There was a primary school teacher from Chorgul, which is a village in the valley above Tash-Bulak, Fergana province for as long as it was Fergana province. The teacher had taught for thirty-one years in the same classroom, the second on the right as you come in, and in thirty-one years he changed the portrait above the blackboard and never the desk in front of the window. Above the blackboard there is nothing now, because the old portrait he had taken down himself and the new one was taken down officially, on two different mornings. The bell he kept in a drawer of his desk, brass, with a wooden handle worn on one side only, because he rang it with his right hand. With his right hand he also wrote the names in the register, and the names in the register that year were twenty-three. Twenty-three children for a place of a little more than two thousand five hundred people, counting Tash-Bulak too, are few, as they had been saying in the village for a good while. In the village the school is one school for the two villages, and the ones from Tash-Bulak come by the low road, which floods at the bridge in winter.

The news of the exchange came twice. The first time it was a line on the radio, which spoke of an agreement between the two countries and of land passing this way and that; the second time it was a man with a briefcase, come from Osh, who measured the school yard with a tape measure and left without drinking his tea. The tea had been offered to him, but he said he had other villages. The other villages were further down, toward the canal; of those the teacher heard nothing more. The bell in those weeks stayed in the drawer; in the drawer it had been since June, since the school closes in June, without anyone hearing it.

After the man with the briefcase came the forms; the forms said that whoever stayed took the new citizenship and whoever left had until autumn. Until autumn the brother telephoned every Sunday. The brother lives in Fergana, he is a carpenter, and on the third Sunday he said he was coming to fetch him with a brother-in-law's van. The brother-in-law had the van and the pass for the crossing; the teacher had his father's house and twenty-three children. Of the twenty-three, four left in August with their families, and the others let it be known that they were staying. Of the four families one went to Andijan, of the others it was not known where.

In the middle of these things they came to plant the posts. The posts they planted in three days, behind the school garden, where a goat path used to run. The goat path now ends against a post, and the goats go around it from above. Whose goats those were is not on record.

In July the new curriculum arrived. The new curriculum was in Kyrgyz for three subjects out of five, and for history it was another book, with another republic inside it. The teacher speaks Kyrgyz the way they speak it in his part of the country, which is to say for buying and for greeting, not for explaining rivers to children in the third year. He asked what language he was to teach the second hour in. They did not answer him in writing, and by word of mouth they told him to wait for the registration.

On the third of August they opened the registration in the council hall, which in winter serves for weddings and in summer for nothing. In the hall they had put two tables, one for the forms, the other for the photographs, and a woman from Osh who wrote the names by hand because the computer was not taking any current. The teacher arrived with the bell under his arm, and this was told by the ones who were in the queue. The form had two boxes at the top and a single line at the bottom. On the two boxes at the top he set the bell, which held the paper still, and below, on the line at the bottom, he wrote his name in full with the pen of the woman from Osh, which was a ballpoint tied to the table with a piece of string, and the signature came out short because the line was short. The woman from Osh asked him whether he wanted to read it over, and he said he had read the part he needed, which is to say the line where the name of the school was written. The school on the form had a new number and the same address as before. The brother was not there that day. The brother was to come on the Friday, and the Friday was four days off. Of the Friday the teacher spoke to no one in the queue. In the queue the others were waiting, and he went out with the bell under his arm, as he had come in.

On the Friday the brother came with the brother-in-law's van and stopped in front of the school. In front of the school they stayed an hour, and of that hour it is not known what they said to each other, because they were alone and neither of the two told it afterward. The van left again toward Fergana with the kitchen chairs and without the teacher, and the chairs were four, of pale wood, with the straw redone one time only. The teacher stayed on with the bell and with the half-empty house, and the half-empty house he left that way afterward too.

Since that Friday he rings at eight. At eight in August the yard is empty, the school has been closed since June, and of the second hour in September it is not yet known what language it will be in. The bell is heard by whoever hoes the garden behind the posts. Whoever hoes the garden behind the posts starts early and stops with the heat, and says the sound carries as far as the low road, the one that goes down to the canal. Of the villages beyond the canal the teacher heard nothing more, and from there no one has come to say whether it is heard. Whoever hoes the garden behind the posts hears it every morning.