Ocean of Words

by Ha Jin

  I slept between Jee Jun and Zhang Min, who had been my classmate back home. Zhang snored a lot at night. It didn’t bother me, since I was told that I also made noises. Jee didn’t snore, but he was often restless in his sleep. He’d hit my chest with his elbow, or kick my thigh, or give me a jab in the back. When I complained about this “night fight,” my comrades would say I was lucky to sleep and frolic with a young lady every night. Then they’d ask Jee, “Would you like to go with me, Miss Jee?” “Can I share the bed with you tonight, Miss Jee?” “Miss, how do you like me as a young man?” “How much do you charge per night, miss?” Jee never answered and merely glared at the questioners.

  One night, he roused me. He pulled my arm and whispered, “Look, look at that girl over there. Isn’t she beautiful? Like a little willow.” He smiled, then murmured something inaudible.

  I shook off his hand and cursed, “Damn you, taking home a bride in a dream.”

  He turned over and went back to sleep.

  The next day I told the squad about Jee’s midnight fantasy. They sat around and asked him what the girl had looked like and why he’d compared her to a willow. What kind of willow exactly? A weeping willow? A silky willow? A red willow? Jee was mad at me because he couldn’t remember the dream and believed I had made it up. “Fan Hsiong, I screw your sisters! You, such a small boy, can tell a lie as big as Heaven!”

  I didn’t argue and merely said, “I don’t have a sister.”

  “Even if he had,” Wu put in, “how can you do that, miss?”

  “I did it to your mother!”

  “Let’s see how big you are.”

  We laughed heartily. Wu spilt the tobacco he had been rolling into a cigarette with his large hands.

  Like us, Jee was very interested in women. He claimed he had a fiancée, whose father was the commune chairman at home. Nobody believed him, though. I once flipped through his diary secretly, to see if he really had a girlfriend. To my dismay, almost everything he had written was related to fighting the Russian Revisionists and guarding the northern frontier. In one item he even said, “I won’t regret it if I die ten times for our great Motherland.” I never mentioned the contents of his diary to anybody, though impressed by his sincerity.

  Jee often argued with Zheng Yuan about women, bragging that in his hometown there were lots of young beauties whose faces were as white and soft as fresh tofu. It was this habit that made him an enemy of Zheng Yuan. According to Zheng’s own words, which must be taken with caution, Zheng’s maternal grandfather was a top general in North Korea, so his mother was Korean whereas his father was Chinese. In other words, he was a hybrid. He tried convincing us that his mother was the most beautiful woman on earth. I doubted it, because he was so short; though eighteen, two years older than myself, he was three inches shorter. How could a beautiful woman, a general’s daughter, give birth to such a thick-boned, bean-eyed, toothy dwarf? Jee never believed a word of what Zheng said and always challenged him. “Don’t boast about your mother. Just show us her picture. Let’s see what a goddess she is.”

  Of course Zheng was never able to produce such a photo. He would fight Jee on the drill ground, since Jee was the worst soldier in our company. When they were paired off for bayonet practice, Zheng would stab Jee’s forearms and hands with the rubber head of his wooden gun. He could do it easily, and Jee simply couldn’t parry a jab. Once hit, he would throw his weapon to the ground and squat down, rubbing the wound and calling Zheng Barbarian Bastard. Within a week some black patches appeared on his arms and the backs of his hands. Later he just refused to practice with Zheng, and our squad leader had to keep them separate.

  It was even worse that Jee could not throw a grenade. However hard he tried, at most he threw it sixteen meters. Seeing it land so close, Zheng Yuan, the “Little Cannon” who could throw it forty-five meters easily would say, “I can send it that far with either of my feet.”

  The minimum requirement was thirty meters. I made only twenty-eight; though both Jee and I couldn’t pass, nobody laughed at me — I was close. Besides, I was three years younger than Jee. When it came to the final test with the real grenade, everybody was afraid to be grouped with Jee. Because we two had the weakest arms, Platoon Leader Ding made Jee and me the last pair to throw.

  The range was in a cornfield beyond the southern hill. There was a deep ditch at the end of the furrows, so we could hide ourselves in it when the grenade throwers carried out the test in the field. Two by two my comrades took their turns. Everybody passed and said the real grenade was lighter than the fakes used for training. When our turn came, I had got somewhat used to the explosions, and my heart stopped kicking. Still, I felt uneasy about Jee. Platoon Leader Ding handed Jee and me each a grenade and pointed to the large triangle he had drawn with his boots in the snow-covered field. “Stay calm and throw it into the target.”

  Jee was on my right, the platoon leader on my left. We twisted off the caps and hooked the rings onto our little fingers.

  “Ready —” Platoon Leader Ding raised his hand. “Throw!”

  The grenades flew off our hands, swishing like flapping wings. We both lay prone immediately. The platoon leader fell on my back, covering me. One grenade exploded in the distance, then the other thundered right in front of us. My eyes blurred, I was deafened. Smoke and snow dust filled the air; my hat was gone, and I felt my neck tight and numb.

  “Killed!” A vague voice came from the ditch a few seconds later. “Hey, are you all right?”

  No answer. Platoon Leader Ding managed to sit up. “Terrible! My grandma, terrible.”

  Some men ran over. Jee and I were still lying on the ground. He was motionless. “What happened?” our squad leader asked. I turned over and tried to get up.

  “Terrible, he threw it only nine meters.” The platoon leader pointed at Jee.

  “Are you all right?” Song Ang asked me. He took off the slips of corn stubble from my hat, which he had recovered from God knows where, and put it on my head.

  “I don’t know,” I moaned. “I feel queasy.”

  Meanwhile Jee was helped up. He sat on the ground, his face covered with blood. “Hey, bring over a first-aid dressing,” Guan shouted to the men in the ditch.

  “Jee doesn’t look injured,” Song Ang said.

  “No,” Jee said. “I’m all right, not injured. My nose has a bleeding problem. Sorry, I didn’t throw it well. Rub some snow on my forehead.” He sounded so calm, like an experienced soldier.

  At once everybody relaxed, but we remained silent as if we had yet to recover from the shock. I was told that my grenade had reached twenty-nine meters, within the target; since it was only one meter short of the requirement, Platoon Leader Ding let me pass. I was happy, though a fragment of Jee’s grenade had pierced a hole in my fur hat. Jee alone flunked the test.

  Before long another two lines were composed about him. In addition to the former couplet, the company now chanted this one:

  Miss Jee threw a hand grenade

  Only to have her looks remade.

  As his fame increased, Jee grew reticent. Even if somebody hummed the couplets in his face, he wouldn’t respond. At night he became less fitful than before and seldom woke me. Still many of us kept teasing him; some even brought him soft toilet paper for his periods, or asked him to sew on a button, or claimed to be his bridegrooms.

  One thing we could not complain about Jee was that he did not eat much. Except for him, all the new soldiers ate like wolves. At every meal we bolted down the first bowl of sorghum and refilled it as many times as possible. The Recruit Company was a temporary unit without any surplus provisions, and most of the new soldiers were from the countryside and had no grease in the stomachs, so we ate and ate and ate. Lacking fresh vegetables, a month later over a dozen soldiers suffered from snow blindness, and many had chapped scrotums and walked bowlegged. Our regiment made an urgent request to the Divisional Headquarters for vitamins.

  But there was no problem with Jee; it was as
though he belonged to a different species. He always ate two bowls at a meal, while the rest of us devoured at least twice as much and still felt hungry at drill. I never heard Jee complain of hunger. Neither could I tell whether he ate like that because of his small appetite or because of his healthy diet. In any case, he didn’t eat like a man.

  One Tuesday morning, we had a meeting which was designed to recall the past miseries and appreciate the present happiness. At lunch only bitter buns, made of husks and wild herbs, were served as a sample of what life had tasted like in the Old China. We couldn’t eat them. Most of us threw them away secretly, but Jee chewed and swallowed his three buns with relish. In our squad only he finished the meal. That afternoon at drill, when we complained that our stomachs were rumbling, he smiled and said that we had been spoiled by our parents and that we had no idea what genuine suffering was like. Little wonder we were such rascals.

  But his euphoria lasted only a few hours. The dinner was a sample of the present sweetness, so there was plenty of good food — fried pork, bean sprouts with scrambled eggs, noodles, and stewed pollack. Because we hadn’t eaten lunch, the spacious dining room instantly turned into a battlefield. The major fight was waged around two huge field caldrons containing noodles. Waves of men, bowls and chopsticks in hands, charged, plundered as much as possible, then withdrew with filled bowls to the dining tables. I pushed forward, waving my chopsticks in the air fearful of poking somebody’s eyes. When I had almost reached a caldron, Jee emerged from the left flank, panting hard and moving ahead. I bent forward to load my bowl; so did Jee. All of a sudden, noodles splashed on the floor and people dispersed. I stepped back, wiping my face with the back of my hand, and found Jee sitting in the caldron, bareheaded and pop-eyed. God knew how he had got in there.

  He scrambled out, his trousers mottled with noodles and cabbage leaves. Without a word he dashed out of the dining room. Squad Leader Lu, putting down his bowl and spoon, followed him immediately. Jee’s fur hat was still floating in the caldron like a drowned chicken. Laughter and cries rang out. Many men went up to the mess to have a better look.

  Then Political Instructor Ni arrived and reprimanded us: “Are you revolutionary soldiers or not? Where’s your discipline? You pushed your dear comrade-in-arms into the hot noodles. Where is your proletarian affection? Don’t you feel ashamed? Won’t you suffer from a stomachache, having such noodles inside you?”

  Most of us could not eat for a while, because if we had opened our mouths we would have broken into laughter. Song Ang and I put down our bowls and went back to see Jee. Squad Leader Lu was sitting with him in our room, which smelled of soy sauce. Jee, in his underpants, was weeping, his boots and cotton-padded trousers on the radiator; seeing us, he turned his face to the window. Song Ang said, “Don’t take it so hard, Jee Jun. Instructor Ni scolded those men in the dining room.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

  Jee didn’t respond. Unable to do anything, we returned to the dining room to finish dinner and to bring some food back for Jee and our squad leader. In there people talked and smiled while eating. “Miss Jee” was discussed at every table.

  Shortly afterwards, another couplet was composed. The little doggerel got two more lines:

  Miss Jee, loving noodle soup,

  Dived into a caldron in a swoop.

  Now he was famous. Soldiers from other platoons would come under any pretext to have a look at him. Most often they would say they came to visit their fellow townsmen. Our squad became the most popular spot in the company. In addition to Jee, Guan was a wonderful storyteller and would entertain the visitors with ancient chivalric legends.

  The most difficult course in our training was Russian — I mean for those of us who didn’t know the language. The textbook was not big — only eight pages long and three by four inches. It consisted of fifteen sentences altogether, such as “Hands up!” “Don’t move!” “This is China’s territory!” “Don’t waste your life for the Russian Revisionist Imperialists!” “Down with the New Czar!” “Put down your arms and we’ll spare your lives!” “Follow me!”

  Guan and Song had studied Russian in middle school, so those sentences were nothing for them, but the rest of us had to labor day and night to remember every sound in each word. We marked every Russian syllable with a Chinese character and then tried to memorize the characters in a meaningless order. When we shouted out the Russian words on the drill ground, nobody could understand them, let alone obey the orders correctly. Wu once burst into tears, because that afternoon somehow his tongue simply couldn’t work out a Russian sentence and even his Chinese was broken and incomprehensible. In Jee’s words, “it was like having a donkey’s penis in his mouth.” He kept gnashing his gums at us for hours.

  Besides our two Russian experts, Guan and Song, Jee did really well. He was probably the best among us, the ignorant ones. Of course he worked on it harder than we did. He could rap out every syllable clearly, though his sentences tended to remain broken. Wu often grabbed him to practice Russian together. Jee’s voice was thin and suave, while Wu’s was thick and hoarse. Whenever the two practiced in the corridor, we would prick up our ears, listening. “No, not like that,” Jee would say. “Don’t mumble. You must shout and let your voice scare them.”

  Apparently Jee was pleased with his Russian, though he dared not demonstrate his achievement in the presence of Song and Guan. Song once offered to teach him a few more sentences, but Jee neither accepted nor refused. He merely said, “Let me think about it.”

  “Don’t you want to know some truly interesting words?” Guan broke in, winking at Jee.

  “I want to know everything about your mother.”

  We laughed.

  “Miss Jee,” Guan went on, “if you really want to know those words, you must stop being so promiscuous and marry me first. Otherwise how can I make you understand those secret words? Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot you’re not a virgin anymore. Of course you can understand.”

  The whole room rang with laughter. Jee remained silent, glaring at Guan with his teeth gritted.

  In the final week of the training, we undertook a forced march. This time everything was described to us in advance — the route, the task, and the time were all clear. After dinner, everybody was given two steamed buns for the night. Like most of my comrades, I ate them promptly, believing it better to carry them inside than on my back. Jee didn’t eat his. He was always more calculating than we were.

  At eight-thirty we set out south. The snow was deep; the air smelled of birch and pine. Fully equipped, we walked and ran in turn through fields, valleys, hills, woods. Our task was to reach a hill in the Six-Finger Mountain by eleven and surround and wipe out the Russian paratroops.

  The wind slacked off while the temperature was dropping. A silver moon swayed in the cloudless sky. Time and again, flocks of crows and pheasants were roused by us, darting away into the dark. A pack of wolves was howling in a distant valley.

  It was ten-fifteen and we still had nine li ahead. Our pace was picking up; we moved at the double, which gradually turned to a sprint. “Close up!” Platoon Leader Ding ordered under his breath. We were running desperately. The air was vibrating with the commotion caused by our boots. Somebody’s canteen dropped on the ground and was kicked off, clattering down a cliff. Soon the mountain emerged like a gigantic mushroom in the sky in front of us.

  At eleven sharp the bugle blared out and we charged up the hill. Somebody shouted in Russian, “Put down your arms!” Then many kinds of Russian words were echoing in the mountain.

  Soon I felt top-heavy, as though the earth was shifting under my feet. Jee was ahead of me, his rifle across his field pack and his hands grabbing branches to pull himself upward. He climbed very slowly.

  We were less than a hundred meters from the summit now. Suddenly three red flares pierced the sky, their blazing tails drawing large question marks in the dark space. Below them everything turned pink and distinct for a few seconds. This meant tha
t the enemy was eliminated and that our men had reached the top. I climbed with all my strength and caught up with Jee. He was staggering; he stopped, holding the branches of a juniper with both hands.

  “Jee, hurry up,” I said.

  He shook his head; his body seemed to reel. Zheng Yuan came up and slapped Jee on the back. “Need help?”

  Jee shook his head again. Zheng went on climbing. I was desperate and cried at Jee, “Come on, let’s go!”

  Jee pressed his fist against his stomach. “Oh, I’m so hungry!”

  “Take a bite of your bun, quick.” I fished a bun out of his bag, but I didn’t raise it to his mouth. It was frozen as hard as stone. “You can’t eat this. Come, let’s go.”

  He looked tearful, but he struggled to move up. The second he let go of the branches, he fell into a swoon, rolling down the slope together with a few rocks. I was scared and shouted, “Squad Leader Lu, Jee Jun fainted! Come over here and help!”

  A few men climbed down looking for Jee. Across the hill, one voice after another cried, “Miss Jee fainted!” There were happy whoops and laughter everywhere. At once, everybody seemed to forget his fatigue.

  Fortunately, Jee was not hurt. When we were carrying him down the hill, I was surprised that his cotton-padded jacket and trousers were all wet; even his fur hat was soaked with sweat. He must have been extremely weak. Even if he had eaten those buns before the departure, still he might not have been able to make the march. We wrapped him up in two overcoats and put him on a horse cart, which carried him and the cooks directly home.

  The next morning, I was amazed to see Jee get up as usual and do the early morning exercises. He was tough.