The Gray Earth - Galsan Tschinag

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to stay connected with the victims until dawn, firing shots in their direction, banging pails and basins with sticks, and calling out after the sheep and goats, pausing only to listen. The animals knew each of these sounds was meant for them, and baaed and bleated in reply.

      At dawn, we saddled the horses and loaded the dung baskets to bring back the dead and the wounded. More than a dozen animals had been killed—there were whole piles of remains. The dogs howled for several days and nights, their helpless cries born from shame and rage.

      Every misfortune demands a culprit. This time, the verdict fell on me. Had it come from only one side, I probably would have tried to defend myself. I could have said the attack was part of life and our ail, having been spared for so long, was due.

      But too many people, everyone really, went to battle against me. Even Mother did. She accused me of a brazenness not even a madman would allow himself, and she claimed that with my twitching and screeching I had scorched her face for all the world to see. Father agreed with her: with my performance I had done worse than bring shame to the family—I had enraged the sky. The bundle the sky had given me at birth simply did not include shamanizing. Their voices were cold and hard, as if I were no longer their baby child. Other people came and behaved as if demanding damages from Father and Mother since I, their child, had awakened the evil spirits and lured them close with my insolence. Soon my defiance collapsed. I remembered whom I had named in my verses:

      Ary börü, asa gooshu . . . Greedy wolves, ghostly devils ...

      Of course I had tried to drive them away instead of luring them close. But the fact remained that I had called their names. And maybe they had heard their names, rushed toward us, and slipped past me. I had been insolent and, unfortunately, blind as well.

      I shrank down to the size of a tick and waited in agony for someone to hurl the fateful line from my verse at my head like a rock. Fortunately, no one did. But things were bad enough already. There was no way of knowing when—if ever—the flock would recover from the loss. For the longest time I could not shake my remorse and melancholy. Time after time I swore to myself never again to shamanize.

      Time passed. Among shamans and their nightly performances, I kept my word. I was just one of their spectators and listeners, and a very mute and quiet one at that. Whenever I watched one of the shamans rise up against death and the devil, my plight returned. I felt the sharp pain of remorse in my diaphragm. The wound might have formed a scar, but it was far from healed.

      Then the bad year arrived. It ended with me rising up against the sky and flinging at him my best weapons—my words. I denounced him. Instead of replying, Father Sky stayed as unreachable and invulnerable as ever. That provoked me the most. What exactly was the sky? I had to find out. In the beginning, I was afraid. I feared he would strike back. But absolutely nothing happened. First I was thrilled and encouraged, then disappointed and affronted. Curiosity awoke in me like in a suckling that stirs, stretches, and waits for his mother to come and feed him, and then starts to cry when no one comes.

      My way of crying has always been to sing the shaman’s chant. So I started to shamanize again, even more than before.

      Ever since that awakening, I have been calling out for the sky. My language is poetry and song. My poetry is mostly pleas, sometimes threats and scorn. When I feel the urge to take on the sky, I flee from people. If people overhear my shamanizing, it is because I have made a mistake. Then I must accept rebuke. But people’s passing remarks are tolerable. They remind me that no one can train his mind for the work of a shaman the way he can train his hands for the craft of a tanner, that the sky alone calls one to shamanizing, and that, when he does, the call is by no means a reward. It is a heavy burden, almost a punishment, and impossibly hard to bear for a human being with an eye of water and a heart of flesh. Anyone who is truly a shaman feels condemned to carry this heaviest of burdens through the years as his or her fate. This is how our aunt, the shaman, puts it.

      Nevertheless, since that worst day in that bad year I have not been given a beating. I can tell my parents are treating me more cautiously. That is probably best for all of us, for every so often I feel the urge to run away. I would love to fly away like a bird or swim away like a fish, away from all these powerless people and animals and away from these unreliable mountains and valleys, which dish out we never know what from one day to the next. Away from the mute and pitiless sky that supposedly knows all, sees all, and hears all, but pretends to be deaf and blind the moment I need to be heard and seen.

      I envy the winds, the water, and the birds whenever I think of them. They blow, flow, and fly; they all get to leave, whereas, in spite of my two quick legs, I am condemned to stay among the mountains and the river valleys, not much different from a tethered horse. I grow restless whenever I imagine the world beyond the mountains. I want the gusts of wind, floods of water, and birds of passage to take me wherever they go. I would gladly go to the end of the world, look into the gaping abyss, lose my way, and face the furies of everlasting night and hell’s roiling, toxic sea. How often I wish I had spirits to take me there and bring me back. Because this feeling is so strong, I am ready to give up whatever I have and to do whatever it takes to become a shaman.

      “Watch out,” Mother warns me one day. “Others have dabbled in shamanism against the will of the sky, who had not given them such powers. Quite a few paid with their lives.”

      Father is usually quick to support her: “Anyone chosen by the sky is seriously ill and needs to heal before becoming a shaman. It is difficult.”

      I do not reply, but mull over their words for a long time. Eventually I decide to ask the shaman herself. She says more or less the same thing as Mother and Father, but when I dig, I learn more: in rare cases a person with pure bones can get infected with shamanism by a shaman. Such an infection can be brought about by different means, but most often results from a blood transfusion.

      This is a fateful bit of news. I decide to try, or rather force, a blood transfusion between the two of us. Some time later I go back to our aunt’s place. In the birch-wood sheath on my belt I carry a small dagger with a horn hilt that Father keeps ground and honed. Soon my opportunity comes: the woman is sewing, and when I see her struggle with a dull knife to unpick an old seam, I jump to help her with my dagger. Now she holds the two sewn-together pieces in her hands to stretch them apart. All I need to do is touch the yak tendon with the grimly sharp blade of my dagger, and the two pieces of sheepskin spring apart with a soft crackle. When my aunt praises me, I grow unsure of my plans, but promise myself not to miss the opportunity that is within my grasp, making my fingers prickle. Just before we come to the end of the seam, I twist the dagger slightly. We both cry out. I am surprised how easy it was, how fast the desired, precious—sacred, even—blood spurts out. The blade has touched the tip of my aunt’s right ring finger, and bright-red blood runs over the fleece and the blade.

      While Aunt Pürwü sets about plucking a tuft of wool from the back of the sheepskin so she can burn it and press the glowing ashes into her wound, I dash from the yurt. I hear her shout after me, “Make sure you wash the blade carefully.”

      When I have reached the hiding place I sought out in advance, I open my lawashak, drop my long pants with their wide legs, and pierce the thick, soft flesh of my left calf with the blade I have carried, bloody side up, in my outstretched hand.

      Fortunately, I have no time to think, and everything happens fast. The wound hurts badly. I cannot help but cry out, and my whole body begins to shake. But otherwise I don’t move. My face is twisted with pain, but I am determined. I stare at the blade. The bright silvery steel is stuck two-fingers deep in my flesh, and its knobby goathorn hilt trembles ever so slightly.

      I wait to make sure that the alien sacred blood gets absorbed by my flesh and travels through my body. Meanwhile, my leg feels heavier, and a dull pain begins to extend to the tips of my toes. Finally, I pull out the blade. That hurts even more than thrusting it in because the steel is stuck. My wound begins to bleed, which worries me mostly because I am afraid the sacred blood might leak out. I lick the wound until the bleeding stops. Then I bandage it with a strip of fabric I tear off my belt.

      Now I have a limp. When people notice, I explain that I hurt myself on a branch jutting from

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