Wolf Totem: A Novel (71 page)

Bilgee banged his club on the ground, sending broken shards of rock flying all over. His eyes nearly popping out of his head, he shouted, “Cut off those firecrackers! Cut the rope, and put the young marmot back into the den!”

The workers took their time untying the rope and refused to let go of the marmot. Old Wang rode over on a light wagon. He no longer appeared drunk. With a broad grin, he gave the old man a cigarette and then turned to scold the workers. He walked up to the man holding the marmot, snatched the animal away, and cut off the rope. Then he went back to the old man and said, “Don’t worry; I’ll let this one go.”

Bilgee got slowly to his feet and brushed the dirt off. “Let it go this minute. And don’t interfere with our work ever again.”

Old Wang smiled ingratiatingly. “I wouldn’t dare,” he said. “I’m just following orders. We won’t stop the wolves if we don’t kill off the marmots, so this is considered eliminating a scourge for the people. But you’re right, of course. Without the marmot oil, the reins won’t be durable, and accidents could happen. We need to leave some marmots for the herdsmen.”

He put the marmot down on the flat surface outside the hole, where the animal swiftly disappeared from sight.

Old Wang sighed. “In all fairness, it’s hard getting a whole den of these things. We went to a lot of trouble to catch that young marmot today. Since we’ve been using firecrackers, they’ve been too scared to come out.”

Not giving an inch, the old man said, “We’re not done yet. You send the stuff to the brigade office immediately. If Lamjav and the other horse herders got wind of this, they’d come and knock over your tent and your carts.”

“We’ll get our stuff together and be on our way. I’ll report to Director Bao myself.”

The old man looked at his watch. Clearly worried about the marmot mountain to the north, he said, “I’m going to see someone. I’ll be right back.” Then he and Chen mounted up and rode toward the border highway.

Firecrackers went off behind them after they had crossed a pair of hills, and then everything turned quiet. The old man said, “We’ve been tricked.” They turned back and rode up to the top of the hill, where they saw Old Wang, a damp cloth covering his mouth and nose, directing the workers to catch and kill the marmots. Dead animals were already strewn on the ground outside the marmots’ den, while thick, acrid smoke continued to pour from it. The last few marmots were clubbed to death the moment they came out. The old man was coughing violently, so Chen helped him over to a place upwind as he thumped him on the back.

With damp cloths over their faces, the workers looked like bandits; they quickly dumped the marmots into a gunnysack, which they then tossed onto the cart before riding down the mountain.

“How could they could trap another baby marmot so quickly?” Chen asked Bilgee.

“They’d probably trapped two, and had one in the hemp sack that we couldn’t see. Or they might have tied firecrackers to a long pole. They’re nothing less than bandits, worse than horse thieves in the old days!”

Bilgee stood up with the aid of his club and surveyed the marmot dens, now completely emptied. He was shaking; tears streaked his face. “What cruelty! I know these dens,” he said. “I set traps here with my father when I was a boy. Generations of my family caught marmots here, and now there are no more. Year after year, they’d be chirping happily. It was a fertile den for well over a hundred years, and those bandits wiped it out in the time it takes to smoke a couple of pipes of tobacco.”

Chen was as upset as Bilgee, but he tried to console the old man. “Don’t be angry anymore, Papa. Let’s go see if there’s anything we can do.”

As they traveled along, their horses slowed down to graze from time to time. Chen saw that the grass was much greener there than back at the pastureland. It had thicker stalks and was bursting with seeds. He spotted little piles on the ground, each the size of a magpie nest, and knew that field mice had been gathering grass and leaving it outside their dens to dry before they carried it in.

The old man reined in his horse where the grass was densest. “Let’s stop and rest a bit,” he said. “The horses can get some of the good grass from the mice. See how they thrive, now that the wolves are gone? These piles are several times thicker this year than last.”

They dismounted and removed the horses’ bits so they could graze. They happily nosed away the dry yellow surface grass to get at the fresh green grass underneath. With green juice streaming from their mouths, they snorted as they ate, one pile after another, permeating the air with a grassy fragrance. The old man kicked a pile away to reveal a hole the size of a teacup; a large mouse stuck its head out to check around. When it saw someone touching its winter stockpile, it ran out, bit the old man’s boot, and scurried noisily back into the hole. A moment later, they heard the sound of a bridle shaking. They turned around in time to see a foot-long field mouse biting one of their horses on the nose, which was already bleeding. Loud squeaks erupted all around them.

“What has the world come to,” the angry old man shouted, “when a mouse is bold enough to bite a horse? If they keep killing wolves, the mice will start eating people.” Chen ran over, grabbed the reins, and tied them to the horse’s front leg so that the horse would be sure to cover the opening with its hoof before starting to eat.

The old man kicked at some more piles. “See how close they are to each other? They’ve picked out the best grass; not even Xinjiang mating sheep get grass this good. The mice, which pick only the good stuff, are worse than grass cutters, which cut down the bad along with the good. If they store up enough this winter, not many of them will die of hunger or cold, which means the females will have plenty of milk in the spring and give birth to even more mice. They’ll steal our grass and make more holes. Next year they’ll overrun the place. See, when there are fewer wolves on the grassland, the mice turn from thieves to bandits, no longer having to sneak around.”

As he looked down at the piles of grass, Chen’s sadness was mixed with fear. A battle between humans and mice was waged on the grassland every autumn. The mice were a sneaky enemy, but they had a weakness. By digging holes deep enough to store food for the winter, they needed to pile the grass to dry, or it would rot inside their dens. That made them an obvious target, providing the opportunity for people to initiate their mouse extermination campaigns.

When a herdsman spotted a pile of grass on a pastureland, he sounded an alarm for the production teams to bring back the sheep, cows, even the horses to forage the piles of grass. The pastureland grass would be turning yellow, while the piles made by the mice would still be green and fragrant, with oily seeds. The livestock would fight over the grass, and it would take them only a few days to finish it off before it dried. It was a natural form of mouse population control.

But humans and their livestock needed the cooperation of wolves when they launched their autumn battles. This was when the mice were at their fattest, perfect for the wolves to feast on. Mice that were cutting and moving grass were easy to catch, and the piles showed the wolves where to find the biggest rodents. But most important, the wolves made the mice wary during their critical grass-collecting season, which indirectly led to starvation in the winter. Humans had their livestock finish off the grass while the wolves were a deterrent to the mice from cutting down grass at will.

For thousands of years, wolves and humans, along with their livestock, worked together to effectively control the population of mice. The grass they gathered delayed the process of yellowing, which in turn supplied the livestock with green grass for about ten days, extra time to store up fat. And so, the battle waged jointly by men and wolves achieved many purposes. Meanwhile, on the distant winter pastureland, beyond the reach of man and their livestock, wolves disrupted grass-collecting activities by the mice, which they then ate. How could farmers understand the strategies of grassland combat, which in the end preserved them all?

The horses’ bellies bulged as they gorged themselves for nearly half an hour. The brigade’s livestock would be outmatched by the vast supply of grass piles. In the face of an unprecedented battle scene, the old man was lost in thought. “Can we bring the horses here? No, that won’t work. This pasture belongs to the sheep and the cows. Bringing the horses would disrupt the established order. But there are so many piles that even baling machines would be unable to complete the job. This is a disaster in the making.”

“A man-made disaster,” Chen said angrily.

They remounted and continued on, heading north, utterly dispirited. Along the way, they saw more piles of grass, some denser than others, all the way to the border.

As they neared the small northern marmot mountain, they heard some loud cracks that sounded like neither gunfire nor firecrackers. Then it was quiet again. Bilgee sighed. “The corps leaders sure found the right person to be their extermination adviser,” he said, despair in his voice. “Wherever you find wolves, you’ll find Dorji, even at the wolves’ last outpost.”

They spurred their horses on, only to encounter an army vehicle coming out of the valley. They reined in their horses as the vehicle came to a halt. In it were the two sharpshooters and Dorji. Staff Officer Xu was driving, and Dorji was in the backseat, with a bloody gunnysack by his feet. The trunk was filled. The old man’s gaze was drawn to the long-barreled rife in Staff Officer Batel’s hand. Chen could see that it was a small-caliber hunting rifle, something the old man had never seen before; he couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“Out hunting marmots?” Batel asked. “No need, I’ll give you two of ours.”

“Any reason we shouldn’t go up there?” Bilgee asked, glaring at the man.

“We killed all the ones outside their dens, and those inside don’t dare come out.”

“What’s that in your hand?” Bilgee asked. “Why does it have such a long barrel?”

“It’s used for duck hunting,” Batel said. “Small-caliber ammunition is perfect for killing marmots. They keep the fur virtually undamaged. Here, take a look.”

The old man took the rifle and examined it and the bullets very carefully.

Wanting to show the old man the advantage of his rifle, Batel got out of the vehicle and took it from Bilgee. He spotted a squeaking mouse on the grass pile outside its cave about twenty yards away. He took aim and fired, blowing the mouse’s head off. The old man shook all over.

Staff Officer Xu laughed. “The wolves all left for Outer Mongolia,” he said. “Dorji took us everywhere, but we didn’t see a single one. Luckily I brought the rifle with me for killing marmots. They’re so stupid they didn’t even run back to their dens when we got closer, as if they were waiting for our bullets to hit them.”

“These two can hit a marmot’s head from fifty yards,” Dorji gloated. “We killed every one we spotted along the way. It was a lot faster than setting traps.”

“Why don’t you turn back and go home?” Batel said. “I’ll drop two large marmots off at your yurt on my way back.”

The vehicle took off before the old man had regained his composure from the shock of witnessing the power of this new weapon. As the smoke and dust from the army vehicle cleared, Bilgee turned his horse around and draped the reins over its neck to let it find its way home. Everyone talks about how China’s Last Emperor suffered, Chen was thinking as he rode beside the old man. But the last nomadic herdsman is suffering a great deal more. How much more difficult it must be to accept the destruction of a ten-thousand-year-old grassland than the overthrow of a thousand-year-old dynasty. The once energetic old man was deflated, his body suddenly shrunk to half of its original size. Tears coursed through the wrinkles on his face, spilling onto patches of wild blue-white daisies.

Not knowing how to lessen the old man’s sorrow, Chen held his tongue, before finally stammering, “Papa, the autumn grass is really good this year . . . The Olonbulag is truly beautiful . . . Maybe next year . . . ”

“Next year?” the old man replied woodenly. “Who knows what bizarre things will happen next year? In the past, even a blind old man could see the grassland’s beauty. It’s no longer beautiful. I wish I were blind so that I wouldn’t have to see how it’s being destroyed.”

He swayed in the saddle as his horse plodded ahead. He closed his eyes. Old, guttural sounds emerged from his throat, infused with the aroma of green grass and fading daisies. To Chen, the lyrics sounded like simple nursery rhymes:

He sang the same thing over and over, as the melody turned ever lower and the lyrics became indistinguishable, like a stream flowing from some faraway place, crisscrossing the vast grassland before disappearing in the undulating grass. Chen Zhen wondered if the nursery rhyme had been sung by the children of the Quanrong, the Huns, the Tungus, the Turks, and the Khitans, as well as the offspring of Genghis Khan. Would the future children of the grassland be singing the song or even understand it? Or would they be full of questions: What are larks? What’s a marmot? Gray cranes? Wolves? Wild geese? What are orchids? What’s a daisy?

A few larks rose up above the vast, yellowing grassland; they flapped their wings and hovered in midair, singing clear and happy songs.

35

The first winter snow melted, moistening the air, while chilling and freshening the fields. The dense winter grass on the wild field was yellow and sere, so bleak it resembled a desert plateau where no grass would grow.

Only the sky was the same blue as in late autumn. The sky was high and clouds were sparse, like a clear lake. The vultures flying high in the sky were smaller than rust spots on a mirror. Unable to catch marmots and mice, which were hibernating inside their dens, the vultures had to fly high into the clouds to broaden their search for rabbits, but the wild Mongolian rabbits, which could camouflage themselves by changing color, hid in the tall grass, hard for even foxes to find. Bilgee had once said that many vultures starved to death each winter.