Then she gave her blessings. They were for Father and Mother and their children, and for all the people in the ail and in the aimag. Afterward she began to sing the praises of the Altai and its mountains, steppes, valleys, rivers, lakes, and forests, and of the sky above. Having heard them from the grownups and used them myself when I had the opportunity, I had long known these hymns by heart, so I noticed that Grandma confused a few lines. They were meant to praise the sky but suddenly addressed the earth.

It much astonished me because such a mistake was not unheard of with other people, but it certainly was with Grandma. Yet I listened with delight and even piety and conviction to everything that was said in the quiet of the night in the dim, quivering light of the quiet dung fire, oil lamp, and dshula. Then her voice broke off, and I thought Grandma wanted to sigh because she breathed out loudly, and then sucked in her breath equally loudly and slowly. Then there was quiet. This was a different quiet from the one that had been there before in small fragments and had filled the breaks between Grandma’s lines. Cold and hot waves of this quiet that now resembled a void washed over me—I could feel the heat and the cold as clearly as if I had sat between the burning stove and the open door. But this quiet did not last long. Father broke it: “Höörküj awam dshoj bardy oj!”—Poor sister has left!

He had whispered loudly, which may be why it sounded frightening, as if he had hissed. Mother jumped: “Uj dshüü didri sen?!”—Oh, what are you saying?

These two exclamations of shock are locked in my memory like incantations, and, along with rhymes, proverbs, songs, and other well-shaped sayings, have accompanied me through life without being dulled by the passage of time, without losing their rough edges and thus becoming crippled or a deformed and impassive mass.

I sat up. I wanted to see better and to find out for sure whether Grandma had really left, as Father had just claimed, or was still there, as it seemed to me. I saw that she still sat there and was leaning back with her eyes closed as if in thought. At that moment Father noticed me. He gestured to Mother, who came over, pulled me back by my shoulders, tucked me into the fur ton I had lain in before, and whispered firmly: “Stay put and go back to sleep!” She took my rolled-up ton, which had served her as a pillow, and placed it in front of my head to block my view.

Bewildered and cowed, I could not find the courage to push aside the ton. Instead I lay still and listened. There was nothing for me to do but pick up the sounds of what was happening on the other side and translate them into what my other senses might take in. And so I figured that Grandma was being undressed and her clothes bundled up, that Mother was sewing something.…Then I was overcome by sleep….