Xu Lei - Search for the Buried Bomber

After his shock, Wang Sichuan vomited from nausea and lay dazed for a long time. There was an ironwork wall beyond the power-distribution room. When he heard the sirens, he took refuge in the iron chamber to rest. There were some mishaps in the iron chamber, but he said they weren’t worth relating. And now he’d opened the door and ran into us.

I patted him on the back and gave a deep sigh at his incredible fortune. How lucky it was that he was such a big guy. Had it been me, I would surely be burned black all over and long dead.

We each let out a deep breath. Seeing Wang Sichuan, I felt my whole being relax. Ma Zaihai was still young, and not only was the deputy squad leader injured, he was also , despite his obvious sense of responsibility, not readily able to adapt to changing situations and new obstacles. I had been the de facto leader of this team, and it weighed on me. Now Wang Sichuan could share some of this responsibility. All at once my mood improved.

Wang Sichuan asked about our experiences. I recounted them systematically and in full detail. Hearing what had happened with Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu, he stared blankly at us. Part of him couldn’t really accept it. I didn’t know how to say it any clearer. I was just as ignorant as he. So I said that, for now at least, our most important task was to figure out just where exactly we were.

The dam seemed to have a symmetrical structure. Both sides had a caisson freight elevator, so there had to be two underwater generator rooms. China was extremely backward at the time. The nation had almost no electric lights, and for a long time after liberation we continued to live in the Dark Ages. So even if there were just two generators per side—the main and the auxiliary—the electricity produced would have been enough to support a small town. Ma Zaihai added that on this kind of dam, construction was probably begun separately on each side with the middle built up afterward. That was the method the Soviets used.

Wang Sichuan looked puzzled. “What part of the dam are we on now?” he asked me.

The caisson can reach the very lowest levels, I thought to myself. We should be at the base of the dam, where the electrical machinery is bottled under poured concrete, but based on what we’d seen on the walk over here, the huge space outside seemed to be a massive icehouse.

Brothers who faced death with me, having written to this point, I feel I must say something: I had known Wang Sichuan and the rest for less than a month. We weren’t really friends yet, but this was when our iron bond began to be forged. Now that I’m retired, when I think back, I’ve found that my life’s greatest blessing is none other than these memories of youth and my comrades in arms, both alive and dead. So often do I lament that no matter how mighty one is while young, raging at the clouds and wind, when one is old there remains only some narrow room in which to type a few words, write a few stories. This is all that is left to me.

You could say that my reunion with Wang Sichuan was unexpected, but you could also say that it was inevitable. The dam’s attached, two-sided design ensured that, sooner or later, we were bound to meet up. Unfortunately, Wang Sichuan really wasn’t the savior I was hoping for. Although he did reduce the psychological pressure, he didn’t change our physical situation. Nonetheless, having him there enabled me to compose myself and begin to ponder what we should do next.

Everyone was hurt or comatose or at least cold and hungry. If you’d replaced us with young people from this day and age, I can assure you they’d have fallen apart long before this point. All this hunger and exhaustion was bearable for people back then, but we still had no idea what was going to happen. Only the devil knew for sure whether our guesses and inferences were correct. Who could say whether this was even the bottom of the dam? Perhaps we were already in hell.

My first thought after I calmed down was that we needed to find some way out of here. The mist would have to disperse eventually, and given how close we’d been to the mouth of the cave when we ran into Yuan Xile, we should be able to make it back there as well—so long as we didn’t lose our minds like she had. I figured that since the caisson could descend, it should be able to ascend as well. I asked Wang Sichuan how he’d started his up, but he couldn’t say. Then I realized my oversight: How were these caissons operated? There was no switch in the bare interior of the iron chamber, but there was another possibility. The freight elevators in the largescale, pre-1949 mines had a switch on the outside and a person specially responsible for its operation. At that time miners lacked any sort of human rights. To control these workers—or should I say these indentured laborers—it was essential to prevent them from operating the elevator on their own and thereby escaping. But who had pulled the master switch? Trails of cold sweat dripped down my back. Was someone else inside the dam? This was a truly terrifying thought. If there were such a person, then he’d been able to see us, but rather than make any sort of direct contact he’d waited until we entered the iron chamber, then secretly dropped us to the bottom of the dam. Why?

I wasn’t going to accept this possibility until I had some proof to back it up. First we needed to figure out how to get back to the surface. I assume I needn’t spell out what would become of us if we couldn’t figure out a way back up. We hesitated in that iron chamber for a long time. In the end it was something Wang Sichuan said that got us going. The sole materialistic explanation for Yuan Xile’s and Chen Luohu’s disappearances, he said, was that they’d escaped into the vast icehouse. But they definitely hadn’t entered this second iron chamber. They were still somewhere out there. No matter what, he declared, we couldn’t leave them behind. Wang Sichuan’s sense of responsibility was the most admirable moral characteristic I ever encountered. It was probably his inability to waver on such matters that made me feel so secure. I did not believe, however, that we needed to rescue Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu. It wasn’t we who’d left them behind. It was they who’d left us.

But, Wang Sichuan said, Yuan Xile had surely been through a similar situation before. Her recent actions were very likely a duplication of the course of her previous escape. Should we be able to find her, she just might be able to lead us out of here. At once it was decided. The deputy squad leader was still comatose. In his condition he shouldn’t be further exposed to the cold. Ma Zaihai would stay behind while Wang Sichuan and I looked for Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu. And with our numbers slightly lessened, our speed would increase. We hurriedly ate a bit of food, wrapped our sleeping bags tightly around us, gathered several flashlight batteries, and set out.

It was probably the layer of cold mist that made the open space beyond the chamber seem so large. Shivering, Wang Sichuan and I walked back along the elevated iron-grate walkway. Soon the door to the second iron chamber had vanished. This was Wang Sichuan’s first time outside. All his attention was quickly drawn to the black shapes frozen in the pools. He kept stopping and shining his flashlight on them, hoping to discover what was inside. The ice was far from transparent, and thick clouds of mist blocked our view. At last he gave up.

I looked around as I walked, scanning my surroundings in much greater detail than I had before. What had the Japanese used this place for? I wondered. The temperature was surely lower than that of the underground river. To keep it this cold, there had to be a compression engine somewhere around here. Back then refrigeration compressors were used only in walk-in freezers. Indeed, this place resembled nothing so much as a freezer for fish or some other aquatic product.