War Trash (48 page)

"You're supposed to have five minutes to make up your mind," he reminded me.

"I have decided to go home," I said.

The young interpreter looked askance at me, perhaps annoyed that I didn't need his help.

"Your request is granted," the arbitrator said. "Please go to the door in the right corner."

"Thank you, sir." I stood up and bowed.

As I was about to turn away, Chaolin rushed over and stretched out his hand, which I shook, his palm clammy. Then he embraced me, his breath sour and hot. Both of us burst into tears and held each other tightly. He murmured, "Yuan, I thought we'd lost you. Thank heaven, you came back alive. This is a miracle!" I said nothing, weeping for a reason different from his. I felt hurt and helpless. Never had I thought I'd return to their ranks this way.

Together we headed for the door that led me to a different and unexpected fate. The whole thing had happened as if I had been in a trance.

36. A DIFFERENT FATE

That same afternoon with eleven other returnees I arrived at Kaesong, which was about ten miles northwest of the Demilitarized Zone. Before reaching there I dropped my Bible into the roadside brambles. When Commissar Pei and Ming saw me, they both hugged me and wept, apparently happy to see me back. I didn't cry this time, though my eyes misted over and my nose went stuffy. They told me that together we would be on our way back to China the next day. The return had happened so unexpectedly that I could hardly absorb its meaning.

The commissar looked at least ten years older than when I'd last seen him, with graying stubble on his chin and a heavy face that seemed more energetic than before. His hair was grizzled now and his hairline was almost an inch higher than it had been three years earlier; it made his forehead appear quite large. The look in his eyes was sad, but still full of confidence, and he walked with a straight back. I was amazed to see his feet encased in the same pair of rubber sneakers he had worn to cross the Yalu in the spring of 1951, although they were very tattered now, bumpy with stitches and patches (he had always refused to put on American shoes in the prison camp). Despite the affection he showed me, I couldn't but be of two minds about him because he had hurt me deeply. Ming, in contrast, was as convivial as before. He had a slight stoop, though his thick shoulders still looked strong. His catfish mouth smiled a lot as if he couldn't open it without letting out something funny.

A bizarre thing happened that afternoon. Toward four o'clock, an officer came to summon Ming and me to follow him to meet a Korean comrade. He led us into a nearby courtyard. The moment we entered the gate, I saw a middle-aged man in a gray Lenin suit gazing at us. I recognized him. "Mr. Park!" Ming cried, and we hurried up to him. He embraced us, and Ming shed some tears. Mr. Park couldn't speak Chinese, but he talked to us in Korean excitedly. From the look on his face and his gestures I guessed he was wishing us a happy future. He kept patting our shoulders and smiling kindly. He looked the same as the previous year, perhaps even more handsome because of his woolen suit.

Together we attended a reception held in Mr. Park's honor. On a table were some sliced ham, salted eggs, dried duck, kimchee, pickled turnip, and two bottles of Green Bamboo Leaves. When I spoke with Mr. Park through the help of his interpreter, congratulating him on his apparently good health and his achievement as the paramount leader of the Korean POWs, he grimaced. "My future is uncertain," he said, "but I'll be happy to see my family." As a junior officer, I couldn't ask him what he meant exactly. He drank several cups of the Chinese liquor, saying it tasted better than saki, its fragrant aftertaste staying longer in your mouth. After the reception, without delay he departed for Pyongyang. His jeep rolled away, its tailpipe issuing a plume of exhaust and its radio blaring out "The Anthem of the Korean People's Army." (Some years later, to my surprise, I read in a journal that Mr. Park had grown up in Russia and was a citizen of the Soviet Union. He had gone to college in Khabarovsk and was later assigned to supervise a collective farm there. He returned to Korea with the Russian Red Army to fight the Japanese. During his imprisonment in the top jail on Koje Island, for some reason he confessed to the Americans and told them how he had planned and executed the kidnapping of General Bell. The Americans treated him well afterward, but a year later he wanted to undefect, because he missed his family so much that he wished to see them even at the risk of being incarcerated by the North Korean authorities. That must have been why he grimaced and told me that his future was uncertain. Still, I'm puzzled. Why had he acted like a willful child? This is still a conundrum to me. In any case, I hope that his Soviet citizenship did protect him from being punished severely by the North Korean leaders.)

That evening, after a shave, we went to a cottage to be received by Major General Tong, a lean-faced man with a pointed nose and hawklike eyes. Over jasmine tea and boiled peanuts, the eighteen returned POWs briefly told him our stories. He listened to us attentively, and from time to time asked a question about other comrades. The general encouraged us to study hard to catch up on current affairs in China. He also said there was a recuperation center for the repatriates in Changtu County, Liaoning Province. We were all going to stay there for some time to recover. He and Commissar Pei had known each other before, so they remained in the house after the rest of us had left.

Ming and I stayed in the same room that night. We chatted for hours on end; there was so much to talk about. He told me that I had been sent to Pusan in his place because the commissar had depended on his service and wouldn't let him go no matter how much he wanted to. I realized he too had been a chess piece on Pei 's board, though I had been a more dispensable pawn. He felt sorry for having caused me so much suffering. My grudge against him abated somewhat, although I still believed Pei must also have meant to protect him by dispatching me to Pusan. Our conversation turned to the commissar, who Ming told me had often been depressed in the prison because Pei felt our country had abandoned us. Occasionally Pei craved alcohol so much that he even suggested bartering his felt hat for it with one of the maintenance men, but they had never done that. We also talked about Pei 's political career, with which our future might be entwined. I was afraid that he might not be well received by the Party. Ming smiled meaningfully, shaking his head and saying, "You're a smart man, Yuan."

"What do you mean?"

"To tell the truth, for some time Commissar Pei hasn't been in high spirits. He's afraid he'll be condemned and demoted by the Party once he goes back. But so far all signs are good. The higher-ups are very understanding and sympathetic. I'm sure he'll do fine."

I wasn't fully convinced, but his words comforted me some. If Pei 's status remained intact, he would be in a position to protect the rest of us. Ming added, "You shouldn't worry too much. You haven't joined the Party yet. If anything bad happens, I'm sure it will affect the Party members first. You'll be the last one to get into trouble."

That made sense and I felt relieved. He went on to tell me that the commissar was now confident that the Party would appreciate our heroic struggle in the prison camps, especially the raising of our flags on the National Day. Gradually the topic shifted to our personal lives. We both wanted to marry as soon as possible, because life had become so precious to us that we didn't want to waste a single day.

At about two in the morning, Commissar Pei returned, his eyes radiating a soft light. He said he had drunk too much tea and couldn't sleep. So we continued to chat. Outside, the autumn wind was rustling the oak trees and blowing more leaves down. Now and then an acorn dropped on the roof, rolling all the way down and falling to the ground with a crisp thud.

"Yuan," Commissar Pei said in a tobacco-roughened voice, "I want to ask you a serious question."

"Sure," I said.

"Would you like to join the Communist Party?"

Taken aback, I hesitated for a moment, then answered, "I want to, but I don't think I'm qualified yet."

"Why not?" Ming put in.

"I went to the Huangpu Military Academy, and for the last few months I got entangled with the Nationalist followers again."

"Don't take that as a burden," the commissar said. "I sent you to the reregistration and the Party is responsible for what happened. As for your past in the Nationalist academy, you have done enough to correct it."

How could I correct my past? His remark amazed me. Ming said, "Don't be so modest, Yuan. You've contributed a lot to our struggle in the prison camps. You're qualified."

"Yes," Pei said, "I can't think of another comrade, except maybe Ming, who has done more than you for our struggle. I don't mean to force you to apply for Party membership. But if you do want to, keep in mind that I'll be happy to be your advocate."

"The same here," Ming added.

"Thank you, I'll remember that," I said.

That ended our long day. A rooster crowed from the village and dawn was breaking, so we all went to bed to catch a few hours' sleep before we set out for China. My heart was again filled with warm feelings. In every way it seemed right for me to go back.

The first snow had covered Changtu Town when we arrived, and the crowns of trees, in which sparrows were twittering hungrily, looked like clouds. The returned POWs were billeted in a large barracks, altogether over six thousand men. The place was called the Repatriates Center. During the first two weeks, some top provincial officials came to visit us. They brought along live pigs and sheep, thousands of solicitous letters from the civilians, and an opera troupe that performed for us twice. One afternoon some girls from a local middle school came to sing to us and presented us with two huge bouquets of fresh flowers. On top of those, a hefty brass medal was conferred on every one of us. The leaders in charge of the center told us that we should rest well and study some to catch up with the country, and that soon we would all go to different jobs. So we felt excited and grateful. The returned officers ranking above regimental commander stayed at a guesthouse in the compound, but they and everyone else had the same kind of board, which was good, much better than what regular servicemen ate. We often had meat and fish; tofu and vegetables were plentiful, though there was more wheaten food than rice, which was scarce in the Northeast. In spite of the nourishing diet, most of us still looked sallow and much older than the staff members running this place who were roughly our age, as though we had all joined their parents' generation. Some fellows already had bald heads and gray beards, and some had lost their teeth.

To my delight, I found my young friend Shanmin here, who hadn't changed much, though he was a bit taller. He told me that Weiming had suffered a stroke and had been hospitalized in Shenyang City. Together we wrote him a letter, but we never heard from that good man.

During the first few weeks we went to study sessions to be briefed about the development of our country, but mostly we relaxed, just to recuperate, and tried to enjoy ourselves. All the men were fond of hot baths, which I rarely took for fear of revealing my tattoo to others in the bathhouse. When I had to bathe myself, I would face a wall while undressing, and would wrap a towel around my waist on my way to a pool. I was not alone in bearing such an embarrassing mark; more than forty men had anti-Communist slogans on their bodies too. I went to the clinic and begged Dr. Liang to remove the tattoo from my belly. He had been helping some other men, cutting the shameful words and signs off their skin. Sometimes he didn't get rid of the whole thing and just removed a word or two to make a dark phrase unintelligible or give it a new meaning. He knew English and would play with the alphabet. In my case, he said the procedure should be easy: he suggested keeping the word FUCK and just erasing all the letters in the word COMMUNISM except the U and the S. I was reluctant at first, but an officer in charge of disciplinary work, who happened to be present, clapped and said this was a wonderful idea, so I agreed. The doctor did a good job and even added three dots behind each word. As a result, the original tattoo was transformed into FUCK… U… S…

We had all written home as soon as we arrived at the Repatriates Center, but not many of us received mail. I was anxious. So was Ming, whose fiancee was in Canton and should have been able to get his letters within three or four days.

From the fifth week on the real study sessions began. By now we had been left in the charge of the Northeastern Military Command; in other words, the leaders in Beijing had washed their hands of us. We were all ordered to confess the crimes we had committed in the enemy's prisons and to contrast ourselves with the hero Huang Jiguang, who had hurled himself on an American machine gun at the embrasure of a bunker after he ran out of grenades. The people running the study sessions announced to us these three principles, which we must follow from now on:

1) The very fact that you became captives is shameful. You could have fought the enemy to your last breath but you did not. Therefore you are cowards.

2) How could cowards carry on the struggle against our enemy? Even if there were some resistance activities in the prisons, they mainly originated from your need for survival. So you have no merit to talk about and must confess your wrongdoings and crimes.

3) You must blame yourselves for your captivity and must not attribute it to any external cause.

The study sessions terrified us. Whoever had served as a leader in the prison camps was now labeled a collaborator, and whoever had told his captors his true name and his unit's serial number was classified as someone who "betrayed state secrets." The fact that you had smoked American cigarettes meant that you had succumbed to the enemy; it was forgivable that you had eaten their food, but your acceptance of the luxury of tobacco was submission. My four merit citations were gone like smoke, not to mention those special ones Pei Shan had issued to the dead men buried on Cheju Island. Many returnees were outraged by this sudden development and often buttonholed Commissar Pei, complaining about the unfair treatment and begging him to protect them and get the citations back for them. In their eyes he was still a demigod who embodied the Communist Party, so they wanted him to confirm their awards, which might have proved their loyalty to our country. He promised to have the citations validated, though by now he must have known that his superiors would never acknowledge them.