I was a bit skeptical about Schulze’s ability to argue with a seasoned Communist agitator and doubted if he could present our side of the picture without talking sheer nonsense and receive sneers instead of cheers. But he seemed confident enough, and I thought, why shouldn’t he have his fun. Besides, as Karl remarked, should Erich go wrong, we could always deliver the final argument, and he tapped the stock of his submachine gun with a significant grin.
Schulze protested. “Nothing of the sort, men, I want to play it absolutely fair.”
Karl chuckled. “How can you possibly play it fair when, at the end of your conference, they are going to be shot anyway? The people will think that we killed the prisoners because they won the argument.”
“Well, we can spare them for once, can’t we?” Karl glanced at me. “What do you think, Hans?”
“Personally I think the whole business is nothing but a shot in the dark, but since I did not intend to leave here before sundown anyway, we have time. We can also decide about the prisoners later.”
Schulze advised Commissar Kwang, “You may say whatever you want, tovarich Commissar—nobody is going to hurt you for it, but you will also have to listen to our arguments.”
“As you wish,” the agitator bowed in mocking compliance, “We are your prisoners and consequently we have no choice.”
“Commissar Kwang,” Erich shook his head slowly, “I am telling you that you may speak as freely as if you were in Peking, yet you begin with unfair remarks. Speak to the people. You should not feel embarrassed Say whatever you feel like saying. Quote Lenin, Stalin, or Mao Tse-tung, condemn the French colonialists, curse us. The people here know you. You have been talking to them before, haven’t you?”
“A most extraordinary favor from an imperialist puppet who calls himself an officer,” the commissar replied, and as Xuey interpreted his words, Schulze broke into a jovial grin.
“That’s much better, Commissar Kwang. Now you are hitting familiar chords.”
Kwang smiled and turned toward the villagers, whose faces revealed eager interest. They understood that we were permitting the important Viet Minh leader to speak with impunity granted to him in advance, something the Viet Minh would never do.
“The colonialist officer wants me to speak to you,” Kwang began slowly, his voice picking up momentum as he went on. “You all know that only an hour ago they murdered sixteen brave patriots, devoted men who have been fighting the white oppressors for many years, so that you may gain your freedom one day. They were killed while they slept, for these brave men here were afraid to face them with a weapon in hand. With blood still dripping from their hands, these aliens are making a mockery of freedom by offering me immunity for whatever I might say against them. They permit me to quote Comrade Mao, they permit us to condemn the colonialist criminals, so that you may see what a great freedom they represent. We don’t need the freedom which the white killers permit us to have. We shall have our freedom without their consent. The colonialist officers are still walking and talking, they can still murder your brothers and sisters—but they are dead men already. Now they are posing as great heroes but they are nothing but frightened rats who sneak in the night to raid your homes, to murder the brave fighters of the people. They know they are losing, therefore they try to make our victory as bitter as possible. The people laugh at them everywhere. The people know who are their true friends, and millions in every part of the country follow Father Ho and Comrade Mao. I have already told you how the brotherly Chinese people defeated colonialists who were a thousand times stronger than the French puppets in your country. We don’t have to condemn them. They have condemned themselves a thousand times. When this mockery is over, they will kill me and Comrade Kly, and afterwards they will speak to you again. You should never believe them, for no oppressor is ever telling the truth to the oppressed.”
He stopped, bowed slightly, and without looking at Schulze he returned to his place. “We are ready to face our executioners now,” he said aloud instead of sitting down, “for we are going to die for the people and when our bodies return to mother earth, for every drop of our blood a hundred avenging fighters will rise.”
Schulze stepped forward.
“Commissar Kwang seems to have told you what he wanted to say,” he began slowly, ignoring Kwang’s dramatic “farewell.”
“You have heard what he thinks of us colonialist officers. He called us rats, oppressors, dead men. I am addressing him as Commissar Kwang, and not a Communist murderer, which is what his kind really are. He may speak to you freely but I am sure that you have never seen a captured French officer speaking to you with the permission of a Viet Minh commissar. And you will never see one, for the Communists will never permit anyone to speak the truth, or to oppose them in any way. What Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung have written down fills enough books to build a dam across the Mekong River. But once their ideology is put into practice, it does not work. It may hypnotize the people but it can never convince them of anything because Communism is the biggest fraud ever conceived by a few wicked men who wanted to get rich through robbery and murder.”
“Say, Erich!” Eisner cut in. “Speak in simple terms or you won’t have a chance of getting through. If you are going to use words like “ideology,”
“fraud,”
“hypnotize,* then you might as well speak German for all the good it will do.”
He paused for a moment, then added: “Just tell them Communism is a big lie and they will get you.”
He sat down. “I’ll bet they don’t even know what Communism means,” he said to me. “Ho Chi Minh isn’t using the term either.”
“I can tel! you in front of the agitators—” Erich went on.
“Merde!” Bernard interposed again. “They don’t know an agitator from Adam.”
“Shut up, will you?” Schulze snapped. “Or stand up and speak yourself.”
Riedl grinned and the prisoners smiled contentedly. Although we spoke German, they had obviously caught the meaning of our exchange. Eisner, however, accepted the challenge. He strode over to Schulze, cleared his throat, then pointing a straight, accusing finger at the Party men he bellowed: “The Lao Dong say that Ho Chi Minh is bringing freedom and a better life for you people, but it is a big lie! They are Communists, though they do not like to use the word for so many people around the world hate them; they talk of freedom, but they want it no more than you want cholera. When the Viet Minh comes to a village, the big leaders speak to the poor people, for it is only the poor people they can cheat. They point to the land of a rich owner and tell you: Kill the owner and you may have his land. In the big city they tell the poor people: Kill the owner of this large store and you may take the food from his shop without paying for it. But even children know that one cannot have food without paying for it. It was so ever since man was born on earth. They point to the house of a wealthy man and say: Kill the rich man and his house will be yours. But the house will not be yours. It will belong to the Lao Dong secretaries, to the commissars, or to some other big Viet Minh leaders; you just do the killing for them. We know that here, too, you killed the rich landowner and took his land. The Viet Minh lets you have the land for a short time, because the Viet Minh needs food. Without your help they cannot fight the French. But should the French leave your country, your lands will be taken away from you and you will have to work in a colchos.”
He paused for a moment waiting for Xuey to catch up, then went on. “Do you know what a colchos is? It is the Communist way of sowing and harvesting, a big piece of land where every villager is obliged to work. But the land does not belong to them and what they harvest will not belong to them either. If the Lao Dong party wins, the Communists will tell you what you must do and nothing will be yours—not even your huts.”