Wolf Totem: A Novel (50 page)

A flurry of hoofbeats resounded on the road some sixty or seventy feet outside the yurt; assuming it was horse herders galloping by, Chen wasn’t particularly curious. So he was caught by surprise when two horses left the road and headed for his yurt, then veered off toward the wolf pen, where the startled cub stood up on his hind legs and straightened out the chain. The rider in front looped his lasso pole noose over the cub’s neck and jerked it back, lifting him off the ground. The force of the man’s movement left no doubt that he wanted the wolf dead, expecting the pull of the chain to decapitate him. The cub had no sooner fallen back to the ground than the second man used his lasso pole as a whip, hitting him with such force that he rolled over. Meanwhile, the first man halted his horse, grabbed his herding club, and was about to dismount and kill the cub with his club when Chen let out a shriek, picked up his rolling pin, and ran out like a madman. Seeing the defiant look in Chen’s eyes, the two men spun their horses around and rode off in a cloud of dust. Chen heard one of them shout, “Wolves killed our fine horses, and you think you can raise one of them! Well, sooner or later, I’m going to kill that wolf!”

Yellow and Yir ran after the men, barking ferociously, and both were struck by lasso poles as the men headed off to where the horse herds were grazing.

Chen could not see who the attackers were, but he assumed that one of them might have been the shepherd whom Bilgee had rebuked and the other a member of the horse herders’ Unit Four. They clearly had come with murderous intentions, and Chen was witness to the fearful blitzkrieg tactics of Mongol horsemen.

He ran over to where the wolf lay, his tail between his legs, nearly frightened to death. His legs were so wobbly he couldn’t stand, and when he spotted Chen, he tumbled into his arms like a chick running for the mother hen after escaping the clutches of a cat. Chen, who was also trembling, held him tight, man and wolf a chorus of shaking. He anxiously felt the cub’s neck and was relieved to see that it was still intact, though some of the fur had been pulled off by the hemp noose and a bloody gouge circled his neck. The cub’s heart was racing. Chen did what he could to calm the young wolf down; it took some time, but eventually they both stopped quaking. Chen then went back to the yurt, where he took down another strip of dried lamb. That had a soothing effect on the cub. Picking him up again, Chen held him in his lap and pressed his face up against the cub’s face while he rubbed his chest until his heartbeat was back to normal. But the cub’s fears lingered, and he wouldn’t take his eyes off Chen. Suddenly he licked Chen on the chin; it was the second time the wolf had done so but the first time that the gesture was an expression of gratitude. As Chen saw it, the story of a rescued wolf showing its gratitude with the gift of seven rabbits had not necessarily stemmed from someone’s imagination.

The thing Chen had feared the most had finally occurred, rekindling his concern. His decision to raise a wolf had offended most of the herdsmen, and the coolness of their attitude toward him was palpable. Even Bilgee had nearly stopped coming to visit. In the eyes of the herdsmen, it seemed, there was little difference between him and Bao Shungui and his laborers, all outsiders who had no respect for grassland customs. The wolf is their spiritual totem, but a physical enemy. Raising one like a pet is something a herdsman could not condone; it was a blasphemy in the spiritual sense and consorting with the enemy in the physical realm. He had broken one of the grassland’s prohibitions, violated a cultural taboo—of that there was no doubt. He was no longer sure if he could continue to protect the cub or even if he ought to keep raising it. Sincere in his desire to record and investigate the secrets and value of the “wolf totem” as the “soul of the grassland,” he saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; he needed to be unyielding, to grit his teeth and carry on. So he went looking for Erlang. When that dog was watching over things, no one but herdsmen in Chen’s unit would dare to come near without being invited. Erlang was capable of driving away an unfamiliar rider by nipping at the man’s horse and sending it off in a panic. The two attackers must have seen that Erlang was not around before making their move.

The sun still had not reached the peak of its daily onslaught, but it seemed that all the heat of the basin had gathered in the wolf pen. The cub’s torso was no longer being baked unbearably, but his head and neck remained atop the sand; the injuries from the foiled attack made it impossible for him to lie down for any length of time, so he was forced to walk around inside the pen until, after several revolutions, he lay back down on the grass.

No longer in the mood to read, Chen busied himself with household chores. He picked some leeks, broke open several duck eggs, rolled out some dough, added filling, and then fried flat bread, all of which kept him occupied for half an hour. When he looked out at the pen, he was shocked to see the cub digging a hole in the sand, his tail and hindquarters sticking up in the air. Sand flew up from the ground like a fireworks display. Chen wiped his hands and ran outside, where he crouched down to see what the cub was doing.

The cub was digging frenetically on the southern edge of the pen, and by the time Chen arrived, half of his body was in the ground. Sand kept coming up through his legs, dispersed by a briskly wagging tail. He backed out of the hole, covered with dirt, and when he spotted Chen, there was a wild, intense look in his eyes, as if he’d been digging for buried treasure.

What was he up to? He wasn’t trying to uproot the post, was he? No, that couldn’t be it; the hole wasn’t lined up with the post, which was, after all, buried too deeply for the cub to dig under. No, he was digging with his back to the post and toward, not away from, the direction of the sun’s movement. Then it hit him! Chen knew exactly what the wolf was doing.

The cub went back to work, digging out more and more dirt, his mouth hanging open as he dug and dug for a while, then moved out the dirt. Lights flashed in his eyes, bright as the sun, and he had no time to take note of Chen, who watched as long as he could before calling out, “Slow down, Little Wolf, you might break off your claws.” The cub looked over at Chen and squinted to form a smile, seemingly pleased with himself and what he was doing.

The sand dug out of the hole was moist and much cooler than the surface sand. It takes a resourceful wolf, Chen was thinking, to dig its way to safety, away from the sun, the heat, the people, and a variety of dangers. This has to be what the cub is thinking: a hole will be cool and dark, and as for direction, the opening faces north, the tunnel faces south, so the sunlight cannot bake its way into the hole. As the cub dug deeper, Chen noted, most of his body was protected against the lethal sun’s rays.

The deeper he dug, the weaker the light; beginning to taste the pleasures of darkness, he was nearing his target depth. Wolves love darkness, for it contains coolness, safety, and contentment. From now on, he would no longer be vulnerable to intimidation and attacks from the much larger cows, horses, and humans. His digging grew more frantic and brought him such pleasure he couldn’t close his mouth. Another twenty minutes passed, until nothing showed above the surface except the tip of his bushy tail; he had all but buried himself in the cool earth.

Amazed once again at the cub’s extraordinary talent for survival and his native intelligence, Chen was reminded of the ditty “A dragon sires a dragon, a phoenix breeds a phoenix, but a rat’s baby knows how to dig a hole.” But a rat knows how to dig a hole because it has observed adult rats at work. This wolf was taken from his mother before his eyes were fully open; he had never seen an adult wolf dig a hole. Surely none of the dogs would have taught him this skill, since they’re not by nature hole diggers. So who taught him? In particular, how had he learned the precision of location and direction? If he’d dug farther from the post, the chain would have kept him from digging as deeply as he needed. No, the hole was midway between the post and the edge of the pen, which allowed him to take half of the chain into the hole with him. Where had he learned that? It was not the sort of skill an adult wolf would have prepared him for, yet he’d worked it out perfectly.

Chen’s hair stood on end. A three-month-old wolf cub had solved a problem that threatened his survival without having been taught how by anyone. Chen got down on his hands and knees to watch more closely, feeling not so much that he was raising a pet as facilitating the growth of a young teacher who commanded his respect and admiration. He was convinced that there would be more lessons from the wolf in the days to come.

The cub’s tail was wagging excitedly. The deeper he dug, the cooler and happier he was, almost as if he could smell the mud of the dark place where he’d been born. Chen believed that the cub was not just digging a hole to be cool and safe but also trying to excavate pleasant memories of his earliest days and find his mother and his brothers and sisters. He tried to imagine the wolf’s expression as he dug. It was probably a complex mixture of excitement, hope, luck, and a bit of sorrow . . .

Chen’s eyes grew moist as he experienced powerful qualms of conscience. His feelings for the young wolf were growing stronger by the day, yet he could not deny that he was the one who had destroyed the cub’s free and happy family. If not for him, all those young wolves would now be off fighting wars with their father and mother. While it was only a guess, Chen had a feeling that the current king of the wolves had sired this splendid cub. Maybe, under the tutelage of the wolf pack, with its vast battlefield experience, the cub would one day be the leader of that pack. Lamentably, his and their brilliant future had been forfeited by a Han Chinese from a faraway place.

The wolf had dug as far as the chain would allow, and Chen was not interested in making the chain any longer. The ground around the hole was loose sand with a thin layer of grassy roots, and in the off chance that a horse or cow stepped too close to the hole, the cub could easily be buried alive. The cub’s enthusiasm for digging was brought to a sudden stop; he howled his displeasure and backed out of the hole to tug on the chain. The collar rubbed painfully against his injured neck, drawing a gasp. But he kept at it until he had exhausted his strength; he then sprawled on the excavated earth and panted. After a brief rest, he stuck his head down into the hole, and Chen wondered what he might be up to now.

As soon as the wolf cub had caught his breath, he scampered down into the hole, and in no time, more dirt came flying out, which Chen found almost stupefying. He bent down and looked into the hole, which the cub was now making wider, another sign of his intelligence.

Once construction on the cool, protective hole was completed, the wolf lay comfortably inside and ignored Chen’s calls to come out. When Chen looked inside, the cub’s eyes, open wide, a bloodcurdling green, gave him the appearance of a wolf in the wild. Obviously, he was enjoying the dark, the coolness, and the smell of earth, as if he’d returned to his first home alongside his mother and his littermates. He was at peace, having finally left the surface, where he was in a constant state of anxiety, surrounded by humans and their livestock; he had taken shelter in his own den and reentered his natural realm. Finally, he could sleep in safety to dream the dreams of wolves. Chen smoothed out the earth around the opening. With his cub in a safe place, he was once again confident of the young wolf’s ability to survive.

Gao Jianzhong and Yang Ke returned at sunset, and when they spotted the wolf hole in front of their yurt, they were amazed. “After a day out there tending sheep,” Yang said, “we were baked dry and dying of thirst, and I figured the wolf cub wouldn’t make it through the summer. He’s smarter than I thought.”

“We’re going to have to be more careful around him,” Gao said, “be on our guard. We need to check out the chain, the post, and his collar every day. Who knows, he could make big trouble for us at a critical juncture. The herdsmen and the other students are just waiting to have the last laugh.”

All three men saved a portion of their oily duck-egg-filled fried flat bread for the cub, and the moment Yang announced mealtime, the cub scrambled to the surface, picked up the food, and took it back down with him. It was a space that belonged to him and only him, off-limits to everyone else.

Erlang, out on his own all day, returned home, his belly taut, his mouth coated with grease. Obviously, he’d hunted down something out there. Yellow, Yir, and all the puppies, half crazed from not having tasted meat in a long time, ran up to Erlang to lick at the grease on his snout.

The cub came out of his cave as soon as he heard that Erlang was back. When the dog walked up to him, he too licked his greasy snout. Then Erlang noticed the hole in the ground and, apparently surprised and pleased, made several turns around it. With what sounded like a laugh, he squatted down at the opening and stuck his nose inside to sniff around. The cub leaped onto his surrogate father’s back, where he jumped and rolled and somersaulted happily, the wound on his neck completely forgotten as his wild vitality burst forth.

At sunset, the hot air dissipated and cool breezes blew. Yang Ke put on a jacket and went out to see to his flock. Chen went along to help drive them home. It was not a good idea to make the sheep move too fast after they’d eaten their fill; for the men, herding the flock into a circle at camp, where there were no fences, was like a casual stroll. During the summer, the sheep spent the nights in the vicinity of the yurts, not in pens, which made the summertime night watch especially hard and dangerous. Vigilance was essential, now more than ever, for a pack of wolves might detect the presence of the cub in camp and take that opportunity to wreak vengeance.

The cub’s day began late at night. He’d run around in his pen, rattling the chain, frequently stopping to admire the fruits of his labor. Chen and Yang sat at the edge of the pen quietly enjoying the spectacle of the cub running around, his emerald eyes shining through the darkness.