Two men were already in the troublemakers' cell when I was slammed in. One of them had been a telegrapher in our army, a large fellow named Mushu, and the other, Little Hou, our code man. Mushu was jailed because he had been caught in the act of semaphoring from Compound 10, and Little Hou was here for hiding bullets in his cap; a GI at the gate to our barracks had found the two rounds. They punched and kicked him, then hauled him away. They interrogated him for a whole evening, but didn't believe what he told them – there was no gun in our hands, which was true. He'd kept the bullets just in case we might use them someday. The next morning they sent him here. He was our battalion's only code man, so his absence from the compound had done us some damage – for the time being we were unable to read any semaphore messages.
Little Hou and Mushu were both pleased to see me, saying it was boring in the dark room. The cell had a dirt floor, walls built of volcanic rocks, and a window facing the ocean in the north. It was damp inside because the room didn't get any sunlight until late afternoon.
On my first day there we tried to while away time by wisecracking and telling stories. But we were bored soon and began to doze off. Toward midafternoon we were ordered to get out to walk a little, relieve ourselves, and breathe some fresh air. Behind the prison stretched a low sandbar, along which I walked with my face toward the window of the cell that contained Commissar Pei. In no time I saw Ming gazing at me and waving behind the steel bars. He looked shaggy and dirty but in high spirits, his face vivid and whiskered. Not allowed to get close to that window, I only nodded to acknowledge that I had seen him. There was a shack nearby, in which lived the POWs maintaining this place. Undoubtedly one of their tasks was to eavesdrop on us and report to the Americans on our conversations, so I wouldn't talk about anything serious with my two cellmates in the open air.
Mushu became restless after we came back in. The room was so damp that he wouldn't sit down on the dirt floor immediately. He kept pacing back and forth while Little Hou and I sat huddled together in a corner. The wind was picking up outside, and the tide was rising, smoky water crashing on the reefs rhythmically. After every six or seven steps Mushu had to turn around; this pacing was maddening him.
Tired of remaining on his feet, he sat down. We began chatting and bantering idly. But our chitchat became earnest as we continued. We talked about what we should do while we were here. By no means should we just sit around wasting time "like a bunch of sea cucumbers," an expression coined by Mushu. As long as we joined hands we could do something useful. We decided to form a fighting group, and they both wanted me to be its leader because I was a kind of officer and older than they. Although embarrassed by this sort of rank pulling, I accepted my leading role. We knew that the most urgent problem our comrades in the camp were facing was how to communicate with Commissar Pei efficiently. So what could we do to improve this situation? Both Mushu and Little Hou believed we could devise a new method of communication. Ignorant of signaling and codes, I just listened to them talk and argue. Every once in awhile I put in a question.
We talked for three hours on end, but couldn't figure out a way. After dinner, which was boiled sorghum and a few pieces of salted turnip, the door opened and the last light of sunset flooded in, reddening my fellow inmates' faces. In came a custodian, a hollow-cheeked man who had once been in our army and now was a turncoat, a name Mushu called him to his face. A collaborator though the man was, he might have given in to the enemy only under unbearable torture, so I felt uneasy about the hostility my cellmates showed him. The man dropped a blanket onto the floor for me, then put a bucket in a corner as our toilet pail and took away the one already used. Little Hou and Mushu glared at him, but he dared not look at us and kept his head low.
The door was closed and the room turned quiet again. Mushu couldn't help but resume pacing back and forth, while Little Hou and I, eyes shut, tried to drop off, though I didn't feel sleepy.
Night came. A trapezoid of moonlight fell on the wall, sliced by four parallel lines of shadows. Tired of chatting and thinking, I soon began drowsing. Suddenly something hit the wall from the other side. We all heard the thumps, which sounded carefully measured, so the three of us sat up at once; Mushu's large eyes glowed in the darkness while Little Hou pressed his ear against the wall. Then came four more knocks, all equally spaced. There was no mistake now! Little Hou knocked on the wall three times in reply. We all held our breath, listening.
From somewhere near the ceiling, in the southern upper corner of the wall, came a rasping sound. We stood up and moved over to look. Slowly a lumpy thing emerged in the corner. None of us could reach it, so Mushu squatted down and let me step on his shoulders while Little Hou held my leg to keep me steady. I stretched out and pulled the thing in through a rift between the ceiling and the wall. It was a parcel wrapped in a piece of waterproof cloth. Hurriedly we opened it – inside were a block of cooked rice and six baked squids, each about four inches long. On top of the food was a slip of paper bearing Commissar Pei 's handwriting in penciclass="underline" "Keep fighting, take care of your health, stay alert, and we'll be in touch soon." We wolfed down the war criminal's food, which was much tastier than ours. We were very touched by the message, which was passed among us several times. We were so excited that for hours we went on talking about what we could do. For most of us, Commissar Pei seemed like a lighthouse that could guide our foundering ship home.
Then Little Hou said, "Why don't we use the time here to create a special code, to open a channel of communication between Commissar Pei and the camp?"
"That'll be great if we can," said Mushu.
"But I don't know anything about the code stuff," I put in. "Can we do it only with the three of us?"
"Probably he can." Mushu pointed at Little Hou, who hiccuped, chewing something vigorously. Mushu continued, "Keep in mind, it was this fellow who made most of the general code used among the battalions."
Little Hou said to me about Mushu, "He was a signalman in Compound 10, he can help me."
We three looked at one another, then hugged tightly. I told them that I would obey any orders they gave, despite my leadership. They laughed. I still couldn't imagine how they could possibly open such a channel of communication, though I knew I ought to encourage them. After we broke the work into separate parts, we ran into difficulties we hadn't expected. To begin with, we needed paper and a pencil. How on earth could we get those things in this hellhole? Little Hou regretted not having brought along his pencil stub. I told him, "Forget it, even if you had taken it with you, you might've lost it to the guards."
Mushu nudged me in the ribs and said, "Look at that." He pointed at the windowsill, on which was a whitish wad. I rushed over and grabbed the thing – ah, a roll of toilet tissue! "The Americans are so considerate!" Mushu laughed. "I never used such fancy toilet paper back in our country. Comrades, I bet none of you did either."
"Uh-uh, not me." Little Hou shook his chin with a straight face.
We cracked up, though subduedly. So we had solved the paper problem. But what should we do about the pencil? This beat us, and we agreed to ask for help the next morning.