Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘I’m not with you blokes.’ I pointed to the American compound.

  ‘How come? You should be with the Commonwealth lot, with us.’

  I explained about Jimmy and his albino ploy and the Irishman laughed. ‘If you’re going to lie to this lot, be extravagant and remember what you said – it’s the simple explanations they suspect. Come along, anyway, you’ll not be taking anyone else’s food. You’ll be getting no more than the smell of an oily rag, and there’s no seconds.’

  On the way he explained the camp system to me. There were three rooms to every mud house with a squad of a dozen or more in each room to make up a platoon. The houses were in a cluster roughly sufficient to house a company of soldiers and the cluster was known as a compound. ‘Except for your lot,’ he laughed. ‘You’re known as the ghetto.’ He went on to explain that the officer and sergeant prisoners had their own compounds where the men had very little contact with them.

  At the company cookhouse we were given a bowl of boiled millet and a spoon. I had grown to detest the vile stuff, but I took Doug Waterman’s advice and ate every grain. It later became apparent that, in the grub stakes, the Chinese didn’t discriminate – the food in our cookhouse was every bit as bad as the stuff I’d shared with the Ulsterman.

  When I got back to our compound the company was assembling and we were marched to a parade ground in the centre of the camp. We arrived to find more than a thousand men already standing at ease, and I could see a lot more prisoners and their guards streaming in from every direction. A public-address system in front of a better-looking building than most had been set up on a raised platform flanked by wooden steps. These buildings were apparently the camp headquarters.

  After the last of the prisoners had arrived, a Chinese officer rose to the platform. He cleared his throat in front of the mike and hawked the result in an arch over the platform to the feet of the front row of men standing below him. The effect had been magnified by the microphone and drew a titter from the crowd. The Chinese did this all the time and it didn’t necessarily indicate contempt. We’d got accustomed to the practice, though I’d never before heard the disgusting habit dramatised over a loudspeaker.

  ‘Four prisoners try to escape!’ he yelled, holding his hand above his head with four fingers extended. ‘They have rejected the generosity of the Lenient Policy and are war criminals! They can now be legitimately shot!’ The commandant paused, and looked around at the assembly. ‘But we are not capitalist warmongers and have given them the chance to repent and embrace the truth.’ He turned to look towards the wooden steps where a tall, gaunt man looking much the worse for wear was being escorted by a guard to the microphone. The prisoner began to speak, hesitatingly at first, the microphone positioned too low for us to catch his voice except for small snatches that made little sense. A Chinese soldier rushed up carrying a set of mud bricks under his chin then, lowering himself to his knees, he unloaded the bricks and built them into a platform, placing the microphone stand upon it. Evidently Chinese microphones were not built to extend any further than roughly the height of the officer who’d just addressed us.

  ‘I shall begin again,’ the gaunt man said, in a pronounced English accent. ‘I have been wrong to try to escape and I am only now beginning to understand that the warmongers of Wall Street have had me in their greedy grasp. They have befuddled my mind. Their lies have been a blindfold so secure that even though I have received the kindness of the Chinese People’s Volunteers I have previously been unable to see the light. But now they have shown me the true path, lighting my way in what was previously the darkness of my mind.’ His voice then seemed close to tears as he announced, ‘I want to apologise for abusing the hospitality of the Chinese People’s Volunteers.

  ‘I want to warn you all of the folly of trying to escape. I want to remind you of the generosity of our Chinese hosts, who feed us. I want to tell you food is very difficult to find beyond this camp. Here the Chinese People’s Volunteers’ kitchens cook our food; out there how can you cook what little food you come across? Why suffer sore feet following the rough mountain track north, why wade through three dangerous rivers and risk getting lost, when you can enjoy the comfort of the housing of the Chinese People’s Volunteers? I want to apologise to the Chinese People’s Volunteers at the checkpoints along the bridges and roads for causing them unnecessary trouble. But most of all, I am forever grateful to the small boy from the village close to the confluence of the two rivers who saw me and reported me to the authorities. It is through him I was brought back here where I can have the blindfold lifted that has prevented me from seeing the truth.’

  The camp commandant and the officers with him on the platform were beaming from ear to ear and, to my enormous surprise, a large number of the prisoners were cheering.

  ‘Jesus, Jimmy, what’s goin’ on? These blokes are bloody cheering?’

  ‘Brother Fish, I been most of mah life in places like this. What dat soldier sayin’ he ain’t saying – he sayin’ somethin’ contrariwise and opposite.’

  ‘Huh? Whaddyamean?’

  ‘Well, the way’s I heard it like so. He done told us iffen we escape we gotta take food and somethin’ to cook it. He say make sure yo’ boots is in good re-pair, follow da mountain track north, cross three rivers and watch for da guards – dey stationed at da bridges and roads. He say to take some navigation e-quip-ment wid you and, above all, stay clear dem North Korean chillen near where two rivers meet.’

  Doug Waterman later gave me a more or less identical interpretation. He explained that the gaunt bloke was the British forces escape organiser. What Jimmy knew instinctively, I had yet to learn. But I did learn something from the episode without Jimmy’s assistance. I’d guessed correctly the reason the Chinese were not concerned about the camp’s lack of perimeter security was that they considered it near impossible for anyone to last long outside. The British soldier had said it all – rugged terrain, a population hostile to the prisoners and Chinese soldiers patrolling the roads and bridges. Add to that our weakened state and the distance to the front-line and I could see why they would sacrifice perimeter security for camouflage from the air.

  However, learning of a quite different kind was in store for us. The following day the twenty new arrivals were assembled for our first talk by the company political officer. It seemed every company was allotted one of these coves whose job it was to indoctrinate us. Our bloke, Lieutenant Dinh, spoke passable English and informed us that the day’s topic would be ‘The South’s Aggression Against the North’.

  The rave was pretty predictable stuff. The South attacked the innocent, peace-loving and prosperous North when the American running-dog president Syngman Rhee decided he wanted all of Korea for the purpose of capitalist exploitation by his few millionaire cronies in the South, who had grown rich by keeping the masses poverty-stricken and enslaved. The criminal, Syngman Rhee, could not allow the remainder of the world to see how the people of the North prospered under communism while the South suffered great hardship under capitalism, so he’d decided to invade with the help of the Wall Street profiteers who stood to make untold fortunes from supplying him with weapons.

  However, determined to defend their gains under communism, the shocked and peace-loving North bravely repelled the criminal attack. When, armed with a righteous cause, they’d beaten back the invading army from the South, lo and behold, the Americans had arrived to save their South Korean lackeys from humiliation and defeat, blah, blah, blah. This, of course, is an encapsulated version of Dinh’s talk, which continued for more than two immensely dreary hours.

  Once Dinh had finished speaking, he invited discussion and questions. Silence followed, and when he insisted I have a go I spoke my mind, which, in retrospect, was bloody stupid. ‘I have seen North Korea. I have been in the capital, Pyongyang, and in many of the villages, and there is no prosperity – and it is easy to see there has never been any. Am I to tell my eyes that they are lying, Lieutenant Dinh?’ I then asked
what was to be my killer question. ‘Why didn’t I see any refugees streaming North?’

  I could sense Jimmy’s discomfort beside me, and at one point he cleared his throat noisily as a warning not to continue. But in my Little General mode I wasn’t going to waste all that good stuff I’d learned as my so-called excuse for joining K Force, so I let Dinh have the lot – the whole catastrophe, chapter and verse.

  Lieutenant Dinh made no attempt to answer me. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we have a reactionary amongst us.’ He looked at me disdainfully. ‘You may try to prevent your fellow war criminals learning the truth, but you will not succeed. You must please understand that a hostile attitude will put you outside the Lenient Policy. I will give you one more chance.’

  And then Dinh began to talk again. Blah, blah, bloody blah, going on forever about Wall Street warmongers and profiteers bought by the blood of the proletariat. Before he finally stopped this seemingly endless monologue, he frequently paused to ask if we understood him, without waiting for any confirmation before continuing. At the conclusion of his talk he started to quiz us on what he’d said. This took another hour. It was late, and finally the time for our afternoon meal came and went, but still he continued. When he’d finally finished we hot-footed it to the company cookhouse where we were waved away, the food all long since gone. To add insult to injury, Jimmy and I were told to stay back to wash a whole pile of enamel dishes. There wasn’t a hope of finding any leftovers on them as the plates had been licked clean.

  It wasn’t difficult to tell that everyone knew that because of my stupid carry-on we were being deliberately punished. Even being chosen for the dishwashing chore wasn’t exactly a coincidence.

  ‘What a shit act of Dinh!’ I exclaimed to Jimmy in an effort to shift the blame.

  ‘Brother Fish, da new arrivals here dey ain’t happy, man. Yoh fucked us real good! No chow, dat da punishment we got.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I finally admitted, thoroughly ashamed of myself.

  ‘In America,’ Jimmy replied, ‘iffen a white man he tell a Negro somethin’, it da God’s truth. It ain’t da truth because it make good sense, it ain’t da truth because it based on a fact or der lotsa ev-e-dence. It da truth because he a white man and you a nigger.’ He paused, and sighed. ‘In dis camp we all niggers, Brother Fish.’ It was the closest Jimmy had ever come to reprimanding me.

  ‘Mate, I’ve been a real prick. What can I do to make it up to the blokes?’

  ‘Somethin’ will come up – never yoh mind ’bout dat, Brother Fish,’ Jimmy said calmly.

  The next day the whole company was assembled and we were marched once again to the company lecture area to endure another two-hour lecture.

  ‘Brother Fish, you listen up good,’ Jimmy said to me.

  ‘Don’t worry, mate, I’m not going to open my big trap,’ I replied, still chastened from the previous day’s verbal diarrhoea.

  ‘Nah, it ain’t dat – jus’ listen up real good,’ he suggested again.

  To our surprise, Lieutenant Dinh started by saying that the cookhouse had reported that a tin plate had gone missing and although he knew we were not responsible, as we’d missed the afternoon meal, this was a typical capitalist act and against the spirit of the Lenient Policy. I wanted to ask why this was so. One tin plate missing among hundreds was hardly a misdemeanour worth mentioning, but of course, after the previous day, I wasn’t going to open my mouth. He carried on about the tin plate for ages, pointing out that the smallest dishonesty was no less harmful to the proletariat than the largest possible crime. Somehow he managed to weave the goddamn tin plate into the day’s lecture theme, which was ‘The Inevitable March of World History Towards Communism’.

  We were allowed to sit on the ground during this long preface, followed by a much longer and extremely tedious lecture. I noted how most of the blokes around me had nodded off. At the end of the verbal marathon we returned to our compound where we were instructed to run a discussion. To my surprise, Jimmy led me over to the white American compound where the new arrivals who’d been present at the previous day’s lecture lived. To ensure the discussion took place the Chinese gave us a list of written questions, and we were required to produce written responses. But upon arrival at the two white American houses most of the blokes promptly fell asleep, and one or two small groups started a desultory game of cards.

  ‘Hey, what about the written answers?’ I asked Jimmy.

  ‘Dat somethin’ I mention be sure to come up – well, it jus’ come up, Brother Fish,’ Jimmy said, grinning.

  My punishment had arrived. I was required to be scribe for the next five lectures before we finally returned to our own compound. Jimmy had established yet another gesture of leadership, this time at my expense. Though I couldn’t really complain – I’d had it coming to me. One of the men was allocated to stand watch so that if a political officer should approach to make sure the discussion they’d ordered was taking place, we would know well in advance. If he called out that Dinh was approaching everyone would gather around and I’d start verbalising, with the others pretending to be totally absorbed, nodding their heads and clapping and saying, ‘Yeah, man!’ or ‘Ain’t that the truth!’ when I made a particularly salient point.

  However, after I’d served my sentence and we were back in the Negro compound, my prowess as a scribe hadn’t gone unnoticed, and I was called upon to do the daily listening and to answer the questions for every subsequent lecture. Jimmy explained that this made me an integral and indispensable part of the group. ‘Ogoya, Brother Fish,’ was all he’d said by way of explanation when I’d accused him of dobbing me in for the ‘ears’n’pencil’ job. But the truth was, in the eyes of our compound, being the ears as well as the scribe was the one thing, except, of course, for the harmonica, that made me trustworthy and accepted. I was small, talked with a funny accent and they had no reason to trust someone with white skin, but to compensate, I’d become a useful and vital part of the daily procedure.

  As a result of my after-lecture discussion reports, our Chinese captors singled us out for meritorious endeavour in the cause of universal communism. Lieutenant Dinh reported that I had seen the error of my ways and it was clear, by the high standard of my reports, I had embraced the teachings of communism with enthusiasm. He also noted that he had come in on several lively discussions and it was obvious our compound was clearly seeing the light of ‘the truth’ beaming from the hilltop. As a reward, under the Lenient Policy, we were granted extra food rations, which was, I suspect, the real reason why I was finally accepted in the Negro compound.

  But I soon realised that yet another agenda was under way, and was probably the truly real reason that we started to get slightly preferential treatment. Lieutenant Dinh was obviously interested in converting the Negroes. He would stress at every session that the American Negro logically belonged on the side of the communist cause: ‘After nearly 300 years you are still the slaves of the white American imperialists. The capitalists use you as cannon fodder in this war,’ he’d say, as an example of his approach, then he’d add, ‘This is what we will discuss today.’ He’d continue in this vein, bringing up a specific instance of Negro oppression in the United States every session. Often it was difficult to refute his logic and I could see many of the men nodding and often afterwards there would be a real lively discussion, although Jimmy would never be a participant. Later he’d say to me, ‘It clever but I ain’t fooled – only people gonna save mah people are mah people demself.’

  Of course, as official scribe I’d have to take notes of the discussions and, as a result, I can still remember just about the whole communist discourse. My wife often accuses me of spouting it in my sleep, with phrases such as ‘Wall Street warmongers’ and ‘Profits bought with the blood of the Negro people’, or as an alternative, ‘the blood of the proletariat’. All this liberally interspersed with my snoring.

  However, as in the cave and the farm hospital, the harmonica was to prove the key to progress in our pa
rt of the POW camp. It was also to cause the rumpus Jimmy had warned would happen with ‘da man’.

  Operation Harmonica had begun slowly, with me knocking out a few tunes – mostly blues – in our room. At first there was the nodding of a few heads, coloured folk seemingly unable to remain motionless when music is about. Then, someone from another room would appear at the door and then more and more would arrive, and then a little humming, and finally, two or three days on, one of the men started singing along, followed shortly by others. Soon enough there was a bit of a concert going on in the compound after the afternoon’s lecture or parade.

  It didn’t take too long before Jimmy had another choir going, with the inevitable result that morale among the prisoners picked up. Cleanliness and cooperation between the men in the compound began to follow, all of which was carefully orchestrated by Jimmy. Pretty soon the Negro compound had regained a sense of self-respect – the blokes were washing their clothes and cleaning their rooms, and the sick among us were being cared for within the compound so as to avoid the hospital death sentence.

  One afternoon after a parade I invited Doug Waterman from the Royal Ulster Rifles to come round. ‘Mind if I bring a few mates, Jacko?’ he asked.

  Pretty soon we had an audience, not only from the Commonwealth forces but also some of the Americans, and this was what finally caused Corporal Steve O’Rourke – ‘da man’ – to surface. With a dozen or so of his henchmen he appeared at one of the afternoon concerts and, walking up to Jimmy, who was busy conducting the choir, he demanded the singing cease and the harmonica be handed over to him.

  O’Rourke wasn’t a small man, but by Jimmy’s standards he appeared so. Jimmy stopped the choir and waited, saying nothing.

  ‘What’s your name, nigger?’ O’Rourke asked.

  Jimmy smiled. ‘What’s yours, punk?’ he retaliated.

  ‘You know mine,’ O’Rourke said belligerently.