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But Nieh said, “You do not want to believe it of the Japanese because you hate them even more than you hate the scaly devils.”
“That…” Liu Han started to say that wasn’t true, but discovered she couldn’t. She did hate the Japanese, with a deep and abiding hatred. And why not, when they’d destroyed the village that had been her whole life and slaughtered the family she’d thought would be hers forever? She amended her words: “That doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s true and what isn’t. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“Well, so I didn’t,” the People’s Liberation Army officer admitted. He bowed to Liu Han, as if she were a noblewoman from the old days, the days of the Manchu Empire. “I will, then. No, the scaly devils didn’t tell me. But I heard the guards talking among themselves. I don’t think they knew I understood.”
“Oh,” Liu Han said unhappily. She knew the scaly devils often didn’t pay any attention to what their human captives might hear. Why should they? Even if the humans understood, what could they do about it? Nothing, as Liu Han also knew all too well. She scowled and kicked at the dirt. “Will the Japanese start using their bombs against the little devils here in China, then?”
“Who knows what the Japanese will do?” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered. “I often wonder if even they know ahead of time. But whether they use bombs or not, they’ve gained a lot of face by having them.”
“So they have,” Now Liu Han’s voice went savage. She kicked the dirt again, harder than before. “They learned imperialism from the round-eyed devils. All we ever learned was colonialist oppression. The little scaly devils threw them out of China, but they kept most of their empire and they kept their freedom. And what have we got from the little devils? More colonialist oppression. Where is the justice in that?”
Nieh shrugged. “Justice comes with power. The strong have it. And they give their version of it to the weak. We were unlucky, for we were found weak at the wrong time.”
When Liu Han looked out to the horizon, she did so through strands of razor wire the little scaly devils had set up around the perimeter of the camp. If that didn’t tell her everything she needed to know about strength and weakness, what would? She scowled. “How can we use the Japanese to our advantage?”
“Now that is a better thought.” Nieh Ho-T’ing set a hand on her shoulder for a moment, as if to remind her they’d been lovers once. “The Russians have always refused to give us explosive-metal bombs of our own. So have the Americans. Maybe the Japanese will be more reasonable.”
“Maybe they’ll hope the Russians get the blame,” Liu Han said, which made Nieh laugh and nod. “That might be a reasonable hope, too. I wonder if Mao has this news yet.”
“Mao always knows the news.” Nieh spoke with great assurance. “What he can do with it may be another question. I’m sure he’d be willing to deal with the Japanese to get an explosive-metal bomb. I’m not nearly so sure they’d be willing to deal with him.”
“If I were one of the eastern dwarfs, I’d be afraid of dealing with anyone Chinese,” Liu Han said. “They must know how much vengeance we owe them for what they did to us.”
“That’s true. No one would argue with it,” Nieh said. “But how much do we owe the scaly devils? If that is more, then the Japanese wouldn’t need to fear, for we would want to settle the bigger debt first.”
Though Liu Han knew how to make such cold-blooded calculations, they didn’t appeal to her. “I want to pay back the scaly devils, and I want to pay back the Japanese,” she said. “How can we be free till we punish all our enemies?”
Nieh sighed. “I’ve been fighting for our freedom since I was a young man, and it seems further away than ever. The struggle ahead won’t be any quicker or any easier than the one we’ve already made.”
That made sense, too, but it wasn’t what Liu Han wanted to hear. “I want Liu Mei to live in freedom,” she said, and then her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I want to live in freedom myself. I don’t want either one of us to spend the rest of our days locked up in this prison camp.”
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my days here, either,” Nieh Ho-T’ing said. “I am not a young man any more. I do not have so many days to spend anywhere, and this isn’t the place I’d have chosen.” His own smile showed wry amusement. “But the little devils gave us no choice. Your daughter helped make sure they would give us no choice.”
Liu Han turned away. She didn’t want to hear that, either, even though she knew it was true. She started to explain that she understood why Liu Mei had done as she did, but what difference did it make? None. She kept walking.
A man she didn’t know came by her. He gave her a polite nod, so she returned one. Probably with the Kuomintang, she thought. Plenty of prisoners here were. The little devils didn’t care if they and the Communists went right on with their civil war here inside this razor-wire perimeter. That just made life easier for them.
The first time she’d been taken to a camp, things had been a lot easier. The little devils were newer at the game then-and she’d been only an experimental animal to them, not a dangerous political prisoner. The Reds had helped spirit her out of the camp through a tunnel, and no one had been the wiser for a long time. Things weren’t so simple here. No humans went into and out of this camp. People came in. They never went out.
Nothing seemed so tempting as giving way to despair. If she stopped caring about what happened to her, maybe she could accept the likelihood that she would never leave this place again. Then she could start shaping a life for herself within the razor-wire perimeter.
She shook her head. She wouldn’t give up. She couldn’t give up. She hadn’t given up after Ttomalss took her daughter away from her, and she’d got Liu Mei back. If she kept up the struggle, she might get her own life back one day, too. After all, who could guess what would happen? The Japanese might resume their war with the little scaly devils. Or the Germans might fight them. The Germans were strong, even if they were fascist reactionaries. If they caused the scaly devils enough trouble, maybe the little devils would have to loosen their grip on China. You never could tell.
She went back to the tent she shared with Liu Mei to tell her daughter the news she’d had from Nieh. But Liu Mei wasn’t in the tent. Liu Han’s carefully constructed bravado collapsed. If the little devils had taken her daughter off to do horrible things to her, what good was bravado?
A woman who lived in the tent next door said, “The scaly devils do not have her.” She had a southwestern accent that hardly seemed Mandarin at all to Liu Han, who had trouble following her.
When at last she did, she asked, “Well, where is she, then?”
The other woman, who was not a Communist, smiled unpleasantly. “She went out walking with a young man.”
“A young man!” Liu Han exclaimed. “Which young man?” The camp held a lot of them, far more than women.
“I have no idea.” The other woman was full of sour virtue. “My children would never do such a thing without my knowing.”
“You ugly old turtle, you must have had a blind husband if you have any children at all,” Liu Han said. That produced a splendid fight. Each of the women called the other everything she could think of. The other woman took a step toward Liu Han, who only smiled. “Come ahead. I will snatch you even balder than you are already.”
“Oh, shut up, you horrible, clapped-out whore!” the other woman screeched, but she backed away again.
Contemptuously, Liu Han turned her back. She listened for footsteps that would mean the other woman was rushing at her, but they didn’t come. She wondered if she ought to wait in her tent for her daughter or to go after her.
She decided to wait. Liu Mei came back about an hour later, alone. “What have you been doing?” Liu Han asked.
“Walking with a friend,” Liu Mei answered. Her face showed nothing, but then it never did-it never could.
“Who is this friend?” Liu Han persisted.
“Someone I met he
re,” her daughter said.
“And what other sort of person is it likely to be?” Liu Han said, full of sarcasm. “Someone you met in Peking, maybe? Or in the United States? I am going to ask you again, and I want a straight answer this time: who is this friend?”
“Someone I met here,” Liu Mei repeated.
“Is it a man or a woman? Is it a Communist or a Kuomintang reactionary?” Liu Han said. “Why do you beat around the bush?”
“Why do you hound me?” Liu Mei returned. If the nosy neighbor hadn’t told Liu Han her daughter was walking with a man, that would have. “I can walk with whomever I like. It’s not like there’s anything else to do.”
