TWENTY-ONE

 

We arrived in a town called Tung Koo Chow. It was much larger and older than Tai Fo. As we marched through it, we passed two large temples, a school, and, sitting on large grounds and built in a European style, a Methodist hospital. The words over the gate reminded me of my school: St. Paul’s Hospital, in iron letters inside the arch. Far back from its entrance, the stately white building with its rows of windows gleamed coolly in the sunlight. A small ambulance was parked outside, and I caught a brief glimpse of a nursing sister in a white-and-blue uniform.

People who asked questions were hit with a rifle butt or ordered to be silent, but we did learn from some of the prisoners that the Japanese had taken the town in the last month. In some places it appeared untouched, in others we marched by damaged buildings and signs of shelling. We shuffled through the town, watched here and there by lean, half-hidden faces in windows or behind crumbling walls.

We stopped at the far end of the town. There, in a large field, sat six simple, long bamboo buildings. A wooden guard tower stood at one end, and some soldiers were building a heavy fence of wooden posts and barbed wire around the field. The last truck in the convoy pulled up behind us, and when its engine shut off, the air around us seemed to collapse into emptiness. We lined up for water from two large, dirty-looking cisterns with rubber hoses attached. Even in my thirst I winced at the stale, pungent taste of the water, and I prayed that Wei-Ming wouldn’t spit it out. But when it was her turn, she grabbed the hose tightly in her fist and took in all the water she could, and I felt embarrassed for having disliked it. Then we were ordered into a second lineup. Two villagers with bandaged heads handed out small metal bowls, and at the end of the line two women dished out a weak gruel of millet and unhusked rice.

My family sat on the ground together. Next to me, Leuk quietly counted out the spoonfuls from his bowl. “I want to remember how many make up a bowl.” He reached fifteen. Yee-Lin watched him as he did this. She watched her own bowl carefully and ate a little, then gave the rest to Wei-Ming.

We sat in the sun and slurped our gruel. None of the farm animals had survived the last day of walking. The Japanese threw them onto the trucks to butcher later. Flies harassed us everywhere. They swarmed over our faces and arms and landed on our bowls and swarmed around a soldiers’ latrine just outside the fence. I imagined they must be thick around the trucks where two dead water buffaloes and some ponies were lying.

Then we sat and waited. A few soldiers watched over us while the rest disappeared. Soon the smell of roasting meat drifted through the village, and we heard the occasional crack of gunfire.

Later, the Cantonese-speaking soldier reappeared. He called himself Sergeant Akamatsu. After wiping his greasy lips on his sleeve, he laid out our fate: we would help build the rest of this camp, all of us without exception for age or health, and here we would wait. Nothing else. Immediately, more soldiers appeared. They tipped a large wheelbarrow full of shovels onto the ground and the men and boys were ordered to line up for them, while a few other men were marshalled to collect bamboo from the grove at the town’s edge.

The soldiers separated the women from the men and then divided the women into two groups. Those in their thirties or older, or who were sick, were put into one group, and the younger ones were put in the other. Many mothers were taken from their daughters, and the Japanese seemed to enjoy shouting at them to be quiet and stop their wailing. When they started to hit the older women, the younger ones learned to be quiet. Standing next to Leuk in the line for shovels, I glanced repeatedly at Wei-Ming and Yee-Lin and tried to catch Wei-Ming’s eye.

I was very hot and thirsty. The soldiers ordered us to dig and showed us where, because none of us knew what we were building. It didn’t take long for the soldiers to start lashing out. Next to me was an older man I recognized from the vegetable stalls in Wah Ying. He had a large sore on the side of his head that looked very raw. He winced as the sweat from his bald scalp ran down into the sore, and when he dabbed or covered it with his dirty sleeve, he gasped and shivered. He was very slow and the soldiers took a special interest in him. A lieutenant approached him, kicking dust up into his face. He shouted, “Baka!” repeatedly. The old man stumbled, blinking in the sun and shielding the sore with his arm. He turned to them, and when he saw the rifle, he collapsed in despair, sobbing and bowing to the soldier with the shovel in one hand.

The soldier shouted back at him, with the explosive syllables and bobbing head that the Japanese often used. The old man muttered back and turned and tried to dig a little more, as if to propitiate the soldier. The shovel head scraped the dry earth and twisted in his hands, achieving nothing. The soldier raised his boot and kicked the old man to the ground. He was rolling onto his side to get up when the soldier raised his leg again and put the sole of his boot on the man’s neck. He shouted something else as he braced his boot against the man’s throat, and then he lunged forward.

I heard a crunch. The man’s tongue protruded and he flailed on the ground, eyes wide in terror. His hands flew up to the boot on his throat and he clutched feebly at it. His lips and face darkened to a bluish shade, and then he was still. The soldier turned and ordered two other prisoners to haul his body away.

Most of us had stopped to stare at this, but as soon as the man was dead, we were ordered to resume our work. I stared at the sun-baked soil and pushed hard with the shovel, thinking of it as a knife, a spike, a deadly instrument to outdo every other shovel nearby. The hunger in my stomach disappeared and I felt as though I’d been injected with a potion that gave me immense strength. The ground crumbled under the shovel’s tip, and I heaved the dirt away in quick snapping motions. I looked carefully at the others near me, checking to see how fast they dug and making sure I brought my shovel down harder and faster.

Leuk was in the next row, dragging stacks of bamboo over to another site. I wanted him to look at me, but he was squinting in the sunlight and his hair was sticking to his face. I worried that he wasn’t working hard enough. One of the other boys carrying bamboo was older and very strong, carrying twice as much as my brother. I wanted to hit that boy with my shovel, break his arm to weaken him and get him into trouble. It was the farmer’s son, the braggart who still bore the bruises on his face and arms from his father’s beating.

In the evening, Sergeant Akamatsu reappeared as we lined up for water and gruel. He picked meat from his teeth ostentatiously, and then he flicked the scraps onto the earth and ground them with his boot. He told us the camp still needed work and that we would sleep in the huts tonight. Anyone seen leaving would be shot, no matter the reason.

Leuk and I ended up in the same building, and I prayed that Wei-Ming and Yee-Lin were still together. The floor was hard, with a few straw mats over it, and the building was crowded and stank of unwashed bodies. It had been three days since the Japanese attacked Wah Ying, and since then I’d slept on the ground. It was very dark and the windows were shut, but air worked its way between the slats and a cool breeze soon blew away the stench. The soldiers closed the door and fixed it shut with a chain, and under the light shining through the door jamb I saw the shadow of a guard. I heard a cough and thought it was Leuk. I closed my eyes and filtered through the sounds around me to locate where he was.

That night, I slept and woke a dozen times, maybe more. I doubt if more than half an hour went by before I woke again, hearing sounds around me or dreaming them. Each time, my eyes went to the same spot: the thin stroke of moonlight beneath the door. I tried to count the number of times I woke up but lost track.

I watched the light closely. Twice the shadows broke it when boots shuffled lightly over the planks.

The third time I woke — which I guessed was before midnight — I began to wonder if everyone else was also waking up. I sat up very carefully and tried to see in the dark. I was confused and thought Yee-Lin and Wei-Ming were in our building. I worried that Wei-Ming would awake and make a noise or cry. And then what? I doubted Yee-Lin could quiet her fast enough. I ran through it in my head a hundred times, and the scenario changed each time. At first I imagined Yee-Lin and I leaning over her, hushing her to sleep before anyone else awoke. But the story took over. As the night wore on and I woke up again and again, it became a scene of stifled riot. The others around us would wake up when they heard her. They’d be angry. The farmer’s wife would sit up and reach around with clawing hands, looking for something to hit with. We’d be pressed in a corner, kicking out at the attackers. I felt someone try to pull my shoes from me and a dusty hand clawed my belt buckle.

My heart raced in the dark, and I rubbed my face to rouse myself from the fantasy. My head cleared and I heard only the others breathing dryly. I slowed my breathing down, timing each breath with the hush of the wind in the trees outside the fence. I was the only person awake. When I realized this, I was thrilled to have privacy. I sat straight up with my palms pressed on the floor beside me. No one could see me. The light from the door jamb lit nothing.

I loved the strange freedom of this moment, and I kept turning my head to listen for the sound of another person moving. I made wild faces in the dark, stretched my jaw and stuck out my tongue, rolled my eyes around, and when my eyes began to ache, I rolled my head around in the dark, flicking my tongue out like a snake.

I moved my jaw up and down while making no sound. I turned to a man and mouthed wa-wa-wa at him, stretching my jaw wider with every syllable. Then I mouthed silent words. I held my breath deep in my lungs as I sounded out phrases and clicked my tongue against my teeth, directing my lips at everyone in turn: idiot, fatty, loudmouth, frog-face, lumpy.

Then I mouthed sentences. Over the slumbering bodies I thrilled to the dry clicking in my mouth as I hurled insults at the other prisoners: you snore too loud, you drink nun’s piss, you love Japs, you love farts, you eat chicken shit. I avenged myself against the attackers in my dream. And when they failed to reply, I redoubled my abuse.

Then I felt dizzy and shivered with exhaustion. It felt like deep night, maybe three in the morning. My head swam until I couldn’t stay awake anymore. It was the last time for months that I’d feel the pleasure of solitude.

 

More prisoners arrived over the next few days, and the Japanese ordered us to keep building. We lashed bamboo poles together while the women and girls wove mats out of leaves and grass. The soldiers clustered near where the younger women such as Yee-Lin knelt and wove, talking loudly to each other and leering at them.

We had eight large huts for the prisoners, who now seemed to number at least a hundred and fifty. A few times I helped put up a wall or helped a woman with some mats, and I’d feel a brief flash of achievement. But I knew these were cages.

No one had enough to eat and the Japanese worked us relentlessly. Each day our pace slowed and we struggled to complete the work they gave us. I was tired all the time and often dizzy, and even at mealtimes I found it hard to stay awake. By the second week in the camp, the older people started dying. I came across an old woman one afternoon whom I recognized from the village. Her clothes and skin were so permeated with dust that I almost didn’t notice her on the ground. She had lost all her hair, and flies trafficked in and out of her toothless mouth. I thought of an old woman who used to sell candies at a stall near our house in Hong Kong, who used to call me a handsome boy. The old woman’s eyes were still open. I reached down to close them with my fingertips. That was all I could manage.

When children began to die, the Japanese changed their ways. Most people tried to give an extra share of gruel to their children, as we did with Wei-Ming, but sharing became harder with time. One morning the four of us sat together with our bowls, all of us very thin. Wei-Ming could barely keep her eyes open and was too tired to chase the flies off a sore on her lips. I still remember how I thought, She’s too tired now, she can’t eat anyway.

Sergeant Akamatsu appeared one afternoon to announce that the rations would be increased. We all knew this was because his supply of workers was dying off, but he made a point of telling us it was because so many villages had been captured that they had more food. He almost smiled as he said this. Vegetable scraps and even beans started appearing in the gruel, and everyone was now allotted a boiled sweet potato with each meal.

That evening, we stood in one of the lineups for food. It was a very hot evening, my shirt clinging to my back and chest, and the smell of burnt food made me feel slightly sick. A constant murmur of worn voices drifted through the prisoners’ ranks, until an argument broke out between two people in the next line. I wouldn’t have noticed it had I not caught Ling’s voice. I peered through the crowd and saw her standing with her bowl, shouting back at an older woman who’d accused her of trying to push ahead in the line.

I called to her. She turned, and at first she looked afraid — as though someone were joining in attacking her — but then she saw me and called back. I pointed the way to where we ate and she promised to meet us there. I had convinced myself she was dead.

By the third week, most of us felt a little stronger and had stopped losing weight. With careful washing, the sore on Wei-Ming’s lip slowly disappeared. Each of us made a point of giving her a small portion of our sweet potato. When we sat down after lining up for food, Leuk, Yee-Lin, Ling, and I would compare the quantities of food we had and try to ensure they were equal. One evening Leuk suggested we start saying grace again. Yee-Lin didn’t care and at first I didn’t, either.

“Don’t you remember the grace we said at our school every evening before supper?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to start saying that.”

“I’d feel better if we did.” His voice was dreamlike and he seemed to be looking at something in the distance.

Wei-Ming didn’t join in because our mother didn’t enforce grace, and Yee-Lin just went ahead and ate. Ling found it very strange. But my brother and I bowed our heads over the greyish liquid in our bowls and recited our school grace. The sound of the words in my mouth, our mutual mumbling of them, brought me back in an instant, and in my mind I saw briefly what Leuk had seen: the blank white walls of the school, the old banyan tree where we used to meet, the muted green of the lawns. We prayed for peace and consolation.

The next day, we finished building our camp.