Wolf Totem: A Novel (26 page)

Chen set down his tea and said to Dorji, “You can dispose of six of the cubs, but leave the most robust male for me. I want to raise it.”

Speechless at first, Dorji stared at Chen for a good ten seconds. “You want to raise a wolf ?” he said finally.

“That’s right. When it reaches maturity, I’ll breed it with dogs, and we’ll wind up with cubs like the wolfhounds at the frontier station. When they start coming, every Mongol family will want one.”

Dorji’s eyes lit up, like a hunting dog spotting its prey. He nearly gasped. “What a great idea! It might just work. If we all had wolfhounds, catching foxes and wolves would be like child’s play. Selling wolfhound pups might even make us rich someday.”

“What if the brigade won’t let me do it?”

“Say you’re raising a wolf to fight wolves,” Dorji said. “To safeguard collective property. Anyone who opposes you will be out of luck when the pups start coming.”

“You’re not thinking of raising one too, are you?” Yang Ke asked with a laugh.

“If you’re going to do it,” Dorji said, “then I will too.”

Chen smacked his fist into his hand. “Great!” he said. “With two yurts involved, we’ll double our chances of success.” He paused. “But there’s no guarantee that a male wolf will mate with a bitch.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Dorji said. “That I can take care of. Three years ago, I managed to get a terrific bitch, which I wanted to mate with my fastest, meanest male dog. But we had ten dogs altogether, eight males, good and bad, and if the bitch had decided to mate with one of the bad ones, what a waste that would’ve been. So here’s what I did. When she was in heat, I found a well that had been dug halfway, about the size of a yurt and twice the depth of a man’s height. I put her and one of my good male dogs inside, added a dead sheep, and made sure they were fed and watered for twenty days. When I took them out, the bitch was pregnant. She had a litter of fine cubs just before Lunar New Year’s, eight in all. I killed the four females and kept the four males. Among all our dogs, more than a dozen, they’re the biggest, the fastest, and the most powerful. Every year they get credit for more than half the wolves and foxes we take. If we do that here, we’ll get our wolfhound pups. But don’t forget, you need to raise your wolf cub with a female pup.”

Chen Zhen and Yang Ke whooped in delight.

There was movement in the canvas bag. The cubs were probably uncomfortable and hungry, so it was time for them to stop playing dead and start struggling to find a way out of the bag. They were seven noble lives, the sort that Chen Zhen valued and admired, and five were about to be killed. His heart was heavy, and a picture of the sculpted wall at the main gate of the Beijing Zoo flew into his mind. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, he was thinking, if I could send them there, members of the purest possible wolf breed, from the heart of the Mongolian grassland? At that moment he sensed how rapacious and vain humans can be. There would have been nothing wrong with picking the biggest and strongest of the seven cubs. So why had they brought the entire litter home? He should never have taken Dorji and Gao Jianzhong along. But would he have only brought one cub back with him if they hadn’t been there? Probably not. Bringing back the whole litter represented conquest, courage, reward, and glory; it won him the respect of others. Compared to that, those seven lives were like grains of sand.

Chen’s heart ached, for he had developed a fondness for wolf cubs almost from the beginning. They’d been on his mind for more than two years, until he was nearly spellbound, and now he wished he could keep them all. But that was out of the question. Seven cubs—how much food would it take to raise them to adulthood? Then an idea came to him. Why not get on his horse and return the remaining five cubs to their den? But other than Yang Ke, no one would have gone with him, and he certainly wouldn’t go on his own, a four-hour trip there and back, more than he or his horse had the stamina for. At that moment the mother wolf must have been wailing grievously alongside her ruined den, howling madly, so going back would be suicidal.

Chen took the bag off the hook and walked slowly out of the yurt. “Wait a few days before you take care of them, all right? I’d like to study them awhile.”

“What do you plan to feed them?” Dorji asked. “Cold as it is, they’ll all die if they go a day without being fed.”

“I’ll feed them cow’s milk,” Chen said.

“No you won’t,” Gao Jianzhong said, obviously displeased. “I tend those cows, and their milk is meant for humans. Wolves eat cows, so feeding them cow’s milk would be an affront to the heavens, and the herdsmen wouldn’t let me tend the cows anymore.”

Yang Ke stepped in to smooth things over. “Go ahead and let Dorji take care of them now. Gasmai is worried about not meeting her quota. If we give her five cub pelts, she’ll be able to squeak by, and we can raise one on the sly. Otherwise, the whole brigade will come over to see the litter of live cubs and you won’t be able to hold one back. So let Dorji dispose of them. I couldn’t do it, and I know you couldn’t. We’re lucky to have him here to do it for us.”

Chen’s eyes stung as he sighed and said, “I guess we have no choice.”

He went inside and dragged out the box in which they stored dried dung for the stove. After dumping out the dung, he emptied the contents of the canvas bag into the box. The cubs immediately scrambled this way and that, but when they reached a corner they stopped and played dead, anything to escape a cruel end. They were trembling, the rigid black wolf hairs oscillating as if electrified.

Dorji moved them around with his fingers, and looked up at Chen. “Four males and three females,” he said. “You can have this one, the biggest and brawniest. This other one’s mine.” Then he picked up the rest, put them back into the bag, and carried it over to an open space in front of the yurt, where he picked out one, turned it upside down, and announced, “This one’s a female. Let her be the first to go to Tengger.”

Kneeling on one knee, he windmilled his right arm and flung the plump little cub as high into the air as possible, the way herdsmen disposed of excess baby dogs in the spring: What goes up to heaven is its soul; what falls to the ground are its mortal remains. Chen and Yang had seen this ancient ritual many times in the past, and they’d heard it was how herdsmen disposed of wolf cubs. But this was the first time they’d witnessed it performed on stolen cubs, and their faces were drained of color, like the dirty snow alongside the yurt.

The female cub, apparently unwilling to go to Tengger so early, had played dead in order to stay alive. Now that she was up in the air and knew where she was headed, she spread her tiny legs and performed a strange dance, as if wanting to grab hold of her mother or dig her claws into her father’s neck. She opened her mouth as she reached the apex of her arc and began to fall.

The cub hit the hard snow-swept ground in front of the barracks with a thud, like a melon, and stopped moving. Trickles of pink blood seeped out through her mouth, her nose, and her eyes, a milky color mixed in. Chen’s heart slipped back into his chest from his throat, the pain moving beyond consciousness. The three dogs ran toward the corpse but were stopped by a shout from Dorji, who kept them from reaching the dead animal and destroying its valuable pelt. To his astonishment, Chen saw that Erlang had rushed over, not to join his companions, but to stop them from getting their teeth into the dead cub. With his commanding presence, he was not an animal to tear into a carcass; maybe he too had developed a fondness for the wolf cubs.

Dorji took a second cub out of the bag. This one, it seemed, could smell the milky blood of its sister, and as soon as she lay in Dorji’s palm, she stopped playing dead and fought to free herself, scratching the back of his hand with her tiny claws. He was about to fling her skyward when he stopped and said to Chen, “Here, you can kill this one, see what you’re made of. No grassland shepherd can go through life without killing wolves.”

Chen took a step backward. “No, you go ahead.”

“You Han Chinese have no guts,” Dorji said with a laugh. “You hate wolves, but you can’t even bring yourself to kill a cub. How do you expect to fight a war? No wonder you put all that time and energy into building a wall all the way across your northern border. Watch me...” His words still hung in the air as the second cub flew skyward, and before she hit the ground, the third one was on its way up. The killing excited Dorji, who murmured, “Up to Tengger you go; there you’ll enjoy a happy life!”

Five pitiful little cubs had flown through the air; five bloody corpses now lay on the ground. Chen scooped them into a dustpan and stared up into the sky, hoping that Tengger had accepted their souls.

Dorji seemed exhilarated by what he’d done. He bent down and wiped his hands on the toes of his boots and said, “You don’t get many chances to kill five wolves in one day. They’re better at this than we are. Given the chance, a wolf will kill a hundred, even two hundred sheep at a time. I only killed five, big deal! It’s getting late. I have to go round up my cattle.” He walked over to pick up his wolf cub.

“Don’t go yet,” Chen said. “Help us skin these.”

“No problem,” Dorji said. “It’ll only take a minute.”

Standing guard over the dead cubs, Erlang snarled at Dorji and tensed. Chen wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck to give Dorji a chance to skin the cubs, which he did as if he were skinning a lamb. They were so small he didn’t need to skin the legs. After the five cubs were skinned, he spread their pelts over the rounded top of the yurt and pulled them taut. “These are fine pelts,” he said. “If you had forty of them, you could make a wonderful coat—light, warm, good-looking. You couldn’t buy one for any amount of money.”

Dorji cleaned his hands with snow and walked over to the wagon to get a spade. “You guys are useless,” he said. “I have to do everything. Dogs won’t eat a wolf, so we have to bury these right away, and deep, to keep the mother from picking up their scent. That would be the end of your flocks and herds.” They picked a spot west of the yurt and dug a four-foot hole. After tossing in the five skinned cubs, they filled in the hole and tamped down the surface. Then they spread medicinal stomach powder over the grave to cover the smell of the corpses below.

“Should we make some sort of den for our cub?” Yang Ke asked Dorji.

“No, dig a hole for it.” So Chen and Yang dug a hole a dozen or so paces southwest of the yurt. It was a foot or so deep and a couple of feet across. They covered the bottom with well-worn sheepskins, leaving a spot of muddy ground uncovered, and put the little male cub inside.

It came to life the moment it touched the muddy ground, surveying its surroundings with its nose and its eyes, as if it thought it might be back home. It calmed down slowly and curled up on a sheepskin in the corner, still sniffing and looking around, as if trying to find its brothers and sisters. Chen was about to put the second cub in the hole to keep the first one company, when Dorji scooped it up and held it close; he jumped onto his horse and galloped off. Gao Jianzhong cast a cold look down at the cub in the hole, then climbed onto his horse and rode off to round up his cattle.

Chen Zhen and Yang Ke, weighed down with anxieties, crouched beside their new wolf den and stared at the cub. "I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do this,” Chen said. "There are troubles ahead.”

“With him on our hands,” Yang said, “the good can’t get out the door; the bad goes on forever. You just wait. The whole country’s singing ‘We won’t stop fighting until all the jackals are dead,’ and here we are, raising a wolf, treating an enemy like a friend.”

“Out here,” Chen said, “heaven is high and the emperor is far away. Who will know what we’re doing? What worries me is that Bilgee won’t let us do it.”

“The cows are back,” Yang said. “I’ll go get some milk. This guy must be starving.”

Chen waved him off. “Dog’s milk is better,” he said. “We’ll give him Yir’s milk. If a tiger cub can live off dog’s milk, a wolf cub is a sure bet.” Chen picked the cub up out of the hole and held it in both hands. Its belly had caved in with hunger and its paws were cold, like little icy stones. It was trembling. Chen quickly held it close, under his coat, to warm it up.

As dusk was falling, the time for Yir to return to her pups, Chen and Yang went over to the dog pen, dug a hole, and lined it with a thick layer of old sheepskins. A stiff, untanned horsehide curtain kept the den warm for Yir and her three puppies. After Yang fed her a soupy mixture of meat and millet, Yir ran back to the den, muzzled aside the horsehide curtain, and lay down gently against the wall. Her pups found her nipples and sucked greedily.

Chen approached Yir warily, crouched down, and rubbed her head to block the view down below. Happy as always when someone rubbed her head, Yir licked Chen’s hand while Yang pushed one of the pups away and squeezed some milk into his palm. When he saw there was enough, Chen took the wolf cub out from under his coat and Yang smeared milk on its head, back, and paws, the way herdsmen tricked ewes into feeding orphaned lambs. But dogs are smarter than sheep, their sense of smell keener. If Yir’s pups had died or been taken from her, she might have accepted the wolf cub. But with three of her own, that would not happen. As soon as she detected the presence of the wolf in her den, she tried to raise her head to make sure she could see her own pups. Using force and guile, Chen and Yang kept her down.

When the cold, hungry little wolf was laid down next to one of Yir’s teats and could smell the milk, he stopped playing dead and, as if detecting the scent of blood, opened his mouth and bared his fangs, instinctively displaying an attitude of “If there’s milk, she’s my mother.” Born a month later than the dog pups, the cub had a tinier head and was smaller overall. But he was already stronger than the little dogs, and his skill at latching on to the closest teat was superior to theirs. There were two rows of teats, some larger than others, so the supply of milk varied. Chen and Yang watched with amazement as the little wolf seemed less interested in drinking than in finding the largest teat, in pursuit of which he nudged the puppies out of the way. An intruder, a thug, a brigand had been introduced into a peaceful den. His wild nature was revealed as he sent the puppies reeling on his search for the largest teat. He sampled one, spit it out, and tried the next, over and over until he settled on the largest, fullest nipple right in the middle, and began sucking greedily. As he drank, he spread his paws over neighboring teats, as if eating out of a bowl and guarding the pot, hoarding the best for himself. The three docile puppies were kept away.