Brother Fish (52 page)

There was another reason the Chinese were not too concerned about having no perimeter fence and watchtowers – their network of undercover progressives. Doug Waterman had been informed on and accused of being on the escape committee and they'd dragged him off to the cells. I confess I had been so distressed and preoccupied with Jimmy's betrayal that I hadn't paid sufficient attention to this second catastrophe. When he returned ten days later I could barely recognise him. I had returned from the cells in pretty bad shape, but he was ten times worse. I sat beside his pallet where he lay motionless for three days, taking turns with his many friends to give him a little water. Finally on the fourth day he managed to talk, and he told me he could take no more.

‘You can do it, Dougie, we're almost there – the peace talks are progressing. Hang in, mate, we need you!' I begged.

‘Jacko, I've agreed to be an informer,' he whispered.

‘Me too!' I protested. ‘You don't have to inform, the beatings aren't too severe.' But my heart skipped a beat. My situation had been different. I genuinely didn't know anyone on the escape committee. I hadn't even been absolutely sure that Doug was a member. But he probably knew everyone on it and if the Chinese hadn't got their names from him they eventually would – nothing was more certain.

Doug lay on his bed and looked at the wall and said not a word more. We tried everything, even force-feeding him, but the food just came up again. Finally he refused water, and his eyes remained mostly closed for the next three days. He had survived the death march. He had survived near-starvation, the brutality of the earlier camp and the harsh punishments that killed so many of his mates. But he couldn't survive the shame of being an informer. The thought of the further torture to come if he didn't inform was too much, and his spirit had finally been broken. A week after he came back from the cells I was seated beside his bed and he whispered through cracked lips that he wanted water. My heart surged, and I reached for the tin mug on the floor beside him and poured a few drops into his mouth. He opened his eyes and looked up at me. ‘I'm so ashamed,' he said, and then he died.

We buried him the following day, and while I wept I was conscious that I was also weeping for myself. I had lost a mate who refused to betray his friends and one who had willingly done so. The day of Doug's funeral was without any doubt the most miserable of my life. I confess that on more than one occasion during the days that followed I determined to join Doug Waterman. But I guess I didn't have the guts to kill myself, and decided I would have to leave it to the Chinese to do it for me. I vowed that I would remain a reactionary with whatever defiance remained in me until they did the job and I was put out of my misery.

If I appear to be wallowing in self-pity then I apologise. Being an informer, I found myself utterly alone. I couldn't talk to anyone, or they to me. Most things concerning the human soul are healed by talk, and I lived and breathed among a thousand men yet I was completely isolated. While things were hotting up, and the interrogation sessions getting more and more intense, even Dinh seemed to give up on me. This had the effect of isolating me even further – even my intellectual enemy had withdrawn from me. He would send me off to be beaten without explaining the reason. I seemed to have become impervious to pain. ‘More,' I'd say to them. ‘Kill me now, you bastards!' Looking back it was too bloody pathetic for words, and I still feel ashamed thinking about it.

Despite the hard work the Chinese were putting in with their boots, the long cane and their various tortures, they were not having it all their own way. Their precious progressives, who had become the foot soldiers of our oppression, were copping a heap. Though I can't speak for myself, as I was too numbed and isolated to be a part of anything, quite suddenly there was resistance coming from the prisoners. This was sparked off when the Chinese proudly paraded Corporal O'Rourke and announced that he'd seen ‘the truth' and was henceforth a progressive. He was attacked and cut about and discovered bleeding behind the latrines one night, and then several of the more odious progressives received the same treatment. Some of the progressives reported the attackers, who were badly beaten by the Chinese. But then posters began to appear with the headline ‘Traitors and Spies', followed by the names of the better known progressives and others who had been secretly informing on their mates. I lived in dread that my name might appear, even though I hadn't given the chinks any information and continued to take my weekly beatings. The posters promised never to forget the treachery and ended with the words, ‘You cannot kill us all, and the last man standing will carry your names to justice. We will never forget your treachery!!'

Perhaps the most effective morale booster came when the poster of Chairman Mao on the wall of the camp headquarters was defaced one night with the slogan, ‘Running Dog of the Russian Imperialists!' And another of Joe Stalin, only recently displayed, was altered to read ‘Emperor of China'. In retrospect these captions may not seem like very courageous initiatives, but in the context of the time they were enormously brave – the perpetrators risked their lives in the process. In the eyes of the Chinese, the disfigurement of the posters was a crime that merited the death sentence.

The peace talks seemed to have slowed down and
The Daily Worker
, our only source of information, mirroring the line of the petition we had been forced to sign, accused America of stalling the negotiations so that the greedy Wall Street capitalists could continue to enjoy the profits of war. Tucked away in the same issue was a small piece that suggested that part of the continuing negotiations might involve each side exchanging prisoners. You couldn't believe anything you read in
The Daily Worker
, but for a moment my heart soared. Though almost as quickly my common sense told me not to be fooled by what I'd read. But what this did mean was that in some small part of me hope remained.

The weeks passed with working parties unloading rice and more of the same daily routines, but with the disruptions continuing. Nobody seemed to know who was responsible, and while the guards became more active and vigilant the incidents didn't stop. Whoever was behind this continued defiance must have controlled a pretty tight-lipped mob because no one had yet broken ranks. Perhaps most of the reactionary prisoners
did
know who was behind the continued fracas, but morale had lifted to such an extent that even the wimps became bold and the secret was kept.

I longed to be a part of this covert revolution but I was outside the loop. It was like being a ghost, aware that you are present among people but that they appear unable to see you. As a child, one of the most onerous punishments at primary school was known as ‘being sent to purgatory'. This was when the other kids were instructed not to talk to you. I can remember how even after a couple of hours of this treatment a small child would be reduced to copious tears. Now, with Doug Waterman gone and Jimmy out of my life, I found myself in a continual state of purgatory.

I had also come to realise how very much I had depended on Jimmy's presence in my life. His peculiar syntax and grammar had added colour and humour to even the darkest hours, and his sanguine outlook had never failed to lift me out of my despair. After I recovered sufficiently from the initial shock of his betrayal, what puzzled me was that his ‘betrayal speech' had been delivered in almost perfect English. It drove me crazy thinking why this might be, or even how he'd achieved the change in the way he spoke. I'd not, even once, heard him speak this way – even as a send-up or while telling a joke. I was unaware he could speak in any other manner than in his ‘dis'n'dat' vernacular. Was he trying to get some sort of message to me? If so, what was it? Was he telling me not to take what he was doing seriously? If so, it hadn't worked. I was unable to convince myself that this was the reason.

I mean, the whole way he'd gone about it was totally alien to his personality. If Jimmy had decided to convert to communism he would have thought it out carefully and talked about it to me. There were no secrets between us. Besides, Jimmy never did anything spontaneously. He was a natural-born thinker. He would have argued, debated, persuaded, turned every aspect upside down and the right way up again. That was his way. He was the most persuasive person I had ever known and could talk the hind leg off a donkey, but he always made sense. He'd often talked about the situation of Negroes in America and the injustice meted out to coloured folk. He'd remarked bitterly about the disparities in misdemeanour sentencing and the disproportionate numbers of Negro prisoners within the US prison system. But he'd always seen it as an ongoing struggle against racism, and was completely aware that America wasn't unique in this respect. We had also discovered that the Chinese were racist, particularly against blacks, and that a dogma such as communism wasn't going to be the answer for the American Negro.

He'd once remarked, ‘It done start in da bible, Brother Fish. It say we da chillen of Ham – we gotta hew wood and draw water for-evah, man. Amen! But dat time der ain't no Christians. So, how come it da Christian folk dat hate da Negro? Dey all Jews dat time, and da Christians dey
also
hate da Jews? Dat don't make no sense. Da Jews, dey don't hate da Negro – no way, man. King Solomon, he done marry dat Queen o' Sheba – she black da ace of spades. He da wisest man in da world at dat time, and he gone marry dat beautiful queen.' It was one of Jimmy's more playful theories but it clearly indicated that he didn't simply blame America for the troubles of his human tribe.

So, why had he remained silent? Despite the fact that I'd warned him not to give me any pertinent information, I told myself surely this was different. Spilling the beans to my Chinese interrogators by telling them he'd decided to be a progressive wouldn't be informing or spying. Just the opposite, I would be bringing them glad tidings, and the news would have been accepted as another coup in the cause of communism.
Why, why, why?
It damn near drove me crazy.

The Chinese announced another parade in front of headquarters, this time to listen to some visiting expert pronouncing ‘the truth'. His truth was titled ‘Russia, the Workers' Paradise'. I confess I was beyond listening, simply too mentally exhausted to take in any more communist claptrap. I could hear words and phrases such as ‘capitalist oppression', ‘working class no longer shackled', ‘production lifted by 300 per cent', blah, blah, blah, when I felt a sudden tugging at my sleeve.

‘Don't turn 'round, Brother Fish,' Jimmy's voice said. My heart started to pound fiercely but I managed to nod my head. ‘We meet two nights' time, one o'clock, da millet storehouse behind da latrines. Trust me.' I nodded again, suddenly feeling quite dizzy. Then he added, ‘Bring yo' parka an' dress warm.'

The speaker raved on and on for an hour or so but I didn't hear another word. My mind filled with possibilities, not all of them good. Perhaps Jimmy was trying to compromise me – there'd be guards waiting when I arrived at the storehouse and I'd be placed back in the cells for attempting to escape. His advice to dress warm and to wear my parka could have been so that the chinks would be further convinced that I'd planned to escape. I'm ashamed of this and other such thoughts now, but at the time my confusion, disappointment and distrust were so great, anything seemed plausible.

Moving very far from your compound unobserved after curfew, or at any time, wasn't easy. The camp comprised a large number of staff, and every one of them saw it as their duty to report even the slightest suspicious movement. The staff lived in the tin-roofed accommodation scattered throughout the camp, which meant there were always eyes on the lookout for aberrant behaviour. The Chinese people, if nothing else, were ever-conscientious in their duties towards the State.

However, both the staff and the guards were accustomed to seeing prisoners going to the latrines at any time during the day and night. Dysentery was so common among the men that the guards took no notice of someone shambling towards this building, which had been built on the outskirts of the compound, supposedly to prevent the smell from reaching their own accommodation. Though why they'd put a millet storehouse close to the latrines was difficult to fathom – it was yet another example of Chinese inscrutability, and the joke, of course, was that this was one of the reasons why the food tasted like shit.

Next day I checked my sandshoes and made sure the laces were strong. Those of us still wearing our boots on arrival at the camp had soon lost them on the grounds that they might help us to escape. It wasn't long before they'd appeared on the feet of the guards. As the Chinese are a small race it was amusing to see a pair of size-eleven boots on the feet of a diminutive guard. These became known as ‘Horace boots' after the cartoon character Horace Horse. I also had a small store of food that I'd pilfered, one handful at a time, while unloading rice on working parties, when inevitably a sack would be dropped on a carefully positioned sharp-edged rock so that it broke open. We took turns getting beaten for this ‘accident'.

On the afternoon of the second day I left the political discussion group on three occasions saying I had a touch of dysentery, and watched as Lieutenant Dinh noted my various departures down in his notebook. Nobody would suspect me for doing a runner, though on the other hand, if all this was a set-up, it would be further evidence of my intention to escape. I wore all my clothes to bed and at a quarter to one that morning, wrapped in my blanket (the usual way to go to the latrines in the cold) I left my room in the barracks. Jimmy was waiting for me, and without saying a word we hid as a strolling sentry passed, then headed south into the hills.