Interpreter Peng, the officer from Taiwan, accompanied the two squads of GIs guarding us. He was a quiet man and seldom spoke a word unless he had to. His English was mannered, slightly British. He seemed lonesome. For a whole day he continually read a dog-eared book under a willow and didn't mix much with the GIs. At the end of the work, we formed up for him to do the head count. He directed ten of us at a time to step aside to join those he had already counted. Done with the last batch of us, he found one man was missing. He demanded that every squad leader conduct a roll call to see who was absent.
Shanmin tugged my sleeve and whispered, "Weiming's not here." I was taken aback; but convinced that our friend would never escape alone, I reported his absence to Interpreter Peng.
Meanwhile Sergeant Harris, the commander of the two squads escorting us, was enraged. And we were worried too, looking around for Weiming. Then I caught sight of his back in the wattle bushes over a hundred yards away. I had heard that he suffered loose bowels these days, and I thought he might be having a movement, so I pointed him out. Interpreter Peng saw Weiming too. "He's there," he told the sergeant.
"Goddammit!" Harris shouted at Weiming, "What are you doing over there? Get your big ass back here." His breath smelled awful, like underarm odor, though he chewed gum constantly.
Weiming didn't respond, as if he had heard nothing. I broke in, "He's suffering from dysentery recently. Let me go get him back." Without waiting for permission I strode away toward the bushes.
The sergeant followed me; so did Officer Peng. When we reached the bushes, Weiming still didn't budge, his naked posterior in clear view.
"Are you deaf?" Harris yelled at him.
Still there was no response. The sergeant stepped over and pulled Weiming's ear from behind, but the squatting man made no sound, as if lost in concentrating on his business. Harris walked around and pinched his cheek; still Weiming didn't say a word, though he winced this time. The sergeant seized his hair and yanked; Weiming shuffled forward a few steps, revealing two dark turds on the sand. At the sight of the solid feces, Harris flew into a rage. He kicked Weiming's backside ferociously and sent him up to his feet. Without wiping himself, Weiming pulled up his pants while the sergeant battered him with his rifle butt.
"Ouch, ouch!" my friend finally said. "I have a stomachache!"
Interpreter Peng told the sergeant, "He has stomach trouble."
To our astonishment, Harris picked up a turd with his bayonet, thrust it to Weiming's mouth, and ordered, "Open wide!"
Weiming was too flabbergasted to say a word. The sergeant yelled at him again, "Eat this! It'll cure your stomach problem. If you don't, I'll finish you off right here."
Weiming looked at me and then at Interpreter Peng, but he wouldn't open his mouth. I intervened, saying, "Sarge, please don't be so – "
"Shut up!" His elbow jabbed me in the sternum. "You fucking liar! You said he had dysentery. Look at his shit, solid like stone. I tell you, if you mess with my job again, I'm gonna make you eat the other piece." He resumed kicking Weiming.
Strangely enough, Interpreter Peng said in his clipped English, "Sergeant, please stop abusing him. He just answered a call of nature. We all do the same."
These unmodulated words seemed to stun Harris, who looked at the interpreter for a moment, then asked, "What did you say?"
"Please stop beating him."
"Who the fuck do you think you are? Get out of my face!"
With trembling lips Peng said, "Colonel Kelly assigned me to accompany you, so I too am responsible for keeping order here. If you don't like my suggestion, you can complain to your superiors."
"You little shit, you think you can order me around?"
"You have been unreasonable."
"Whose side are you on, eh?"
"That has nothing to do with this. You're wrong. Who can eat his own shit?"
"Fuck you, chink! You're helping them Commies. You think I can't see through you?"
While they were wrangling, I dragged Weiming back into the ranks of the prisoners. I was afraid that Sergeant Harris would attack the interpreter. But a moment later they came back, both with sullen faces. Officer Peng didn't walk with the GIs on the way back to the camp; instead, he followed us, alone and rather absentminded. I turned to glance at him from time to time. He looked pensive, his face tauter than an hour ago.
Back in our compound, Weiming described the incident to the other prisoners, who were all amazed, because we had always held in contempt the Nationalist officers working here and believed all they dared to do was say "Yes sir" to the Americans. Nobody had expected that the interpreter would intercede for a POW, an enemy he was supposed to hate. A week later Officer Peng left the camp. Some people said he had been called back to Taiwan, some believed he had applied for a discharge of his own accord, and some guessed he might have gotten demoted. What happened to him? I asked several Americans, but they didn't know either.
I have often thought of this scrawny man. Over the years, his smooth face and close-set eyes have grown more and more distinct in my memory.
30. THE FINAL ORDER
Winter was short on Cheju, though it wasn't over in February yet. Nothing newsworthy had happened since November. It was peaceful on the island, but the peace was not easy for our leaders to take. We had learned that the truce talks at Panmunjom had broken off some months ago and hadn't yet resumed. One day in late February, Colonel Kelly informed us that four of our officers must go to Pusan to get reregistered. Among them were Hao Chaolin and Chang Ming. We all thought they would be interrogated again, and that probably the Americans meant to put them away before the repatriation began. Ming was still with Commissar Pei in the prison house; it might do him good to get out of the confinement for some time, though the reregistration sounded treacherous. I often saw him moving left and right behind the window of that cell, transmitting messages. His movement was slow. His health had deteriorated, and I had heard that he suffered from arthritis. The inside of that prison was extremely damp; it was on the edge of the beach, and sometimes at high tide, seawater would reach the base of the exterior wall.
A message regarding the reregistration was sent to Commissar Pei. The next afternoon he replied: "Feng Wen cannot leave his job. Ask Feng Yan to go for him. The four officers should contact the underground Party at Pusan and build a channel of communication." Ming's listed name was Feng Wen and mine Feng Yan – we shared the same family name. That must have been one of the reasons I was ordered to take his place. Before we received Pei's message, a returned "troublemaker" from the prison house had delivered to us Ming's POW ID tag, which was a card six inches by three, bearing information on his birthplace and date of birth, family members, education, rank, conscript time, and the serial number of his former army unit. At the top of the card was his POW number: 720143. Plainly Pei wanted me to take Ming's tag with me.
Having read the message, I was overtaken by anger and fear. I left my shed without a word and walked along the barbed-wire fence alone. The yard was slushy in places and the mud felt sticky under my boots, but I didn't care and just let my feet go anywhere they wanted. My face was hot, as if I were running a temperature, and I kicked whatever was in the way, pebbles, tin cans, bottle caps, twigs, mule droppings. Soon my boots, caked with mud, felt twice their normal weight. The wind tossed up a couple of tattered leaves, whose ribs and veins hadn't rotted yet; the leaves now tumbled around and now dropped flat. Outside the camp, the ground looked fecund, already pierced by the sprouting grass. In the southeast, nutmeg trees were green with tiny leaves, and their thick boles brightened, whitish in the last sunlight. I was angry about the commissar's decision, my throat aching. Indeed Ming was his interpreter, secretary, code man, and signalman, yet I could easily have replaced him without interrupting the regular work and communication. With a little training, I could learn how to use the Pei Code and how to transmit and receive messages from that cell. At most it would take me two days to master the skills. Why did I have to go in place of Ming?