scissored patches and a few spots where the skin had been nicked. A sad, scrawny old ram with a terrible haircut that might have been remotely presentable had it been favoured with a full coat. Attracted by the short fleece, Jiaojiao reached out to touch the animal and startled it into a leap. The unexpected movement caused the fellow to stumble and jerked the lead out of his hand, freeing the animal to meander up to the queue of sellers and their animals, the rope dragging on the ground behind it. The fellow ran after it, taking big strides and swinging his arms wildly as he tried to step on the moving rope, but missed every time. It almost looked as if he was putting on an act for the crowd. Every time he bent over to grab the rope, it slipped out of range. By now, his clumsy, comical performance had everyone in stitches. Including me.
‘Elder Brother,’ Jiaojiao said with a laugh, ‘who is that man?’
‘A fool, but a funny one,’ I said.
‘You think he's a fool?’ said an old fellow with four dogs on his pole. He seemed to know us, but we didn't know him. His jacket draped over his shoulders, his arms crossed, he held a pipe between his teeth. ‘He's no fool,’ he said as he launched a mouthful of phlegm. ‘Look at those shifty eyes, how they take in everything. He's not an honest man,’ he continued under his breath, ‘not with those eyes.’
I knew what he was getting at. ‘We know,’ I said softly, ‘he's a thief.’
‘So call the police.’
I called the old fellow's attention to the queue of animals and their sellers. ‘We've got plenty on our hands already, Uncle.’
‘Thunder always rumbles after a temple festival. There are thieves everywhere you look these days,’ he said. ‘I was going to feed these four dogs another month before taking them out of their pens, but I couldn't take the chance. The thieves toss knockout drugs into dog pens—ones that are effective for days—then steal the dogs and sell them outside the area.’
‘What can you tell me about those drugs?’ I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Now that the days were turning cold, men in the city were looking for tonics to increase their vitality, which meant that dog meat pots were getting fired up. We supplied the city with dog meat, and had to attend to the issue of canine water-cleansing. The animals could inflict serious damage if they were spooked, and a knockout drug could solve that problem. Once the dogs were doped, we could hang them up and start the treatment. That done, it wouldn't matter if they came to, since they'd be more like pigs than dogs and no longer a threat. All that remained then was to drag them over to the killing room, not dead but barely alive.
‘I'm told it's a red powder bomb that makes a muffled noise when it hits the ground and releases a pink mist and a strange smell somewhere between fragrant and noxious. Even an attack dog will keel over after one whiff.’ In a tone that was equal parts anger and dread, he added, ‘Those thieves are no different than women who drug and kidnap children. They all belong to secret societies, and ordinary peasants have no way of laying hands on their formulas. It's probably some strange concoction we could never track down.’
My eyes travelled down to the old fellow's bleary-eyed dogs. ‘Did you get that bunch drunk?’
‘Two jin of liquor and four steamed buns,’ he replied. ‘Liquor these days has lost its punch.’
Jiaojiao was squatting in front of the dogs, prodding their oily lips with a reed stem, occasionally revealing a white fang. Their breath reeked of alcohol. From time to time one would roll its eyes and make dreamy sounds.
A man pushed a scale on squeaky wheels over to the dog pens from the warehouse, the hook swaying back and forth. For the sake of convenience, we'd built a pen exclusively for dogs near the one that held sheep and pigs. What made that necessary was an incident involving a worker who'd entered the pen holding all the animals together to pick out one of the pigs, and had been badly bitten by dogs turned half mad from being penned up too long. He was still in the hospital receiving daily shots of anti-rabies vaccine—vaccine that had already expired, according to someone from the hospital who spoke in confidence.