We climbed a hillside above the town to get away from the crowds, and the acid was kicking in as the sun set, leaving a gorgeous peachy smear across the horizon. Just then two Indian lads came careering down the hillside behind us, shouting, laughing and waving their hands around their heads. One of them had a long stick with a huge wild honeycomb on the end, bees still whirling frantically around it.
‘Eat, eat! Very delicious, very sweet.’
And so we did. And it was the best honey we’d ever tasted, the glistening, treacly goo dripping between our fingers as the sun went down. Even Cosmo came out for the occasion and licked our fingers before climbing back into his pouch for a doze.
The trip to Hampi was short and sweet, and then it was time for Rosie and Nadia to go to Kerala without me. I saw them off at the station, and the week we’d be apart felt more like a month. Cosmo and I took another train back to Goa and arrived in time for a party. I didn’t really want to go, but neither did I want to sit around on my own missing Rosie. Tripped-out tourists gathered round to pet my new friend as we sat on bamboo mats at a chai shop under the stars. I had a couple of drinks, but avoided any psychedelics and headed home early, feeling exhausted from my long journey. Before I knew it, it was morning, and I was lying on a futon with all my clothes on. I walked out onto the porch as a schoolboy trundled past along a sandy track on his way to class. Then I remembered Cosmo, and I could feel his familiar body weight hanging in my shirt pocket. I reached in, but his body was cold as I pulled him out and laid him in the palm of my hand. Somehow, I’d rolled over in my sleep and squeezed all the life out of the little guy. I sat on the porch and wept like I hadn’t done in years. Later a couple of friends came round to cheer me up, and we buried my pocket-sized pal under a banyan tree in the garden.
The Chinese prisoners in the lifers’ block had found themselves a pet, too. A small, furry kitten. Rather than giving it a name and doing their best to look after the creature, they broke its legs and poured boiling water over it.
[9]
Coming Down From the Mountain
I’d been in Ti Lan Qiao for less than a year, but I’d already reached the halfway point of my sentence. The Chinese called this stage of the sentence ‘coming down from the mountain’. The metaphor implied a relaxing stroll back down from the dizzying heights of arrest and incarceration, but it was not to be. Though in private I could consider the worst to be over, the fact that my colleagues had yet to reach their own personal peaks robbed me of my own sense of relief. Added to this was the post-New Year gloom that inevitably set in as the jail returned to normal, and the guards arranged a flurry of meetings to propose new ways of reforming the prisoners. This usually involved a purge of those who’d risen to the top of the existing order: a recurring feature of Mao’s monocracy, in which the cream that had made its way to the top of the system was summarily reduced to scum at the bottom. The strategy had served the dictator well, enabling him to scupper the careers of those perceived to be a threat to his rule, replacing them with thuggish lackeys until their own day of judgement arrived and they, too, were sent to ‘learn from the masses’. Two decades after his death, and three years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Party still employed similar tactics to purge itself of ‘bad elements’, while the reverberations could be felt throughout society as a whole.
Shanghai radio, which had aired a good selection of Western music, began to play traditional Chinese music after the Party warned against the creeping tide of ‘bourgeois cultural imperialism’. There had been an American DJ on most weekday mornings, playing songs from bands like Smashing Pumpkins and many other US indie bands, which we listened to religiously. Suddenly it was replaced with ‘wholesome’ Chinese music that made our ears burn. Meanwhile the Elvis lookalike and ranting demagogue Warden Lai appeared with greater frequency on prison TV, delivering mordant sermons to his flock about the need for ever greater vigilance in the lofty pursuit of reform. A deluge of fawning missives followed as the Chinese cleansed themselves of barbarian tendencies, singing patriotic songs and marching for hours on end around the concrete compounds of the prison. Even Captain Xu, who was expert at keeping out of the way, had to turn up to work and look like he had something to do.
Given the casual manner in which the judiciary handed out death sentences, and the swift efficiency with which those sentences were executed, it came as little surprise that there were few genuinely heinous offenders in the prison. In a country where cigarette smugglers and fraudsters are regularly put to death, it followed that few murderers made it through the courts without getting a bullet through the back of the head. One such lucky person was Mr Zhao, a factory worker nearing the end of a fifteen-year sentence for strangling his wife. Like Mr Yin, who’d got eight years for torturing his wife, Mr Zhao was respected by the officers, who felt his wife had got what she deserved. While every other prisoner had to make grovelling apologies for their crimes, actively expressing repentance as part of their reform, Mr Zhao talked openly of his lack of remorse.
After our number one prisoner, Gao Zhengguo, was stripped of his title for passing letters to an inmate in the women’s brigade, Mr Zhao had been given the job of keeping order on our landing. Though respected by most of the Chinese, the foreigners were wary of Mr Zhao, who made no secret of his dislike for our group and set about trying to bring us in line with the Chinese way of doing things. His first plan was attempting to get us to work alongside the other prisoners, a situation that we all dreaded. Larry refused to have anything to do with working on human-rights grounds. He argued, quite rightly, that the unpaid work was slave labour and contrary to international law. He’d made a point of logging the serial numbers on the boxes of prison-made sports clothes destined for the United States and was using his consul visits to highlight this illegal activity. The authorities were well aware of this, and in spite of Mr Zhao’s efforts the idea was quietly dropped. But our victory was short-lived, because within days Mr Zhao complained that foreigners used too much hot water and should take their showers with the Chinese in 3rd Brigade. From that day on we would make the twice-weekly walk across the prison to the main showers, which were located in the same building as the kitchens.
My first visit to the large concrete box was something of an adventure. It involved walking up a long staircase past the kitchens, which I’d never seen before. The foreigners had nicknamed the austere, industrial-sized concrete room ‘Auschwitz’. More than one wing at a time would use the shower so it was an opportunity to meet some of the inmates we’d normally only see from a distance. In the winter the room was icy cold and we’d have to stand naked waiting for the archaic plumbing system to groan and splutter before the water came, which was often cold when it did. The trick was to get lathered up and rinsed as quickly as possible, otherwise you’d be left covered in soap suds and have to wait another three days to wash it off. Once I got the hang of it, I found it a pleasant enough break from the monotony of life on the wing. After all, we got to walk across the jail to a different building twice a week. Some of the other foreigners were less happy with the arrangement, and Gareth got into a fight with a couple of Chinese guys on our first trip to the new wash place. After writing a report to Captain Xu, it was decided that foreigners who wished to wash in the 8th Brigade washroom could do so as long as they only used one bowl of hot water. This was absurd since the bowls were barely large enough to get you wet, let alone rinsed; still, most of the foreigners stopped going to Auschwitz for their showers, while Jürgen and I continued to make the twice-weekly trek with the rest of the wing. Meanwhile, Mr Zhao was happy to have got his own back on our group after losing face over the issue of forced labour.
Another change came about when it was reported that I’d been seen talking to Pakistanis while doing the shitbuckets. It was decided that from that day on, foreigners would no longer get to empty their own buckets. Instead, a small team of Chinese prisoners would take care of the whole wing. Larry, who had a bad knee and hated havin
g to traipse up and down the stairs every day, was happy, but the others were angry. Emptying shitbuckets was a pretty odious task, but it was an important break from the monotony of life on the wing. It was 15 minutes of exercise and an opportunity to see another part of the jail. The location changed most days, depending on which drains were available, and sometimes we’d get a nice stroll through the courtyards to parts of the jail we’d otherwise never see. Although I wasn’t the only foreigner who talked to prisoners from other wings, it was me who had been reported and consequently I was to blame for the loss of the privilege.
I was also under fire for communicating with McLoughlin, whom the other foreigners had not spoken to for months. I’d maintained from the start that while I understood he was prone to violent outbursts and was rather too friendly with some of the guards, I wished to remain neutral. For a while this had been easy enough, and Tommy was happy to ignore the other prisoners while chatting to me from time to time. But inevitably problems began to emerge when it was discovered that Tommy had access to our mail. He had friends in the intellectual wing who were responsible for translating not only our letters but also reports anybody wrote to the guards. We also had friends who were translators, as these people were often brought in to mediate between ourselves and the officers, and we soon learned that McLoughlin was regularly writing reports that were critical of our group. Meanwhile, Larry, who seemed to be permanently at war with the authorities, was at loggerheads with Captain Xu, who was refusing to send a letter he’d written to Shanghai People’s Court demanding an appeal of his case. I was caught in the middle of all this hostility and it wasn’t long before fists started flying. McLoughlin punched Larry in the face, and reports were written by both parties blaming the other.
I tried to keep a distance from the disputes, but it became an increasingly difficult position to maintain. In spite of the violence, I felt that McLoughlin had a more pragmatic approach to dealing with the situation than Larry, whose attitude did himself, and our group, no favours. It was all very well that he wanted to appeal his sentence, but it was pure fantasy to believe his combative feud with Captain Xu would advance his case. In truth it was a waste of time anyway, since the People’s Court could never admit it had made any mistakes. Larry was banging his head against a wall. Tommy, on the other hand, had decided that the way forward was to ‘go Chinese’. He began to consider himself a regular prisoner and took part in all the activities that the Chinese did. He volunteered to work and even learned ‘patriotic’ songs. We all thought he’d lost the plot, though I felt it was his estrangement from the foreigners’ group that was exacerbating the problem.
The rise of Mr Zhao to number one prisoner status proved an unlikely bonus for Tommy, who found a kindred spirit in our loutish new leader. An expert at ingratiating himself with slippery authority figures, McLoughlin quickly moved to side with Mr Zhao against the other foreigners, heartily endorsing the Reform Through Labour issueas well as the hot-water dispute. As the only foreigner who worked, McLoughlin felt that he should get special privileges denied other prisoners, specifically an opportunity to obtain merit points, which in theory at least could lead to a sentence reduction. This put me in a very difficult position as I was the only foreigner who was still on speaking terms with the volatile Scotsman, and my loyalty towards the foreign group was put into question. As McLoughlin was actively involved in the anti-foreigner purge, I was forced to take sides with ‘my people’, the foreigners. Needless to say, from then on I became McLoughlin’s enemy, and he threatened to have my girlfriend’s parents’ house in St John’s Wood burned down by his gangster pals. This was cause for concern, because he was the only prisoner who had access to sending mail outside the usual channels – via a prisoner with a connection to a bent guard. Every so often he would remind me of this by singing the Rolling Stones song ‘Play With Fire’, particularly emphasising the line about the mother who owned a block in St John’s Wood, with his own twisted modifications to the lyrics.
He continued to write thinking reports to Captain Xu, emphasising his progress over the rest of the foreigners and reporting misdemeanours we’d committed. What he didn’t realise was that the translators were passing on information to both parties and we got to read what he was saying in his reports.
To underline the new order on the wing, Mr Zhao put McLoughlin in charge of the washroom, which required that he monitor the amount of hot water the other foreigners were using. This was ridiculous given the new ‘bowl-of-water’ rule for foreigners, and nobody had ever taken any interest in how much water was being used before. The latest rule was clearly designed to wind up the foreigners. The increasingly barmy Scotsman relished his new position and began to patrol the room at shower times, filling large vats with scalding water and joking how easy it would be to ‘slip’ and pour the contents over the naked occupants. Incensed by the new regime, the foreigners banded together to complain about the intimidating living conditions, but instead of writing a report that would be ignored by the guards, it was agreed that everyone would mention the situation at the next consular meeting, which was coming up. When the day arrived, a meeting was held to discuss the issue, and in the presence of the head warden and the consular staff from the British, German and American embassies, McLoughlin and Mr Zhao’s racist and intimidating agenda was exposed. The plan worked: McLoughlin lost his job in the washroom and Mr Zhao lost interest in humiliating the foreign unit.
Not to be outdone by our small victory, Captain Xu announced that from now on the foreigners would have to fall in line with the rest of the prisoners and take part in Reform Through Education classes. Captain Xu spoke no English and may well have been illiterate (all his paperwork was done for him by prisoners from the intellectual brigade), so when the big day arrived for the foreigners to begin their education, the task was passed on to the jovially ineffectual Captain Mai. Mai spoke very little English, but brought in Jin Feng, the elderly lifer from the brainy wing, whose English was reasonably coherent even if his translation skills were haphazard and prone to vague meanderings.
Jin Feng was a liumeng, or sexual hooligan, and had been in and out of prison since the ’60s. We never worked out what his crimes had been, but he’d grown up around foreigners in the foreign concessions before the war. The son of a Christian pastor, he’d been educated at a Christian school, where he’d learned to dance the rumba, tango and waltz. It wasn’t hard to see why he’d fallen foul of the Communist system, being both a Christian and prone to ‘bourgeois’ Western habits. He’d even given himself a Western name: Joseph King. He was tall for a Chinese and had been something of a dandy in his earlier years, given to wearing Western blazers and cravats at a time when most Chinese were wearing blue or green Mao suits. He reminded me of the bellhop I’d met on the morning of my arrest, whose cultured manner had singled him out for persecution.
The text we were to study was the Chinese Law, a sprawling tome that supposedly protected the rights of the people who lived under its edicts. It was peppered with obscure caveats and fuzzy interpretations of buzzwords like ‘democratic’ and ‘human rights’, but the classes became an occasionally fascinating insight into the murky legal quagmire that was Chinese law. This provided an opportunity for the foreigners with legal issues to pursue their own agendas, while the hopelessly inept Captain Mai looked like a man drowning under the barrage of angry questions. Typically he would announce through the interpreter, ‘Every person has a right to see a lawyer,’ at which point everyone would burst out laughing in his face until it turned from red to purple as he pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow. ‘Every person has the right to appeal his sentence!’ he muttered sheepishly as we rolled in the aisles giggling. Occasionally he’d drop a bombshell: ‘The Chinese people’s police have a right to confiscate the property of some criminals!’ and we began to speculate how many people had had their homes stolen by bent coppers.
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Mai; he didn’t want to take th
e class any more than we wanted to attend it. It was difficult to workout whether he believed much of the material himself. He’d been in the jail long enough to know that whenever someone came in with a death sentence, their right to appeal was little more than a formality. Miscarriages of justice were unheard of because it was inconceivable that the state could have made a mistake in the first place. The innocent minority were meant to show the same repentance in the eyes of the powers above as the guilty majority. While the Chinese were forced to reconcile themselves to their fate, the foreigners could dispute their treatment and speak out. Mai had never been in a situation where an individual, let alone an entire group of prisoners, could contradict his point of view. For us, it was an important victory. We’d escaped the crucial factor in the Chinese prisoners’ enslavement: their own capitulation to the state ideology.
But we were privileged; we lived outside the Maoist bubble that still engulfed much of the nation. Captain Xu knew this well, which is why he was eager to pass the job on to anyone he could find. He knew that the bumbling, well-meaning Mai would be able to take flak from the infidels, and he probably had a few laughs with his mates about it. Perhaps they’d taken bets on how long the classes would last, because Xu had long since realised that the foreigners couldn’t begin to understand the notion of repentance as the Chinese were made to know it. He’d told me to my face, ‘You don’t belong here.’ And he was right. We were a disruptive influence on the smooth running of his wing. The language barrier was the tip of the iceberg; beneath it lay a chilling history of fear and terror.
Though originally scheduled as a bi-weekly, four-hour gathering, the increasingly rowdy meetings quickly became a ninety-minute, once-a-week opportunity for the foreigners to vent their spleens about the atrocious legal limbo that the law had left them in. Before long the meetings withered away to nothing, though Captain Xu announced with typical fanfare at a work-unit meeting that the foreigners had made good progress with their education reform. Then Mai delivered the news we’d been dreading: from now on the foreigners would be required to write thinking reports.
Monkey House Blues Page 18
