Wolf Totem: A Novel

by Jiang Rong

  “I haven’t seen many rabbits over the past year or so,” Bao said. “I admit there are a lot of ground squirrels near headquarters, but I haven’t seen them anywhere else. I’ve seen plenty of marmots and their burrows. But it’s the number of gazelles I’ve really noticed. I’ve seen herds of ten thousand more than once. I’ve even shot a bunch of them. They’re a true scourge, the way they graze like locusts.”

  “Our pastureland is good,” Uljii said, “with tall, dense grass that hides the squirrels and rabbits. You have to look carefully to see them, but they’re there. You’ll see them in the fall. All those piles of cut grass are laid out to dry by the squirrels before they take it into their nests. The gazelles are nowhere near as destructive, because while they eat the grass, they don’t burrow into the ground. Ground squirrels, rabbits, and marmots not only eat and dig burrows but also reproduce wildly. Without the wolves, those pests would eat all the grass on the Olonbulag and have holes everywhere in a few years. The desert wouldn’t be far behind. If you insist on annihilating the wolves, you won’t have a job three or four years from now.”

  With a snicker, Bao said, “I know that cats and raptors and snakes catch rodents, but I never heard that wolves catch them too. Even a dog won’t waste the energy to go after a rodent. Are you saying that wolves do? They eat sheep, and they eat horses. There isn’t enough meat on those rodents to stick between their teeth. Sorry, I don’t believe that rodents are on their menu.”

  Uljii sighed. “That’s a mistake all you farming people make. I grew up on the Olonbulag, so I understand wolves. They prefer to eat big animals, like cows, sheep, horses, and gazelles. But the first three are tended by humans, which makes them difficult prey, and the wolves have to eat to survive. Gazelles are so fleet-footed, they’re hard to catch. Ground squirrels, on the other hand, are there for the taking. In olden days, poor people survived the lean years by catching and eating the squirrels. I was a slave as a boy, and anytime I didn’t get enough to eat, I caught squirrels. They’re big, plump rodents, from a few ounces to a full pound, and three or four of them will tide you over. For the ones you don’t eat right away, you skin them and dry the meat, a tasty meal for the next time. If you don’t believe me, I’ll catch a few one day and roast them for you. You’ll find the meat quite tender. Even Genghis Khan ate squirrel.”

  Zhang Jiyuan, caught up in the discussion, felt a need to add his views. “I’ve been tending horses for two years now, and I’ve watched wolves catch squirrels, sending dirt flying. They’re better at it than dogs. Ground squirrels are the favorites of female wolves and their cubs. Before the young ones are weaned, their mothers teach them how to hunt, beginning with ground squirrels. When a female’s litter is still young, they seldom join the other wolves in a hunt. Their cubs learn to fear humans when they’ve grown to about a foot in length and have just begun to run. When a hunter spots a female wolf and her cubs out in the open, if he shoots the adult, the cubs are all his. All he has to do is scoop them up as if they were baby lambs, which is why the female will take her young as far from human habitation as possible, where they’re safe. But since there’s no livestock in those places, what do they eat? Well, except for the occasional meat and bones the older wolves bring them after a successful hunt, they survive on ground squirrels and marmots.”

  “And there’s more.” Uljii seemed somewhat stressed. “If there were no wolves, we and our livestock would be in big trouble during a natural disaster. When the grassland is hit by a hundred-year or two-hundred-year blizzard, the toll on our livestock is enormous. Then, when the snow melts, the ground is cluttered with the carcasses of dead cows and sheep that quickly begin to stink. If they aren’t buried, an epidemic could kill off half the people and animals of an entire banner. But wolves will dispose of the dead animals in no time. Plagues aren’t a problem as long as there are wolves around. We’ve never had one on the Olonbulag. In the old days, when wars were fought out here, the battlefields would be strewn with thousands of dead men and animals. Who disposed of them? Wolves. Old-timers tell us that if there’d been no wolves, a plague would have wiped out the human population of the grassland long ago. We can thank the wolves for keeping the Olonbulag a place with fresh water and lush grass. Without them, we wouldn’t have such flourishing herds. The communes down south have killed off their wolves, and their grazing land is dying. They’ll never raise livestock there again.”

  Bao had been listening without saying a word as the three horses rode up a slope, with its fragrant green grass and the sweet fermenting smell of rotting grass from the year before. Meadowlarks singing in the air above them plunged down into the tall grass, while those on the ground soared up into the blue sky, where they hovered above the party and sang their own tunes.

  Uljii sucked in his breath. “Isn’t that a gorgeous sight?” he exclaimed. “As unspoiled as it was thousands of years ago. This is the most beautiful grassland in China. Men and wolves have fought battles to seal this place off and keep it unspoiled over the centuries, and we simply must not let it come to grief in our hands.”

  “You need to hold a study session for us students,” Zhang Jiyuan said, “to teach us what we need to know about the grassland and its wolves.”

  Uljii’s face darkened. “I’m a deposed official. I don’t have the authority to hold anything. You need to learn from older herdsmen. They know more than I do anyway.”

  After they crossed another ridge, Bao finally spoke up: “Uljii, no one will deny the depth of your feelings for the grassland or what you’ve accomplished. It’s your politics that get you into trouble. You talk about things that happened in the past, but this is a new age, an atomic age for China. Using primitive forms of thinking to deal with current needs is a big problem. I’ve thought long and hard since coming to the pasture. In terms of size, it is, as you say, the equivalent of a whole county down south, and a population of a thousand people is less than one of our villages. That’s incredibly wasteful. In order to create the greatest wealth for the party and the nation, we must bring an end to this backward, primitive nomadic way of life. I did a little exploring a few days ago. There’s quite a bit of land with black soil south of us, each section thousands of acres in size. I dug with a hoe and found that the topsoil was two feet thick. It seems a shame to devote good soil like that to graze sheep. At a league headquarters meeting, I asked an agricultural expert from an autonomous area about the land, and he said it was ideal for wheat. If we don’t attempt a large-scale reclamation project, only a few hundred acres, maybe a thousand or two, there’s no danger of desertification.”

  Uljii said nothing, so Bao continued. “I looked into the water situation too. It’s easy to get to. We dig a trough and bring the river over.

  We have plenty of cow and sheep manure, which makes ideal fertilizer. If we plant wheat there, I’ll bet that in the first year we’ll produce more per acre than they do in the Yellow River region. If we keep at it, in a few years agricultural production could outstrip livestock. When that happens, not only will we supply all our own food and animal feed, but we’ll assist the rest of the nation, where grain is in short supply. In my hometown the people don’t have enough to eat; on average they come up short by three months’ supply every year. Now, when I see all that good black soil left fallow and turned over to sheep to graze on for more than a month, it pains me. I’m going to plant an experimental plot, and if it’s successful, we’ll go all out. I hear that some communes down south are running out of grazing land and may have to stop raising livestock. They’ve decided to set aside land for crops, and I think that’s where Inner Mongolia’s future lies.”

  Uljii’s face fell. “I knew this day was coming,” he said with a sigh. “You people never give a thought to livestock capacity. You keep forcing us to increase the numbers, and now you’ve gone on a wolf-killing spree, just waiting for the day when the grass is gone and you can cover the land with your crops. Your homeland was pasture a few decades back and was converted to crop
land only a decade or so ago, but there isn’t enough grain to go around. This is already the frontier, so after you turn this fine pastureland into what you’ve got down there, where will you go next? The Xinjiang Desert takes up more space than any province in the country, and no people live in the Gobi. Would you call that a waste of land?”

  “You needn’t worry,” Bao said. “I’ve learned the lesson of my hometown, and will make a distinction between land that’s arable and land that’s not. Going only one way—crops or pasture—is wrong. Half and half is the way to do it. I’ll do everything I can to safeguard the good pastureland and keep raising fine livestock. Without it we won’t have fertilizer. Where’s the grain production going to come from without manure?”

  “When the farmers come out here,” Uljii said angrily, “and see this land, you won’t be able to control them. And even if your generation somehow manages, how will you control the next generation?”

  “Each generation controls its own affairs,” Bao said. “The next generation is not my concern.”

  “Do you still plan to hunt down the wolves?”

  “Not supporting the hunt is what got you into trouble, and I won’t take that path. If the wolves wound up massacring another herd of horses, I’d be in the same fix as you.”

  They saw chimney smoke above the base camp off in the distance. “By giving you an old horse, those upstarts at pasture headquarters have really slowed us down.” He turned to Zhang Jiyuan. “When you get back to the herd, pick out a good horse for Uljii. Tell Batu I said so.”

  “When we get to the brigade,” Zhang replied, “no one will let Uljii ride a nag.”

  “I have things to do,” Bao said, “so I’ll go on ahead. I’ll wait for you at Bilgee’s. Take your time.” He loosened the reins and rode off at a gallop.

  Zhang rode up alongside the plodding old horse and said to Uljii, “Old Bao treats you well enough. At headquarters they say he tried to get them to keep you in the leadership group. But he’s ex-military and has his share of warlord habits, so don’t be angry.”

  “Old Bao charges ahead on everything he does,” Uljii said vigorously and resolutely, “and he’s usually up there on the front line. There’d be no one better in a farming area. But out here he’s a danger to the grassland.”

  “If this had happened when I first arrived,” Zhang said, “I’d probably have taken his side. Lots of people are starving in farming villages down south, while there’s all this land lying fallow. A lot of the students support his view. But I don’t see things the same way anymore. Yours is the visionary view. Numbers of grazing animals mean nothing to farming people, nor do those people understand the effects of human population. As for big lives and little lives, they don’t have a clue. Chen Zhen said there’s a simple grassland logic that’s been in place for a thousand years or more, one that’s in accord with objective laws of development. He thinks that the Manchu rulers had a brilliant policy during the first two hundred years of the Qing dynasty; they prohibited a large-scale migration of people from farming areas, believing that would have led to grievous consequences.”

  Uljii was intrigued by the term grassland logic. He repeated it a couple of times to commit it to memory. “But during the later years of the Qing,” he said, “they couldn’t stop the flow from China, so the grassland shrank northward, and then westward, until it was right up against the Gobi. If desertification occurs north of the Great Wall, what will happen to Beijing? That’s something even the Mongols dread, because Beijing was once their capital—they called it Dadu—and it’s now an international city.”

  Zhang saw his horses drinking at a well. Time to pick out a good horse for Uljii.

  18

  Chen Zhen stirred the milk and meat porridge. The rising steam smelled so good that all the dogs were lined up at his door whining hungrily. The porridge was for the wolf cub.

  Gasmai had taught him the secret of feeding puppies. "They need to be fed milk and meat porridge as soon as they’re weaned,” she said. “It’s a sure-fire way to get them to grow big and strong. What they eat the first three or four months after being weaned determines their growth patterns, especially their bones. If you miss that window, you won’t have big, strong dogs, no matter what you feed them after that. Well-fed pups can grow to be twice the size of poorly fed pups, which will never be decent wolf fighters.”

  Once, when their team was hauling rocks to build a wall, Gasmai pointed to someone else’s squat, skinny dog with ratty fur and whispered to Chen, “That dog is from the same litter as Bar. Quite a difference, wouldn’t you say?” Chen found it hard to believe that two dogs from the same litter could be so different. “On the grassland, it’s not enough to have dogs of good breeding; you also have to feed them aggressively.” Chen took that to heart, attending carefully to what went into his cub’s stomach. He followed Gasmai’s puppy recipe to the letter.

  Gasmai had added, “After puppies are weaned, a contest develops between women and wolf mothers. The wolves hunt ground squirrels, marmots, and lambs to feed their young and teach them how to hunt.

  They’re good mothers. No stoves, no fires, no pots, so they can’t make meaty porridge for their young. But their mouths are better than the pots we use. They turn the squirrels and marmots into a soft, warm meaty mix with their teeth, their saliva, and their stomachs, just what their cubs need and like. They grow like weeds.

  “Women on the grassland earn work points by taking the night watch with their dogs, which is why they must be even more conscientious, more hardworking than the wolf mothers. Lazy women raise mongrel dogs; good women raise big dogs. Look at a dog and you’ll know what sort of woman lives in that yurt.”

  Chen had changed many of his habits once he’d taken on the responsibility of raising a wolf cub, and Zhang Jiyuan teased him by wondering when he’d become so industrious, so motherly. In fact, Chen felt that he took more care than either a wolf mother or Gasmai. By increasing the number of daily chores he did, he was given the go-ahead by Gao Jianzhong to take some cow’s milk, which he supplemented with a meat pulp. Milk was clearly inadequate for developing strong bones; additional calcium was essential, which he supplied by including shavings of soft bone in the meat. He’d even gone to the medical clinic at the pasture headquarters to get some calcium tablets, which he ground up and mixed into the meat, something that neither the wolf mother nor Gasmai could have thought of. Even the meaty porridge seemed insufficient to Chen, who added butter and salt, making it so fragrant that he himself was tempted to try a bowlful. But since there were also the three dogs, he swallowed hard and decided against it.

  The cub was filling out, its belly tight as a drum after each meal, like the fat, squinty-eyed laughing Buddha. He was growing faster than an autumn mushroom, and was already half a snout longer than the puppies he was with.

  The first time Chen fed the mixture to the cub, he was concerned the animal might turn his nose up at the millet in the mixture, since in the wild wolves fed only on meat. He was pleasantly surprised when the cub buried his nose in the bowl and gobbled up the fragrant, warm contents, snorting and rumbling until he licked the bowl clean and, finally, raised his head. Chen later discovered that the cub would only eat millet when there was plenty of meat and milk mixed in with it.

  The porridge had cooled off, so Chen placed the bowl on a rack just inside the door, opened it a crack, slipped out, and quickly shut it behind him. All the dogs in the area, except for Erlang, rushed up. Yellow and Yir stood and laid their paws on Chen’s chest; Yellow licked his chin to show his affection. The three puppies nibbled at his pant cuffs. But the cub stormed the door, buried his nose in the crack, and greedily sniffed the porridge inside the yurt. He clawed at the door frame, trying to get in.

  The last thing Chen wanted was to put any of the animals ahead of the others. The cub was his favorite, but he was fond of the puppies as well, his puppies, and he couldn’t stand the thought of any of them being neglected. He wouldn’t feed the wolf unti
l he’d pacified the dogs.

  Chen wrapped his arms around Yellow and then Yir, and twirled them in the air, rewarding them in the most intimate expression he knew. They responded happily by slobbering all over his chin. Then he picked up each of the puppies and lifted them high in the air. Once they were back down on the ground, he rubbed their heads, patted them on the back, and stroked their fur. All these were things he’d begun doing after taking in the wolf cub; prior to that, only when he felt like it would he show that sort of attention. Now, however, if he didn’t treat all the dogs the same, and they one day felt a sense of envy toward the cub, they might well turn on him and kill him. Chen had been surprised to learn that raising a wolf in a nomadic environment was like sitting on a powder keg, and that each day presented a challenge. At the time, everyone was busy with the birthing of new lambs, so there was little socializing among the herdsmen. Few knew that Chen had a wolf cub, and even those who had heard rumors did not come by to see for themselves. What would happen when the word got out? Riding a tiger was bad enough; getting off was worse. That went double for a wolf.

  As the temperature rose, frozen winter meat was cut into strips and dried in the sun and wind. The bones, with shreds of meat that were covered with mildew and emitted a strange smell, were fine for late-spring dog food. Chen had a following of dogs as he headed toward the meat-basket wagon, Erlang out in front. He wrapped his arms around the dog’s massive head. Having grown more familiar with human behavior, Erlang knew this meant he was going to be fed, and he nudged Chen under the arm as a sign of thanks. Chen took a basket of bones down from the wagon, divided the contents in accord with the dogs’ appetites, and then ran back to his yurt.