Wolf Totem: A Novel Read online

  Breathing in the cold spring air helped, for the heavy snowfall meant that the spring drought would come to an end. Every day it had been dry winds, dry dust, dry grass, and dry manure, until Chen’s eyes stung and felt crusty; now that was over. Following the storm, the melting snow brought clear water to the rivers and lakes, filled the plains with green grass and beautiful flowers, and was a sign that the livestock would grow plump in the spring. Old Man Bilgee was fond of saying that springtime was the best of the three periods for livestock to accumulate fat. If they failed to plump up in the spring, they wouldn’t be able to catch up in the summer, with what they call water fat, and would have no chance to add oily fat in the fall. If they hadn’t accumulated a three-finger layer of fat in the fall, before the grass turned yellow, they likely would not survive the seven-month-long winter. Those sheep would have to be sold cheaply in China before winter arrived. In bad years, it was necessary to sell off half a herd, sometimes even more, before winter set in. Spring was the critical season on the grassland, and everyone hoped that the spring snows would make up for some of the previous losses.

  Chen Zhen and the other students, both from his and other units, went to the site of the slaughter along with the disaster inspection team sent by headquarters and the production brigade. On the way over, somber looks filled the faces of leaders of the revolutionary committee—Bao Shungui, the military representative, and Uljii, the pasture director— the herdsmen Batu and Laasurung, and all the other representatives of mass organizations; even brawny young herdsmen had been brought along to clean up the site. Chen’s heart sank when he reflected on the anger expressed by the military and local leaders at the knowledge that an entire herd of horses had been lost before they could join military service. Batu was on a new mount, his big black horse being treated by the veterinarian after sustaining debilitating injuries. The ointment covering his face could not conceal the disfigurement that was almost too terrible to look at. The skin on his nose and cheeks was black from frostbite and scarred with wrinkles from which pus oozed. Pink new skin forced to the surface created a startling contrast on his brown face. A big wooden shovel handle was stuck through his belt across his back as he rode along listlessly beside Bao Shungui.

  Laasurung had found Batu behind an abandoned animal pen on the southern tip of the big lake after the blizzard had blown all night and half the next day. His horse, severely injured, could not move, and Batu was frozen half to death. Laasurung managed to get horse and rider back home. In order to describe to the investigation team exactly what had happened, Batu had to mount up and lead the way back to the site, however much pain it caused. The other two herdsmen, also badly frostbitten, had already been interrogated separately.

  Chen Zhen rode along with Bilgee behind the main body. “Papa,” he said softly, “how will they punish Batu?”

  The old man wiped the dew from his wispy goatee with his sleeve, a look of sympathy deep in his eyes. Without turning his head, he stared off at the distant mountains and said slowly, “Do you students think he should be punished?” He turned and added, “Headquarters and the military representative are interested in your opinions. That’s why they invited you along.”

  “Batu is a good man. He nearly gave his life for those warhorses. He just ran out of luck. Personally, I think he’s a hero whether he succeeded in saving them or not. I lived in your house for a year, and everyone knows I consider Batu my big brother. But I can appreciate Bao Shungui’s stance, so my opinion probably doesn’t count. Besides, we students don’t agree among ourselves. So I think that you, as a representative of the poor herdsmen, a member of the revolutionary committee, and someone everyone listens to, ought to have the last word.”

  “What do the other students say?” the old man asked, clearly concerned.

  “Most of the ones in our unit have only good things to say about Batu. What happened this time, with a killer snow, a killer wind, and a killer wolf attack, could not have been averted by anyone, and they don’t think Batu should be punished for it. But there are some who say that the herdsmen may have used a natural disaster for evil purposes, an antimilitary, counterrevolutionary act, and that the backgrounds of all four need to be closely examined.”

  Bilgee looked grim. He said nothing more.

  After skirting the eastern edge of the lake, the party reached the spot where Batu had fired his rifle. Chen Zhen held his breath, preparing himself emotionally for what he was about to see.

  There wasn’t a drop of blood anywhere; a foot of new snow had covered the bloody scene following that night of butchery. There were no horse heads poking up out of the lake, nothing but undulating snowbanks, between which the snow was especially deep. The snowdrifts spread out, carved by a nighttime of winds to cover the corpses of horses that ought to have been in full view. The people looked on silently, seated in their saddles, unwilling to pull back this blanket of snow. Everyone was trying to conjure up an image of what had occurred at that spot.

  Bilgee broke the silence. “What a shame.” Pointing to the eastern edge of the lake with his herding club, he said, “See there, that’s how close they were to making it. It was no easy matter for Batu to drive his herd from the grassland to the north over to this spot, given the terrible winds and all those wolves. Even if he wasn’t afraid, the horse he was riding was. He stuck with his herd from start to finish, fighting the wolves all the way. He did what he was supposed to do.”

  The old man found it easy to argue his son’s case.

  Chen edged up next to Bao Shungui. “Batu fought the wolves all night to safeguard communal property,” he said, “and nearly died in the process. He should be commended to the authorities as a hero—”

  Bao glared at Chen. “Hero, you say?” he roared. “A hero would have saved the herd.” He turned to Batu. “Why was the herd north of the lake that day? With all your experience tending horses, how could you not have known that the wind would drive them right into the lake? That’s what led to what happened here.”

  Batu could not look Bao in the face. “It’s my fault,” he said, “all of it. If I’d driven the herd to the eastern pastureland before nightfall, none of this would have happened.”

  Laasurung spurred his horse up to disagree. “Headquarters told us to graze the horses there, saying that’s the only place where there was plenty of autumn grass, and where new spring grass was already sprouting. We were told to make sure the militiamen who came to claim the horses were happy with their mounts. I recall that Batu stood up at the ‘grasp revolution, promote production’ meeting and said that grazing the horses at the northern tip of the lake was unsafe. And now that his prediction has come true, how can you pin the blame on him?”

  Headquarters leaders looked on quietly, until Uljii cleared his throat and said, “What Laasurung says is right. That’s how it happened. Everyone wanted the horses to get big and strong so they could travel great distances and contribute more to strategic plans. Who could have predicted a white-hair blizzard? One from the north, mind you. And, of course, the wolf pack. If not for them, Batu would have driven the herd to safety, guaranteed. A killer wind, a killer snow, a killer wolf attack, a once-in-a-century chain of events, if that! I’m responsible for production, so if anyone is to blame, it’s me.”

  Bao Shungui pointed his whip at Laasurung’s nose. “You’re not blameless in this,” he said. “Bilgee was right when he said they were close to reaching safety. If you three hadn’t fled the field of battle and had instead stayed with Batu to keep the herd moving, none of this would have happened. The only reason I haven’t sent you to be interrogated is that you rode out and saved Batu’s life.”

  Bilgee reached out and lowered Bao’s whip with his herding club. “Representative Bao,” he said with a stern look, “as a Mongol from a farming region, you should at least be aware of our customs out here. You do not point a whip at people’s noses when you talk to them. That was a prerogative reserved to kings and pasture lords.”

  Bao l
owered his whip and shifted it to his left hand. He pointed first to Laasurung, then to Batu with his right index finger. “You!” he barked. “And you! Why aren’t you down there shoveling and sweeping snow? I want to see those remains. I want to see how big a wolf pack we’re talking about. Don’t try to pin the blame for what happened on the wolves. Chairman Mao tells us that man is the primary element!”

  The men climbed down off their horses; picked up their spades, shovels, and brooms; and began clearing the graveyard. Bao Shungui rode around taking pictures with a Seagull brand camera as evidence and giving commands: “Sweep it clean, absolutely clean! Inspection teams from the prefecture and the banner will be here in a few days.”

  Along with Uljii, Bilgee, Batu, and Laasurung, Chen Zhen walked toward several snowbanks in the middle of the lake, where the ice was hard and the snow crunched beneath their feet. “To determine how ferocious a pack it was, all we need to know is whether the horses buried out there were killed by the wolves,” Bilgee said.

  “How come?” Chen asked.

  “Think about it this way,” Uljii said. “The farther out you go, the greater the danger. The mud out there would be the last to freeze, and no wolf would risk the possibility of drowning. So if those horses were killed by wolves, that’ll tell us how ferocious a pack we’re dealing with.”

  The old man turned to Batu. “Didn’t it help to fire your rifle?”

  “No,” Batu said with a sad face. “I only had ten bullets, and they were gone in no time. The wind swallowed up the sound. But even if I’d scared them off, they’d have returned when I was out of ammunition. It was pitch-black, and my flashlight was dimming. I couldn’t see a thing.

  “But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time.” Batu reached up and touched the frostbitten skin on his face. “The snow kept falling. I was afraid I’d shoot the horses. I was hoping the wind would die down and the lake wouldn’t freeze so that the wolves would stay back. That way some of the horses could have lived. I recall raising the angle of my rifle a foot or so.”

  Bilgee and Uljii sighed heavily.

  When they were standing in the middle of the lake, Batu hesitated before clearing the snow near the horses’ heads. The men sucked in their breath. Half of the exposed neck of a great white horse had been chewed off and the head had been pulled around until it was lying on the animal’s back. Its bulging eyes, frozen into nearly transparent black-ice eggs, were stamped with the despair and fear of the horse’s last moments, a terrifying sight. The snow beneath the head was stained red by frozen blood, so hard that the men’s tools couldn’t crack it. Without a word, the men shoveled and swept the snow away, exposing half of the carcass. To Chen it looked as if the horse’s abdomen had been torn open by an explosion, not by wolf fangs.

  They stood around gaping at the sight. Chen’s hands and feet were cold as ice, the chill seeping deep into his bones.

  Holding a spade in his hands, Bilgee looked thoughtful. “This may be the second or third largest wolf pack I’ve ever encountered,” he said. “I don’t have to see any more, since the innermost horse has been torn apart like this. Not a single horse escaped the carnage.”

  Uljii, his face a study in dejection, sighed. “I rode this horse for two years,” he said. “Together we caught three wolves. It was one of our fastest horses. I never rode a better one, not even when I was suppressing bandits as company commander of a mounted unit. No horse thief could have devised the strategy or tactics this wolf pack employed. They took advantage of the wind and the lake, which makes you wonder just how smart we are. If I’d been a bit smarter, this horse would still be alive, and I have to accept some of the blame for what happened here. If only I’d been more forceful in my comments to old Bao that day.”

  The greater half of the carnage site had been cleared. Carcasses lay all over the frozen lake, with its bloodred ice. Broken limbs were strewn everywhere, as on a battlefield after heavy bombardment. The two horse herders sat on their heels on the ice, cleaning the heads of their favorite horses with fur-lined sleeves and the hems of their deels, weeping nonstop. Every man in the party was stunned by the miserable scene. Chen Zhen and other students who had never witnessed the bloody results of battle or the aftermath of a wolf attack stared at each other, their faces turned ashen by visceral fright.

  The old man’s displeasure was obvious. “You Chinese are poor horsemen. When the riding gets rough, you can’t even stay in the saddle.”

  Not used to being reproached by Bilgee, Chen understood the implication in the old man’s comment. The wolf totem occupied a more unshakable place in his soul than a skillful rider on a Mongol horse. After thousands of years, during which unknown numbers of minor races had died out or were violently displaced, the grasslanders would never question their predatory totem, which would remain their sole icon even after killing seventy or eighty fine horses. Chen was reminded of the sayings “The Yellow River causes a hundred calamities but enriches all it touches”; “When the Yellow River overflows its banks, the people become fish and turtles”; “The Yellow River—our Mother River”; and “The Yellow River—cradle of the Chinese race.” The Chinese would never deny that the Yellow River was the cradle of the Chinese race or that it was crucial to the survival and development of their race even if it sometimes overflows its banks and swallows up acres of cropland and thousands of lives. The grasslanders’ wolf totem deserved to be revered in the same manner.

  Bao Shungui, who had stopped shouting commands, rode around to get a fuller picture of the carnage. As Bao took photographs of the scene, Chen Zhen noticed his hands trembling violently; he was having trouble keeping his camera steady.

  Bilgee and Uljii were shoveling snow in an area where several rendered carcasses lay, digging here and poking there, as if looking for evidence. Chen Zhen hurried over to give them a hand. “What are you looking for, Papa?” he asked.

  “The path the wolves took,” the old man replied. “We need to proceed carefully.”

  Chen bent over and, stepping carefully, helped them look. It didn’t take long. There on the ground they spotted a path where the snow was tightly packed atop the frozen mud. After it was swept clean of the powdery snow that had settled on it, they saw wolf prints as large as an ox hoof and as small as a large dog’s paw print. There were traces of blood in some of the heel marks.

  Uljii and Bilgee called the others over to help clear the snow from the wolf path; according to Bilgee, what they learned from the path would bring them closer to the size of the pack. As the path was gradually revealed, they saw it was curved, not straight, and farther along they noted that it became a semicircle. It took more than an hour to clear away the entire length of the path, and to learn that it ran in a complete circle, a circle of ice and blood, of red-stained snow that was as thick as a fist; the black and red frozen mud and red ice was a terrifying sight, like a sort of demonic writing. Shocked to their core, the men shuddered as they discussed what they’d found.

  “I’ve lived a long time, but I’ve never seen this many wolf prints in one place.”

  “This wasn’t a wolf pack; it was a gang of fiends.”

  “The numbers are scary.”

  "Forty or fifty at least.”

  Batu, you’ve got guts, going up against this pack. If it’d been me, I’d have been scared off my horse and straight into the bellies of those wolves.”

  “It was dark that night, and snow was falling; I couldn’t see a thing. How was I to know how big the pack was?” Batu said.

  “This will make things tough on our pastureland from now on.”

  “The women won’t dare go out walking at night.”

  “Damn those idiots at headquarters for pillaging the food the wolves had put away for the lean days of spring. That’s why they were on the trail of revenge. I’d have done the same thing if I’d been their alpha male. But I’d have gone after their pigs and chickens.”

  “Headquarters can do something right for a change by organizing a wolf hunt
. If we don’t kill them now, we’re next on their menu.”

  “I vote for fewer meetings and more wolf hunts.”

  “The way they gorged themselves this time, it looks like we might not have enough animals to satisfy their appetites.”

  “People from farmlands have been shipped in as leaders of our pastureland, and everything they do is wrong. Tengger sent the wolves as a lesson to us.”

  “Watch what you’re saying, or the next criticism session will be for you.”

  Bao Shungui examined the path with Bilgee and Uljii, stopping to talk with the two local men as he took pictures. His face gradually relaxed, and Chen Zhen suspected that Bilgee had said some things relaxed, and Chen Zhen suspected that Bilgee had said some things to undermine his concept of "man as the primary element.” Was man able to successfully resist this killer wolf attack, this natural disaster? You can send all the inspection teams you want, but one look at the carnage here is enough to convince you that man was powerless to keep this from happening, especially when you factor in the blizzard. Chen’s concern for Uljii and Batu gradually lessened.

  He turned to a closer scrutiny of the wolf path. The strange circular shape made his hair stand on end; it wrapped itself around his heart, as if a pack of wolf sprites were racing inside his chest, until he could hardly breathe. Why a circle? What were they trying to do? What was their goal? Grassland wolves were impossible to figure out. Every clue to their behavior presented a new puzzle.

  Was it to keep out the cold? Did running somehow warm them?

  Or was it to aid their digestion? Burning off excess energy might have increased their need for horseflesh. That too was possible. Unlike other grassland creatures, such as ground squirrels and golden prairie dogs, wolves do not store up food. What they can’t eat from a kill, they leave, so in order to get the most out of their kills, they gorge themselves until they can eat no more. Then they run to facilitate digestion and store up as much nutrition as possible, emptying their stomachs to go back and eat more.