集中營記(二)
入集中營
日軍命令我們全體離開學校被集中的那情景我記憶猶新。戰爭的演變使我們成了日本的敵人,那時香港,星加坡,馬來亞已全入敵手,緬甸方面也吃着敗仗。美國陸軍上將史提威直截了當的說,“我們被人家打得落花流水,實在慘得很!”最後,菲島也完了。
記得那是次年(1942)十一月的某天,我們被一些身穿草綠色制服的日本軍導路,過市區,約三英里之遙,進到我們初次被集中的地方。路上,這個由二百多學生組成的隊低看起來既不整齊,步伐又散漫,老師,傳教士們一同前往。老師們平素生活拘謹而有規律,態度嚴肅,衣服講究。那些傳教士更是敬虔專誠,現在一體成了戰俘。我們邊走邊唱詩篇之句“上主是我的避難所和力量…我們不必懼怕…”
按規定,每人須纏臂章,美國人專用A字,英國人用B字。在日本士兵和老師監視疏忽之下,美國學生就將臂章倒轉,取粉筆塗去橫劃,成了代表勝利的V字。
集中的四所住處各原為容納一個家庭的樓房,今令每一所強納六十至七十人,真是如同擠罐頭沙丁魚似的。我們在此受了十個月的罪(此處原為煙台美國長老會教士住宅,在我母校─益文商專,即今日的第二中學之北─譯者)我們常用詩歌來舒暢惆悵的心靈:
還未遭貶遠方,
也未被送還家鄉,
現今在煙台受些齷齪,
無非因為暫時作了俘虜!
每逢唱到末句,就把喉嚨使到頂點,然後做個鬼臉,傻笑一番。
在肉食供應逐日而減的當兒,一名學校的工友偷偷地從牆頭上送進來兩頭乳豬和幾隻雛雞,我們恐日崗兵查覺,起初餵以鎮靜藥片,免得牠們吵叫,晚上就藏之陽台上。後來經他們發現,但未以此為意,料想我們蓄幾隻可供玩賞的愛畜沒甚不當處。
日間,我們用鐵箱子當做椅凳,擠着,支撐着,來學習英語課,又將俘虜生活的感受試寫雅韻句子長短不齊的四行詩:
小豬兒奧古斯都,
祇吃些廢食剩粥;
聖誕日到─我們有點兒憂苦,
可是舒坦了大家的肚腹。
十個月的時間過去了。像一捆捆地柴火似的,我們被送進了一艘輪船的統艙裏,是裝貨的地方,經過山東半島(經青島)到了濰縣,那是至終的集中營所在。俘虜人數約一千四百人(包括未成年的幼童和學生五百名以上。─譯者)其中英國人最多,其次為歐洲各國人,來自天津,北京和華北各地。
你若問我:“在營裏怎樣來消除憂懼呢?”我們的老師會以行動來作答案。我們被組織起來,有連綿不斷的講授,學課和戶外工作,等於將我們的精神全盤集中動員,使之無餘暇來思想那些憂懼的事。
組成的團體多,花樣也多。
老師繼續教導我們怎樣勇對現實。我們晨起列隊同進高粱粥揭鍋蓋後充滿了水蒸氣的飯堂(高粱米是中國本家餵家畜用的)。飯後各帶着自己的飯杯羹匙再列隊回到宿舍,第一件事就是洗刷地板,下一步是去參加早禱。
上主高坐祂的寶座!
但也看顧塵世上的我;
祂有信實的應許,
不會讓你孤獨或飢餓。
上主高坐祂的寶座!
我們排隊,接受清潔檢查。夠乾淨嗎?是否衣,髮外觀整齊?衣襪破了,縫好了未?完畢,我們天坐在箱子上學習功課:英,拉丁,法文,歷史,聖經。每天的課程是繼續不停的。
營中的節目永遠不變的一項是每晨的集合點名。鐘一敲過,全體齊集操場上,分六組,也可說六隊,各有固定的地方,胸前有別針別上的號頭牌子。點查時,各自報自己的牌號。經值日的士兵核對名簿,六隊相加總數無誤,聽鐘敲過才得散去。
我們這一隊,小孩子佔一百名以上。對於已婚思家的日本士兵來說,每天看到我們,算是一件賞心快事。每逢有長官來營視察,我們這一群小洋鬼兒就列隊相迎,純小學生姿勢,目不斜視,腰版直挺,先行注目禮,然後用日語報數:日奇,泥,散,西,告…
點名時間有時會拖得很長。夏天每感熱不可耐:冬季,在冰天雪地裏幾乎凍殭了人。天真無邪的孩子們則習以為常,將戰爭逆境下被迫做出的老套當作遊戲。日士兵查點人數,我們趁機會打彈子,作跳蛙之戲。曾受過男女童軍訓練的孩子彼此打旗語和信號。
濰縣集中營用的房舍和場地原為美國長老會的財產,此處設有,中,小學,醫院和教會。校舍佔用樓房四至五座,另有飯廳,廚房三處,烤麵包室一間和供寄宿生用的宿舍房間多不勝數。(濰縣本教會,學校區建於1881年,於1883年完成,正稱是“樂道院”。義和團時期,全部被毀,事後重建,並擴大,1904年完成。廣文大學同年設於此,十三年後遷濟南,成立齊魯大學,將舊址為中小學保留使用直到日本佔領。──譯者)昔日,作家賽珍珠和時代,生活週刊主人魯斯先後隨其父母居於此地。(魯斯於1898年出生登州,今稱蓬萊。六歲時移居濰縣,十歲入“芝罘學校”讀書,十四歲升學英國,後轉耶魯。──譯者)
本營長約二百碼,寬一百五十碼,建築外觀雖好,但自中日戰爭以來經過兩交戰國不同單位的駐軍,內部的設備和器物早已蕩然無存。現今取作集中營用,安置了俘虜一千四百名以上,實在擁擠得不堪言狀。
宿舍裏,每鋪床相隔的空隙祇十八吋。打鼾,打嗝,小解時沖擊便盆的聲音,成了夜間的音樂。對一切成年人來說,私隱權利之被剝奪最難忍受。
一般成年人都對這場遙無止日的戰爭深懷恐懼。也可能有少數的人在被捕的初期因受污辱或折磨而對日本人的暴虐十分忿恨。可是透過我們這些天真稚子的眼睛所見,戰爭無非是整天穿着便衣去集合上課,開會,舉行節目和戶外遊戲等等玩意兒罷了。我們都相信老師會安排一切來照顧我們。如果她們不能,上主一定會的!
我們的心靈時刻向天上奔馳,堅信上主數不盡的應許和保證,舉例:“萬事都互相效力叫愛祂的人得益處”。
還有許多事實來證實保護和救助決不是空虛徒然的事。摩西領導被埃及王奴役的以色列人進入應許之地;荒年,有烏鴉來餵養先知以利亞;先知但以理被扔在獅子洞中為上主所保護。現今也有足堪低訴將要預期的:我們至終被救助的事實定必與歷代的神蹟奇事同列一起。
小學部的主任卡爾女士多年後在信上寫着:“我當年面對日軍本身和被拘禁這兩件事全不懼怕。為着未來的事懷憂,是於己無益,於事無補的。不管朝向哪一方面走,有時感到已經面臨人生終點。是否不久會被迫自掘墓穴,就地被處決而葬於此?那麼我就為我自己名列最早的一批而祈禱。”
每當傍晚,日軍練習衝刺術,孩子們群習左右觀看而毫無懼色。這件事後來想起,實在感到難以理解。
我怕的是那些俗稱狼狗種的軍犬。四十年後還未忘淨那次令人震悸的夜晚。小貓維亞蜷伏着活像一隻小毛球兒。多時它夜間伴我入眠。床單下,它會吮吸我的手指好像吃着奶。我想,母親在授乳嬰兒時會必有同一溫馨的感覺。在同房間十一名小同伴的簽字紀念冊裏,每人都將小維亞的蹄爪拿來打印章似的印下來。維亞是我們女校校長布魯豪女士的愛畜。
和日衛兵你可嬉戲,和軍犬卻不能。軍犬是訓練來行凶殺人的,所以我恨牠。
那夜,我蜷臥在放下的蚊帳裏,在枕上傾聽窗外操場上的動靜。沙沙的漫步聲由遠而近,這是一位天主教神父作例行沉思和晚禱的時候。我又聽見笨重的皮靴大踏礫石路發出嘎吱嘎吱聲,那也是我熟識的:巡夜的日士兵。他們總是帶着軍犬同行。人犬怎能相親?我想不開。
突然間,我窗前一片強烈的嚎叫聲劃破了夜寂,動物相捕捉,抵抗聲起,繼之以咽喉淤塞發出的吠聲,分明維亞這小毛球的全身已進入兩組血齒之間了。我感到全身發僵,驚叫塞於喉間,聲音卻發不出來。同伴們也許會飛奔窗前外看,我自埋於被枕之間,摀住了耳朵,不敢去聽。
有人晨起將骯髒清理了。我們的校長是一位明智,易感,循規行事的人,自從痛失愛畜之後,我們發現她走路不如以前那麼輕快了。(下期續)
A Song of Salvation at Weihsien Prison Camp
Mary Taylor Previte
II
I remember so well when the Japanese came and marched us away from out school. By them, the war had made us enemy aliens. Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya had fallen to Japan. Burma had collapsed, and U.S. Maj. Gen. Joseph Stillwell put it bluntly: “We got a hell of a beating.” The Philippines had toppled.
It was November 1942. Wearing olive uniforms, the Japanese soldiers led us off to our first concentration camp, three miles across town. A straggling line of perhaps 200children, proper Victorian teachers and God-fearing missionaries, we went marching into the unknown, singing from the Psalms. “God is our refuge and strength…therefore we will not fear…”
We had become prisoners of the war.
We all had to wear armbands in those early days of the war. “A” for American, “B” for British. When our teachers and the Japanese weren’t looking, the American children turned the “A” upside down, chalked out the crossbar and proudly wore a “V.”
We were crammed into the camp like sardines. There were four family-size houses, each one bulging with 60 to 70 people. Ten months it was like this. We always sang to keep our spirits up:
We might have been shipped to Timbuktu.
We might have been shipped to Kalamazoo.
It's not repatriation,
Nor is it yet stagnation
It's only con-cen-tration in Chefoo.
We would hit the high note at the end and giggle.
To supplement the dwindling food supply, one of the servants from the old Chefoo School smuggled two piglets and some chicks over the wall for us to raise. For the first few nights, we hid the piglets under the veranda and fed them aspirin to keep them quiet. When the Japanese finally discovered them, they accepted them rather affectionately as our pets.
In the daytime, propped up on our steamer trunks, we practiced our English lessons, writing iambic quatrains about life in concentration camp:
Augustus was pig we had,
Our garbage he did eat.
At Christmastime we all felt sad;
He was our Christmas treat.
After 10 months, they stacked us like cords of wood in the hold of a ship and brought us to the Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center, a larger concentration camp cross the Shandong peninsula. This camp contained about 1,400 prisoners, mostly British and European, including some other children from Tientsin, Peking and elsewhere.
In a prison camp, how do you arm yourself against fear? Our teachers’ answer was to fashion a protective womb around our psyches, insulating and us with familiar routines, daily school and work details.
Structure. Structure. Structure.
Our teachers taught us exactly what to expect. They marched us off to breakfast for a splash of steaming gao liang gruel (animal feed, even by Chinese standards). They trooped us back to our dormitory, mug and spoon in hand, to scrub the floor. We grouped for morning prayers, and sang:
God is still on the throne;
And He will remember His own…
His promise is true;
He will not forget you.
God is still on the throne.
We lined up for inspection. Were we clean? Where we neat? Did we have our mending done? We settled down on our steamer-trunk beds for school: English, Latin, French, History, Bible. School must go on.
Structure. It was our security blanket.
One of the predictable routines of the camp was daily roll call. The ringing of the assembly bell would summon us to our assigned roll called “district.” Then would come the strict lineups, with our prisoner numbers pinned to our chests, and the numbering of when the uniformed guards counted us, and then the delays while the guards taillied the totals from all six roll call districts. And finally, the all-clear bell.
To the Japanese soldiers who missed their own families, our district, with more than 100 children, was their pride and joy. And when visiting Japanese officials monitored the camp, our roll call was the highlight of the show—little foreign devils with prep school manners, standing with eyes front, spines stiff at attention, numbering off in Japanese: Ichi…nee…san…she…go…
Delays to the all-clear bell often dragged on and on. In summer we wilted in the insufferable heat; in winter we froze in the snow. But the innocence of children turns even the routines of war into games. While The Japanese tallied the prisoner count, we played marbles, or leapfrog, or practiced semaphore and Morse Code for our Brownie, Girl Guide and Boy Scout Badges.
The Weihsien concentration camp had once been a well-equipped Presbyterian mission compound, complete with a school of four or five large buildings, a hospital, a church, three kitchens, a baker and rows of endless rooms for resident students. Many years before, novelist Pearl Buck had lived there, and so had Time and Life publisher Henry Luce. The compound stretched only 200 yards at its widest point and was 150 yards long. Though the buildings themselves were intact, everything else was a shambles, wrecked by how many garrisons of Chinese, then Japanese, soldiers. Now, with 1,400 prisoners, it was hopelessly overpopulated.
In the dormitories, only 18 inches separated one bed from the next. Your snore, your belch, the nightly tinkle of your urine in the pot, became your neighbor's music. For adults, this lack of privacy was the worst hell.
The grownups in the camp knew enough about war to be afraid. Indeed, a few came to Weihsien with the baggage of hate from earlier Japanese prisons. But I saw the war through the eyes of a child, as an endless pajama party, an endless campout. I entrusted my anxieties to our teachers in the belief that they would take care of us. Or if they couldn't, God would.
Our spirits could scamper to the heavens atop the hundreds and hundreds of God's promises, such as: “All things work together for good to them that love God.”
We could tell endless stories about God's rescuing His people: Moses leading God's children out of slavery into their Promised Land. The ravens' feeding the hungry prophet Elijah in the wilderness. God's closing mouths of the lions to protect Daniel in the Lions' Den.
You could breathe the anticipation: God was going to add our very own story to the Miracles of the Ages.
“I was not afraid of our Japanese guards or of being interned,” our prep-school headmistress, Miss Ailsa Carr, would write me years later. “There was no sense in taking thought for the future, for there was nothing we could do about it anyway. Occasionally, I faced the end—whichever way it went—as being forced to dig a trench and then being lined up and machine—gunned into it, and prayed that my turn might come near the beginning.”
I thought about it once when I was young, how curious it was that children watching enemy bayonet drills at dusk could know no fear.
What I did fear, though, were the guards' Alsatian police dogs. Forty years have not dimmed the terror of one screaming night. Victoria was only a tiny ball of fur. Sometimes, under my bedcovers after dark, she would purr and suck on my finger as if it were a nipple. I wondered whether mothers felt warm and soft like that. Along with the “remember – me – forever” signatures and the fingerprints of all my 11 dorm mates, I had Victoria's paw print. I have it still. Victoria Frisky Snowball—Miss Broomhall's kitten. Miss Broomhall was our headmistress.
I hated the dogs. You could play with the Japanese guards but never with their dogs. The dogs were trained to kill.
Tucked under my mosquito net, I listened to the nighttime sounds from the roll call field below our window. I heard the tread of footsteps—one of the Catholic priest, pacing in his nightly meditation. Then I heard the coarse crunch of gravel—I knew that sound—rough leather boots of the Japanese soldier on his night patrol. His police dog would be with him, I knew. How, I wondered, does he get to be friends with a killer dog?
Suddenly, below our window, a terrified, yowling shriek ripped the stillness, clashing in a hideous duet with a guttural barking muffled by the tiny ball of fur between those bloody teeth. My little body froze, and my throat retched on a voiceless scream. Perhaps my dorm mates ran for the window. I do not know. I buried my head in terror and stuffed the pillow around my eyes.
They cleaned the mess by morning—perhaps our teachers, perhaps our older brothers. But we knew. Miss Broomhall, always sensible and very proper, walked a little slower after that.(to be continued...)
(英文原文經原作者同意在本報發表)