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By Dogmid Baljiriin, a writer
Old Baldan was slowly riding home. He just has been to the top of the nearby Steppe
Mountain, worshipping the nature, lighting incentives and making offerings. A carpet of
steppe carpet was now slowly rolling in front of him. Early spring was silent, and not
even birds’ cries can be heard. Only dry grasses waived under a slow breeze.
The steppe was drowning in a haze as if being lullabied. Baldan’s old horse with
sleepy eyes was slowly protruding on her old and stiff legs. Human soul softens toward the
evening of life and the observance of commandments and rituals takes over the priority
over daily duties and body needs. Following this imperative Baldan woke up earlier this
morning to greet the rising sun on the top of the Steppe Mountain. He felt fulfilled after
observing the rituals, and while riding was in deep thoughts about the fragile balance
between sins and deeds in the human‘s life.
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Suddenly, his horse lifted her ears and softly whined. Baldan was very surprised as the
mare was too old and lost any interest in the surrounding world. Even a rabbit jumping out
from beneath her hooves would not surprised her. What was there that made even her to
whine? Looking around Baldan spotted in distance a gray silhouette of an animal. “It
does not move. . . is it a tethered horse?” thought Baldan as both curiosity and fear
send a chilly cold wave across his spine. Fear of something terrible coming swallowed him
as he approached the horse, thin from fatigue and standing as if sleeping.
Only seeing small snowdrifts around the horse’s hooves, Baldan realized that the
horse is long dead*. His eyes passed through the horse thigh, and his whole body suddenly
jerked as if seeing someone long dead resurrecting from a graveyard. On the horseback, he
clearly saw his own clan’s totem: a moon crescent and three flames of fire.
Baldan’s legs gave up and he just sunk down to ground. He slowly took out his pipe.
The pipe’s cold jade mouthpiece burned his tongue and teeth gum. As long as he can
remember, he never sold a horse, not even to relatives. Then he suddenly recalled a
distant shadow.
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Many years ago, his old mare gave birth to a colt that was so fast that he easily won
the Naadam race, leaving all other far behind and making everyone gape. As elders say, too
much admiration also brings trouble. Immediately after the Naadam Festival, a stranger
from faraway place began to frequent his gher, offering large amount of money for the
young horse. At the end, Baldan could not resist and traded the horse for an exquisite
smoking pipe with a jade end.
“How foolish I was! Exchanged the blessing of fate just for a dead stone. And what
do I have now? A bad cough and black phlegm…” “When I will die, people will
find the pipe beneath my pillow and it will continue to poison others. Otherwise, I would
have many horses now. As for Red Haired, well, so was his destiny to end days in the
native land, with the head on the Steppe Mountain.
”Old Baldan could not take off his eyes of the dead horse, which in his turn also
seemed to look from beneath frozen eyelashes as if sharing the grievance of the old man.
Tears slowly made their way across man’s deep wrinkles. “10,000 tugriks, by that
time unheard money, were offered for this horse, but I traded it for nothing, for a
useless piece of stone,” Baldan’s eyes stopped at the pipe in his hand. Suddenly
he waved and smashed it over a rock edge he was sitting in. Through tears, he saw how
stone fragments sparkled in snow bristling in sunshine.
This encounter with the past happened in time when soft blows of the waking nature call
the hearts of men and horses to native lands wherever the fate takes them.
Dogmid Baljiriin, the State Prizewinner in Literature, was born in Eastern Gobi, where
he worked for more than 20 years as an accountant. He calls himself a rural writer and
remains loyal to the theme of the ongoing nomadic world. Richard Geer, a well known
Hollywood star, plans soon to produce a film based on the script written by B.Dogmid
“Long Live Marshal Choibalsan!” about the tragedy of the political repression of
30s. He now works as a writer at one of the capital city newspapers.
* Translator’s remark: Horses and sheep freeze standing. And in Mongolian
tradition a true man also dies standing. |
