Wolf Totem: A Novel (69 page)

The old man sighed. “It didn’t take the outsiders long to learn all about the old wolves. Dorji has followed in his father’s footsteps, by leaving dead sheep stuffed with poison and setting traps when they move. They go back a few days later to skin the dead or trapped wolves. Why do you think his family sells more pelts than anyone else? They don’t believe in Lamaism, and they don’t respect the wolves. They don’t mind using the cruelest means possible to kill them all, including the old and injured ones. See what I mean? Wolves could never be as evil as humans.”

With sadness brimming in his eyes, the old man continued, his beard quivering, “Do you know how many wolves they’ve killed lately? The wolves are so spooked that they don’t dare go out to look for food. I figure that even the healthy ones will go to the old site to look for food, now that the brigade has moved on. Dorji’s far more devious than wolves. If they keep killing them, no one here will ever again go up to Tengger, and the grassland will be doomed.”

Chen knew there was nothing he could say to heal the wounds of this last hunter of the nomadic herdsmen. No one could stop the explosion of the farming population or the farmers’ plundering of the grassland. Unable to ease the old man’s feeling, all he could say was, “Watch me. I’m going to remove every one of those traps.”

They crossed the ridge and headed toward the nearest campsite, seeing tire tracks left by the truck, which had already driven to the other side of the slope. They approached the site cautiously, not wanting their horses to get caught in a trap.

The old man checked the area and pointed to the cooking pit. “Dorji’s good at setting traps. See those ashes? They look as if the wind blew them over there, but in fact he sprinkled them over the traps. And he left two meatless sheep hooves near them. If those had any meat on them, the wolves would be suspicious. But meatless hooves are trash, just waiting to trick the wolves. He smeared his hand with ashes to mask the human odor before he set the traps. Only wolves with the keenest sense of smell could detect his odor. The old ones’ sense of smell has been dulled with age.”

Shocked and angered, Chen could say nothing.

Pointing to half of the carcass of a sick sheep, the old man said, “I guarantee you that sheep has been poisoned. I hear they got some powerful poison from Beijing. The wolves can’t smell it, but once they ingest it, they’ll be dead before you can smoke a pipe.”

“Then I’ll toss that carcass down an abandoned well.”

“There are too many campsites. You can’t do that in all of them.”

They got back on their horses and checked four or five sites. Dorji hadn’t left anything at some of the sites, but he’d set traps or left poison at others. He’d planned it out well, employing plenty of deception. He would alternate methods, leaving small hills between the camps, so that if a trap caught a wolf in one place, that wouldn’t affect the ones set in the next spot.

They also saw there were more sites with poison than with traps. He’d made use of the cooking pits and the ashes inside, which was why he could finish so quickly; he hadn’t had to dig fresh holes for the traps.

They had to stop there, or Dorji would have seen them. The old man turned his horse around as he muttered, “These are all we’ll be able to save.” When they reached a site where Dorji had worked, the old man got off his horse and walked toward a rotten sheep leg. He took out a small sheepskin pouch, opened it, and spread some grayish white powder over it. Chen knew exactly what he was doing. The stuff was low-grade animal poison sold at the local co-op; not very powerful, it had a strong odor that was effective only on the stupidest wolves and foxes. Dorji’s work would be in vain now that the poison could be detected by most wolves.

The old man is, after all, smarter than Dorji, Chen was thinking. But a question occurred to him. “What if the smell dissipates in the wind?” he asked.

The old man said, “Not to worry. The wolves can smell it even if we can’t.”

At places where there were traps, Bilgee told Chen to pick up some sheep bones and throw them at the traps to snap them shut. That was one of the ways cunning old wolves dealt with traps.

Then they moved to the next site and did not turn back until the old man had used up all his low-grade poison.

“Papa, what if on their way back they see that the traps have snapped shut?”

“They’re probably off to hunt wolves, so they won’t worry about these,” the old man said.

“But what if they come back to check the traps and see they’ve been touched? You could be in serious trouble for sabotaging the wolf extermination campaign.”

“Not as serious as the trouble the wolves will be in. Without them, the mice and rabbits will rule the grassland. Then, when the grassland is gone, they’ll be in trouble too. No one can escape it. I’ve managed to save a few wolves. We’ll just have to be happy with that. Olonbulag wolves, run for your lives, run over there. To be honest, I hope Dorji and the others do come back and see what I’ve done. I’ve got a score to settle with them.”

They reached the top of the ridge, where they saw several wild geese crying sadly and circling in the air, looking for their own kind. The old man reined in his horse, looked up, and sighed. “Even the wild geese can’t form a flock. They’ve eaten nearly all of them.” He turned back to look at the new pastureland that he had opened. Tears filled his murky eyes.

Chen was reminded of the beautiful paradise they’d found when he’d first arrived at the new pastureland with the old man. It had taken only one summer for the people to turn the lovely swan lake area into a graveyard for swans, wild geese, wild ducks, and wolves. “Papa,” he said, “we’re doing a good deed, so why do I feel we have to sneak around? I feel like crying.”

“Go ahead and cry. I feel that way myself. The wolves have taken away generations of old Mongol men, so why am I going to be left behind?” He looked up at Tengger with a tear-streaked face and wailed like an old wolf.

Tears streamed down Chen’s face, joining the old man’s tears as they fell onto the ancient Olonbulag.

The cub endured his pain, standing in the cage for two whole days. Chen Zhen and Zhang Jiyuan’s carts finally arrived at a gentle slope dense with autumn grass on the evening of the second day. Their neighbor, Gombu, was putting up his yurt. Gao Jianzhong had already released the cows onto the new pasture and was waiting for Chen and Zhang at a yurt site Bilgee had chosen for them. Yang Ke’s sheep were also approaching the new site.

Chen and his friends quickly put up their yurt. Gasmai sent Bayar over with two baskets of dry cow dung. After the two-day trek, the three friends could finally make a fire to cook and to boil water for tea. Yang Ke made it back before dinner, with a surprise for everyone—a rotten cart shaft he had dragged back with him, enough fuel to cook a couple of meals, which finally appeased Gao Jianzhong, who had been sulking over the dung that Chen had thrown away.

The three men walked up to the prison cart. When they removed the felt blanket, they were shocked to see a hole the size of a soccer ball in one side of the willow basket, made by the cub with his blunted claws and dulled fangs.

Chen looked closer and saw bloodstains on the chewed-up willow branches. He and Zhang quickly unloaded the basket, and the cub scrambled onto the grass-covered ground. Chen untied the other end of the chain and carried the cub up next to the yurt, where he sank the post, looped the chain, and placed the cap over it. The cub, after all the torture and shock, seemed to still be feeling the effects of the moving cart, for he quickly lay down in the grass. That way, his injured paws weren’t touching anything hard; he was so tired he could barely lift his head.

Chen grabbed hold of the cub and forced open his mouth with his thumbs. There wasn’t much blood from his throat wound, but one of his teeth was bleeding. Gripping the cub’s head tightly, Chen told Yang Ke to feel the tooth. Yang moved it back and forth. “The root’s loose, so the tooth is probably useless.” To Chen, it felt worse than losing his own tooth.

For two days the cub had struggled, causing a number of serious injuries to his body and ruining a tooth. Chen let go of the cub, who kept touching the bad tooth with his tongue, a clear sign that it hurt. Yang carefully applied some medicine to the cub’s paws.

After dinner, Chen prepared a basin of semisolid food, using leftover noodles, small pieces of meat, and soup. After it cooled off, he gave it to the young wolf, who gobbled it down. Chen could tell, though, that the animal was having trouble swallowing; it was as if something was stuck in his throat. Then he went back to touching the bad tooth with his tongue, soon began coughing, and spit out some bloody, undigested food. Chen’s heart sank; the cub not only had a bad tooth but something was wrong with his throat as well. But where would he find a vet who would examine a wolf cub?

“Now I understand something,” Yang Ke said to Chen. “The wolves are unyielding, not because the pack has no ‘traitors’ or wimps, but because the merciless environment weeds out the unfit.”

“This cub has paid too high a price for his wild, untamed nature,” Chen said sadly. “You can see what a person will be like as an adult when he’s only three, and what he’ll be like as an old man when he’s seven, but with wolves, it only takes three months to foresee an adult wolf and seven months to see into his old age.”

The following morning, when Chen was cleaning the wolf pen, he saw that the usual grayish droppings had been replaced by black ones. Startled, he quickly opened the cub’s mouth and saw that his throat was still bleeding. He got Yang Ke to hold the cub’s mouth open while he tried smearing some medicine on the wound with a chopstick and a piece of felt . But it was too deep for the chopstick to reach. They tried everything, all the home remedies, until they were both exhausted, regretting that neither of them had studied veterinary science.

On the fourth day, the color of the droppings started to lighten, and the cub regained his vitality. The two men breathed sighs of relief.

34

Bilgee was never again invited to attend the corps or division production meetings. Chen often saw him at home, silently doing leatherwork in his yurt.

The leather bridles, reins, bits, and hobbles belonging to the horse, cow, and sheep and horse herders’ horses had all been softened in the summer and autumn rains; after drying in the sun, the leather had stiffened and cracked, making it less durable. It was not uncommon for a horse to snap its reins or break its hobbles and run back to the herd.

With time on his hands, Bilgee was able to make new leather fittings for his family, the section’s horse herders, and the Beijing students. Chen Zhen, Yang Ke, and Gao Jianzhong often took time out to learn leatherwork from the old man. After a couple of weeks, they were able to produce passable bridles and whips. Yang even managed to make a hobble, which was hardest of all to make.

The old man’s spacious yurt was transformed into a leather workshop. Finished work was piled high; the smell of leather salt permeated the air. All they needed to do now was to apply marmot oil.

Marmots produced the best oil on the grassland. During severe winters, oil from sheep and other animals solidified; marmot oil, the sole exception, could be poured even at thirty degrees below zero. It was a grassland specialty found in the homes of all herdsmen. When the white-hair blizzards blew in the depths of winter, all the people had to do to keep their faces free from frostbite was to smear on a layer of marmot oil. Mongolian flour cakes fried in marmot oil were golden brown and delicious; they usually only appeared at wedding banquets or for special guests. And on burns the oil was as effective as badger fat.

Marmot oil and pelts were two important sources of income for herdsmen. In the fall, when the marmot skins were at their thickest, herdsmen went into the mountains to hunt them, keeping the meat for themselves and sending the skins and oil to the purchasing station to swap for bricks of tea, silk, batteries, boots, candy, and daily necessities. A large skin sold for four yuan, and a catty of oil fetched at least one. Ideal for women’s coats, the skins were exported for foreign exchange.

But income from hunting was not steady. Wildlife on the grassland is no different from fruit trees in other parts of China; there are good years and bad years, determined by weather, growth of grass, and natural disasters. But the herders on the Olonbulag knew how to control the scale of their hunting and never set a growth rate for each year. They would hunt often if there were many animals, less often if there were fewer, and stop altogether when there were none. It had gone on like that for thousands of years, which was why there were always animals for them to hunt. Most of the time they sold the marmot skins but not the oil, for it was used widely, mostly on leatherwork, turning it a rich brown color, soft yet resilient. The leather would retain its salt if marmot oil was regularly applied during the rainy season, thus prolonging its life and reducing the frequency of accidents. They often ran out before hunting season arrived.

With an eye on his leatherworking tools, one day Bilgee said to Chen, “I only have half a bottle of oil left, and I have a craving for marmot meat. It tastes best at this time of year. In the old days, aristocrats wouldn’t eat mutton around this time. Tomorrow I’ll take you out hunting for marmot.”

“When he brings them home,” Gasmai said, “I’ll treat you to some tea and cakes fried in marmot oil.”

“That’s great news,” Chen said, “but I can’t keep coming here for food.”

Gasmai laughed. “Once you started raising the cub, you pretty much forgot about me. How often have you come for tea over the past few months?”

“You’re the section leader, and I’ve already caused you trouble over that cub. I haven’t dared come to see you.”

“If not for me,” Gasmai said, “your cub would have been killed by herdsmen long ago.”

“What did you say to them?”