One day by chance I found him smoking. He stood outside the kitchen and looked silly with a cigarette clamped between his cracked lips, two coils of smoke dangling under his snub nose. Like all the others, he was given a pack of cigarettes a week. I went up to him and said, "Stub it out! You're too young for that."
He obeyed me and lifted his foot, scraping the tip of the cigarette against his rubber sole, but he looked hurt, his eyes misting. I softened and said, "I'm not a meanie, Shanmin. Tobacco will damage your lungs, which are still tender. If you were over eighteen, I wouldn't interfere."
"I understand."
"You don't want to become a consumptive, do you?"
"Uh-uh."
"You still want to study with me?"
"Of course I do."
"Then you mustn't start smoking now."
"I won't light a cigarette again."
He kept his promise. From then on, whenever he was allocated a pack, he would exchange it for food or stationery with others. The inmates all smoked the same kind of cigarettes that had no brand. On one side of the white pack was printed three scarlet words: LIBERTY, JUSTICE, PEACE; on the other side was the moon half hidden in the clouds. Cigarettes were a kind of currency among the prisoners. Sometimes Shanmin gave a few to others, and this made them like him more.
I still remember how amazed I was to see that he could read an article in a Chinese newspaper just three months after he had enrolled in the literacy class. One day he came upon a scrap of Ta Rung Pao, a Hong Kong daily, which must have been subscribed to by the Chinese translators working for the prison administration here. Sitting in a corner, Shanmin was poring over a report on a race of dragon boats. From time to time I glanced at his engrossed face. His lips went on stirring and once in a while a smile flickered on them. When he finished, I asked him, "Any new words?"
He beamed and shook his head. I wanted to congratulate him, but my voice caught. I was so happy for him.
Shanmin even wrote a skit about the South Korean president, Rhee Synman. After a little editorial help from the others, his play was staged in our compound and was well received. It would be inaccurate to say that the war and imprisonment ruined this boy, as they did destroy millions of lives. His was an exceptional case. He flourished in the camp. How mysterious, tenacious, and miraculous life could be! If Shanmin had stayed home, he might not have had an opportunity to learn how to read and do sums, and might have had to work the fields to help his parents raise his siblings, or might have gone begging from town to town. But in this prison he thrived and even got some education, which helped him grow into a capable man eventually.
Many years later he wrote me a beautiful letter, saying he had become the accountant in his home village, where no one but he could use the abacus. He thanked me for having taught him so well and was proud to inform me that he still didn't smoke. His handwriting was clean and handsome.
22. THE PEI CODE
Colonel Kelly, the commander of the guards at Camp 8, informed us that we must provide two men for Commissar Pei, one to be his cook and the other his interpreter. Both of them were to live with the commissar in the same cell inside the prison house. The cook was easy to find; several men volunteered because the work promised better food. A fellow named Hailin was picked for the job. But choosing the interpreter was more difficult. There were a number of men who knew English, and each compound had at least one interpreter as its spokesman. For us, though, the officer about to join Commissar Pei had another task, which was to establish communication between the prison and the compounds. I knew English better than the other interpreters, so I was one of the candidates for the job, which I was not especially keen to take because the interpreter would have to suffer the strict confinement of the prison too. Chang Ming, whose English was second only to mine, was also a candidate. After an exchange of messages among the leaders of the different compounds, mainly between Zhao Teng and Chaolin, Ming was detailed to go there. This was an appropriate choice, because he was more resourceful than me, and besides, he was a Party member, able to assist the commissar in matters other than translation, especially the Party's secret work.
Chief Zhang Wanren, a balding man with carious teeth, was pleased that I remained in Compound 6, saying I was indispensable to him. He often talked with me about the affairs of our compound and sought my opinion. That was why I knew so much about the workings of the leadership in the camp, where most men had no idea what was transpiring, having strictly followed the order "Do not question what you are told, and do not listen to what you are not supposed to hear." I guessed probably Pei and Chaolin had said some good words about me to Wanren, who treated me like a leader of sorts and had kept me at the battalion headquarters. Wanren once even asked me whether I would like to join the United Communist Association, which had been inducting new members ever since we arrived at Cheju Island. I told him that Commissar Pei believed I should go through a longer period of testing. He couldn't check this with Pei, so he didn't press me again. The truth was that after my application had been turned down four months before, I had vowed I would never apply for membership again, unless Pei himself invited me to do it. This was a way to protect myself from being humiliated again. Besides, I didn't believe in Communism. Why should I change just to suit their requirements? I should be loyal at least to my own heart.
There were only two rooms in that prison house near the beach, roughly the same size – twelve by sixteen feet. One jailed troublemakers and the other held the war criminal; the two cells were separated by a stone wall. A number of men had been confined there as troublemakers, usually for two weeks at a stretch, so, through their accounts, we knew the interior layout of that cell. Ming went to the prison charged with the task of digging a hole through the wall between the two rooms. It took him a whole week to fulfill this mission. He found a stone that looked removable in the southern upper corner of the wall. With the help of the cook and Pei, he managed to pry that stone off, and after some digging by turns, they bored a hole, which became the channel of communication. Whenever we wanted to get orders from the commissar, a trustworthy man would be instructed to pick a fight with someone or yell and make obscene gestures at GIs so that he would be sent to the troublemakers' cell, where he could take orders from our top leader through the hole in the wall. When released, he would return with the oral message. However, this method of communication was extremely slow, unreliable, and cumbersome, because usually a troublemaker was imprisoned there for at least five days, sometimes as long as three weeks. Often by the time the messenger came back, the orders no longer applied to the changed situation in the camp. Still, up to early September this method was the only one available.
The Pei Code wasn't created according to a plan; it came about by a stroke of luck. One day toward the end of August, I was sent to the prison house because a guard had found in my pocket a slip of paper that carried "Song of the Three Tasks," composed by some men in another compound. Zhao Teng had asked me to pass it to our battalion chief. Colonel Kelly interrogated me for half an hour, but I insisted that I had copied the song myself from the inmates repairing the road outside the southern fence of the camp. They were mostly from Compound 9 and could sing the song. The colonel didn't believe me, saying I had attempted to relay a secret message, so he had me taken to the prison. I wasn't very upset at this turn of events, because now I could finally communicate directly with Commissar Pei and Ming.