Wolf Totem: A Novel (53 page)

The night winds grew colder, drawing the sheep closer and closer to keep warm, shrinking the space they occupied by at least a fourth. The three pups crawled under Chen’s tattered deel as they settled down in the dark, intensely cold night.

After a couple of turns around the flock with his flashlight, he had barely sat down on his felt mat when, from somewhere not far off, he heard the mournful baying of a wolf—
Ow . . . ow . . . ow . . .
—trailing off slowly, with only the briefest of pauses between each pure, resonant trill, a sound mellow yet sharp-edged, simultaneously seeping into and boring through the consciousness. Before the sound had died out, low echoes rebounded from the mountains on three sides—north, south, and east—and swirled in the valleys and in the basin, as well as along the lakeshore, where they merged with the rustling of reeds in the gentle breezes to create a chorus of wolf, reed, and wind. The melody turned cold, carrying Chen Zhen’s thoughts off to the Siberian wilderness.

It had been a long time since he’d listened to the call of a wolf late on a calm and clear night, and it made him shudder. He drew his deel even more tightly around him, but that could not keep out the fearful chill of the howls, which penetrated his deel and his skin, then moved down his spine to his tailbone. He reached out and pulled Yellow to him, wrapping his deel around the dog, and that brought him a bit of warmth.

This was just the overture, somber and drawn out. Next came the high-pitched bays of several powerful male wolves, which set all the dogs in the brigade camps barking. The dogs around Chen, big and small, ran to the northwest perimeter around the flock and raised a din of ferocious barking. Erlang rushed noisily toward the howls but stopped and headed back, fearing an attack from the rear. Taking up his place before the flock, he continued barking. Flashlights shone at all the brigade camps that snaked past the foothills on the edge of the basin; the hundred or more dogs belonging to the brigade barked for half an hour before gradually quieting down.

The night was, if anything, darker still, and colder. The wolf leader began baying again; the answering calls of more wolves, like three walls of sound bearing down on the camps, were so loud that they drowned out the dogs, whose barks had a flustered, surging quality. All the night-watch women flicked on their flashlights and frantically swept the area where the sound was coming from as they cried out:
Ah-he . . . wu-he . . . yi-he . . . ,
wave after wave of shrill cries pressing down on the wolf pack.

Taking a cue from their human masters, the dogs set up a ferocious storm of noise: a mixture of barks, howls, roars, provocations, intimidations, and jeers produced a cacophonous drumbeat. Chen added his uncontrolled shouts to the mix, but his weak shouts were immediately swallowed up by the night.

On the new grazing land, the proximity of the yurts had the effect of concentrating and invigorating the herdsmen’s vocal and light-beam counterattack, producing a warlike tension.

The wolves’ cries were quickly overwhelmed. The close concentration of yurts, devised by Uljii and Bilgee, had worked as a strategy. The unified camp would hold, making an attack from the wolves unlikely.

Suddenly, Chen heard the sound of a rattling chain and ran immediately to the young wolf, who was jumping up and down outside the hole, snarling and baring his claws, wildly excited by the sound-and-light war between humans, wolves, and dogs.

Darkness is kind to wolves: they are liveliest at night and at their most warlike. It is a time of plunder, of gorging themselves on flesh and blood, of dividing up the spoils of a kill. But a metal chain kept the young wolf imprisoned, turning him into a crazed animal. As he struggled in vain against the chain, roaring his anger over being denied the fight he sought, he curled into a ball, then burst out and raced to the path he had worn in the pen. He leaped into the air, snapping at imaginary targets as he ran, stopping abruptly before the next charge and rolling on the ground. Then he closed his mouth, ground his teeth, and shook his head, just as if he had taken down a large animal and was waiting for it to die from his death grip.

Moments later, the cub was standing on the northern edge of the pen, staring straight ahead, his ears pricked straight up, and not moving a muscle, poised to launch another charge. His fighting instincts had been stimulated by the prebattle tension and palpable sense of fear in the air, and he seemed incapable of distinguishing between friend and foe, so long as he could enter the fray on any side. It seemed as if killing a puppy or killing another cub would have made him equally happy.

The cub rushed up to Chen Zhen as soon as he saw him coming, but he then backed up so Chen would come into the pen. Chen took one step into the pen and was about to crouch down when the cub attacked like a hungry tiger, wrapping his legs around Chen’s knee and opening his mouth, ready to bite. Chen was prepared for the attack; he jammed his flashlight up against the cub’s nose and turned it on. The blinding light stopped the attack.

The cub cocked his head and listened enviously to the warlike howls of the big dogs, then lowered his head thoughtfully, as if just discovering that he could not bark like they could. He opened his mouth, determined to learn from them. Chen was surprised; he crouched down to see what the cub would do next. The young wolf opened his mouth and managed, with considerable difficulty, a strange guttural sound; but it sounded nothing like a dog’s bark, and that made him furious. So he tried again: he took a breath and held it, then constricted his belly over and over, copying the movements of the dogs; but the raspy sound that emerged belonged to neither dog nor wolf, tormenting the cub, who spun in circles of exasperation.

As he watched the cub’s bizarre movements, Chen nearly laughed out loud. The cub could not yet make wolf sounds, so he’d tried to imitate the barking of a dog, but that was simply too hard. Most dogs are able to imitate the sounds of wolves, but wolves have never tried to bark like dogs, possibly finding that demeaning. But at that moment, a young wolf maturing among dogs wanted only to sound like them. The poor thing was having an identity crisis.

Yet even as the cub fretted over his inability to bark like a dog, he refused to stop trying. Chen walked up, bent down until his mouth was next to the cub’s ear, and barked. The cub, appearing to understand that his “master” was trying to teach him something, briefly had the embarrassed look of a slow student but quickly followed that with the defiant glare of a shamed classroom bully. Erlang came running over, stood beside the cub, and began to bark, slowly, like a patient teacher. A moment later, Chen heard the cub cry out in the cadence of a dog’s bark, but without the sound a dog makes—
orf orf.
The cub was so excited he leaped into the air and began licking Erlang’s mouth. From then on, the cub made the same un-doglike sound. It made Chen laugh.

The strange sound brought the three puppies running, while the other dogs made deriding sounds as if mocking the cub. Every time he went
orf orf,
Chen answered with an
arf arf,
and before long the camp was awash in a battle of strange, unharmonious sounds:
orf orf
—
arf arf.
The cub may well have been aware that the man and the dogs were making fun of him, but that only increased the intensity of the
orf orf—arf arf.
The puppies were so happily caught up in the atmosphere that they were rolling on the ground. Before long, all the brigade dogs stopped barking, and with no models to follow, the cub turned mute.

The people’s voices had stilled when the wolf cries came from the surrounding mountains, and the flashlights had been turned off; by then even the dogs were just going through the motions. When the wolves responded by howling even louder, Chen Zhen was convinced that they were plotting something. Maybe the pack had discovered how tight the man-and-dog line of defense was, and had settled on a strategy of wearing the enemy down; once the herdsmen and their dogs were worn out from the battle of sounds, they would launch a sneak attack. The state of paralysis could last several nights. Grassland wolves had perfected tactics for wearing down an enemy.

Chen lay back on the felt mat, his head pillowed by the dog Yellow. In China the baying of wolves enjoyed a fearsome reputation. It was a sound the inhabitants of China’s Central Plain equated with “wails of the Devil.” Chen had grown accustomed to hearing wolves over the years, though he’d never understood why the baying was so sad, so desolate-sounding, like a mournful lament, a long drawn-out torment. The sound did indeed call to mind the incessant wailing of widows at a grave site, and the first time he heard it, he wondered how the hearts of the savage, arrogant wolves could be so full of anguish. Was it an expression of the difficulty of life on the grassland? Were they complaining about their wretched fate at a place where death from starvation, the freezing elements, and mortal combat was so common? Chen had long felt that the wolves, so fierce and tenacious, were burdened with weak, fragile hearts.

But in the wake of two years of contact with them, especially over the past six months or so, he’d come to disavow that view. To him, the grassland wolves, with their hard bones, hard hearts, and survival skills, were tough as steel, consumed by a bloodlust, and unflinching even in the face of death. The agony over the loss of a female wolf’s young or the grave injury to a male wolf, even the loss of a leg, was only temporary and immediately led to thoughts of vengeance that grew more intense with each passing day. The several months he’d spent with the cub had convinced him of that. He had yet to discover a single moment of weakness in the young wolf; except for those times when he was overcome with exhaustion, his eyes were always aglow, his energy never flagged, he was full of life. Even after the time his neck had nearly been broken by the herdsman, he’d sprung back to life almost immediately.

As he continued listening to the wolves, Chen began to detect an arrogant, menacing quality to their baying, but he wondered why the threat to men and their livestock had to sound like mourning. What was the reason their baying adopted the sound of wailing? His reflections went deeper into the heart of the matter. The mighty wolf may have its moments of sadness, but at no time, at no place, and under the sway of no emotion does it cry. Crying is alien to a wolf’s character.

Clarity of mind settled in after Chen had been listening for much of the night. Dogs and wolves just sounded different. Dog barks are short and rapid; the baying of a wolf is a drawn-out sound. The effect of these diverse sounds on the listener is radically different. The baying of a wolf travels greater distances than the bark of a dog. The barks of dogs from the northernmost yurts in the brigade aren’t nearly as crisp as the baying of wolves in the same vicinity. Chen was also able to make out the baying of wolves in the mountains to the east, but no dog barks could ever travel that distance.

Perhaps that was the reason the wolves chose to wail—over thousands of years of evolution, they had discovered it was the sound that hung in the air longest and was able to travel the greatest distances. The grassland wolves are known for long-range raids, for splitting up to scout a situation and then joining for an attack. As pack animals, they range far and wide while hunting, and this highly advanced system of communication is how they make contact across great distances. In the most ruthless battles, results are all that count; how they sound is immaterial.

The baying thinned out gradually; but then, quite suddenly, a juvenile howl emerged from somewhere behind the yurt and the flock of sheep, momentarily paralyzing Chen. Had the wolves managed to of sheep, momentarily paralyzing Chen. Had the wolves managed to sneak up from behind? Erlang charged, barking ferociously, the other dogs right behind him. Chen scrambled to his feet, grabbed his herding club and flashlight, and ran after the dogs. When he reached the yurt, he saw Erlang and the other dogs growling as they stood around the cub’s pen in puzzled fashion.

With the aid of his flashlight, Chen spotted the cub, crouching next to the wooden post, his snout pointing into the sky as he howled. So that’s where the sound was coming from! It was the first time Chen had heard the cub actually bay like a wolf, something he thought the cub wouldn’t do until he was fully grown. But here he was, only four months old, and already sounding and acting like a mature wild animal. Chen was as thrilled as a father hearing his son say “Daddy” for the first time. He bent down and stroked the cub’s back; the cub turned and licked the back of his hand, then went back to baying.

The dogs were so bewildered they couldn’t tell if they should kill the cub or just get him to stop howling. The arrival of a mortal enemy in their midst had thrown the sheepherding dogs into total confusion. A dog belonging to their neighbor, Gombu, stopped barking; some of the other dogs ran up to see what was happening and offer their support. Erlang happily walked into the pen and licked the top of the cub’s head, and then sprawled alongside him and listened to him howl. Yellow and Yir glared hatefully at the cub—in those few minutes, the cub had given himself away to the dogs he’d lived with for months, exposing his true identity. He was a wolf, not a dog, a wolf no different from a wild wolf in a battle of howls and barks. But when Yellow and Yir saw their master smiling and stroking the cub’s head, they could only fume silently.

Chen crouched down beside the cub to listen to him howl and watch his movements. He saw how the young wolf raised his snout into the air before making a soft, drawn-out, even sound that Chen found so pleasant; it was like the sound a dolphin makes as it gently noses out of the water, sending ripples in all directions. It occurred to Chen that pointing the snout into the air was how wolves were able to communicate with their distant kin. Their long, mournful baying and their snout-in-the-air attitude were characteristics that had helped make it possible for them to survive on the grassland. The perfection of the wolves’ evolution was nothing less than Tengger’s masterpiece.