ELSA IN THE LAND OF ABRALY

“Elsa! I know there is no such country as Abraly.” Little Bruno looks patronisingly at his great-grandmother, “I googled all the countries. And mum said there is no such country!”
“Oh! Bruno, you used to trust me!” Elsa’s eyes – after eighty-seven years of life, faded from bright purple to faint blue – are laughing. “When did you stop trusting?!”

But she herself knows when. Both her grandson Henrich and her granddaughter-in-law Anna recently began to show condescension towards Elsa’s age, the condescension of youth towards the whims of the elderly. Bruno now feels that he and his beloved Elsa are equal; it turns out she also makes up stories and tells fibs. Just like him, sometimes.

Her grandson’s family came to Munich only three years ago, when Henrich was entrusted with supervising the local division of his firm. And Elsa lived in a suburb, in a big house. Alone. This house was designed and built by her husband, an architect famous across Germany. He’d been gone twenty years, but the warm house remained.

Both sons in different countries. Elsa had become used to solitude: her will is written, and even the contract with the Silver Age Retirement Home is signed, in case of complete infirmity. And now this gift: to see her grandson and great-grandson so often. They visit Elsa every weekend, sometimes with Anna. Bruno’s parents had already left him with his great-grandma twice, when they went on long trips. Together they are never bored – Elsa has so many stories! Although mum sometimes says that Elsa imagines some of them. Such things don’t happen. Also the great-grandma and the seven-year-old great-grandson love to argue with each other. They debate or compete as equals. Elsa never gives in; like Bruno, she loves to win. The old and the young!

“And also mum says that one mustn’t keep the bones of dead animals in the house. That this is barbarism.” Bruno observes Elsa with interest, now that the authority of her age is crumbling.
“Which bones does your mum have in mind?” Faded eyes continue to laugh, and fine, snow-white curls on her old head bounce in time with her laughter.

Bruno begins to understand that it is not so easy to shake Elsa’s authority.

He races up to the second floor, flies into his great-grandmother’s bedroom, grabs a carved wooden box from the chest of drawers and rushes down. In Elsa’s house Bruno can do anything, there is no corner that remains unexplored by him. He knows the contents of the box by heart. A piece of paper, folded in two and worn thin with age, is packed in transparent plastic. Unfamiliar letters barely show through. Elsa says they are Russian. She also says that this is the certificate of her freedom. An unevenly cut ribbon of fabric, also nearly rotten away. Elsa says that once she used to have braids once, and this ribbon was for them. But Bruno knows what real hair ribbons look like: satin or silk – in a word, smart. Like his mother’s.

And then there is this bone, which sits surprisingly comfortably in any palm, whether a child’s or an adult’s. Unevenly yellowed by time. Where there are depressions, the yellowing is strong and thick. Where there are bulges, it is weaker. Sometimes the bone seems light, other times it seems to grow heavier. Roughly polished by a thousand touches, the bone seems perfect despite its bizarre form. As perfect as anything created by nature. From Elsa Bruno has learned that it is a sheep bone.

“Here’s your knee. This bone is very important, it bends and unbends your leg.” Elsa explains to her grandson, “and this is a sheep’s knee.”
“So small?! And why do you keep it?”
“It’s my first victory, my great prize…”
“Tell me, tell me!” Bruno jumps up and down impatiently.
“Not now, dear, let the right time come…”
Today her great-grandson squeezes the bone in his hand with a serious, penetrating look into her eyes.

***

Telish looks into the pleading eyes of the seven-year-old Elsa, and nods his head for her to come with him. Spring has come to the village of Abraly a little late, as usual. But it has come all at once and almost dried out the land. The boys had agreed to meet in the spot where they used to play assyk before the war: on the outskirts of the village, behind the house of the herdsman Yelyubay. There is a large, well-trampled, almost flat yard there. The lanky Artyk, who is a friend of Telish, the village foreman’s son Social, and Koszhan, the eldest among the boys, are already there. When Social sees Telish with Elsa, he spits like an adult:
“What are you doing messing around with this pascist?!” He struggles with the foreign word. “Can’t you leave her at home?
“She’s a German, not a pascist. Father said so.”
“And that’s why your father is fighting who knows where against these Germans!” Telish clenches his fists. Since November there’d only been a single letter from his father.
“Will you play or not?” Koszhan interjects darkly, “I need to go for firewood.”

Koszhan is not much older than the others. Over the winter he has stretched out and now his skinny neck and long hands stick out of his short quilted jacket.

This is what happened to him in winter, while he was searching for stray sheep on horseback. A snowstorm broke out towards evening, and the boy got lost. The white steppe offered no landmarks. He rode in circles on his exhausted horse until by chance he stumbled across an abandoned sheepfold. There he waited out the storm. The letter informing of his father’s death had come the day before.

Elsa knows all of this because she listens to the conversations of grown-ups. Recently she has been hearing clear and coherent speech, where before there was only the strange, meaningless noise of a foreign tongue.

She also knows that the draw is about to begin. She had watched Telish in their yard, teaching his little brother Amantay how to play, and remembers everything. And so, the boys first get out their saka assyks. The saka is the main piece, larger than the other assyks. A good, lucky saka could even be traded for a leather whip, but the idea does not enter the boys’ minds. After all, it is saka that ensures your victory in a game of assyk. She also remembers that ‘alshy’ refers to the position of the assyk sideways, with the funny groove on top and the flat side facing down. ‘Buk’ is the position with the bulging side facing down. It is very easy to remember this, as the Kazakh word ‘buk’ sounds like it’s bulging. ‘Ompy’ is the vertical position of the assyk, when its ‘ears’ stick into the ground. Elsa had thought that the assyk could not fall like that, but Telish had shown her that it was easily possible. And ‘taikye’ is the opposite of ‘alshy’. There is also ‘shigye’ and ‘shonka,’ but Elsa still does not understand their positions.

The boys all throw their saka at the same time. The one whose piece falls into the alshy position starts the game. Two assyks fall into alshy at once – Social’s and Telish’s. Now they play against each other again for the right to start the game.

Elsa feels that Telish is good and honest, and Social is a snitch and a liar. Once their fathers had been friends. One called his firstborn Telman, in honour of the German Communist Thälmann, and the other Social, in honour of Socialism.

Social cries out joyfully – his saka falls into alshy again. Telish moves away to the side.

All of the assyks are already arranged in a row at a certain distance. The game begins…

As always, Koszhan knocks out the most assyks of all. He has an unusual saka, stronger and even slightly heavier than all the others. But the real reason, of course, is his dexterity and accuracy. Social is envious, and whispers that Koszhan has filled his saka with lead. But if it were true, the piece would be much heavier. And if Koszhan were to hear these claims, he would not care that Social’s father was an actual foreman. He’d give him a real thrashing.

Artyk also plays well, but always concedes a little to Koszhan. ‘Artyk’ means ‘superfluous,’ Elsa translates for herself. He has a superfluous sixth finger on his right hand, right next to the thumb. Artyk’s grandfather, the huge bearded Ynsangozha, also has an extra digit, but on his foot. Telish has said that it skips a generation. If Artyk’s father had had it, he would not have been sent to the front and he would be alive now. Social says that Artyk plays assyk dishonestly. That his extra thumb helps him knock them out. But Elsa knows that this is not so. She carefully observes how everyone plays. The extra finger has nothing to do with it.

Telish has no luck at all today – he loses more assyks than he knocks out. And now everyone is keeping the sheep safe, no one is slaughtering them. It will take a long time to restore his numbers without new bones. He feels especially sorry to lose the pair of assyks his father polished, the edges filed down for stability and painted. A pity!

The game comes to its end. Elsa tugs on the sleeve of the disappointed Telish and gestures to the saka. The game is already over, could she knock out an assyk once?

The boys laugh: “The mute pascist wants to help the player with the best aim in our village!” Social’s tone is mocking.
“Yes, alright!” Koszhan magnanimously allows, “let her throw one time.” And for fun he puts his own famous saka in line with the other assyks. It becomes even funnier. Even Telish smiles and condescendingly hands Elsa his piece.

The girl moves the required distance away, goes down on one knee, closes one eye and takes aim. At that moment, a wide beam of sunlight falls from the clouds. The whole scene sparkles. The bare steppe beyond the small Kazakh village of Abraly. The land exuding the damp smells of spring. The boys, emaciated and grown-up after the first winter of the war. Their old sheepskin coats and quilted jackets forever imbued with the animal smells of wool and manure. Children who remembered that they are children and came here to play. The girl with thin, whitish hair the colour of feather grass, and eyes the colour of a bright sky who had suddenly appeared here.

Elsa throws the piece. It flies, tumbling through the air. It flies fast, yet seems slow. So slow that Elsa remembers everything.

First tumble. The sun’s glare on the polished bone sides. She remembers that they took her father away, somewhere. That her older sisters Anna and Maria wept, and Elsa did not yet understand. That the next day mum said dejectedly: “Children, I was fired.”

Second tumble. The sunbeam reaches the funny notch on the alshy. Elsa remembers how the word ‘war’ entered their lives and she came to understand that being German was bad and dangerous. She remembers that she, her mum, and her sisters had packed up in one day. That on a cold autumn day they were loaded onto a special train full of Germans. The only survivors of those freight cars were the ones who packed properly, taking warm clothes. Her mum had been a music teacher, she did not know how to get ready in the right way. Anna and Maria died first, from cold, hunger, and sickness like the other children. Their bodies remained somewhere near Orenburg. Before that, Elsa’s mum took off their coats and put them over Elsa. And then, after taking off all of her own warm clothes as well, her mum died. Elsa should have died too, but didn’t have time. After a month and a half of travelling, the train arrived in Kazakhstan, at the destination.

Third tumble. The saka assyk, swimming in the bright tunnel of sunlight, slowly but steadily approaches its aim. Elsa remembers how in Semipalatinsk she was handed over to Telish’s father half-alive, with the words: “Here are her papers, assigned to Abraly.” How she realised that she was speechless, unable to squeeze out a sound. How she quietly whined at night. How Raziya would put aside her sleeping infant daughter and pull Elsa towards her. “Tss, tss,” she soothed the transparent-white girl and softly sang in an unknown language. Elsa pressed up against her, trying to warm herself. How Raziya’s four children lay in a row, generously giving their mother over to a strange girl. How Raziya roughly cut a piece from her own colourful calico scarf and wove it into Elsa’s braid as a ribbon.

In this moment Telish’s saka assyk tumbles for the final time and flies to its goal, knocking down Koszhan’s saka assyk. Everyone freezes. Then Koszhan pulls himself together and hands what had been his saka to Elsa. She approaches Telish and in her outstretched palm holds out to him her saka, her prize. Telish does not look at it, shaking his head no. He just silently gathers her hand into a fist. Inside lies the sun-warmed assyk.

How quickly Elsa runs! Even faster than the wind! In the yard stands Raziya, shading her eyes with her palm. Oh, Allai! What is this girl Elsa screaming about? Maybe I’m imagining it? After all, she’s mute.

But the girl flies in screaming “Apa, Apa! Men uttym! Mum, mum! I won!”

The fourth spring comes to the village of Abraly early, and by May it is almost summer on the steppe. The elders say that it had been twenty years since they had seen such a sudden and early spring. By all indications, even Quralai, the few cold days in the month of May during lambing, will not be so cold as usual this year.

Elsa runs so fast that now she could have overtaken even Yelyubay, the fastest boy in the village.

Her blonde hair is dishevelled because the ribbons, cut from Raziya’s old headscarf and woven into the braids, have long since unravelled and been left to lie on the dusty road. The wind loves to playfully pull Elsa’s curls, which resemble the white-gold silky feather-grass. So different from the thick Kazakh braids the colour of raven’s wings!

Elsa is out of breath, but the wind affectionately and persistently blows on her back like a sail, urging on and speeding up her run: “Run, Elsa! Run! Look, I am helping you! Faster, faster!”
The girl’s bare legs are lashed by the shrubs with little blue flowers. In the village they are called Kök Köz, Blue Eyes, for their ultramarine flowers. These flowers used to be jealous of Elsa’s eyes: now purple with alarm, now bright blue with joy. After all, this girl was now also known as Kök Köz, and the flowers have lost their exclusivity against a background of black-brown Kazakh eyes.

But now they too urge her on in a friendly manner, their petals fluttering: “Run, Elsa, run! Our branches will not hinder you!”

And in her pocket the assyks clatter excitedly. They never thought that Elsa would learn to play with them! And now, just you look at that… She’s so skilfull that she wins against many of the boys. The most important piece – the saka assyk – knocks loudest of all. With it Elsa had collected four new assyks that morning – the snitch Oraz almost burst into tears with frustration!

Jostling inside the small pocket, the assyks thunder: “Run, Elsa, run! Today you are the most skilful and fast!”

She arrives at the edge of the village, Kara Kampir standing at her gate. “Äy, Älzä! Äy, nemis qız, ne boldı? Oh Elsa, Oh German girl, what’s going on?” She asks excitedly.
But Elsa cannot even slow down and, waving her hand, runs on further. The village dogs accompany the girl with joyful barks: “Run, Elsa, run! We know why you run so quickly!”
Raziya, her hand raised to her forehead, cannot hear Elsa from such a distance, but sees her cry out: “Apaa, Apaa!!! Muum, muum!”

Elsa flies into the yard:
“Apaa! Apaa! Soğıs ayaqtaldı! Muum! Muum! The war is over!”

***

Bruno unclenches his palm. The bone has acquired history and meaning. And it is still warm, as if alive. Because he had squeezed it so hard, probably.

“Elsa, when you die, can I take this assyk for myself?”
“Of course my dear!” Elsa smiles, “I would be glad that it’s in safe hands.”

Perhaps this will happen soon, Elsa thinks. After all, yesterday she had dreamed of Raziya. She was standing, young and beautiful as she had been then, cupping her palm above her eyes. And Raziya smiled silently and looked at little Elsa.