Wolf Totem: A Novel (32 page)

“Light the fires!” someone shouted, breaking the silence. “Light the fires!”

Chen grabbed Bilgee’s horse’s halter and raced out of the reeds. Black smoke billowed above the southeastern edge. Then flames leaped skyward in the eastern, western, and northern sectors. Bao Shungui ordered the hunters to use reeds as torches to start the fire spreading deep into the reeds with the wind. The densely packed, dry, oily reeds nearly exploded when the fires touched them, sending flames and thick smoke high into the sky. Acres of dry reeds were turned into a sea of fire, with black leaves and stalks dancing in the air currents above, like a cloud of bats. High up on a slope looking down, Bao Shungui liked what he saw.

On the western edge of the billowing smoke, Bilgee dismounted and fell to his knees, facing east, tears wetting his face. He was murmuring prayerfully. Chen Zhen couldn’t hear clearly, but he knew what the old man was saying.

Suddenly the wind turned, sending the choking black smoke and flames in the old man’s direction. Chen and Yang quickly lifted him off the ground and ran with him up the snow-covered hillside. The old man’s face was sooty black; so were his tears. Chen gazed at him, suddenly feeling the creation of a silent spiritual resonance between them; at the same time, he could imagine a fearful yet revered wolf totem rising up to take the Mongol people’s tenacious souls away with it. Their survivors—sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters—would continue to live on the Mongolian grassland, taking the bitter with the sweet, bringing pride and glory to their race.

Waves of fire carried by the wind incinerated the old reeds and sent hot cinders into the sky and onto the snow-covered pastureland. The fire raged for much of the afternoon, leaving in its wake a torched wasteland. Finally, inevitably, the fires died out above a vast blackened landscape and acres of black snow. But the dogs and the rifles remained silent.

After the winds swept the smoke away, the cold settled in. Bao Shungui ordered everyone to form a single line and comb the battlefield to get a count of dead wolves. One man estimated they’d find twenty or more; another predicted a count to exceed that of the morning hunt.

“I don’t care how many there are,” Bao said. “Just find them, no matter what shape they’re in, even if they’re unrecognizable. I want to photograph them so that no one can accuse me of sending up false reports. I want all the banners in the entire league to know that this is what is meant by ‘Kill a wolf and remove a scourge,’ and that this has not been done for the sake of a few wolf pelts.”

On the far end of the line, Chen Zhen said softly to Bilgee, “How many animals do you think were burned up, Papa?”

“This scorched-earth tactic was the brainchild of a Han Chinese,” Bilgee said. “We Mongols fear nothing more than fire, so how am I supposed to know how many wolves it claimed? What concerns me is this: now that Bao has burned off the reeds, he’ll start thinking about opening up the area to farming.”

They followed the easy pace of the line as they searched through the ashes. Whenever they came across a higher pile, they nervously poked it with their lasso poles and stirred it up a little. When nothing turned up, the old man sighed in relief.

The winds had died down, but the ashes loosened by horse hooves still brought tears to people’s eyes and made the horses and the dogs cough. The dogs yelped in pain whenever they stepped on smoldering cinders. Nothing had been found by the time the sweep had passed the halfway mark, and Bao Shungui’s nerves were on edge. “Slow down!” he shouted. “Not so fast! Don’t overlook a single ash pile.”

The worried look on Bilgee’s face was fading.

“Do you think the wolves got away?” Chen asked.

“They must have, or we’d have found at least one by now,” the old man replied hopefully. “Maybe Tengger came to their aid.”

A distant shout interrupted their conversation. “There’s a dead wolf here!”

The old man’s face fell as he and Chen rode over to see. They were joined by the others, with Bao Shungui in the center. He was excitedly motioning for Bilgee to come up and identify the carcass.

It was curled up on the ground, burned beyond recognition, a greasy stench rising from its body. Everyone was talking at once. “The burn was a success, it worked!” a keyed-up Wang Junli said. “We’ve found one, so the rest have to be here somewhere.”

Then Laasurung spoke up. “That’s not a wolf—it’s too small.”

“It shrank in the fire,” Bao said. “Of course it’s small.”

Wang nodded. “Probably a young wolf.”

Bilgee dismounted and turned the carcass over with his herding club. Every hair had been burned off, and it was obvious that whatever it was had burned on a pile of reeds. “It’s no wolf, not even a young one.”

Bao stared doubtfully at the old man. “How can you tell?” he asked.

“Look at its mouth,” Bilgee said. “A wolf’s fangs are longer than a dog’s, and sharper. If you don’t believe me, take a picture and see what your superiors say. Anyone who knows a thing about wolves will realize you’ve sent up a false report, calling a dog a wolf.”

Displaying sudden anxiety, Bao said, “Put a marker here. If we find some more, we’ll know if this was a wolf or a dog.”

The old man gazed down sadly. “This old dog knew it was finished, so it came here to die,” he said. “The wind was behind it, and there were wolves everywhere. Too bad the wolves didn’t find it first.”

“Spread out and keep searching!” Bao demanded. “Straight line. Comb the area.” So they spread out and continued examining each ash pile, but found nothing. Several of the students were starting to feel uneasy. The hunters, experienced in everything but fire tactics, wondered if Batu could have given a false report.

“I swear to Chairman Mao,” he said under the pressure of questioning, and to Tengger. “Buhe and I saw them. The rest of you saw their tracks, didn’t you?”

“This is odd,” Bao said. “I know they couldn’t have sprouted wings and flown away.”

Bilgee smiled. “I thought you knew that wolves could fly. They’re marvelous animals that don’t even need wings to do it.”

Bao replied angrily, “Then how did we manage to kill so many of them this morning?”

“That was payback for the horse massacre. Tengger won’t let you kill any more; it wouldn’t be fair.”

Bao cut him off. “That’s enough talk about Tengger this and Tengger that. That’s one of the Four Olds.” He turned. “Spread out and finish the job,” he ordered.

Almost immediately, two horse herders shouted, “Bad news—there are a couple of incinerated stud bulls here!”

The party rode over to see. Both the herdsmen and the hunters grew tense.

Stud bulls, called
buhe,
are the freest, most carefree, and most respected male steers on the grassland. Selected by experienced cowherds as breeding animals, once they reach maturity, except for the summer months, when they travel from place to place to mate, they spend their time away from the herd, wandering the grassland freely, requiring no one to tend or feed them. They are big, brawny animals with thick necks and great strength; their faces are covered by beautiful curly hair below a pair of short, thick, and very sharp horns, perfect weapons for close fighting. The powerful marauders of the grassland—the wolves—stay clear of these bulls, even when they travel in packs. Their fangs are useless against the thick hide, and they haven’t the strength to overwhelm the animals.

Stud bulls therefore have no natural enemies. They normally travel in pairs, grazing together on the best grass during the day and sleeping tail-to-tail at night. They emit a sacred air, symbols of strength, power, virility, courage, freedom, and good fortune. The grasslanders have long viewed them as supernatural; their health is a sign of the prosperity of cattle herds and sheep flocks. A sickly bull foretells disaster. Since there are scant few of these bulls, no more than one for several herds of cattle, the news that two of them had died in the conflagration produced panic among the herdsmen, as if they’d learned of the death of a loved one.

The herdsmen climbed down off their horses and stood quietly around the huge carcasses, the animals’ legs spread out stiffly on the scorched earth, their thick hides a mass of black bubbles with yellow grease oozing from the cracks. Their eyes were like black lightbulbs, their tongues stuck out as far as they would go, and black liquid seeped from their mouths and noses. The cowherds and women recognized the two animals by their horns, and rising anger swept over the crowd.

“This is unforgivable!” Gasmai exclaimed. “These were the best stud bulls in our production brigade. Half our herd came from these two, and you’ve burned them up! You’re well on your way to destroying our grassland!”

“Those were the finest breed of Mongol bulls we have, what we call red bulls,” Bilgee said. “Cows that mate with them produce the most milk; their offspring have the most meat, and the best. I’m reporting this incident to the banner authorities, demanding an investigation. I’ll bring them to this spot so they can see for themselves. The human destruction far outweighs any losses from wolves!”

“A few years back,” Uljii said, “the Mongol League’s Livestock Bureau wanted these two, but we wouldn’t part with them and gave them instead a pair of young bulls these two had sired. This is a tremendous loss!”

“The reeds kept the wind out,” Laasurung said, “so the bulls came here to sleep. And wound up burning to death. They were too slow to have any chance of escaping, even if they hadn’t suffocated in the thick, oily smoke. This is the first time in our history that someone has incinerated cattle on the grassland. Anyone who disobeys Tengger is bound to suffer the consequences.”

The charred hides of the animals were still splitting, producing terrifying cracks like ominous spirit writing and mystical curses. Frightened women covered their faces with their wide lambskin sleeves and ran outside the circle of onlookers. Everyone shunned Bao Shungui, who stood there, alone, alongside the bull carcasses, his face and clothes soot-covered. Suddenly he blurted out, “The wolves will pay for the deaths of these two bulls! I don’t care what any of you say—I won’t rest until I’ve killed every last wolf on the Olonbulag!”

The sunset had disappeared and the early-winter cold had settled over the land like a net when the horses, the people, and the dogs— hungry, tired, and cold—returned sadly to camp, heads down, like a defeated ragtag army. No one knew how the gray wolf king had managed to lead his pack out of the fire and through the encirclement. There was plenty of talk, with competing views, but all were convinced the wolves had flown to safety. “There was a fatal flaw in this encirclement, ” Uljii said. “The people and dogs made too much noise before we were in place. The gray wolf led his pack out before the fires were even set.”

The horse herders raced anxiously to their herds. Chen Zhen and Yang Ke, who had been worried about their wolf cub, signaled Zhang Jiyuan and Gao Jianzhong to leave the hunting party with them and take a shortcut back to camp as fast as they could get there. As they rode along, Yang muttered, “Before we left, I gave the cub a couple of pieces of overcooked lamb, but I don’t know if he’s ready to eat meat yet. Dorji says he won’t be weaned for another month or more.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Chen said. “Last night he ate so much I thought his belly would pop. He won’t starve even if he doesn’t eat the meat. What worries me is that we’ve been away all day, leaving the place unguarded. If the mother found him, you know what that means.”

It was midnight by the time they made it back to camp. Erlang and Yellow were waiting for their food in front of the empty dog trough. Chen rolled out of his saddle and gave the dogs some meaty bones, while Zhang and Gao went into the yurt to wash up, boil some water for tea, and get some sleep after they ate. Chen and Yang ran out to the wolf burrow, where they removed the boards over the top and trained flashlights into the hole. The little wolf was curled up in a corner, fast asleep. The little bitch, on the other hand, was whining from hunger and trying to claw her way up the walls to find her mother’s teat. Yir was anxiously pacing the area, so Chen reached down, brought the pup up, and handed her over to Yir, who picked her up with her teeth and carried her away.

Chen and Yang examined the burrow carefully. The two pieces of lamb were gone; the cub’s belly bulged in both directions and spots of grease dotted his nose and mouth. As he slept, his mouth curled up at the corners, like he was enjoying a wonderful dream. Yang was thrilled. “The little bastard gobbled up all that meat,” he sighed. “Apparently, his mother is busy elsewhere.”

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.