The Wolves

In three days the wolf family covered more than one hundred and fifty kilometres. The hunt no longer had a visible pursuer; it was maintained by the inertia force of muscle and sinew, replenished during rests fraught with anxiety. The rests were mainly because of the ten-month-old Beltyna and Ushal. The full-grown wolves endeavoured by their running to encourage, but at the same time they took care to adjust the tempo to the needs of the youngest. They were compelled by laws of solidarity shaken by the recent loss of Odin, and in forgiving memories the end of Frog, too, was gradually being assimilated. The absence of these two unsettled an already precarious balance; it deprived the wolves of Frog’s cheer-giving pranks and the strength derived from Odin’s song. Sometimes they looked back.

On the fourth day after sun-up, just as the family was gathering to take its rest, the She-wolf caught sight of a pair of ravens fluttering towards a depression on the hillside opposite. It took a single, soft bark and a steady gaze for the others to understand that food was near. They knew these birds with their great beaks; indeed, they had a certain fondness for them. The birds were an entertainment – sometimes they would fly down on the remains of the prey of the sated hunters, who would observe them with good humour, admiring the grace with which they landed, the briskness of their pecking, their swaggering and squabbling, the manner in which they ordered their feathers. Sometimes a magpie, jay or hooded crow would try to sneak in among them, and this would make the performance livelier still.

But this time the wolves were hungry. When they came across the cadaver of a hind, the ravens were forced to move aside. They did not raise too much of a protest: they realized places at the feast would be taken in reverse order. Only the female failed to desist in her squawks of dissatisfaction. None of the guests noticed this: all sounds were drowned out in the mix of growl and bark with which each of the wolves marked off its territory. The She-wolf threw herself on the beast’s flank, on which the ravens had already made a start. She chewed right through to the liver, while the Wolf tore at the stiff flesh of a leg. Chingis set about the neck, Purim tugged at a shoulder, and Ushal and Beltyna wrestled with the other leg. Half an hour later, all that remained in the trampled snow – apart from shreds of skin, the head and the hooves – was the torso, dominated by the outline of the ribs.

The feeling of satiation made the forest around them more friendly; for a short while the wolves could forget they were homeless. The She-wolf lay on her back, showing her pleasure by rolling over several times. The Wolf bent down to her, perfunctorily brushing against her muzzle. He licked her. She was playing dead; only the sparks in her slit eyes declared: Don’t even try! Her suitor made a grimace. He raised his lip, bared his fangs, snarled. He caught her by the whiskers and she flinched. And she, while still on her back, snarled too, though this snarl had in it more of the coo of the dove than the darkness of a threat. But the Wolf knew that this seeming powerlessness concealed tensed-up muscle; he held his victim firmly. Her strategem was time-tested; she squealed: What a poor thing I am! He let go of her. He knew what happened next, as did his sons and daughters. They were waiting for the moment: certain events never become commonplace. If one thing is certain about the co-existence of wolves, it is the presence of passion.

The She-wolf shot to her feet. She was beautiful. The Wolf, too, struck his most impressive pose, his head held high and his mane tousled. She tossed her head and gave a faint bark; he lifted his tail high and moved it a few times from side to side. Each looked the other in the face, but at the same time this look was directed far away. This was the most intimate game of hide-and-seek. The young ones watched them carefully; their shaking increased as their patience diminished.

Then – for a fraction of a second – the eyes of the Wolf met those of the She-wolf. No one could know which memories, moods, secrets and intentions were exchanged in their amber gleam. (And neither, too, did they.) What followed was a fierce chase, which was to lighten the weight of the communication. Naturally the young ones joined in with this. They dashed among the trees, snapped at each other, threw themselves to the ground, jumped and fell about, rolled around one over the other; then again they pelted away, until they were back at the bald remains of the hind. Here they ploughed into the exasperated ravens. The birds managed just in time to fly up to the bough of an ash, from where they were able to observe the finale of this wolfish drama. The drama unexpectedly switched to opera when the She-wolf detached herself from the mêlée. She jumped clear of the belligerent muddle, stiffened, and fixed her gaze on the Wolf. Stop your messing about and come to me, she communicated to him. Having squared up to Chingis, the Wolf turned his attention to Purim; then he shoved Beltyna and Ushal out of his path, arching round to face his mate’s challenge. He laid his paw on her shoulder – as she did hers on his – and their faces touched. They licked each other in an exchange of random tokens of affection. Then came the glorious rise, at whose close they stood on hind legs, resting in an embrace, one against the other. They began to dance. They had taken but a few turns, small steps carrying them up to the ravens’ lodge and back again, when they straightened their necks. They threw back their heads, and, from muzzles barely open, aimed at the heavens – which were in need of a buttress – came the opening strains of a duet.

The last time their sons and daughters had beheld such a scene was far to the east of here, in their lost home. It had been the big-game rutting season, and the irresistible scents given off by the herds had filled the air. These herds were gathering from the grassy ridges to the valleys, providing the wolves with a feast for day after day. But what about now …? What is this trigger it suffices to press to flood us with joy? What kind of finger is this which is forever prepared to shoot? Is it something within, or something apart from us?

Purim, Chingis, Ushal and Beltyna stood in a circle around their parents, watching more than their singing faces. Their gaze stretched far higher; it followed the invisible pillar of the howl. This howl reached clouds laden with powder snow, at which point the soloists suddenly ran out of breath. It fell to the choir to prevent the burgeoning structure from caving in. Chingis came in first, in an attempt to assume the role of the great Odin. A half-second later he was joined by Purim, her alto winding itself upwards and around her brother’s baritone like a woodbine; finally, Ushal and Beltyna pitched in with their falsetto. The resulting canon – to which the soloists returned a short while later, with their lovers’ duet – may have sounded barbaric to the untrained ear; the ravens, however, heard it out with half-closed eyes and half-opened beaks. And they were not alone. A herd of deer, too, distant by several kilometres from the wolfish theatre, granted these immigrant singers an audience. They stood there all dismay, their ears admitting a sound the like of which they had never before heard, as wolves had not been present in these surroundings for generations. Not even the magnificent sixteener – though he knew himself confronted with a portent – was able to interpret the sense of this communication formed under complex, vaulted skies. For all that, the libretto was of parsimonious design.

flight
hunger distance sun man dark
refuge
prey water now joy settlement
anxiety
I caution wickedness wind scent
will
rip river frost ash possess
God
blood light eyes law clouds come
libation

A final faint tone, silence, end. The vault caved in and it started to snow thickly. The She-wolf in the lead, the singers made for the stream to drink. In the brushwood of spruce near by, they lay down to rest.

Shortly before midnight on the fifth day, after another twenty kilometres had brought them to the crest of the borderline ridge which might represent their journey’s end, they heard voices ahead. Between the wolves and the voices were barely two hundred metres of high-grown vegetation, which a few steps further on descended sharply to a woodland path. At the same time they heard a stampede; the crisp snow ahead was making a crunching sound. A mixture of human scents reached their noses, but there was nothing in any of these which was domineering: what the wolves sensed was exhaustion, fear, but also resolution. An aroma of excitability. Were it not for its human dimension, it would be bidding the wolves to attack.

At first they stood perplexed; then the She-wolf, the Wolf and their young lay down on their bellies, sphinx-like. This was followed immediately by a number of shots and rockets which flew hissing to the heavens, transforming at the top of their trajectory into small night-time suns, their white light rendering bare the surprised forest for the longest time. Somewhere off to the right these were answered by a red flare, which died quickly to be replaced on the other side by its counterpart in green. From this direction the reek of horsesweat and the clatter of shod hooves carried to the wolves, complemented then by the roar of a jeep which had been waiting somewhere in reserve. There were more human scents now – aggressive, desirous of a prey – and they were getting closer.

Never before had the wolves known men to be hunted by men. Although they were prepared to flee at any moment, something told them that now they were safe. They assumed the prerogative of observers and continued to play the sphinx, retaining this pose even when two men and a woman broke away from the group of the pursued. They came within ten or fifteen metres, and for a moment the wolves heard the wheeze in their breathing. Less than half an hour later all other sounds, too, had dissipated. The scents had been scattered by the breeze, perhaps coming to rest in the bark of trees. Quiet had resumed; the forest was just forest.

The family of wolves continued on its way. As she determined direction and tempo, the She-wolf respected what had befallen them earlier. They went cautiously along the ridge, steering clear of valleys, where the roads ran, where – as they knew – men were marched. They did not get far. After a trot of twenty minutes they encountered fresh tracks of the game called deer. A challenge such as this could not be ignored.

At the feeding rack in the middle of an oval-shaped clearing stood the twelver, in the company of two equally magnificent eighters and two sixers, who had left the hinds in the autumn. As they had the rank of newcomer, the latter stood a few paces from the trough – which was chock-full of hay – and waited their turn. One of them – a young stag rather than a sixer – ran out of patience and tried to snatch some hay before his turn came. His hooves pounding, the twelver took him to one side. He never returned to the trough. The wolves leapt out of the forest and made straight for him. Neither he nor his companions had ever before experienced such an attack – it was only against men that they were on their guard; still, the old stager took to flight immediately, with his subject a second behind him. Thanks to their extreme fright, their progress could not have been more rapid. But it was not orderly. Both eighters turned sharply upwards, seeking to return whence they had come; the twelver headed for the slope opposite; the sixers struck out along the stream, heading downwards, which was best of all for their pursuers. The wolves caught up with the deer with the weak antlers whom just moments earlier the lord of the herd had driven away from the hay. This happened at the place where the surge of the stream suddenly opened out into a space filled with several piles of logs. Away from here led the forest track which joined the road. Barely had they eaten their fill when something sounded near which came from far. This new sound most impressed the She-wolf and Purim – perhaps the first signs of the heat were upon them. The mother raised her head from the food immediately. She gulped down a piece of lung, moved aside, and – her ears pricked up – stood immobile. The daughter positioned herself next to the mother. Scenting the air only briefly but for that all the more cautiously, they set out side by side in the direction of the creator of the summons. To begin with the Wolf was no more than an observer, but then he ordered Chingis to stay behind with Beltyna and Ushal and their cooling plunder; he followed the She-wolf and Purim at a distance.

Under an open porch attached to a log cabin – which served the forest labourers as a workshop and store – stood a rough-hewn table. On this table – from which someone had removed the in-drifted snow, apparently with a shovel – lay a new-born child. It was wrapped in a woollen blanket, from which its head – clad in a fur hat – protruded. It was wailing.

It was several minutes before the She-wolf gathered the courage to enter the porch, to raise her tousled neck and fix her eyes on the shrieking foundling. Apart from the image of a face with a wide-open mouth she was most impressed by the howls, which contained more than just a lament, and the scent, which was not the simple human one, as it had as ingredients the child’s first urine and faeces and was attended by a softness which is common to all young. Her senses stirred, the She-wolf touched the woollen blanket with a muzzle still stained with the blood of the deer. Then she licked the child’s face. The shrieking stopped. The child opened its eyes. She was slightly startled, and paused briefly before resuming her licking. Purim watched what she was doing from outside, sometimes glancing back at her father, who was sitting guard by a pile of tyres half-covered in snow.

The porch was not to the She-wolf’s liking. She took the bundle with child in her teeth, and very carefully carried it over to the stripped deer. Purim and the Wolf followed a few metres behind. She laid the child on the ground to the side of the remains of their loot. When Chingis expressed an interest in it, she went for him without mercy, in so doing drawing a clear boundary which also applied for Ushal and Beltyna, who were waiting at a safe distance with their tails down. Purim, too, lashed out at Chingis, and a fight would have started if her father had not intervened.

The mother licked the child a few times more; then, in the tracks of the recent hunt, she went on her way. She was joined immediately by Purim, then by the rest of the family. As usual, the Wolf was at the procession’s foot, a chunk of deer leg in his muzzle. They stopped at the feeding rack, under which the She-wolf laid the foundling on a pile of hay which had fallen out of it. It seemed to her that the child was sleeping. She licked him again and then sat. The Wolf laid the meat before her. Then he, too, sat. They sat facing each other, in mutual trust and affection. Yet they remained on the alert. Something or other was urging them to flight, the only thing which can smooth away a wolf’s anxieties. The young ones, too, were becoming impatient. Beltyna was whimpering quietly. Ushal was leaning against Purim and trying to tell her something, but she was growling at him in warning, her eyes fixed on the mother.

The She-wolf stood and broke into a run: this was the instruction all had been waiting for. They followed her to the ridge, where they resumed their broken journey; only the Wolf hesitated momentarily over the leg of venison. In the end he left this next to the feeding rack.

 

Translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland