War Trash (39 page)

Unless I had to, I didn't sing with others. My young friend Shanmin enjoyed singing, and I didn't discourage him. I spent more time reading English-language newspapers. It was my job to glean information for our leaders, so nobody interfered with my reading. Often tired of news articles, I craved a good book, a long novel or biography. This mental deprivation was more painful to me than hunger. Sometimes I sat alone with an old issue of Stars and Stripes on my lap, but my eyes couldn't register the meanings of the words as I sank into thought. This manner of sitting, however, was a safe way to indulge in my own thinking. I felt that when I was alone, my mind would be clearer and more alert. I didn't have to join the inmates in the morning exercises; instead, I would read loudly for an hour to practice my spoken English, which was also my job.

Barely having enough to eat, I couldn't run as often as I wished. Sometimes I did dozens of squats inside the shed, deliberately putting more weight on my injured leg; once in a while I ran a few laps along the fence of our compound. If I had been given enough food, I would have been happy to labor like a coolie every day, because I believed that physical work and fresh air could keep me from rotting away in jail. I wanted to return home healthy and strong. I was not yet twenty-five and should have a long life ahead.

But I wasn't well fit for hard labor. I once left the camp with fifty men to dig ditches in the South Korean army's training base, where recruits were drilled before they were shipped to the Korean mainland. The work was exhausting, though once in a while you could be lucky enough to find a turnip or a sweet potato left in the fields. That morning we set off at eight and dug away for a whole day with only a half-hour break for the midday meal. It drizzled in the afternoon; few of us had brought our rain ponchos, and by the time we returned in the evening, most of us were drenched. I couldn't get up the next morning, aching all over, and remained sick for several days. The doctor forbade me to join the ditch diggers again. My bad leg, not having fully recovered from the injury yet, couldn't stand the long hours of work. Oddly enough, this experience made me see that some of the "artists" stayed in the barracks for artistic creation perhaps because they wanted to shun physical labor, from which only officers and the disabled could be exempted. This realization instilled into me some contempt for those able-bodied shirkers.

Being an interpreter, I was regarded as an officer by the Americans and the prisoners, who literally called me "Officer Interpreter." So the inmates didn't like my joining them in their work, as if I was a nuisance to them. My bad leg wasn't strong enough for me to carry anything heavier than sixty pounds; this made me a poor hand when we unloaded a ship or truck. Some men often poked fun at me, though good-naturedly, saying they didn't need a scholar around when they were slaving away. But I wasn't a total weakling in their eyes. We had arm-wrestled several times, and I could beat many of them.

The work I liked best was shoveling, which could tone my muscles without overstraining my injured leg. At first, when I used a shovel, I would drip with sweat and have a sore back and hot, swollen hands in the evening. But gradually I adopted a rhythm when shoveling dirt or sand or gravel. I could apply a shovel with a swing of my upper body like a skilled laborer. Whenever there was shoveling to do, I would volunteer to go. Sometimes they took me and sometimes they didn't. Wet mud was much harder to shovel, but because so many hands were available, we would tie a rope to the shaft of a shovel, just above its scoop, and have two men pull at both ends of the rope to help the shoveler lift a pile of mud. This rhythmical group shoveling could be fun if you were teamed with the right men, with whom you could swap jokes.

Behind our kitchen sat a grinding stone, at which we often crushed grain to groats. I would volunteer to rotate the stone by pushing a long rod attached to it. I liked this work very much because it could exercise both of my legs and, working alone, I didn't have to hurry. Most people wouldn't toil at the grinding stone and some called it a donkey's job, so I often did the grinding. At times when I was done, the cooks would give me something to eat, a bowl of pea soup or a piece of dried fish, which made the work more rewarding. Gradually I could see that some men thought of me as an eccentric – they wondered why an officer, a college graduate, would condescend to labor like themselves. I never explained why, just saying I enjoyed it.

There was another advantage in doing some physical work. An educated man like me tended to be accused of having deliberately separated himself from others. If I often worked with my hands, few people could say I had put on airs. In fact, the battalion leaders praised me several times for my integration with our men. They mistook my voluntary labor for an educational task I had imposed on myself, like the kind of education the Party had always called on intellectuals to undergo conscientiously.

One evening my friends Shanmin and Weiming returned from the GIs' quarters, where they had been detailed to plant grass. They told me excitedly that they had eaten their fill in that barracks, where they had come upon a trash can stuffed with cartons that still contained half-eaten bread, roast beef, carrots, and sliced cucumber. "What's this, do you know? Lard or soap?" Weiming showed me a yellowish chunk, the size of a matchbox.

"Cheese," I said. "It's very nutritious, made from milk."

"Damn, we should've taken all the leftovers back," he said to Shanmin. He stroked his belly, on which slanted a scar like a giant centipede. His navel was huge and cavernous.

Shanmin told me, "There were many cubes of this cheese in the trash can. We weren't sure if it was edible."

"We tried it," said Weiming, "but couldn't swallow it, so we didn't bring the rest with us."

"Men, you left behind the best stuff." I was salivating a little.

So he gave me the cheese, which I put into my mouth, chewing with relish, though it was stale. They were both amazed. "You have a diplomat's stomach and can eat anything," said Weiming, smiling and shaking his round head.

29. A SURPRISE

One day in mid-January, two hundred men from our compound were sent to unload a large cargo ship at the wharf. I went with them. We carried sacks and bundles to the shore and piled them on the ground so that they could be transported to the warehouses near the camp later on. For lunch we were each given a hard roll and an apple, so we were happy about the work. There was no wind, and the ocean looked placid and somewhat opalescent, wavelets flickering in sunlight. Though it was wintertime, it was quite warm.

Interpreter Peng, the officer from Taiwan, accompanied the two squads of GIs guarding us. He was a quiet man and seldom spoke a word unless he had to. His English was mannered, slightly British. He seemed lonesome. For a whole day he continually read a dog-eared book under a willow and didn't mix much with the GIs. At the end of the work, we formed up for him to do the head count. He directed ten of us at a time to step aside to join those he had already counted. Done with the last batch of us, he found one man was missing. He demanded that every squad leader conduct a roll call to see who was absent.

Shanmin tugged my sleeve and whispered, "Weiming's not here." I was taken aback; but convinced that our friend would never escape alone, I reported his absence to Interpreter Peng.

Meanwhile Sergeant Harris, the commander of the two squads escorting us, was enraged. And we were worried too, looking around for Weiming. Then I caught sight of his back in the wattle bushes over a hundred yards away. I had heard that he suffered loose bowels these days, and I thought he might be having a movement, so I pointed him out. Interpreter Peng saw Weiming too. "He's there," he told the sergeant.

"Goddammit!" Harris shouted at Weiming, "What are you doing over there? Get your big ass back here." His breath smelled awful, like underarm odor, though he chewed gum constantly.

Weiming didn't respond, as if he had heard nothing. I broke in, "He's suffering from dysentery recently. Let me go get him back." Without waiting for permission I strode away toward the bushes.

The sergeant followed me; so did Officer Peng. When we reached the bushes, Weiming still didn't budge, his naked posterior in clear view.

"Are you deaf?" Harris yelled at him.

Still there was no response. The sergeant stepped over and pulled Weiming's ear from behind, but the squatting man made no sound, as if lost in concentrating on his business. Harris walked around and pinched his cheek; still Weiming didn't say a word, though he winced this time. The sergeant seized his hair and yanked; Weiming shuffled forward a few steps, revealing two dark turds on the sand. At the sight of the solid feces, Harris flew into a rage. He kicked Weiming's backside ferociously and sent him up to his feet. Without wiping himself, Weiming pulled up his pants while the sergeant battered him with his rifle butt.

"Ouch, ouch!" my friend finally said. "I have a stomachache!"

Interpreter Peng told the sergeant, "He has stomach trouble."

To our astonishment, Harris picked up a turd with his bayonet, thrust it to Weiming's mouth, and ordered, "Open wide!"

Weiming was too flabbergasted to say a word. The sergeant yelled at him again, "Eat this! It'll cure your stomach problem. If you don't, I'll finish you off right here."

Weiming looked at me and then at Interpreter Peng, but he wouldn't open his mouth. I intervened, saying, "Sarge, please don't be so – "

"Shut up!" His elbow jabbed me in the sternum. "You fucking liar! You said he had dysentery. Look at his shit, solid like stone. I tell you, if you mess with my job again, I'm gonna make you eat the other piece." He resumed kicking Weiming.

Strangely enough, Interpreter Peng said in his clipped English, "Sergeant, please stop abusing him. He just answered a call of nature. We all do the same."

These unmodulated words seemed to stun Harris, who looked at the interpreter for a moment, then asked, "What did you say?"

"Please stop beating him."

"Who the fuck do you think you are? Get out of my face!"

With trembling lips Peng said, "Colonel Kelly assigned me to accompany you, so I too am responsible for keeping order here. If you don't like my suggestion, you can complain to your superiors."

"You little shit, you think you can order me around?"

"You have been unreasonable."

"Whose side are you on, eh?"

"That has nothing to do with this. You're wrong. Who can eat his own shit?"

"Fuck you, chink! You're helping them Commies. You think I can't see through you?"

While they were wrangling, I dragged Weiming back into the ranks of the prisoners. I was afraid that Sergeant Harris would attack the interpreter. But a moment later they came back, both with sullen faces. Officer Peng didn't walk with the GIs on the way back to the camp; instead, he followed us, alone and rather absentminded. I turned to glance at him from time to time. He looked pensive, his face tauter than an hour ago.

Back in our compound, Weiming described the incident to the other prisoners, who were all amazed, because we had always held in contempt the Nationalist officers working here and believed all they dared to do was say "Yes sir" to the Americans. Nobody had expected that the interpreter would intercede for a POW, an enemy he was supposed to hate. A week later Officer Peng left the camp. Some people said he had been called back to Taiwan, some believed he had applied for a discharge of his own accord, and some guessed he might have gotten demoted. What happened to him? I asked several Americans, but they didn't know either.

I have often thought of this scrawny man. Over the years, his smooth face and close-set eyes have grown more and more distinct in my memory.

30. THE FINAL ORDER

Winter was short on Cheju, though it wasn't over in February yet. Nothing newsworthy had happened since November. It was peaceful on the island, but the peace was not easy for our leaders to take. We had learned that the truce talks at Panmunjom had broken off some months ago and hadn't yet resumed. One day in late February, Colonel Kelly informed us that four of our officers must go to Pusan to get reregistered. Among them were Hao Chaolin and Chang Ming. We all thought they would be interrogated again, and that probably the Americans meant to put them away before the repatriation began. Ming was still with Commissar Pei in the prison house; it might do him good to get out of the confinement for some time, though the reregistration sounded treacherous. I often saw him moving left and right behind the window of that cell, transmitting messages. His movement was slow. His health had deteriorated, and I had heard that he suffered from arthritis. The inside of that prison was extremely damp; it was on the edge of the beach, and sometimes at high tide, seawater would reach the base of the exterior wall.

A message regarding the reregistration was sent to Commissar Pei. The next afternoon he replied: "Feng Wen cannot leave his job. Ask Feng Yan to go for him. The four officers should contact the underground Party at Pusan and build a channel of communication." Ming's listed name was Feng Wen and mine Feng Yan – we shared the same family name. That must have been one of the reasons I was ordered to take his place. Before we received Pei's message, a returned "troublemaker" from the prison house had delivered to us Ming's POW ID tag, which was a card six inches by three, bearing information on his birthplace and date of birth, family members, education, rank, conscript time, and the serial number of his former army unit. At the top of the card was his POW number: 720143. Plainly Pei wanted me to take Ming's tag with me.

Having read the message, I was overtaken by anger and fear. I left my shed without a word and walked along the barbed-wire fence alone. The yard was slushy in places and the mud felt sticky under my boots, but I didn't care and just let my feet go anywhere they wanted. My face was hot, as if I were running a temperature, and I kicked whatever was in the way, pebbles, tin cans, bottle caps, twigs, mule droppings. Soon my boots, caked with mud, felt twice their normal weight. The wind tossed up a couple of tattered leaves, whose ribs and veins hadn't rotted yet; the leaves now tumbled around and now dropped flat. Outside the camp, the ground looked fecund, already pierced by the sprouting grass. In the southeast, nutmeg trees were green with tiny leaves, and their thick boles brightened, whitish in the last sunlight. I was angry about the commissar's decision, my throat aching. Indeed Ming was his interpreter, secretary, code man, and signalman, yet I could easily have replaced him without interrupting the regular work and communication. With a little training, I could learn how to use the Pei Code and how to transmit and receive messages from that cell. At most it would take me two days to master the skills. Why did I have to go in place of Ming?