On Monday morning, Monkho sat alone in the conference room, popping tiny curls of sweet curd into his mouth and staring at his cellphone lying face down on the table. His mind churned from the previous night’s spat with his wife, but his body warmed from the digestion of Curuud, a product he had co-designed and had a bottomless supply of in the company kitchen. At the sound of shuffling feet in the hall beyond the doorway, he pocketed his phone, picked his teeth, and pushed curd crumbs off the striated veneer of the large conference table.
His colleagues trickled in: the chipper executive assistant scurrying around and lobbing handouts onto the table; stylish youths from sales conjecturing about the prospects of rain; stern faces from accounting and transportation grunting greetings and yawning like lions.
Then came the production folks, often called the “white coats”. They hadn’t come to the meeting in a white coat per se – that was strictly attire for the manufacturing facility – but their button-down shirts and woolen sweaters oozed scents of sanitizer and sour milk; so, smell-wise, they might as well have been sitting here in laboratory garments.
An elderly man slumped into the seat across from Monkho and folded his arms over the table like a middle school student. It was Ravjaa, the head of the dairy production department. He rested his eyeglasses over his grizzled, combed-over hair, directing his solemn, pockmarked face to colleagues on either side, then the agenda in front of him, and then to Monkho.
Monkho managed a smile, then let his eyes be drawn back to the printouts in front of him. The white coats were a terrifying bunch, but, surely, he thought, after the Curuud campaign, he had gained their respect.
As the teams settled in – department heads and senior specialists around the table, juniors and assistants on the row of chairs against the walls – Director Chimgee hurried in, and the chatter died down.
A middle-aged woman, seen in pantsuits of varying muted colors and a perennial ponytail, Chimgee was a relatively new implant to the company, poached from a rival food and beverage giant by the now-elusive founder, post-IPO, to bring professionalism and productivity to the company. And thus far, she had delivered it, tolerating no buffoonery and docking salaries judiciously. With his direct supervisor on maternity leave, Monkho was now the head of the department and directly reporting to Chimgee.
Over forty people waited with bated breath as the director unclasped her leather notebook. She cleared her throat, looked around, and asked, “Where’s Monkho?”
Monkho, who sat at the farthest end on her left side, raised his hand.
“Can you see me in my room? We have to talk about something.” There was an accusatory note in her decidedly neutral voice.
All eyes shifted from the director to Monkho, who nodded timidly, mortified by being called out like that.
The director lurched up from her seat and minced toward the door. Monkho’s stomach twisted in knots. His head spun as he stood and walked.
Couldn’t she have brought it up after the meeting? His office was two doors down from hers.
As they entered the director’s room, she told him to close the door.
“Your wife, Shüre, called the office this morning,” she said.
Now it dawned on Monkho what this was going to be about. His heart skipped a beat. “Oh?”
“She got through to me, and asked me why you didn’t get a raise. Said you do too much work for the same pay.”
His face heated like an induction oven. “Well, I can explain–”
“I told her there must be a misunderstanding. Because you did get a raise with your promotion. Three months ago.”
“She doesn’t…” Monkho muttered, scrambling for a way to save face. “She doesn’t know about it because it’s a… surprise.” The trail-off at the end made his statement sound like a question.
Monkho wanted to explain the actual reason, but where could he begin? And was this the right time and the right place?
“A surprise?” asked Chimgee.
“Y-yes.” Monkho smiled sheepishly.
“Like you’re saving up your money to buy her something?”
“I am.”
The director frowned at him quizzically. “Have you talked to her yet?”
He shook his head as he fished his phone from his pocket. Eight missed calls.
“Then I’m so sorry about this,” Chimgee said. “I’ve told her.” She drew up her mouth and shrugged, as if to say, Don’t blame me. It’s all your mess.
“That’s okay,” Monkho managed to muster, wiping sweat from his forehead. “I’ll handle it.”
Back in the conference room, the stares gathered on Monkho like a swarm of laser sights.
“Za, let’s begin,” the director addressed the rest of the group and studied the agenda, and everyone else followed suit. The sales guys spoke up, tentatively muttering numbers related to the projected quarter. Their words were trailed closely by the pitter-patter of typing by the assistant in the back.
Monkho found himself seated, his arms under the table, palms up and fingers splayed, pushing up against the underside of the table. The coolness of the wooden furniture kept him anchored. He dreaded the thought of checking his phone again. How could he explain himself? What could he tell his wife now? He had been caught, plain and simple.
Monkho was the eldest son in a family of five. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Modon, had met and conceived Monkho while studying forest engineering at the National University of Agricultural Sciences around 1988. Two years later, the People’s Republic of Mongolia started the painful transition to just Mongolia, kicking off a tumultuous decade that created a generation of disillusioned and disturbed souls.
Mr. and Mrs. Modon, being of sound mind and body, had tried like any other Mongolian to embrace capitalism. But owing to some bad habits and the scarcity mindset – not just of them but the whole country – the couple’s efforts to find affluence always ended with less than the initial capital. Trying their hands at business after business, they had racked up debt after debt, burning bridge after bridge.
As the eldest, Monkho was often assigned the tedious chore of babysitting his younger siblings. Forbidden from helping his parents, he had only his school to focus on. He hated it.
By the mid-2000s, his father, unable to work for anyone, spent his days as a mobile mechanic, and his mother, increasingly bitter towards her husband, wrote recipe books and haunted hospitals for various ailments. When Monkho attended a college in Hungary, his parents had sent him a monthly allowance of $100, footing the remaining bills after a hefty scholarship.
Upon return, he found his parents struggling. Sending any of his younger siblings abroad was out of the question. He couldn’t help but feel guilty – and responsible – for them.
He hopped between jobs, each time getting higher pay, coming out as more experienced, until he had landed at this food and beverage company. Finally, he thought, I’m going to pay back my parents, contribute to the bills.
But then he met Shüre and got her pregnant.
With equal measure of dread and excitement, they planned their future together. With her parents’ tacit support, they secured a mortgage for a small apartment in Youth Town, a string of kitschy, five-story buildings resting on an escarpment along the Tuul river. When the novelty of the nubbly wallpaper, boutique storefronts, and double-loaded stair towers faded, they realized that the whole neighborhood was at risk of being wiped out by a minor flood.
Monkho wanted to provide for his two families, the old and new one, with the latter requiring a more exclusive commitment. The cognitive dissonance ate away at him. His parents hadn’t had a stable job, hadn’t paid social insurance, and were therefore ineligible for a pension. Then there were his younger siblings, who, with fewer opportunities and more exposure to their parents’ fights during their formative years, couldn’t really finish school with solid grades, much less a scholarship abroad.
On the other hand, his wife had left her job at an international development project to give birth to their baby boy. Half of his meager salary went to the mortgage, a quarter to bills, and the rest to groceries. It wasn’t nearly enough. Monkho knew that if he worked hard, he would eventually advance in his career.
Three years passed, and Monkho’s career was stuck; the only person making strides was his toddler. Shüre would nag him about getting extra jobs – it was her parents who were taking his son out of the city, away from the winter smog, her parents who were buying the necessary clothes, the diapers – not Monkho’s.
Monkho resented it when Shüre brought up the fact that his parents didn’t support them. He resented it to the point that after receiving a raise, he avoided telling her about it and diverted the extra bump to his youngest brother for his college tuition.
And now, seated at the conference table with tense shoulders and a red face, quietly listening to his colleagues’ discussion, Monkho deliberated on a way out of this mess. Every potential income of his was already accounted for. Even if he found a new gig, the time taken away from the family would draw suspicion. How was he going to find the missing money? Should he get it back from his brother? After all, as his wife insisted, it was his parents’ responsibility to pay the tuition, not his. But he was the eldest in the family, and the only one earning a decent salary. No, he would find another way.
(…to be continued…)
Transadaptation Volume 6 – Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted
January: A Regular Train Trip – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)
February: Growing Up – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)
March: Mess – Veronika Groke (Austria)
April: The Roads We Take – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
May: Need – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)
June: “Next Sunshine” – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
July: Intentions – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
August: Planet Kyiv – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)
September: Feeling like a Fool – Ulrike Bergmeister (Germany)
October: Stories of Outcast Souls – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
November: Ronaldinha – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)
December: Aimlessly – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Background photo: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – From above – Altansukh (Unsplash)
Left to right at top: 1. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – The high rises – Anonymous (Shutterstock); 2. Erdenet, Mongolia – A city street – Pecoid (Shutterstock); 3. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – An autumn day – Munkhtevshin (Unsplash)
Left to right in middle: 1. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – A winter weekday – Anonymous (Shutterstock); 2. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – From the car – Keleny (Shutterstock)
Left to right at bottom: 1. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – Residential highrises – Seewhybee (Shutterstock); 2. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – In the capital – Anonymous (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed