Again Grandma agreed with Father, and Mother had to keep quiet. Right then, Uncle Sargaj, with his pipe already between his lips and Aunt Buja’s coat around his shoulders, stepped out of his yurt. He had taken hardly ten steps when he stopped, spread his legs, and peed. While he was peeing, he kept his body straight and calm but kept turning his head. I knew he was looking at the distant mountains and the sky above. And so he did not seem to notice us as we walked past him only a lasso’s length away. Brother admonished me quietly: “Don’t look. One mustn’t look when grown-ups relieve themselves.” I tried to defend myself: “I only looked at his pipe!” But I obeyed at once and afterward only listened to the high-pitched hiss of his pee, which went on for quite some time. It always took Father a long time, too, even longer, really. But Father walked farther away, and instead of standing, he knelt. So mostly you didn’t hear anything.

Grandma stood next to the dung heap and waited for us. She remarked that the baskets were full and that the pieces of dung glistened gray and were hard and dry. This was praise for Brother and Sister. I tried to draw her attention to my own contribution: “And I watched that nothing fell off, Grandma!”

“That’s what I just said!” she reassured me. I could see the soft little smile in the middle of her upper lip.

And that is how our day began.

In the afternoon a darga appeared at the edge of the steppe. Even before they could make out his clothes, people recognized him by the way he sat on his horse. He sat across the saddle on one of his thighs. Soon they were also able to identify his clothes: the peaked cap, the high boots, and the shoulder bag, all gleaming in the sun. The chrome-leather bag at his side swung forward and backward to the rhythm of his horse’s gallop, like a young black goat charging a stake and bucking.

In those days, people held dargas in a kind of sacred awe. All of a sudden, life in the ail quickened. Men hunted for their sleeves which they had taken off their coats now that it was warm again—after the cool days up in the summer camp—down in the fall camp. Women picked up pieces of clothing and whatever else was lying around—and that during the course of the day had turned into a mess—so they could put everything where it belonged or could be hidden. And the children were sent for water and dung, and reminded to blow their noses and behave themselves in front of the darga.