Curious, I rounded the corner of the stack to see what he was doing. He had opened his fly and was peeing on a roll of canvas, his urine producing a muffled tapping sound. The second he was done, an American officer emerged from the darkness about fifty yards to the north, humming a tune he must have learned from the Korean geishas. He seemed drunk, didn't notice us, and veered unsteadily toward the rows of houses below a water tower, wearing a pistol at his flank. To my surprise, the tall prisoner came out from the stacks and followed the officer at a distance of about a hundred feet. I wondered what he was up to. Did he want to kill him? Or simply to escape?
Not daring to stay there for long, I went back to work, taking care to pick lighter items to carry. Busy as I was, I couldn't stop wondering what the tall man was doing. If only Ming had been here, so that I could ask him. Then I saw Chaolin talk with two men in whispers while the three of them were piling bundles of barbed wire. He was the leader of the two hundred men here. Like me, he wanted to get out of the compound as often as possible, always saying, "I need to stretch my limbs." He and I had never been close, so I didn't go up to him and report on the disappearance of that inmate.
About twenty minutes later the tall man came back, panting hard, his eyes shining. He said to Chaolin that an American officer had gone to sleep without locking his door and that there was a pistol in his room. "Should I go back and take it?" he asked Chaolin.
"Why didn't you just snatch it?" a man butted in.
"I wasn't sure if it was a right thing to do, so I came back to ask permission."
Chaolin said, "We must get the gun, but you shouldn't go alone. Yuan, why don't you go with him?"
"Me?" I was taken aback as several pairs of eyes turned to me.
"Yes, you go with him. Let him stay outside the house to keep watch while you go in for the gun."
"What if the officer wakes up?" I was puzzled why he picked me for the job.
"Kill him with this!" another man said and handed me an iron bar about two feet long.
I realized Chaolin meant to give me a test, which I had no choice but to take. So I agreed. But we couldn't set about the task right away because the sentries at the wharf were still alert. We had to go on working.
After ten-thirty the guards began yawning, whereas many prisoners had grown more spirited, gathering around them, asking questions or complaining that we were too hungry to continue. The inmates wanted to share a sack of peanuts, but the duty sergeant wouldn't let them. While they were begging him, I set off with the tall man, whose name I now knew was Wang Yabing. We sneaked behind the stacks and slunk away, avoiding the lights along the quay. My heart was fluttering as if a rabbit had been trapped in my chest, and my steps were shaky. Within five minutes we reached a low house that looked like a civilian home with a ceramic-tiled roof. Indeed the door wasn't locked and it opened at a light push. Then came the officer's soft snoring. Thank heaven, he was sound asleep.
"You go in now," Wang Yabing whispered to me. "If someone's coming, I'll meow like a horny cat."
With the iron bar under my arm I tiptoed into the room. The table lamp was still on, covered by a shade made of fawn paper. The sleeper, a small man with a graying mustache, had his clothes on, his bristly face toward the dark ceiling. He stirred a little, clattering his teeth as though munching something. Suddenly he chuckled, saying, "Oh dear, what a mess. Can you give him another fork, Cathy?" I froze in my tracks. A moment later he resumed snoring. Beside his pillow lay a grimy Colt pistol and a black flashlight. Shivering all over, I picked up the gun and stepped backward until I reached the door. The instant I turned around, the iron bar fell on the stone steps with a clanking noise, but I didn't stop to retrieve it and just tore away into the darkness.
Wang Yabing caught up with me a moment later. He clutched my shoulder and gave me a shake. "What happened?"
"I don't know." My face was sweaty and my tongue wooden.
"You look as if you've been chased by a ghost."
I was still gasping for breath. He asked again, "Did you get it?"
"Yes." I showed him the pistol.
"Great!" He took the gun and waved it as though to fire into the sky. Together we headed back.
Our men were wrapping up the work when we returned. Chaolin was so elated to see the pistol that he wore it in his belt while listening to me report how I had stolen it. Although I admitted I had left behind the iron bar, nobody took it as a mishap, so I stopped worrying about it. Then a problem I hadn't anticipated arose: how could we smuggle the gun back into the compound? Having talked briefly with Wang Yabing, Chaolin decided to let me carry it through the gate, because I was familiar with most of the guards.
I unloaded the five bullets and gave them to other prisoners, one apiece, to take back. This was easy for them – they could put the bullets in their mouths before going through the gate. I used a long shoelace to tie the pistol to my good thigh; the ends of the string were attached to the waist of my underwear. Most of the time the guards wouldn't touch my thighs.
On our way back the gun chafed my groin badly, but I pretended everything was normal. Still, I couldn't help walking bowleggedly. Some prisoners laughed at my discomfort and even imitated the way I waddled. Chaolin stared at them, eye-signaling them not to attract the guards' attention. Thanks to my injured leg, which always gave me a limp, the GIs didn't notice anything unusual.
The front gate opened and two guards began frisking us. When my turn came I stepped forward with a forced yawn. The GI touched my front and back, from my neck to my ankles, but he didn't feel elsewhere. I passed the gate, then strode toward Chaolin, who was awaiting me inside the compound. The moment we got into the nearest tent, I untied the pistol and handed it to him.
My thigh and scrotum were chafed, but the medic was already in bed, so I had to wait until the next morning to have the sore treated. My muscles were strained too, owing to the awkward walk back from the wharf. Yet I was happy and went to bed without further delay. In a state of half sleep I saw myself in the American officers bedroom again, looking for his pistol but unable to find it. He yelled suddenly, "You can't have it!" I woke up, my heart palpitating and the front of my shirt damp with sweat. In spite of pain and fear, I was glad I had passed the test in the way a soldier should, though in my mind a shadow of doubt was thickening. I was unsure whether the test had just been improvised by Chaolin or whether there had been a decision within the Party to give me such an ordeal. Later I asked Ming, who said confidentially that a week ago the Party had indeed decided to test my loyalty should such an occasion arise.
The next morning, a company of GIs came into our compound and ordered all the prisoners to get out of our tents. With their bayonets thrust here and there, they rummaged through all the barracks, overturning our mats and knocking down our makeshift furniture, but they found nothing. In fact, they couldn't possibly have recovered the pistol, which had just been smuggled out of the compound by the night soil team, who had hidden it among rocks on the beach. The Americans were unsure who among us had worked the night before, though they grabbed hold of Chaolin, who claimed he couldn't remember all the faces and names. So they ordered some of our men at the front of the crowd to step out. Unprepared for such an order, the inmates obeyed. From the back of the crowd I watched them with a pounding heart. The men who had stepped forward were innocent and most of them hadn't gone out the night before. After inspecting them, the officer in charge, a tall man wearing two hand grenades on his chest, one on either breast pocket, picked four prisoners and had them taken away to a truck parked outside the gate. One of the four men turned colorless and hollered, "I didn't do anything wrong! What's this about?" The GIs couldn't understand him and just hauled him away.