Ocean of Words

THE RUSSIAN PRISONER

Squad Leader Shi Hsiang returned from the Company Headquarters with eleven pistols and told us to pack up. Only summer clothes were needed, and everybody had to take his mosquito net. “This time we got an easy job,” he assured us. Because we had the pistols, we left our rifles and submachine guns at our billet.

Twenty minutes later, we stood at attention facing Company Commander Yan Li in the middle of the drill ground. He called, “At ease!” and then described the “easy job.” A fly landed on my cheek, crawling zigzag down to my chin. I dared not shake it off. Some piglets suddenly started screaming from the pigpens about fifty meters behind us. Squad Leader Shi told Wang Min to go tell Swineherd Liu to stop catching and gelding those piglets for a short while.

“This time,” Commander Yan continued, “you Ninth Squad represent our company, undertaking the important task, directly under the command of Chief of Staff Shun. The Party and the people trust you. I hope everybody keeps in mind that anything you do will bear on the honor of our Guards Company. To guard the Russian prisoner is both a military task and a political task. You must not forget that to the Russian you stand for China and the Chinese Army. You must show him our true revolutionary spirit. As I said just now, in appearance you should be polite to the Russian Big Nose and not give him the impression that he is a prisoner, because at this moment we don’t know who he really is. But never forget it’s our duty to keep him always under watch, day and night. Comrades, is that clear?”

“Yes sir,” we shouted in one voice, clapping our heels together.

A new Liberation truck arrived. We climbed into it and sat down on our blanket rolls against the panels. As we were pulling out, the piglets began to squeal again. Off along a sandy road, the truck sped to the eastern outskirts of Longmen City. The scorching sun made us feel sleepy as we were tossed about in the truck.

Having left behind a long dragon of dust, we arrived at the Eastern Airport, a deserted military base built by the Japanese during the Second World War. Three young officers were already there waiting for us. Two of them wore cameras around their necks, and the other held a morocco briefcase. Everything had been arranged: Our room was upstairs in the small black-brick building, which was the only building at the airport; our dining room was on the first floor; the Russian captive and his Chinese interpreter would live in the two small rooms adjoining our large room, so that they had to cross ours to get out. There was also a recreation room on the first floor, and the Ping-Pong table looked brand-new.

“For the time being, treat him as a kind of guest. I mean in appearance,” a tall officer with a gleaming gold tooth told our squad leader, while the rest of us were busy adjusting straw mattresses on the plank bed that stretched for fifteen meters across the large room. He was a staff officer from the Office of Tactics in the Divisional Staff, famous for his graceful handwriting. People called him Scholar Wang.

We all felt we could have a good time here. Everything seemed neat. At least we could avoid the summer drill.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon two Beijing jeeps pulled up in the center of the basketball court in front of the building. Divisional Chief of Staff Shun Hsin, his bodyguard, four officers, and the Russian captive got out of the jeeps. The Russian looked rather boyish and must have been under twenty-five. To our surprise, he was not as tall and big as we had expected, but just about as tall as most of the Chinese walking beside him, even shorter than Scholar Wang by half a head. He wore the Russian uniform; unlike ours, his cap had a big, broad peak. We watched attentively from upstairs, keeping our faces away from the windowpanes so that those outside would not notice us.

“He looks smart in that uniform,” Wang Min said. “It must be made of wool.”

“Gunnysack rags,” Squad Leader Shi said. “It looks good only when it’s new. You’ll see how soon it will fall apart.”

“His nose is not big at all,” Ma Lin said.

“Why is his face so white?” Meng Dong asked.

“He must have drunk too much milk,” Wang Min answered. “You see how large his round eyes are. That means he stuffs himself every day.” Wang always liked to tease.

“Who’s that old fellow with a gray goatee?” Vice Squad Leader Hsu Jiasu asked, referring to the officer who was walking between the Russian and the chief of staff, speaking to one and then the other.

“That must be Interpreter Zhang. He speaks Russian best in the province. Haven’t you heard of Big-Beard Zhang?” the squad leader asked.

“No. He has no big beard.”

“He used to have a long beard.”

“The Russian doesn’t look like an officer,” I said.

“No, you’re right, Song Ming,” the vice squad leader agreed. “He must be a soldier like us. Seems too young to carry bars and stars.”

At this moment, one officer took out a shiny toylike machine gun and a green walkie-talkie from the back of a jeep and handed them to the two officers waiting with cameras, who brought them immediately into the building to take photos. Those items must have been the most advanced Russian equipment. The walkie-talkie looked like a lunch-box. None of us could tell what model the machine gun was, because our handbook of Russian weapons did not give a picture of it.

There were two extra rooms downstairs, which we were told not to enter. In the morning the officers would use the rooms when they interrogated the Russian captive. In the afternoon he was free, so we had to “accompany” him.

Toward evening, another jeep came and brought over Chef Wang, who worked in Longmen City’s Guest Hotel. We heard that he was one of the best cooks in the province, and that his French cuisine had been highly appreciated by Premier Zhou Enlai. Certainly we had to eat our sorghum and rice, but we felt that eventually we might be able to take a bite of something unusual, since we had such an important “guest” among us. We enjoyed smelling the fragrance of the dishes prepared for the foreigner, which soon filled the first floor and the stairwell.

The Russian was called Lev Petrovich. According to his own account, he was a new soldier who had just arrived at the border. He used to serve as an orderly at the Headquarters of the Far East Military Region. Because of being lazy, he was sent to the Siberian border. That is what he said. It troubled us. We could not decide who he actually was and the true reason why he had crossed the border. Was he really a new soldier? Or was he an experienced agent? Did he come over to get information? Whom did he plan to meet? Or was it true as he said that the older soldiers forced him to carry both the machine gun and the walkie-talkie during their patrol along the border and that they deliberately gave him a hard time — not waiting for him when he was moving his bowels in the bushes — so he went astray and wandered onto our side? A group of peasants working in a hemp field saw him from far away. They deployed themselves as a trap. As soon as he entered the “bag,” they jumped out, raising sickles, stones, hoes, and rifles, shouting: “Put down your weapon and we’ll spare your life!” Lev didn’t fight and just gave them his gun. This again puzzled us. It looked as though everything had been planned — he didn’t even try to escape. Those officers questioned him every morning and didn’t believe whatever he told them.

Chief of Staff Shun came to the interrogation for the first few days. Then Lev was left completely in the officers’ hands. Our squad’s major task was to stand the night guard. It was not a big thing, since each of us only had to stay awake for one hour in the hall. We didn’t have to stroll around outside in the dark. In the morning we did nothing about him, so we studied the Manifesto of the Communist Party for two hours. In the afternoon, after two hours’ nap, we played games with him if he wanted. He didn’t join us very often in the beginning and read by himself a lot. Interpreter Zhang kept him company most of the time, because we couldn’t make out what he babbled. They slept in the same room, where two mosquito nets hung on either side of the window, whose opening was blocked by six iron bars. Mr. Zhang had many of his books sent over, and the other small room was used as their study. I had never seen so many books, which filled four tall bookcases standing against the walls. Many of the bricklike books had pictures on their spines. Those were the portraits of Russian authors, some of whom had a big beard similar to Marx’s or Engels’s. We were awed by Mr. Zhang’s books. We had heard that his father had been a general in Warlord Zhang Zuolin’s army, and that his wet nurse was a Russian woman, so he could speak Russian fluently when he was a boy. But we hadn’t imagined the interpreter knowing all those books. What a wise old gentleman. In fact, he was not so old, about forty-five, I think. Only his skin shriveled around his slender bones, and his narrow eyes looked bleary behind the thick glasses.

Sure enough, those books impressed Lev too. During the first two weeks, he always stayed in the study, reading and writing. We didn’t expect him to be such a bookworm and also a lover of poetry. One early morning, we returned from our exercises and heard Lev shouting madly on the second floor. Hurrying upstairs, we ran into Interpreter Zhang in the corridor.

“What’s the matter with him?” Squad Leader Shi asked.

“Nothing is wrong,” Mr. Zhang said. “He’s reading out Pushkin.”

The door of the study was open. Holding a large book in his hands, Lev was yelling at the bright dawn beyond the window. His face looked sweaty and burning hot. Mr. Zhang went into the study and patted him on the shoulder. They talked and both sat down.

Soon we saw Mr. Zhang pacing up and down in the room with both hands in his trouser pockets, and we heard him humming Russian words, which must have been poetry, probably Pushkin’s. Lev sat there stock-still, his eyes following Mr. Zhang and his large ears perked up. It was a long poem, for it took Mr. Zhang about ten minutes to finish. No sooner had he stopped than Lev got up and embraced his interpreter, murmuring something to him. Then we saw Lev pull a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his eyes with it. Mr. Zhang smiled, looking amused. We all thought it funny: Lev was like a woman, who would cry for beautiful words.

As our squad leader had predicted, Lev’s uniform did look like gunnysack rags after a few washes. Now he wore our Dacron uniform, but without the red badges on his collar and the red star on his cap. Though he asked for a pair of badges and a cap insignia, the officers refused him. They said it was too soon for him to switch sides. As a matter of fact, he had thrown away all his Russian stuff, including the clumsy boots and foot wrappings, and instead he wore our green sneakers and cotton socks. It was funny that you could easily take him for one of us if you looked at him from behind. Once Vice Squad Leader Hsu tapped Lev on the neck, believing he was Wang Min, and said, “When will you buy us the Popsicles you promised?” Lev turned around, his gray eyes glittering with bewilderment, and his square, whiskered face broke into a feline grin. The large wart on his upper lip merged with his left nostril. Hsu was struck dumb. We all laughed and shouted: “Popsicles, five fen apiece,” just as the old women vendors did on the streets.

Lev was an arrogant son of a bitch as well. Because we had been treating him as a guest, he was spoiled. He only smoked the two most expensive kinds of cigarettes: Ginseng and Great China. The staff officer Scholar Wang once gave him some Peony cigarettes, but Lev, after trying one, refused to accept them. He only wanted the best of the Chinese and took his privileges for granted. Naturally, he didn’t know how to respect his hosts. One day he even stood on his hands on the head of our plank bed for a good two minutes. Having landed on the floor, he waved and seemed to invite us to a gymnastic contest. None of us could do that. Perhaps in his eyes we were all clodhoppers and didn’t know how to do gymnastics or read those fat books.

He was smart indeed. On his desk there was a thick pile of paper, about two hundred pages. Mr. Zhang said those were Lev’s thoughts on Lenin’s State and Revolution. But all his smartness only caused more trouble for himself. No one would believe that a common Russian soldier could write an article the length of a book and could use the horizontal bar like a professional athlete. The more you thought about him, the more he looked like a well-trained agent.

We had to find a way to beat him in gymnastics. Even our officers couldn’t perform well on the horizontal bar, so the Divisional Staff sent over Doctor Cai, who had been on the gymnastics team at the Chinese University of Medical Science, to compete with Lev. Certainly Lev was not Doctor Cai’s match. The doctor’s body was so lean and his muscles resembled those of a hound, whereas Lev’s body looked powerful indeed but was too thick to be maneuvered deftly.

Behind the building Mr. Zhang introduced them, and they shook hands. Lev grabbed up some sand from the long-jump pit and ground it between his palms. Then he dashed forward, jumped up, held the bar, and flew back and forth in the air. Soon his body began circling around. We were all impressed, not having expected he could do the grand circles. He was flying around and around until his body slowed and stood still upside down on the bar. We were so surprised, we held our breath. After about five seconds, he swung down and landed on the ground. We clapped our hands reluctantly while he was smiling at us, breathing hard. Mr. Zhang handed him a towel.

Doctor Cai didn’t bother to wipe his hands with sand. He walked calmly to the bar and hopped a bit to grab it. After remaining motionless for a few seconds, he started to move. Without doubt, our doctor was superior. In no time his body began flying in the same kind of grand circles. After five rounds, he suddenly let both hands go and swiftly flipped his body into a backward somersault. Coming down, he seized the bar again. We whooped, cheering him on. He repeated the same movement three times. Then he came to a handstand in the air. Gracefully releasing his left hand, he stood upright on only one hand. We all applauded and shouted “Bravo!”

The game was over. Lev, with a red face, went to the doctor and they shook hands again. He didn’t look happy. It was good for him to understand that we Chinese were not so stupid as he thought, and that we could do whatever he did. For two days, he remained rather quiet and dared not challenge us.

But we all agreed he was a smart fellow who learned things fast. When he had arrived he could not play Ping-Pong; within four weeks he played as well as the best of us. It was so annoying that he always demanded you compete with him. He would point his Ping-Pong paddle at his chest and say: “Russia,” and then at you: “China.” Those were the first two Chinese words he could speak. He meant that each player represented his own country in the game. It made you nervous and unable to play at your best. Once he beat me — 21 to 18. I felt so bad that I could have torn him apart, but he was happy and gave me a Ginseng cigarette.

Even worse, after six weeks he could play Chinese chess (which he must never have seen before) better than any of us. And he always wanted to play it in the Russia-versus-China way. None of us dared play chess with him anymore, so we started to play poker, because in this game he had to choose one or more partners and could not represent Russia himself.

One afternoon we played One Hundred Points with him. His team seemed to be winning. He dashed the diamond king to the table and said loudly in Chinese, “Fuck you!” His doggy eyes turned around, looking at us seriously.

We were shocked, but then we all burst out laughing, and he laughed too. He didn’t know what those words meant. From that day on, he began to use bad language in poker games. At first, we found it hilarious hearing him toss out those expressions, which we couldn’t help using among ourselves. Then we began to worry. This meant that now he could understand some words in our language, and that he was trying to learn Chinese secretly. Scholar Wang told us to speak as little as possible when we played together. It was in our own interest not to let him understand us. He was our prisoner; if he understood our minds, God knew what would happen. So before long we played poker silently.

When he could not bear the silence, he would take out his wallet and look at the photograph of a girl, who he said was his girlfriend. He would kiss her right in our presence and then shamelessly grin at us, revealing his broad front teeth; or he would press her against his ear as if listening to her talk. By now he had got used to missing the girl. In the beginning, he had often gone to bed very early because he had missed her. We were convinced that the Russians were not good fighters. If you always thought of women, how could you fight? We all saw the girl’s picture and agreed she was pretty in a way: yellow hair, gray eyes, peach-colored cheeks, and as slim as a sleek cat. She indeed looked different from other Russian women, who had breasts as large as basketballs. I was curious to see if Lev had pictures of naked women, because we had been told that every Russian soldier had at least five naked women in his wallet. But I didn’t see any. It seemed Lev had only his girlfriend’s picture with him.

Lev’s immediate purpose for learning our language was to make out his whereabouts. Though he had been at the Eastern Airport for six weeks, he had no idea where he was. They had captured him in Hutou, which was merely two hundred li from Longmen, but they drove him in a jeep for a whole night from Hutou to Longmen, circling around and around the same mountains and back and forth through the same small towns. The windows on both sides of the jeep were covered with curtains; nobody but the Lord of Heaven could keep his bearings. Later Lev asked those officers about his location, and they refused to tell him. They also ordered us not to reveal to him what city we were in. He asked us many times and even drew a map on a sheet of paper, putting on it some Chinese cities he knew of, including Beijing, but we never identified the city we stayed in. The reason was very simple: If he had known his geographical location, it would have been easy for him to get in touch with some Russian secret agents.

Though we were still uncertain of who he was, his eagerness to find out where he was further convinced us that he was not merely a soldier. In addition to that, the Russians showed unusual interest in his case. They had continually asked about him and even offered to release some information on two Chinese defectors in exchange for information on him. Our side turned them down and refused to talk about Lev. Why was he so important to them? Of course we would not let them know anything about him before we could determine who he really was and decide how to handle him according to his true worth.

One evening, the men of our squad had gone to a movie shown at the Divisional Headquarters, and only Squad Leader Shi, Ma Lin, and I stayed with Lev at home. As usual, we played poker. Interpreter Zhang never joined us and always read in the study by himself. Lev took from his pocket a box of wine candies that Scholar Wang had given him; they contained the best wines. He put it on the table and made a gesture inviting everybody to share the dessert. We three looked at one another. Though a little surprised by his generosity, we didn’t care much and just went ahead enjoying the candies. Shi picked up a maotai, Ma a five grains’ sap, and I a green bamboo leaves. These were Chinese wines contained in Chinese candies, and our country provided Lev with them; since we were the hosts, why shouldn’t we savor them?

After playing a few rounds, Lev stood up and moved to the door. Our squad leader gave me a hint with his eyes, and I immediately went out too. Lev walked into the lavatory. I followed him in, urinating and observing him at the same time. The window of the bathroom looked onto a vast cornfield. The moon was like a little boat anchored to a golden bank of clouds. After making sure he squatted down, I went out and waited in the hall. Five minutes later he came out. He moved close to me, looking mysterious. He took out a packet of Ginseng cigarettes and handed it to me. He put on a false smile and drawled in a nasal twang, “Changchun, Harbin, Jilin, Shenyang, Beijing?” He wanted me to tell him in which of these cities we stayed. His eyes were shining like a leopard’s in the dark. I pushed aside his cigarettes and shook my head. He didn’t mention Longmen and must have thought we were at least a thousand li away from Russia. That night he seemed rather absentminded during the game.

One thing we all liked about the guarding job was that we could have some good food. In the beginning Chef Wang cooked a lot of grand dishes for Lev. Only Interpreter Zhang ate with him, and he explained to him the names of the dishes and the ways they were made. Certainly Lev had never tasted anything genuinely Chinese. If he liked a dish on the first try, he would eat it all without touching the other six or seven dishes. Wiping out the first one, he would move to attack the second, then the third, and then, if he still had room in his stomach, the fourth. Through the crack between the door and its frame, we saw Interpreter Zhang watching him amusedly in the dining room, and we all laughed at his barbarous manners.

During the first week, at every meal Lev left some dishes untouched, so we, eating after him, would have those dishes in addition to our stewed vegetables and sorghum or rice. Oh, I had never tasted things so good! The quails, the bear palms, the frog legs, the oysters, the salmon, everything seemed eager to jump into your mouth. But we had to be patient, since we would share the dishes. Officers and soldiers were equal, just as we were all brothers. Chef Wang was really a kind old man, and he would smile watching us gobble down everything he made. Probably, he sometimes cooked a lot for Lev on purpose so that we could have more untouched leftovers.

As there were more important people to be fed, Chef Wang couldn’t stay long to cook for Lev. There was no sense in treating an obscure Russian man like a state guest for good. In the beginning we fed him so well in hopes that he would cooperate and tell the officers whatever they wanted to know. He talked a lot indeed, and Scholar Wang always wrote down his words translated by Interpreter Zhang, but they could not figure out the credibility and value of what he said. So after three weeks Chef Wang left, and a cook was dispatched from the Divisional Headquarters. Though the new chef, Old Bi, did not cook as well as Chef Wang, he was good enough for Lev. Lev’s daily meal expenses remained seven yuan, while every one of us had only fifty-five fen a day. In terms of board expenses, Lev ate more than our whole squad. There was no way he could eat so much, so we still benefited from his leftovers. However, Lev was civilized now — he would first try everything, make a plan of operation, and then launch an all-out attack.

One day after lunch Lev came out of the dining room with a chicken leg in his hand. Mr. Zhang followed him, climbing the stairs while Lev kept chewing the meat. Passing a window in the hall, Lev threw the unfinished chicken leg outside. The interpreter saw it and started yelling at him in Russian. We didn’t understand what he said, but we could tell he was very angry. None of us could imagine such a quiet, kind man could go mad like that. After they were in their room, we still heard Mr. Zhang shouting. He thumped the table again and again. A few minutes later, Mr. Zhang came out, walking quickly across our large room, and went downstairs. In no time he returned with a pair of chopsticks and a bowl of cooked sorghum partly covered with stewed eggplant, which was our lunch. He hurried past us, panting hard, his thick goatee vibrating a little. After he entered their room, we heard the chopsticks striking the table. Immediately we gathered at their door, peeping at them through the cracks in the plank.

Lev sat on the edge of his bed, hanging his head low. His face was as purple as an eggplant. Mr. Zhang raised the bowl of sorghum to Lev’s face, and Lev turned his head away. Then Mr. Zhang went on talking loudly. It seemed he was teaching Lev a lesson — not to forget who he was, and to understand that some Chinese didn’t even have sorghum to eat. He took up the bowl and began to eat the food himself while continuing to talk to Lev. We never found out what he said. Our squad leader asked Mr. Zhang afterwards, but he was told to forget about it.

More than being respectful, Lev was sort of attached to his interpreter. Three weeks after Mr. Zhang had yelled at him, a Russian gunboat was sunk by the Chinese militia in Hutou. The Russians protested, and a border negotiation was arranged. Mr. Zhang was summoned to join the delegation as the interpreter. During his absence, a young interpreter named Jiao Mu, a recent graduate from Jilin Foreign Language School, came to accompany Lev. Lev seemed deliberately to make things difficult for Interpreter Jiao, pretending he didn’t understand Jiao’s Russian and constantly mentioning Mr. Zhang. Perhaps he meant to remind the young officer that he would never be as good as his predecessor. He even showed us how he missed Mr. Zhang — slapping his chest, saying “Zhang,” and jerking up his square thumb.

Every day Interpreter Jiao reported to Scholar Wang that Lev had asked when Mr. Zhang would be back, as though Lev had felt something ominous. It turned out that Mr. Zhang would never be back with him again. He died in Hutou right after the negotiation. When he had arrived at the county town, he felt a pain in his stomach, but he didn’t take it seriously; he just took some painkillers and set out with the delegation. Once they were in Russia, the pain grew intense. Because he was the only interpreter in our delegation, he had to be present at the talks, which were to last for a whole day with only a lunch break. During the morning negotiation, he swallowed one tablet after another and tried hard to interpret the dialogue. He came out of the hall sweating all over. While the other officers were having lunch, he lay on a sofa unable to move. The Russians sent for a doctor. The diagnosis was acute appendicitis, and Mr. Zhang needed an immediate operation. But the negotiations were to continue in the afternoon. Without our own interpreter, the talks would be controlled by the Russians and they would cheat us, and we might make some agreements in their favor, so Mr. Zhang struggled to his feet and worked until the meeting ended. Now the doctor said the patient must be operated upon, with absolutely no delay. The Russians offered to have Mr. Zhang taken to their hospital and after the operation they would send him back. Our chief delegate, Commissar Lin of our division, asked Mr. Zhang if he wanted to stay in Russia for a few days. Mr. Zhang refused, saying with tears in his eyes: “I will never have my illness cured … by our enemy. If I’m dying, please, please let me die in our Motherland!” So they drove him back to Hutou as fast as they could, but they stopped on the way again and again, finding the road flooded and two bridges washed away by mountain torrents. Desperate as they were, they couldn’t get to the headquarters of the Fifth Regiment until three in the morning. It was too late, and Mr. Zhang passed away.

He became our hero. The Political Department of Shenyang Military Region issued a general order that required all officers and soldiers to study Zhang Fan’s moving deeds and learn from his love for the Motherland and his unbreakable Chinese spirit. The newspaper Forwards described his life and his last moments in a full front-page article. When we read the paper, we couldn’t control our tears. He was awarded the First Class Merit Citation, and the Zhangs became a Revolutionary Martyr’s Family.

Though we all felt terrible about his death, none of us took it harder than Lev. Now he had to depend on Interpreter Jiao to translate Mr. Zhang’s story in the newspaper. The young interpreter spent a whole evening in the study putting the article into Russian. The next morning after breakfast, Lev read the article, and he cried loudly, as though his parents were dead. The whole building could hear him. He wailed for almost an hour. In fact, he later told Interpreter Jiao that Mr. Zhang had been like a father to him and had taught him a profound patriotic lesson. We had never thought Lev had a heart. That day he didn’t eat lunch.

After that Lev picked up a strange habit — whatever was Russian had to be good and better and the best: Russian weather was the most congenial, Russian girls the most pretty, Russian horses the most powerful, Russian pigs the most delicious, Russian apples the most juicy, Russian tongues the most clever.

We didn’t bother to argue with him whenever Mr. Jiao interpreted to us what he said, except that once Wang Min challenged him to pronounce a few Chinese sounds that Lev’s clumsy Russian tongue couldn’t manage. We laughed but then agreed to let him indulge himself in his Russian chauvinistic dreams alone.

The officers all went home at night and slept with their wives. Interpreter Jiao took over the night command. He had been an officer for just three months and had not yet dropped the airs of a college student. Not used to acting as a superior, he would not demand to have more men if we left him only two men guarding Lev in the evening when the rest of us went to a movie or a game in Longmen City. Three people together with Lev could play any kind of poker game. Unlike Mr. Zhang, Jiao would join in whenever Lev played with us. He wanted to seize every opportunity to improve his Russian. He was the root of our troubles; after he came, our vigilance slackened little by little.

On a Tuesday evening, we all went to the Divisional Headquarters to see a movie, having left Vice Squad Leader Hsu and Wang Min with Interpreter Jiao at home. We heard that it was an anti-espionage movie made by North Korea, and everybody felt excited. No sooner was the title, The Invisible Front, shown on the screen than the lights were on again. The loudspeaker announced: “Emergency call, emergency call: All officers and soldiers leave immediately and gather outside.

“Emergency call, emergency call …”

We jumped up and ran out. In front of the movie house we joined our company. Commander Yan was walking to and fro before us with his hands behind him, waiting for more men to arrive. The whole yard was full of shouts: “Engineer Battalion —” “Communication Battalion gather here—” “Antichemical Company go to the gate.”

Our political instructor Niu shouted to the crowd rushing out of the movie house, “Here’s Guards Company.”

Commander Yan called for attention, and we pulled our feet together. “Number One has escaped,” he declared.

I shuddered. “Number One” was Lev — our first Russian prisoner. The commander continued, “The orders just came from Beijing: We must mobilize all the troops and the militia in Longmen and the neighboring cities and counties to search every field, every hill, every ditch, every yard, every cellar until we catch him. Now, we’ve no time to decide who is responsible for his escape. It happened in our company, and it’s our responsibility to bring him back. The divisional leaders have ordered us not to return until we find him.” He paused, then shouted: “Right face. Double time.”

We actually sprinted back to our company barracks to get guns. Running in front of me, Squad Leader Shi never stopped cursing Vice Squad Leader Hsu and Wang Min. “Damn it, I’ll do the two asses in! They ruined us all. I’ll finish them off!”

Our company got on four trucks and were driven to the Eastern Airport. On the way we saw lights on in all the other barracks and heard people shouting and trucks moving everywhere. The entire city was going into action. Our trucks were running at full speed. Mosquitoes and moths struck our faces while Platoon Leader Fang, clutching the panel of the truck, was busy dividing us into groups. Each group had three men who were to stay together in the search.

The trucks pulled up in front of the building at the airport. We jumped down. Interpreter Jiao, Hsu Jiasu, and Wang Min ran over. Shi clutched the vice squad leader’s upper arm and cursed, “Screw your ancestors! You undid us all!”

“Old Shi, listen to me. Please listen —”

“Cut it out!” Platoon Leader Fang shouted. “Shi Hsiang, let him go. I said let go! You think you can get away with this? I tell you, you are the one responsible. If we can’t bring Number One back, we’ll all go home turning up dirt clods. Stop biting each other, man. Save your breath for the job. Hsu Jiasu, you go join the sixth group, and Wang Min, you go with the seventh group.”

The two squad leaders stood among their groups motionless as Wang Min walked over to our group. “Remember,” the platoon leader went on, “keep fifty meters between groups and don’t move too fast.”

We started to search. Meng Dong led our group, which included Wang Min and me. We walked slowly in a cornfield, trying hard to see if there was something hidden in the field’s ditches. The corn leaves lashed our faces time and again, but we dared not complain. It was terrifying to make our way through the crops. The cornstalks were thick and taller than we were, and we couldn’t see our neighboring groups. We only heard them proceeding quietly. The most frightening part was that we didn’t know if Lev had a gun with him, though we had been told that he had not stolen any of our pistols. He was in the dark and could observe us moving. If we ran into him, surely he would shoot first. Full of fear, we used our rifles to remove the cornstalks in our way, always keeping the barrels pointed at the darkness ahead.

After combing the cornfield, we entered a soybean field. This was less frightening, since we could see other groups advancing with us in a line. Then we got into a cabbage field. God knows how many cabbages we trampled. Behind us the field was scarred with numerous dark tracks.

In front of us, two German shepherds, accompanied by some officers, were dashing in opposite directions along a brook. One of the dog handlers was carrying Lev’s pillow, and the other was holding Lev’s washbasin. They threw the pillow and the basin to the dogs time after time to refresh their memory of Lev’s smell so that they could pick up his trail. There were six dogs all together, running about and barking, but none of them was any good. They ran in six directions, so the officers soon lost interest in them.

In the beginning we dared not talk. After crawling through four fields, Wang Min couldn’t contain himself anymore and started cursing. We asked him how in the world the whole thing had happened. He said it was nobody’s fault. Lev, the son of a wolf, wanted to make a fool of us on purpose:

“We were playing cards, and he said … he wanted to go to the bathroom. I went with him — Watch your step, Song Ming — I saw him squat down and — as usual, waited outside for him to finish. I waited for ten minutes, and he didn’t come out. Interpreter Jiao … and Hsu Jiasu came to see what … was going on — Slow down a bit, Old Meng. We have to wait for the other groups — We three went in the bathroom. Lev was still squatting there, so we came back out. Then we heard a thump, and we went in again. Lev was not there! He had jumped out the window. We leaned on the window … and saw him down there staggering along … toward the cornfield.

“ ‘Halt! Le-v, halt! Come back, Lev!’ we shouted from upstairs. He didn’t even turn his head, just walked straight ahead, and disappeared in the field. Interpreter Jiao didn’t know what to do. He could only shout, ‘Just look at that, just look at that!’ Hsu Jiasu told him … to call the headquarters. Then we both ran out looking for Lev in the fields.”

“Did you find him?” Meng Dong sounded rather serious.

“Damn you, Old Meng. You can still joke about it.”

“You shouldn’t have tried. It was impossible you two could get him back.”

“You may be right, but we had to do it. It’s a part of the job, you know.”

“What will you do if we catch him?” I asked Wang Min.

“I’ll make him drink horse pee!”

“I’ll increase his meal expenses,” Meng said. We all laughed.

“Hey, stop laughing, men,” Ma Lin shouted at us. He was in the group on our left. “We’re all going to the hill ahead and beat the woods.”

We set out for the foot of the hillock. Lev’s escape puzzled us. Did he plan to meet someone, an agent, at a certain place? Did he know in what direction Russia was? He must have known, otherwise what was the good of escaping? Did he have weapons and food with him? Why did he run away just a week before the National Day? Was he joining someone in order to destroy a factory or blow up a bridge on October 1? None of these questions could be answered. But one thing we were all certain about — if he knew his whereabouts, he would be able to return to Russia, because it was midfall now and the crops could cover him. Though more than thirty thousand troops and militia were in the operations, there was no way that we could go through every place in this vast area of eleven counties and three cities. Besides, he was a live creature and could move about to avoid us. More to his advantage was that he would not starve in the season of harvest, since there were fresh beans, corn, potatoes, and vegetables in the fields everywhere and even ripe fruits in the mountains. As long as he knew his bearings, he could get back to Russia. It seemed somebody among us must have accepted his bribery and told him that he was in Longmen. If Lev succeeded in hiding out or crossing the border, then everyone in our squad would be suspected. We had to bring him back to clear ourselves.

It was one o’clock now. We had been searching for almost five hours without rest. Whoever we came across, soldiers or militia, would curse “The Russian Big Nose,” “The Polar Bear,” “The Russian Hairy Beast.” They didn’t know Lev’s name, or what he looked like. We dared not tell them, because he had broken loose from our hands. Also, Lev was really an egg of a turtle, deserving any name. We had treated him so well, but he betrayed us and made us crawl around on a dark night like this, hungry and exhausted.

We hadn’t brought overcoats and food, nor could we go back and fetch them. The orders stated clearly: “Do not return until you find him.” After five hours’ walk, we were tired out and dying to eat something. There were edibles in the fields, but none of us dared touch them. The Second Rule for the Army says never take anything that belongs to the people, so we tried hard to stand the hunger and went on searching.

But we couldn’t keep this up. It was cold. Dewdrops fell on us from the tops of the crops, and our clothes were soaked through. Without food in our stomachs, we felt as if our bones were hollow inside and couldn’t help trembling.

We entered a turnip field where sorghum also grew. Between every dozen rows of turnips, there were four or five rows of sorghum. Every group was walking in its own turnip strip and couldn’t see the other groups in the adjacent strips. Wang Min said, “Can’t we have a tur-turnip?” His teeth were chattering.

“It’s gnawing inside,” I said, kneading my stomach.

“Why not?” Meng Dong kicked down a turnip. He tore off the leaves and began gobbling.

We all got our turnips. Wang Min stabbed the head of his turnip with his bayonet to get rid of the leaves. “Don’t use the bayonet. It’s poisonous,” Meng warned him.

Wang was a new soldier and forgot that. He threw away the turnip and pulled up another one, as big as a baby. Soon we all stopped talking and ate quietly. We were afraid that the groups on both sides might know what we were doing, so we tried to make as few noises as possible. Who knew what they were doing? They might have been eating turnips too. People all at once fell into silence, and we only heard muffled footsteps advancing.

I finished the turnip and yanked up another. Meng got his second one too. Wang’s was too big to finish. Thank God, the field was long, and I could eat up the second turnip before we got out of it.

Now it was two-thirty, and we were told to pull up and get two hours’ sleep. Our company leaders must have thought that the search would last for days, so they didn’t want to wear us out too soon. We all sat down on a flattish slope that separated a soybean field and an oak wood, but this time everybody stayed by himself and kept a distance of thirty meters from the next man.

Soon it became quiet, and only a few barking dogs could be heard vaguely. Stars hung loosely in the dark purple sky. Some streaks of clouds fluttered beneath the majestic silver moon, which laid its steely beams on the damp plants and the furrowed land. The stuff in my stomach started stirring and made me want something warm and hot, soup or porridge, which could relieve the uneasiness inside. Turnips were a good vegetable for opening bowels, and one turnip was more than enough for that purpose, but I had rammed two into my stomach. Now heartburn replaced hunger.

If only we had a fire and could roast some fresh soybeans … it’s so cold … oh my knees … they are numb … not my own …

Peanuts, fresh peanuts, so delicious, just roasted … together with the vines … come sit here, close to the fire … what a good flat stone, warms up your feet so well … give me some room … I want to heat up my lunch — salted mackerel and corn cake … smells so good … the sun, what a spendid sun, dry and warm … those clouds … wonderful — horses and cows … also apples and pears … hah, we have everything here … Fourth Dog, where’s your brother … call him to stop digging for potatoes … don’t be greedy … the whole field is ours … nobody knows this place … Lilian, take a bite of this melon … it will melt your teeth … why laughing … it’s sweeter than anything from Dwarf Liu’s garden … hey, all of you … come here … peanuts, fresh peanuts roasted with vines … don’t you want to have some … sit here around the fire and eat … everybody is welcome … today’s Communism Day — take whatever you need … why are you giggling, Old Meng … don’t you feel happy … you son of a goat … don’t you want to have fun … where’s Lev … he was eating peanuts here just now … you mean he’s taking a piss in the bushes … hey, who’s there … is that you, Lev … no, it’s Wang Min … Wang — Min — … tell Lev we have baked sweet potatoes too … more good eats for him to wipe out … Ma Lin, give me your fur coat … don’t be selfish … it’s my turn to be warmed … who is blowing a whistle there … damn, who’s the killjoy —

“Guards Company get up” … who is yelling — “Guards Company get up.”

I jumped to my feet and picked up my rifle. Kneading my arms, I felt numbing pains in the elbows. My knees went shaky too, and I slapped my legs to wake them up. What a dream! I had dreamed of so many good things, but everything was messed up. How could so many people get to one place — my home village? Terrible, I even dreamed that Lev was our friend. All gathered in Fox Valley.

Oh how I miss home! Home, the place that is always warm and safe, where you can sleep a whole day and a whole night when you’re so dog tired. Mom will bring a bowl of millet porridge, hot and delicious, to the side of your pillow when you open your eyes in the morning, and there will be four poached eggs in the porridge. Oh Mom and Dad, how I miss you! —

My thoughts were interrupted by some people’s swearing. They cursed Lev again, wishing him to be crushed to death and licked to a skeleton by bears.

It was almost dawn. A thin curtain of fog surrounded the oak woods and spread above the fields. Every blade of grass was heavy with dew. The air smelled grassy, but everybody seemed to lack the strength to breathe in the fresh air. We spread out along the slope quietly, forming a long line at the edge of the woods. I felt dizzy, and my forehead was still numb. A woodpecker was hammering at a tree trunk, and the sound seemed to shake the entire mountain as we started moving.

When we got out of the fog, suddenly the dawn was opening and the east turned pink and bright. Beneath the eastern sky, we saw people running down along a winding path on the hillside. Somebody guessed they must have caught Lev. Commander Yan raised his field glasses to watch while we were gathering around him.

“No,” he said. “It looks like another injured militiaman. They’re carrying a stretcher on their shoulders.”

“This is not war yet,” Platoon Leader Fang said, “but there’s already a depletion of numbers.”

“Attention, everybody.” Commander Yan turned to us. “We are going ahead through the thicket in front of us now. When we’re out of it, we’ll have breakfast.”

We set off again, thinking of warm porridge and steaming bread for breakfast. The night before it was reported that two militiamen had been injured. Some of the militia had forgotten to lock the safety catches on their guns.

The thicket was very small. Soon we sat down for breakfast, which was hardtack and cold water. The biscuits were not bad, but we’d like to have drunk some hot water, still shivering with cold. No fire was allowed, because the smoke might show Lev where we were. Though there had been no shadow of Lev, we had to act as if he was within our range.

After breakfast we rested for an hour. No one knew what place should be searched more thoroughly than anywhere else. Walking aimlessly like this, we could not find any trace of Lev, so it was better to take it easy.

At ten o’clock our squad was sent to search around a slaughterhouse in a valley. We were told not to wander far away, just stay within that area. By this time every pass and every juncture, from Longmen to Hutou and to the border, had been occupied by troops, militia, and villagers. Lev had already fallen into the boundless ocean of people’s war.

Slowly we moved through the millet field east of the slaughterhouse. Everybody tried to relax a little while his legs were dragging him forward. The two squad leaders had already made up. It was always like that: They quarreled, looking as if a melee was about to break out, but an hour later they would become pals again. All of us were in a better mood now, except that everybody swore whenever Lev came to his mind.

The slaughterhouse butchered oxen in the daytime. After the first search through the millet and the soybean fields nearby, we went to the slaughter hall to see how they killed oxen. Ma Lin said that the folk in his hometown would trip the animal to the ground first, than stab its heart with a long knife, but Vice Squad Leader Hsu said, “Nonsense, you have to use a sledgehammer to knock out the ox first. Who can trip up an ox!”

We all went to see. In the large hall hung a few headless oxen that had been disemboweled but not yet skinned. Probably because it was lunchtime, there were only two men in there. One of them looked like a master and the other an apprentice. They nodded at us and didn’t seem to mind our presence. The master was tall and stout. The flesh on his cheeks was thick and squeezed his eyes into two tiny triangles. The apprentice was also tall but thin and narrow shouldered. His big jaw had grown sideways, his chin almost in a vertical line with his left cheek. He looked brain-damaged. Wang Min asked them to show us how they butchered an ox, and they agreed. I was wondering how just the two of them could kill such a large animal.

They placed a piece of rope into a sort of groove on the floor, forming a chain of four nooses. A small knife, about five inches long, dangled on the master’s hip. Then they went into the cattle pen behind a green gate and pulled in a large ox. The animal saw the carcasses in the air and refused to move forward. Around its shoulders there were hairless patches, so it must have done a lot of work. Its eyes looked dim. Tears, I saw tears rolling down its cheeks. The two men were pulling hard.

As soon as the ox’s hooves were in the trap, they hauled at the ends of the rope. With a bang the ox fell to the floor. Its four legs were tied up struggling in the air. The young man hit its forehead with a sledgehammer, and the ox instantly stopped moving. The master jerked out the short knife and started cutting the ox’s head. Beneath the blade whitish flesh flared and then turned ruddy. With three strokes the head was slashed off. The whole process took no more than twenty seconds. On the floor, a foamy crimson pool extended, and the hall at once filled with an odor of compost.

I walked away, my chest and stomach twinging inside. In front of me, small stars were jumping about on the wormwood. I felt like vomiting but could not bring anything up. They killed an ox like a chicken. Grandma was right: The most wicked creature on earth is man. That ox had worked for its master till it was old; when it couldn’t work well, the master sold it to the slaughterhouse for money. The ox had wept just now, begging the fat butcher in silence for its life, but people wanted to eat beef, so they ignored its tears and butchered it. Man is a true beast.

When I rejoined my comrades at the edge of a soybean field, they were having a lunch break, still talking about the scene in the slaughter hall. Everybody had been impressed; nobody had expected that a big ox could be killed without any noise. Lunch was hardtack too. At breakfast each of us had been given two extra pieces for noon. I was hungry and forced myself to eat, but I felt sick and couldn’t eat as fast as the others. Our squad leader told me to take my time. Meanwhile, those who had finished lunch lay on the grass, smoking tobacco.

The news came at three o’clock that Lev had been caught. Rejoining our company, our platoon took a truck to the Divisional Headquarters to wait for him. Everybody was talking about how to handle Lev once we had him in our hands again.

It turned out that Lev had never known what city he was in, nor had he been able to tell in what direction Russia was. All night he ran inland, but he covered only thirty li. He had been totally spoiled by us. Contrary to our fears, he simply couldn’t eat anything in the fields. He had eaten too much of the delicate food and the best candies, and had smoked too many of the expensive cigarettes, so for a whole night he didn’t eat anything, no matter how hungry he was. By noon he couldn’t endure the hunger anymore; he got out of the cornfield where he had hidden himself, went over to an old peasant who was passing by, and asked him for food and cigarettes. The old man knew who he was, brought him home, and gave him a pipe, then told his wife to cook. In the meantime his daughter ran to the office of their production brigade to tell the militia. When the militiamen arrived, Lev was eating scallion cake, scrambled eggs, and bean sprouts. They surrounded the house but didn’t disturb him. Then a jeep from Chaoyang County’s Military Department came and picked him up.

Now we were ready to receive him. The militia, the police, and the people on the streets all knew we had recaptured the “Russian agent.” Standing in two lines at the entrance of the Divisional Headquarters, we kept the militiamen and the people away from the front sentry post. Some of them carried guns and many held carrying poles and spades. They declared they wanted to teach the “Russian agent” an unforgettable lesson. Everyone was angry, having not slept for a night and having trudged around for twenty hours. Besides, so many crops had been trampled. Even some policemen said they wanted to beat the Big Nose too.

Our squad was told to accompany him back to the Eastern Airport. From now on, all the privileges Lev had enjoyed were taken away, and his daily meal expenses would be the same as ours. He was to eat with us.

Here came the jeep. The moment it stopped, Lev got out with a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. Some people were rushing to him. Lev could tell they wanted to beat him, so he hurried to us but then paused, probably noticing us all fully armed. We hated him — because of him we were notorious now, and every one of us would have to do self-criticism for several days.

Seeing the few men around him holding only carrying poles, we didn’t seriously intervene but merely shouted, “Don’t beat him. Don’t use force.” We thought a few strokes wouldn’t hurt him much and would give him enough of a warning not to escape again.

“Ouch!” Lev slumped down and started screaming. His body spun around on the gravel road and fell into the roadside ditch. There he lay on his back, and the green uniform on him turned mottled. His arms circled his head, wriggling to loosen the handcuffs, while his legs stretched motionless.

“Halt, halt!” We all ran over and pushed the wild people away. We had not expected they would beat him as if they wanted to kill him. A young man was still struggling along in the crowd, waving a carrying pole in the air and crying, “Let me go! I’ll get even with him, the Russian Tartar.” He was the one who had broken Lev’s right leg. We caught him, together with his pole, and brought him into the headquarters. Later we came to know that his elder brother, a platoon leader in the militia, had been shot by a carbine going off accidentally that morning.

Meanwhile Lev was moved into the Office of Mail and Information. He smelled like a goat, and his body was quivering on the cement floor. He was moaning in a choked voice and kept his eyes closed, as if he were a dumb animal that couldn’t speak a human word, although Interpreter Jiao was standing by. Some parts of his clothes were soaked with sweat. Squad Leader Shi held up Lev’s neck and raised a glass of cold water to his mouth. Lev drank it up without opening his eyes. It seemed he didn’t care whether we gave him water or poison.

Doctor Cai came with an ambulance. We carried Lev out and put him into the van. Immediately the siren started and the ambulance sped to the Twenty-third Field Hospital.

That night we packed up and returned from the airport to our billet in the Company Headquarters. It was the last time we saw Lev, whose identity was clarified after his escape, since he had no one to meet and even fled toward Beijing to get back to Russia.

We were told two months later that he was returned to his country in exchange for a defector from the Fourth Regiment. Though we knew who Lev Petrovich was now, I guess, it would not be easy for him to prove who he was to the Russians. They would suspect him of being either a traitor or a Chinese agent. Lucky for him, he had a broken leg.