“You asked me, I-wan, how I came to be in prison. It is a simple story. One day soldiers came into our English classroom and they shouted my name. I was reading a poem by an English poet. I could not understand it very well, but I felt through the dimness of foreign words that there was beauty. It began, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud—’
“I had been studying English for three years. At home in the village they all crowded around me in the summer evenings and begged me, ‘Speak some English for us to hear!’ So I would say slowly and clearly, ‘My name is Liu En-lan. How do you do. I am very well, thank you.’ Everyone listened in silence, and when I stopped they burst into laughter and they laughed until tears ran down their cheeks. ‘It sounds like hens cackling,’ they said. ‘Now tell us what it means.’ And they listened again while I told them, admiring me for all I knew.
“And my old uncle, Liu Ih, the oldest man in the village, always nodded his head and sucked his pipe and said, ‘I knew we made no mistake when we let him go to school. No one from this village has ever gone to school, but times are changed. He will bring honor to us all. He will get a fine government job with all this English and pay us all back — with interest.’ ‘Yes, I will,’ I always promised. I gazed around at their faces, and I loved them greatly as they looked at me, their eyes innocent and wistful in their lined dark faces. At their feet stood little children, staring at me in wonder and in silence, to whom I knew I was a hero. When I was graduated with honors, I would get the fine job and do everything for them. I would hire a good teacher and all the children should go to school….
“So that morning I had been reading through the foreign words toward that beauty, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud.’ … Miss Maitland was saying slowly, ‘This is a poem by a great English poet, whose name was Wordsworth.’
“At this moment something struck the door and we all looked toward it. It was a flimsy door, and it burst open at once, as indeed you know it does, even in a little wind. How then could it withstand the blow of a gun? Soldiers stood there, at least twenty of them, and one shouted, ‘Where is Liu En-lan?’
“When I heard my name I stood up at once. No one said anything.
“‘Are you Liu En-lan?’ the sergeant shouted.
“‘Yes, I am,’ I answered quietly, though I was very much astonished.
“‘You are under arrest!’ the sergeant roared. ‘Come with us!’
“‘But why — why—’ I stammered, and could not talk. I could not imagine why I was arrested, nor indeed that even my name was known except to my teachers and a very few of my fellow students. ‘I think there is a mistake,’ I said to the sergeant.
“‘No mistake!’ cried the sergeant. ‘Liu En-lan of the Liu village in the province of Shensi!’
“‘That is certainly I and that is my village,’ I replied, ‘but why should I be arrested?’
“At this the sergeant grew very red in the face. ‘You dare to talk to me!’ he bellowed, and rushing to me he seized me by the collar and jerked me off my feet. I felt to my horror that my collar was torn and I would have to buy a new coat. But I had no time for anything more than the bare thought, because the sergeant was a large man and very angry. He shook me and shouted, ‘You dare — you dare!’ I wanted to fight back, but I knew it would be foolish, with all the guns of the soldiers pointed at me.
“At this Miss Maitland grew very angry. You know her small mild face, under her parted white hair — it is always gentle and proper. None of us had ever seen it otherwise. But suddenly she flew at the sergeant and grasped his arm and shook it.
“‘You stop behaving like that in my classroom!’ she said severely. ‘I say stop it — do you hear me?’
“Since she spoke in English the sergeant understood nothing that she said. He looked at her as a tomcat looks at a furious mouse.
“‘What is this foreign female saying?’ he asked me.
“‘She begs you to desist,’ I translated.
“‘Tell her you are arrested,’ he ordered.
“‘I am arrested,’ I said to Miss Maitland in English.
“‘What for?’ she demanded.
“‘I do not know,’ I replied truthfully.
“‘That’s silly!’ Miss Maitland cried. ‘Ask him, the big beast! And tell him I say he is a beast!’
“But I dared only say to the sergeant, ‘This honorable foreign lady, who is our teacher, asks why I am arrested.’
“‘Tell her it’s not her affair,’ the sergeant replied loftily.
“‘He says he is not allowed to say,’ I translated to Miss Maitland.
“‘Now that’s just too silly!’ Miss Maitland said. ‘Tell him to get out and stop interfering — tell him he can’t come arresting my students like this — I’ll speak to the British consul!’
“I hesitated.
“‘Tell him all I said!’ Miss Maitland commanded.
“‘She says,’ I began, ‘she will ask her consul to inquire—’
“The sergeant glared at Miss Maitland, but she glared back, and he turned away with dignity.
“‘I was told to arrest you,’ he said more loftily.
“‘But why?’ I now demanded for myself.
“‘Oh, what’s all this about?’ Miss Maitland cried.
“But before she could say another word the sergeant shouted to the soldiers, ‘Forward, march!’ Instantly the soldiers seized my arms and I was hustled out before anyone could help me — if, indeed, I could have been helped. The students all sat silent and still as stone, and Miss Maitland only screamed.
“I was marched down the street, and then into a great gate and thrust into the jail. I had written of this jail in my composition.
“‘We have also a model prison in our country,’ I had written. ‘It is said that prison is one of the best in the world, and American and English visitors go to see how well China treats her captives in her model prison.’
“Now I was thrust into a cell in this prison and the door was locked. It was, as a matter of fact, not uncomfortable at all. I think I must have been the first one there. It was clean — not as you saw it when hundreds had been through it. The cell was much better than most of the little earth huts in which the villagers lived in my home village, and indeed quite as good even as the tiny room I had been able to afford when I had first come to school in Shanghai, before I was given a room in the dormitory. In the cell there was a board bed, a dark blue cotton quilt, quite clean, and some bricks piled into a seat, and the small window. The house in which I had spent my childhood had no window at all. But then the door was open to the threshing floor, which was also the dooryard, so that the wide sky was always to be seen. As a small boy I sat on the high doorstep and watched my father and mother threshing wheat or beans and sifting out the chaff and husks in the strong dry winds. But the food in the prison was certainly better than what I had as a child.
“The food, in fact, was so good that I enjoyed it and when I had finished my breakfast of rice and salt fish, with a bit of bread, on the second morning, I could not believe that in such a beautiful prison I would not receive the utmost justice. Besides, I told myself, this new government was just. They would allow me to explain at the trial. Every morning I thought, ‘Today I shall be summoned.’ I had long prepared in my mind what I would say. Lying upon the board bed at night, and staring at the square of sky by day, I planned every word until it was put together something like this.