"War Trash" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jin Ha)

10. THE SCREENING

We ate breakfast at six the next morning, then packed all our belongings onto our backs and waited outside Liberty Hall. I had only a satchel and a blanket roll; some men had nothing but the ragged clothes on them, having gambled away everything else. The screening started at 8:00 a.m. Group by group we were led into the hall, where we waited to be called individually to meet the arbiters. We were to walk through a side door and into one of the three white tents, pitched specially for the screening, in which we would be asked whether we wanted to repatriate. After that, we would be sent to join either those going to Taiwan or those returning to the mainland. When our group had entered the hall, I couldn't stop fidgeting, unsure where I was going to wind up. In a corner of the room the bodies of the two men killed the night before were still lying under rice straw. The iron bars hidden in the sleeves of the Chinese "policemen" scared me, and from outside a voice rang out, "Catch him! Smash his skull!" I closed my eyes and tried not to think.

A U.N. official came in to check our ID tags against his record and made us sign our names on a ruled manila envelope. About a dozen U.N. guards, all empty-handed, showed up too, so the hall quieted down some.

Meanwhile Dajian, standing behind me with several men between us in the line, kept looking at me and asked with his sluggish eyes what we should do. I turned my head away, not wanting to face him because I had no idea either. Out of the corner of my eye I caught him shaking his chin at me a few times, but I didn't respond. Besides, our battalion's police didn't allow anyone to talk, so I couldn't go up to him and say that all we could do was act as the circumstances required.

A pebble hit my back, signaling it was my turn. With shaky steps I moved to the side door. I walked slowly so as to see what it was like outside and to assess the situation. Some GIs stood at the entrances to the white tents, all having MP painted on their helmets and on their dark blue brassards. An idea finally came to mind: if the arbiters forced me to go to Taiwan I would rush out of the tent and beg the GIs to send me to the group heading for the mainland. If I spoke to them in English, they might help me, I guessed.

After entering a tent, I was ordered to sit down in front of two American officers, with a folding table between us. One of them was a Caucasian, tall with a long face and in a pea-green shirt; the other was a stocky Chinese. The white man, a captain, began speaking to me about the Geneva Convention and the consequences of my decision. I was amazed that he could speak Mandarin, while the other officer, who was a lieutenant, kept smiling knowingly. Once in a while the Chinese man put in a few words in Cantonese, which I couldn't understand.

I must have looked absentminded, for the white officer grew impatient and said to me, "All right, tell me now, do you want to go to Taiwan or mainland China?"

"To the mainland," I replied firmly.

He looked me in the face for a moment, as though in disbelief. Then he handed me a card, saying, "Go straight to the front gate and give this card to the guards."

With tears on my face I bowed to both of them and said, "Thank you," then hurried out toward the gate. The card in my hand was five by three inches, bearing these words: "The People's Republic of China."

I handed it to the GI standing at the middle of the gate with a rifle hung across his chest. He glanced at the card, grabbed my shoulder, and shoved me out of the compound. Near the sentry post was parked a truck whose back was under canvas. A GI beckoned me to get onto the vehicle by the ladder at its rear. Climbing up, I turned around to look at the white tents in hopes that Dajian would be following me.

"Don't look around, you motherfucker!" another GI yelled and pushed me into the back of the truck. There were only about a dozen men in it, most of whom looked unfamiliar to me. I grew more anxious. If only I had given Dajian an eye signal just now! I felt awful for having left him in the lurch.

About ten minutes later the truck rolled away toward a new compound, number 602, where all the would-be repatriates were assembled. Later I heard from a fellow who had joined us in the afternoon that after Dajian returned to my former company, he kept asking others, "Where's Feng Yan? Did you see him?" They all shook their heads. For hours he wept quietly alone. What had happened that morning was that before entering a screening tent, he was sandwiched between two pro-Nationalists, who told him I had just made "the wise choice." So Dajian declared to the arbiters that he would go to Taiwan too.