Search for the Buried Bomber

by Xu, Lei

  At first we talked it over, then we became fidgety, felt a burst of calm, then another rush of agitation. Ma Zaihai and I took turns looking out through the aperture, feeling around the iron walls, and doing a great deal of things that were utterly pointless. The deputy squad leader continued to sit in the same place, his eyes closed, pondering who knows what. We waited for approximately seven hours, suffocating under our agitation and the choice we faced. At last it was the deputy squad leader who suddenly stood up, walked over to the airtight door, and grabbed hold of the wheel lock. Slowly, he began to turn it.

  I remember the deputy squad leader's expression with total clarity. I wish I could describe it as filled with that calm, composed, and fearless sort of revolutionary spirit, but in reality, he was no different from us—his mind was barely able to bear what he was doing. It's just that those who've served on the battlefield become accustomed to life and death hanging in the balance. It becomes easier for such people to take the pivotal step. Only after he'd rotated the wheel halfway did we really understand that he meant to open the door. It was then that I did something pretty worthless: I actually made to rush over, grab hold of him, and prevent him from going any further, but before I moved, the deputy squad leader stopped on his own. His expression was very calm as he turned and waved over at us, saying we'd better get against the interior wall. If something was wrong, he could still quickly shut the door and we would be saved. Ma Zaihai insisted they open it together, but the deputy squad leader refused. That's the difference between those who've served on the battlefield and those who haven't, he said. Those who've served would never just give away their lives for nothing. They know as long as they remain alive they might still be of some use to their country. Ma Zaihai didn't listen, so I grabbed him tightly and dragged him back. The deputy squad leader became annoyed and yelled at us to shut up. Only then did Ma Zaihai calm down.

  He and I retreated to the back wall, our eyes on the deputy squad leader. We watched him take a deep breath and then, with almost no hesitation, spin the wheel one full turn. From within the door came a faint creak and a sort of sucking noise as the air lock broke. It quietly opened a crack. I hadn't fully readied myself. I began to shake all over. The three of us went stock-still. Time seemed to stop and my mind went blank.

  Nothing happened. Everything was just as it had been before. I held my breath for a long time before discovering that, in fact, we were OK. I was right after all. I relaxed and, from his place in the doorway, the deputy squad leader let out a deep breath. Ma Zaihai did, too. I was about to say thank goodness, when the deputy squad leader's entire body suddenly slackened and he crumpled softly to the floor, his hand pulling the door halfway open. I watched as, in an instant, a roiling cloud of mist poured through the doorway and into the iron chamber.

  This is it, I thought to myself. In a moment, the dense, heavy mist had filled the room, rising and spreading as if it were some enormous soft-bodied organism taking over the iron chamber. My nerves were stretched to their limit, a single thought playing in my head: Fucked. The wall at my back was ice-cold. I could retreat no farther.

  Perhaps, if given a bit more time, I would have felt both furious and regretful. Because of my baseless inferences, my comrades in arms and I were going to die. Those minutes of remorse would have been far worse than any pain that dying could bring. I probably would have slapped myself viciously and torn off my own scalp. There was no such time. Within ten seconds of my having realized that, in fact, things were no longer looking so bright, the surging mist had already closed in on me. Ma Zaihai rushed into the dense mist to help the deputy squad leader, but I knew it was futile. As the mist blew in against my face, I instinctively held my breath and turned my head away, wanting to stay alive if for only a second longer. What was the use? I smelled some ice-cold scent and the mist wrapped itself around me.

  CHAPTER 39

  The Mist

  Iclosed my eyes. I was surely about to fall down, froth at the mouth, and die. Looking back on it, how unexpected my thoughts were. In the very moments before I was to expire, not for a second did I ponder the significance of my death. In the end, of course, I survived. You're all probably aware of this. But while I wouldn't say that I had any great revelation, at the very least this experience matured me. It was only after this that I understood what one would have to go through—the price one would have to pay—to become as calm and steady as someone like Old Cat.

  So then, what actually happened? Why didn't I die? I waited for death within that mist for over ten minutes. After a while I began to feel something new. The cold had begun to seep into my body. As my pores violently contracted, all the heat was sucked out of me. At first I thought this was the harbinger of death, but as I became colder and colder, to the point where I began to sneeze, I realized that something was amiss. Opening my eyes, I discovered the dense mist had already mostly dispersed. Ma Zaihai was standing beside the door with the deputy squad leader slung over his back, his expression as puzzled as my own.

  There was no poison? How ridiculous all this was. How could this have happened? Had we really just been warring with nothing but our own minds? The mist had become very thin, not to mention cold as hell. Ma Zaihai was all huddled in on himself. The doorway was colder than the room. He glanced over at me, then slowly opened the door all the way. The mist seethed and our flashlight beams lit upon nothing but the roiling mass.

  The deputy squad leader must have fainted from sheer exhaustion. Of the three of us, he'd overexerted himself most severely— both physically and mentally—and he was injured. He'd just passed out. We put our equipment in order. Then, with Ma Zaihai carrying the deputy squad leader, we stepped out of the iron chamber.

  On all sides of us, there was nothing but mist. It obscured everything. Our flashlights were unable to illuminate even a few feet ahead, but at this point they were barely working anyway. The majority of the mist accumulated below our knees, white and thick, swiftly rising up, then thinly falling back down. It rolled as soon as we touched it, as if we were walking through a cloud. The air was so cold, after a few seconds I could no longer feel my legs, and only when they moved could I be sure they were still there. Already this cold went far beyond the icy chill of the underground river. We huddled in on ourselves and, feeling rather terrified, surveyed our surroundings. The falling temperature very quickly restored my train of thought. This mist was not the heavy gray fog we'd seen earlier, but rather the kind of freezing-cold water vapor often seen in large-scale freezers. But the temperature here was far lower than that of any freezer. It was just too cold.

  We took out our sleeping bags and draped them over our shoulders, but they barely helped. I stamped my foot. There was iron grating running beneath us, covered with a layer of ice. An echo resounded each time I stamped down. Evidently, this was a relatively wide-open space. Where were we? What was supposed to be at the bottom of a dam? Shouldn't the rotor for the main generator be sunk down here? How come it all resembled a gigantic icehouse?

  We continued cautiously, the iron grating vibrating rhythmically beneath our feet. The farther we went, the thinner the mist became. Soon enough, I saw we were tromping along a walkway, like a ridge between two farm fields. On either side was a massive, square, concrete swimming pool–like depression riddled with cement ridges crisscrossing the frozen pools within. It resembled a work site for burning lime, only its construction appeared much more detailed. In the ice were a number of large black shadows, each the size of a small cow. I stepped carefully atop the ice to have a look at what was inside. It was frozen solid, the water at least six feet deep. I still couldn't make out anything distinct about the shadows.

  We continued along the grating, the cold increasing with each step. After 150 feet I already wanted to go back. Ma Zaihai couldn't stop shivering. Then we saw a familiar iron wall, and, within this wall, a familiar airtight iron door. It was covered in a thick layer of ice and hung with long, daggerlike icicles. Broken shards of ice carpeted the
ground, and a crowbar leaned against the door. Presumably, someone had recently used the crowbar to pry open the ice-sealed door. I let out a deep breath. Had Yuan Xile opened this door?

  I picked up the crowbar and was about to stick it in the wheel lock and open the door when with a click, it suddenly turned, if only slightly. Ma Zaihai and I each took a quick step backward. We watched as the wheel slowly began to rotate. My instinct was to raise the iron bar in defense. Ma Zaihai planted himself against the wall beside the doorway. The door opened gradually. Just as I was guessing whether it was Chen Luohu or Yuan Xile, a swarthy face—big and flat as a pancake—emerged and blinked at us. All of us, including the owner of the big, flat face, froze in astonishment.

  It took me a full minute before I recognized the dark face sticking out from behind the door as Wang Sichuan's. This wasn't slowness on my part. He was unrecognizable, like he'd just emerged from a slaughterhouse. His face was covered in crusted blood, the skin on his forehead all flared up, and there was something very unnatural about the blackness of his skin. A long time passed. Then at last he yelled out, "Old Wu, you're still fucking alive!"

  I stepped over and hugged him at once, the tears immediately flowing. Then Ma Zaihai recognized him and he started to cry, too. Wang Sichuan cried out in pain. For Wang Sichuan to have survived was just too wonderful. It felt like winning the lottery. But we military men frown on crying, so I used my sleeve to wipe my eyes. I looked him over. His clothes were all scorched, and when I hugged him I could smell the stink of something burned. "What happened to you?" I asked.

  He swore loudly. He'd stepped on an exposed power cable, he said, and was nearly cooked alive. He'd gotten to the dam more or less the same way we had, though he'd climbed atop a different section. There he'd found a three-story-tall cement tower topped by a searchlight, likely some kind of guard post. At the top of the tower was an iron bridge that led to a door in the side of the dam, inside of which was some kind of power distribution room. Countless huge and worn-out power cables crossed through the room, their insulation layers already frozen and cracked open. He never would have expected electricity might still be running through them after so many years, but the moment he stepped on one he found his expectations refuted. First he smelled burning flesh, then felt like he was floating. His body went numb from head to toe and he shot into the air like a bomb had gone off. Ordinarily, a fall like that would have been very painful, but all he could think about was the smell of roast meat. He was just too hungry.

  Seeing the hand gesture Wang Sichuan made to describe the thickness of the power cable, I felt once more how incredibly strange this place was. This kind of temporary dam would need no more than a small electrical generating unit to satisfy whatever illumination or other needs might arise. Based on the size of that cable, this dam was generating far more power than I thought. What did they need all that electricity for? There was too much here beyond my comprehension, and I didn't have time to consider these questions.

  After his shock, Wang Sichuan vomited from nausea and lay dazed for a long time. There was an ironwork wall beyond the power-distribution room. When he heard the sirens, he took refuge in the iron chamber to rest. There were some mishaps in the iron chamber, but he said they weren't worth relating. And now he'd opened the door and ran into us.

  I patted him on the back and gave a deep sigh at his incredible fortune. How lucky it was that he was such a big guy. Had it been me, I would surely be burned black all over and long dead.

  We each let out a deep breath. Seeing Wang Sichuan, I felt my whole being relax. Ma Zaihai was still young, and not only was the deputy squad leader injured, he was also , despite his obvious sense of responsibility, not readily able to adapt to changing situations and new obstacles. I had been the de facto leader of this team, and it weighed on me. Now Wang Sichuan could share some of this responsibility. All at once my mood improved.

  Wang Sichuan asked about our experiences. I recounted them systematically and in full detail. Hearing what had happened with Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu, he stared blankly at us. Part of him couldn't really accept it. I didn't know how to say it any clearer. I was just as ignorant as he. So I said that, for now at least, our most important task was to figure out just where exactly we were.

  The dam seemed to have a symmetrical structure. Both sides had a caisson freight elevator, so there had to be two underwater generator rooms. China was extremely backward at the time. The nation had almost no electric lights, and for a long time after liberation we continued to live in the Dark Ages. So even if there were just two generators per side—the main and the auxiliary—the electricity produced would have been enough to support a small town. Ma Zaihai added that on this kind of dam, construction was probably begun separately on each side with the middle built up afterward. That was the method the Soviets used.

  Wang Sichuan looked puzzled. "What part of the dam are we on now?" he asked me.

  The caisson can reach the very lowest levels, I thought to myself. We should be at the base of the dam, where the electrical machinery is bottled under poured concrete, but based on what we'd seen on the walk over here, the huge space outside seemed to be a massive icehouse.

  Brothers who faced death with me, having written to this point, I feel I must say something: I had known Wang Sichuan and the rest for less than a month. We weren't really friends yet, but this was when our iron bond began to be forged. Now that I'm retired, when I think back, I've found that my life's greatest blessing is none other than these memories of youth and my comrades in arms, both alive and dead. So often do I lament that no matter how mighty one is while young, raging at the clouds and wind, when one is old there remains only some narrow room in which to type a few words, write a few stories. This is all that is left to me.

  You could say that my reunion with Wang Sichuan was unexpected, but you could also say that it was inevitable. The dam's attached, two-sided design ensured that, sooner or later, we were bound to meet up. Unfortunately, Wang Sichuan really wasn't the savior I was hoping for. Although he did reduce the psychological pressure, he didn't change our physical situation. Nonetheless, having him there enabled me to compose myself and begin to ponder what we should do next.

  Everyone was hurt or comatose or at least cold and hungry. If you'd replaced us with young people from this day and age, I can assure you they'd have fallen apart long before this point. All this hunger and exhaustion was bearable for people back then, but we still had no idea what was going to happen. Only the devil knew for sure whether our guesses and inferences were correct. Who could say whether this was even the bottom of the dam? Perhaps we were already in hell.

  My first thought after I calmed down was that we needed to find some way out of here. The mist would have to disperse eventually, and given how close we'd been to the mouth of the cave when we ran into Yuan Xile, we should be able to make it back there as well—so long as we didn't lose our minds like she had. I figured that since the caisson could descend, it should be able to ascend as well. I asked Wang Sichuan how he'd started his up, but he couldn't say. Then I realized my oversight: How were these caissons operated? There was no switch in the bare interior of the iron chamber, but there was another possibility. The freight elevators in the largescale, pre-1949 mines had a switch on the outside and a person specially responsible for its operation. At that time miners lacked any sort of human rights. To control these workers—or should I say these indentured laborers—it was essential to prevent them from operating the elevator on their own and thereby escaping. But who had pulled the master switch? Trails of cold sweat dripped down my back. Was someone else inside the dam? This was a truly terrifying thought. If there were such a person, then he'd been able to see us, but rather than make any sort of direct contact he'd waited until we entered the iron chamber, then secretly dropped us to the bottom of the dam. Why?

  I wasn't going to accept this possibility until I had some proof to back it up. First we needed to figure out how to get back to th
e surface. I assume I needn't spell out what would become of us if we couldn't figure out a way back up. We hesitated in that iron chamber for a long time. In the end it was something Wang Sichuan said that got us going. The sole materialistic explanation for Yuan Xile's and Chen Luohu's disappearances, he said, was that they'd escaped into the vast icehouse. But they definitely hadn't entered this second iron chamber. They were still somewhere out there. No matter what, he declared, we couldn't leave them behind. Wang Sichuan's sense of responsibility was the most admirable moral characteristic I ever encountered. It was probably his inability to waver on such matters that made me feel so secure. I did not believe, however, that we needed to rescue Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu. It wasn't we who'd left them behind. It was they who'd left us.

  But, Wang Sichuan said, Yuan Xile had surely been through a similar situation before. Her recent actions were very likely a duplication of the course of her previous escape. Should we be able to find her, she just might be able to lead us out of here. At once it was decided. The deputy squad leader was still comatose. In his condition he shouldn't be further exposed to the cold. Ma Zaihai would stay behind while Wang Sichuan and I looked for Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu. And with our numbers slightly lessened, our speed would increase. We hurriedly ate a bit of food, wrapped our sleeping bags tightly around us, gathered several flashlight batteries, and set out.