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 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!”