Wolf Totem: A Novel

by Jiang Rong

  None of the moves took them very far, just far enough to be away from where the livestock had been grazing. It usually took half a day, too little time for the cub to bite through the cage no matter how hard he tried. Chen breathed a sigh of relief, having finally, after two weeks of racking his brain, found a solution to the problem of the cub’s survival during their constant moves.

  Chen and Yang had also figured out how to make the cub enter the cage: they would trap him under a covered basket on the ground, then lift the shaft of the oxcart and slide the cart under it with the cub inside. All they had to do after that was lower the cart and secure the basket, and the cub would be safely on the cart. They reversed the procedure when they reached a new site. They were hoping to move the cub the same way each time until they settled in one place, where they would build a stone pen; that would be the end of their troubles and enable them to live side by side with the cub. They’d raised him with puppies, and since they had basically grown up together, they’d surely produce results—a few litters of wolfhounds, true descendents of the grassland wolves.

  Chen and Yang spent a great deal of time sitting with the cub, rubbing his head as they chatted. At moments like this, he would rest his head on one of their legs, prick up his ears, and listen curiously to their conversation. When he was tired, he’d shake his head and rub his neck against their legs or raise his head for them to scratch his ears or cheeks. The scene would draw the two men deeper into their fantasy about their lives with the cub.

  Holding the cub to brush his coat, Yang said, “Our little wolf wouldn’t try to run away if he had his own litter. Wolves care about their families, and male wolves are model mates. So long as no wild wolf came along, we wouldn’t have to chain him; he could play on the grassland and return to the pen on his own.”

  Chen shook his head. “He wouldn’t be a wolf if he did that. I don’t plan to keep him here. My initial dream was to have a real wolf friend. If I rode into the hills by the border and yelled out, ‘Little Wolf, Little Wolf, time to eat,’ he’d bring his whole family, a group of true grassland wolves, and run happily toward me. There’d be no chains around their necks, their teeth would be sharp, and they’d be strong. They’d roll in the grass with me, lick my chin, and bite my arms, but not hard. But now that the cub’s sharp teeth are gone, my dream has become just that, a dream.”

  Chen sighed softly. “But I don’t want to give up. I have a new fantasy now: I’ve become a dentist and have given the cub four sharp steel teeth. Next spring, when he’s fully grown, I’ll secretly take him to the border and free him in the mountains of Outer Mongolia, where there are still wolf packs. Maybe his father, the White Wolf King, has fought his way to freedom and opened a base for them. This cub is smart enough to find his father, and when they’re together, the White Wolf King will sniff out the bloodline in the cub and welcome him back. Armed with his sharp steel teeth, the cub will be invincible and may even take over as king in a few years.

  “Little Wolf clearly has the best genes of all the Olonbulag wolves. He’s stubborn and extremely smart; by rights, he should have been the next king of the wolves. But only if he could return to the real Mongolia, where few people inhabit a vast territory. There are only twenty million people in the real Mongolia, which is a spiritual paradise that venerates the wolf totem; it is free of a farming population that hates wolves and wants only to kill them. The vast, lush grassland is where our little wolf ought to display his prowess. I committed a crime when I destroyed the future of such an outstanding little wolf cub.”

  Yang fixed his gaze on the distant mountains, the light darkening in his eyes. He sighed and said, “If you’d come here ten years earlier, maybe your dream could have come true, but your latest fantasy is a pipe dream. Where are you going to find a set of dental tools? Not even the banner hospital has those. The old herdsmen have to travel eight hundred li to the league hospital to have their teeth fixed. What are the chances of taking a wolf there? Stop dreaming. We need to face reality.”

  That reality was the cub’s injuries. His paws had healed, but the blackened tooth was getting looser by the day and the gums were swelling up. He no longer tore at his meat, and sometimes, when his hunger made him forget about the bad tooth, he took a big bite, but the pain caused him to drop it and open his mouth wide to suck in cold air. He licked the bad tooth until the pain was gone before he started eating again, this time chewing on one side, and very slowly.

  What worried Chen most was the injury to the cub’s throat, which had yet to heal. He continued to smear medicated powder on the food, but the cub still had trouble swallowing, even though the bleeding had stopped. He coughed constantly. Since he didn’t have the nerve to ask for help from the vet, all Chen could do was borrow books to study on his own.

  The cows and sheep that would feed the people through the winter had been slaughtered and frozen. The four people in Chen’s yurt were allocated six sheep each for the winter, twenty-four in all. They also were given one cow. Their grain allotment remained the same, thirty jin each a month, while the herdsmen, though given the same amount of meat, received only nineteen jin of grain. As a result, the meat in Chen’s yurt was enough for all: people, dogs, and the cub. In addition, there were sheep that had died from the cold or illness, and since the herdsmen didn’t eat them, they could be fed to the dogs and the cub. Chen no longer had to worry about finding enough meat for the cub.

  Chen and Gao Jianzhong took most of the frozen meat to their section’s storage shed, three rammed-earth rooms on the spring pasture. They kept only a basket of meat in the yurt and went to the shed to restock their supply.

  Winter days are short on the grassland, with only six or seven hours for the sheep to graze, barely more than half of the summer grazing time. But, except for the white-hair blizzards, winter is a time of rest for the herders. Chen planned to spend more time with the cub and do some reading and take notes. He was waiting to see what sort of show the cub would put on for him during snowy days. Grassland dramas centered on the wolves’ wild nature, wisdom, and mysteriousness, and Chen was confident the cub wouldn’t disappoint his biggest fan.

  During the long, severe winter, wolves that had fled across the border faced conditions ten times harsher than on this side of the border, while his cub would be living in a herders’ camp, where there was an abundant supply of meat. His fur was now fully grown, and he looked bigger, every bit like a mature wolf. When Chen buried his fingers in the thick coat, he could feel the cub’s body warmth, like a burning brazier, better than gloves. The cub still would not respond to his new name, Big Wolf. He feigned deafness if they called him that, but would run over happily to jump onto their legs and knees if they called him Little Wolf. His puppy companion often went into the pen to play with the cub, who no longer bit down hard. Sometimes he’d even mount the puppy, as if mating. Watching the intimate yet violent behavior, Yang Ke would smile and say, “Looks like we can expect something next year . . . ”

  There were things about the cub’s wolf nature that never changed: one, no one could be near him when he ate, not even Chen or Yang; two, he would not let anyone pull him along when out walking, and anyone who tried would be in for the fight of his life. Chen always tried his best to honor his rules. The cub’s craving for and enjoyment of food was much stronger during the freezing winter months than in the other seasons. Each time Chen fed him, he would snarl and bare his fangs until Chen was nearly out of the pen before he felt safe enough to return to eat. Even then he’d growl menacingly at Chen. Though still not completely recovered from his injuries, he was gaining strength and seemed to be making up for the lost blood with his voracious appetite.

  Nonetheless, the bad tooth and the injury in his throat affected his wolf nature; it now took him seven or eight bites to swallow a meal that he’d once been able to gobble down in two or three mouthfuls. Chen wondered if he would ever completely recover.

  A leaden bleakness heavier than in the depths of autumn permeated t
he winter pastureland at the border region rarely visited by humans. The quiet, dreary, monotonous grassland looked even more lifeless than ever. A sense of unending, boundless sorrow rose up repeatedly in Chen Zhen; he thought he’d lose his mind or go numb from the boredom if not for the cub and the books he’d brought from Beijing. Yang Ke once told him that when his father was a student in England he learned that the suicide rate was much higher among Europeans who lived close to the North Pole. The Slavic Depression that had been common for centuries on the Russian grassland and Siberian wasteland was closely tied to the long, dark winters on vast snowy fields. But how did the Mongols manage to spend several thousand years in a similar environment with healthy bodies and high spirits? They must have developed those as a result of their tense, violent, and cruel battles with the wolves, Chen concluded.

  Physically, the grassland wolves were half of the grassland residents’ enemies, but they were the inhabitants’ spiritual masters. Once the wolves were exterminated, the bright red sun would no longer light up the grassland, and the stagnant stability would bring dejection, a withering decadence and boredom, and other more terrifying foes of the spirit, obliterating the masculine passion that had characterized them for thousands of years.

  After the disappearance of the wolves, the sale of liquor on the Olonbulag nearly doubled.

  Wolf totem, the soul of the grassland, the symbol of the grassland people’s free and indomitable spirit.

  The young wolf grew bigger; the chain grew shorter. The sensitive cub, never an animal to be cheated, protested like an abused prisoner when he realized that the length of the chain was disproportionate to his size. He pulled at it with all his might, tugging and ramming the wooden post as a way to get Chen to lengthen the chain; he wouldn’t stop until he was satisfied, even if that meant being strangled to death.

  Chen added a few inches to the chain, as the wound on the cub’s throat had yet to heal. But even he had to admit that it was still too short for the grown-up cub. The only reason he didn’t lengthen it more was that extending the cub’s running distance would give him more power when he tugged at the chain. Chen was worried that one day he’d wear the chain out, or break it.

  The cub, seemingly engaged in a prison battle, cherished every inch added to the chain. As soon as it was lengthened, he’d run madly in circles, rejoicing over the new inches of freedom he’d gained. The desolation vanished from Chen’s heart each time he sat down by the cub, as if he’d received a transfusion of roiling wolf blood.

  As he watched him, he realized that the cub wasn’t only celebrating the added length of his chain, for after the excitement abated, he kept running, and Chen felt that his instincts were telling him to train for speed, for the skill to escape. He struggled against his chain with more power than during the summer and fall. As he grew stronger and more mature by the day, he stared out at the grassland with a longing in his eyes; he could almost reach out and touch the freedom, and that made him hate the chain even more. Chen realized how cruel his imprisonment was yet felt the cub would surely die if he ran away to roam the snowy land in the depths of winter, when even adult wolves are barely able to survive.

  The cub continued to fight the chain, which delayed the healing of his throat. Chen felt his own throat tighten whenever he looked at the cub. All he could do was check the chain, the collar, and the post more often to prevent the cub from running away into the land of freedom and death before his own eyes.

  Pangs of guilt struck Chen’s heart. In this barren, uninhabited land, he enjoyed the company of a young wolf whose life generator created the power to help him through the seemingly endless winter. He’d learned so much from the clash in nature and destiny of two species on a fertile yet bramble-covered wasteland. He worshipped and admired the wolves. Had it really been necessary to imprison the cub and deprive him of his freedom and happiness so he could overcome Han ignorance and prejudice and succeed in his study of the wolves?

  Chen sank deep into doubts and worry regarding the series of actions he’d taken.

  It was time to do some reading, but he couldn’t seem to lift his feet. He felt he’d developed a spiritual and emotional dependence on the cub. He finally dragged himself away, though not without constantly looking back and wondering what else he could do for the imprisoned animal.

  The cub’s temperament eventually sealed his fate.

  Chen Zhen always felt that losing the cub in the harsh winter climate was an inevitable plan by Tengger, who also launched a lifelong assault on Chen’s conscience, so that he’d never be forgiven.

  The cub’s injury took a turn for the worse on a windless, moonless dark night when the dogs did not bark and the stars did not shine. The ancient Olonbulag was quiet and lifeless, like vegetation trapped in a fossil rock.

  In the second half of the night, Chen was awakened by a violent shaking of the chain. A heightened sense of fright made his head unusually clear and his hearing uncharacteristically keen. He detected, amid the sounds of the chain, indistinct wolf howls from the mountains across the border. The intermittent howls sounded old and sad, anxious and angry. Defeated wolf packs that had been driven out of their homeland may have been under attack by stronger wolves from the other side of the border; maybe only the White Wolf King and a few wounded and lone wolves were left, and they had run south to the no-man’s-land between the border marker and the highway. They could not return to the old blood-soaked place. The White Wolf King’s anxious howl seemed to be an urgent search to gather together the defeated and dispersed wolves for one final battle.

  It had been over a month since Chen had last heard the howls of free Olonbulag wolves, and the tremulous, feeble, anxious howls transmitted a message that had been worrying him. He wondered if Bilgee was crying at that moment, for hearing the howls of desperation was worse than hearing nothing at all. Most of the strongest, most ferocious, and smartest males had already been eliminated by the hunters. After snow blanketed the grassland, the army vehicles were of no use, so the hunters exchanged them for fast horses and continued to hunt wolves, who seemed to have lost the power to find their way out and create a new territory for themselves.

  This was Chen’s greatest fear. The return of the long-absent wolf howls rekindled hope, longing, resistance, and a fighting spirit in the cub. Like an imprisoned grassland prince, he heard his aging father’s call, a call for help, and he grew anxious, agitated, and violent, so much so that he wanted to respond with a howl as loud as a cannon shot.

  But his injured throat would not allow him to answer his father and his own kind. Crazed by anxiety, he grew reckless, jumping and running, jerking the chain and the wooden post, oblivious to the possibility of mortal injury. Chen felt the frozen ground move; given the clanging and clamoring from the pen, he could imagine the wolf cub running, crashing, coughing up blood.

  Frightened, he jerked away his felt blanket and quickly put on his fur-lined pants and deel before running out of the yurt. Blood was visible in the beam of his flashlight. The cub was bleeding openly, but he kept running and crashing, his tongue lolling involuntarily from the pressure of the tightening collar. The chain was stretched taut, like a bow at the breaking point. Bloody icicles hung from his chest, while beads of blood splattered the ground.

  Chen ran up, without regard for anything, in an attempt to hold the cub by his neck, but the cub took a large patch of sheepskin from Chen’s sleeve the moment he reached out. Yang Ke ran over anxiously, but even with two of them they couldn’t get close. The madness that had been building up inside the cub turned him into a demon with eyes reddened from killing, or a cruel, enraged, suicidal wolf. They hurriedly dragged over a large thick, filthy felt used to cover the cow dung, and lunged at the cub to press him to the ground.

  Seemingly engaged in a bloody life-and-death struggle, the cub went completely wild; he gnawed at the ground, bit the felt and anything else he came into contact with, and continued shaking his head to free himself from the chain. Chen felt as if h
e himself were losing his mind, but he forced himself to calm down and call out in a tender voice, “Little Wolf, Little Wolf.” Finally, the cub exhausted his energy and slowly gave in. Chen and Yang sat wearily on the ground, gasping for breath as if they’d been engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a wild wolf.

  In the light of dawn, they pulled the felt away to see the consequence of the cub’s crazed struggle for freedom and longing for his father’s love: The infected tooth was now protruding from his mouth; the root had broken when he tore at the felt. He was bleeding, his wounds possibly made worse by the dirty felt. His throat was still bleeding as well, worse now than when they’d first moved here. The old wound had clearly been reopened.

  His eyes bloodshot, the cub kept swallowing the blood, but it was everywhere: on their deels, on the felt, inside the pen, a worse sight than when a foal was killed. The blood quickly turned to ice. Chen’s knees buckled from the fright and he stammered in a shaky voice, “It’s all over. He’ll die for sure.”

  “He’s probably lost half his blood,” Yang Ke said. “He’ll bleed to death if we don’t do something fast.”

  They didn’t know how to stop the bleeding. Eventually, Chen got on his horse to go ask for Bilgee’s help.

  The old man, shocked by the sight of blood on Chen, went back with him. “Do you have anything to stem the bleeding?” the old man asked.

  Chen brought out four bottles of Yunnan White Powder. Bilgee entered the yurt, where he found a cooked sheep lung, which he soaked and softened in warm water from a vacuum bottle. He cut off the hard windpipes and separated the two halves before smearing powder on the surface of the softened lungs. He took it out to the pen for Chen to feed the cub, who caught and swallowed one of the halves as soon as Chen pushed the food basin in. He nearly choked, for the lung had swelled up after soaking up the blood in his esophagus. The soft organ remained in the throat for a while, like blood-stemming cotton, before slowly going down. The expanded lung put pressure on the blood vessels while helping to medicate the esophagus, slowly reducing the bleeding after the cub had swallowed both lung halves.