Chen had never seen Bilgee so furious. The powder keg had finally exploded, blowing Chen’s heart to pieces. The old man was like an angry wolf, and Chen was afraid he might kick the rock and hurt himself or, worse, pick it up and crush the wolf cub with it. And he was getting angrier by the minute. “When I first heard that you were raising a wolf cub, I wrote that off as an example of how you Chinese students really don’t understand grassland customs, that you are ignorant of our taboos, and were just trying something new that you’d give up after a few days. But then I heard that Dorji was raising one too and that you planned to breed wolfhounds. You can’t do that! I want you to dispose of that cub right now, in front of me…”
Chen knew he’d really stepped over the line this time. No one had raised a wolf on the grassland for all these thousands of years. You can kill a warrior; you cannot humiliate him. You can kill a wolf; you cannot raise it. Now here was a young Chinese deep in the heart of the grassland, on Mongol ancestral land, where the inhabitants worshipped Tengger, a sacred place where they paid homage to their wild forebear, their master of wisdom, their war god, and the protector of the grassland, the wolf totem, and he was raising a wolf as he would a dog, a true outrage. If this had occurred in ancient times, he would be labeled a sinner, a pagan, and would surely have been drawn and quartered, his corpse thrown to the dogs. Even now, what he was doing ran counter to the national policy on ethnic minorities, an act that unavoidably incensed the grassland inhabitants. But what disturbed Chen the most was what this was doing to Bilgee, the elderly Mongol who had brought him into the mysterious realm of the wolf totem, and whose careful instructions had made it possible to steal the cub in the first place. He could hold out no longer, could not keep defending his actions. “Papa,” he said, his voice quaking.
The old man waved him off. “Don’t call me that!”
“I was wrong, Papa,” Chen said, pleading with the old man, “and you’re right, I don’t understand grassland customs, and I’ve offended you… Tell me, how do you want me to dispose of this poor little wolf?” Tears virtually gushed from Chen’s eyes, spilling onto the grassy ground where the cub had been playing happily only a short while before.
The old man, caught by surprise, could only stare at Chen, suddenly not sure what to do now. He knew that no matter what Chen said, the young man had been bewitched by grassland wolves. He was, after all, a sort of adopted half-Mongol son, and his fascination with the wolves far exceeded that of most Mongol youths. But now he’d done something the old man found intolerable. He’d never encountered anything like this before, and didn’t know what to do about it.
Bilgee looked up at Tengger and sighed. “I know you Chinese aren’t religious and that the soul means nothing to you. You’ve really taken to our wolves over the past couple of years, I know that, but you don’t know what’s in my heart. I’m old and getting frailer by the day. The grassland is a hard, cold place to live in, and we Mongols spend our whole lives here doing battle, like savages. Sickness takes its toll, and we don’t live long lives. I’ll be going to Tengger in a few years. How can you think of keeping a wolf that might one day take my soul up to Tengger and raise it with a bunch of dogs? That would mean that I’d committed a sin and Tengger might not accept my soul, but send it down to the dark, suffocating hell under the Gobi. If everyone out here treated wolves like slaves, the way you do, the souls of Mongols would be lost.”
“Papa,” Chen said quietly, defending himself, “I’m not treating this wolf cub like a slave. If anything, I’ve become its slave. I wait on it like I would a Mongol king or a prince. I milk a cow to feed it, I mix porridge for it, I cook meat. I worry about it being cold, or sick, or bitten by dogs or hit by people, or carried away by an eagle or by its mother. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and Gao Jianzhong has begun calling me the wolf’s slave. You know I revere wolves more than any of the other Chinese. Tengger sees everything, Tengger is fair, Tengger won’t blame you for anything.”
This stopped the old man. He knew that Chen was being earnest with him. If Chen waited on the little wolf the way he would a deity or a king, then was that offending the gods or revering them? Bilgee wasn’t sure. Even though Chen Zhen’s methods ran counter to traditional Mongol customs, he had a good heart, and there was nothing the grassland Mongols valued more. The old man’s gaze softened; he was no longer an angry wolf. Chen hoped that with his wisdom and farsightedness, the old man would be willing to break precedent for a young Chinese man who truly valued the wolf totem and would spare the life of the month-old wolf cub.
Chen saw a glimmer of hope. He dried his eyes and took a deep breath. Forcing himself not to panic and to stay calm, he said, “Papa, the only reason I want to raise this wolf is to understand what they’re really like and how they behave. I want to figure out why they’re so formidable, so smart, and why the people revere them. You can’t imagine how much the Chinese hate wolves. We call the most malicious people wolves; we call sex fiends wolves; we say the greediest people have the appetite of a wolf; the American imperialists are referred to as ambitious wolves; and anytime an adult wants to frighten a child, he cries out ’Wolf!’ ”
Chen could see that Bilgee’s attitude had softened, so he mustered up the courage to soldier on: “In the eyes of Chinese, wolves are the worst, the most vicious, the cruelest things alive, but you Mongols revere them as if they were gods. You learn from them in life and feed them in death. But still, watching and studying wolves from a distance doesn’t tell me what I need to know. I figured the best way to do that was to raise a cub on my own, to observe it close up, to be with it every day. I’ve only been at it a little more than a month so far, and already I’ve seen incredible things I never saw before. These animals are truly worthy of reverence. But most of the students out here still haven’t changed their opinion. If they don’t understand wolves, just think of all the millions of Chinese who’ve never been out here. More and more of them will be coming, and if they really do manage to wipe out the wolves, what will happen to the grassland? It’ll be disastrous for the Mongols, but in the long run even worse for the Chinese. I tell you, I’m worried. I couldn’t stand to see the destruction of this beautiful grassland.”
The old man sat on the rock over the cub’s burrow and took out his pipe. Chen hurriedly lit it for him. “It’s my fault,” Bilgee said after taking a puff. “I’ve been a bad influence on you… But now what? I know you weren’t thinking of me when you decided to raise that wolf, but you have to think of Uljii and of the brigade. He lost his official position, and demerits were recorded against four horse herders. You know why, don’t you? They say it was because he came down on the side of the wolves, that he held off organizing a wolf hunt for too long. They also said that I’m an old wolf, the head wolf in the brigade, and that our Second Brigade is a wolf’s den. And now, at a critical moment like this, the brigade has a student who’s raising a wolf cub. Why aren’t students in other brigades doing that? Doesn’t that prove that you’ve been badly taught by someone in the Second Brigade. Wouldn’t you say you’ve handed them the ‘weapon’ they need?”
The look of melancholy in the old man’s eyes came to Chen in waves; the dejection in his voice increased.
“The mother of your cub will come one day,” he said. “That’s for sure. And she won’t come alone. Olonbulag wolf mothers protect their young like no others. They have an amazing sense of smell, and I predict that this one will find her cub one day. When she does, she’ll take her revenge on this camp. There’s nothing Olonbulag wolves won’t do, however evil, and this brigade doesn’t need another incident. If something terrible happens, Uljii and the other brigade officials will be down for good. If a wolf pack came after your sheep and killed great numbers of them, the cost of raising this wolf cub would be a huge loss of communal property, and there’d be no excuse. You could count on jail time… ”