Chen picked up the cub, but no further intimacy was advisable when the little wolf was eager to eat. Chen opened the door and stepped inside, where he set the cub down in front of the stove in the light from the opening above, which he’d gotten used to. He turned to stare at the aluminum pan on the rack. Chen tested the porridge with his finger to see if it was too hot. It had cooled to room temperature, just the way the cub liked it. Wolves cannot handle food that’s too hot. The one time he’d been given hot food, he’d reacted by curling his tail between his legs, shuddering, and running outside to lap up the snow. It was only after Chen replaced the old pan with a new aluminum one that the cub would draw near to eat again.
Chen worked on the wolf’s conditioned reflexes by calling out, “Little Wolf, Little Wolf, food, food,” before each meal. The cub immediately leaped into the air, his reaction to the word food already stronger than the dogs’ reactions to commands. Chen quickly laid the pan down on the ground, squatted a couple of paces away, and pressed down on the edge of the pan with his spatula to keep the wolf from stepping on it and turning it over as he buried his snout in the food and gobbled it up.
Humans display that kind of gusto only during famines. This cub, though every meal was guaranteed, ate like a starving animal, as if the sky would fall if he didn’t bolt down every bite. Wolves eat without a thought for anyone else, and this one, true to form, did not display a hint of gratitude toward Chen Zhen, who patiently tended to his every need. To the contrary, at that moment he saw Chen as a mortal enemy intent on taking his food from him.
In the space of a month, Chen had drawn closer to the young wolf in a number of ways: He could rub him, hold him, kiss him, pinch him, carry him, and scratch him. He could carry him on his head, lay him across his shoulders, rub noses with him, and even stick his fingers in his mouth. But when the cub was eating, Chen didn’t dare touch him and could only crouch a safe distance away and watch. If he so much as moved, the cub would snarl, his black wolf hairs would stand up, and he would tense his hind legs, ready to pounce if necessary, quite prepared to kill. In order to change this behavior, Chen once reached over with a broom to stroke the cub lightly; before he knew it, the wolf had pounced on the broom, sunk his teeth into the sorghum stalks, and yanked it out of Chen’s hands. Chen backed up, shocked and more than a little frightened, while the cub, as if attacking a lamb, shook his head violently, tearing several stalks from the handle. Refusing to be deterred by a single incident, Chen tried the same thing several times more, with no change in the result; it was as if the cub saw the broom as its enemy, now a ruined enemy. Gao Jianzhong, who had recently bought the broom, was so angry that he knocked the cub over with the handle. In the end, Chen had to abandon his desire to touch the cub while he was eating.
Chen had prepared twice the usual amount of porridge this time, hoping there’d be some left over so that he could add a bit of milk and a little more meat, and feed it to the puppies. But when he saw how the wolf attacked the food, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Chen was given an opportunity to see how hard it was for wolves to survive on the grassland. In spite of their fertility, probably only one in ten cubs lived to adulthood. Bilgee said that Tengger sometimes punished the wolves mercilessly. A sudden storm that drops several feet of snow in a short period can kill off vast numbers of wolves, from cold or from hunger. A wildfire that blots out the sky can also wipe out vast numbers, burned or suffocated. Packs of starving wolves fleeing famine or natural disasters can slaughter half the local wolves. Few can survive the spring thefts of newborn cubs from their dens, autumn trapping, early-winter encirclement hunts, and the deep-winter hunts. The old man said that the grassland wolves are the descendants of hungry wolves. The original animals, which lived lives devoid of want, were subdued by hungry wolves fleeing from famine. The grassland had always been a battlefield, and those that survived were the strongest and wisest, the ones best suited to eating and fighting, animals who could eat their fill yet never forget what it was like to be hungry.
Chen discovered over time that grassland wolves held many sacred articles of faith where survival was concerned, of which the fight for food and independence were among the most fundamental. When he was feeding the cub, he never felt as if he were giving it life, as he did with the dogs. The wolf showed no gratitude, for he did not consider himself as being raised by a human and was incapable of reacting slavishly just because he saw his master coming with his food. The word raise was absent in the relationship between Chen and the cub. The wolf was his prisoner for the time being, not his ward. A unique spirit of obstinacy underlay his territorial nature; this knowledge sent chills up Chen’s spine, for he was no longer confident that he could successfully keep the cub and see him to adulthood.
In the end, Chen abandoned the desire to pet the wolf while he was eating and respected his noble natural instincts. He continued to crouch down a few paces away and observe the cub quietly, grateful for the lessons in wolf behavior.
The cub gradually slowed down, but even though his belly seemed about to burst, he kept his head buried in the bowl and continued eating. Chen saw that when the cub’s basic appetite was satisfied, he began picking and choosing, starting with the strips of meat and ending with the last little bits, his tongue like tweezers, picking up every little piece until all that remained of a once meaty porridge was a bowl of light yellow millet-no more meat, no more bone, no more fat, just grain. And still he didn’t look up. He was concentrating on the milk at the bottom, since that too was a favorite food. When he finally looked up, only dry kernels of tasteless, odorless millet remained. Chen laughed out loud. When it came to food, the little wolf was very shrewd.
Chen had no choice but to add a little meat, the remaining milk, and a bit of warm water, stir it into a soupy mix, and take it outside, where he poured it into the dog bowls. The dogs rushed up hungrily but immediately whined their disappointment, and Chen was made pointedly aware of the obligations of livestock raising, of which caring for dogs is an essential component.
The cub, so stuffed he could barely move, sprawled on the floor and gazed outside, where the dogs were finishing off his leftovers. Chen went up and called out to him: “Little Wolf, Little Wolf.” He just rolled over, legs held in close, belly sticking up, and head on the ground, where he looked at Chen, a mischievous glint in his eyes. Chen picked him up and lifted him high in the air, five or six times, frightening and delighting him simultaneously. His mouth was open, but his hind legs pressed against his tail and trembled. By now the cub seemed to be getting used to this game, recognizing it as a friendly gesture. Chen laid the cub on top of his head, then on his shoulder, where the still-frightened cub dug his claws into Chen’s collar.
After bringing the cub back down, Chen sat cross-legged and laid him belly-up to give him a good rubbing, the way both dog and wolf mothers do to their young to help them digest their food. Chen enjoyed gently rubbing the little wolf’s belly and listening to him moan contentedly, burp occasionally, and pass a bit of gas. The wild animal at his food had become a well-behaved pet, grabbing Chen’s finger with his paws and licking it, even biting it playfully. The look in his eyes was gentle and at times-when the rubbing was most pleasurable-tinged with laughter, almost as if Chen were a surrogate mother.