When the eggs were weighed, they had actually gained an ounce or so.
The egg-stealing drama was brought to a ruthless end in a couple of weeks. Midsummer rains signaled the hens’ molting season, and egg production dropped precipitously. One day they stopped at the same spot with their load of a crate and a half of eggs, and entered the enclosure through the wet fence; the artemesia buds were filled with seeds, and a watery mist hung over the military relics. The rusting hulks gave off a thick, bloodlike odor. A frog was resting on one of the tank wheels, its sticky green skin creating a sense of unease in Jintong. When Qiao Qisha squirted the egg into his mouth, he suddenly felt nauseous; with his hand around his throat, he said, “This egg tastes rotten, and it’s cold.” In a couple of days, you’ll be lucky to get cold, rotten eggs. The curtain is about to drop on our little drama.” “That’s right,” Jintong said, “the hens are about to molt.” “You’re a silly kid,” she said. “I wonder if you have some sort of intuition about me.” “You?” Jintong shook his head. “What kind of intuition would that be?” “Forget I said anything. There’s enough going on with your family already, and I’d only complicate things more.” “I don’t get what you’re talking about,” Jintong said. “I’m confused.” “Why haven’t you asked anything about my background?” she said. “I’m not planning on marrying you, so why should I?” She froze for a moment, then smiled. “Spoken like a true Shangguan. Always a hidden meaning. Who says you have to marry me to ask about my background?” “My teacher, Huo Lina, said that asking a girl about her background is rude.” “Are you talking about that manure carrier?” “She speaks beautiful Russian,” Jintong said. With a sneer, Qisha said, “I hear you were her prize student.” “I guess so.” In a display of grandstanding, Qisha responded by reciting a long monologue in perfect Russian, clearly more than Jintong could handle. “Did you get all that?” “I think it was a sad folktale about a little girl…” “Is that the best Huo Lina’s prize student can do? A three-legged cat, a paper tiger, a dim lantern, an empty pillowcase.” She picked up the four refilled eggs and headed back. “I studied with her less than six months,” Jintong defended himself. “You expect too much from me.” “I don’t have time to expect anything from you,” she replied. The wet artemesia plants had brushed up against her blouse, which stuck to her breasts, made full from the sixty- eight eggs she’d eaten, in stark contrast to her skinny frame. Feelings of tenderness and melancholy swept over Jintong, as a sensation of familiarity with this beautiful rightist worked its way into his head like an army of ants. Instinctively, he reached out to her, but she bent down and stepped nimbly through the wire fence. A moment later, the sound of Commander Long’s grim laughter came on the air from the other side of the fence.
Commander Long turned one of the refilled eggs over and over in her hand. Jintong, his knees knocking, stared at that hand. Qiao Qisha, on the other hand, was gazing haughtily at the gun barrels pointing into the overcast sky, as if launching silent screams. A fine rain formed translucent beads on her forehead and then slid down the sides of her nose. Jintong saw in her eyes the calmly contemptuous look so common among all the Shangguan girls when faced with a bad situation. At that moment, he had a pretty good sense of her background and, at the same time, understood why she’d asked so many questions about his family during the weeks and months they’d been working together.
“A genius!” Commander Long sneered. “A credit to your education.” Then, without warning, she flung the refilled egg at Qiao Qisha, hitting her squarely in the forehead. The shell broke, causing Qisha’s head to wobble, and drenching her face with dirty water. “Follow me to the farm headquarters,” Commander Long said. “There you’ll get the punishment you deserve.” “This has nothing to do with Shangguan Jintong,” Qisha said. “All he’s guilty of is not reporting me. The same as my not reporting the others, who not only steal and eat eggs, but the hens as well.”
Two days later, Qiao Qisha forfeited half a month’s grain rations and was reassigned to the vegetable unit as a manure carrier, to work alongside Huo Lina. There the two Russian speakers were often seen brandishing their manure spades in one another’s face and cursing in Russian. Jintong kept his job at the chicken farm, where less than half the laying hens had survived. The dozen or so women were reassigned as night-shift field workers, leaving Commander Long and Jintong to tend the surviving molting hens in the once-busy farm. As for the fox, it continued its incursions; battling the marauder became Commander Long and Jintong’s primary duty.
One summer night, when dark clouds swallowed up the moon, the fox returned and was heading out the gate with a featherless hen in its mouth and a swagger in its step. Commander Long got off her usual two shots, which had evolved into a sort of farewell ritual. Amid the intoxicating smell of gunpowder, the two of them stood facing each other. The croaking of frogs and cries of birds came on the wind from distant fields as the moon broke through the clouds and oiled the two combatants’ bodies in its light. Hearing a grunt from Commander Long, he saw that her face had grown long and scary; the glare of her teeth turned a terrifying white. And there was more: a bushy tail swelled the seat of her pants like an expanding balloon. Commander Long was a fox! A horrifying clarity burst in his head. She was a female fox, the mate of that other one, and that was why her shots always missed. The frequent green visitor that Wild Mule said entered the sleeping quarters in the hazy moonlight was that transformed fox. The noxious odor of fox filled the air, and he gaped as he watched her come toward him, the smoking pistol still in her hand. Flinging away his club, he ran screeching back to his quarters and put his shoulder to the door as soon as he was inside. He heard her go into the adjoining room; she was alone. Moonlight struck the wall, which was nailed together with old slats. She scraped the wall with her claws and murmured softly. All of a sudden, she knocked a gaping hole in the wall and entered his room, completely naked, once again in human form. Only a horrible scar, like the tightly closed opening of a burlap bag, remained where her arm had once been. Her breasts protruded hard and heavy, like the weights of a scale. She fell to her knees at Jintong’s feet and wrapped her arm around his legs. Muttering like a teary old woman, she said, “Shangguan Jintong, take pity on a wretched woman!”
Jintong fought to step out of her grip, but she reached up and grabbed his belt, tugging so hard she snapped it and pulled down his pants. When he bent down to pull them up, she wrapped her arm around his neck and her legs around his waist. In the grappling that ensued, she somehow managed to undress him. Once that was done, she tapped him on the temple; his eyes rolled back into his head and he lay flat on the floor like a beached fish. Commander Long nibbled every inch of Jintong’s body, but was unable to release him from his terror. Enraged by her failure, she ran back into the adjoining room, grabbed her pistol, tucked the barrel between her legs, and shoved two yellow bullets into the chamber. Then, pointing the weapon at a spot below his belly, she said, “There are two paths open to you. You can get it up, or I’ll shoot it off.” The glare in her eyes was all the proof he needed to know that she was serious. The iron-hard breasts were bouncing around on her chest. Once again Jintong watched as her face lengthened and a bushy tail emerged behind her, slowly, until it reached the floor.
Over the drizzly days that followed, Commander Long did everything possible, from encouragement to threats, day or night, to make a man out of Jintong. In the end, she failed, and by then she was spitting blood. In the final moments before she turned her gun on herself, she wiped the blood from her chin and said sadly, “Long Qingping, ah, Long Qingping, you’re still a virgin at the age of thirty-nine. Everyone knows what a hero you are, but no one realizes that you’re also a woman, and that your life has been wasted…” She coughed and hunched her shoulders; her dark face paled, and, with a loud cry, she spit out a mouthful of blood, driving the soul right out of Jintong, who stood with his back flattened up against the door. Tears ran down Long Qingping’s face as, with a look of resentment in her eyes, she crawled on her knees to him, raised her pistol, and put the muzzle against her temple. Not until that moment did Jintong finally comprehend the seductiveness of a woman’s body. Raising her elbow to reveal the fine hairs under her arm, she sat down on her heels, as a cloud of golden smoke burst in front of his eyes. The cold spot between his legs suddenly swelled with heated blood. The inconsolable Long Qingping pulled the trigger – if, at that moment, she had glanced back, the tragedy would have been averted – and Jintong saw a puff of burnt ocher smoke emerge from her temple hair as the dull crack of a pistol sounded. Her body rocked briefly before she crumpled onto the floor. Jintong rushed up and turned her over, exposing the black hole in her temple, circled by tiny blue particles of gunpowder; dark blood oozed from inside her ear and ran down his fingers. Her eyes were open, still showing traces of her grief. The skin of her chest was still twitching, like ripples on a pond.
Jintong held her in his arms, overcome by remorse, and granted her final wish as her life slipped away. Finally, he climbed off her, utterly spent; the sparks of light in her eyes died as her lids descended. A pall of gray settled in his head as he gazed at her now lifeless body. Outside, a torrential rain fell, a blinding gray that entered the room in waves and swallowed up both their bodies.
5
Shangguan Jintong was taken into the chicken coop for interrogation. His bare legs seeped in rainwater that cascaded in over the eaves, flooded the compound, and crashed against the roof. Ever since that moment between
