Wolf Totem

32

After they finished eating, Bao Shungui had a brief conversation with Staff Officer Xu, and then the two vehicles sped toward the northeast.

"We’re heading the wrong way,” Chen Zhen said. "We’re better off retracing our steps.”

Bao said, “We’re a hundred and forty li from the brigade, and we have to make it worth our while for the long trip back.”

Staff Officer Xu said, “If we avoid the areas where the shots were fired, we might run into more wolves. If not wolves, maybe foxes, and that wouldn’t be too bad either. We must continue the glorious military tradition of keeping the fight going and accumulating victories.”

Soon they entered a vast winter pastureland where acres and acres of needle grass spread before Chen’s eyes. This was high-quality winter grass, with two-foot-long blades and tassels a yard long. The winter snows seldom if ever covered it completely; both the stalks and the tassels were fine livestock feed. The sheep could also get to leaves buried beneath the snow. During the seven months of winter, this pasture kept the livestock alive and thriving.

An autumn wind sent the grass rippling like waves spreading from the border all the way to the vehicles and submerging their wheels; they knifed through the grassy waves like fast ships. Chen breathed a sigh of relief. Even a telescope would be useless in finding wolves on a pasture with such tall, dense foliage. He felt renewed gratitude toward the grassland wolves and the horse herders. The seemingly pristine grassland was actually maintained through their efforts. Both labored hard at their tasks. Whenever Chen heard the herdsmen singing folk songs that echoed wolf sounds, he was happy, knowing that through their songs the herdsmen were acknowledging their debt to the wolves for their part in preserving the winter pasture.

The vehicles sped along, carrying the slightly drunken hunters, who scanned the landscape with binoculars in search of wolves. Chen was lost in his own thoughts, for this was the first time he’d had a chance to contemplate the primitive beauty of the winter pasture before the people and livestock arrived.

Not a single column of smoke, no horses, cows, or sheep. After six months of rest, the pasture looked bleaker than the spring-season birthing pasture, where there were many animal pens, storage sheds, well terraces, and other traces of human effort. In the winter pasture, people and livestock took water from the snow, eliminating the need for wells and terraces. The lambs and calves were fully grown, so instead of sheds and pens, the herders formed semicircle windbreaks for the sheep using wagons, mobile railings, and large pieces of felt.

The vehicles were now speeding along an ancient path. The soil was sandy and hard, but the grass was short and lush. Chen spotted three black dots in the grass not far to his right. He knew it was a large fox standing on its hind legs to keep an eye on the humans traveling through the pasture. The orange afternoon sun turned the fox’s white fur a soft yellow, making it indistinguishable from the grass tassels. The three black spots above its neck were its ears and nose.

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 that 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.