Wolf Totem: A Novel (17 page)

The Red Guard angrily pointed his whip at Chen and said, “You think you’re so clever just because you finished high school! Those books you read, filled with capitalist, feudal, revisionist garbage. Nothing but poisonous weeds! You’re like that dog-father of yours. At school you kept to yourself, a member of the leisure class, but out here in the most primitive, backward spot in the world, you’re like a fish in water. You fit right in with the stinking Four Olds!”

Feeling the blood rush to his head, Chen wanted to run over and, like a wolf, sink his teeth into the Red Guard and drag him down off his horse. But, reminded of the wolves’ unswerving patience, he merely glared at the man, slapped the sides of his boots loudly, turned, and rode off.

Dusk was setting in, and the students, who had grown accustomed to meat and tea in the morning and a full meal in the evening, were half starved and shivering in the cold. The leaders of the headquarters inspection team and most of the militiamen and students had fallen in behind the cart with the dead wolves to head back to camp. Chen Zhen, Batu, and Laasurung went searching for Batu’s treasured lasso pole, at the same time looking for more wolves that had been killed or wounded by flying horse hooves.

7

Most wolf hunts on the Mongolian grassland take place in early winter. By then, the marmots have begun their hibernation. Fatter and more nutritious than rabbits, marmots are among the wolves’ favorite foods. But once the marmots go down their holes, the wolves turn their attention to domestic livestock, forcing the pasture residents to launch counterattacks. At this time of year the wolves have new winter coats, supple, unmarked, bright, and thick. Pelts from this season command the highest prices. Early-winter wolf hunts were the primary source of income, outside of work points, for livestock herders, and an excellent opportunity for young hunters to display military skills and courage; they honed their scouting abilities, choosing the right place and time to fight. In the past, early-winter wolf hunts were used by tribal heads, barbarian leaders, khans, and Great Khans to train and drill their people. This tradition, passed down over the millennia, has been followed in modern times. Preparations for the hunt were completed after the first big snow of the year, when the tracks of wolves in the snow were the clearest. Even with their long legs, wolves cannot run particularly fast in fresh, wet snow, which gives the advantage to horses, whose legs are so much longer. Early winter, with its new snow, is the season of death for wolves, and the herders use it to repay the wolves for their arrogance and allow the people to take revenge for a year of hardships.

The customs of the grassland are understood by people, and by wolves. As this hunt would make clear, the wolves had gotten smarter in recent years, for as soon as the first snow settled on the ground, and the grassland turned from yellow to white, the wolves either crossed the northern border, went deep into the mountains to hunt gazelles and wild rabbits, or remained in the wild country once the snows had sealed up the mountains. They endured despite their hunger, getting through the days by gnawing on animal bones or the dried, rotting skins of earlier kills. Then, once the ground hardened, they became fast runners again and, sensing that the people had lost their fighting spirit, returned to plunder and loot.

At the headquarters meeting Uljii said, “In early-winter hunts over the past few years, we’ve brought back mainly half-grown and small animals, few big ones. So from now on, we need to be more like the wolves and abandon conventional tactics. We hunt when and where we feel like it and take them by surprise, stopping for a while, then hunting some more, winning the fight by being random and unpredictable. That way the wolves won’t be able to spot patterns and cannot guard against us. We don’t normally hunt in the spring, so I suggest we break with tradition and have a spring hunt, mounting a surprise attack. The pelts might not be as fine as those in early winter, but it’ll be a month before they begin to molt, and even if we don’t get the highest prices, we’ll be rewarded with an additional supply of ammunition.”

It was decided at the meeting that, in order to lessen the terrible impression left by the wholesale slaughter of horses, and to carry out orders from above to eradicate the evil Olonbulag wolves, all able-bodied headquarters personnel would be mobilized for a major antiwolf campaign. “Since it’s springtime, I understand that you’re all busy with the birthing of livestock, and that it won’t be easy to take you away from your work,” Bao Shungui said, “but if we do not take the offensive against the wolves, we’ll have failed to carry out our responsibilities.”

“It’s been our experience,” Uljii said, “that after a major battle, the main body of the pack leaves the area, since they know we’ll retaliate. I’m guessing they’re in the border region somewhere, and as soon as they think something’s up here, they’ll rush across the border. We need to wait awhile, at least until the horseflesh they gorged themselves on is only a memory, and they start thinking about all the frozen meat they left behind. The marmots and field mice haven’t come out of their holes yet, so there’s nothing else for the wolves to eat. They’ll risk a confrontation to return for more horsemeat, I’m sure of it.”

Bilgee nodded his agreement. “I’ll set some traps around the dead horses as a decoy,” he said. “The alpha male will spot the traps and assume we don’t plan to attack. When headquarters organized hunts in the past, they always took a pack of dogs along when they set the traps. This time we’ll set the traps before the attack, which will confuse even the smartest alpha male. If we catch a few of the wolves in the traps, the rest of the pack won’t know what to do. They’ll stare at the horsemeat from a distance, not daring to approach but unwilling to leave. That’s when we surround them. We’ll have them right where we want them, most of them anyway, and this time we’ll bag several alpha males.”

Bao Shungui turned to Bilgee. “I hear the wolves out here avoid places where there are traps or poison, and that older animals or pack leaders will leave tooth marks on poisoned meat to ensure that the females and the young eat only around the poisoned area. I’ve even heard there are alpha males that can drive a hunter crazy by removing his traps as if they were land mines. Is that true?”

“Not quite,” Bilgee replied. “The poison sold at the co-op has a strong odor, and if dogs can smell it, you know the wolves can. I don’t use poison, since there’s always the chance I’d kill the dogs. I prefer traps. I’ve got a special way of laying them so that hardly any wolf can sniff them out.”

Bao sensed that assigning Uljii, the commander of a cavalry company, to the grassland had been the right decision. Sending Bao as military representative had also been the right thing to do. He tapped his mug with his pen and announced, “Then that’s how we’ll do it!”

The order was given that no one was to hunt wolves north of the grazing land without headquarters permission, especially with rifles, which would frighten them off. Everyone was told to be ready to set out on a wolf extermination campaign at a moment’s notice.

People began choosing their horses, feeding their dogs, repairing lasso poles, sharpening knives, cleaning rifles, and readying ammunition. Everything progressed with a quiet rhythm, as if they were preparing to tend to birthing stock around the Qingming Festival, or to shear sheep in midsummer, or to bale straw at midautumn, or to slaughter animals in early winter.

Early morning. Clouds darkened the sky and pressed down on the distant mountains, shaving off the peaks. The Olonbulag seemed flatter than ever, and gloomier. Snow swirled lightly; the wind barely blew. Metal chimneys poking through the tops of yurts were like asthma victims struggling to breathe, releasing an occasional cough and sending puffs of smoke to settle on the ground around the snow-covered barracks that was dotted by animal droppings, patches of hair, and tufts of dying grass. The late-spring cold front was hanging on, giving no sign that it was ready to yield to warmth. Fortunately, the livestock still had a layer of fat sufficient to keep them warm until the snow melted and the grass sprouted with the coming of spring. New buds were close enough to the surface that sheep could get to them by kicking the snow away.

The sheep lay quietly in their pens, lazily chewing their cud, content to stay where they were. Three cold and very hungry guard dogs that had barked through the night huddled together and shivered in the doorway of the yurt. When Chen Zhen opened the door, the dog named Yellow stood up and rested his paws on Chen’s shoulders as he licked his chin and wagged his tail ferociously, begging to be fed. Chen laid down a big platter of bones. The dogs grabbed them and lay down, stood the bones on end, and began to chew and gnaw. Crunching sounds accompanied the gradual disappearance of the bones, marrow and all.

Chen also brought out some lamb from inside the yurt for the bitch Yir, a dog with a shiny black coat. Like Yellow, she was a hunting dog from the Great Xing’an Mountains, with a large head, a long body, long legs, a narrow waist, and short fur. Both were born hunters, fast, agile animals that could do considerable damage with their teeth. They were excellent foxhunters, especially Yellow, a well-bred, quick-learning dog with unique skills. He was never fooled by how a fox swished its bushy tail, but caught it in his mouth, then put on the brakes and let the fox strain to keep moving. By abruptly opening his mouth, he sent the fox tumbling in a somersault, its neck and abdomen facing up. Yellow had only to trot up and sink his teeth in the fox’s neck, and the hunter was presented with a flawless fox pelt. If they encountered a wolf, Yellow and Yir alertly, nimbly, and fearlessly engaged it, snapping and grappling, but always managing to avoid being bitten, buying time for the hunter and other dogs to catch up.

Yellow had been given to Chen by Bilgee and Gasmai. Yir had been brought over by Yang Ke from his landlord’s place. The Olonbulag residents always gave the students the best things they owned, and when these two dogs grew to adulthood, they outstripped their canine brothers and sisters in every respect. Batu often invited Chen and Yang to go hunting, mainly because of the two dogs. Just since the previous winter, Yellow and Yir had caught five large foxes. The fur caps Chen and Yang wore in the winter were gifts from their two favorite dogs.

Yir had a litter of six pups soon after the Spring Festival. Three were immediately spirited away by Bilgee, Lamjav, and one of the students. That left one female and two male pups, a black and two yellows. They were roly-poly animals, like little piglets but more appealing.

Yang Ke, cautious by nature, fawned over his dog and her pups. He prepared a meaty broth of millet and shredded lamb for Yir nearly every day, using up half the yurt’s monthly ration of grain, which was based on a Beijing standard—thirty
jin
a month per person: three of “fried rice” (cooked corn millet), ten of flour, and the remaining seventeen in millet. Most of the millet went to feed Yir, so the students had to model themselves after the Mongols by making meat the foundation of each meal. The herdsmen were given only nineteen
jin
of grain a month, all of it millet. Gasmai had taught Yang and Chen how to prepare food for a bitch with new pups. As a result, Yir had an abundance of milk, which made her pups hardier than those raised by the Mongol herdsmen.

The third guard dog was a husky black five- or six-year-old Mongol breed with a broad snout and wide mouth, a burly chest, and a long body, a male who roared like a tiger and was absolutely ferocious. He was covered with battle scars: black, hairless gouges on his head, chest, and back, all of which made him both ugly and fearsome. At one time there’d been a pair of yellow eyebrows above his eyes, but one of them was missing, lost perhaps to a wolf. Now it almost looked as if the dog had three eyes, and Chen called him Demon Erlang, after a fictional character in classical literature.

On his way back from a neighboring co-op one day, Chen had felt a chill on his back, something that made the ox up front jittery. He turned to look, and nearly fell off the wagon when he found himself face-to-face with an ugly, fiendish-looking dog the size of a wolf, his tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth. He tried to scare him off with his cow-herding pole, but that didn’t work, and the dog followed him all the way home. Several of the horse herders recognized the dog. They said he was a mean animal with a bad habit of attacking sheep. He’d been driven out by his owner. The herdsmen advised him to drive the dog away, but Chen felt sorry for him, and the fact that he could live with wolves and survive the brutal winters piqued his curiosity. There had to be something special about the animal. Then too, since moving out of Bilgee’s yurt and losing contact with the impressive Bar, Chen felt as if he were missing his right arm. “The dogs belonging to the students,” he said to the herdsmen, “are hunters, fast but young, and they lack the ferocity of a big dog like this, with experience guarding a livestock pen. I think I’ll keep him around and see how he does. If he kills another sheep, he’ll pay with his life.”

Two months passed, and Demon Erlang still hadn’t gone after another sheep. Chen could tell that the dog was fighting the urge by staying clear of the pens. “In recent years,” Bilgee said to Chen one day, “there’s been an influx of short-term laborers, and they’ve just about killed off the grassland population of wild dogs, which wasn’t all that big to begin with. They lure them into adobe houses, where they hang them up and drown them by pouring water down their throats. Then they skin and eat them. This dog looks like it barely escaped the same fate; it stopped its roaming and kept its wildness in check. Wild dogs aren’t afraid of wolves that eat sheep, but they are afraid of men who eat dogs.”

Demon Erlang guarded the sheep and drove off would-be attackers with his vicious barking, and he never shied away from a good fight; there were often traces of wolf blood on his snout when morning came. Winter passed, and few of Chen’s or Yang’s sheep had been taken off or killed by wolves.