Wolf Totem: A Novel
Page 31
The cub was still trying to open the door with his fangs. By this time, a month after his arrival, he was over a foot in length, and his legs were nice and straight; more and more, he was beginning to look like a wolf, especially now that the blue membranes had disappeared to reveal gray-yellow eyes, with pinpoint black dots in the center. His snout was longer and his ears were no longer catlike, having developed into triangles that stood erect above his head. He spent much of each day playing with the pups; but when no one was around and during the night, he was put back into his enclosure to keep him from running off. Even Yellow and Yir tolerated the presence of the wild addition, though they kept their distance. Whenever he went up to Yir and tried to find a teat, she flicked him away with her nose. Only Erlang was friendly toward him; nothing the little wolf did bothered him. He could crawl on the dog’s belly, he could jump all over his back and head, he could bite his coat and nibble at his ears, and he could relieve himself wherever he wanted. Erlang often licked the little cub, sometimes rolling him over on his back with his snout to clean his belly with his tongue, as if he were his own offspring. The little wolf had come to accept his surroundings and was happy to frolic with his puppy friends, even though his nose told him that this wasn’t his real home.
Chen picked up the cub, but no further intimacy was advisable when the little wolf was eager to eat. Chen opened the door and stepped inside, where he set the cub down in front of the stove in the light from the opening above, which he’d gotten used to. He turned to stare at the aluminum pan on the rack. Chen tested the porridge with his finger to see if it was too hot. It had cooled to room temperature, just the way the cub liked it. Wolves cannot handle food that’s too hot. The one time he’d been given hot food, he’d reacted by curling his tail between his legs, shuddering, and running outside to lap up the snow. It was only after Chen replaced the old pan with a new aluminum one that the cub would draw near to eat again.
Chen worked on the wolf’s conditioned reflexes by calling out, “Little Wolf, Little Wolf, food, food,” before each meal. The cub immediately leaped into the air, his reaction to the word food already stronger than the dogs’ reactions to commands. Chen quickly laid the pan down on the ground, squatted a couple of paces away, and pressed down on the edge of the pan with his spatula to keep the wolf from stepping on it and turning it over as he buried his snout in the food and gobbled it up.
Humans display that kind of gusto only during famines. This cub, though every meal was guaranteed, ate like a starving animal, as if the sky would fall if he didn’t bolt down every bite. Wolves eat without a thought for anyone else, and this one, true to form, did not display a hint of gratitude toward Chen Zhen, who patiently tended to his every need. To the contrary, at that moment he saw Chen as a mortal enemy intent on taking his food from him.
In the space of a month, Chen had drawn closer to the young wolf in a number of ways: He could rub him, hold him, kiss him, pinch him, carry him, and scratch him. He could carry him on his head, lay him across his shoulders, rub noses with him, and even stick his fingers in his mouth. But when the cub was eating, Chen didn’t dare touch him and could only crouch a safe distance away and watch. If he so much as moved, the cub would snarl, his black wolf hairs would stand up, and he would tense his hind legs, ready to pounce if necessary, quite prepared to kill. In order to change this behavior, Chen once reached over with a broom to stroke the cub lightly; before he knew it, the wolf had pounced on the broom, sunk his teeth into the sorghum stalks, and yanked it out of Chen’s hands. Chen backed up, shocked and more than a little frightened, while the cub, as if attacking a lamb, shook his head violently, tearing several stalks from the handle. Refusing to be deterred by a single incident, Chen tried the same thing several times more, with no change in the result; it was as if the cub saw the broom as its enemy, now a ruined enemy. Gao Jianzhong, who had recently bought the broom, was so angry that he knocked the cub over with the handle. In the end, Chen had to abandon his desire to touch the cub while he was eating.
Chen had prepared twice the usual amount of porridge this time, hoping there’d be some left over so that he could add a bit of milk and a little more meat, and feed it to the puppies. But when he saw how the wolf attacked the food, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Chen was given an opportunity to see how hard it was for wolves to survive on the grassland. In spite of their fertility, probably only one in ten cubs lived to adulthood. Bilgee said that Tengger sometimes punished the wolves mercilessly. A sudden storm that drops several feet of snow in a short period can kill off vast numbers of wolves, from cold or from hunger. A wildfire that blots out the sky can also wipe out vast numbers, burned or suffocated. Packs of starving wolves fleeing famine or natural disasters can slaughter half the local wolves. Few can survive the spring thefts of newborn cubs from their dens, autumn trapping, early-winter encirclement hunts, and the deep-winter hunts. The old man said that the grassland wolves are the descendants of hungry wolves. The original animals, which lived lives devoid of want, were subdued by hungry wolves fleeing from famine. The grassland had always been a battlefield, and those that survived were the strongest and wisest, the ones best suited to eating and fighting, animals who could eat their fill yet never forget what it was like to be hungry.
Chen discovered over time that grassland wolves held many sacred articles of faith where survival was concerned, of which the fight for food and independence were among the most fundamental. When he was feeding the cub, he never felt as if he were giving it life, as he did with the dogs. The wolf showed no gratitude, for he did not consider himself as being raised by a human and was incapable of reacting slavishly just because he saw his master coming with his food. The word raise was absent in the relationship between Chen and the cub. The wolf was his prisoner for the time being, not his ward. A unique spirit of obstinacy underlay his territorial nature; this knowledge sent chills up Chen’s spine, for he was no longer confident that he could successfully keep the cub and see him to adulthood.
In the end, Chen abandoned the desire to pet the wolf while he was eating and respected his noble natural instincts. He continued to crouch down a few paces away and observe the cub quietly, grateful for the lessons in wolf behavior.
The cub gradually slowed down, but even though his belly seemed about to burst, he kept his head buried in the bowl and continued eating. Chen saw that when the cub’s basic appetite was satisfied, he began picking and choosing, starting with the strips of meat and ending with the last little bits, his tongue like tweezers, picking up every little piece until all that remained of a once meaty porridge was a bowl of light yellow millet—no more meat, no more bone, no more fat, just grain. And still he didn’t look up. He was concentrating on the milk at the bottom, since that too was a favorite food. When he finally looked up, only dry kernels of tasteless, odorless millet remained. Chen laughed out loud. When it came to food, the little wolf was very shrewd.
Chen had no choice but to add a little meat, the remaining milk, and a bit of warm water, stir it into a soupy mix, and take it outside, where he poured it into the dog bowls. The dogs rushed up hungrily but immediately whined their disappointment, and Chen was made pointedly aware of the obligations of livestock raising, of which caring for dogs is an essential component.
The cub, so stuffed he could barely move, sprawled on the floor and gazed outside, where the dogs were finishing off his leftovers. Chen went up and called out to him: “Little Wolf, Little Wolf.” He just rolled over, legs held in close, belly sticking up, and head on the ground, where he looked at Chen, a mischievous glint in his eyes. Chen picked him up and lifted him high in the air, five or six times, frightening and delighting him simultaneously. His mouth was open, but his hind legs pressed against his tail and trembled. By now the cub seemed to be getting used to this game, recognizing it as a friendly gesture. Chen laid the cub on top of his head, then on his shoulder, where the still-frightened cub dug his claws into Chen’s collar.
The wolf was a handful, but an enjoyable one. Chen imagined a scene from antiquity or from some current distant spot in which a loving wolf mother licked the belly of her “wolf boy” after his feeding, and the cub grabbed his toes and giggled. A wolf pack surrounded the scene peacefully, even bringing meat to feed the little one. Throughout time, how many wolf mothers had raised infant children and how many humans had raised wolf pups? Chen found himself living out some of the marvelous tales of wolves he had heard over the years, and he was able to both sense and actually touch the warm, gentle side of wolf nature. Deeply moved, he wished he could repay the respect the world of humans felt for these wolf boys, be they Hun, Gaoju, Turk, Roman, Indian, or Soviet. He bent down to touch the cub’s wet nose with his own; like a dog, the wolf licked his chin, which pleased and excited him. It was the first time the cub had shown any trust in him. They were growing closer emotionally, and he wanted to savor everything this pure, innocent friendship offered. He fantasized that his own life had begun to stretch back into antiquity, and he felt unimaginably old.
The one thing that nagged at him was that the wolf had not been orphaned or abandoned; raising an animal under those conditions constituted a natural, primitive love. He, on the other hand, had stolen his cub from its den, an entirely selfish act intended to satisfy a desire for novelty and for study. His story was not a patch on the stirring tales of humans and wolves that had been passed down through the ages. The thought that the mother would one day come to seek revenge was never far from his mind. His impulses had not been noble; rather, he had acted in the name of scientific and cultural progress. He hoped Tengger would understand this callousness and new savagery—for what he wanted was to enter the wolf totem realm of the grassland people.
After eating his portion of the food, Erlang walked slowly over to Chen. Every time he saw Chen stroking the wolf cub, he came up to watch inquisitively, and sometimes he licked the cub’s bulging belly. Chen rubbed Erlang’s head; the dog smiled at his master. Ever since Chen had taken in the wolf cub, the distance between him and Erlang had shrunk dramatically. Was there a bit of the wolf in him too, something Erlang had sniffed out? He suddenly saw how intriguing his situation had become—for here were a man with wolfish characteristics, a dog with a wolfish nature, and a genuine wolf all living together on the grassland. His life had suddenly become more exceptional than the stories of wolf boys.
Since becoming bewitched by the grassland wolves, Chen felt that his already listless, weary blood had weakened further and that what seemed to be alien wolf blood had begun to flow in his veins. His view of life had altered—he treasured it even as it became more vigorous and fulfilling. He now understood why Jack London’s story “Love of Life” was tied up with a dying wolf, why when Lenin was critically ill, he had asked his wife to reread it aloud to him. The Russian dictator had died peacefully, listening to the struggle between man and wolf. His soul may well have been taken to see that of Marx by a wolf totem that belonged to a different race. If even the truly great, with their astonishing vitality, come to the grassland—the land of the wild wolf, and its life force—then why not an ordinary man like him?
The cub began to squirm in Chen Zhen’s lap, a sign that he had to relieve himself. He also spotted Erlang and wanted to play with the big dog. So Chen let go, and the wolf bounded up and onto the ground, where it created a puddle of urine, then flew at Erlang, who happily sprawled on the ground to let all the pups climb him like a mountain. The wolf was first onto Erlang’s back, and then proceeded to knock away all the puppies that tried to follow, howling to any that would challenge him as king of the mountain. Two male puppies fought back, biting the wolf cub’s ears and tail, until all three tumbled off their mountain, with the puppies landing on top; they began biting the cub all over. He fought back angrily, legs flailing, sending dust flying. A moment later, Chen heard one of the puppies yelp in pain and saw blood on its paw. Obviously, the wolf was no longer just playing.
Chen picked the cub up by the scruff of his neck and carried him to the puppy, where he held the wolf’s nose up against the injured paw and rubbed it in the blood. It had no effect on the cub, who bared his fangs and showed his claws, sending the puppies scurrying in fright over to Yir, who first licked the bloody paw, then bounded over to the wolf and roared at it, ready to bite. Chen quickly scooped him up in his arms and turned his back to Yir, his heart pounding, dreading the possibility that someday one of the big dogs would kill his wolf cub. Raising a little tyrant like this with no cage or pen worried him. But first he needed to calm Yir down, which he did by rubbing her head. When he set the wolf cub on the ground again, Yir ignored him and led her puppies off to play by themselves. The wolf clambered again onto the back of Erlang, a fierce animal that was both tolerant and fond of the cub.
After he’d fed the animals, Chen cleaned out the wagon to move to the new pastureland. When he looked up, he saw Bilgee coming toward him on a wagon filled with wood. He jumped down, scooped up the wolf cub, and put him back in his burrow, quickly covering it with the wooden plank and setting the rock down on top. His heart was racing.
Yellow and Yir, tails wagging, rushed out with the puppies to greet the old man. Chen followed to unload Bilgee’s cart, take care of the ox, and lift down the old man’s heavy carpenter’s kit. Prior to every move to new grazing land, Bilgee came over to make repairs to the students’ wagon. “Papa,” Chen said nervously, “I can manage; you don’t need to come do that for us.”
“Manage isn’t good enough,” the old man said. “This is going to be a long trip, and there are no roads. It’ll take two or three days to get there. One wagon breaking down along the way will slow the entire brigade.”
“Well, at least you can go inside for some tea while I unload our wagon.”
“Your tea is too black for me.” Then, without warning, he walked over to the burrow. “Let me see your wolf cub,” he said darkly.
Flustered by this unexpected development, Chen tried to stop the old man. “There’s nothing to see,” he said. “Why not have some tea?”
“It’s been almost a month,” Bilgee said, his rheumy eyes glaring, “and still you won’t let me see it!”
“Papa,” Chen said somewhat desperately, “I’m raising it to breed a litter of wolf hounds . . . ”
The old man’s face showed how angry he was. “Nonsense!” he roared. “This is absolute nonsense. You might be able to get a wolfhound with wolves from somewhere else, but not Mongolian wolves. What makes you think a Mongolian wolf would mate with a dog? He’d just as soon kill and eat her.” As his anger grew, his goatee quivered. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you people lately. I’ve lived on the grassland for over sixty years, and this is the first time I’ve even heard someone suggest what you’re doing. Do you really think you can raise one of these? Alongside a litter of dogs? How can you speak of wolves and dogs in the same breath? Dogs eat people’s shit; wolves eat people. By eating shit, dogs are nothing but slaves to humans. But wolves eat human corpses to send the souls into the bosom of Tengger. Wolves and dogs, as different as heaven and earth, and you plan to raise them together? And if that wasn’t enough, you’re actually hoping to mate this one with dogs! If we Mongols wanted to mate your Dragon King to a sow, what would you Chinese think about that? You’d call it blasphemy! Well, what you’re doing is an affront to our ancestors. And to Tengger! You’ll pay one day, and so will this old ma
n...”
Chen had never seen Bilgee so furious. The powder keg had finally exploded, blowing Chen’s heart to pieces. The old man was like an angry wolf, and Chen was afraid he might kick the rock and hurt himself or, worse, pick it up and crush the wolf cub with it. And he was getting angrier by the minute. “When I first heard that you were raising a wolf cub, I wrote that off as an example of how you Chinese students really don’t understand grassland customs, that you are ignorant of our taboos, and were just trying something new that you’d give up after a few days. But then I heard that Dorji was raising one too and that you planned to breed wolfhounds. You can’t do that! I want you to dispose of that cub right now, in front of me...”
Chen knew he’d really stepped over the line this time. No one had raised a wolf on the grassland for all these thousands of years. You can kill a warrior; you cannot humiliate him. You can kill a wolf; you cannot raise it. Now here was a young Chinese deep in the heart of the grassland, on Mongol ancestral land, where the inhabitants worshipped Tengger, a sacred place where they paid homage to their wild forebear, their master of wisdom, their war god, and the protector of the grassland, the wolf totem, and he was raising a wolf as he would a dog, a true outrage. If this had occurred in ancient times, he would be labeled a sinner, a pagan, and would surely have been drawn and quartered, his corpse thrown to the dogs. Even now, what he was doing ran counter to the national policy on ethnic minorities, an act that unavoidably incensed the grassland inhabitants. But what disturbed Chen the most was what this was doing to Bilgee, the elderly Mongol who had brought him into the mysterious realm of the wolf totem, and whose careful instructions had made it possible to steal the cub in the first place. He could hold out no longer, could not keep defending his actions. “Papa,” he said, his voice quaking.