White Horse Neighing in the West Wind - Chapter 6

The wolf came with terrible suddenness.

Supu and Li Wenxiu were sitting side by side on a small knoll, watching the sheep scattered across the grassland.

As usual, Li Wenxiu was telling him stories. Some were ones her mother had told her long ago, some came from Old Man Ji, and the rest she had made up herself. Supu liked best Old Man Ji’s thrilling tales of danger and daring, and he had little patience for Li Wenxiu’s own childish, girlish stories. But once a thrilling story had been told and retold a few times, it ceased to thrill, and so he listened patiently to the others as well: how the little white rabbit could not find its mother, how the little spotted dog went off to help it search.

Suddenly Li Wenxiu gave a cry and toppled backwards. A great grey wolf had lunged at her, its sharp teeth snapping at her throat.

The wolf had crept up behind them without a sound, and neither child had noticed it. Li Wenxiu had learned some martial arts from her mother, and instinctively she tilted her head to one side, dodging the wolf’s snap at her throat. Supu, seeing how huge the beast was, felt his legs go weak beneath him, but at once the thought flashed through him: “I must save her!” He drew his short dao from his belt and hurled himself forward, stabbing at the grey wolf’s back.

The wolf’s bones were hard. The dao slid across its spine, cutting only skin and flesh. But the wolf sensed danger too. It released Li Wenxiu, opened its great bloody jaws, leapt high into the air, and landed with its front paws on Supu’s shoulders, lunging for his face.

Supu, startled, fell backwards. The wolf came down like lightning, its paws pressing him flat, its white fangs already touching his cheek. Li Wenxiu was so frightened she could barely move, but she forced herself to be brave. She seized the wolf’s tail and pulled with all her might backwards. The wolf stumbled a step from her tug, but it was ravenous, its hind paws planted firm in the snow, and Li Wenxiu could not budge it another inch. The wolf snapped again.

Supu screamed. The wolf had caught his left shoulder. Li Wenxiu was nearly weeping with fright, but she summoned every last ounce of strength she had and pulled. The wolf cried out in pain, opening its jaws to howl, and for a moment loosened its grip on Supu’s shoulder. Supu, half-conscious, thrust his dao forward. The dao struck the soft place on the wolf’s belly and sank in to the hilt. He tried to pull the dao free for another thrust, but the wolf gave a great leap, rolled over several times in the snow, lay on its back, and died.

The wolf’s death-roll dragged Li Wenxiu head over heels as well, but even so she never let go of its tail. Supu struggled to his feet and stared at the enormous grey wolf lying dead in the snow. For a long moment he stood stunned. Then at last he called out joyfully, “I killed the big wolf, I killed the big wolf!” He reached down and helped Li Wenxiu up, saying proudly, “Axiu, look, I killed the big wolf!” In his triumph, though blood streamed from his shoulder, for the moment he felt no pain at all.

Li Wenxiu saw that the left front of his sheepskin coat was soaked with blood. She quickly pushed back the coat, took a handkerchief from her bosom, and pressed it against the wound, where blood still flowed without ceasing. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

If Supu had been alone, he would have cried and screamed long before, but now his heart was full of a hero’s courage, and he shook his head. “I’m not afraid of the pain!”

Just then a voice behind them said, “Apu, what are you doing?”

The two children turned. A great, bearded man sat on horseback.

Supu called out, “Father, look, I killed a big wolf.”

The man was delighted. He saw his son’s face splattered with blood, and his eyes swept over Li Wenxiu’s face as well. He asked Supu, “Did the wolf bite you?”

Supu said, “I was sitting here listening to Axiu tell stories, and suddenly this wolf came to bite her…”

All at once a shadow fell across the man’s face. He stared at Li Wenxiu coldly and said, “Are you that Han girl whom Allah has cursed?”¹

By now Li Wenxiu had recognised him. It was Su Luke, the man who had kicked her. She remembered Old Man Ji’s words: “His wife and eldest son were both killed by Han bandits in a single night. That is why he hates Han people with all his heart.” She nodded, and was about to say, “My father and mother were killed by those same bandits too.” But the words had not left her mouth when, with a sharp crack, a long red welt rose on Supu’s face where his father’s riding-whip had lashed across it.

Su Luke shouted, “I told you to hate Han people for generations to come. You have forgotten my words. You go and play with a Han girl, and you even spill your blood for a Han girl!” The whip cracked again, full across his son’s head.

Supu did not flinch. He only stared at Li Wenxiu and asked, “Is she really the Han girl whom Allah has cursed?”

Su Luke roared, “Isn’t she?” He swung the whip around again, and it cracked across Li Wenxiu’s face. She staggered two steps back and pressed her hand to her cheek. Supu, already badly wounded from the wolf’s bite and now savagely whipped twice more, could hold out no longer. He swayed and collapsed to the ground.

Su Luke saw that his son’s eyes were shut tight and he had fainted. He too was alarmed. He leapt from his horse, gathered his son in his arms, and with a spring landed on the horse’s back. He flung a rope-loop, caught the dead wolf by the neck, clamped his legs tight, and rode off. The dead wolf was dragged behind through the snow. Between the two lines of hoofprints a long trail of blood was left. Su Luke rode some dozen zhang, then turned and fixed Li Wenxiu with a venomous look, his eyes seeming to say: “Next time I catch you in my hands, see if I don’t whip you half to death!”

Li Wenxiu was not afraid of that look. But her heart was hollow and empty. She knew that from this day on, Supu would never be her friend again, never come to hear her sing, never come to hear her stories. The north wind seemed colder than it had ever been, and the whip-mark on her face throbbed with her pulse, each throb sharper than the last.

She drove the sheep home in a daze. Old Man Ji saw the blood on her clothes and the swollen whip-mark on her face, and was greatly alarmed. He asked her what had happened. Li Wenxiu said lightly, “I fell down carelessly.” Old Man Ji did not believe her, of course. But however much he pressed her, she gave no other answer. When he asked too urgently, she burst into loud sobs and would not say another word.

That night Li Wenxiu burned with fever. Her small face was crimson, and she spoke in delirium: “Big grey wolf!” “Supu, Supu, save me!” and “The Han girl whom Allah has cursed.” Old Man Ji guessed some of the truth, and was deeply troubled. He paced the room, clutching his chest and holding his head, with no good plan to be found. Fortunately, by dawn the fever broke and she fell into a deep sleep.

That illness lasted more than a month. By the time she rose from her bed, the bitter winter was past. The white snow on the Tianshan mountains had begun to melt, and threads of meltwater gathered into streams that flowed out across the grassland. Here and there on the plain, tender shoots of new grass were already rising.

***

That day Li Wenxiu rose early. She opened the gate of the pen and was about to drive the sheep out to graze, when she saw, thrown down beside the gate, a great wolf-skin, made up into the shape of a cushion.

Li Wenxiu started. She recognised the colour of the pelt at once: it was the very same grey wolf that had bitten her in the snow. She bent closer and saw, near the belly, a hole where the blade had entered. Her heart beat hard. She knew that Supu had not forgotten her, and had not forgotten his own promise. In the middle of the night he had crept here and thrown the wolf-skin over the fence into her yard.

She took the wolf-skin into her own room and said nothing of it to Old Man Ji. She drove the sheep out and went to the place where she and Supu usually met, and waited for him.

But she waited until the sun set behind the western mountains, and Supu never came. She knew the sheep of Supu’s family, and that day they were tended by a young man of seventeen or eighteen. Li Wenxiu thought, “Could it be that Supu’s wounds haven’t healed yet? And why did he send me the wolf-skin after all?” She very much wanted to go to his tent and see how he was, but then she thought of Su Luke’s whip.

In the middle of the night she finally took courage and walked to the back of Supu’s tent. She did not know exactly why she had come. To say “Thank you for the wolf-skin”? To see whether his wounds had healed? She could not say herself.

She hid behind the tent. Supu’s sheepdog recognised her, came over and sniffed at her a few times, then walked away without barking. A tallow candle still burned inside the tent. Su Luke’s great voice was roaring:

“You gave that wolf-skin to which girl, eh? You little scamp, so young already, and you know to give your first hunt to the girl you’re sweet on.”

With every shout, Li Wenxiu’s heart leapt. Supu had told her once, in his stories, about the Kazakh custom: every young man treasures his very first kill, and always gives it to the girl he loves, as a token of his heart.

Hearing Su Luke’s questioning now, her small face flushed, and a feeling of pride rose in her. They were both still too young to know what true love is, but dimly, obscurely, they had tasted something of the sweetness and bitterness of first love.

“You must have given it to that Han girl whom Allah has cursed, that little wretch called Li something-or-other, didn’t you? Fine, you won’t talk? Let’s see whether you’re tougher, or your father’s whip is tougher.”

Crack-crack-crack-crack, the sound of a whip striking flesh again and again. Kazakhs like Su Luke have always believed that only the whip can forge a strong man, that a boy cannot be raised with gentle methods. His grandfather had whipped his father this way, his father had whipped him, and now he whipped his own son in turn. A father’s love was not the weaker for it. A man deals with men. With friends and kin it is fists and whip. With enemies it is dagger and long dao.

But for Li Wenxiu, her father and mother had never raised their voices to her, not even once. If their faces lost so much as a smile, if there was less fondness in a caress, that was punishment enough. Now every lash fell as though it struck her own flesh. “Supu’s father must hate me terribly. He beats his own son this hard, could he beat him to death?”

“Fine! You won’t answer! Will you answer or not? I know you gave it to that Han girl.” The whip fell blow after blow. At first Supu bit down and bore it in silence, but at last he was crying out, “Father, stop, stop, it hurts, it hurts!”

Su Luke said, “Then tell me. Did you give the wolf-skin to that Han girl? Your mother was killed by Han bandits. Your elder brother was killed by Han bandits. Do you know that? They call me the bravest warrior of the Kazakhs, yet my wife and son were killed by Han bandits. Do you know that? Why was I not home that day? Why can I never find those bandits, so I can avenge your mother and brother?”

Footnotes

1. 真主降罚的汉人女孩儿 – “the Han girl upon whom Allah has sent down punishment.” Su Luke’s phrase reflects the Kazakh belief that misfortune visited upon one’s kin may be Heaven’s judgement; the term carries a bitter, fatalistic fury. ↩