The children learned only later what happened next. No matter how long we lurked around the yurt and how often we slipped past its open door, we had to content ourselves with unintelligible shreds of the conversation carried on inside. It was an exciting conversation, though. The names of children from our ail popped up again and again, which naturally increased our curiosity and desire. How could anybody think of play, let alone of the calves that had to be herded? But sadly, sadly, the guest whom we still believed to be a darga—which is why our noses were so clean that even Marshal Choibalsan could have inspected them—spilled over into Mongolian whenever he raised his voice.

As we would later learn, he was actually a public school teacher in the process of recruiting children for his school. In the chrome-leather bag that he carried on a shining strap over his shoulders and that dangled next to his right thigh, he carried the names of all Tuvan children who the dargas at the sum center guessed might have turned eight.

Among them were six names from our ail, three of whom were children of Sama’s: Marshaa, Dshanik, and Tögerik. The first two were grown up: Somebody had courted Marshaa as a bride for his son, and Dshanik, the future sum elephant, had long ago joined the men who loaded the oxen whenever we moved. Until a year before, though, both had been considered seven-year olds, along with their younger sister, who actually might have been seven. And so it was entirely understandable that all three of them were now summoned to start school together. But Uncle Sama promptly declared the bride and the wrestler altogether too old for school, while his third child again stayed seven. Try as he might, the teacher had no luck.

The next two children in question—the girl Gökbasch and the boy Sambyy—belonged to Aunt Buja. Their father, Uncle Sargaj, had by now already twice greeted the man with the shoulder bag as a representative of the state, first in front of his own yurt and then inside Uncle Sama’s yurt, where both times he had stood to attention and had bowed deeply, demonstrating his reverence with broken Mongolian and repeated offerings of his lit brass pipe. He now eagerly agreed to all the teacher’s requests.

“Of course both children will attend school,” he said, nodding constantly.

“But last time when the sum representative and teacher was here, you were just as agreeable, weren’t you?” asked our visitor, the man who this year himself embodied the two roles he had just named.

“But, Comrade Sum Representative and Teacher, I did send the boy, Comrade Sambyy, to school.”

“But, Comrade Sargaj, you did not send the girl, Comrade Gökbasch, to school.”