Wolf Totem: A Novel

by Jiang Rong

  These thoughts made Chen aware that his understanding of wolves was still incredibly shallow. For a long time he had thought that food, and hence killing, was the most important thing for wolves; obviously, that was not the case. He had based that assumption on his understanding of human behavior. Neither food nor killing was the purpose of the wolves’ existence; rather, it was their sacred, inviolable freedom, their independence, and their dignity. It was this principle that made it possible for all true believers among the herdsmen to willingly be delivered to the mystical sky-burial ground, in hopes that their souls would soar freely along with those of the wolves.

  After four or five li, the stubborn cub had lost about half of the fur around his neck, which was now bleeding. The thick pads on his paws were rubbed raw, exposing the flesh underneath. Finally the exhausted cub could no longer roll over; now, like a dying wolf dragged along by a fast horse and a lasso pole, he no longer struggled. When drops of blood began to fall from his throat, Chen realized that the collar had opened a wound there. He shouted for the carts to stop and jumped off his horse, picked up the quaking cub, and walked with him in his arms for a yard or so to loosen the chain. His arms were quickly smeared by blood from the cub’s neck. Seemingly close to death, the cub continued to bleed; he scratched Chen’s hands with paws whose claws had been blunted from his ordeal and were now a bloody mess. Chen’s tears merged with the wolf’s blood.

  Zhang Jiyuan was shocked to see the state the cub was in. Walking around and around, but not knowing what to do, he said, “How could he be so stubborn? Doesn’t he want to live? What do we do now?”

  Chen had no idea what to do except hold the cub; the tremors nearly broke his heart.

  “He won’t let us pull him along now, and he’s not yet fully grown,” Zhang said, wiping off the sweat on his forehead. “Even if we manage to get him to the autumn pastureland, we’ll have to move every month. How will we take him with us? I think . . . I think we ought to . . . set him free, here... and let him live on his own.”

  Chen’s face was steely gray. “You didn’t raise him!” he shouted. “You don’t understand. Live on his own? That’s the same as killing him. I’m going to see that he grows to adulthood. I’m going to let him live.”

  Fired by his determination, Chen jumped to his feet and ran over to the cart carrying cow dung and other odds and ends, where, puffing with anger, he untied the rope and moved the cart to the end of the caravan. Then he picked up a willow basket and dumped out half a load of the dry cow dung. He’d decided to convert the basket into a prisoner transport, a temporary jail cell in which to move the cub.

  “Are you crazy? This load of fuel is how we’ll eat and drink tea on the journey. If it rains, we won’t be able to eat. And we’ll need dry dung for days after we get there. How dare you dump that just so you can transport the wolf! The herders won’t forgive you, nor will Gao Jianzhong.”

  Chen quickly reloaded the cart. “I’ll borrow some from Gasmai when we get to camp tonight. Then when we get to the new pasture, I’ll go collect cow dung. Rest assured, you’ll have your meals and your tea.”

  Having barely escaped death, the cub stood stubbornly on the ground despite the pain in his paws; his legs were still shaking, and blood continued to drip from his mouth, but he stiffened his neck and dug in his heels in case the cart started off again. He stared at it with a defiance that said he was prepared to fight to the death, even if his paws were rubbed raw, down to the bones. Chen crouched and laid the cub on the ground with his paws up in the air. Then he went for some medicated powder to treat his paws and neck. Seeing the blood dripping from his mouth, Chen took out two pieces of meat, spread the powder over them, and held them out to the cub, who swallowed them whole. Chen hoped the medicine would help stop the bleeding. He then retied the basket and rearranged the odds and ends to clear a space on the cart. After laying down a piece of untanned sheepskin, he tore off half of a felt blanket to use as a cover; the space was barely big enough to contain the wolf. But how was he going to get him into it?

  Undoing the chain, Chen rolled up his sleeves and picked up the cub. But as soon as he took a step toward the cart, the cub began to growl and struggle. So Chen ran, hoping to toss the cub into the basket. Before he got there, however, the cub chomped down on his arm and wouldn’t let go. Chen screamed in pain and fear. He broke out into a cold sweat.

  The cub did not let go until he was back on the ground. Chen shook his arm to relieve the pain. He looked down and saw that, while he wasn’t bleeding, there were four purple welts on the skin.

  Zhang’s face was a ghostly white. “You’re lucky you snipped off the tips of his fangs, or he’d have bitten through your arm. I don’t think we can keep him anymore. When he grows up, even blunted fangs could break your arm.”

  “Don’t talk about his teeth, okay? If not for that, I might have been able to return him to the grassland. Now he’s handicapped. How could he survive with fangs that can’t even break the skin? I maimed him, so I’ll have to feed him. Now that the corps is here, and they’re talking about settling down, I’ll build a stone pen for him after we settle, and there’ll be no need for the chain.”

  “All right,” Zhang said, “I won’t try to stop you. But we have to find a way to put him on the cart and get on the road. Let me try, since you’re hurt.”

  “I’ll carry him,” Chen said. “He doesn’t know you, and he could bite your nose off. Tell you what. You stand there with the felt blanket and cover the basket as soon as I toss him in.”

  “Are you crazy? He’ll bite you, and hard, if you pick him up again. Wolves are ruthless when they’re that angry. He’ll go for your throat if you’re not careful.”

  Chen paused for a moment. “I’m going to have to pick him up, even if he bites me. I guess I’ll have to sacrifice a raincoat.” He ran over to one of the carts and took out his army raincoat, with green canvas on one side and black rubber on the other. Then he took out two more pieces of meat to keep the cub busy while he forced himself to stop shaking, opened up the raincoat, and flung it over the young wolf. He quickly tightened his grip and carried the frantically struggling cub, disoriented and unable to see where to bite, over to the cart, where he tossed him in, raincoat and all. Zhang ran up and dropped the felt blanket over the basket. By the time the cub struggled out of an opening he’d made in the raincoat, he’d become a prisoner. After the two men secured the felt cover with a horse-mane rope, Chen collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat. The cub made a turn in his new prison, prompting Chen to jump up to be ready if the cub tore at the felt blanket or rammed his head against the basket.

  The carts were now ready to set out, but Chen was worried that the flimsy willow basket would not be strong enough to hold an angry, powerful animal. He coaxed and cajoled, and even tossed several pieces of meat into the cage. After bringing the dogs back to the rear of the caravan to keep the cub company, he signaled to get Zhang moving. On one of the carts, Chen found a club, which he was prepared to bang against the basket to stop the cub from struggling if necessary, while he rode alongside to keep an eye on him. He fully expected that the cub would try to chew a hole in the basket to get loose from a prison far worse than any chain.

  He needn’t have worried, for when they began moving, the cub stopped struggling; rather, fear showed in his eyes, something Chen had never witnessed before. Not daring to lie down, he lowered his head, arched his back, and, with his tail between his legs, stood staring at Chen, who watched as he grew increasingly frightened, to the point where he shrank into a ball. He wouldn’t eat, drink, growl, or bite; like a seasick prisoner, he’d lost the capacity to resist.

  Shocked by this turn of events, Chen stuck close to the cart as they crossed a mountain ridge. The cub’s eyes seemed to show that his head remained clear, though he was clearly exhausted, his paws were injured, and his mouth was still bleeding. But he didn’t dare lie down to rest, as if out of an instinctual fear of the cart’s mo
tion and of being lifted off the ground. After six months with the cub, Chen was still flabbergasted by his repeated, unfathomable behavior.

  The caravan traveled fast but at a smooth pace. As Chen rode along, he was quickly lost in thought. How had the often violent cub suddenly become so fearful and weak? That was so unlike a grassland wolf. Do all heroic figures have a fatal flaw? Was it possible that the grassland wolf, which Chen believed to have evolved to the point of perfection, had a character defect? He turned his attention to the difficulties facing him in the frequent moves they would be making throughout the winter. The cub would be fully grown by then, and there simply wouldn’t be enough resources to transport him from place to place. No solution presented itself.

  The oxen smelled the cows after they crossed over the hill and picked up the pace in order to catch up with earlier caravans some distance away.

  As they were moving through a mountain pass on the edge of the summer pastureland, a light truck came from the opposite direction, trailing clouds of dust; instead of waiting for the carts to yield, it drove off the road and continued past them.

  Chen saw two rifle-toting soldiers, some laborers from the brigade, and a herdsman in a thin deel. The herdsman waved; it was Dorji. Chen’s heart was in his throat again at the sight of the skilled wolf killer in a truck that had become infamous for killing wolves. He rode up to the front. “Is Dorji taking people to hunt wolves again?” Chen asked.

  “There’s nothing around here but mountains, lakes, and streams,” Zhang said. “The truck would be useless in places like that, so how could they be going to hunt wolves? They must be going back to help move the storage shed.”

  When they reached the grassland, a horse came galloping toward them from the caravan up front. They saw it was Bilgee, looking grim. “Was Dorji on that truck?” he asked breathlessly.

  They confirmed that he was. “Come with me to the old campsite,” Bilgee said to Chen. Then he turned to Zhang Jiyuan. “You go on ahead with the carts; we’ll be right back.”

  “Check on the cub when you can,” Chen whispered to Zhang. “If he gives you any trouble, don’t do anything till I get back.” He then galloped off with the old man.

  “Dorji must be taking those people to hunt wolves,” Bilgee said. “These days, his skills have been in great demand. Since he speaks Mandarin, he’s becomes the wolf-killing adviser to the corps, leaving the cows to his younger brother. He takes people out hunting every day. He’s on great terms with the officials. A few days ago, he even helped one of the division big shots shoot several wolves. He’s their hero now.”

  “How do they hunt when there’s nothing but mountains and rivers? I don’t get it.”

  “When a horse herder told me he was taking them back to the old campsite, I knew what he was up to.”

  “What?”

  “He’s putting out poisoned bait and setting traps on the old campsite. The old, sick, and injured wolves are in such bad shape that they have to survive on leftover bones from the pack, or food left behind by people and their dogs. They go hungry half the time. So whenever the herders move to a new place, they look for food in the ashes and garbage at the old sites. They’ll eat anything, rotting sheep pelts, stinking bones, sheep skulls, leftover food, and stuff like that. They even dig up dead dogs, sheep, and cows. All the old herdsmen know this. Sometimes, when they’ve left something behind during a move, they go back to get it and see traces of wolves. As good-hearted believers in Lamaism, they know those wolves are in bad shape, so they’d never set traps or leave poisoned bait behind. Some even leave food for the old wolves when they move.”

  The old man sighed. “It didn’t take the outsiders long to learn all about the old wolves. Dorji has followed in his father’s footsteps, by leaving dead sheep stuffed with poison and setting traps when they move. They go back a few days later to skin the dead or trapped wolves. Why do you think his family sells more pelts than anyone else? They don’t believe in Lamaism, and they don’t respect the wolves. They don’t mind using the cruelest means possible to kill them all, including the old and injured ones. See what I mean? Wolves could never be as evil as humans.”

  With sadness brimming in his eyes, the old man continued, his beard quivering, “Do you know how many wolves they’ve killed lately? The wolves are so spooked that they don’t dare go out to look for food. I figure that even the healthy ones will go to the old site to look for food, now that the brigade has moved on. Dorji’s far more devious than wolves. If they keep killing them, no one here will ever again go up to Tengger, and the grassland will be doomed.”

  Chen knew there was nothing he could say to heal the wounds of this last hunter of the nomadic herdsmen. No one could stop the explosion of the farming population or the farmers’ plundering of the grassland. Unable to ease the old man’s feeling, all he could say was, “Watch me. I’m going to remove every one of those traps.”

  They crossed the ridge and headed toward the nearest campsite, seeing tire tracks left by the truck, which had already driven to the other side of the slope. They approached the site cautiously, not wanting their horses to get caught in a trap.

  The old man checked the area and pointed to the cooking pit. “Dorji’s good at setting traps. See those ashes? They look as if the wind blew them over there, but in fact he sprinkled them over the traps. And he left two meatless sheep hooves near them. If those had any meat on them, the wolves would be suspicious. But meatless hooves are trash, just waiting to trick the wolves. He smeared his hand with ashes to mask the human odor before he set the traps. Only wolves with the keenest sense of smell could detect his odor. The old ones’ sense of smell has been dulled with age.”

  Shocked and angered, Chen could say nothing.

  Pointing to half of the carcass of a sick sheep, the old man said, “I guarantee you that sheep has been poisoned. I hear they got some powerful poison from Beijing. The wolves can’t smell it, but once they ingest it, they’ll be dead before you can smoke a pipe.”

  “Then I’ll toss that carcass down an abandoned well.”

  “There are too many campsites. You can’t do that in all of them.”

  They got back on their horses and checked four or five sites. Dorji hadn’t left anything at some of the sites, but he’d set traps or left poison at others. He’d planned it out well, employing plenty of deception. He would alternate methods, leaving small hills between the camps, so that if a trap caught a wolf in one place, that wouldn’t affect the ones set in the next spot.

  They also saw there were more sites with poison than with traps. He’d made use of the cooking pits and the ashes inside, which was why he could finish so quickly; he hadn’t had to dig fresh holes for the traps.

  They had to stop there, or Dorji would have seen them. The old man turned his horse around as he muttered, “These are all we’ll be able to save.” When they reached a site where Dorji had worked, the old man got off his horse and walked toward a rotten sheep leg. He took out a small sheepskin pouch, opened it, and spread some grayish white powder over it. Chen knew exactly what he was doing. The stuff was low-grade animal poison sold at the local co-op; not very powerful, it had a strong odor that was effective only on the stupidest wolves and foxes. Dorji’s work would be in vain now that the poison could be detected by most wolves.

  The old man is, after all, smarter than Dorji, Chen was thinking. But a question occurred to him. “What if the smell dissipates in the wind?” he asked.

  The old man said, “Not to worry. The wolves can smell it even if we can’t.”

  At places where there were traps, Bilgee told Chen to pick up some sheep bones and throw them at the traps to snap them shut. That was one of the ways cunning old wolves dealt with traps.

  Then they moved to the next site and did not turn back until the old man had used up all his low-grade poison.

  “Papa, what if on their way back they see that the traps have snapped shut?”

  “They’re probably off to hunt wolves, so
they won’t worry about these,” the old man said.

  “But what if they come back to check the traps and see they’ve been touched? You could be in serious trouble for sabotaging the wolf extermination campaign.”

  “Not as serious as the trouble the wolves will be in. Without them, the mice and rabbits will rule the grassland. Then, when the grassland is gone, they’ll be in trouble too. No one can escape it. I’ve managed to save a few wolves. We’ll just have to be happy with that. Olonbulag wolves, run for your lives, run over there. To be honest, I hope Dorji and the others do come back and see what I’ve done. I’ve got a score to settle with them.”

  They reached the top of the ridge, where they saw several wild geese crying sadly and circling in the air, looking for their own kind. The old man reined in his horse, looked up, and sighed. “Even the wild geese can’t form a flock. They’ve eaten nearly all of them.” He turned back to look at the new pastureland that he had opened. Tears filled his murky eyes.

  Chen was reminded of the beautiful paradise they’d found when he’d first arrived at the new pastureland with the old man. It had taken only one summer for the people to turn the lovely swan lake area into a graveyard for swans, wild geese, wild ducks, and wolves. “Papa,” he said, “we’re doing a good deed, so why do I feel we have to sneak around? I feel like crying.”

  “Go ahead and cry. I feel that way myself. The wolves have taken away generations of old Mongol men, so why am I going to be left behind?” He looked up at Tengger with a tear-streaked face and wailed like an old wolf.

  Tears streamed down Chen’s face, joining the old man’s tears as they fell onto the ancient Olonbulag.

  The cub endured his pain, standing in the cage for two whole days. Chen Zhen and Zhang Jiyuan’s carts finally arrived at a gentle slope dense with autumn grass on the evening of the second day. Their neighbor, Gombu, was putting up his yurt. Gao Jianzhong had already released the cows onto the new pasture and was waiting for Chen and Zhang at a yurt site Bilgee had chosen for them. Yang Ke’s sheep were also approaching the new site.