by Cheng Nien
During moments of lucidity, I tried to discipline my mind by doing simple arithmetic. I would repeat to myself, “Two and two makes four, four and four equals eight, eight and eight equals sixteen, sixteen and sixteen equals thirty-two …” But after only a little while my ability to concentrate would evaporate, and I would get confused again. The guards still came to the locked door. But what they said was just a jumble of words that made no sense to me.
After several more days, I became so weak that I no longer had the strength to stagger to the small window for rice or water. I tried to refuse when they were offered to me, but whether words came out of my mouth or not I did not know. Perhaps the woman from the kitchen was urging me to take the rice or the drinking water; I did not hear her voice, only sensed that she stood there waiting for something. Most of the time I was so far away that I did not know what was happening around me. After drifting in and out of consciousness like that for some time, I passed out altogether.
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself lying on the dusty floor.
“Get up! Get up!” a man’s voice was shouting very near me. “You are feigning death! You won’t be allowed to get away with it.”
My arms were still bent to my back, but they were no longer held together by the handcuffs.
“Get up! Get up!” a female voice joined in.
I pulled myself together and looked up to find the militant female guard and the young man who had put the handcuffs on me standing over me. The cell door was wide open. Dangling in the hands of the female guard was the pair of heavy brass handcuffs they had removed from my wrists. The handcuffs were covered with congealed blood and pus. Probably the guard considered them repulsive, as she was holding them gingerly by the chain with just two fingers.
“Don’t think we are finished with you! There are other ways to bring you to your senses. Those who dare to oppose the Dictatorship of the Proletariat will not be allowed to get away with it,” said the man.
The female guard gave my prostrate form a hard kick as they left the cell and locked the door behind them.
I remained on the floor, too exhausted to move. Although the handcuffs were gone, my whole body was aching and hot. Slowly I brought my left arm forward and looked at my hand. Quickly I closed my eyes again. My hand was too horrible to contemplate. After a moment, I sat up and looked at both hands. They were swollen to enormous size. The swelling extended to my elbows. Around my wrists where the handcuffs had cut into my flesh, blood and pus continued to ooze out of the wounds. My nails were purple in color and felt as if they were going to fall off. I touched the back of each hand, only to find the skin and flesh numb. I tried to curl up my fingers but could not because they were the size of carrots. I prayed to God to help me recover the use of my hands.
After a while, I tried to get up. But I had to stifle a cry of pain, for my feet could not support my body. As I was very near the bed, I managed to haul myself up to it. The woolen socks were stuck to my feet with dried pus. When I succeeded in peeling the socks off with my numb and swollen fingers, I saw that my feet were also swollen to enormous size. Under each toe was a large blister. I could not take the socks completely off because some of the blisters had broken and the pus had dried, gluing the socks to my feet. What was making it impossible for me to walk was the fact that some of the blisters had not broken. Obviously I needed a sterile sharp instrument such as a needle to break the blisters and let the fluid out. Also, to prevent infection, I needed bandages and some antiseptic medicine for the wounds on my wrists. I stood up. I almost sat down again immediately because the burning pain in my feet was unbearable. However, I resisted the impulse to sit down and, shuddering, remained standing. I thought that since I had to move about in the cell, the sooner I practiced walking on my swollen feet, the better. I moved one foot forward a couple of inches, shifted my weight onto that foot, and moved the other foot a couple of inches. Eventually I arrived at the door. Leaning against it for support, I called the guard on duty.
“Report!” My voice sounded feeble. But almost immediately the shutter on the small window slid open. The guard had been right outside the door, watching me through the peephole all the time without my knowledge.
“What do you want?”
“May I see the doctor, please.”
“What for?”
“My wrists and feet are wounded. I need some medicine and bandages,” I explained.
“The doctor does not give treatment when the prisoner has been punished,” declared the guard.
“In that case, perhaps you could just give me some disinfectant ointment or Mercurochrome for the wounds?” I knew the guards kept a supply of these in their little room.
“No, not allowed.”
“The wounds may become infected.”
“That’s your business.”
“May I just have a roll of bandages to tie the wounds up?”
I lifted my swollen hands to the window to show her the wounds on my wrists, but she turned her head the other way and refused to look at them.
“May I have some bandages?” I asked her again.
“No.”
I got angry. “So, you do not practice revolutionary humanitarianism in accordance with Chairman Mao’s teaching,” I said.
“Revolutionary humanitarianism is not for you,” she said.
“No, it’s not for me because I’m not a real enemy of the Communist Party. And I haven’t done anything against the People’s Government. Revolutionary humanitarianism was applied to the Japanese invaders. The Communist Party gave the wounded Japanese prisoners of war medicine and bandages, according to Chairman Mao’s books,” I said sarcastically.
“Look at you! As argumentative and unrepentant as you were before. You learned nothing from the handcuffs. Perhaps you did not have them on long enough. If you argue any more, I am going to put them on you again.” With that threat she retreated to the guards’ room and remained there. I knew she had no authority to put the handcuffs back on my wrists again. It was just bluff. She knew I knew it too.
It seemed there was no alternative to relying on myself to deal with the wounds on my wrists and feet. With the help of God, I thought, I would find some way to prevent infection. Very slowly I shuffled to the table and drank up the water in the mug. I heard the woman from the kitchen entering the building with her heavy trolley, on which were two huge buckets of boiled hot drinking water for the prisoners. I waited for her at the small window. When she came to me, she gave me a generous portion, filling the large mug almost three-quarters full. I poured this water into the washbasin and with a clean towel carefully washed the wounds on my wrists and wiped away the dried blood and pus. Then I washed my feet in the same bloodstained water. The feel of hot water on my skin was good. I longed to drink some, but I thought it more important to clean the wounds.
While I sat on the bed drying my feet, I wondered what I could tear up and use as bandages. After so many years, my meager stock of clothing had become even more depleted because I often had to tear up a worn garment to patch those that were just beginning to develop holes. As I was searching my mind for an idea, I saw the pillowcase hanging on the clothesline. I had washed it the morning I was called to the interrogation room. It looked dry. It was the only pillowcase I had left, but I thought I could dispense with it; I could put the pillow under the sheet at night. I raised my arm to take it off the clothesline. To my dismay, I found I could not reach the pillowcase because my arm refused to be raised higher than the level of my shoulders. I supposed that after such long restraint the tendons were paralyzed. I resolved to restore the function of my arms by exercise. But that would take some time. For the moment, at any rate, I would have to leave the wounds on my wrists uncovered.
The Labor Reform girl came with cold water. She poured the water slowly into the washbasin as I held it up to the small window. As soon as she saw my hands shaking because they could no longer bear the weight, she stopped. The washbasin was barely half full. I poured some of the wate
r into one of the mugs for drinking. With the rest, I washed my face. Then I tried to comb my hair. Since my right arm holding the comb could not reach the top of my head, I used my left hand to hold up the elbow of my right arm. With my head bent forward, turning first this way and then that way, I managed to smooth out my hair. I wanted very much to give myself a sponge bath and change my underclothes. But I was afraid I would catch cold in the icy room. In any case, I was already exhausted, and there was no more clean water.
The woman from the kitchen was again at the small window. She handed me the afternoon meal through the opening. The aluminum container was filled to the brim with rice and boiled cabbage. When I pushed the food into my mug, I discovered two hard-boiled eggs buried at the bottom of the container.
To forestall, I am sure, any possibility of my thanking her for the eggs, the woman did not open the window to collect the container as was her habit but shouted through the door as if she were angry, “You are always so slow! Hand the container over to the guard on night duty when you have finished! I can’t stand here all night waiting for you!”
I sat down on the edge of the bed to eat. With each mouthful I swallowed, I felt a little strength flowing back to me. When I had finished, I washed the mug and stood up to exercise my arms. I was most anxious that I should be able to reach the pillowcase on the line as soon as possible so that I could make bandages to cover up the wounds on my wrists. I swung my arms up and down many times, each time raising them a little higher in the air to stretch the tendons. My feet were very painful, but I remained standing until I was exhausted. After a short rest, I resumed the exercise.
The guard on night duty came to the small window, handed me the day’s newspaper, and took away the aluminum container. I looked at the date on the newspaper and discovered that only eleven days had elapsed since I had been called to the interrogation room and manacled. It seemed much longer. The guard came to tell the prisoners to go to bed.
This was the first time in eleven days that I had the chance of a full night’s sleep. But it took me a long time to drop off. Somehow, the tight handcuffs had affected my nervous system. My whole body was aching and hot. No matter on which side I lay, it was painful and uncomfortable. The weight of the blanket and quilt seemed unbearable. Since I did not feel the cold, being feverish, I pulled the blanket off. I tried to arrange my feet and arms in such a way that the blood and pus would not stain the quilt. I soon found this impossible.
To put those special handcuffs tightly on the wrists of a prisoner was a form of torture widely used in Maoist China’s prison system. Sometimes additional chains were put around the prisoner’s ankles. At other times, a prisoner might be manacled and then have his handcuffs tied to a bar on the window so that he could not move away from the window to eat, drink, or go to the toilet. The purpose was to degrade a man in order to destroy his morale. Before my own imprisonment, victims and their families had simply not told me about such practices. But after my imprisonment, I became a member of that special group, so they did not hesitate to tell me of their experiences. However, since the People’s Government claimed to have abolished all forms of torture, the officials simply called such methods “punishment” or “persuasion.”
It took me many months of intense effort to be able to raise my arms above my head; it was a full year before I could stretch them straight above me. The minor wounds left no scar after healing, but the deeper wounds where the metal of the handcuffs cut through my flesh almost to the bone left ugly scars that remain with me to this day: a legacy of Mao Zedong and his Revolutionaries. The swelling of my hands and fingers subsided eventually, but the backs of both my hands had no sensation for more than two years. The nerves were so damaged that when I experimentally pricked the back of my hand with a needle to draw blood, I felt nothing whatever. Even now, after more than thirteen years, my hands ache on cold, wet days. In winter, even in a warm room, I have to wear gloves in bed. If I use my hands a little too much in cleaning, typing, or carrying heavy parcels, sometimes I find my right hand suddenly going limp and useless, unable to grip anything. My right hand sustained a greater degree of damage than my left hand, mainly because the zipper on my slacks was on the left side. Since I strained to the left of my body to unzip my slacks whenever I had to use the toilet, the handcuffs cut deeper into the flesh of my right wrist. The irony of the situation was that normally women’s slacks in the clothes stores in China had the zipper on the right side. Since my slacks had been specially tailored, I had the zipper on the left, because I had worn it that way long before the Communist regime came into being. I suppose the interrogator would have said that this was another instance of my stubborn reluctance to change my old way of life.
Some of my friends exclaimed, “Why did you bother to zip up your slacks at all when you had your handcuffs on!” I suppose I could have left my slacks unzipped, but I would have felt terribly demoralized. That wouldn’t have been good for my fighting spirit. Looking back on those years, I believe the main reason I was able to survive my ordeal was that the Maoist Revolutionaries failed to break my fighting spirit.
On the whole my feet fared better. Though they remained swollen and painful for many weeks after the handcuffs were taken off, there was no permanent damage. When Sunday came around again, I was able to borrow a needle to open the blisters and let the fluid out. After that, I was able to hobble along slowly without excruciating pain until the blisters gradually healed.
The morning after I was freed from the handcuffs, the guard called the prisoners for outdoor exercise. I went to the door to wait for her so that I could ask to be excused.
“May I be excused today? My feet are swollen. I can’t get them into my shoes,” I said when she opened the shutter.
She looked at my feet through the opening and saw that I was wearing cloth shoes with the backs pressed down.
“You can go out just as you are,” she answered.
“I’m afraid it will be difficult for me to walk the distance to the exercise yard. My feet are very painful. May I be excused this time?” I requested again.
“No, you will have to go. Today, everybody must go.”
She unlocked the door and stood there watching me. Each step I took was sheer agony. My body trembled, and I was very slow.
“Please, may I stay in today?” I asked again after going a yard or so.
“No, you have to go today,” she said.
What did she mean? Why must I go today? What was so special about today? I was thinking while making slow progress. She was patiently following me out of the building of the women’s prison. Since my cell was at the end of the corridor, I was always the last prisoner from downstairs to go out.
Suddenly, the militant female guard ran into the courtyard. “Why are you so slow? Walk faster! We can’t wait for you all day!” she shouted.
I continued to shuffle along, trying very hard to bear the pain and walk faster. She gave me a hard push impatiently. I collapsed onto the path. The other guard pulled me up.
“You are acting! Hurry up! Hurry up! Can’t you walk faster? Walk faster!” she yelled and then dashed off in the direction of the exercise yards.
“I can’t walk any faster. To fall down only delays me,” I said to the other guard.
“Never mind. Do the best you can.” She seemed much more reasonable.
Finally I reached the exercise yard. Instead of being locked into my usual place with the plane tree over the wall, I was put into an exercise yard directly below the pavilion on the raised platform from which the guards watched the prisoners walking about below. The pavilion seemed to be closed. All the guards were standing in the wind on the platform. As soon as the door of the exercise yard was locked, I leaned against it for support and to take the weight off my feet, which were burning with pain. I thought I would remain there until the exercise period was over.
“Start walking!” shouted the voice of the militant female guard on the platform above me.
I had r
eached the end of my tether, so I ignored her and remained beneath the platform, leaning against the heavy iron door.
“What are you doing there? Start walking!” she called again.
“I can’t walk. My feet are excruciatingly painful. Can’t you see my arms and hands? My feet are just the same. They are badly swollen and wounded. Blood and pus are coming out of the wounds.” I was so angry that I shouted back at her. I fully expected her to come down and hit me, as prisoners were not allowed to talk about what happened to them in the hearing of other prisoners. My voice was loud enough for everyone in the area of the exercise yards to hear clearly. But she did not rush down from the platform to punish me. It almost seemed that what I had just said was exactly what she wanted to hear, for she moderated her tone of voice when she said, “Just stand in the middle of the exercise yard.”
I hobbled to the middle of the yard and stood facing her.
“Turn around! Face the other way!”
Why did she want me to face the other way? It seemed she wanted me to be seen but not to see what went on on the platform where she stood. It suddenly dawned on me that someone, probably the so-called higher-up, was on the platform. But I saw only the guards who were familiar to me. The man could be inside the pavilion. It had glass windows. If he was inside, he could see my wounded arms and hands easily. I supposed he had come in person to verify the damage done me by the handcuffs. What I had said to the militant female guard was tantamount to a description of my condition. That, I decided, was why the militant female guard was pleased to hear it. She probably hoped to impress the “higher-up” with the good job she had done in inflicting damage on my wrists and feet. But why did the “higher-up” not stand with the guards on the platform? Why did he have to hide in the enclosed pavilion? I turned my body slightly so that I could see the entrance to the pavilion from the corner of my eye. After a little while, three men in khaki military topcoats came out of the pavilion and disappeared down the steps followed by the female guard. Although I had been outside hardly more than ten minutes, I was now told to go back to my cell. On my way back no one urged me to walk faster.