Читать книгу The Gray Earth - Galsan Tschinag - Страница 9

NUMBER ONE HUNDRED

Sit? Ssuuh!

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. The students are led by the Comrade Teachers, who are led in turn by Comrade Principal. 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 softly slap my face, I snatch the garment and fling it at the wall as hard as I can.

Suppressed laughter rings out, lonely sickening laughter. Neither boy joins in. I glimpse nervous curiosity in their faces, which is vaguely comforting. Like a beast of prey facing its hunter, I have a liberating sense of determination.

The man still will not leave me alone. He inches closer. His size terrifies me, and I hear a voice inside warn me: Watch out and hold tight!

For now I concentrate and keep my eyes on the crumpled underpants in his bony black fist as he waddles toward me. But the moment he shoves his fist with the underpants in my face and gives me a rough punch on the nose, my jaws snap shut and bite down. Something hard and soft is between my rows of teeth; I taste blood and hear a crunching sound that clearly drags on.

Again I hear the voice inside: Spit it out!

I spit. A blubbery dark mass like dog crap shoots at the gaunt old face, which is contorted with fear. It hits the face on the right and turns dark red as it spreads across the man’s eye, nose, and chin.

Because I can taste the blood more distinctly now, I go to spit again. But before I can, I am throwing up.