Representative and Teacher, I did send the boy, Comrade Sambyy, to school.”
“But, Comrade Sargaj, you did not send the girl, Comrade Gökbasch, to school.”
“That’s right, Comrade Sum Representative and Teacher. But that was last year. At that time, Comrade, the revolutionary spirit of the arate, of whom I am one, was not as high as it is now. It has since grown tremendously. It says so in the paper. I have heard it read with my own ears, Comrade Darga Sum Representative and Teacher.”
“All right then. I trust you, Comrade Arate. Also, I understand there has been word that you want to join the Party?”
“That’s right, Comrade Darga Sum Representative and Teacher. As surely as I am an uneducated arate, I feel a revolutionary heart glow and beat inside me. And I do not have the slightest doubt that the great wise Father Comrade Marshal Choibalsan and his faithful sons and students, the comrades dargas at the sum, will recognize this honest wish of the simple arate that I am.”
In this way the dialogue between the sum representative and the arate took its course. Then the teacher turned to Father: “Your daughter—.”
Father rushed to accommodate him: “Yes, daughter Torlaa is eight years old, that’s right. And she, too, will attend school on the assigned date.”
“Why don’t you follow your older brother’s example, Comrade?” the delighted teacher turned to Uncle Sama.
Uncle Sama, however, had only a small, unequivocal smile for such a comment. And even Uncle Sargaj, the glowing Party candidate, rewarded Father, his brother-in-law, with a mere smile for his forthright words.
Sobered, the teacher looked at the group and turned again to Father: “So far I’ve only got half of the six children from your ail that are supposed to go to school. If only I had four! Tell me, Uncle, what shall I do? What shall I tell the dargas when I get back?”
“You need one more, don’t you?” Father asked instead of answering him.
“I do. At least one.”
“Then take my boy as well.”
“But, Uncle?!”
“He is only seven. But what’s a year? It doesn’t matter if he goes this year or next.”
Mother, who had already flinched, only now got a chance to call out: “You want to give Galkaan away as well? You can’t do that!”
“You keep quiet!” Father snapped and ordered the Dandisch son: “Write down his name. He is called Galkaan, Galkaan of Schynykbaj.”
Then Father got up and left the yurt. The teacher got up as well.
When he left the ail, he left behind a fight. On the one side stood Father, alone; on the other side, all the ail’s other grownups came together.
Grandma was still deep in thought, as one could tell by looking at her. It was not until everybody prepared for the night that she fina
lly spoke up. “You should have talked this over with your wife first, Schynyk,” she said, and in the same breath turned to Mother, who had started to look around triumphantly upon hearing these words: “And as for you, Balsyng, you need to understand that it will be easier for your daughter if she knows her brother is close by. And remember, earlier is always better than later. Your husband has surely thought of such things.”
But earlier, before it came to this, everybody had spoken up against Father—and it goes without saying—behind his back. Uncle Sama called his older brother an old man whom age had made childish. Aunt Pürwü spoke of a difficult spring ahead, one that would demand great sacrifi es, especially in places where many people gathered. Aunt Galdarak thought that a child of seven was not capable of learning and would die from homesickness. Even among the Khalkh people, who certainly were smarter and more courageous than us, children started school only when they were eight.
Uncle Sargaj called Father, his wife’s older brother, a man who did not know how to live in the new era. He said the new era no longer called for things, but for the spirit. Words were more important than actions. Aunt Buja thought what everybody else was thinking, and what they said was fine with her; she was without a mind of her own. She simply carried words from one person to the next where they arrived as warm as the mouth they had come from. And what she carried in her mouth that day was directed against her older brother, of whom she was normally more afraid than is a child of its father.
Swarms of children gathered all over. Their conversation revolved around the leadless rider who, though not a darga, had been just about as elegant and as powerful as if he had been one. And since the rider was a teacher, they also talked about school and about what lay ahead for Brother and Sister, and for Gökbasch and Sambyy.
“They will go to school!” everybody repeated in shock, although nobody could imagine what it meant. The four children concerned were looked upon with both envy and pity. Each reacted differently. Sister Torlaa was neither able nor willing to hide her joy, and trumpeted: “I’ll become a teacher! But you, if you stay out here in the country without school, you will herd sheep and gather dung until you die.”
Brother Galkaan said nothing. Withdrawn into himself, he looked on silently. Nobody could tell what was hidden behind his silence. But I have known him almost better than I have known myself and believe to this day that he was not thinking anything and did not care what would happen.
Cousin Sambyy, on the other hand, had already attended school the previous year and bragged: “You think you can scare me with school? Forget about it. School’s great. You don’t have to herd sheep or gather dung, and the way they put you up is so neat too—when you crap, you squat on two planks. Learning is no big deal. What stays in your head stays; what doesn’t, doesn’t. You simply prove to the teacher you’re too dumb for school. If you can manage that, you’ll graduate after four years.”
Cousin Gökbasch did not want to hear about school. “You’ll see!” she said, her lips pressed together. “I simply won’t go. I’ll say I have the freedom, everybody’s got the freedom, it’s the new era. The era of Pidilism is over. People can no longer be forced to do what they don’t want to do.”
Gökbasch kept her word. Instead of being forced to go to school, she married and did so of her own free will. The groom was a darga from the aimag. He did not speak Tuvan, and she had not mastered Mongolian. But she wanted to learn his language, and she succeeded because she lived with her darga in the aimag center. Sometimes gifts arrived from her, sweets, but not just lumps of sugar, oh no, they were fragrant, colorful candies wrapped in crackling paper, always two of them. Did the dear cousin, the elegant darga wife in the aimag, remember me? Or was it really Aunt Buja, who must have had a guilty conscience toward her brother? But the story ended badly for the one who had risen to be a darga wife. She died giving birth to her first child.
Uncle Sargaj, too, never had a chance to enjoy fully the fruits of the new era that pleased him so much. He died the following winter from appendicitis.
From that day onward, all the ail’s hustle and bustle changed. The relatives avoided our yurt. Out in the hürde, there were no longer any intimate conversations between Mother and the aunts, nor the peals of laughter that used to accompany them. Uncle Sargaj’s and Uncle Sama’s remarks got more pointed. They stung Father and the children alike—even me. For example: “Hey, little one! D’you want to claw your way up to a salary, too?” I had no idea what a salary was or what it had to do with me, but I felt the scorn in the remark.
I asked Grandma. She explained: They were referring to the money that in the old days the prince and his officials, and that in the new era the dargas and the teachers, received from the state. To me, that didn’t seem bad at all. Money, the colorful square pieces of paper, represented something valuable. I had noticed how carefully Father handled the pieces, and with how much respect Mother looked at them—I could even sense her desire at least once to hold them in her own hands. But Father did not let her have any, he never let them out of his hands.
I had also heard that you could exchange money for anything. In our family, we were short of money. We only had it in the spring, after Father took away the flocks of sheep and herds of yaks. People said they ended up at the Russian border and got slaughtered by the Russians. Maybe that is why people insulted animals by saying, “Up the Red Russian ass!” The pieces of paper one got for a boisterous flock of sheep or herd of yaks did not even fill a hand, and one by one turned into flour, rice, salt, tea bricks, candles, lead, gun powder, primer, and other stuff. And when no paper money was left but more stuff was needed, Father sold another sheep or yak cow. The Kazakhs would buy them. The Kazakhs had money. They cut down the larch forests, built rafts to take away the logs, and exchanged them in the aimag for pieces of paper. No Tuvan ever touched a larch with an axe or a saw unless it had fallen already. But the Kazakhs sawed or cut them down wherever they found them.
What if I had a salary? What if I owned many colorful pieces of paper? I would be so happy. I would give them all to the grown-ups, and especially to Mother so that she, too, could hold them in her hands and exchange them for something she would like to have. I would also give some to Father so that he would never again need to deliver flocks or herds for slaughter to the Russians, nor offer any more sheep or yaks to the Kazakhs in exchange for one or two, or more perhaps, of the colorful pieces of paper.
The bickering in the ail was getting worse. It was worst among the children when we tethered or untethered the lambs and kids.
Brother, Sister, and I stopped helping the children of our relatives when they, as usual, could not even manage their single höne. It upset them, and they teased us. Torlaa, the devil, knew how to reply to an angry word with an even angrier one. The sparring got fie cer by the day.
Aunt Buja had sharp ears. Even before, she often meddled when we played, but now she was even keener to butt in when we wrangled.
“Kulaks!” she railed one day. This was not the first time we had heard the insult. Anytime someone had something against us, he or she would say or even yell the word. And nobody who did so ever got a reply: Neither Father nor Mother nor Grandma could afford to reply. But this was no way to tangle with Sister Torlaa—whose name meant “Little Partridge” but who certainly wasn’t one, didn’t know how to hold back, and who now flared up: “There has never been more than one kulak around here, and he’s dead as far as I know.” She meant Aunt Buja’s own father, who had been the richest man in our corner of the world. She kept going: “Don’t speak of kulaks who no longer exist. Speak of the dshelbege the place is teeming with!”
Aunt Buja was not prepared for this, and she squealed like a stuck pig: “You don’t mean us, do you?”
Sister Torlaa should have been called Mys, “Scratching Kitten.” She hissed: “Who else? How dare you claim not to be one? You have devoured your dowry and your father’s wealth like a dshelbege. And now you’re so ashamed and envious th
at you spit venom at whoever hasn’t done the same!”
Aunt Buja jumped up, let out a scream, and ran toward our yurt, screaming loudly all the way: “Your Torlaa, your daughter, has insulted me! I’ll take you to court. To court! Aaaah! Ihii-ih!” But just when she had almost reached the yurt, she turned around even while she continued screeching.
Brother Galkaan said to Sister Torlaa: “Watch it. Mother’s going to give you a thrashing, and maybe Father will as well.” There was pity in his voice.
Sister Torlaa, however, raged: “So what? I’ve got to be able to say, to my last breath, what sounds right to me.”
The aunt seemed to calm down once she had run a circle around the hürde. Sister remained unscathed but was admonished: “It’s not right for children to argue with grown-ups.”
The aunts, who used to drop by several times a day to chat and drink tea with Mother, stopped coming to our door. Instead, they now visited each other more often and drank their tea in either of their yurts, laughing especially loudly. And when they weren’t taking a nap, the uncles would sneak after them and join them for the chats and the tea. When we happened to show up, we noticed them either change topics or else make sure we would not understand. But we understood plenty.
While this was going on in the other yurts, the opposite conversation was taking its course in our own. Mother held forth, and Grandma threw in her bit.
Mother called the relatives nitwits whose heads had been turned. Grandma shook her head as she listened and spoke of times that would change and diseases that would heal.
Father had no time for such talk. If he happened to catch the tail end of one of these conversations, he had nothing but disdain to spare: “Without livestock, without meat or milk—what are these purultarens going to live on? Their jabber perhaps?”
Purultarens—this was one of the fashionable words Uncle Sargaj and Uncle Sama had recently taken to. They called themselves purultarens, by which they meant proletarians. Then we heard that Uncle Sargaj was going to move and settle in the sum center because his children would be attending school. Reputedly Sambyy, who had spent his first year in boarding school, had become homesick and now said that he would only return if his parents moved to the center with him. And maybe Gökbasch could still be talked into going to school if her parents’ yurt were next door and she knew she could go home whenever she felt like it.
The Blue Sky Page 6
