The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag

Author:Galsan Tschinag
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

ARSYLANG

The Cow was followed by the Tiger. Secretly we were afraid of the Tiger, but we didn’t forget to look for something to comfort us: This Tiger was white. It was as if the White Tiger came creeping on soft paws, for it was silent before and after. The New Year was not as it used to be. Rumor had it that bleeding dysentery was on its way. Nobody from outside came to visit, and there seemed to be no end to the meat and the deep-fried bread the Yellow Cow had prepared and left for the White Tiger. And even though the New Year and with it the first month of spring had arrived, it was bitterly cold. Snow fell on the ninth and again on the seventeenth. The second snowfall had been forecast by Father and therefore expected by everybody.

“How much worse will it be on the twenty-second?” everybody wondered. People were on their guard and went about their days with quiet mindfulness. It snowed during the night of the twenty-first. The heavy snowfall did not stop until the following noon and was followed by a storm. The snow already on the ground started to move again, and sky and earth collapsed into each other. The dshut had arrived. We took the big flock to where the small one normally grazed. The hendshe stayed where it had spent the night and later in the day was fed the way young lambs are fed in their first year: we hung bundles of hay on a line drawn tight above their heads. But when we went to do the same the next day, we had to let the animals off because we did not have enough hay. Mountain and steppe lay in glaring black and white as if shattered in a sea of shards. It tired the eye. And a howling and hissing wind sawed and cut, stung and tugged at everything in its path. The hendshe burst into noise when it stepped into this wind.

Driven by the wind, the lambs ran for a while, then tired and tried to hide their heads under one another’s bellies for protection from the pinching and stinging cold. They were barely able to graze.

I was cold myself and shivering. The glow stone couldn’t keep my hands and face warm. My fingertips burned, along with the backs of my hands, my nose, and my cheeks and chin. And I was freezing in other places as well, such as my calves and my neck.

Even Arsylang kept his tail between his legs and tilted his head when we crossed through the wind that lashed us like flames.

“What on earth shall we do?” I asked Arsylang, pointing at the shivering mass. Arsylang didn’t know. So it was left to me to decide. And I decided and said: “Let’s go home, Arsylang.”

So we drove the flock home. This meant going against the wind, which was hard, but with me shouting and Arsylang barking and both of us running hither and thither, we made progress as best as we could.

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