CHAPTER XXX

The soldier carrying him said something in an abrupt grunt to someone else. He was slung over the man's-shoulder. Seen upside down, the yellow--brown earth hung wobbling over him, a heavy sky perilously close, as if about to fall- The man was not big and was staggering under his weight. They seemed to be talking Korean. Liu dimly remembered shouting for help as the two of them passed by.
They were heading for the road- Trucks and jeeps: were moving along the roadway again- The purr of traffic were strange, civilized sounds, Liu thought. The man carrying him gave another grunt in answer to something his companion said- He stopped  and slowly bending his knees, squatted and lowered Liu to the ground. The other man came around to pick him up under the shoulders while the man who had been carrying him picked him up by the legs. They started off again, carrying Liu between them. During the reshuffling Liu got a chance to take a good look at them and realized for the first time that they were wearing South Korean uniforms. In his feebleness it only gave him a small shock, 'which, if anything, helped to clear his head.
They must have picked him up because he was dressed like a kan-pu and could very well be an officer of some importance. They had no way of telling, since no badges of rank were worn by the People's Volunteers in Korea.
Were these men a patrol? He listened for the thump of distant guns., There didn't seem to be any. But then there came an absentminded peal or two, like summer thunder, as if it was raining in another part of the country, though the sun was shining here. The line must have shifted. Have we been cut off? he wondered. He couldn't have been unconscious for long. But things happen so fast out here with everything motorized. The long smooth run of traffic unimpeded by horse-carts and pack-mules sounded ominous now, telling him that he was well inside enemy territory.
His wound had wakened before he had. It was screaming in his ears without a break, sometimes like a hungry infant, sometimes like a forest full of cicadas on .a hot day. He tried not to cry out when the men stumbled over rough spots. After they climbed to the road they passed wrecked trucks, blackened husks all burned out inside. The cheap tin-can bareness within the cab made him shiver. Was one of those trucks the one he had escaped from? There had been four. He' forgot to count,
The enemy soldiers finally brought him to a big cave at the foot of the ridge. He guessed it was a South Korean first-aid station. A Chinese interpreter asked him his name, rank and outfit. He answered as best he could but he did not expect to be believed. It was a common prac¬tice for captured officers to give a lower rank than their real one. A Korean nurse snipped away parts of his blood-encrusted uniform and a Korean doctor looked over his
wound. The examination was so painful that he lost consciousness again.
He came to at the back of a jeep. They must be taking him to the headquarters for questioning- It turned out to be a long journey. It was dark when they drove into a large city in semi-blackout and they woke him again by lifting him out of the jeep.
The next morning when he roused himself from drugged sleep, the UN hospital in Seoul struck him as a fantastic thing- It floated shiplike and almost palatial on the grey sea of war. They must be pretty anxious that. he should live, so they could get information out of him.. They evidently still had the wrong idea about his identity; it wasn't a real officer they'd captured, just a disillusioned ex-student whose career was finished anyway. A lot of stories had been circulated about the Americans using torture on war prisoners. He had not believed all that he had heard. But after all, war is war- He hadn't the least idea of what was coming, so that the modest comfort of clean pajamas and snow white sheets and the foreign nurses in attendance took on sultanic and, sinister splendor.
All the doctors and nurses were foreigners. To him that was nothing unusual. But all the wounded men were westerners too. He had never seen so many foreigners. His contact with such people had been limited to books. and films and a college professor at his university, to him. they always seemed to talk like books and behave like film characters and were quite unreal- It stunned him to, see the two rows of sun-baked faces pink or 'meaty red, very much flesh-and-blood against the chill white of beds and wall. It was rather careless and, slipshod of the people in charge to put a Chinese, captive together with their own wounded. This went to show that their security measures were very lax, he thought weakly with a habit-taught flicker of disapproval.

He had been re-examined, had his dressings changed, and was given a blood transfusion upon arrival at the hospital. They were giving him penicillin injections and Vitamin pills and made him eat beef and liver- But they did not let ,him have enough water to drink. A nurse brought him chewing gum and showed him by gestures that he was to chew it when he felt thirsty. Out of caution he did not speak English to them, not wishing to call attention to himself in any way- The nurses laughed and joked with the other patients. To him they were brisk and unsmiling. If their eyes were not pale blue they seemed to turn that color when they looked at him. Blue eyes, remote -- and somehow empty when he thought suddenly of Su Nan. In their weariness and. their rumpled uniforms they were not as pretty as the nurses in the movies.. Liu had gone to foreign movies often before he had learned to condemn them-
They gave him sedatives again so he had a good night's sleep the second day. Waking up he was astounded to find a Chinese in the bed next to his. The man had just had an operation. Liu waited hours in feverish suspense before the effects of the anesthetics wore off and the man could talk a little- He said he was a soldier from the 33rd Section. He spoke with a Szechuan accent. Liu saw that he had a head wound and another in his thigh.
So Liu was not the only Chinese war prisoner brought here for treatment. Then they had not singled him out, expecting to 'extract information from him- His heart throbbed with sudden hope. But it was inconceivable that these people should run the war like a charity. The little Szechuanese was getting several vitamin and penicillin injections a day, more than any westerner in the ward got, because his condition was critical-
They to give the Szechuanese one blood trans
fusion after another. Then the. nurses put, up a screen
around his bed and Liu knew that he was dying. When Liu was wheeled back into the ward. after his. own operation, the screen was gone and so was the Szechuanese. The few words they had exchanged had felt like a family reunion on New Year's Eve, and made Liu more acutely conscious of being lost and a drift among strangers in a foreign country, an outlaw and an invalid.
Liu's operation turned out well. The incredible days repeated themselves- He never could get over waking up from a nap and finding tea or milk and biscuits by his pillow. His astonishment was almost resentful. No wonder that over on the other side they called American soldiers shao-yeh ping, young-master soldiers. They were' that pampered.
These people lived in such a state of plenty, they could afford to give in to humanitarian impulses, whimsically overwhelming the recipients of their charity with kingly gestures. It means litle or nothing to them to lavish medical dares on their captives, Liu thought. It did not pledge them to anything- What was to happen to him next remained yet to be seen- He remembered some detective thriller he had. read, translated from English. The cornered murderer was riddled with bullets and finally caught. He was rushed to, a hospital where they did their best to save his life and nurse him back to health just so, that he could stand trial and be. hanged. They do things like that. For three weeks, prey to these thoughts, he lay in the ward, served. with impersonal kindness by the blue-eyed nurses.
His mind was not at rest until he got transferred to the POW hospital in Pusan. A hospital train took him there as soon as he was in condition to travel. It was reassuring to be back among his own countrymen once more. And it seemed to him that they lived in circumstances somewhat more appropriate to -their station as prisoners of war. The large wards were a series of wooden shacks set in a compound surrounded by barbed wire. The Chinese food was all right but nothing fancy and without the perpetual round of little snacks.
The austerity and rigidity of routine pleased him. The change was like going to boarding school from a sumptuous boyhood home where he had felt insecure- Many of the patients here were also on their way to recovery, which he thought rather a pleasant thing, at first. He soon found that prudence returned with health. Here it was not like it was with the little Szechuanese who died, when they could have said anything to each other so long as they had the strength.
The prevalent sentiment here seemed to be pro-Communist. Liu was first aware of it when the word went round: "Better stay here as long as you can. They're starving over at the camp." This news was supposed to come from another ward where a recent arrival from the North Korean POW camp had brought the news-
"That means the American imperialists are running out of supplies," somebody said. "Let's step up the eating. We'll exhaust the Paper Tigers."
A Grab Rice Movement was proposed. If anyone in the room objected, he wisely held his tongue. Liu managed to keep out of the conversation by pretending he had not yet recovered from the fatigue of his trip here. But at supper that evening the Szechuanese in the next bed to his snatched his rice bowl and turned it upside down over his own, pressing the rice together. "Mao - ern fan, hot rice," he said, giggling. The white dome of rice stuck out of the bowl like a round cap.
"Ai, ai — no teasing." Liu reached out for the bowl, trying to make a joke of it.
"You yell for more if you want to eat. Just say I took your share. What of it? Your dad's hungry. Not
enough rice to go round."
There were arguments and remonstrations when the nurse came. An interpreter had to be called in- Liu was glad they didn't know he speak English. The Positive' Elements in the ward would always be wondering what he had actually said if he ever spoke to the hospital staff in English; if anything went wrong it must be because he had informed on them.
Later he spotted_ the one who must be the man behind' the scene here, in charge of "Mutual Consolidation" --¬that is, mutual watching. Liu did not recognize him at first — an Instructor Hsi, a Party member. Here he had given his name as Wu P'ei and his rank as mess sergeant.
The Grab Rice Movement did not go very far for the lack of active participation. But heartening messages were always being passed around, news of the Volunteers' latest victories and of fallings out among the members of the United Nations who had sent troops to Korea. The news was supposed to be brought by recent arrivals in other wards.
Liu was hardly surprised to find, himself subject to the extra-territorial rule of the Party- To begin with he' had never consciously -felt that he had passed beyond the boundary line. He wondered if anybody who had lived under Communist rule could ever feel unwatched again.
A new man in the ward had just had an operation. He had a bad shock waking up to find that he had lost a leg. He wept and screamed, "Give me back my leg!' I'd rather die! At least die with a whole carcass!"
"7"a ma ti, those imperialist executioners!" a Positive Element exclaimed in sympathy. "Feel like cutting off your arm today, or sawing off your leg tomorrow — just as they please. And drug you so you can't struggle. Ai,- comrade. Ma ti — worse than sitting on tiger benches." He referred to the most common instrument of torture back home. "Just sawed the leg right off!"
The man kept everybody awake at night screaming, "I want my leg back! You butchers! Executioners! Give me back my leg!" He sounded like the ghost of the beheaded man in so many old stories, wanting his head back. The soldier shrieked on and on, stopped only by fits of violent sobbing. He wouldn't be taking it this way if they only explained to him that they had to remove his leg to save his life, Liu thought. But he supposed that with the shortage of interpreters it was impossible to prepare every POW who was to be operated on. And the doctors were so rushed, they really could not be expected to worry about what was, after all, beyond the call of their duty. Liu felt a certain guilt himself because he could easily have explained to the man and was afraid to-
But it was just common sense- One day everybody would be going home. And there would always be enough unpleasantness back there without making trouble for yourself- The war prisoners would be going home; so would their keepers. He wasn't the only one to look at it that way. So what if your captives were humane? Their goodness only saddened you because it had nothing to do with you.
The doctor and nurses made their rounds early every morning. After them came the sun. Liu noticed that lately it had been coming deeper into the wooden shack. The summer sun looked so bored on its duty calls, it apparently knew that its coming and going did not mean anything to these mien. They no longer did anything with their days and nights..
Breakfast often interfered with the doctor's morning round. While a patient was having his wound treated and his bandages changed, his bowl of rice would be cooling on his night table. Sometimes a man would eat while he was being.. attended to, twisting his head around between mouthfuls to look at his wound. The comforting warm white rice must taste a bit funny, mixed with the pain.
A young soldier had just arrived from the Chinese POW camp on Koje Island- He had been sent to the hospital in Seoul to have shrapnel removed from his thigh, and then brought back here to rest up after the operation- He seemed to be doing very well. The first day he arrived he sang to himself while lying in bed. Liu had often heard soldiers humming shank. hill songs, but had never heard them sung out loud- All hill songs were love songs and would meet with jeering disapproval in the Communist army- But now the young man was singing one about bamboo's which seemed to be a little girl's ditty:
"Pa Bamboo, Ma Bamboo,
Grandpa, Grandma Bamboo:
This year, your turn to grow;
Next year, my turn to grow.
No use your growing tall —
I tall, can get husband."
The singer's face, turned sideways on the pillow, was unsmiling. He had rather long cheeks, a hard, good profile and slightly protuberant eyelids that looked a little sullen. He sang in a high voice, but quite a falsetto', with lots of little extra "ai's" thrown in to give it bounce. The singing sounded strange in the afternoon silence. Outside the row of windows the compound was one large smooth cake of dust in the glare. Three wooden watchtowers were in view, boxlike and unpainted, set wide apart- Trucks roared and puffed in and out. In the ward the few men who were not asleep constantly gave out little groans that got to be perfunctory and annoying, less like groans than the pointless sighs of old folks as they moved about or sat down, expressive of mild exertion or contentment.

"Blouse on washline 'cross the river,
Looks like peony from afar.
Good flowers grow in pots of gold —
Looking's easy; picking is hard."
Another song he sang was wistful as well as a little hypocritical:
"A southeast wind rises, coming a slanting.
A lovely flower here, abloom against the leaves.
A young woman like you mustn't smile so much—
So much illicit love comes from smiling-"
It could not be more Chinese. Listening, Liu could see the undulating hills, the plains blanketed by paddies, the mud hut by the peach ,tree in bloom, thin black branches standing skeletal in the ball of mauvish pink mist. The whole familiar landscape unrolled before him,, oppressive in its vastness.
The man gave his name and outfit when somebody tried to talk to him. His name was Chiao- He answered questions with peasant shortness.
"What's it like in camp?"
"Food not bad," he said. "Not so good as what you have here." Then he had started to sing.
Supper was early, before sunset- After supper a nurse came to give Chiao' a rubdown. A slight ripple of excitement and consternation ran across the ward when he turned over to lie face downward. Not everybody saw at once what was on his back. The electric light had just been turned on but it was a time of day when it was not much brighter with the light on. The long room was a tobacco-colored box with windows cut out showing rectangles of bright blue-green sky. The tattoo on Chiao's, naked back was crudely done and the strokes were too thin and spiky for the large characters. The four characters in a vertical row read, "Fan-kung, k' ang eh; anti-Communist, resist Russia."
After the nurse was gone, a man asked, "What's that -on your back?".
"I got it in camp. Everybody's got one," Chiao said, buttoning up his pajama top. Then he corrected himself. "Some had it different. Some had `Shih ssu fan-Kung; vow to destroy Communism till death.' Also four characters."
"You mean they forced everybody to be tattooed?" the man asked incredulously.
"No, nobody forced me. Why?" Chiao rolled over to look at the man. "I wanted it. What's there to be scared of now- Nobody can clap 'reactionary hats' on, you now and get you shot."
"Traitor!" the man flung at him. Somebody else called out, "Imperialist spy! Are you a Chinese or aren't you?"
"I'm as Chinese as you! I'm against the Russian big-noses and their running dogs who fight their war for them
send us here to tso t' i ssu kiwi, be the ghost to take their place-" He was talking about the common belief that the ghosts of suicides are doomed to haunt the places where they died and are not freed for reincarnation unless they can entice other men to take their own lives in a similar manner, filling their places.
"Where did you pick up this sort of talk, comrade? In camp?" another man asked pityingly.
"I know what I'm talking about. Ma ti, a man ought at least to know good from bad- Look what they did here for my leg wound. I've been wounded before — you ever been to a Volunteers hospital? You lie on the ground —in the open air when the caves are full up. All the nurses ever do is to feed you rice gruel three times a day. I ,don't blame those that refuse to be disarmed. That's the only way to get any attention in a Volunteers hospital —threaten them with grenades."

"He's bought," several people cried out at once. "Imperialist stay! Ta! Ta! Beat him! Beat him! Ta-ah! Ta-ah!
Liu had been following the conversation closely. But violence always came too fast for him, catching him unawares. It gave him quite a turn to see two men hobbling on their crutches toward Chiao's bed. Somebody tossed a kidney dish in. Chiao's direction, yelling encouragingly, "Ta! Ta-ah!!
"Comrades! Now just a minute, comrades," Liu heard Instructor Hsi's voice call out. "We mustn't forget we're all prisoners here. We may belong to different parties and factions, it makes no difference. As long as were prisoners we have to observe the rules-"
Chian had sat up tense and pale in bed. "Come on, Ta! Ta! Ma ti, where do you think you are?" He waited, but the men on crutches returned: muttering to their beds. Liu saw them exchange looks and wondered what it meant.
Bed check had always seemed a funny institution to Liu — two stalwart UN military policemen marching shoulder to shoulder into a roomful of sick and wounded people. Eyes watchful under their steel helmets, with their guns on their hips, they looked as if they were ready for anything. Tonight he felt differently- He was on the' verge of speaking to them when they came to his bed. The only thing that stopped him was his certain knowledge that whatever he warned them of would not happen. The others would have guessed what he was saying, even if they did not understand. They would merely put it off — that and their revenge on him which was bound to come sooner or later- Meanwhile the hospital staff would not like him for telling false tales. The last thing they would want to do was to take sides in the patients' brawls. Pro-Communist, or anti-Communist, these POWs were not going to be with them long.
The guards were gone. The nurses had made their
last rounds. In the dimmed out ward the rows of beds looked inhumanly tidy. Liu had never realized how quiet it was here at night. The staff's quarters were on the other side of the compound- Liu had read quite a few detective stories. Nearly all of them were translations. The few Chinese attempts at detective fiction just did not sound real at all. He supposed it was because murder mysteries were basically impossible in a Chinese environment. Murders there were, but never mysteries. There was never any question of, who had dropped in on the deceased from eleven at night to quarter past twelve. Just pump the houseful of servants who were on duty twenty-four hours a day. In the absence of servants the deceased must be so poor that he would be living cheek by jowl with several other families. The neighbors would supply all necessary information- Liu had often envied the westerners their privacy which the Chinese never have and probably never would now, with the coming of the Communists and their Group Life- But now he thought bitterly that you could always depend on the westerners to arrange things so that the prisoners would have here the neat and cozy, air-tight isolation on the night of the murder-
There were some whisperings at Instructor Hsi's end of the room, but they did not start anything until hours later. Liu stiffened at the patter of running feet and the sound of scuffling. He lifted his head to look. Several men were dragging Chiao, struggling and kicking, into the aisle. He wondered why Chiao did not cry out. Then he saw dimly the white beard of a towel trailing down his chin- He supposed the first thing they did was to gag him.
They had Chiao pinned down fiat now. Somebody was pounding on him with a big stick. Liu had a glimpse of the crosspiece on top of the stick, so it must be a crutch. It came down with the regularity of a pestle, with dulled, light thuds- For a moment he speculated if he was strong enough to get up; climb out the window and get help. They would grab him before he had gone far. Anyhow there was no time for anything like that. They were hitting the man on his chest-
He caught hold of the water bottle on his night-table and smashed it against the window-pane. There seemed a perceptible pause before it crashed on the ground, a shower of splinters tinkling in its wake. Without turning round he knew that the small knot of "operators" had stopped to look at him in amazement. He did not know what to do next unless it was to crash out the window after the bottle. They would be upon him in a second.
Then a broad beam of blue-white light swooped in the window. The big jagged ,hole in the glass stood out clear. It was the searchlight from one of the watchtowers-  It swerved round briefly, then returned to the broken window. Liu almost felt like giggling to see the strong light contemplating seriously the foot of his cot, an edge of the night-table and his slippers on the floor. His feet were out of sight because he was sitting up. He could not see the men very well. The blinding light had cut the dark room in two, They are probably trying to make up their mind whether they should spring at him across the moat of light.
When the guards rushed in and all the lights were turned on, the rioters were all back in bed. Only Chiao was left, lying on the floor, still gagged. Liu told the story in his stiff, rusty English. He supposed, he did not do it very well-
Chiao was whisked away for medical examination. The questioning lasted a good part of the night. The rioters were reprimanded and warned through interpret¬ers. But evidently the affair was not taken too seriously.
Chiao's bafflingly strong constitution was partly to blame. He was sent back to the ward a few days later, apparently none the worse for his chest injuries.
Liu had thought he wouldn't survive another night in the same ward with the Positive Elements after this. But aside from some muttered threats to traitors, Instruc¬tor Hsi had kept them under control. Of course they would want to wait a while before doing anything to him-
Chiao's cot had its head pushed against a wooden post half encased in the wall. After Chiao came back he always lay with his head propped up against the pillar, the better to observe in case anyone should sneak up on him. He looked funny with his neck at right angles to his body- His face seemed carved on a totem pole, it merged so well with the unpainted wood- Liu often caught Chiao watching him, though Liu was the one man in the room he need, not guard against.
Their beds were too far apart for conversation and anyhow it was inadvisable to talk. They hardly exchanged glances. Liu could understand the man's embarrassment- Circumstances had thrust them into a relationship too close for comfort. Still, they did come to a tacit understanding that they would take turns sleeping at night- When Liu had, turned and tossed and coughed long enough, he noticed that the shaved head with its yellow wooden luster had slipped off the post on to the pillow, asleep.
The day Chiao was going to be discharged from the hospital, he stopped by Liu's bed on his way to the latrine just before dawn. Liu woke up with a slight start.
"You are a light sleeper," Chiao said. He seemed pleased.
"Well, you've got to be one around here," Liu murmured.
"Sure. .Just like a 'black inn'." He meant the inns

that figured so much in old stories, where the innkeeper robbed and murdered all travelers who stopped there. "That was a near thing — the other night," he said grinning and repeated several times, "a near thing." Liu guessed that he was being thanked.
"You're lucky to be leaving," Liu said smiling.
"What about you? When can you get out of here?"
"I don't know. Nobody has said anything to me. —What's that?" he asked when Chiao slipped something under his mattress.
"You better keep that," Chiao whispered- Liu's groping hand under the mattress told him it was a pair of scissors, the long slim kind that stood in the jar of instruments on the wheel-cart that followed the doctor on his morning rounds.
"Now, how are you ever going to get any sleep at night?" Chiao said worriedly.
"I can sleep in the daytime."
"Ma ti, just wait till those bastards get into camp —we'll bash their brains out. You know which days they change the bedsheets?"
"Yes," Liu said a bit uncertainly.
He gave the mattress a slight pat. "On those days, don't forget to take it out and hide it on your body." He nodded and sauntered off singing "Pa Bamboo" in a low voice. It was the first time he had sung since the first day he came.