The pig farm was about a mile from the chicken farm, and the road passed by a fertilizer pit for the vegetable garden unit. My teacher, Huo Lina, walked past us carrying a load of manure, her slim waist compressed by the weight of her load until she seemed about to snap in two. At the pig farm, we delivered our chicken droppings to the woman in charge, Ji Qiongzhi, my former music teacher, who dumped the slimy, stinking mess into the pig troughs.
One of the members of the food processing team was an athletic fellow who could high-jump nearly two meters using the latest flop method. Naturally, he was a rightist. He displayed a great deal of concern for Qiao Qisha, and was extremely friendly to me, one of those cheerful rightists, unlike the ones who went around scowling the day long. Wearing a towel draped around his neck and a pair of goggles, he worked happily on the pulverizer, which filled the air with dust. The leader of his team was another special case, an illiterate man named Guo Wenhao who created clapper-talk lyrics that were sung all over the farm. On our very first trip with coarse fodder made of yams, he entertained us with one of his lyrics:
“There’s this animal farm leader, Ma Ruilian, who has a new vocation. She carries out experiments at the breeding station, mating a sheep and rabbit with high elation. She angered her assistant, Qiao Qisha, and hit her in the belly, ha ha ha. A horse and a donkey produce a mule, but a rabbit sheep would be a new creation. If a sheep can marry a rabbit, a boar can take Ma Ruilian for gestation. With anger in her breast, she told Li Du with detestation. Tolerant Director Li counseled hesitation. These rightists, he said, don’t understand cessation. Little Qiao went to medical school, Yu Zheng uses a newsletter for his narration. Ma Ming studied in the American nation, Zhang Jie’s dictionary is a clarification. Even rightist Wang Meizan, whose head knows no sensation, is a great athlete, cause for celebration …”
“You there, rightist!” Guo Wenhao shouted. Wang Meizan brought his legs together. “Yo!” he responded. “Load the Qiao girl up with fodder.” Wang replied, “Will do, Leader Guo.”
Wang Meizan loaded our cart with fodder, as Guo Wenhao asked me over the roar of the pulverizer, “Are you a Shangguan?” “Yes,” I said, “I’m the little Shangguan bastard. “A bastard can become a great man. You Shangguans are an incredible family. Sha Yueliang, Sima Ku, Birdman Han, Speechless Sun, Babbitt. You’re really something …”
On our way back to the chicken farm with the feed, Qiao Qisha blurted out, “What’s your name?”
“Shangguan Jintong. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” she said. “We work together, so we might as well know each other’s name. How many sisters do you have?” “Eight. No, seven.” “What about the eighth?”
“She turned traitor,” I replied with annoyance. “That’s all you need to know.”
Every night the same fox came to harass the chickens, and every other night it stole off with one of the hens. On off nights, it didn’t steal a hen not because it couldn’t, but because it didn’t want to. Its nightly activities fell into two categories: nights when it was hungry, and nights when it merely wanted to cause a disturbance. This drove the women chicken tenders to distraction, and cost them lots of sleep. Commander Long fired at least twenty bullets at the fox, but never harmed a hair of its fur. “That fox is a demon for sure,” one of the women said. “It can recite a charm to ward off bullets.”
“Nonsense!” a tall woman nicknamed “Wild Mule” disagreed sharply. “No mangy fox can turn into a demon.”
“If that’s true, how come Commander Long, who was a sharpshooter in the militia, keeps missing?” asked the other woman.
“I think it’s intentional. The fox is a male, after all,” Wild Mule said salaciously. “Maybe a handsome green visitor comes to her bed late at night, when everything’s quiet.”
Commander Long stood under the tattered netting silently listening to the women’s talk, fiddling with her pistol, apparently lost in thought. The wanton laughter roused her from her ruminations; tapping her gray cap with the muzzle of the pistol, she strode into the chicken coop, skirting the laying pens, and planted herself in front of Wild Mule, who was gathering eggs. “What did you say just now?” she demanded angrily. “I didn’t say anything,” Wild Mule replied calmly, a brown egg in the palm of her hand. “I heard you!” Commander Long raged as she tapped the wire with her pistol. “Exactly what did you hear?” Wild Mule asked provocatively. Commander Long’s face turned the color of the egg Wild Mule was holding. “I’ll never forgive you for that!” she sputtered as she turned and walked away, enraged. Wild Mule looked at her back and said, “If your heart is pure, not even the devil can scare you! Don’t be fooled by her serious appearance, fox. She’s lusting, all right. The other night, you think I didn’t see with my own eyes?” “Wild Mule,” one of the more prudent women counseled, “that’s enough. Where do you find all this energy on the six ounces of noodles you’re given to eat?” “Six ounces of noodles? Fuck her and her six ounces of noodles!” She pulled a pin out of her hair, poked a hole in each end of the egg she was holding, and quickly sucked it dry. Then she put the outwardly whole egg with the others. “Anyone who wants to report me, go ahead. My dad’s found me a husband in the Northeast, and Fm leaving next month. There are enough potatoes up there to form mountains. How about you, planning on reporting me?” she asked Jintong, who was shoveling chicken droppings by the window. “You’re the most likely one, a fragrant baby rooster, just the type favored by our armless leader. An old cow like her, with bad teeth, has to graze on tender grass!” Jintong was totally befuddled by the verbal assault. Holding his shovel out in front of him, he said, “Want some of this chicken shit?”
That afternoon, when they reached the vegetable unit’s fertilizer pit with their load of four crates of eggs, Qiao Qisha asked Jintong to stop. He slowed down and lowered the cart handles to the ground. “Have you seen them?” Qiao Qisha asked when he turned around. “They all steal eggs, even Commander Long. You’ve seen the one called Wild Mule, what good shape she’s in? Those women get more nutrition than they need.” “But these eggs have been weighed,” Jintong said. “Are we supposed to go hungry, even when we’re delivering a load of eggs? Fm about to drop from hunger.” Picking up two of the eggs, she darted into the fenced-off enclosure and disappeared behind two tanks. A few moments later, she reappeared with what looked like two whole eggs and put them back into the load. “Qiao Qisha,” Jintong said worriedly, “that’s like a cat covering up its own shit. When they weigh this load at the farm, they’ll know what’s happened.” She laughed. “Do you think Fm stupid?” she said as she picked up two more eggs and motioned to him. “Come with me,” she said.
Jintong followed her into the enclosure, where white pollen floated above tall artemesia stalks, filling the air with a dizzying fragrance. She squatted down beside a tank and removed something wrapped in oilpaper from a gap between the tractor tread and a wheel. Her crime kit. It included a tiny drill bit, a hypodermic needle, a piece of rubberized fabric dyed the color of an eggshell, and a little pair of scissors. After drilling a tiny hole in one of the eggs, she inserted the hypodermic needle and slowly drew out the contents. “Open your mouth,” she said, and emptied the contents down Jintong’s throat, making him her accomplice. Once that was done, she drew water out of an upturned steel helmet lying next to the tank and inserted it into the shell. Finally, she cut out a small piece of fabric to cover the hole. All this with practiced efficiency. “Is this what they taught you at the medical school?” Jintong asked. “That’s right,” she said with a smile. “Egg theft!”
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 ove
r 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 him and Long Qingping, the rain had been unending, letting up briefly, only to start up again harder than ever.
The water nearly reached his knees. Wrapped in a black raincoat, the security section chief was squatting on his chair. Two days and nights of questioning had produced no results. The man was a chain-smoker; the water around him was peppered with water-soaked cigarette butts and the air was suffocating with acrid smoke. Rubbing his bloodshot eyes, the section chief yawned from exhaustion, as did the official recorder. Then he picked up a notebook from the wet desktop and stared at the smudged writing. Reaching out and grabbing Jintong by the ear, he barked, “Did you rape her first and then kill her?” Jintong stood there weeping, but with no more tears to shed. “I didn’t kill her,” he repeated, “and I didn’t rape her …”