Ha Jin - War Trash

"To put it in a nutshell," he said, "those who follow the Communists will come to a bad end, because we won't let them get away unscathed." He then turned to Lin Wushen, whose hands were tied from behind. "We begin with you. Now, Lin Wushen, tell me, for the last time, where will you go?"

Without looking at him, the large man turned to us and cried, "I was born in China. Where else should I go!"

Silence ensued, the air as if frozen.

Liu Tai-an barked, "All right, you want to go to the mainland, I'm sending you there now." Grabbing Lin Wushen's neck with one hand and waving the dagger in his other hand, he hissed, "Let me ask you one more time, where will you go?"

Lin Wushen glared at him silently, then looked at us. Suddenly he shouted at the top of his voice, "Long live the Communist Party! Long live our motherland!"

Liu Tai-an stabbed him in the chest and twisted the dagger. Without another word Lin Wushen dropped on the floor. Immediately Liu bent down and cut his stomach open while the dying man's feet were still kicking. His blood and intestines spilled out, and a few men at the front began retching. With a sidewise slash, Liu slit his chest, then pulled out his lungs and heart, all the organs quivering with steam. He cut out the heart and skewered it with the dagger. Raising the heart, he brandished his bloody free hand at us and said, "Look, this is what I meant when I said we wouldn't let you leave unscathed. If anyone else wants to go back to the mainland, I'll have to see the true color of his heart first." He turned to give the corpse a kick.

For about a minute there was no sound in the auditorium. The air seemed thickened with the smell of the blood. I was stunned not only by the ferocity of Liu's act but also by his skill in disemboweling the man, as though butchering human beings had been his everyday business.

"Let's continue. Next," Liu Tai-an ordered, still holding the heart on the tip of his knife.

The man they dealt with next was an acquaintance of mine. He was Yang Huan, a scrawny fellow with large, intense eyes and a massive scar on his cheek, who was also a graduate of the Huangpu Military Academy. But he had matriculated a year before me and was kept in another company here, so we hadn't had a chance to talk at length when we ran into each other. I vaguely remembered that he had been very active in leading the revolt against the Nationalists in our alma mater. Probably he was a Communist.

They dragged Yang Huan to the center of the stage. Then a lanky man walked up to him and asked, "Brother Yang, do you still know me?"

"Mei Lufu, why are you here?" Yang Huan looked baffled.

"My friend, I came to help you. We lived in the same dorm at the Huangpu for three years, and I can't forget how kindly you helped me, so now it's my turn to pull you out of the Commies' trap."

"I don't need your help."

"You and I are both graduates from the Huangpu, and we're students of Generalissimo Chiang, who treated us like a father. But I can't comprehend why you want to return to the mainland. What made you so loyal to the Reds?"

I was bewildered. Although Mei Lufu said he was our schoolmate too, I couldn't remember him. Yet without question the two men had once been roommates and buddies. Yang Huan answered, " China is where my home is, why can't I go back?"

"Give him one on the mouth!" ordered Liu Tai-an.

Dutifully Mei Lufu slapped his former friend.

"Turncoat!" Yang Huan cursed loudly. "Scum of China, we'll get even with you sooner or later."

"Goddammit, you're a traitor! You betrayed Generalissimo Chiang's love and expectations." Mei Lufu began punching him. "Take this. How dare you call me a turncoat?"

Then a bunch of guards fell on Yang Huan, who kept yelling, "Long live the revolution! Long live Communism!"

Clubs and iron bars landed on him while he was still mumbling, "Long live… long live…"

Within a minute they beat him to the brink of death. A heavyset man pressed the heel of his boot on Yang Huan's throat and stamped down forcefully. Yang Huan twisted a little, then stopped moving. I was shuddering all over, never having thought that an educated man like Mei Lufu could be as vicious as Liu Tai-an. At the same time I was amazed that the two Communists they had just butchered had seemed entirely unafraid of death. Like me, Dajian was utterly terrified; he placed his hand on my shoulder to steady himself.

Liu Tai-an said to the twenty men on the stage, waving the bloody heart, "You're lucky today. I spare you for now to see how you'll behave tomorrow." Then he turned to us. "Let's end here for today, although I still mean to collect the tattoos from some of you. Brothers, please don't follow the bad examples of Lin Wushen and Yang Huan. You're free to go now."

Both Dajian and I were alarmed, having realized that as graduates of the Huangpu Military Academy, we also must have been targets of the pro-Nationalists. They would use every means to coerce us. Unlike the Communist Party members, we didn't feel we should sacrifice our lives for repatriation. We talked briefly on our way back and agreed we should act according to circumstances and shouldn't openly refuse to go to Taiwan. Above all we had to survive. As long as we were alive, there would be an opportunity to get back to China.

Though many prisoners hated Liu Tai-an, some pro-Nationalists loved and revered him, and some even regarded him as a hero. At the sight of him, even some staunch Communists couldn't refrain from quaking, let alone regular inmates like Dajian and me. It was this small muscular man who had started the slogan "We must go to Taiwan!" It was this savage man who had poured a large bowl of saki, bitten his middle finger to drip his blood into it, and thus inspired some POWs to follow suit: they mixed their blood in the liquor and drank it together to forge the bond of brotherhood. To be fair, Liu Tai-an was generous to pro-Nationalist inmates. As the vice chief of the regiment and the leader of our battalion, he was entitled to eat special meals like Han Shu, but he wouldn't use this privilege and always ate the same food as the other prisoners. One day the kitchen couldn't serve the midday meal on time because it had to cook for the officers first. Liu Tai-an went in and knocked over the cauldron of boiling millet and the pot containing stewed clams and potatoes. After that, even those officers who enjoyed special mess would avoid him during mealtimes. Another day, an illiterate prisoner played truant after signing up for a literacy class. Liu Tai-an knelt down and begged him to treasure this opportunity to learn how to read and write. For Liu, good and evil were as clear-cut as black and white – his mind wouldn't tolerate any ambiguity. It seemed to me that although he had only an elementary education, he must have been a sick man whose mind was warped by the image of the macho hero in classical Chinese novels, embodied by wild figures like Zhang Fei and Li Kui, who wouldn't hesitate to kill an evil man, eat his flesh, and guzzle his blood. In fact, many pro-Nationalists did compare Liu Tai-an to those fictional heroes, and he was proud of the analogy and relished his ability to inspire terror.

Back in our tent, we couldn't stop cursing Liu Tai-an. One said that the Communists should have finished him off, referring to an incident one night the previous winter when a group of Communists had beaten him to his knees and made him beg for mercy. Some regretted they hadn't formed their own armed force. Now without access to weapons they had become meat for the pro-Nationalists to hack at will. Some said that once they returned to China, they would get hold of Liu Tai-an's and his lackeys' families and relatives and wipe them out. Dajian told them that Mei Lufu's younger sister lived in Tianjin City and worked at a newspaper, and one man declared he would settle accounts with her one of these days. As we were talking, both Liu Tai-an and Wang Yong arrived with the police force. They ordered us to get out of the tent immediately.