The Distant Land of My Father (39 page)

The sounds of the place were eerie, too strange to ever become routine. Because of the way the buildings were built, the acoustics were like those of a concert hall. There were more than two thousand men in each block, and every one of them could hear everything that went on in the building, even just one man talking in a normal voice. On a winter afternoon when the rain nagged at the windows and ceiling and walls, they were waiting for their second meal, and except for the rain, the whole place was silent. And then they heard the old Buddhist at the other end of the hall say, “Waiter, bring me twenty ravioli, will you?” and the place was filled with the unfamiliar sound of laughter.

At night there were whistles that told them what to do. The first whistle meant get ready for bed, and the prisoners would unroll their blankets or whatever they had. The second whistle meant get in bed, and the third whistle meant lights out. When the place fell into darkness, there was an ocean of voices that heaved one huge sigh, a sound of fatigue and despair and pain. And then the music would start, the guards playing one of the two records they had, either Artie Shaw’s “Lady Be Good” or a somber piece by a German orchestra—no one ever knew its name.

Late in the night on the second Christmas Eve, the solid silence of the place was broken by someone’s beautiful singing of “O Holy Night,” and my father recognized the rich voice and strong New Orleans accent, and he lay in his cell and listened in awe. The man’s deep voice echoed through the corridors and cells, and my father thought he even felt its vibration inside of him.
Fall on your knees, oh hear the angels’ voices, Oh night divine, oh night when Christ was born.
My father listened as though the sound could save him.

The man singing was Mitch Patten, my father was sure. He’d run the Shanghai office of J. T. Edwards Ltd., cotton controllers of Boston, and my father had known him through business and seen him at parties. Both of them were man-about-town types. Mitch was young, only twenty-eight, and tall and handsome, over six feet, an extrovert who loved a party and a good time. On a warm night some months later, my father heard Mitch’s voice again, this time against a backdrop of commotion: the sounds of someone thrashing about, the banging of metal against the walls, the sound of Mitch’s voice as he wept and yelled. The place was silent as everyone listened unwillingly to his collapse, and then to the sound of the guards trying to subdue him. But he finally just wore himself out, and my father listened to the sound of Mitch’s cell being unlocked as he was taken from it, then the sounds of footsteps as Mitch was led down the hall and finally chained to the bars of my father’s cell, where he collapsed on the hallway floor, weeping. “Some American company for you,” the guard whispered, and then they’d left Mitch there for the night. As my father listened to him weep, he repeated a Cantonese phrase that Father McKenna used often:
Pu yao pa, pu yao pa.
Do not be afraid.

In the morning Mitch was taken away, and there were only whispered rumors about how everything had been so sudden, and how he’d torn his clothes and thrown his waste bucket and smeared excrement on the wall. My father did not speak for four days afterward.

Like all prisoners, my father was given paper and pencil and told to think over what he had done with his life, and to then write his confession, which was to include where he had gone wrong.
T’anpai,
the guards said over and over again,
t’anpai!,
confess! He was also to write his complete life history, a detailed account of the events of his life since the age of six. The questions to be answered were extensive and detailed: What is your age, your place of birth? Who are your parents, your siblings? What are their occupations? What schools have you attended, what courses did you take? When did you arrive in China, and what places have you visited? Do you have guns at home? To what political party do you belong? Do you know President Truman? Do you own land? What are your attitudes toward the officials of the People’s Republic of China?

When he’d answered all the questions, the completed forms were carefully folded and taken away, and my father never saw them again. And then he was asked to write it all again, and again after that, a total of five times in the course of his imprisonment.

He, like hundreds of others, was accused of being a spy. More than that he didn’t know, until late one winter’s night in 1953 when a guard called his name and unlocked the heavy steel door, then told him to come along. He led my father down the dimly lit passageway and then downstairs into what felt like a dungeon, further down than he’d ever been before. His legs were stiff and cramped from confinement and inactivity, and he shuffled as he walked.

He was taken to a small room at the end of a corridor. The sign on the door said
COMMANDANT
. The guard knocked and was told to enter, and when my father followed him into the room, he found the warden of the jail, Colonel Wang. He was sitting at his desk, smoking a long tailored cigarette. Next to him was a simple table covered with a red cloth, where a Chinese girl sat at a typewriter. On his other side was a guard whose eyes were closed, and my father wondered if he was sleeping.
As well he should be,
my father thought, for he guessed it was the middle of the night. The jail was eerily silent.

The guard motioned for my father to be seated on a hard wooden chair that had been placed directly in front of the colonel’s desk. He did as he was told, and the guard trained a bright light across his face. And then the colonel began to speak.

He addressed my father by his Chinese name, and he smiled broadly as though they were old friends. My father bowed, as he was required to, and the colonel nodded. “Such good manners! And from an American!”

My father said nothing, waiting.

“We have something to talk about, but first you need food, do you not?” The colonel stared at my father for a moment, and he nodded. “I see that you do,” the colonel said, and he motioned to the guard, who handed my father a bowl.

My father stared at the bowl and saw that it held an egg. He had had very little protein for months, and he had to resist the urge to crack the egg and wolf it down on the spot. But he didn’t want the colonel to have that pleasure, so he said casually, “Thank you.”

The colonel smiled again. “Go ahead. Eat. You will need your strength. And protein is good for the mind.”

My father cracked the egg open and stared for a moment. There was a chick inside, pin feathers and all, and for a moment he thought he might be sick. He glanced at Colonel Wang and saw how carefully his reaction was being watched and enjoyed. It was all a test, or a dare, just a trick to see what he’d do. And so he did the most unpredictable thing he could think of: he ate the chick. At least there would be protein.

Colonel Wang grinned and nodded his approval. “A tough one,” he said. “China-born is a tough one all right,” he said. “Now, to our business, China-born. We have information that you have firearms at your house. You have refused to confess thus far; now we will make you confess. What about it?”

My father worked to keep his voice calm as he answered. “I have no illegal firearms,” he said. “The only firearm I have is a thirty-eight, which you gave me permission to have. I have a license for that, and I was keeping it only to protect myself. You know how the city is these days.”

Colonel Wang shook his head. “No,” he said, “you have plenty of firearms. You’ve got guns all over your place, you have ammunition in your house. We have found everything.”

My father said, “I don’t have guns. If I do, you can shoot me.”

Colonel Wang looked up and narrowed his eyes at my father, assessing him. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes.”

The colonel smiled and seemed pleased. “You think you can out-smart the people of China. You cannot. We know far too much. Let me illustrate. You are an expert polo player. You know a great deal about gardening. Though you are right-handed, you prefer to deal cards with your left hand. You call your former wife Eve, though she is known to everyone else as Genevieve.”

My father blanched at the colonel’s accuracy, but the colonel waved his reaction away. “But none of that is important just now. What’s important is this,” and he motioned to the guard and said, “Bring it in.”

The guard left the room for a moment. When he returned, he carried a basket full of firearms. On the top was the water-cooled machine gun.

My father was startled, but he looked at the colonel and said, “Yes, those are my guns. But they weren’t in my house. Everybody within five miles of my place knows I threw those guns into the pond.”

“No,” Colonel Wang said evenly, his tone scolding. “They were all over your house.”

“I threw them into the pond when the Nationalists came, long before you were here.”

Colonel Wang was still shaking his head. “China-born,” he said calmly, “do they look as though they have sat in mud?”

My father took a breath. “It is well known that I destroyed those guns.”

Colonel Wang leaned toward my father slightly. “So you think they are destroyed?”

“I’m certain of it.”.

“You will allow me to fire one at you?”

My father froze as the colonel pulled out a chrome-plated Remington .45. It looked like new. “If this gun has been sitting at the bottom of a pond for years, I am most surprised,” he said coyly.

“The only gun I had was a thirty-eight. That’s what I have told you. I have nothing to add.”

Colonel Wang aimed the gun at my father for a long moment. My father stood motionless, staring at the desk. He thought of Hungjao, and of the huge plane tree he had planted. He thought of the way my mother looked when she was getting ready for bed as she undid her hair and let it fall down her back. He thought of watching me sleep when I was small. And then he closed his eyes.

A minute passed. One of the guards shifted and stifled a yawn. Suddenly the colonel laughed, and he motioned to the guard. “Take him,” he said, pointing the gun at my father once more. And he placed the gun back in the basket.

The guard led my father back up the stairs, prodding him with his gun. My father concentrated on not tripping on the stairs—his knees shook, and the sweat that had soaked him had made his thin shirt cold and wet on his back.

“You’re pretty lucky guy,” the guard said.

“How’s that?” my father answered, trying to catch his breath.

The guard laughed. “Looks like no execution for you after all. Not tonight anyway. Lucky, lucky guy.”

His eyesight diminished, his legs weakened, he suffered from dysentery and he lost weight, going from a solid and barrel-chested two hundred pounds to a skeletal one hundred and thirty. Because he always chose thin rice for warmth, he became severely deficient in vitamin B, which led to beriberi, an illness of the nervous system. It started as a strange relaxed feeling in his legs, the sensation almost pleasant, and it grew to numbness and swelling and then to stabbing pain that made him cry out for the guards, annoying them so much that they placed him in solitary confinement, an octagonal cell six feet across and fifteen feet high. There was a small peephole in the door, and no vent or window. The floor was covered with a leather mat, the walls with leather mattresses, and when he entered the place, the crazy scratching on the walls told him that men had lost their minds in that room. He was allowed no change of clothing, no bathing, and given no water to wash his face. There was no waste bucket; he was given ashes to cover his excrement. But, the guards said, he could move and use his legs in there, and maybe that was what he needed.

It wasn’t. His condition only grew worse. And now he was alone.

The trustee who brought him his food was a Russian named Nikolai Petrovich, an old man with cataract-blurred eyes who smelled of cigarettes and something more pungent, and who always spoke of himself in the plural. On one of my father’s first days in the jail, Nikolai had admired my father’s heavy wool sweater. Even the opportunity to bribe a trustee was a godsend, and my father took the hint and handed the sweater over, hoping that it would someday help. It did. Nikolai took a liking to my father—”We think you’re not so bad,” he confided—and he did small favors for him. A little extra rice, an occasional cup of strong tea, an old pair of socks that Nikolai found in an empty cell, which my father used as mittens. My father viewed him as a future investment, the only one he had.