Chen sensed that the pack was withdrawing.
The dark, gloomy slope was deadly quiet, like the sky-burial ground on Chaganuul Mountain.
Feeling no desire to sleep, Chen and Yang engaged in a whispered discussion; neither could explain to the other why things had turned out as they had.
At dawn the cub finally stopped howling; sad and despairing, he slumped to the ground and stared wide-eyed at the misty slope in an attempt to see the dark shadows. The morning mist slowly dissipated, revealing a familiar grassy slope devoid of shadows. The cub closed his eyes as if falling into a deathlike despair. Chen rubbed him gently, his guilt mounting as he thought of the cub’s missed opportunity to rejoin his family.
The production teams and the rest of the brigade had made it through another scary night; no camp was attacked and the livestock had gone unharmed. The surprised herders were talking about it, unable to understand why the mother wolves, who would protect their cubs with their own lives, had retreated without a fight. Even the old men shook their heads. It would be the most mystifying incident Chen witnessed in his years on the grassland.
Bao Shungui and some of the herders who had expected to lure and kill the wolves were disappointed. But Bao came to Chen and Yang’s yurt at dawn to praise them for their innovation and courage, helping to pull off an unprecedented victory of defeating the enemy without a fight. He said that they could keep the flashlight as a reward and that he’d publicize their experience. Chen and Yang breathed a sigh of relief, knowing they at least could continue to raise the cub.
Around the time for morning tea, Uljii and Bilgee came over for some tea and horsemeat buns.
Uljii seemed to be in good spirits for someone who hadn’t slept well the night before. “That was a scary night,” he said. “I really worried when the pack began to howl, since dozens of them had surrounded you on three sides and at times were only a hundred yards or so away. We were afraid they’d tear down your yurt. That was close.”
“If I hadn’t known you had all those ‘crackling cannons,’ I’d have ordered everyone and all the dogs to come to your rescue,” Bilgee said.
“Why didn’t they attack the sheep or try to snatch the cub away?” Chen asked.
The old man took a drink of tea and puffed on his pipe. “I think it could be that your little cub wasn’t speaking real wolf language, and the dogs were barking, which confused the wolves.”
“You’re always telling me that wolves have a spiritual connection. So why didn’t Tengger tell them the truth?”
“Of course the three of you and a few dogs would have been no match for them,” the old man said. “But all the people and dogs here were geared up for a real battle, and if the wolves had decided to mount a frontal attack, they’d have been in serious trouble. Director Bao may be able to trick others, but not Tengger. Tengger didn’t want the wolves to be trapped, so he ordered them to withdraw.”
Chen and Yang laughed. Yang said, “Tengger is very wise.”
“Scientifically speaking,” Chen said to Uljii, “why didn’t the wolves attack?”
Uljii thought for a moment. “I haven’t seen or heard anything like what happened last night before. I think the pack might have considered the cub to be an outsider. The grassland wolves have their own territory, and those without territory leave sooner or later. Territory is more important than their lives. The local wolves often engage in mortal combat with wolves from other areas. Maybe your cub speaks a language unintelligible to the pack, and they didn’t think it was worth their while to fight over an alien cub. The alpha male was here last night, and he’s not easy to trick. He must have seen through the trap, since he understands that deception is the battlefield norm. He grew suspicious when he saw how close the cub was to humans and dogs. He won’t take a risk unless there’s a seventy percent chance of success, and he never touches anything he doesn’t understand. He treats the females well and doesn’t want them to be tricked either, which is why he came to check things out for them. He led them away when something didn’t look right to him.”
Chen and Yang nodded in agreement.
They saw their guests out. Still despondent and visibly thinner, the cub was sprawled on the ground, resting his chin on the back of his paws, staring straight ahead. He looked as if he’d had both good and bad dreams the night before and was still unable to return to reality.
The old man stopped when he saw the cub. “Poor little wolf. The pack didn’t want him and his parents couldn’t recognize him. Will he live the rest of his life attached to a chain? When you Chinese came to the grassland, you broke down our established rules. My heart aches when I see you shackle a clever little wolf like a slave. Wolves are very patient. Just you wait and see. He’ll escape one of these days; you’ll never win him over, not even if you feed him a fat little lamb every day.”
No wolf howls sounded around the camp on the third night, or on the fourth, except for the lonely and forlorn howls of the cub rising above the quiet grassland and echoing in the valley. There was no response. After a week, he all but stopped.
For some time after that, no wolves came to attack the sheep or cattle in Yang and Chen’s care, or any livestock belonging to the two nearby production teams. The women on night shift all smiled and said to them, “Now we can get a good night’s sleep, all the way through to milking time.”
During those days, when they talked about raising wolves, the herdsmen went easier on Chen. But none of them expressed any interest in raising a cub themselves, not even to scare away a wolf pack. Some old herdsmen in Section Four said, “Why not let them do it? We’ll see what happens when the cub grows bigger and turns wild.”
27
During this period, the cub had plenty to eat, thanks to Zhang Jiyuan’s supply of horsemeat. Whenever he was reminded of how the mother wolves took care of their young in the pack, Chen felt he should give the cub better and even more food, and walk him more often. But even though he reserved all the meat for the cub, the supply eventually ran out and the entrails were barely enough for one more meal. Chen was concerned.
One evening Gao Jianzhong told him that an ox grazing on a slope had been struck by lightning, so early the next morning Chen went up the hill with his knife and a gunnysack, but he was too late. Nothing but the skull and some of the hardest bones remained; the wolves hadn’t left a shred of meat behind. He sat down to check out the bones and saw tiny tooth marks left by cubs in the cracks. Working together, the adults had gobbled up great chunks of meat while the cubs had eaten the shreds, finishing off the ox completely. Even the flies buzzed in anger and flew away after a nibble or two. An old cow herder in Section Three came up while Chen sat there; the pile of bones appeared to have belonged to an animal in his herd. He said to Chen, “The wolf pack didn’t dare come for the sheep, so Tengger killed an ox for them. See, Tengger even picked the right moment, at night, when the workers couldn’t be here to haul it back for its meat. Young man, Tengger sets the grassland rules and punishes people who break them.” With a dark face, he closed his knees around his horse’s sides and rode slowly down the hill toward his herd.
The rules the old herdsmen talk about are the natural laws of the grassland, Chen was thinking, set by heaven, that is, the universe. Raising a wolf under nomadic, pastoral conditions clearly disrupts the mode of production. The cub has already caused the grassland trouble, and who knows what new troubles it might cause in the days to come. He returned empty-handed, his head a jumble of thoughts. Gazing up at Tengger, he thought of lines of poetry: “The sky covers the earth like a terrestrial roof,” and “The sky is dark, the wilderness vast / The grass bends when the wind blows / No wolf can be seen.” Out there, a wolf pack is like a will-o’-the-wisp, coming and going in a flash; people often hear the wolves and are witness to the damage they do, but they seldom see them in the flesh, which is why, in the minds of the people, they are so mysterious, so cunning, so magical. That was also why Chen could not control his own curiosity, his desi
re to learn and to study. With the cub, he knew he had a living wolf that was surrounded by a belief in a wolf totem. He’d gone through so much trouble, had endured so much pressure, and had risked so much that he felt he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.
He went over to the laborers’ camp, where he paid a steep price for some millet. Without meat, all he could do was add more grain to the cub’s food, hoping the diet would sustain it until the next time a sheep was slaughtered. Then he’d be able to give the dogs some meat too. Back in the yurt he was about to take a nap when the three puppies yelped happily and ran off. Chen went out and looked to the west; it was Erlang, Yellow, and Yir returning from the mountains. Both Erlang and Yellow held their heads high, holding large prey in their mouths. Constant gnawing hunger had driven Yir and Yellow to follow Erlang up into the mountains to hunt. Obviously, they’d had a pretty good day; not only had they taken care of their own bellies, but they were able to bring some home for the puppies.
Chen rushed up to greet the dogs, as the puppies fought for the food in their mouths. Erlang laid down his catch to chase the puppies away, then picked it up again and ran toward home. Chen’s eyes lit up, for Erlang and Yellow each carried a marmot and Yir had a foot-long prairie dog, its head the size of a turnip. It was the first time Chen had seen his dogs bring prey back, and he happily ran up to take it.
Eager for Chen’s praise, Yellow and Yir quickly laid their catch at his feet and jumped up and down, yelping and wagging their tails and running in circles around him. Yellow even did a split with his front legs, with his chest and neck nearly touching the dead marmot, something completely new to Chen. He appeared to be telling him that it was he who’d caught it. A row of pink, swollen nipples on the marmot’s belly showed that it was a nursing female. Chen patted both dogs on the head. “Good dogs,” he said. “Good dogs.”
Erlang, on the other hand, refused to lay down his catch; he walked around Chen and then ran toward the cub. Seeing it was a big, fat marmot, Chen ran up and grabbed Erlang’s bushy tail, then snatched the marmot from him. Erlang wagged his tail to show he didn’t mind. Holding one of the animal’s hind legs, Chen figured it weighed over ten pounds, a male with shiny fur that had accumulated a thick layer of meat, though it wouldn’t have any fatty flesh until the fall. Chen planned to save it for himself and his yurt mates; it was a delicacy they hadn’t enjoyed for a very long time.
Holding all three catches, Chen walked happily toward the yurt, followed by the three dogs, who were snarling playfully at each other. Chen put the big marmot inside the yurt and closed the door. The puppies sniffed at the other catches curiously; Chen decided to give the skinny female to them and the prairie dog to the cub so that he could taste wolves’ favorite food and learn to eat an animal on his own.
In the summer, marmot fur is virtually worthless; the purchasing station wouldn’t buy one, so Chen quartered the animal and gave three portions, skin and flesh, bones and entrails, to the puppies, and saved the last quarter for the cub. The puppies knew exactly what to do when they saw the bloody meat. They sprawled on the ground to eat their share, no fighting or yelping. The three big dogs were wagging their tails, showing their appreciation of how Chen divided up the food, something he’d learned from Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, a book he knew he’d never get back after lending it out, now that it was in circulation among students in two brigades.
The bellies of the big dogs bulged; they’d eaten their fill in the mountains. But their accomplishment still had to be rewarded, an established rule on the grassland. So Chen walked out of the yurt with four pieces of candy and gave two to Erlang, who held them in his mouth and looked at Chen out of the corner of his eye to see how he’d reward Yellow and Yir. When Erlang saw the other two dogs get one piece each, he happily tore open the wrappers with his paws and teeth, then made a crackling noise as he chewed the candy. Yellow and Yir did the same, not at all upset over getting less than Erlang. Chen suspected that Erlang might have caught all the prey himself, and the other two dogs had merely helped him bring it back.
The smell of blood had the cub so frenzied that he stood up on his hind legs and clawed at the air. Chen tried not to look in his direction, for that would have gotten him excited enough to pull the chain too tightly around his neck. He didn’t attend to the prairie dog until he’d finished taking care of the dogs. There is a wide range of rodents on the grassland, the most common of which are ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and field mice. Prairie dogs are everywhere, always within a fifteen- or twenty-foot radius of any given yurt, where they stand outside their holes and squeak loudly. Sometimes, when a yurt is set up right over their holes, they abandon their grass diet and switch to eating grain. They steal grain, dairy products, and meat, leave their droppings in food bags, and sometimes even gnaw on books. When people move, they often find rodents’ young in boots and shoes they haven’t worn for a while. Infant prairie dogs squirming like meaty worms is a disgusting sight. The herders and the students also hated the mice; Chen and Yang took a special dislike to them, for these rodents had destroyed two of the literary classics in their collection.
According to Bilgee, in ancient times, live prairie dogs were used as targets by Mongol children to practice archery.
Chosen for their speed and keen eyes, the prairie dogs were good targets for Mongol children, whose parents told them not to come back home until they’d shot a certain number. It was the children’s favorite game, the grassland their amusement park, and they were often so caught up in it that they forgot to go home to eat. When they grew older, they exchanged their small bows for bigger ones and practiced shooting from horseback. Jebe, Genghis Khan’s general who conquered Russia, was a famous archer who had learned to shoot like that. He could shoot a prairie dog in the head on a galloping horse from a hundred yards. Bilgee said the Mongols’ riding and shooting skills both protected the grassland and helped them conquer the world. Shooting the smallest, cleverest, and most difficult target, the prairie dog, was how they honed their archery skill.
Chen picked up the prairie dog by its tail and examined it. He’d seen large ones when he was out with the sheep, but a foot-long specimen that was thicker than a baby bottle could grow only in the fertile grassland of the mountains. He assumed that its meat would be fatty and tender, for it was a favorite food of the wolves. He imagined how the cub, once he smelled the blood, would pounce on it and nearly swallow it whole.
Chen held it upside down; blood from its wounds dripped onto the sandy ground. Standing outside the pen, he shouted, “Little Wolf, Little Wolf, time to eat.”
The cub stared until his eyes turned red; he’d never seen food like that, but the smell of blood told him it was something good. He leaped up over and over, but Chen kept raising it higher; the exasperated cub kept his eyes fixed on the fat prairie dog, not on Chen, who insisted that the cub look at him before he’d give him the food, but after seeing the dead animal, the cub had changed; he was now more like a fierce wild wolf, fangs bared, claws pawing the air. His mouth was opened wide, exposing all four canines, all the way back to the gum line. The cub’s demonic look terrified Chen. He waved the prey a few more times but was still unable to divert the cub’s gaze. Finally he gave up and tossed it over. Then he crouched by the pen, expecting the cub to tear the animal to pieces and gobble it down. So he was surprised by what the cub did after catching the prairie dog in midair; it was something he could neither explain nor forget.
As if he’d caught a piece of hot steel, the cub immediately dropped it and backed away. Then, standing a few feet back, he stretched his neck and body and stared at the dead rodent with apparent fright; that continued for three minutes, until fear no longer showed in his eyes. Then he arched his body and leaped seven or eight times before running up and pouncing on the prairie dog. He took a bite, jumped back and stared at it again for some time. Seeing that the rodent wasn’t moving, he pounced, took another bite, then stopped and glared at it. He repeated this three or four
times before finally calming down.
Reverence replaced the ferocity in the cub’s eyes. He walked up to the prairie dog and stopped beside it. He respectfully bent his right front leg, then the left; he touched the prairie dog with the right side of his back before rolling over. Then he got up, shook off the sand, straightened out the chain, and ran to the other side of the rodent, where he repeated the action, but in reverse order.
Chen watched with nervous curiosity, unsure of what the cub was doing, where he had learned those movements, or why he’d touched the rodent’s side and rolled over. The cub was like a little boy who’s been given a whole roasted chicken to himself for the first time: he’s eager to eat but cannot bring himself to begin, so he turns it over and over in his hand. The cub repeated the actions three times.
Chen could hardly believe his eyes. He’d given the cub plenty of tasty meat, sometimes fresh from a kill, but the little wolf had never done anything like that before. What was so different about this prairie dog? Was it a way for the cub to congratulate himself on getting an animal? Or was it a ritual before eating? His respectful, reverent manner resembled that of a Catholic taking communion.
After thinking until his head ached, Chen realized that what he’d given the cub this time was different. No matter how good the food, he’d always given the cub broken pieces of bone and chopped meat, food processed by humans. But this was natural, wild, intact food, a “live” animal that, like he himself, had a head and a tail, a body and paws, skin and fur, just like oxen, sheep, horses, and dogs. Maybe for wolves this “live” food, with its distinct shape, was a meal only noble wolves were entitled to enjoy.
The cub took a breath but did not start right in. He shook his body to smooth out his coat before trotting slowly around the dead animal. Then his eyes narrowed; his tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth; he picked up his feet and put them down slowly, like one of those white horses in a Russian circus, carrying out well-rehearsed movements in a clearly defined performance. After several rounds of this, the cub quickened his pace but did not change the size of the circle made by his footprints on the sandy ground.