Wolf Totem: A Novel

by Jiang Rong

But Bao grabbed the old man’s hands. “Some of your good luck might rub off on me with a little of that wolf blood, and some of your glory.”

  The old man’s face darkened. “Please don’t talk about such things as glory. The greater the glory, the deeper my sins. This cannot happen again. If there are any more hunts like this, the wolves will disappear, and the gazelles, the ground squirrels, the rabbits, and the marmots will rise up. That will be the end of the grassland, and will infuriate Tengger. We and our livestock will pay dearly.” He raised his bloody hands to Tengger in fear and trepidation.

  With an embarrassed laugh, Bao turned to look at Erlang, covered with blood. “Is that the wild dog I’ve heard about?” he asked emotionally. “He’s so big it’s scary. I watched him fight from up on the slope. A real tiger. He was first to charge the wolf pack. He killed one of its leaders and scared off most of the others. How many wolves did he kill altogether?”

  “Four,” Chen replied.

  “A hell of a dog!” Bao remarked. “I’d heard you had a big, wild, sheep-killer of a dog. People complained that you were making a mockery of grassland rules and wanted me to have the dog killed. Well, I’m in charge here, and I say keep that dog and make sure it’s well fed and well taken care of. If he kills any more sheep in the future, I’ll spare him. But the skins of sheep he kills will belong to the commune and you’ll have to pay for the meat.”

  Chen and Yang happily agreed to the conditions. “We students didn’t kill a single wolf, which means we’re not the equal of dogs, and certainly not this one.” Everyone laughed, even the other students.

  “That doesn’t sound like something a Chinese would say,” Uljii said with a laugh.

  Bilgee was visibly pleased. “This youngster respects the grassland; he’ll be one of us someday.”

  The battlefield was strewn with pale wolf carcasses and stained with their blood. Patches of fur above their paws were all that remained of their coats. Bao had the hunters gather them up and stack them to form the character jing, , for a well. When they were finished, the three dozen or so dead wolves were stacked nearly head high. Bao brought out his camera and took pictures from four or five angles. Then he had the successful hunters raise their trophies and stand on both sides of the stacked carcasses. More than thirty hunters held their pelts high, tails hanging to the ground, with the badly injured, blood-covered assassin dogs crouching in front of their masters, steam rising from their bodies. Bao asked Chen to take a picture with him in the center, holding up the biggest pelt of all. Bilgee stood there, a pelt draped over his right arm, his head lowered, and a sad smile on his face. Chen snapped two pictures.

  Bao stepped forward and turned to the hunters in front of him. “As representative of the Banner Revolutionary Committee,” he said, “and commander of the military district, I thank you all! You are heroes of the wolf hunt, and your pictures will be in the papers in a few days. I want all people to see with their own eyes the wolf scourge of the Olonbulag, to see how many wolves were killed in a single hunt, wolves that came mainly from Outer Mongolia and were the perpetrators of the warhorse massacre. I also want to tell them that the Olonbulag officials, herdsmen, and Chinese students did not bow down before those wolves and that, thanks to steely determination and careful organization, they counterattacked with a vengeance. This extermination campaign has just begun, and we are confident it will continue until every Olonbulag wolf is dead.”

  Bao ended his speech by thrusting his hand in the air and proclaiming, “We won’t stop fighting until all the jackals are dead!”

  There was no reaction from anyone except for Dorji’s family and a few of the students. Bao disbanded the hunting party. The people sat down to rest and wait for Batu.

  As he sat cross-legged on the ground, Bao said to Uljii, “The border situation is very tense, and my superiors are pressing me to organize a militia and begin training. It was an unexpected stroke of good luck that this hunt produced some hand-to-hand combat.”

  “Grassland Mongols are born fighters,” Uljii said. “Give them a weapon and they’ll join the fight. This hunt has provided you with a double victory: the killing of wolves and the training of troops. I say write up two summary reports, and that will satisfy your superiors.”

  The Chinese students crowded around Chen Zhen and Yang Ke to look at their pelts and touch them enviously. A student named Wang Junli said, “If you two hadn’t taken in this dog, we students would have no face at all. We’d be nothing but a bunch of retainers to the Mongol cavalry.”

  Chen said, “We Chinese have never had the fighting skills or courage of nomads, and when others are your betters, you do well to learn from them. We’ve been given the rare opportunity to serve as retainers to the herdsmen when they fight wolves.”

  With a superior tone of voice, Wang said, “Sure, nomads have made many incursions into the Central Plain. But both times they ruled the nation they eventually surrendered to the advanced culture of the Chinese, didn’t they? The grasslanders have had their moments of grandeur, but in the end they haven’t moved beyond the talent of shooting birds out of the sky with bows and arrows, and can display only military might.”

  “You might be right,” Chen countered. “But be careful when you place the civil over the military. Without military might, the most glorious culture ever will eventually be reduced to rubble. The civil control of the Han and Tang dynasties was founded on military might. Just think how many great civilizations throughout the world have come to ruin at the hands of backward but militarily strong races. Even their written and spoken languages were lost as a result. You’re wrong when you say the Han civilization destroyed the backward grassland people, for they’ve retained their language, their totemic faith, and their traditional customs. Khrushchev tried to supplant the Kazakhstan nomadic culture with Russian agriculture and industry. And what happened? One of the world’s great grasslands is now a desert.”

  Seeing that the combative male students were on the verge of another argument, the student Sun Wenjuan spoke up. “Okay,” she said, “that’s enough. We hardly ever get to see each other, since our flocks are so far apart. Let’s not ruin this reunion by fighting. You guys turn into wolves as soon as you come to the grassland, nipping at each other nonstop!”

  Erlang, clearly uncomfortable with people putting their hands all over his pelt, walked up slowly. Assuming no dog taken in by students would bite any of them, Sun took two chunks of curd out of her pocket to reward him. “Good boy, Erlang.”

  Without wagging his tail or making a sound, Erlang glared venomously as he approached the student group, frightening Sun, who backed up. “Come here!” Chen yelled, but not in time to keep the dog from growling and threatening to attack the students. In her fright, Sun stumbled and sat down hard.

  “You son of a bitch!” Yang shouted as he raised his herding club threateningly. But Erlang tightened his neck and showed he’d rather be hit than retreat. He was, after all, a once feral dog that had just killed four wolves, and Yang was afraid of arousing his still-smoldering wolfish nature. Knowing it would be foolish to use his club, he let it drop.

  “No one will dare visit you two in your yurt after this,” Wang Junli said. “If he hadn’t killed all those wolves, I’d be ready to skin and eat him.”

  “He’s a strange dog,” Chen said apologetically, “a lot like a wolf, and he doesn’t take easily to humans. Come by more often and he’ll get used to you.”

  The students drifted away. Chen patted Erlang on the head. “See what you’ve done,” he said. “You’ve offended my friends.”

  Erlang took a few steps toward the pile of carcasses and stared blankly at their pale bodies. Dozens of other dogs standing off at a distance, respectful and somewhat afraid, wagged their tails in his direction. But only Bar, head held high, came up to him; Erlang, neither overbearing nor servile, brushed noses with him. Now that he’d gained the approval of the pasture leaders and the herdsmen, he was being welcomed into the ranks of Second Briga
de hunting dogs.

  But Chen Zhen detected a look of loss in Erlang’s eyes. He wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck, wishing he knew of a way to console him.

  Bao Shungui invited Bilgee over to where most of the hunters had gathered. The old man sat in the center and spread out an array of sheep and horse droppings to describe the battle in detail. His audience listened raptly, with Bao asking a few questions and every once in a while shouting his approval. “This battle,” he said, “should be entered into a military textbook. It was more brilliant than the plan the wolves engineered in massacring the warhorses. You, sir, are a military genius.”

  “In the days of Genghis Khan,” Chen volunteered, “Bilgee would have been one of his great generals, as great as Muhuali, Jebe, and Sabutai.”

  The old man waved off the compliment. “Don’t compare me with those Mongol sages, or Tengger will be angry. If not for them, the grassland would have been tamed long ago. I’m just an old slave who mustn’t be mentioned in the same breath with them.”

  It was nearly noon, and Batu still hadn’t returned, but it was time to head back to camp. Then a horse raced up with a sense of urgency. Buhe jumped down and reported breathlessly to Uljii and Bao Shungui, “Batu says come at once. The wolves you fought this morning were only half the pack. The other half slipped away before daybreak and made its way to the reedy valley at the base of the mountains.”

  Bilgee glared at him. “You must be wrong.”

  “Batu and I rode into the valley,” Buhe replied, “where we saw fresh wolf tracks in the snow. Batu says there are at least twenty of them, and he thinks that includes the old gray wolf, the alpha male that led the attack on the horses. He says that’s one wolf we have to catch.”

  Uljii turned to Bao. “All of us, horses included, have gone without food all night and half the day. And there are many injured dogs. I know that valley, it’s huge, thousands of acres, much too big for us to encircle. I say forget it.”

  Bao stared suspiciously at Bilgee. “The nonnatives and the Chinese students tell me you usually take the wolves’ side. You didn’t plan this, did you? Your men and dogs should have been able to surround an additional twenty wolves so that we could wipe them out.”

  “No,” Uljii said. “Today we trapped many wolves, like stuffing a big dumpling. If there’d been more of them, we’d have been stretched too thin, and the dumpling skin would have broken.”

  Bao turned back to Bilgee. “I think you let them escape on purpose.”

  Bilgee stared back at him. “Trapping wolves isn’t the same as scooping noodles out of a bowl! It was pitch-black and there were gaps between the riders. Of course some of the wolves got away. If you’d led the hunt, I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t have gotten a single one.”

  Bao’s face colored as his anger grew. Smacking his whip into the palm of his hand, he bellowed, “There may not be enough men and horses, or dogs, but we haven’t used our rifles yet. Now that we’ve located more wolves in the reeds, I’m not letting them go. I’m taking charge of this campaign!”

  Bao rode partway up the slope, turned, and said, “Comrades, another pack has been discovered in the reedy valley. There are many among you who still have no pelts, right? Especially you students. Weren’t you complaining that you were kept away from the front line? Well, this time that’s exactly where you’ll be. Comrades, we must prove that we can overcome exhaustion and keep our fighting spirit alive as we annihilate this wolf pack!”

  Several of the students and some of the hunters were itching to give it a try.

  “Here’s my plan,” Bao announced loudly, “one that will take a relatively small expenditure of energy. We’ll surround the valley and burn them out. Then we can pick them off with our rifles, using as much ammunition as necessary.”

  The herdsmen and hunters were shocked. For them grassfires were taboo.

  “A grassfire violates heavenly laws,” Bilgee said. “It blackens the face of Tengger, and you know what that will mean for us. The rivers will turn black, and the water gods will give us nothing to drink. Shaman-ism and Lamaism do not permit fires out here. In the past, the Great Khans would kill the entire family of anyone who lit a fire on the grassland. Even the current government forbids them.”

  Gasmai was so enraged her face was red. “Fire is the grassland’s greatest scourge. If we catch a child playing with fire, we spank him till his rear end swells up. If you set one now, when children play with fire after this, they’ll say they learned that from Representative Bao.”

  Lamjav’s thick neck bulged. “In ancient times,” he said angrily, “the Han armies burned our grasslands. It was the cruelest thing they could think of doing. They don’t dare do that anymore. How could a Mongol set fire to his own ancient grassland? Are you a Mongol, Representative Bao, or aren’t you?”

  “There’s snow on the ground,” Sanjai said, “which means we’re not into the fire season yet. But if we set a fire now, prevention will be harder in the future. And it will singe the wolves’ coats and ruin their pelts.”

  Laasurung said, “Burning the wolves is mean and cruel. But let’s say you burn them all up—then who pays when the fire kills our livestock? The stench would fill the air and could cause an epidemic. Not only that, kill off all the wolves, and the field mice and rabbits will bring the Gobi desert over.”

  Zhang Jiyuan said, “We horse herders came out this time to fight the wolves. We’ve been away from our herds for a day and a night, and if we don’t get back now, the wolves will outflank us. We have to get back to our horses. I won’t be responsible for anything that happens.”

  “Quiet down!” Bao Shungui shouted. “Quiet down all of you! Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re killing the wolves to eliminate a destructive force and protect national property. The best defense is a good offense. The only way to keep the wolves from outflanking us is to wipe them out. We don’t do it for the pelts. A dead wolf with a burned coat constitutes a victory. I want to see another stack of dead wolves, take some more pictures, and let our superiors look upon our great achievement. I’ll arrange a criticism session for anyone who doesn’t obey me! Now, let’s go, everyone!”

  A murderous glare emanated from Lamjav’s wolfish eyes. “Arrange what you want,” he bellowed. “I’m not going! My horses need me.”

  Several of the other herders turned their horses’ heads. “We’re going back!” they said.

  Snapping his whip in the air, Bao roared, “I’ll take away the job of anyone who deserts on the eve of this battle. That goes for your backers as well.”

  Bilgee glanced at Uljii, then waved his hands helplessly and said, “No more of this quarreling. I led this hunt, so I’ll have the last word. One horse herder will head back to each of the herds, all the others will go with Representative Bao. End of discussion.”

  Lamjav said to Zhang Jiyuan, “I’ll tend the herd. When this is over, you go home and rest for a couple of days.” He turned and rode off with eight or nine horse herders.

  The hunting party crossed three mountain ridges to arrive at a vast expanse of reeds spread out below like white gold, surrounded by snow. Wang Junli and half a dozen other students escorted Bao Shungui, assuring him that it was an ideal spot to burn the wolves out.

  Batu emerged from the reeds and rode up to Bao Shungui and Uljii. “I didn’t alert the wolves,” he said. “It’s a big pack, and they’re still in there.”

  Pointing to the reeds with his whip, Bao said, “Listen up, section leaders. Section One take the east, Section Two the west, and Section Three the north. Section Four, you circle around to the south and light fires between there and the eastern section. First seal off all escape routes, then move upwind out of the way. When you men in the other three sections see smoke in the south, light your fires. Then everyone, dogs included, wait at the outer rim. Loose the dogs as soon as the wolves appear, and start shooting.”

  The students of the Fourth Section took off at a gallop, followed by the herdsmen. The other sectio
ns turned and headed to their assigned sectors.

  Chen Zhen followed Bilgee into the reedy area to check it out. Undisturbed by natural fires for several years, the reeds had grown to twice the men’s height; the ground was covered by a blanket of dead, dry reeds at least two feet thick. Dry as a bone, the reeds—living and dead—could not have been more flammable.

  “The wolves know we’re out here,” the old man said, “but they’re not afraid. The reeds are so dense that dogs are no threat, and the lasso poles are useless. The sound of horse hooves on the undergrowth in the dark tells the wolves exactly where we are. There are many paths in here, paths that will take them behind any horses, men, or dogs that come in. This is their territory in the winter and spring, their refuge. Olonbulag wolves have seen their share of natural fires, but fires set by humans are alien to them. Nothing like this has ever happened before. You outsiders have all sorts of ideas, but this one is especially cruel. This pack of wolves is doomed.”

  “Light the fires!” someone shouted, breaking the silence. “Light the fires!”

  Chen grabbed Bilgee’s horse’s halter and raced out of the reeds. Black smoke billowed above the southeastern edge. Then flames leaped skyward in the eastern, western, and northern sectors. Bao Shungui ordered the hunters to use reeds as torches to start the fire spreading deep into the reeds with the wind. The densely packed, dry, oily reeds nearly exploded when the fires touched them, sending flames and thick smoke high into the sky. Acres of dry reeds were turned into a sea of fire, with black leaves and stalks dancing in the air currents above, like a cloud of bats. High up on a slope looking down, Bao Shungui liked what he saw.

  On the western edge of the billowing smoke, Bilgee dismounted and fell to his knees, facing east, tears wetting his face. He was murmuring prayerfully. Chen Zhen couldn’t hear clearly, but he knew what the old man was saying.

  Suddenly the wind turned, sending the choking black smoke and flames in the old man’s direction. Chen and Yang quickly lifted him off the ground and ran with him up the snow-covered hillside. The old man’s face was sooty black; so were his tears. Chen gazed at him, suddenly feeling the creation of a silent spiritual resonance between them; at the same time, he could imagine a fearful yet revered wolf totem rising up to take the Mongol people’s tenacious souls away with it. Their survivors—sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters—would continue to live on the Mongolian grassland, taking the bitter with the sweet, bringing pride and glory to their race.