War Trash (32 page)

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.

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 lighthouse 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 emerged 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.

Day after day we racked our brains, but still couldn't find an adequate transmission method. Little Hou was truly a smart fellow and engrossed in the code work most of the time. When he was eating or taking a break, he would mention to us one possibility and another, but none of them would work. Then one morning he hit on a brilliant idea, namely to simplify the Morse code as much as possible, to the degree of letting one dot or one dash stand for a numeral. This would not only speed up the transmission but also reduce confusion. Based on this conception, he and Mushu created the Walking Telegraphic Method: the sender of the message would stand behind the window of the war criminals cell. If he walked to the left side, it meant a dot; if he moved to the right, it denoted a dash; if he hunkered down below the window, that indicated the beginning of a new group of numerals. One dot meant 1, one dot plus one dash – 2, two dots plus one dash – 3, two dots – 4, three dots – 5, three dashes – 6, two dashes plus one dot – 7, one dash plus one dot – 8, two dashes – 9, and one dash – o. As a rule, every four numerals represented a word. After the receiver jotted down the numerals, he passed it on to the code man, who could decipher them with the aid of the codebook Little Hou was making. In the reverse order to our cell, the war criminal's room had a window facing Compound 6, so they could send and receive messages from within the room. This method would definitely resolve the problem of transmission. How excited we were! We wanted to shout for joy, but we didn't dare. We only lifted Little Hou on our shoulders and walked a few rounds in the cell. Then he returned to working at the code.

When the lead in the pencil was worn down, Mushu would bite the tip sharp. As the main worker, Little Hou didn't get enough sleep, his eyes bloodshot. We were worried about him, but couldn't do much to help. Without a dictionary, we couldn't remember all the essential words, but we managed to come up with over eight hundred common characters. This wasn't bad. The code shouldn't be too elaborate; otherwise it would have been difficult to master. So we aimed at fewer than one thousand characters. Whenever an often-used word came to mind, we would tell Little Hou. The penciled pages looked complicated and incomprehensible to me, but Little Hou could trace what he had done to avoid repetition. We continued to work for five days.

Finally a booklet – loose sheets of toilet paper bound by a shoelace – was completed, which listed all the codes and gave instructions about the Walking Telegraphic Method. We put a title on the cover: The Pei Code.

The work done, we reported our success to the other side. Immediately came Commissar Pei 's congratulations. He wrote: "Dear Comrades – You have accomplished a spectacular deed, which demonstrates your sense of revolutionary duty and astonishing talent! It is hard to imagine how much the code will contribute to our future struggle. I hereby notify you that each of you is awarded the first-class merit citation. On behalf of the Community Party, I thank and salute you!" I could see the excitement in his vigorous handwriting, which was less formal than usual. I was amazed he had another pencil.

We hugged one another again, proud of our achievement.

Then came a problem we hadn't anticipated: How could we take this code back to the barracks? The original codebook was going to be handed over to the other cell; normally we would duplicate a copy, which wasn't hard to do. But none of us would be able to smuggle such a thing back into the camp, because we'd have to go through at least two searches before we could rejoin our comrades there. Looking at one another and clutching at our hair, we were at a loss. Silence filled the room.