Wolf Totem: A Novel

by Jiang Rong

  When they went fox hunting, Bilgee always pointed out the three black spots to Chen, especially on snow-covered ground. Experienced hunters would aim at those spots. The cunning grassland fox could not deceive grassland hunters, but could turn the sharp-eyed hunters seated next to Chen into blind men. Chen kept quiet, wanting to see no more bloodshed. The beautiful, sly foxes were expert mice catchers. As the vehicles drew closer, the black spots slowly disappeared in the dense grass.

  As they continued, a wild rabbit stood up in the grass to stare at them. Its color was close to that of the tassels, but its camouflage was ruined by its big ears. Chen whispered, “There’s a fat rabbit up ahead. They’re enemies of the grassland. Want to take it down?”

  “Not now,” said Bao Shungui. “We’ll get the rabbits after we kill all the wolves.”

  Unafraid of the vehicles, the rabbit did not crouch down and disappear until they were only ten or fifteen yards away. The fragrance of the needle grass grew stronger. With the realization that they would not find any prey here, the hunters turned and headed for the hilly autumn pasture.

  Here the grass was shorter, but the herdsmen made it their autumn pastureland because of the abundant grass seeds. In the fall, seeds of wild wheat, clover, and peas were rich in fat and protein. The sheep would fatten up by eating the seeds right off the plants. Outsiders, who did not understand this primitive technique, could not manage to fatten their sheep enough to survive the winter, and large numbers of lambs would die in the spring when the ewes could not produce enough milk.

  Chen had learned almost everything about the grassland from Bilgee in the two years he’d stayed with him. He reached down and pulled up a handful of grass seed, which he rubbed between his palms. The seeds were ripening; it was almost time for the brigade to move to the autumn pasture.

  The shorter grass widened their view and allowed the vehicles to speed up. Bao Shungui spotted some fresh wolf droppings in the dirt. The hunters reacted excitedly; Chen began to worry once again. They were now sixty or seventy li from where they’d used their guns, and wolves around here wouldn’t be on guard against motor vehicles quietly approaching from the north, where there were no traces of human beings.

  “Wolf! Wolf!” Three of the passengers cried with soft urgency after they crossed a gentle slope. Chen rubbed his eyes and saw a giant wolf, as big as a leopard, some three hundred yards ahead. On the Olonbulag, large, powerful, fast-moving wolves often went out on their own, and while they appeared to be loners, they were actually scouting for the pack.

  The giant wolf looked as if it had been startled out of a nap by the sound of the vehicles; it raced into the dense grass of a gulley. Old Liu stepped on the gas and shouted excitedly, “Don’t even think about getting away!” By blocking its escape route, he forced the wolf to spin around and run toward the hilltop, nearly at gazelle speed, but Staff Officer Batel’s vehicle caught up with it. Coming at the wolf from opposite directions, they had yet to reach top speed, while the wolf was running as fast as it could.

  The hunters deferred to one another. Xu shouted, “Go ahead, you have the best shot.”

  “No,” Batel replied. “You’re a better shot, you take it.”

  Bao waved and yelled, “Don’t shoot. Don’t anyone shoot. I want a pelt with no bullet holes. I want to skin it alive. A live pelt, with its bright, shiny fur, fetches the best price.”

  “Great idea!” the hunters and their drivers shouted in unison. Old Liu even raised his thumb at Bao. “Watch me. I’ll chase that son of a bitch down.”

  Little Wang joined in: “I’ll chase it till it coughs up blood.”

  The gentle slope made for easy maneuvering, and this wolf was not going to escape the two-pronged motorized attack. It was already foaming at the mouth. What should have been a tense battle between man and wolf now became nothing more than entertainment for humans. It was the first time since his arrival on the grassland that Chen saw the tremendous edge humans had over the wolves. The Mongolian wolves, having dominated the grassland for thousands of years, were now more pathetic than the rabbits.

  The skilled drivers followed at a leisurely pace, speeding up when the wolf ran faster and slowing down when the wolf’s pace slackened, all the while forcing it to keep running by blowing on their horns and keeping a distance of fifty to sixty yards between them. The wolf was fast, but the chase was taking its toll; after twenty li, it was panting hard, its mouth opened as wide as possible, but still it was having trouble catching its breath.

  The wolf ran for its life, exhausting its will and strength; seemingly, it could run forever, so long as the enemy did not catch up with it. Chen wished that a giant hole or dip in the ground, or a pile of ox bones would rise up before them; he wouldn’t have minded being tossed out of the vehicle.

  The faces of the hunters, exhilarated by the chase, were red and shiny, as if they were drunk. Bao yelled, “This wolf is bigger than any we’ve gotten before. Its pelt is big enough for a blanket without having to sew pieces together.”

  “Let’s not sell the pelt,” Xu said. “Let’s give it to the corps commander. ”

  “Good idea,” Batel said. “That way the corps leaders will know how big the wolves around here are and what a danger they are to the grassland.”

  Old Liu banged on the steering wheel. “The Inner Mongolian grassland is so rich that within a year or so we’ll all have better houses than we could ever get in the city.”

  Chen’s fists were clenched until they were sweating. It was all he could do to stop from pounding Liu in the back of the head. The image of the cub flashed before his eyes, and a warm current coursed through his heart, as if a nursing baby were waiting for him at home. His arms fell weakly to his sides; he felt empty from head to toe.

  They’d finally chased the wolf onto a long, wide-open slope, with no gulley, no hilltop, no holes, and no lowlands, nothing the wolf could use to defend itself. Under the blaring of the vehicles’ horns, it began to slow down, its legs twitching from exhaustion.

  Bao grabbed Xu’s rifle and fired two shots less than a yard from the wolf, grazing its fur. It was the sound that the wolves feared most, and it squeezed out the last of its strength; after managing another half li or so, it stopped, turned, and sat down for its final gesture.

  The vehicles screeched to a stop about three or four yards away. Bao leaped off with his rifle; seeing that the wolf wasn’t moving, he fixed his bayonet and walked up to it. It was quaking, its eyes unfocused. It remained motionless as Bao walked up, so he stabbed at its mouth, still getting no reaction. He laughed. “We’ve chased it stupid.” Then he reached out to rub the wolf’s head, like petting a dog.

  Bao may well have been the first man in thousands of years who dared to touch the head of a living wolf sitting in the wild. The wolf crumpled to the ground as Bao’s hand moved toward its ears.

  Chen Zhen returned home feeling like a sinner, finding it difficult to enter the yurt. He hesitated before finally walking inside, where he found Zhang Jiyuan talking angrily to Yang Ke and Gao Jianzhong he found Zhang Jiyuan talking angrily to Yang Ke and Gao Jianzhong about the brigade’s wolf extermination campaign. "Everyone’s gone mad about killing. The hunters and workers use trucks and cars, given all the gasoline and ammunition they need. Even the doctors have joined in. They inject an odorless and colorless poison into the bone marrow of dead sheep that they then tossed into the wild. I have no idea how many wolves they’ve poisoned. The worst are the corps’ road repair crews. They use any weapon they can find. They even found a way to insert explosives into sheep bones, smear them with sheep fat, and then leave them at places frequented by wolves. The rigged bones blow wolves’ heads off when they bite down. The workers have put the sheep-bone bombs everywhere. They’ve already killed several of the herdsmen’s dogs. The wolves have fallen into the abyss of the people’s battle. Everywhere people are singing, ‘Kill the wolves! Generation after generation, we won’t stop fighting until all the jackals are dead.’ I hear th
at the herdsmen have lodged a complaint with the military district.”

  “The workers in our team have also joined the fray,” Gao said. “They killed five or six big wolves. These herdsmen-turned-farmers are even better at killing wolves; it cost me two bottles of liquor to find out how they do it. They use wolf traps, but they’re much sneakier than the herders. The herders leave traps near dead sheep, and after a while the wolves figure it out. They’re cautious with dead sheep in the wild; they won’t touch them until the alpha male, with its sharp nose, sniffs and digs out the trap. But the workers do it differently. They set traps at places where there are lots of wolves, with no dead sheep or bones, on level ground. Guess what they use for bait? You couldn’t guess in a million years. They soak horse dung in melted sheep fat and dry it. Then they break it into small pieces and spread it around the traps. That’s their bait. When a wolf passes by, it’ll smell the sheep fat, but it won’t be on guard since there are no dead sheep or bones. It sniffs around, and sooner or later it’s caught. How cruel is that! Old Wang said that’s how they killed all the wolves in his hometown.”

  Unable to bear any more, Chen went out and walked to the wolf pen, where he called softly to the cub, who had obviously missed him that day. He was waiting for Chen at the edge of the pen, his tail standing straight. Chen crouched down and held the cub for a long time, his face touching the cub’s head. The moon seemed cold on this frosty autumn night; the wolves’ tremulous howls were distant memories on the new pasture. Chen no longer worried about the mother wolves coming for the cub; now he wished they’d come and take him north across the border.

  He heard footsteps behind him; it was Yang Ke, who said, “Lamjav said he saw the White Wolf King leading a pack of wolves across the border before the corps could react. I don’t think he’ll ever return to the Olonbulag.”

  Chen couldn’t sleep that night.

  33

  You can tame a bear, a tiger, a lion, or an elephant, but you cannot tame a Mongolian wolf.

  The cub would rather be strangled than move to a new place. The brigade’s cows and sheep left soon after dawn and the caravan of transport wagons, separated into sections, crossed a western mountain ridge on their way to the autumn pastureland. Those from the Section Two students’ yurt, with their six heavy oxcarts, had not yet started out, even though Bilgee and Gasmai had sent people twice to tell them to get on the road.

  Zhang Jiyuan took time off to help them move, but he and Chen Zhen were helpless in dealing with the fiercely stubborn cub. Chen never dreamed that they would fail in the move after weathering so many storms with the cub over the past six months.

  The little wolf had been a recently weaned cub no more than a foot long when they’d put him in a wooden box used for dry cow patties to move from the spring pasture. After a summer of voracious eating, he’d grown into a midsized wolf. They didn’t have a cage big enough for him now, and, even if they had, Chen would not have been able to put him in it; besides, there wouldn’t have been space. There weren’t enough carts to begin with. All six carts were seriously overloaded (the students’ books alone filled one cart) and ran the risk of overturning or breaking down on the long trek. Weather was the determining factor in choosing a date for the move; the brigade wanted to avoid the coming rains. Chen was in a tough spot.

  Sweat beaded Zhang Jiyuan’s forehead. “What have you been doing all this time?” he grumbled. “You should have trained the wolf to walk with you.”

  “How do you know I didn’t try?” Chen fired back. “I could drag him along when he was small, but that couldn’t last forever. All summer long he pulled me where he wanted to go, and if I tried to assert myself, he threatened to bite me. Wolves aren’t dogs; they’d rather die than change. Have you ever seen a wolf perform in a circus like a tiger or a lion? No animal trainer could manage that. You’ve been around more wolves than I have, you ought to know that.”

  Zhang clenched his teeth and said, “I’ll try again. If it doesn’t work this time, we’re going to have to do something drastic.” He walked up to the cub, herding club in hand, and took the iron ring from Chen. As soon as began to pull on the chain, the cub bared his fangs and growled, staying glued to the spot by leaning backward and digging in with all four paws. Zhang pulled with all his might but couldn’t budge the little wolf. So he turned around and draped the chain over his shoulder to pull like a coolie dragging a boat on the Yangtze River.

  He barely managed to move the cub, whose paws gouged tracks in the sandy soil, leaving two small mounds at the end. Unhappy about being dragged along, the cub shifted his weight forward and prepared to pounce, sending Zhang flying headfirst to the ground and covering his face with dirt. That dragged the cub even farther, and now man and wolf were a tangled mess, the cub’s mouth no more than a foot from Zhang’s throat. Terrified, Chen rushed up, grabbed the cub around the neck, and held tight. The cub was still snarling at Zhang.

  Both men were gasping for breath, their faces ashen. “We’re in big trouble,” Zhang said. “The move will take two or three days, which means a round trip of at least five. If it was only a day, we could leave him here and come back with an empty cart. But the guard at the wool shed and the workers haven’t moved yet, and if we leave him here longer than that, either they’ll kill him or the corps wolf hunters will. We have to get him to move with us. How’s this? We’ll tow him along behind a cart.”

  “I tried that a few days ago. It didn’t work. I just about strangled him in the process. Now I understand the meaning behind ‘unbridled wildness’ and ‘death before surrender.’ The wolf would rather be strangled to death than follow our orders. I think we’re stuck.”

  “I can’t accept that,” Zhang said. “Why don’t you do it first with one of the puppies to show him?”

  Chen shook his head. “I tried that too. Didn’t work.”

  “Let’s try it again.” Zhang brought over a loaded oxcart, slipped a rope around the neck of one of the puppies, and tied the rope to the rear axle. Then he circled the wolf, the obedient puppy tagging along behind.

  “We’re going to a nice place,” Zhang said as he walked, trying to win over the cub. “See, like this, follow the cart. It’s easy. You’re smarter than a dog; you know how to do this, don’t you? Here, take a good look.”

  The cub stared at the puppy, his head held high out of disdain. Chen coaxed and cajoled, dragging the wolf behind the puppy a few steps, though it was actually he who was being pulled along by the cub, who followed because he liked the puppy, not because he wanted to do their bidding. After completing one revolution, Chen looped the iron ring over the shaft, hoping the cub would follow the cart. But the moment the chain was attached to the cart, the cub pulled against it with all his might, straining harder than when he was tethered to the wooden post and making the heavy cart creak.

  Chen looked at the scene in front of him: not a single yurt or sheep left. Panic began to set in. If they didn’t get on the road soon, they wouldn’t reach the temporary campsite before dark. With so many sections and so many twists and turns along the way, what would happen to Yang Ke’s sheep and Gao Jianzhong’s cows if they were lost? How would the two men find a place to stop for food and tea? More dangerous yet was the night shift, when everyone was tired and they didn’t have the dogs around. If something happened to the sheep because of the cub, Chen would be criticized again and the cub would probably be shot.

  Anxiety finally hardened Chen’s heart. “He might die if we drag him along, but he’ll surely die if we let him go, so let’s seek life in death and drag him along with us. You get the carts moving and let me have your horse. I’ll bring up the rear with the cub.”

  Zhang sighed. “Obviously, raising a wolf under nomadic conditions is just about impossible.”

  Chen moved the cart tethered with the puppy and the cub to the rear of the caravan. Then he tied the rope from the last ox to the shaft of the cart ahead of them. “Let’s go,” he shouted.

  Since Zhang could
n’t bring himself to sit on the cart, he walked along holding the rope tied to the first ox. One after another, the carts started moving. The puppy followed as the last cart began moving, but the cub stayed put even when the three-yard-long chain was stretched taut. Gao Jianzhong had picked the best and fastest six oxen for the move. They had followed grassland customs by feeding the oxen nothing but water for three days. When their stomachs were empty was the best time to put them to work. So when they got under way, the cub was no match; he was jerked forward and fell head over heels before managing to dig his paws into the ground.

  Startled and angry, he struggled, clawing wildly as he rolled around and got to his feet time and again. He’d run a few steps, then stop and dig in. But then, once they were on the path, the carts picked up speed. The cub stumbled and bounced around for a dozen yards or so before he was dragged backward, pulled along like a dead dog, the hard grass stubble scraping off a layer of his fur.

  The puppy cocked her head to look at the cub sympathetically; she whimpered and raised her paws as if telling him to walk like her or he’d be dragged to his death. But, too haughty to act like a dog, the cub ignored her and continued to resist...

  Chen could see that the cub would rather endure the pain and struggle against the chain than be led along like a dog. His resistance marked the fundamental distinction between wolves and dogs; between wolves and lions, tigers, bears, and elephants; and between wolves and most humans. No grassland wolf would surrender to humans. Refusing to follow or to be led was a core belief for a Mongolian wolf, and that was true even for a cub who had never been taught by members of a pack.

  As the cub struggled, the road grit rubbed his paws bloody, a sight that stabbed at Chen’s heart. The wolf, a totem for the stubborn grassland people over the millennia, possessed spiritual power that would shame and inspire awe in humans. Few people could live according to that code without bending and compromising; fewer still would pit their lives against a nearly invincible external force.