Wolf Totem: A Novel Read online

  Chen Zhen asked his neighbor Gombu to tend his sheep that day. As a onetime herd owner, Gombu was kept under surveillance, and his right to tend sheep had been taken from him; but the four Beijing students asked him to watch their animals whenever they could, for which Gasmai would let him earn the appropriate work points. Chen and one of the other herders, Yang Ke, yoked up a light cart and headed to Bilgee’s yurt.

  Yang, a classmate who lived in Chen Zhen’s yurt, was the son of a famous professor at one of Beijing’s most prestigious universities. They had as many books at home as a small library. In high school, Chen and he had often traded books. They’d exchange views when they finished, and were best friends. In Beijing, Yang had been a shy, mild-mannered boy who blushed whenever he met a stranger. No one could have predicted that after two years of eating lamb and beefsteaks and cheese, after baking in the strong rays of the Mongolian sun season after season, he would be transformed into a brawny son of the grassland, with a face as sunburned as the native herdsmen and none of the bookish manners he’d brought with him.

  Yang was more excited than Chen, and as he whipped the back of the ox he said, “I didn’t sleep at all last night. The next time Bilgee takes you hunting, be sure to let me go along, even if I have to lie there for two whole days. This is the first time I’ve heard of wolves performing good deeds for people, and I won’t believe it until I personally drag one of the gazelle carcasses out of the snow. Can we really take a cartload of them back with us?”

  “Would I lie to you?” Chen smiled. “Papa said that no matter how hard it is to dig them out, we’re guaranteed a cartful, which we can swap for other things, like New Year’s items and some large pieces of felt for our yurt.”

  Yang was so pleased he whipped the back of the ox until it glared angrily. “It looks like your two-year fascination with wolves is beginning to pay off,” he said. “I’ll have to start studying their hunting techniques myself. Who knows, it might come in handy in a real fight one day . . . What you said could be a pattern. Living on the grassland over the long haul as a nomad, it makes no difference which ethnic group you belong to, since sooner or later you’ll start worshipping wolves and treating them as mentors. That’s what happened with the Huns, the Wusun, the Turks, the Mongols, and other nationalities. Or so it says in books. But the Chinese are an exception. I guarantee you, we Chinese could live out here for generations without worshipping a wolf totem.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Chen said as he reined in his horse. “Take me, for instance. The wolves have won me over in a little more than two years.”

  “But the vast majority of Chinese are peasants,” Yang countered, “or were born to peasants. The Han have a peasant mentality that’s impossible to break down, and if they were transported out here, I’d be surprised if they didn’t skin every last wolf on the grassland. We’re a farming race, and a fear and hatred of wolves is in our bones. How could we venerate a wolf totem? We Han worship the Dragon King, the one in charge of our agrarian lifeline—our dragon totem, the one we pay homage to, the one to whom we meekly submit. How can you expect people like that to learn from wolves, to protect them, to worship and yet kill them, like the Mongols? Only a people’s totem can truly rouse their ethnic spirit and character, whether it’s a dragon or a wolf. The differences between farming and nomadic peoples are simply too great. In the past, when we were immersed in the vast Han Chinese ocean, we had no sense of those differences, but coming out here has made the inherent weaknesses of our farming background obvious. Sure, my father is a renowned professor, but his grandfather and my mother’s grandmother were peasants.”

  “In ancient times,” Chen said, picking up the thread, “the impact of Mongols on the world was far greater than that of the Han, who outnumbered them a hundred to one. Even now, people in the West call us members of a Mongol race, and we accept that. But back when the Qin and Han dynasties unified China, the word Mongol didn’t exist. I tell you, I feel sorry for the Han Chinese. We built the Great Wall and crowed about what an achievement it was, considering ourselves to be the center of the world, the central kingdom. But in the eyes of early Western people, China was only a ‘silk country,’ a ‘ceramic country,’ a ‘tea country.’ The Russians even thought that the little Khitan tribe was China, and to this day, they still call China, Khidai.”

  “It looks like your fascination with wolves was worth it,” Yang said. “It’s contagious. Now when I read history, I keep looking to the barbarian tribes of the four corners and am tempted to look for their connections to wolves.”

  “Look at you,” Chen said. “You’re damned near a Mongol yourself. All you need is an infusion of wolf blood. Hybrids are always superior creatures.”

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you urged me to come to the grassland. Do you know what it was you said that touched that special spot in me? You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? This is it: you said, ‘The grassland contains the most extensive primitivism and freedom anywhere.’ ”

  Chen loosened his horse’s bit and said, “I think you’re putting words in my mouth.”

  They laughed happily. Snow flew from the wheels of the cart as it sped along.

  Humans, dogs, and carts formed a scene on the snow like a Gypsy carnival. Every member of Gasmai’s group—four hots (two adjacent yurts comprised a hot), altogether eight yurts—sent men and carts. The eight carts were loaded with felt, ropes, hoes, kindling, and wooden-handled hooks. Everyone was wearing grimy old clothing for the dirty, tiring work ahead—so grimy it shone, so old it was black, and dotted with sheepskin patches. But the people and the dogs were as cheerful as the tribes that had followed the ancient Mongol hordes in sweeping up battlefields to claim the spoils of war. A large felt-wrapped flask of liquor was passed from the head of the procession all the way to the rear, and from the hands of women to the mouths of men. Music filled the air: Mongol folk songs, songs of praise, war chants, drinking songs, and love songs—the dam had broken. The forty or fifty furry Mongol dogs were acting like children, giddily showing off on this rare and happy occasion, running around the carts, rolling in the dirt, play-fighting, and flirting.

  Chen Zhen and two horse herders, Batu and Lamjav, plus five or six cowherds and shepherds, clustered around Bilgee, like bodyguards for a tribal chief. Lamjav, a man with a broad face, straight nose, and Turkish eyes, said to Bilgee, “I could be the best marksman anywhere and I still wouldn’t be your equal. Without firing a shot, you’ve made it possible for every family in the team to enjoy a bountiful New Year’s holiday. Even with an apprentice like our Han friend Chen Zhen, you haven’t forgotten your old Mongol apprentices. I’d never have predicted that the wolves would launch their attack out here yesterday.”

  The old man glared at him. “In the future, when you have a successful hunt, don’t you forget the old folks and the Beijing students in the team. I’ve never seen you deliver meat to anybody. You only gave Chen Zhen a gazelle leg because he visited your yurt. Is that how we treat our guests? When we were young, the first gazelle or snow otter of the year always went to the old folks and to guests. Young people today have forgotten customs handed down from the great khans. Let me ask you, how many wolves do you have to kill to catch up with Buhe, the great hunter of the Bayan Gobi Commune? You want to see your name in the newspaper, hear it on the radio, win a prize, don’t you? If you hunt the wolves to extinction, where do you think your soul will go after you die? Don’t tell me you want to be like the Han, buried in a hole in the ground, where you can feed the worms and other insects! If you do, your soul will never make it to Tengger.”

  “Batu is your son,” Lamjav said as he touched the back flap of his fox-fur cap. “You may not believe me, but you ought to believe him. Ask him if I have any interest in becoming a great hunter. A journalist from the Mongol League came to the horse unit to see me the other day. Batu was there; you can ask him if I didn’t cut the number in half.”

  “Is that true?” the old man turned and asked his son.r />
  “Yes,” Batu replied, “but the man didn’t believe him. He asked people at the purchasing station how many wolf pelts Lamjav had sold them. You know that after they check the quality of the pelts to determine the price, they give the seller twenty bullets. And they keep records. After the journalist returned to the league, he said over the air that Lamjav had nearly caught up with Buhe, which so frightened Lamjav that he asked others to sell his pelts for him.”

  The old man frowned. “You two hunt wolves too often. You get more kills than anyone on the pasture.”

  Batu defended himself: “The grazing land for our herd of horses is the closest to the border with Outer Mongolia, and that’s where most of the wolves are. If we don’t hunt them, they’ll cross the border in even greater numbers. Most of the foals that year did not survive.”

  “Why are both of you here? Did you leave the herd in the care of Zhang Jiyuan?”

  “The wolves come at night,” Batu said, “so we relieve him then. He’s never taken gazelles during the day, so we came instead. We can work faster.”

  The winter sun lay low in the sky, appearing to settle close to the land. The blue sky turned white, as did the dry grass; the surface of the snow began to melt, forming a glittery mirror. Humans, dogs, and carts had a spectral quality. The men put on their sunglasses, while the women and children covered their eyes with their flapped sleeves. A few of the cowherds, who suffered from sun-blindness, shut their eyes, but not in time to stanch the flow of tears. The big dogs, on the other hand, were either watching wide-eyed at bounding hares or sniffing the side of the road, where foxes had recently left tracks in the snow.

  As they neared the site of the encirclement, the dogs discovered something new on the slope and raced over, leaving frenzied barks in their wakes. Those that were still hungry tore into gazelle carcasses the wolves had left behind. But Bilgee’s Bar and a few of the team’s better hunting dogs, their hackles raised, ran over to where the wolves had left droppings in the snow, searching the area to determine how many wolves there had been, how powerful a force, and which alpha male they had followed. “Bar recognizes the scent of most of the Olonbulag wolves,” Bilgee said, “and they recognize his. The way the fur on his neck is standing up is a sure sign that it was a large pack.”

  As the riders entered the hunting ground, they sized the scene up by keeping their eyes to the ground. All that remained of most gazelles on the slope were heads and a scattering of bones. Bilgee pointed to the tracks in the snow and said, “Some of them came back last night.” Then he pointed to tufts of grayish-yellow wolf fur and said, “A couple of wolf packs had a fight here. It was probably a pack from the other side of the border that followed the scent of the gazelle herd. The shortage of food there makes them more ferocious than ever.”

  The horse team finally made it up to the ridge, where they reacted as if they’d discovered a cornucopia, whooping it up like mad. They waved their hats to the carts behind them. Gasmai jumped down off her wagon and grabbed the bridle of the lead ox to get it to trot. So did the other women. They gathered speed, since the oxen were fast and the carts light.

  When Lamjav saw the sight below, his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Yow!” he exclaimed. “It took an amazing pack of wolves to herd in that many gazelles. Last year it took more than twenty of us herders to pen thirty, and we nearly ran our horses into the ground doing it.”

  Bilgee reined in his horse and took out his telescope to pan the snow-drift and the surrounding mountains. Everyone else reined in their horses too and looked around, waiting to hear what he had to say.

  Chen viewed the slope through his telescope. Countless gazelles were buried in the snowdrift, which could also have been the burial site of ancient warriors. The center of the drift was relatively smooth, like a mountain lake sealed by snow and ice. A dozen or so gazelle carcasses dotted the sloping area around the lake, but the shocking sight was seven or eight yellow dots on the lake, some still moving. Chen realized it was a cluster of gazelles that had been driven into the lake but had not been swallowed up by the snow. The surrounding area was pitted with hollows, some large, some small, off into the distance, the only visible traces of gazelles that had drowned in an ocean of snow. Unlike lakes of water, snow lakes indicate where the drowning victims have fallen in.

  Bilgee said to Batu, “You and some of the others start shoveling snow to let the carts come up closer.” Then he led Chen Zhen and Lamjav up to the edge of the lake. “Make sure you check for gazelle and wolf tracks before you take a step, and avoid spots with no grass.”

  They rode their horses carefully down the slope. The snow kept getting deeper, the grass less visible. They moved down a little more. The surface was peppered with holes about the thickness of a chopstick tip. A dry yellow stalk of grass stood rigidly in the middle of each hole. Bilgee said, “Tengger gave those air holes to the wolves. Without them, how could they detect the smell of their dead victims in snow this deep?”

  Chen Zhen smiled and nodded. The holes and grass stalks were safety signs. A few paces farther down the slope they disappeared, but there were still gazelle and wolf tracks. The powerful Mongol horses’ hooves broke through three inches of crusty snow and settled into deep drifts as they moved closer to the snow lake, heading toward the nearest dead gazelles.

  Finally, the horses could go no farther. The men dismounted, broke through the crusty surface, and sank into deep snow. They struggled to stomp out a platform on which they could turn around. A half-eaten gazelle lay at an angle in the crushed snow beside Chen Zhen’s foot. All around it was frozen grass from the gazelle’s stomach. The remains of thirty or forty gazelles that had been caught and eaten lay in the immediate area. That was as far as the wolves had gone.

  Chen Zhen gazed out at the most tragic scene he’d ever encountered. Eight or nine little gazelles stood trembling on the lake a hundred yards or so from him, surrounded by holes in the snow, where other gazelles were now buried. These surviving animals were too frightened to move, but the tiny spot of hard snow on which they stood could crumble at any moment. There were others whose thin legs were buried in the snow but whose bodies remained supported by a crusty layer. They were still alive but immobilized. These fleet-footed free spirits of the grassland were hungry and cold, unable to move, suffering one last torment from Death itself.

  But the most heartbreaking sight was a series of gazelle heads poking up out of the snow, their bodies completely submerged. They might have been standing on a little hillock or perhaps on the corpses of their companions. By using his telescope, Chen thought he could see the animals’ mouths move, as if crying for help, although no sound emerged.

  The crusty surface sparkled like ice, beautiful yet treacherous and cruel, another gift from Tengger to the wolves and humans, a deadly hidden weapon safeguarding the grassland. The crusty layer is a product of winter blizzards and the sun. The winds that sweep across the land are like winnowing machines, removing the powdery snow and leaving a dense carpet of pellets that make up the snowy landscape. In the windless mornings, all the way up to midday, under intense rays of sunlight, the snow begins to melt, but cold afternoon winds freeze it again. After several blizzards have blown across the landscape, a three-inch crust, a mixture of ice and snow that is harder than snow alone but more brittle than ice, remains; smooth and slippery, it is uneven in its depth. At its thickest, it can support a man, but there are few places that can withstand the sharp hooves of the Mongolian gazelles.

  The scene made Chen tremble with dread. Wolves had dragged all the gazelles they could out of the snow, creating long troughs crisscrossing the edges of the deep snow as they hauled their victims away. The far ends of the troughs were the abattoirs and picnic areas. Only the innards and the choicest flesh were eaten; the rest was left as waste. The wolves had obviously heard the approach of the people and dogs, and had left in a hurry, for the snow pellets were still shifting on the surface, and spots where the wolves had defecated had not comple
tely frozen over.

  Mongolian wolves are brilliant fighters on a snowy field, fully cognizant of the limits of battle. They will ignore gazelles out in the deeper snow, those lying on top and those sunken beneath the surface. There wasn’t a single track from a probe outside the safe zone. The animals dragged out of the snow could have fed several large wolf packs; the ignored frozen carcasses were the wolf pack’s guaranteed fresh food, for they would keep till the spring thaw, when the wolves would return for more tasty meals. This enormous snowdrift and snow lake was a wolf pack’s natural cold storage. Old Bilgee said, “There’s ice and snow storage for wolves all over Olonbulag. This is just the biggest one. The wolves often store their kills in places like this to keep from starving the following year. The meat of these frozen gazelles is life-saving food for wolves that grow lean in the spring and have a lot more stored-up fat than the live, and very thin, gazelles.” The old man pointed to one of the holes and said with a laugh, “Wolves out here really know how to live. We’re no match. As winter sets in each year, herdsmen slaughter their cows and sheep before they start losing their autumn fat and then they store the meat, which will take them through the winter. They learned that from wolves.”

  When Bar and the other dogs spotted live gazelles, their hunting instincts kicked in and they ran toward them. But when they reached the spot where the wolves’ paw prints ended, they stopped. Denied the kill, they stretched out their necks and barked madly in the direction of the gazelles. Some of the targets were so frightened that they broke for the snow lake. But before they’d gotten far, the crust gave way and they sank into the quicksand-like snow, struggling briefly before disappearing from sight. The snow above them shifted like sand in an hourglass, until it formed a funnel. One of the animals broke through the crust, thrusting out its front legs and supporting the front half of its body while the rear half sank into the snow. Half a life was saved—for the moment.