Ha Jin - Ocean of Words

When we got out of the fog, suddenly the dawn was opening and the east turned pink and bright. Beneath the eastern sky, we saw people running down along a winding path on the hillside. Somebody guessed they must have caught Lev. Commander Yan raised his field glasses to watch while we were gathering around him.

“No,” he said. “It looks like another injured militiaman. They’re carrying a stretcher on their shoulders.”

“This is not war yet,” Platoon Leader Fang said, “but there’s already a depletion of numbers.”

“Attention, everybody.” Commander Yan turned to us. “We are going ahead through the thicket in front of us now. When we’re out of it, we’ll have breakfast.”

We set off again, thinking of warm porridge and steaming bread for breakfast. The night before it was reported that two militiamen had been injured. Some of the militia had forgotten to lock the safety catches on their guns.

The thicket was very small. Soon we sat down for breakfast, which was hardtack and cold water. The biscuits were not bad, but we’d like to have drunk some hot water, still shivering with cold. No fire was allowed, because the smoke might show Lev where we were. Though there had been no shadow of Lev, we had to act as if he was within our range.

After breakfast we rested for an hour. No one knew what place should be searched more thoroughly than anywhere else. Walking aimlessly like this, we could not find any trace of Lev, so it was better to take it easy.

At ten o’clock our squad was sent to search around a slaughterhouse in a valley. We were told not to wander far away, just stay within that area. By this time every pass and every juncture, from Longmen to Hutou and to the border, had been occupied by troops, militia, and villagers. Lev had already fallen into the boundless ocean of people’s war.

Slowly we moved through the millet field east of the slaughterhouse. Everybody tried to relax a little while his legs were dragging him forward. The two squad leaders had already made up. It was always like that: They quarreled, looking as if a melee was about to break out, but an hour later they would become pals again. All of us were in a better mood now, except that everybody swore whenever Lev came to his mind.

The slaughterhouse butchered oxen in the daytime. After the first search through the millet and the soybean fields nearby, we went to the slaughter hall to see how they killed oxen. Ma Lin said that the folk in his hometown would trip the animal to the ground first, than stab its heart with a long knife, but Vice Squad Leader Hsu said, “Nonsense, you have to use a sledgehammer to knock out the ox first. Who can trip up an ox!”

We all went to see. In the large hall hung a few headless oxen that had been disemboweled but not yet skinned. Probably because it was lunchtime, there were only two men in there. One of them looked like a master and the other an apprentice. They nodded at us and didn’t seem to mind our presence. The master was tall and stout. The flesh on his cheeks was thick and squeezed his eyes into two tiny triangles. The apprentice was also tall but thin and narrow shouldered. His big jaw had grown sideways, his chin almost in a vertical line with his left cheek. He looked brain-damaged. Wang Min asked them to show us how they butchered an ox, and they agreed. I was wondering how just the two of them could kill such a large animal.

They placed a piece of rope into a sort of groove on the floor, forming a chain of four nooses. A small knife, about five inches long, dangled on the master’s hip. Then they went into the cattle pen behind a green gate and pulled in a large ox. The animal saw the carcasses in the air and refused to move forward. Around its shoulders there were hairless patches, so it must have done a lot of work. Its eyes looked dim. Tears, I saw tears rolling down its cheeks. The two men were pulling hard.

As soon as the ox’s hooves were in the trap, they hauled at the ends of the rope. With a bang the ox fell to the floor. Its four legs were tied up struggling in the air. The young man hit its forehead with a sledgehammer, and the ox instantly stopped moving. The master jerked out the short knife and started cutting the ox’s head. Beneath the blade whitish flesh flared and then turned ruddy. With three strokes the head was slashed off. The whole process took no more than twenty seconds. On the floor, a foamy crimson pool extended, and the hall at once filled with an odor of compost.

I walked away, my chest and stomach twinging inside. In front of me, small stars were jumping about on the wormwood. I felt like vomiting but could not bring anything up. They killed an ox like a chicken. Grandma was right: The most wicked creature on earth is man. That ox had worked for its master till it was old; when it couldn’t work well, the master sold it to the slaughterhouse for money. The ox had wept just now, begging the fat butcher in silence for its life, but people wanted to eat beef, so they ignored its tears and butchered it. Man is a true beast.

When I rejoined my comrades at the edge of a soybean field, they were having a lunch break, still talking about the scene in the slaughter hall. Everybody had been impressed; nobody had expected that a big ox could be killed without any noise. Lunch was hardtack too. At breakfast each of us had been given two extra pieces for noon. I was hungry and forced myself to eat, but I felt sick and couldn’t eat as fast as the others. Our squad leader told me to take my time. Meanwhile, those who had finished lunch lay on the grass, smoking tobacco.

The news came at three o’clock that Lev had been caught. Rejoining our company, our platoon took a truck to the Divisional Headquarters to wait for him. Everybody was talking about how to handle Lev once we had him in our hands again.

It turned out that Lev had never known what city he was in, nor had he been able to tell in what direction Russia was. All night he ran inland, but he covered only thirty li . He had been totally spoiled by us. Contrary to our fears, he simply couldn’t eat anything in the fields. He had eaten too much of the delicate food and the best candies, and had smoked too many of the expensive cigarettes, so for a whole night he didn’t eat anything, no matter how hungry he was. By noon he couldn’t endure the hunger anymore; he got out of the cornfield where he had hidden himself, went over to an old peasant who was passing by, and asked him for food and cigarettes. The old man knew who he was, brought him home, and gave him a pipe, then told his wife to cook. In the meantime his daughter ran to the office of their production brigade to tell the militia. When the militiamen arrived, Lev was eating scallion cake, scrambled eggs, and bean sprouts. They surrounded the house but didn’t disturb him. Then a jeep from Chaoyang County’s Military Department came and picked him up.

Now we were ready to receive him. The militia, the police, and the people on the streets all knew we had recaptured the “Russian agent.” Standing in two lines at the entrance of the Divisional Headquarters, we kept the militiamen and the people away from the front sentry post. Some of them carried guns and many held carrying poles and spades. They declared they wanted to teach the “Russian agent” an unforgettable lesson. Everyone was angry, having not slept for a night and having trudged around for twenty hours. Besides, so many crops had been trampled. Even some policemen said they wanted to beat the Big Nose too.

Our squad was told to accompany him back to the Eastern Airport. From now on, all the privileges Lev had enjoyed were taken away, and his daily meal expenses would be the same as ours. He was to eat with us.

Here came the jeep. The moment it stopped, Lev got out with a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. Some people were rushing to him. Lev could tell they wanted to beat him, so he hurried to us but then paused, probably noticing us all fully armed. We hated him — because of him we were notorious now, and every one of us would have to do self-criticism for several days.