Ha Jin - War Trash

"Sure."

"Can you eat chicken every day if you want?"

"Chicken's cheap back home, you know. Most folks can afford it."

"What's expensive food then?"

"Steak. Rich folks go to restaurants for a steak. Seafood is pricey too."

"You mean shrimp?"

"Yeah, also salmon, crawfish, oyster, and lobster. Man, my mouth is watering."

I had no idea what a lobster looked like, though I knew the Chinese meaning of the word – dragon prawn. To my mind it must have been a kind of giant shrimp. But I was a little surprised by his mention of oysters as an expensive food, because I had seen street peddlers selling shucked oysters for five cents a pound in a coastal city back in China. I disliked oysters and wouldn't touch them even for free. I told Frank that to the Chinese, chicken was the best meat and that in the southern provinces like Canton and Fujian even chicken feet were served as a kind of delicacy in restaurants. He whistled and said, "Man, if it ain't for this war, I'd be in the chicken business making tons of dough out of you Chinamen."

"To be the first black millionaire, eh?"

"Why not?"

We both laughed.

I also mentioned to him the antislavery movie entitled A Shipload of Slaves that I had seen in China, but he hadn't heard of the film either. His ignorance of books and movies didn't prevent us from having something to talk about. He often gave me chewing gum, for which I wished I could have given him something in return. Once he offered me a joint, which I inhaled but didn't like. Later he asked me to help him get a certificate like the one Richard had. Within two days I handed him a similar one, which pleased him a lot.

Because blank paper was in short supply, we couldn't produce this kind of certificate every time a request came up. If paper was unavailable, we would give the man a red star, our former cap insignia, which might help him some. During the rest of our imprisonment, including the year we stayed on Cheju Island, altogether we issued over one hundred safety certificates to GIs. No South Korean ever asked us for such a thing.

One evening in the late spring we were sent to unload a ship. Usually we didn't work at the wharf. The men in Compound 70, nicknamed the Labor Gang, would unload cargoes and transport them to the warehouses. Some of them also repaired roads, felled trees, quarried stones, built barbed-wire fences, dug foundations, and laid bricks. Today was an exception because the work was urgent and the ship would raise anchor the next morning. On the way to the quay we sang "The Guerrillas' Song." The guards couldn't understand the words, so they didn't interfere.

There were numerous sentries at the wharf. A pair of searchlights scraped the ground and the sky, while strings of lamps lit almost the entire area. It was a warm night, so warm that you felt drowsy as though drugged. We were divided into four groups, three of which unloaded the ship while the other stacked the cargo on the shore. With my weak leg, I couldn't tread the quivering planks leading to the ship's deck, so I worked with the fourth group piling stacks. From time to time we poked a hole in a sack or a box to see what was inside – corn, rice, peanuts, cigarettes, straw paper, medicines. Among the cargo there were also sacks of cement and bundles of used clothing.

As we slaved away, from the north came some female voices singing ditties that sounded mawkish and lighthearted. We had heard that a number of restaurants and brothels were in that part of town. We couldn't help but look in that direction now and again. The women's voices stimulated me. For the first time since my injury I felt a strong sexual stirring. Even the air I breathed seemed to be sharpening my nose, as if from a distance of over three hundred yards I could smell the flesh and scent of women. My temples were tight and my pulse raced. Though a little giddy, I was happy to feel the throbbing of my blood, because this meant I had physically regained my strength. I was amazed that even subsisting on inadequate food, I had recovered miraculously. I was still youthful, still full of vitality.

In the cabins and on the deck of the ship and among the stacks on shore, the prisoners were busy lifting and shouldering parcels, boxes, and sacks. We were all soaked with sweat and often panted for breath. Yet a GI, a florid-faced man, kept barking at us, "Pahly, pahly!" which means "hurry" in Korean.

A tall inmate dropped a clothing bundle on a stack and cursed in an undertone, "Son of a bitch!" He then sneaked away, probably to take a breather.

Curious, I rounded the corner of the stack to see what he was doing. He had opened his fly and was peeing on a roll of canvas, his urine producing a muffled tapping sound. The second he was done, an American officer emerged from the darkness about fifty yards to the north, humming a tune he must have learned from the Korean geishas. He seemed drunk, didn't notice us, and veered unsteadily toward the rows of houses below a water tower, wearing a pistol at his flank. To my surprise, the tall prisoner came out from the stacks and followed the officer at a distance of about a hundred feet. I wondered what he was up to. Did he want to kill him? Or simply to escape?

Not daring to stay there for long, I went back to work, taking care to pick lighter items to carry. Busy as I was, I couldn't stop wondering what the tall man was doing. If only Ming had been here, so that I could ask him. Then I saw Chaolin talk with two men in whispers while the three of them were piling bundles of barbed wire. He was the leader of the two hundred men here. Like me, he wanted to get out of the compound as often as possible, always saying, "I need to stretch my limbs." He and I had never been close, so I didn't go up to him and report on the disappearance of that inmate.

About twenty minutes later the tall man came back, panting hard, his eyes shining. He said to Chaolin that an American officer had gone to sleep without locking his door and that there was a pistol in his room. "Should I go back and take it?" he asked Chaolin.

"Why didn't you just snatch it?" a man butted in.

"I wasn't sure if it was a right thing to do, so I came back to ask permission."

Chaolin said, "We must get the gun, but you shouldn't go alone. Yuan, why don't you go with him?"

"Me?" I was taken aback as several pairs of eyes turned to me.

"Yes, you go with him. Let him stay outside the house to keep watch while you go in for the gun."

"What if the officer wakes up?" I was puzzled why he picked me for the job.

"Kill him with this!" another man said and handed me an iron bar about two feet long.

I realized Chaolin meant to give me a test, which I had no choice but to take. So I agreed. But we couldn't set about the task right away because the sentries at the wharf were still alert. We had to go on working.

After ten-thirty the guards began yawning, whereas many prisoners had grown more spirited, gathering around them, asking questions or complaining that we were too hungry to continue. The inmates wanted to share a sack of peanuts, but the duty sergeant wouldn't let them. While they were begging him, I set off with the tall man, whose name I now knew was Wang Yabing. We sneaked behind the stacks and slunk away, avoiding the lights along the quay. My heart was fluttering as if a rabbit had been trapped in my chest, and my steps were shaky. Within five minutes we reached a low house that looked like a civilian home with a ceramic-tiled roof. Indeed the door wasn't locked and it opened at a light push. Then came the officer's soft snoring. Thank heaven, he was sound asleep.

"You go in now," Wang Yabing whispered to me. "If someone's coming, I'll meow like a horny cat."

With the iron bar under my arm I tiptoed into the room. The table lamp was still on, covered by a shade made of fawn paper. The sleeper, a small man with a graying mustache, had his clothes on, his bristly face toward the dark ceiling. He stirred a little, clattering his teeth as though munching something. Suddenly he chuckled, saying, "Oh dear, what a mess. Can you give him another fork, Cathy?" I froze in my tracks. A moment later he resumed snoring. Beside his pillow lay a grimy Colt pistol and a black flashlight. Shivering all over, I picked up the gun and stepped backward until I reached the door. The instant I turned around, the iron bar fell on the stone steps with a clanking noise, but I didn't stop to retrieve it and just tore away into the darkness.