Ha Jin - War Trash

Chief Zhang Wanren, a balding man with carious teeth, was pleased that I remained in Compound 6, saying I was indispensable to him. He often talked with me about the affairs of our compound and sought my opinion. That was why I knew so much about the workings of the leadership in the camp, where most men had no idea what was transpiring, having strictly followed the order "Do not question what you are told, and do not listen to what you are not supposed to hear." I guessed probably Pei and Chaolin had said some good words about me to Wanren, who treated me like a leader of sorts and had kept me at the battalion headquarters. Wanren once even asked me whether I would like to join the United Communist Association, which had been inducting new members ever since we arrived at Cheju Island. I told him that Commissar Pei believed I should go through a longer period of testing. He couldn't check this with Pei, so he didn't press me again. The truth was that after my application had been turned down four months before, I had vowed I would never apply for membership again, unless Pei himself invited me to do it. This was a way to protect myself from being humiliated again. Besides, I didn't believe in Communism. Why should I change just to suit their requirements? I should be loyal at least to my own heart.

There were only two rooms in that prison house near the beach, roughly the same size – twelve by sixteen feet. One jailed troublemakers and the other held the war criminal; the two cells were separated by a stone wall. A number of men had been confined there as troublemakers, usually for two weeks at a stretch, so, through their accounts, we knew the interior layout of that cell. Ming went to the prison charged with the task of digging a hole through the wall between the two rooms. It took him a whole week to fulfill this mission. He found a stone that looked removable in the southern upper corner of the wall. With the help of the cook and Pei, he managed to pry that stone off, and after some digging by turns, they bored a hole, which became the channel of communication. Whenever we wanted to get orders from the commissar, a trustworthy man would be instructed to pick a fight with someone or yell and make obscene gestures at GIs so that he would be sent to the troublemakers' cell, where he could take orders from our top leader through the hole in the wall. When released, he would return with the oral message. However, this method of communication was extremely slow, unreliable, and cumbersome, because usually a troublemaker was imprisoned there for at least five days, sometimes as long as three weeks. Often by the time the messenger came back, the orders no longer applied to the changed situation in the camp. Still, up to early September this method was the only one available.

The Pei Code wasn't created according to a plan; it came about by a stroke of luck. One day toward the end of August, I was sent to the prison house because a guard had found in my pocket a slip of paper that carried "Song of the Three Tasks," composed by some men in another compound. Zhao Teng had asked me to pass it to our battalion chief. Colonel Kelly interrogated me for half an hour, but I insisted that I had copied the song myself from the inmates repairing the road outside the southern fence of the camp. They were mostly from Compound 9 and could sing the song. The colonel didn't believe me, saying I had attempted to relay a secret message, so he had me taken to the prison. I wasn't very upset at this turn of events, because now I could finally communicate directly with Commissar Pei and Ming.

Two men were already in the troublemakers' cell when I was slammed in. One of them had been a telegrapher in our army, a large fellow named Mushu, and the other, Little Hou, our code man. Mushu was jailed because he had been caught in the act of semaphoring from Compound 10, and Little Hou was here for hiding bullets in his cap; a GI at the gate to our barracks had found the two rounds. They punched and kicked him, then hauled him away. They interrogated him for a whole evening, but didn't believe what he told them – there was no gun in our hands, which was true. He'd kept the bullets just in case we might use them someday. The next morning they sent him here. He was our battalion's only code man, so his absence from the compound had done us some damage – for the time being we were unable to read any semaphore messages.

Little Hou and Mushu were both pleased to see me, saying it was boring in the dark room. The cell had a dirt floor, walls built of volcanic rocks, and a window facing the ocean in the north. It was damp inside because the room didn't get any sunlight until late afternoon.

On my first day there we tried to while away time by wisecracking and telling stories. But we were bored soon and began to doze off. Toward midafternoon we were ordered to get out to walk a little, relieve ourselves, and breathe some fresh air. Behind the prison stretched a low sandbar, along which I walked with my face toward the window of the cell that contained Commissar Pei. In no time I saw Ming gazing at me and waving behind the steel bars. He looked shaggy and dirty but in high spirits, his face vivid and whiskered. Not allowed to get close to that window, I only nodded to acknowledge that I had seen him. There was a shack nearby, in which lived the POWs maintaining this place. Undoubtedly one of their tasks was to eavesdrop on us and report to the Americans on our conversations, so I wouldn't talk about anything serious with my two cellmates in the open air.

Mushu became restless after we came back in. The room was so damp that he wouldn't sit down on the dirt floor immediately. He kept pacing back and forth while Little Hou and I sat huddled together in a corner. The wind was picking up outside, and the tide was rising, smoky water crashing on the reefs rhythmically. After every six or seven steps Mushu had to turn around; this pacing was maddening him.

Tired of remaining on his feet, he sat down. We began chatting and bantering idly. But our chitchat became earnest as we continued. We talked about what we should do while we were here. By no means should we just sit around wasting time "like a bunch of sea cucumbers," an expression coined by Mushu. As long as we joined hands we could do something useful. We decided to form a fighting group, and they both wanted me to be its leader because I was a kind of officer and older than they. Although embarrassed by this sort of rank pulling, I accepted my leading role. We knew that the most urgent problem our comrades in the camp were facing was how to communicate with Commissar Pei efficiently. So what could we do to improve this situation? Both Mushu and Little Hou believed we could devise a new method of communication. Ignorant of signaling and codes, I just listened to them talk and argue. Every once in awhile I put in a question.

We talked for three hours on end, but couldn't figure out a way. After dinner, which was boiled sorghum and a few pieces of salted turnip, the door opened and the last light of sunset flooded in, reddening my fellow inmates' faces. In came a custodian, a hollow-cheeked man who had once been in our army and now was a turncoat, a name Mushu called him to his face. A collaborator though the man was, he might have given in to the enemy only under unbearable torture, so I felt uneasy about the hostility my cellmates showed him. The man dropped a blanket onto the floor for me, then put a bucket in a corner as our toilet pail and took away the one already used. Little Hou and Mushu glared at him, but he dared not look at us and kept his head low.

The door was closed and the room turned quiet again. Mushu couldn't help but resume pacing back and forth, while Little Hou and I, eyes shut, tried to drop off, though I didn't feel sleepy.

Night came. A trapezoid of moonlight fell on the wall, sliced by four parallel lines of shadows. Tired of chatting and thinking, I soon began drowsing. Suddenly something hit the wall from the other side. We all heard the thumps, which sounded carefully measured, so the three of us sat up at once; Mushu's large eyes glowed in the darkness while Little Hou pressed his ear against the wall. Then came four more knocks, all equally spaced. There was no mistake now! Little Hou knocked on the wall three times in reply. We all held our breath, listening.