Mother had regained control. Her voice sounded strong again and seemed rested:
You are our father—
toega—toe …
But the singing halted abruptly when a scream rang out. The scream began bright and clear, but quickly drowned in muffled, endless gurgling. Eventually the gurgling ebbed into sobs and wheezes. I saw the ewe for whom the disrupted song was meant walk away, and then I saw its lamb fall: the lamb’s mother had pushed her baby over as she tore away. The lamb cried and flailed about, but its crying was as faint and weak as its flailing. Mother’s sobbing and wheezing, on the other hand, was loud, and I had the feeling that the entire hürde was listening and waiting anxiously for what might come next. Words came next—they poured out, one on top of the other, all aimed at the sky. It was as if Mother had grabbed the sky, as if she had grabbed this hard-hearted old father by his hair and was plucking away at him. I was relieved because the wordless sobbing and wheezing had been terrifying.
“Oh, what a hard-hearted father you are!” she yelled, her eyes turned upward. She waved her hands, which were clenched into fists.
“You who punishes us so severely! Oh, what have we done? Have we not lived in constant fear and infinite awe of you? Ah? Why do you punish us so cruelly and needlessly? Eeh? We’d be better off renouncing you and listening to others, we’d be better off urning our backs on you!”
And on it went. It was as if somebody had hurt her deeply and now she was quarreling with him.
Father and I stayed with our sheep, continued our work, kept on singing. I tried to come up with beautiful, difficult words for my song so I wouldn’t have to listen to what Mother yelled or rather screamed at the blackish-blue night sky. But the words I needed seemed to hide behind the sheep, and I could not find them. While I relaxed a little even as I searched desperately for words to fill the lines of the toega, I listened and watched helplessly what was happening next to me. I had to admit that Mother was not entirely wrong with her outburst. Father, meanwhile, was endlessly repeating his song about the little ears and the little mouth and the little legs and the little tail. Maybe he felt the same way I did?
Time passed, and Mother must have had second thoughts. Her threats gave way to pleas. In the end she got up and went to look for the ewe that had escaped from her. She was staggering. I would have liked not to have seen her stagger, but I couldn’t take my eyes off er.
That night was long and filled with struggle. The sheep were obstinate. The clouds were sinking lower and lower. The world turned as dark and as narrow as if we were stuck in a hole. And all was silent. I felt as if we had been abandoned with the stupid, stubborn sheep, condemned to sing forever in an empty, dark world.
The following night snow fell as expected. But we had not expected the sun that afterward shone on the snow-covered world. Already in the morning the snow began to melt on the southern slopes of the cliffs. Delicate, dark edges appeared around the rags of snow on the blue rock, spread, and eventually touched. “Any wind now, and we’ll be done for!” Father said, his voice breaking. Mother cowered and whispered a prayer, her eyes turned to the sky. There were fear and remorse in her eyes.
But the wind never came. The sun continued to burn almost as if it were summer. A bluish light first hung above the snow, then sank down and became one with it. The air simmered. Here and there tiny rills appeared along the southern slopes and grew by the hour. We stood speechless with surprise, anticipation, and hope, taking it all in. Toward evening, mountain and steppe were a checkered black. Two more sunny days with no wind, and there would be no snow left on the slopes facing the sun.
Tracks began to appear in the snow. Mice, rabbits, foxes, stone martens, wild cats, and wolves had run across it in all directions. The tracks were fresh, but not a living thing could be seen. How odd!
Arsylang sniffed them and rushed ahead, his senses alert. Whenever he hit upon wolf tracks, he barked and growled, and sometimes scraped the snow with his back paws, tossed it in the air, and urinated with excitement. There weren’t that many wolf tracks, but they were the largest, as the sharp wolf claws had pierced the fresh snow. Somewhere I had heard that in years rich with snow, wild animals grow strong claws and hooves.
Whenever Arsylang got excited, I did too. I would look hard in the direction of the tracks and try to spot the animal that had left them. But I never did.
I wished a stone marten were close by or a fox, or even a wolf—yes, ideally a wolf. Then Arsylang would tear after it and, naturally, catch it. I had no doubt that Arsylang had not only the courage, but also the speed and the strength to defeat any enemy whatsoever. Wouldn’t that be something! How I would tell Brother and Sister! And in the summer I would get to tell the other ail children as well. My Arsylang would become as famous as Gysyl Galdar, Hüreldej the Warrior’s legendary dog. Even the grown-ups would say: “Schynykbaj’s youngest, what a great guy he is with his dog Arsylang!”
Could my flock still be called a hendshe? Few of the late-born lambs were left, and those whose life blood still pulsed had suffered so much. They were drained and beaten and barely able to stay on their feet. And yet we could tell that the tottery and wobbly creatures still had their will to live, as they scratched in the snow for tiny blades of grass. Their will encouraged all of us and strengthened our hope that, maybe, the wind would stay away altogether. Father was in a confident mood. His face had brightened during the course of the day. “Everything points to the dshut finally being over,” he said, smiling as he drank his milkless, steaming-hot tea.
He, too, had seen tracks, wolf and fox tracks mostly. And what was more, he was getting into the mood for a little hunting. Father was a good or rather a first-rate herder, but a poor hunter. He had never been able to fill his hunting quota for wolves and foxes. He bought pelts from other people instead and paid for them with sheep: a wolf pelt was worth three sheep, a fox pelt two. And he had a terrible time coming up with the required five rock partridges and ten gray partridges since he hardly ever shot any and caught them in a trap instead. Each year it was the same story, and when the hunters arrived with their pelts and drove away our sheep, Mother got angry with him. Father did have a good rifle, a Mauser, and sometimes he carried it along with him, but he shot nothing but marmots and even those not that often. Many of the good hunters poked fun at him.
Now he wanted to hunt, and he wanted to do it with poison. Poison was the latest thing. The white powder looked like today’s table salt, and you could find it by the bagful in the yurts; people bought it in the store for roughly the same price as salt. It was called wolf poison, but people used it for whatever they wished to see dead: birds that stole the curd cheese spread out to dry; rodents that dared to get close to the yurt; game whose pelts people needed but whose meat they didn’t relish. Eventually, the poison was declared illegal and no longer sold in public, and whoever had any left was asked to turn it in so it could be destroyed. But that didn’t happen until we had our first outbreak of rabies.
But in the spring of that year, the novelty had only just arrived and not yet revealed its dangers. It was still surrounded by the brilliance the manufacturer had attached to it by way of a boastful leaflet, which had the gullible nomads under its spell.
So Father melted some butter, poured it into the small intestines from a sheep, and put the sausage outside on top of the yurt for a short time. When it was frozen solid, he cut it into two-finger thick slices, scraped a little hollow into each slice, and used the little silver spoon at the end of his snuff-bottle stopper to stuff the hollows with poison. Each slice got a little spoonful of poison and was sealed with the butter he had scraped out before. The slices—thirty altogether—looked colorful and playful.
When he was done, Father washed his hands and the little spoon—he even used warm water—and told us about Schirning. Old Man Schirning had passed out and collapsed when he took snuff after having prepared poison-butter slices and only wiping his little snuff spoon when he really should have rinsed it.
I knew the old man and called him Eshej, like any man older than Father, but mostly he was called Schirningbaj because he was rich and had a dark-brown, quilted. velvet coat and a mustache that covered half his face with its twirled and trimmed tips. It made me giggle to think that this man had fainted. But I could hear Mother cry, “Ihiij,” the way she always did when she was afraid. “Ihiij,” she cried again, “then don’t do it—who knows what’ll happen.”
“Don’t worry, I’m always careful,” Father interrupted her. Then he added, “Maybe Deedis will bring me more luck this way than with the gun and the trap.”
Mother didn’t reply, but she did look at Father, and for a brief moment her face lit up. Maybe Father would indeed get lucky on the hunt. Who was to know? If he did, the little flock we lost each year because of the hunting quota could remain in our larger flock. We needed them badly. And maybe even more wolves and foxes than we owed the state would bite into a poisoned slice and drop dead. Then we could exchange the extra ones for sheep and goats and whatever else we needed. After all, why couldn’t we do what the others did?
We needed three more animals to make up our quota, and Father took thirty poisoned slices with him. Wolves and foxes were said to have a keen sense of smell, which would now lead them to their death—ha! It was another calm day. The sun confi ently went about his task, rising and warming the earth after it had cooled down once more the night before.
The hendshe struggled with the ice that had formed along some of the edges of the snow islands, but these poor four-legged inhabitants of the earth went to task with the same confi ence as the sun in the sky. They hurried onward with their necks craned and their limbs stretched, searching for tiny blades of grass on the rocky, blue ground, and did not shy from scraping the snow even though it was harder than the day before and had formed a thin crust that, quietly clinking, broke beneath their hooves.
Soon, very soon, the ice melted, and the ground began to steam. Rills appeared and by afternoon had become brooks and puddles. The mountains and the steppe glistened. No longer willing to eat düüleesh, the hendshe wanted real grass and the cool mugwort that had suddenly turned up. I saw that it already grew in places, and its savory scent drifted toward me from all sides.
The animal tracks were fading: increasingly meaningless and bluish, they sprawled across the rags of snow. Arsylang sniffed them all as eagerly as the day before, and was no less excited by the remaining wolf tracks. I thought about the wolves even more than before, but now imagined them all dead. The thirty poisoned slices that Father had taken and would have laid out by now occupied my thoughts. They would be spread all over in order to ambush their victims. Shaped into a perfect circle and reddish yellow in color, every one of them looked like the sun. The thirty little suns made me feel hot inside. Maybe the first wolves and foxes were already dead?! Oh, it was such a long day.
In the evening I set out to meet Father. I had waited and waited and finally got through the long yellow spring day, but now I was running out of patience. From afar I tried to make out whether Father was dragging any wolves or foxes. No, both his hands were empty. But I didn’t allow myself to get disappointed quite yet. It struck me that he would have skinned any wolf or fox he caught right away. And if he had, their pelts would have been hanging behind him from his belt. I had seen quite a few hunters carry pelts that way. But Father didn’t seem to have any pelts dangling behind him. Then I noticed that his felt bag was full. So they were in there! Or were they? My heart was in my mouth when I reached him. “What’s in your bag, Father?”
“Lambs. Three lambs. One’s got stumpy ears and snow-white skin.” I was deeply disappointed. Suddenly weary, I thought: Get lost with your stupid lambs!
But I still did not want to lose hope and asked: “How was the hunt?” I had really wanted to ask where his kill was, but I didn’t have the courage. Father understood and said: “I’ve only just put out the poison today.”
“And when are you going to check?”
“Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. Every day.”
I was feeling better.
“The sheep ate their fill today,” Father told Mother, beaming with joy. “You’ll see.” She agreed: “The udders have milk.”
We had less work to do than the two previous evenings even though we still stayed out in the hürde, still sang till our voices were hoarse, and still crouched, yawning, in the light of the stars.
It was the sixth day of the second month of spring. A full month had passed since the first snow ushered in the dshut. “Tomorrow’s the make-or-break day,” Father said, looking at the sky. He sounded and looked confi ent. And he was right. The weather stayed mild, and the late spring continued.
That night my dreams were heavy. The last dream was the one I had dreamed once before, a long time ago, the bad one. It had somewhat changed, but I still recognized it: Blue snow has fallen everywhere, beyond the mountain peaks and to the ends of the steppe, wherever the eye can see. I am trying to get out of the snow because I think snow that blue cannot be good. But I can’t tell if I am making any progress because the snow is mute. It makes no sound no matter how much I stamp in it. I sense a restlessness growing inside me, and then it turns into fear. I want to scream, but am shocked to find that I have no voice. Suddenly, Arsylang, Grandma, and our flock appear. And my fear does not subside. Instead, it becomes even more unbearable as I notice that they are different from what they were before: they don’t walk or run but rather float, and they too are mute. Arsylang barks and howls, the hendshe bleats, and Grandma talks. I can see them do it, but I cannot hear a sound. Everybody is mute.
Then I notice that Grandma’s face is pale, that her hands are emaciated, and that she has grown very old. The flock consists of nothing but dead animals. And Arsylang has a fixed stare and stiff limbs; he falls over, gets up again, and stumbles. I can tell that he is suffering terribly and wants to bark and howl, but he can’t. Then suddenly I hear barking and clip-clopping.
I woke up and heard Arsylang tear off with a muffled bark. Outside, Father was shouting: “Tuh-tuh-tuh!”
“What’s up?” I called and jumped up. And then again, since there was no answer: “What’s up, Father?”
“A fox.”
“Oh.”
I hastily slipped into my boots, threw on my ton, and dashed to the door. I couldn’t see a fox, but I saw Arsylang briefly before he disappeared behind the mountain saddle above the sacrifi ial cairn. Then there was no more barking.
Although it was still early in the day, Father and Mother were already at work with the sheep. They had let me sleep in. I put on my clothes, tucked a lamb under each arm like a grown-up, and hurried out to help them. The hürde seemed to be spilling over with the din of the sheep and lambs, but for a fraction of a second it was as if behind all the noise I could catch the silence of the early-morning earth. It was a strange sight: There was the sun, a garish red, glued to the craggy peaks, while there was still a breath of darkness below, and up above, there was the sky, shining bright. So sharp was the contrast between earth and sky that I couldn’t help but feel as if I was standing between day and night. I was aware of the beauty, but my senses quickly turned in the direction the dog and the fox had likely gone. I was waiting for Arsylang’s return. And while I waited, I thought about my dream. It was a bad dream. I needed to tell it to a hole in the ground and spit three times. I should have done so earlier, when I went to relieve myself. Now I was stuck with my work and was stared at and bleated at from all sides. I couldn’t simply leave the stupid, impatient lambs and sheep that were following each and every one of my movements to dash off and rid myself of my dream. For the time being, I would have to lug it along with me.
With each chunk of time that passed, the dream weighed more and more heavily on me. Finally the hürde was empty, and the lambs were grazing. But Arsylang did not come.
Only a few sheep mothers were left to listen to our singing. The songs were short, but I found it difficult to sing. Arsylang did
not come.
The lambs that had drunk their fill were caught again. The youngest ones were brought back into the yurt, while those who were already able to graze were sent into the hendshe’s sheepfold.
Arsylang did not come.
I was told to have breakfast. The tea wasn’t too hot or too tepid, but I had only one bowl full and ate nothing, although I did put a handful of curd cheese into my breast pocket as usual.
Arsylang did not come.
Mother asked if maybe he had in fact come back. I said he had not. Father was about to say something but stopped himself and noisily slurped tea from his colorful yellow china bowl.
“It’s odd,” he said finally.
The big flock was about to leave the hürde. I opened the gate to let the sheep out. The flock had grown and become more sightly again, thanks to the white fleeces of the lambs. The young ones who were leaving for pasture for the first time tried to run back to the hürde. I chased after them, every so often looking in the direction from which Arsylang should have come. But he still did not come.
As soon as I had got away from the yurt, I took on a solemn posture, raised my eyes to look across the steppe, and lightly stretched my arms out in front of me with my palms turned up. Then I told the dream and spat three times. Once I had completed this task and shifted the burden of the dream off myself, I felt some small relief.
The rays of the sun felt as hot and sharp as in summer. A slight, fragrant breeze passed over me, vanished, and a little later made its presence felt again. It smelled of new growth, although the eye could see no trace of green yet. Sparkling like a shard of glacier, a lark was flung out of the blue and hovered in the air at the height of a lasso’s length, fluttering its wings. I wished it would sing, but it was mute.
The lambs baaed and gamboled. Now and again they got startled and jumped apart with breezy drumming, then piled again into a ball, and soon started the noisy game all over. Their older brothers, the hendshe, did not much care for the game; they searched single-mindedly for blades of grass and found a few.
The Blue Sky Page 12
