Radigan Neuhalfen - The Steppe

Radigan Neuhalfen

The Steppe

Radigan Neuhalfen

Chapter One

The steppe is like the sea. When you are out upon it, it and the sky are all you can see. It is as wide as it is long; it forms a far horizon in every direction.

I crested the small hill with my two horses—riding the one and leading the other as a packhorse—halted, and looked down into the shallow, narrow valley and at the ger at the nadir of it. The day was ending, and shadows were filling the valley.

I rode to the ger. Inside, the approach of the horses must have been heard. The colorful—blue and orange, with wide vertical stripes of red and yellow—short wooden door swung open, and an old man bent through the jamb and stepped out. I raised my hand in greeting as I rode up, and called out, “Sain baina uu?” Are things well?

“Things are well,” he said. Sain, sain.

I drew the horses to a halt and climbed slowly out of the saddle, my knees sore from riding. I tied the leads of the horses to the uyaa, a rope strung two meters off the ground between two poles, set up beside the ger. Two other horses were tethered to the uyaa, one of which was saddled.

As I walked to the old man, I reached into the front flap of my deel, found my tobacco bottle, pulled it out, and unwrapped it from its cloth bunting. I offered it to him. He reached out his right hand to accept it, and suddenly grinned. Closer to one another now, he could see my facial features clearly. He accepted the tobacco bottle, pulled the cap open just a bit, held it to his nose, and sniffed.

He pushed the cap almost closed and handed the bottle back to me, asking, “Where are you from?”

“From Ulaanbaatar,” I answered, holding the bottle in my hand without re-wrapping it.

He grinned again. “Ti russkii?” he asked, in Russian. Are you Russian?

“No, no—I am American,” I said, in Mongolian.

His grin was large and cheerful. He turned to the door, opened it, ducked down, and went through. I bent down and followed, even as he turned slightly to wave his hand at me and say, “Come in, come in.”

As I pulled the door shut and straightened up inside the ger, the old man was saying laughingly to the women inside, “Look! It is another American.”

An old woman and a young woman were at the stove. They had both looked up from their cooking, their faces blank, their mouths hanging open. I spoke quickly. “Things are well? Are your animals fattening up well?”

They both grinned, and the young woman said, “Very well, very well.”

There were no other men in the ger, so I tightened the cap on my tobacco bottle, wrapped it, and tucked it into my deel.

I walked around the women at the stove, between them and the saddle rack against the wall, and sat on the short stool at the left side of the low, orange table. The old man had seated himself at the top of the table and had found his tobacco bottle. He proffered it to me, still grinning.

I took it with my right hand, touching my right arm at the elbow with my left hand. I opened the cap slightly, sniffed, then replaced the cap loosely and handed it back to him.

“You speak Mongolian well,” the old man said, pushing the bottle into his deel.

“Thank you. It is a beautiful language.”

They all three laughed. “Of course,” the young woman said. She then spoke to the old woman, and they began, or resumed, a conversation between themselves.

“What is your name?” the old man said through his smile.

“Radnaa,” I said.

“That is a Mongolian name!”

“Yes.”

“What is your original name?”

I told him. “Eh?” he said, bending his head down and leaning his ear closer to me.

“Call me Radnaa.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, grinning. “That is actually a Tibetan name.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“A friend gave it to me in Ulaanbaatar.”

“That is good, that is good,” the old man said, nodding his head in approval.

“He told me that many Mongolians have Tibetan names.”

“It is true! We are very connected to Tibet. We are both Buddhist countries.”

“Yes.”

“Are you Buddhist?” he asked.

“More or less,” I said.

He laughed. Then he leaned closer to me, conspiratorially, and said, “Me too!”

He had poured two glasses of vodka and set the bottle in the center of the table. He handed one glass to me, then picked up the other glass from the table, raised it, and said in Russian, “To health!”

I raised my glass and said, also in Russian, “To Lenin!”

He laughed. “Yes, to Lenin, to Lenin!” We drank the shots and set the glasses on the table. He immediately refilled them.

For a moment, the ger was silent.

“So who is this other American?” I asked.

All three of them laughed.

“You mean Buddha?” the young woman said.

They laughed with each other.

“He lives alone out on the steppe,” the young woman began again in explanation. “We call him ‘Buddha.’ Not our Buddha, but an ‘enlightened one.’”

“He is crazy,” the old woman said softly, her chin down, but the other two laughed again, and then she smiled, looked around, and joined them in the laughter.

“Do not worry about him,” the old man said to me. He handed me the glass of vodka. “He is just one of your crazy countrymen.”

He raised the glass to his lips, then stopped, and looked at me out of the corners of his eyes. “You are not crazy, are you?”

I did not answer, but looked back at him, into his eyes. Then I smiled.

“Maybe all Americans are crazy!” he said to the women, and they all laughed.

“Maybe,” I said, smiling, and we drank down the vodka. “What is your name?” I asked the old man.

“Tomor,” he said. He pointed at the old woman, “Narantsetseg,” and at the young woman, “Bayanjargal.” Each of them smiled at me.

“Bayanaa,” the young woman said.

“Bayanaa,” I repeated.

“What is your name?” Bayanaa asked.

“Radnaa.”

“Oh, that is a nice name,” she said, turning to Narantsetseg, and laughed. She turned back to me. “What are you do—”

She interrupted herself as we heard the fast approach of a horse outside.

We were quiet. The women continued with their work. They had moved to the right side of the ger and were sitting on stools, not far from the door.

Tomor nodded at me. “That is Ganbold,” he said.

The horse pulled up outside, and we heard the rider dismount in a loud, two-footed jump to the ground. Some moments passed, and then the door of the ger swung open.

A young man bent through the short doorframe, then straightened up and looked directly at me, his mouth slightly agape.

I stood up from the table.

“Sain baina uu?” I said.

The young man stared at me. Finally he replied, “Sain, sain baina uu?”

“Sain,” I said, stepping forward, towards him, between the stove and the saddle rack. I had produced my tobacco bottle from within my deel and was unwrapping it. He saw this and reached into his deel and groped around. He pulled out his tobacco bottle and unwrapped it.

We exchanged bottles simultaneously with our right hands, in a handshake. The small, flat, glass bottles clacked as they came together.

We each opened the other’s bottle slightly and drew a loud breathe of the finely powdered tobacco into our noses. We replaced the caps and handed the bottles back to each other, again in a handshake, again clacking the bottles.

He pointed at the stool from which I had risen. “Sit down,” he said.

He moved around the stove opposite me. Tomor scooted over, and the young man seated himself on a stool next to him at the top of the table.

The young man looked at me. “You speak Mongolian?” he asked.

“I try.”

“He knows Mongolian well,” Tomor said as he leaned towards the young man.

“Where did you learn it?” asked the young man.

“In Ulaanbaatar.”

“Where are you from?”

“ANU-aas,” I said. From the U.S.A.

“Eh?” He didn’t understand.

“From America.”

“Why are you in Mongolia?”

“This is the most beautiful country in the world,” I said.

The young man blinked.

“Another crazy American,” Tomor said loudly, and he and the women laughed.

“What is your name?” asked the young man.

“Radnaa.”

“What?” the young man said.

“It is his Mongolian name,” Tomor said. “It is a good name. He is Buddhist,” he added.

“And yours?” I said to the young man.

“Ganaa.”

“Good to meet you,” I said.

“Yes, yes, good to meet you,” Ganaa replied, and smiled.

The untroubled atmosphere of the ger returned.

“Ganaa, how are your animals?” I asked.

“They are good, they are good,” he said.

Tomor and Ganaa began an earnest discussion of the day’s activities of the herd. Tomor looked at me, waved vaguely around the ger with his arm, and said, “Radnaa, sleep here tonight.”

“Zaa, zaa,” I said. Okay.

I went outside to unburden my horses. I set the saddle and pack and horseblankets on the ground near the door of the ger and opened the pack. I entered the ger with a round loaf of bread, a jar of blackcurrant jelly, and a half-liter bottle of vodka. I set the goods on the table.

The two glasses stood on the table in front of Tomor and Ganaa, filled with vodka. As I turned to go back outside, Ganaa nodded at me, raised his glass and tossed back the shot. He stood and followed me out the door.

Outside, I squatted next to my pack on the ground and found the hobbles. Standing, I turned to the uyaa. Ganaa had untethered all five horses, and held three of the leads in one hand and two in the other hand.

“Leave those there on the ground,” he said to me. He was leading the horses towards the tiny stream, which made no noise, not far from the ger.

I took my saddle and blankets into the ger, then split my pack and brought in half of it, and then the other half. I set it all on the floor of the ger in front of the saddle rack. The floor of the ger consisted of a carpet laid over the ground of the steppe.

I sat on the stool at the left side of the table. Tomor was using a knife to cut the moldy parts of crust from the bread. The knife had been sharpened so many times that the cutting edge of the blade formed an unlikely angle with the hilt.

“That bread is a bit old,” I said in apology.

“Zugeer, zugeer,” Tomor said dismissively, continuing to cut. It’s fine, it’s fine.

“Not as old as your knife, though,” I said with a grin.

Tomor grinned broadly. “Zugeer, zugeer,” he said as he lifted the bread in his hand and turned it over, inspecting it for remaining mold. Setting the bread on the table, he wiped each side of the blade of his knife on the heel of the palm of his left hand and then proffered the knife to me.

I took the knife with my right hand. I held the knife close to my face and conspicuously examined it.

“It is Russian,” Tomor said.

“Yes, yes,” I said. Near the hilt, “NOVOSIBIRSK” was stamped into the blade in Cyrillic letters.

“It is a good knife,” I said. I passed his knife into my left hand and pulled my knife from my right boot with my right hand. I positioned the back of the blade in my palm and held the handle out to Tomor. He took the knife.

“It is big,” he said.

“Yes, it is big.”

He turned the knife in his hands. “Sain baina,” he said and handed my knife back to me. I set my knife on the table and handed his knife back. He pushed his knife into his boot. I sliced the bread.

We were waiting for supper to be ready.

It was warm in the ger. I opened the flap of my deel and pushed my hat to the back of my head.

Tomor watched my movement. “Good hat,” he said.

“I like it. I like yours, too.” I thought our hats were similar.

“You are a cowboy,” the old man said and laughed.

I scooted my stool around the table, next to the old man. I put my arm about his shoulders. “Have another drink, Tomor,” I said. I took my arm back to uncap the bottle, then put it on his shoulders again as I poured the vodka into the glasses.

We drank the shots together, quickly. We set the glasses on the table. Within a few moments, Tomor filled the glasses again. “Drink, Radnaa,” he said. We lifted the glasses and downed them again. I wiped my lips on the sleeve of my deel.

The ger was warm and dusty and comfortable.

Ganaa came in carrying a saddle. Leaning over my pack, he placed the saddle on the saddle rack. He went out and came in again with the other saddle, then again with the saddleblankets. Then he sat at the table.

The women ladled stew into bowls. As Bayanaa set a bowl on the table in front of me, I asked her, “Why do you call him ‘enlightened’?”

She smiled, startled.

Tomor laughed, and answered, “Because he knows something that we do not know.”

I looked at Tomor.

He spooned mutton and noodles into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “He lives all alone out there. He does not herd. He does not trade. He knows something.”

“How does he live? What does he do?” I asked.

“He is a hunter,” Bayanaa piped.

“He hunts what?” Ganaa snapped his head towards her and spoke sharply. “There is nothing out there to hunt.” He made a noise in his throat and looked at the center of the table. “Except sheep,” he said.

“Have you seen him take sheep?” I asked. Tomor spread a wide grin across his face, and alternated his gaze between Ganaa and me.

I looked at Ganaa, quietly waiting for a reply. He was chewing, and his eyes were down, focused on his bowl. He lifted his eyes to mine, instantly averted them to Tomor’s face, and just as instantly tossed his gaze to the door of the ger. A reluctant smile crossed his face, and he said, “No, no.”

Tomor leaned towards me and again spoke in his conspiratorial tone. “Once, they watched him all day. A group of three. They hid and spied on him. But all he did was sleep! He left his camp after sundown. They followed, but he went over a rise and they could not find him again. The next day, he was back at his campsite.” He added as he straightened up, “No livestock have ever gone missing.”

“And they had better not,” Ganaa threatened.

“They have tried to follow him at night three times,” Tomor said. “But they have learned nothing about that Buddha!” Tomor laughed hard. Ganaa looked deep into his bowl and ate.

“Does no one know what he eats?” I asked.

Tomor wiped his eyes. “People have talked to him. He says he hunts animals at night. Araatan. Predators. But there are no wolves or bears here! And he has no gun! He is just crazy.”

“He does not take sheep. He has never been seen near a herd. No sheep have gone missing,” Bayanaa interjected eagerly.

“Maybe he eats grass,” Narantsetseg said.

We laughed, all of us.

“How long has he been out there?”

Tomor talked. “He was out there when we pitched the ger here this spring. No one knows how long he has been out there. No one knows where he spent the winter. He could not have been out there. He would have frozen to death.”

“He does not have a ger! He does not have a foreign tent! He sleeps on the ground,” Bayanaa exclaimed with emotion.

“He is crazy; do not worry about him,” Tomor said in his dismissive tone.

“He will die come winter,” Bayanaa said softly. Her face bore concern.

Ganaa was quiet, pushing bread into his bowl to sop up stew. Narantsetseg moved her spoon restlessly in her bowl, looked up and anxiously shifted her eyes from one person to another, then threw her eyes down and earnestly resumed eating. Tomor coughed.

“He is eating marmots or mice,” Tomor said, frowning. “Do not worry about him. He is just a crazy foreigner.”

After supper, the women cleared and cleaned the dishes. Ganaa pulled a battered pack of Mongolian cigarettes from his deel. He wordlessly offered a cigarette to Tomor and then to me, and we each wordlessly declined. Ganaa smoked his cigarette slowly.

Bayanaa excitedly presented a deck of playing cards. “Let’s play Mushgi,” she declared.

As she dealt and we began playing, Bayanaa asked me about the States, my life in Ulaanbaatar, what other countries I had been to, why I was riding alone through the steppe. Soon all interest in me was lost, however, replaced by fervent interest in the cards.

The evening passed with card playing and joking and drinking.

Several times, I ducked through the door to the outside, as did the others. When outside, I walked west and south of the ger and urinated.

During the evening, I determined that I wanted to find this “Buddha.”

I slept on the floor of the ger, on top of my bedroll. The night was cool. The fire died out and no one relit it. I slept wearing my deel, removing the sash and opening the deel. The cool air felt good on my chest and face. I had drunk much vodka.

We rose early the next morning. We breakfasted on milk tea and boiled mutton.

Ganaa rode away to the northwest, across the stream. The stream flowed feebly from the west, bending toward the north. I had approached the night before from the east.

A few sheep were visible at the northern draw of the valley.

I washed myself and filled my canteens in the stream and readied my horses.

Tomor stood outside the door of the ger and pointed at the empty land to the south. “That is where Buddha lives,” he said.

I smiled at the statement. “Zaa,” I replied.

The steppe to the south rolled away in small hummocks.

The early morning sun made our shadows long across the steppe. Even the shadows of the blades of grass were long, and the land appeared in patches light and then dark as the wind played with the grass.

“Bayartai,” I said to Tomor. Good-bye.

“Bayartai,” he said, smiling.

I rode up out of the shallow valley.

At the time, I did not know that the ger by the little stream was to be my last contact with reality as I had previously understood it.

Read Chapter Two of The Steppe

Chapter One of The Steppe

Chapter One