Wolf Totem

14

Rays of long-absent sunlight streamed into the yurt through the wood-framed opening at the top. Chen Zhen opened his eyes and looked up into the blue sky of a cold spring morning. He jumped out of bed, dressed hurriedly, and ran outside, straight to the cub’s burrow, squinting from the sting of bright sunlight.

Gombu had already led the lambs out of their pen; they made their slow way over to the hillside grazing land. Another cluster of sheep, those that had recently lambed, were grazing nearby. All but a few of the ewes had lambed by now; the flock moved at a glacial pace. Chen saw that Yang Ke hadn’t gone out and that he and Zhang Jiyuan were learning from Gombu how to stuff wolf pelts, two of which were draped over the empty oxcarts. Chen walked over to watch. The elderly Gombu had carried an armful of hay from a nearby stack and was now stuffing it gently into the pelts, which slowly took the form of the wolves. “This is how you keep it from shrinking and prevent the inside surfaces from sticking together,” he said. “That lowers their value.” Once he’d finished stuffing the pelts, he bored a hole through the nostrils and strung a thin rope through it.

Then he asked Zhang Jiyuan if he had a spare birch rod for use as a lasso pole. Zhang said he did and led the old man over to an oxcart, where Gombu picked out the longest and straightest of the four or five birch poles, one that measured some twenty feet in length. He then tied the rope he’d strung through the nose of the pelt to the tip of the pole, dug a hole several feet deep in front of the yurt, and planted the pole securely in it. When he had finished, two stuffed wolf pelts waved in the wind high above the ground like signal flags.

“That’s how you dry them,” Gombu said, “and at the same time announce to passersby that successful hunters live in this yurt. In olden days, pelts like those would keep robbers and bandits away.” Chen, Yang, and Zhang stared at the wolf flags put in motion by the wind, which flattened out the fluffy fur and turned the pelts into the image of a pair of live wolves charging into battle.

Yang sighed. “The wolves are dead, but not their form or their souls. They’re up there in full attack, spirited as always. It gives me the creeps.”

Chen too felt his emotions rise. “Seeing those pelts up there reminds me of the Turkish flags gilded with wolf heads that ancient horsemen carried into battle, galloping across the grassland, wolf blood coursing through their veins, filled with the courage, ferocity, and wisdom they’d learned from those very wolves, to become conquerors of the world.”

“You know,” Zhang said, “I now share your view that the wolf is a very complex subject, one that touches on many important issues. No wonder you’re so fascinated by them.”

“The way I see it,” Yang Ke said, “the three of us should forget about studying university courses on our own and concentrate on the far more interesting wolfology.”

The wind billowed the wolf pelts and combed the fur until it was soft and shiny, the dark wolf hairs emitting a lustrous glow in the sunlight, like banquet attire. The pair of wolves frolicked in the blueness of Tengger, embracing one another and tumbling over and over, the relaxed behavior of a freed creature. To Chen, the wolves were stuffed not with straw but with the passion of life and a joyful fighting spirit. Swathed in the white smoke of the yurt’s chimney, they appeared to be dancing in the clouds or breaking through the mist. They were flying up to Tengger, up to Sirius, up to a Paradise they had revered all their lives, taking the souls of grasslanders with them.

Chen realized that what he was doing, standing and gazing skyward, was itself a sort of ritual; without being aware of it, he was standing at the foot of a totem, in a place where respect and admiration reigned. The spirit and faith of the grassland envelops you like the air, and to sense them you need only possess the anxieties and yearnings of the soul…

Chen said to Zhang, “Come with me to look in on the cub.”

They walked over to the new burrow, where Chen removed the rock and slid back the wooden cover. The little female pup was sleeping lazily in a corner, with no thoughts of a morning meal. The wolf cub, on the other hand, sat in the middle of the burrow, looking up hungrily, impatiently. As soon as the bright sunlight lit up the burrow, he stood on his hind legs, energized, and began clawing at the wall. He climbed no more than a couple of inches before tumbling back down, then scrambled to his feet and tried again, digging his claws into the dirt and pulling himself up with all his strength, like a little lizard. When the dirt gave way, he landed like a fur ball and began growling at his own shadow on the wall, angry at it for not helping him out of the hole.

Zhang, who’d never seen a live wolf cub before, felt like reaching down to pick him up and study him closely.

“Hold on a minute,” Chen said. “Let’s see if he can get out on his own. If he can, I’ll have to make the burrow deeper.”

After falling back twice more, the cub gave up on that part of the wall and began moving around the burrow, sniffing here and there, as if trying to devise a new escape plan. All of a sudden, he discovered the presence of the little bitch and, without wasting a second, clambered onto her back and from there onto her head. He started climbing again, sending loose dirt raining down on the pup; awakened from her sleep, she stood up, whimpering, and shook the dirt from her back as the cub fell yet again. Now in full anger, he wrinkled his nose at the pup, bared his fangs, and howled. “The little bastard has plenty of wolf in him already!” Zhang exclaimed with a laugh. “He looks pretty smart to me.”

Chen saw that in two short days, the membranes covering the cub’s eyes had become much thinner; still quite watery, the eyes looked almost diseased. Nevertheless, the cub appeared able to make out some hazy shapes and react to hand gestures. When Chen opened his hand and held it out, the wolf followed it with his eyes. So as to begin conditioning the cub’s reflexes, Chen said slowly, “Little… Wolf… Little Wolf… food… food.” The wolf cocked his head, pricked up his catlike ears, and listened with a mixture of fear and curiosity.

“I’d like to see if he has any memory of his original den,” Zhang said as he cupped his hands over his mouth and made wolf sounds. The cub moved nervously, then leaped back onto the dog’s body and clawed madly at the wall, falling back once, twice, until he curled up in a corner as if seeking the safety of his mother. The men knew they’d done something cruel by letting the cub hear sounds from the realm of wolves.

“Raising this one isn’t going to be easy,” Zhang said. “This isn’t the Beijing Zoo, where he could be taken out of his natural habitat and gradually shed some of his wildness. Out here in these primitive surroundings, when night falls, we’re surrounded by baying wolves, and I don’t know how he’s going to change under those conditions. He’ll hurt someone once he’s fully grown. Be very careful.”

“It’s never been my intention to rid him of his wildness,” Chen said. “What would be the point? I just want to be in contact with a living wolf, to stroke him and hold him, to get closer to him each day, and see if I can figure him out. You can’t know wolves without going into their den. Which means you can’t be afraid of getting bitten. My only concern is that the herdsmen won’t let me raise him.”

The cub was still trying to get out of his burrow, so Chen reached down, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and lifted him out. Zhang cupped the little animal in his hands and studied him closely as he rubbed his coat. He tried to smooth it down, but when he lifted his hand, the wolf hairs stood up wildly. “I’m embarrassed to admit that here I am, a horse herder who has to come to a sheep’s pen to touch a living wolf. Lamjav and I went out looking for litters twice but came back empty-handed. I’ll bet not one in a hundred thousand Chinese has ever actually touched a living grassland wolf. We hate them, which means we hate whatever they’re good at. Just about the only people who have learned from wolves are the nomads.”

“In world history,” Chen continued the thought, “nomads have been the only Easterners capable of taking the fight to the Europeans, and the three peoples that really shook the West to its foundations were the Huns, the Turks, and the Mongols. The Westerners who fought their way back to the East were all descendants of nomads. The builders of ancient Rome were a pair of brothers raised by a wolf. Images of the wolf and her two wolf-children appear on the city’s emblem even today. The later Teutons, Germans, and Anglo-Saxons grew increasingly powerful, and the blood of wolves ran in their veins. The Chinese, with their weak dispositions, are in desperate need of a transfusion of that vigorous, unrestrained blood. Had there been no wolves, the history of the world would have been written much differently. If you don’t know wolves, you can’t understand the spirit and character of the nomads, and you’ll certainly never be able to appreciate the differences between nomads and farmers or the inherent qualities of each.”

“Don’t worry,” Zhang said. “I understand why you want to raise this wolf, and I’ll talk to the herdsmen for you.”

Chen held the cub under his coat and walked over to the dog pen. When Yir saw that a wolf was feeding on her milk, the moment Chen let down his guard, she stood up and turned to bite it. But the cub held on to the nipple and wouldn’t let go, hanging from her belly like a leech, like an empty milk bottle. Yir turned around and around, swinging the wolf with her, trying but failing to bite him. To Chen and Zhang it was comical yet maddening. Chen reached down and pried open the cub’s mouth to make him let go of the teat. “A real bloodsucker,” Zhang said with a laugh.

Chen held Yir down and stroked her gently to get her to let the little wolf drink. When the cub was full, Chen stood up and said, “I think we should let the youngsters play together.” So they carried the puppies over to dry grass, where Chen set the wolf down among them. The instant his paws touched the ground, he took off as fast as he could, away from the puppies and the men. With his belly rubbing the ground and his bowlegs churning, he looked more like a hairy tortoise than a wolf. One of the male puppies tried to run with him, but the wolf showed his fangs and snarled.

Chen was surprised. “When he’s hungry,” he said, “anyone with milk is his mother, but when he’s had his fill, there’s no such thing as mother. His eyes aren’t fully open, but his nose is working fine. It’s a wolf’s best weapon.”

Zhang said, “I can see he already knows this isn’t his real home, that the bitch isn’t his real mother, and that those pups aren’t his brothers and sisters.”

“When we found him out there,” Chen said, “he already knew how to play dead.”

They stayed four or five paces behind the cub, following to see what he would do. He crawled several yards over ground covered with patches of snow and dry grass before stopping to sniff the area. He smelled horse dung, cow patties, cow and sheep bones, and whatever else happened to be there-territory-marking dog piss, maybe. His nose led the way, and it wasn’t until they’d followed him several hundred feet that they realized he wasn’t wandering aimlessly, but had a clear objective in mind: he was running away from the yurts, the camp, the pens, and the aura of humans, dogs, smoke, and livestock.

The cub had a natural stubborn streak, Chen realized. He possessed a nature that was more fearsome and more worthy of respect than other animals. Chen had always held sparrows in high regard, for they were impossible to domesticate. As a child, he’d caught many of them and brought them home as pets. But as soon as they were in captivity, they stopped eating and drinking, refusing to adapt to their new surroundings. Their answer to the loss of freedom was death every time. He never once succeeded in keeping a captured sparrow alive. Wolves were different, he realized. They cherished their freedom, but they cherished life as well. A captured wolf ate and slept as always. Instead of fasting, it gorged itself and slept as much as possible to store up energy. Then it escaped at the first opportunity in a quest for renewed freedom and a new life. Chen felt he was witnessing the rare character and human qualities one saw in gladiators. A people who adopted the wolf’s temperament and made it their totem-beastly ancestor, god of war, and sage-would always be a victorious people.

Chen was grateful to the cub, whose sturdy little body had the power of transporting him all the way to the heart of a mystery.

Gombu rode up and told Chen to come with him to pair up the newborn lambs with their mothers. It took the two men no more than an hour to match all the ewes and their lambs, which nursed twice a day, morning and afternoon. Lambs that could not find their mothers would quickly starve. Pairing also gave the shepherds the opportunity to count their flock. To avoid the blistering sunlight, newborn lambs often curled up in marmot burrows, and shepherds could easily lose them if not for the pairings. Chen once went looking for missing lambs after a count and found three of them in marmot burrows.

Gombu was satisfied with the flock. “We have good grass and water here on the Olonbulag,” he said, “so the sheep have plenty of milk and they know their own lambs. That makes things easy for us. If the grass and water quality were poor, the sheep wouldn’t have enough milk and they’d reject even their own lambs. We’re lucky we have good leaders who understand the grassland and understand wolves. They don’t focus their effort on the flocks, but on the grass and on the pastureland. When people take care of the important business, the lambs pretty much tend themselves. Shepherding is carefree work on the Olonbulag. In a few days, I’ll be able to pair the sheep and lambs by myself.”

Gombu wasn’t one to go around boasting, but he knew the grassland like the back of his hand.