War Trash

by Ha Jin

  One day by chance I found him smoking. He stood outside the kitchen and looked silly with a cigarette clamped between his cracked lips, two coils of smoke dangling under his snub nose. Like all the others, he was given a pack of cigarettes a week. I went up to him and said, “Stub it out! You’re too young for that.”

  He obeyed me and lifted his foot, scraping the tip of the cigarette against his rubber sole, but he looked hurt, his eyes misting. I softened and said, “I’m not a meanie, Shanmin. Tobacco will damage your lungs, which are still tender. If you were over eighteen, I wouldn’t interfere.”

  “I understand.”

  “You don’t want to become a consumptive, do you?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “You still want to study with me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then you mustn’t start smoking now.”

  “I won’t light a cigarette again.”

  He kept his promise. From then on, whenever he was allocated a pack, he would exchange it for food or stationery with others. The inmates all smoked the same kind of cigarettes that had no brand. On one side of the white pack was printed three scarlet words: LIBERTY, JUSTICE, PEACE; on the other side was the moon half hidden in the clouds. Cigarettes were a kind of currency among the prisoners. Sometimes Shanmin gave a few to others, and this made them like him more.

  I still remember how amazed I was to see that he could read an article in a Chinese newspaper just three months after he had enrolled in the literacy class. One day he came upon a scrap of Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong daily, which must have been subscribed to by the Chinese translators working for the prison administration here. Sitting in a corner, Shanmin was poring over a report on a race of dragon boats. From time to time I glanced at his engrossed face. His lips went on stirring and once in a while a smile flickered on them. When he finished, I asked him, “Any new words?”

  He beamed and shook his head. I wanted to congratulate him, but my voice caught. I was so happy for him.

  Shanmin even wrote a skit about the South Korean president, Rhee Synman. After a little editorial help from the others, his play was staged in our compound and was well received. It would be inaccurate to say that the war and imprisonment ruined this boy, as they did destroy millions of lives. His was an exceptional case. He flourished in the camp. How mysterious, tenacious, and miraculous life could be! If Shanmin had stayed home, he might not have had an opportunity to learn how to read and do sums, and might have had to work the fields to help his parents raise his siblings, or might have gone begging from town to town. But in this prison he thrived and even got some education, which helped him grow into a capable man eventually.

  Many years later he wrote me a beautiful letter, saying he had become the accountant in his home village, where no one but he could use the abacus. He thanked me for having taught him so well and was proud to inform me that he still didn’t smoke. His handwriting was clean and handsome.

  22. THE PEI CODE

  Colonel Kelly, the commander of the guards at Camp 8, informed us that we must provide two men for Commissar Pei, one to be his cook and the other his interpreter. Both of them were to live with the commissar in the same cell inside the prison house. The cook was easy to find; several men volunteered because the work promised better food. A fellow named Hailin was picked for the job. But choosing the interpreter was more difficult. There were a number of men who knew English, and each compound had at least one interpreter as its spokesman. For us, though, the officer about to join Commissar Pei had another task, which was to establish communication between the prison and the compounds. I knew English better than the other interpreters, so I was one of the candidates for the job, which I was not especially keen to take because the interpreter would have to suffer the strict confinement of the prison too. Chang Ming, whose English was second only to mine, was also a candidate. After an exchange of messages among the leaders of the different compounds, mainly between Zhao Teng and Chaolin, Ming was detailed to go there. This was an appropriate choice, because he was more resourceful than me, and besides, he was a Party member, able to assist the commissar in matters other than translation, especially the Party’s secret work.

  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 han
ds, 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 a while 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.

  From somewhere near the ceiling, in the southern upper corner of the wall, came a rasping sound. We stood up and moved over to look. Slowly a lumpy thing emerged in the corner. None of us could reach it, so Mushu squatted down and let me step on his shoulders while Little Hou held my leg to keep me steady. I stretched out and pulled the thing in through a rift between the ceiling and the wall. It was a parcel wrapped in a piece of waterproof cloth. Hurriedly we opened it—inside were a block of cooked rice and six baked squids, each about four inches long. On top of the food was a slip of paper bearing Commissar Pei’s handwriting in pencil: “Keep fighting, take care of your health, stay alert, and we’ll be in touch soon.” We wolfed down the war criminal’s food, which was much tastier than ours. We were very touched by the message, which was passed among us several times. We were so excited that for hours we went on talking about what we could do. For most of us, Commissar Pei seemed like a light-house that could guide our foundering ship home.

  Then Little Hou said, “Why don’t we use the time here to create a special code, to open a channel of communication between Commissar Pei and the camp?”

  “That’ll be great if we can,” said Mushu.

  “But I don’t know anything about the code stuff,” I put in. “Can we do it only with the three of us?”

  “Probably he can.” Mushu pointed at Little Hou, who hiccuped, chewing something vigorously. Mushu continued, “Keep in mind, it was this fellow who made most of the general code used among the battalions.”

  Little Hou said to me about Mushu, “He was a signalman in Compound 10, he can help me.”

  We three looked at one another, then hugged tightly. I told them that I would obey any orders they gave, despite my leadership. They laughed. I still couldn’t imagine how they could possibly open such a channel of communication, though I knew I ought to encourage them. After we broke the work into separate parts, we ran into difficulties we hadn’t expected. To begin with, we needed paper and a pencil. How on earth could we get those things in this hellhole? Little Hou regretted not having brought along his pencil stub. I told him, “Forget it, even if you had taken it with you, you might’ve lost it to the guards.”

  Mushu nudged me in the ribs and said, “Look at that.” He pointed at the windowsill, on which was a whitish wad. I rushed over and grabbed the thing—ah, a roll of toilet tissue! “The Americans are so considerate!” Mushu laughed. “I never used such fancy toilet paper back in our country. Comrades, I bet none of you did either.”

  “Uh-uh, not me.” Little Hou shook his chin with a straight face.

  We cracked up, though subduedly. So we had solved the paper problem. But what should we do about the pencil? This beat us, and we agreed to ask for help the next morning.

  I slept well for the rest of the night, whereas neither of them could sleep a wink. When I woke up six hours later, they told me that I had snored like a pig. Before daybreak, as the stars were fading and a fine mist was rising from the ocean, we knocked on the wall. Instantly the other side responded. I got on Mushu’s shoulders and talked to Ming through the hole. “This is Yuan,” I whispered.

  “Ah, I was so happy to see you yesterday.” His voice was brisk but half suppressed.

  “How’s Commissar Pei, and yourself?”

  “We’re fine.”

  “Listen, we’re planning to create a code for you to use to communicate with the camp. But first we want to get permission from Commissar Pei. Can you ask him for us?” We ought to inform the top leader beforehand in case a similar project was already afoot.

  “Certainly,” Ming said.

  Both of us got down to give our bearers a breather. Two minutes later I stood on Mushu’s shoulders again. Ming told me, “Commissar Pei is delighted. He appreciates your initiative in this matter. He says he’ll wait for the news of your success. Can we do something to help?”

  “We need a pencil. Do you happen to have one?”

  “We do have a short piece here. Wait a second, I’ll hand it over.”

  Seeing that a wet patch had eme
rged on Mushu’s back, I asked him if I should step down for a moment.

  “No, I’m all right.” He patted my leg. Little Hou squatted down beside him and asked me to put my right foot on his shoulder, but Mushu pushed him away. They were both excited because a pencil was available.

  A moment later another package was pushed over through the hole. This time it contained some rice together with a pencil. Little Hou grabbed the three-inch stub, kissed it, and pressed it against his chest.

  Without delay we began to work. There were two parts to the project: first, the code, and second, the method of transmission, that is, a special way of sending and receiving encoded messages. According to Little Hou, the code wasn’t very hard to make, and he had already started on it. Neither Mushu nor I had any clue how it was formed exactly, so we focused on the method of transmission, which was the difficult part, having to be invented entirely by ourselves. Alas, I couldn’t be of any help. If messages could not be transmitted properly, the code would be of no use however ingeniously it was devised, but all the methods Mushu could imagine were unsuitable. For example, the semaphore of gestures employed among the compounds couldn’t be distinguished from a distance of over three hundred yards. How about light? That wasn’t feasible either. In the first place, we had no flashlights. Even if we’d had them, they would have been too dangerous to use, since the enemy could see the light and might fire at the signalman.

  What should we do? Mushu began pacing the cell again while we were both thinking hard for a solution. Although I was a layman, I could tell we wouldn’t find an adequate method very soon, so I suggested we focus on the code first, giving thought to the transmission part whenever we could. During the day I stood at the window most of the time keeping watch on the guards and the maintenance men. We had divided the safety measures among ourselves. If a GI or a custodian came in, I would go up to him and block his way by speaking to him, and Mushu would drop his pants and crouch over the toilet pail so as to prevent the intruder from searching the cell while Little Hou would put the piece of toilet paper he was writing on into his mouth. Little Hou always kept the penciled sheets underneath his shirt. With great caution we went on working at the code.