Wolf Totem: A Novel (30 page)

Erlang and Yellow sat on their haunches beside their masters looking on; Erlang licked the blood from his injured chest and front legs the whole time. He appeared to be enjoying it. Yellow, who was uninjured, licked the injuries on the top of Erlang’s head, like a pampered pet. Still, many of the hunters were praising him, telling how he had wrestled several wolves to the ground and taken bites out of their rear legs. If not for Yellow, Lamjav would have been unable to get his noose on the wolves.

That made Yang happy. “Lamjav is like me, after all,” he said, to even a score, “standing brave behind his dog.”

Chen took some hard candies out of his pocket and gave them to the canine generals, three for Erlang, two for Yellow. He’d had a premonition that Erlang and Yellow would make him proud that day. The dogs laid the candy on the ground and peeled the paper away with their teeth, then picked each piece up with their tongues and, heads held high, crunched them loudly. All the other dogs could only look on and slobber, or lick the paper on the ground. The students’ arrival had taught the dogs that there were more good things to eat in the world than they were used to, and eating candy in front of all those dogs brought Erlang and Yellow canine glory.

Grinning, Gasmai walked over and said to Chen, “I guess you’ve forgotten your old dog since moving out of our place.” She reached into his pocket, retrieved some candy, and gave it to Bar. Chen hurriedly took out all the remaining candy and handed it to Gasmai. She smiled, peeled the paper from one piece, and popped it into her mouth.

A layer of heat had settled over the hunting ground; steam rose from the wolf carcasses, the horses’ bodies, the dogs’ mouths, and the people’s foreheads as they separated into family units and skinned the dead animals. Tradition was followed in dividing up the spoils of battle. There were no arguments. The herdsmen always knew which dog or hunter had killed which wolf. A few words might pass between two men who had both gotten their nooses around a single animal, but Bilgee settled the matter with a single comment: Sell the pelt, buy a crock of liquor, and split it. Hunters and herdsmen who had killed no wolves watched enthusiastically as the others skinned their kills, even offering positive comments on the pelts and the people’s dogs. With good dogs, the pelts were flawless; with bad dogs, the pelts were chewed up. Those who wound up with the most pelts loudly invited everyone to their yurt for a drinking celebration. On the grassland, everyone benefited from an encirclement hunt.

People rested on the now quiet site of the hunt.

Women had the most unpleasant work—patching up the injured dogs. Men used dogs during a hunt, but women relied on them for watching the livestock at night. And it was they who raised them, almost as if they were their children. When dogs were hurt, or when they died, it was the women who grieved. A few of the dogs lay dead on the ground. Where they lay was where their souls had flown up to Tengger; what had sent them on their way was their mortal enemy— the wolf. “The dogs should thank the wolves,” Bilgee said, “for without them, the herdsmen would have no need to keep so much meat on hand, and their pups would be off to Tengger soon after they came into the world.”

The dead dogs lay undisturbed, for no grassland Mongol would give a second thought to the lush, beautiful coats. Dogs were their comrades-in-arms, their best friends, their brothers. Grasslanders survived in two enterprises: hunting and tending livestock. For both, dogs were indispensable. As production instruments and livestock guards, they were more important to them than oxen were to farmers on the Central Plains. And their relationship to the humans was closer; they helped to dispel the loneliness of the wildwood.

The Mongolian grassland—vast, underpopulated, and dangerous— was a place where dogs kept people safe. Gasmai told Chen and Yang that she could not forget how Bar had saved her one autumn when she was out dumping stove ashes and hadn’t noticed a still-smoldering piece of dried sheep dung. A strong wind ignited a fire that quickly spread to the dry grass in front of her yurt. She was alone that day with old Eeji and her child, doing needlework, unaware of what was happening outside. Suddenly she heard Bar barking violently and ramming the door. She ran outside, where a fire was threatening haystacks belonging to other production brigades; they were tall, densely packed, and oily, and if they caught fire, there would be no saving them. Animals that were not killed or injured in the fire would starve without that year’s hay, and she would be punished. Bar’s warning had given her time that was more valuable than life itself. She ran out with a large piece of wet felt straight into the flames, wrapped herself in it, and rolled on the ground, managing to crush the fire before it reached the hay. She often said that without Bar she’d have been lost.

“Our men are such big drinkers,” she said to Chen and Yang, “that sometimes they fall off their horses and freeze to death. Those who don’t die can thank their dogs, who run home, grab their mistresses’ clothing with their teeth, and lead the women to their husbands, where they dig them out of the snow and bring them home. Every yurt has someone whose life has been saved by the family dog.”

And so eating dog meat, skinning a dog, or sleeping under a dog skin were considered acts of unforgivable betrayal. This was one of the reasons why herdsmen had come to hate inhabitants of farming regions and Han Chinese.

Bilgee said that in olden days, Han armies would come to the grassland and start killing and eating dogs, infuriating the herdsmen and inciting armed resistance. Even now, shepherds’ dogs were often stolen by outsiders, who killed and ate them. Their coats were secretly sent to the Northeast and to China proper. The pelts of Mongolian dogs—large, with lush fur—were favorites for making hats and bedcovers. The old man commented angrily, “But you’ll never find that mentioned in books written by Chinese!”

Bilgee and his family often asked Chen: “If you Chinese hate dogs, curse them, even kill them, why do you eat them?”

Embarrassed by the question, Chen had to think long and hard to give them a satisfactory explanation.

One evening he said to the family as they sat around the fire, “There are no nomads among the Han, and few hunters. Just about every wild animal that can be killed and eaten has been. So we Han don’t know the value of dogs. With our dense population, it’s hard for Chinese to be lonely, so we don’t need dogs to keep us company. We have dozens of curses based on dogs: ‘rapacious as a wolf and savage as a dog’; ‘A dog in a sedan chair does not appreciate kindness’; ‘You can’t get ivory from a dog’s mouth’; ‘Only busybody dogs catch rats’; ‘Throw a meaty bun at a dog, and it won’t come back’ . . . And some have entered politics.

Everyone in the country is shouting slogans like ‘Smash in Liu Shaoqi’s dog head’ and ‘Down with Liu the dog.’

“Why do we hate and curse dogs? Mainly because dogs don’t follow Chinese rules. You know all about our ancient sage Confucius, right? Well, even emperors throughout our dynastic history have bowed down before him. He established a series of rules to live by, and over the centuries we’ve followed those rules. Every literate person had his own ‘quotations,’ like today’s little red book of quotations by Chairman Mao, and anyone who didn’t follow the rules was considered a barbarian; death awaited the worst cases. The biggest problem with dogs is that they don’t follow the Confucian rules of behavior. They bark at strangers, violating our rules of hospitality; they are incestuous; and they eat human feces. But the main reason we hate dogs, why we kill and eat them, is that we’re a farming people, not nomads, and we seek to impose our habits and customs on other people.”

Bilgee and Batu heard Chen out in silence, and did not appear to be offended. “Young man,” Bilgee said after a while, “it would be a good thing if more people, Han and Mongol, were as reasonable about such things as you.”

Gasmai sighed and remarked indignantly, “The worst thing that ever happened to dogs was being introduced into Chinese society. What they do best they can’t do there, and their shortcomings are all you see. If I were a dog, I’d stay as far away from there as possible. I’d much prefer to stay here, even if a wolf got to me.”

“Not until I came here,” Chen said, “did I realize that dogs and humans are so much alike, that dogs are truly man’s best friend. It’s only the impoverished, backward farming peoples who will eat anything, including dogs. One day, maybe, when all Chinese are well off, when there’s enough food for everyone, they’ll make friends with their dogs and stop hating and eating them. I’ve grown to love dogs. A day without dogs is a wasted day for me. If someone were to kill the dogs at our yurt, Yang Ke and I would beat the hell out of him.” Chen’s emotions got the better of him, to his own amazement. Having grown up with the concept that a gentleman argues but does not fight, he now found himself articulating feelings more wolfish than human.

“When you return to Beijing one day,” Gasmai said, “will you raise dogs?”

“I’ll love dogs for the rest of my life,” Chen replied with a smile. “Love them as much as you do. Just so you’ll know, I haven’t eaten all the fine hard candies my family sent me from Beijing. I haven’t even given many to you or Bayar. I’ve saved them for my dogs.”

Batu slapped Chen on the back. “You’re at least half Mongol now.”

More than six months had passed since that conversation about dogs, but Chen would never forget the promises he’d made that day.

Quiet had settled over the site of the hunt. The exhausted and injured dogs were grieving over the loss of their comrades, sniffing their bodies nervously, fearfully, and circling them over and over, a rite of farewell perhaps. A young boy lay prone on the ground, his arms wrapped tightly around the body of his dog. Adults tried to get him to leave, but he wailed mournfully, his tears falling on the lifeless body of his beloved dog. His wails hung in the air for a very long time, and all Chen Zhen could see was a blur.

13

After Bao Shungui and Uljii led a party of pasture officials to view the spoils at the site of the hunt, they rode up to Bilgee. Bao dismounted and said excitedly to the old man, "A marvelous victory! Truly wonderful! And we have you to thank for that. A signal accomplishment, as my report to my superiors will state.”

He reached out to shake hands with Bilgee, who responded by spreading out his bloody fingers. “Too dirty,” he said.

But Bao grabbed the old man’s hands. “Some of your good luck might rub off on me with a little of that wolf blood, and some of your glory.”

The old man’s face darkened. “Please don’t talk about such things as glory. The greater the glory, the deeper my sins. This cannot happen again. If there are any more hunts like this, the wolves will disappear, and the gazelles, the ground squirrels, the rabbits, and the marmots will rise up. That will be the end of the grassland, and will infuriate Tengger. We and our livestock will pay dearly.” He raised his bloody hands to Tengger in fear and trepidation.

With an embarrassed laugh, Bao turned to look at Erlang, covered with blood. “Is that the wild dog I’ve heard about?” he asked emotionally. “He’s so big it’s scary. I watched him fight from up on the slope. A real tiger. He was first to charge the wolf pack. He killed one of its leaders and scared off most of the others. How many wolves did he kill altogether?”

“Four,” Chen replied.

“A hell of a dog!” Bao remarked. “I’d heard you had a big, wild, sheep-killer of a dog. People complained that you were making a mockery of grassland rules and wanted me to have the dog killed. Well, I’m in charge here, and I say keep that dog and make sure it’s well fed and well taken care of. If he kills any more sheep in the future, I’ll spare him. But the skins of sheep he kills will belong to the commune and you’ll have to pay for the meat.”

Chen and Yang happily agreed to the conditions. “We students didn’t kill a single wolf, which means we’re not the equal of dogs, and certainly not this one.” Everyone laughed, even the other students.

“That doesn’t sound like something a Chinese would say,” Uljii said with a laugh.

Bilgee was visibly pleased. “This youngster respects the grassland; he’ll be one of us someday.”

The battlefield was strewn with pale wolf carcasses and stained with their blood. Patches of fur above their paws were all that remained of their coats. Bao had the hunters gather them up and stack them to form the character
jing,
, for a well. When they were finished, the three dozen or so dead wolves were stacked nearly head high. Bao brought out his camera and took pictures from four or five angles. Then he had the successful hunters raise their trophies and stand on both sides of the stacked carcasses. More than thirty hunters held their pelts high, tails hanging to the ground, with the badly injured, blood-covered assassin dogs crouching in front of their masters, steam rising from their bodies. Bao asked Chen to take a picture with him in the center, holding up the biggest pelt of all. Bilgee stood there, a pelt draped over his right arm, his head lowered, and a sad smile on his face. Chen snapped two pictures.