11
The three students mounted up and followed Dorji as he headed west through the reedy land, then turned south, skirting alkali dunes, intentionally choosing land too hard to leave hoofprints as they sped home. They were unavoidably nervous, feeling not in the least victorious, and overcome by guilt and trepidation.
Chen felt better when he thought about the wolf running off with one of his lambs. As a shepherd, he’d avenged a slaughtered member of his flock. Removing a litter of cubs, difficult as it might be, was easier than killing the same number of adult wolves. But the question remained: Why, if the Mongols had stumbled on this lethal means of keeping down the wolf population, did the wolf scourge persist? Chen decided to ask Dorji.
“The wolves are too clever,” Dorji replied. “They choose the perfect time to bear their litters. Everyone says that dogs and wolves were the same family back in antiquity, while in fact wolves have always been stealthier than dogs. Dogs have their litters about half a month after Lunar New Year’s. Wolves, on the other hand, have theirs at the very beginning of spring, when the snow has melted and sheep are having their young. That’s the busiest time of the year for us, the most exhausting and the most urgent. Once the lambs have been born and the people can relax a bit, the cubs have grown out of their dens. The only time wolves live in dens is when the females bear their litters. The cubs open their eyes at about a month, and a month or so after that, they’re out romping with their mother. There’s another advantage to having their cubs in early spring. The mothers can hunt newborn lambs to feed their offspring and teach them how to hunt. Tender lamb is a wonderful diet for the cubs.”
As Yang yawned over and over, Chen suddenly felt so tired he could barely stay on his mount. The prospect of sleep sounded good. But he couldn’t get the wolves out of his mind. He asked Dorji, “How come the herdsmen out here aren’t enthusiastic about looking for wolf cubs?”
“The local herdsmen are Lamaists,” Dorji replied. “In the past, nearly every family had to send one member out to become a lama. Lamaists believe in doing good deeds, so they forbid random killing. Killing lots of wolf cubs, they believe, will shorten their own lives. Since I’m not a Lamaist, I’m not afraid of shortening my life. Manchurian Mongols don’t feed their dead to the wolves, and I wouldn’t shed a tear if every last wolf was killed. Once we learned how to plant crops, we began following the Han custom of burying our dead in the ground.”
Chen felt as if an ill wind were following him, stirring up a deep-seated fear in his soul. After having had no contact with wolves in the city, he now was the master of seven cubs whose mother was unimaginably fierce and cunning. Who could say that the litter in his bag had not been sired by the leader of the pack? Or the finest of the breed? If not for his obsession, the tiny creatures would surely not have fallen into human hands; they would have grown to adulthood and become intrepid fighters. But his arrival changed their fate, and he would forever be linked to all the wolves on the grassland, their eternal enemy. Wolf families on the Olonbulag, led by the implacable mother wolf, would come to him in the dark of night to demand retribution, forever nipping at the edges of his soul. He suddenly sensed that he may have committed a terrible sin.
By afternoon they were back in the yurt; Chen hung his bag on the wall, and the four men sat around the stove drinking hot tea, eating roasted meat, and discussing what to do with the seven cubs.
“What’s there to talk about?” Dorji said. “After we’re finished here, watch me. It won’t take two minutes.”
Chen was now facing the dilemma he had anticipated-the raising of a wolf cub. From the moment the thought had first occurred to him, he knew there would be resistance from the herdsmen, party officials, and fellow students. Raising a wolf cub was something only someone with an ulterior motive would consider. It not only flew in the face of politics, faith, religion, and ethnic relations but also adversely affected production, safety, and their state of mind. During the early years of the Cultural Revolution, the Beijing Zoo attendants had kept an orphaned tiger cub and a canine surrogate mother in the same cage, and that had turned into a serious political incident, viewed as extolling the virtues of the reactionary theory of class harmony, for which the attendants were subjected to strident criticism. Wouldn’t raising a wolf around flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and packs of dogs be a public disavowal of separating friend and foe? Would he be seen as advocating the idea of considering one’s enemy a friend? Since wolves were the enemies of herdsmen, as well as their revered divinities, their totem (especially in the minds of the elders), their bridge to heaven, and as such, creatures to whom homage was paid, how could they be raised as pets, like domestic dogs? From the perspectives of religion, production, and safety, one need only consider the saying “Raising a tiger invites peril; raising a wolf brings disaster.” For Chen, the greatest concern was whether Bilgee would still consider him as a second son if he decided to raise the wolf cub.
Chen was not motivated by a desire to blaspheme the Mongols’ divinity, nor did he wish to defile their religious beliefs. Quite the opposite: He felt an increasing sense of urgency to raise a cub owing to his deep-seated respect for the Mongol people’s totem and his obsessive interest in the profound mysteries surrounding wolves, the way they came and went like shadows. But to avoid creating enmity with the herdsmen, especially with the old man, it was important to come up with reasons they could accept, however reluctantly.
Even before finding the litter, after racking his brain for days, Chen had finally found an argument he thought they might find reasonable: raising a wolf would be a scientific experiment to create a new breed of wolf hound. Wolfhounds enjoyed an excellent reputation on the grassland. Guards at the frontier station had five or six of the large, ferocious, and speedy animals. When they hunted wolves or foxes, they were fast, ruthless, and successful nine times out of ten. Commander Zhao of the frontier station had once gone out with two soldiers and a pair of wolfhounds to inspect the work of the militias in livestock regions. Along the way, his dogs had caught four large foxes. The commander had moved from place to place on his inspection tour, skinning foxes along the way, to the amazement of all the hunters who saw him. Not surprisingly, the herdsmen all wanted one of those wolfhounds; unfortunately, they were a rare breed at the time, and were considered army materiel. The herdsmen had no chance of ever getting a wolfhound cub, even if they were on good terms with the military. What were wolfhounds but the spawn of a male wolf and a female dog? Chen reasoned. So all he had to do was raise a male wolf to maturity and mate it with a bitch to produce a wolfhound, which he would donate to the herdsmen. Since Mongolian wolves were considered the finest in the world, if his experiment was a success, he might well produce a breed superior to German and Soviet army dogs, and might even be responsible for developing a new form of livestock farming.
Chen set down his tea and said to Dorji, “You can dispose of six of the cubs, but leave the most robust male for me. I want to raise it.”
Speechless at first, Dorji stared at Chen for a good ten seconds. “You want to raise a wolf?” he said finally.
“That’s right. When it reaches maturity, I’ll breed it with dogs, and we’ll wind up with cubs like the wolfhounds at the frontier station. When they start coming, every Mongol family will want one.”
Dorji’s eyes lit up, like a hunting dog spotting its prey. He nearly gasped. “What a great idea! It might just work. If we all had wolfhounds, catching foxes and wolves would be like child’s play. Selling wolfhound pups might even make us rich someday.”