Chapter 7
Return to Prisoners of Liberation: Four Years in a Chinese Communist Prison
Chapter 7
Rick: It had taken me several days to write the seventy-six pages of my confession, and during that time, except for joining the others for meals and latrine call, I had taken no part in the activities of cell No. 9. Unlike the men in my first cell who had insisted on “helping” me write every detail of my confession, my new cell mates, apparently assuming that I knew what I was doing, had left me completely alone. When the document was finally handed in it was with a mixed feeling of hesitancy and curiosity that I sat down cross-legged along with the six other men in a semicircle on the kang. I leaned back against the dirty yellow whitewash of the wall as if in hopes of physical as well as moral support.
For a few moments no one spoke, while the cell leader, Liao, busied himself with a small notebook he had made of crude brown squares of Chinese toilet paper. The faces around me were expressionless masks, made even more forbidding by the grotesque shadows cast by the dim light emanating from the dust-covered bulb overhead. It was obvious that everyone was waiting to stand in judgment on what I was about to say, and I felt a nervous tension rising in my stomach. Finally, Liao finished shuffling his notes and, clearing his voice, gave a sign that class would begin.
“You’ve been here several days,” he said, turning to me, “but we still don’t know much about you, nor you about us. Why don’t you tell us a little of yourself?”
In an unsure voice I gave a resume of my background and told them why I had been arrested. The others remained as impassive as before until Liao, apparently satisfied I had made a complete confession, nodded his approval. At this the features of the others began gradually to relax and my tension began to abate.
After introducing the others Liao informed me that everyone in the cell had made at least an initial confession and was waiting to be sent to one of the prison farms or factories or back to his home district to await charges there. In order not to waste time while waiting the days were spent in study.
He hesitated for a moment and then, brushing back the long lock of hair which kept dropping down over his eyes, and with a boyish smile that belied his thirty-five years, went on talking in a smooth, friendly tone.
“In the old days under the Nationalists, a person in jail just sat and rotted, and if he had been sentenced for more than three years his chance of coming out alive was very slim. If slow starvation didn’t get him, sickness usually would. Now, under the People’s Government, it is different. We are all criminals undergoing punishment, but the purpose of this punishment is not revenge, as it was in the old China, but education, so that someday we can return to society and start anew. However, this means that we must change our outlook on life so we won’t try to repeat the mistakes we made before.
“Most of us became counterrevolutionaries and ended up here because we had spent our lives trying to get something for nothing at the expense of others. There is no place for such people in the new society. We must therefore re-examine our old ideas. In other words, we must reform our thoughts. The only way to do this is through study and mutual criticism in order to clarify in our minds right from wrong.”
While he talked I sat listening intently and nodded my head as though I understood everything he said. But such terms as “outlook on life” and “reform our thoughts” were as meaningless to me as they had been on the outside, where I had heard them many times before. From the time the Communists had first entered Peking I had come to know a number of persons who claimed that their thoughts and outlook on life had been reformed. Mostly young students, graduates of short-term indoctrination courses at the revolutionary colleges, these people had become fired with an evangelistic zeal for the revolution, and there was no doubt about their changed attitude. However, I had not been inclined to take any of them very seriously at the time. It seemed to me that their change in outlook was a temporary one stemming from immature personalities.
Even when the influence of Marxism began to spread among the Western-trained intellectuals whom I knew and respected in the universities I still did not consider this to represent any profound change but merely a superficial compromise with the doctrines of the new regime. I felt that, with their solid background of Western training, it would not be easy to sway them from a deep-seated loyalty to Western ideals. Therefore, after the Chinese entry into the Korean war in October, 1950, when my close friends such as George Lee and Wu and Jao turned against the West so completely, I was profoundly shocked, frustrated, and embittered.
Particularly from January, 1951, on it was with loathing that I watched the long series of public self-criticism meetings held by the students and teachers at Yenching. In both departmental and schoolwide meetings, before small groups of close friends and large crowds, they decried their former intellectual servility toward the West as manifested in everything from a love of American detective stories to helping American imperialism by working in the United States Information Service. Many had become so emotionally worked up in their self-criticism that they had broken down and sobbed. What had made all this even more incomprehensible to me was the fact that no force appeared to have been used other than the dynamic pressure of a group experience and the emotional patriotic upsurge produced by the Korean war.
And now here I was about to witness this very same process of self-criticism and thought reform at much closer range, but with one difference. Liao, by talking in terms of our being criminals who had been guilty of living by exploiting others, was implying the need of a much deeper change than the mere rejection of a senile attitude toward Western cultural influences. I felt a faint stirring of uneasiness as he seemed to include me with the others in talking of our need for reform. Could I be expected to take part in it? Clearly I was not a criminal and they had no right to ask me, an American, to reform. But then, as I compared Liao’s high-sounding phrases with what I had already seen of this so-called study as practiced in cell No. 3, my fears began to subside.
During those first few weeks, whenever Jeng, Gwo, and the others had not been helping me with my confession they had sat in a circle on the kang and discussed the history of the Communist Party, a topic which apparently had been assigned for general study during that period. I did not pay much attention, but from what I overheard of their conversation while I was writing or thinking about my problem they seemed to spend most of their time talking about different battles between the Communists and Nationalists, or against the Japanese, or the exploits of some spy.
Whenever they thought the guard or supervisor might be listening at the door, they would, in an obviously forced manner, praise the People’s Liberation Army to the skies and loudly damn the Nationalists. Sometimes they would start out with at least a token regard for the form of a serious discussion, but usually within a short time the talk degenerated to plain gossip, the kind one would hear around any barracks. With this lapse into informality the stilted phrases of praise for the Communists disappeared almost entirely. This was especially true when Jeng was out of the room.
With the possible exception of Jeng, the hypocrisy of their attitude was apparent not only in the study period but was inherent in their every action. One afternoon, instead of wo-tou we had millet cooked dry, like rice, for dinner. Quite a bit of it had been spilled on the kang and Meng had just told Big Lu to brush it onto the floor when the supervisor happened to open the door and call me. Immediately Meng and Gwo turned on Lu with great recriminations, shouting, “What do you mean by wasting all that millet? Don’t you realize that every grain of it represents the toil and sweat of some poor peasant? Not one grain of the people’s food should be wasted.” At the same time, they began busily picking up the remnants and putting them into their mouths.
Afterward Jeng criticized them for their dishonesty, but it did not seem to faze them. Thus, I felt that if the attitude in cell No. 3 could be taken as typical of thought reform in prison I was capable of handling the situation. By the time Liao had expounded in more detail the need for all of us to reform the whistle blew and it was time for bed.
During the days which followed I quickly became familiar with the study routine. Every cell, except those in which a new prisoner was being helped to make his confession, spent its time in study. The daily schedule which we followed varied little from the time I entered the prison until I left:
| 6:15 | Rising (6:45 in winter) |
| 6:30 | Latrine call and start study |
| 8:00 | Breakfast (8:30 in winter) |
| 9:00 | Study |
| 12:00 | Noon nap (1 ½ hours recreation in winter) |
| 2:00 | Study |
| 4:30 | Dinner (4:30 in winter) Latrine call Recreation |
| 7:30 | Study (7:00 in winter) |
| 9:15 | Bed |
During the recreation periods we read, played cards or chess, sewed, or just sat around talking. Sunday was free from breakfast until evening. The content of the study program was under the direction of the prison authorities, who assigned general topics for discussion and occasional books to use as a basis. The study itself was organized and conducted by the prisoners in their individual cells under supervision of the cell leader. The latter had been picked by the authorities from among those prisoners who had demonstrated some desire to reform and some ability to lead a discussion and maintain order.
Once every few days or week, depending on the need, the cell leaders were called out individually or in groups to report on the activities in the cell—what they were studying, what problems had arisen, and the attitude of each prisoner. The supervisor would then make suggestions as to how to improve study in general or solve individual problems. To counteract any prejudiced opinions the supervisors would also often call-in other prisoners for reports, but, outside of this general supervision and discipline whenever anyone got out of hand, our only direct contact with the authorities came through occasional prison wide broadcasts to explain the policies of the government and to answer questions that had been brought to light in the reports of the cell leaders.
It was only natural, therefore, under these circumstances that the level of study and degree of progress varied from cell to cell, depending on the ability of the cell leader and composition of his group.
When I joined the discussion in cell No. 9 the group had just been issued a small pamphlet written by Mao Tse-tung in 1926 called Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society. Liao read it out loud and then handed it to the man next to him, a thin, wolfish-faced individual wearing ankle chains, whom I had come to know as Ma. The latter read it again in a quick, unintelligible Shansi accent and, almost before he had finished the last sentence, tossed it with ill-disguised impatience to the next man. And so, it was passed among the four literate members of the circle to read out loud. Afterward Liao went through again paragraph by paragraph, explaining any part which might be unclear and asking for questions which could be used as a basis for discussion. For example, how did the landlords come to own the land; why was the capitalist treated differently from the landlord; was the peasant a member of the proletariat?
As discussion on the first question started, Liao turned to a fat old man clad in a black silk gown and wearing a black skull cap which typed him immediately as either a landlord or country merchant and said, “You’re a landlord, Wang. What do you think about it?”
Wang peered over his tinted glasses and, after clearing his throat several times, began as though reciting a piece, “All landlords are parasites and oppressors. They’ve stood on the neck of the poor people of China for thousands of years. Only under the glorious leadership of Mao Tse-tung and the Communist Party have the Chinese people been able to stand up in the world. When I think of the crimes that we landlords have committed I want to beat my head on the floor. I deserve to be shot.”
“Chü ni de ba [Go soak your head]!” broke in Liao. “Who do you think you’re going to fool with that hogwash? You deserve to be shot, all right, but it’s not just because you’re a landlord. It’s because you and your hangers-on tried to sabotage land reform by terrorizing the peasants. When are you going to learn you’re not here to mouth pleasantries but to come to a true realization of yourself and what you’ve done?”
He paused a moment to shake back his unruly lock of hair, and then continued smoothly, “If you think you’re fooling the People’s Government with that kind of talk you’re sadly mistaken. They just laugh at it. We want to hear what you really think. You think the landlords were being terribly persecuted when the People’s Government divided up the land and you could have only the same amount as everyone else. But the question we’re discussing now is, how did you obtain that land in the first place? It didn’t always belong to you. It was only over the years that you people have squeezed it out of the peasants who worked it.”
Wang blinked his little pig eyes and remained silent. It seemed as if, having been forbidden to recite his prepared speech, he could think of nothing to say.
Liao waited a moment as though hoping someone else would continue the conversation. The silence that followed was broken only by the rattle of Ma’s ankle chains as he picked them up to recross his legs. Then, glancing at Liao, Ma said with a smile intended to appear amiable:
“I can tell you where most of them got it. In the old days anyone who had any surplus and was clever enough to make a few well-placed loans was on his way up. During the ching hwang bu jye [period in spring when the old grain has given out and the new has not yet come in] he could lend grain to a peasant who had to put up his land as security. With interest rates of 40 per cent or more, the latter had a difficult time paying it back, with the result that the land quickly passed into the hands of the creditor. The former free peasant then became his tenant. Once a man had a few tenants he could squeeze them for 50 per cent or more of the crop each year and build up even more surplus. He could even go into the grain business buy it up cheap at harvest time and hoard it until shortages came. That’s how my father got his start as a grain merchant.
“Of course, we weren’t landlords,” he added quickly. “During the war my father gave up most of his land and concentrated on trading, so by the time of land reform we had only enough to be classed as middle-class peasants. Besides, when he did rent out land, he never charged his peasants more than 40 per cent of the crop.”
Turning to another man in ankle chains, Liao asked, “What was it in your district, Sung?”
Sung looked up sullenly and replied in a low voice, “It depended on the land. Usually, 50 to 70 per cent.”
I was curious about this man Sung, whose handcuffs had just been removed the day before. He was about thirty-five, with a small, tough, compact build. I had never seen him smile and he usually sat in surly silence, his rather light eyes staring straight ahead without the slightest flicker of emotion in them. Across his shaven skull there was a long scar.
“Where is your home?” I asked.
“Up near Shanhaikuan,” he replied shortly. (Where the Great Wall comes down to the sea.)
“How did the peasants live under such conditions?” I questioned.
“Many of them didn’t.” spoke up Liao again. “He and his family had their own petty kingdom up there and they did as they pleased. You should have seen the statement this fellow wrote. It’s a wonder they took the handcuffs off him at all. Why, he’s killed over twenty men— that is, those that he can remember. And he has no idea how many women he’s raped, except that one of them was his younger sister.”
Sung lowered his head and said nothing. Liao went on, “He and his brother used to carry their pillows along with them. Wherever they saw a girl they wanted to sleep with, they just spent the night there and nobody dared say anything about it. If you’ve never been out in the countryside you have no idea what it was like. This fellow’s family controlled a whole group of villages up there. The land all belonged to them. During the war against Japan, when the guerrillas took over the area they forced his family to cut down on the rents and interest rates.
“After the war, when the Nationalists came back, the guerrillas were forced to retire to the hills. Sung and his older brother organized their own private army and bought a Nationalist unit number for it. That made it all nice and legal. Then they started out to collect all that back rent and interest. They didn’t care how they did it. The peasants paid, or else. Tell him how you wiped out most of the Jang family, Sung, the one whose younger son ran off to join the guerrillas when he couldn’t stand it any longer.”
Sung kept picking at the straw matting at his side, but refused to say a word.
“Yes, go ahead and tell him the way you told us when you were making your confession,” said Ma.
Sung still remained silent. Finally, Ma, who, I was to learn later, had a penchant for gory details, told the story himself. Pointing to Sung, he said, “One day this character and his brother took some of their men down to the Jang house. When they arrived, they found the old grandfather out in the melon patch, watching the melons.”
“He was too old and feeble to do anything else,” explained someone. Ma continued, “When they found him there, they asked him how the melons were. He was so scared his mouth just hung open and he stared without saying a word. Sung took out his long knife and asked the old man if he wanted to see how sharp it was. One of the gang picked up a melon and threw it up in the air. As it came down, Sung cut it in two with one swipe. The old man was shaking so hard by that time that he would have fallen over if they hadn’t held him up. Then Sung bet his knife could do the same with the old man’s head. He tried it, and it did. After that they went up to the house and took care of the old man’s son and wife. Luckily, the rest of the family were away that day.”
“His brother was a nice person, too,” said Liao. “He even outdid Sung here as far as killings were concerned. One time he used a five-year-old child for a football and kicked her to death when her mother tried to make a fuss about being raped. It was especially that little business which infuriated the other peasants so much. When they got their hands on him after the Liberation Army came in, they tied a rope around his feet and dragged him to death through the streets. Sung would have ended up that way, too, if he hadn’t managed to escape by jumping off his horse and diving over a cliff— with his hands tied behind his back— while they were bringing him in that night. That’s where he got the scar.”
“And some people like Wang here think the landlords got a raw deal. Huh!”
“Of course, they’re not all like Sung and his family,” said Ma.
“Naturally!” snorted Liao. “Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any Chinese left. But, then, very few of them ended up like Sung and his brother. Most of them were let off pretty easy. They received a piece of land and a house— as much as anybody else, besides being able to keep their personal belongings, all of which represent the blood and sweat of the peasants. In all China there were few districts where the peasants didn’t have to eat chaff or the bark and leaves of trees during at least part of the year in order to give these leeches their 50 to 70 per cent rent and 40 to 60 per cent interest.”
Another man, who seemed to spend most of his time searching for the lice which infested his dirty, ragged peasant clothes and then cracking them between his broken teeth, leaned forward. As he spoke, in a thick country accent, his eyes, set deep in a face grown gaunt with years of smoking heroin, scowled their hatred for the entire world. “Until I turned bandit at sixteen,” he said bitterly, “I had tasted meat exactly three times in my life. And those times were at New Year’s when we usually ground up a few old bones and corn meal for a feast.”
“I suppose you think that’s an excuse for turning bandit and working for the Nationalists,” snapped Ma. “And why don’t you stop cracking those lice? It’s disgusting.”
Then, turning to me, he said, “He and his gang ran a kidnapping racket. Of course, after they got the ransom, none of their victims ever went home again. Ning here himself strangled three of them that he admits to. Now he’s trying to claim that he was really helping the Communists because the people he killed were all landlords.”
“The government doesn’t quite see it that way,” broke in Liao, “but what he says is right. A lot of peasants turned bandit in the old China because they couldn’t find any other way to live. Unfortunately, they usually ended up working with the landlords, Japanese, the Nationalists, or anybody else who would pay them for doing their dirty work. That’s why he’s here.”
Though I knew well, through my reading in Chinese history and sociology, that such conditions had existed in the countryside, this personal contact with landlords and bandits gave me a stronger feeling of their reality.
In the weeks that followed, our discussions covered every phase of China’s present, past, and future, with little regard for the limits set by the framework of Mao’s text. Every man was quite willing to criticize that part of the old society with which he had little connection, but when the discussion approached his own interests he quickly fell silent or, like the landlord Wang, made such a bad pretense of beating his breast that the others turned away in anger and disgust.
Liao tried often to place our talk on a rational, analytical plane, but for the most part his efforts were in vain.
Only Ma, who like Liao seemed to have had some education, showed any interest at all. The others remained completely apathetic unless they were engaged in swapping stories about what was quite obviously to their minds “the good old days.”
One might very well ask why it was that these men who were all violently anti-Communist and often unregenerate bandits and murderers were willing to submit to study at all. Naturally, for them it was not voluntary, at least at first. The authorities, in accordance with the Articles for the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries, put the choice clearly before every man who was arrested. He could refuse to confess and refuse to reform; in which case he would be tried immediately. If found guilty by the military court he would be given the maximum penalty provided by law. For many this would have been death or life imprisonment. If, on the other hand, he made a complete confession and demonstrated by his actions that he was willing to reform he was assured of a lenient settlement of his case and the chance later on to become a respected member of society.
By the time I went to prison in the middle of 1951 there was little doubt in the minds of the vast majority of prisoners that the Communists meant exactly what they said. On the one hand, the well-publicized public executions of the preceding spring had made it clear that the government was quite capable of shooting those who refused to comply. On the other hand, there were many well-known examples of people with a long history of destructive activity under the Nationalists who had decided to change their ways and had not only been allowed to go free but had been given responsible positions in the government and other organizations.
Many were worried about what might happen if they confessed and the Nationalists should come back. Others were also hesitant about involving their fellow-conspirators. But since the present danger of immediate execution was, after all, much more real than the hypothetical revenge which might come from the Nationalists and since, contrary to popular belief, there is really very little honor among thieves, most of them decided to cooperate with the government as their way out. Thus, by the time a man had made a full confession and was ready to take part in study, he had already advanced so far along the road he had chosen that there was very little chance of turning back.
At that time, we all had a ridiculously simple conception of what was meant by reform. At first there was a general feeling that it merely involved a willingness to “turn Communist” and memorize a few stock slogans which we could repeat over and over. When our proficiency had reached a certain point in this we would be considered to have passed the test. For those of us who had been involved in political activity for any length of time this seemed like the simplest of the simple. If the Communists wanted “Long live Mao Tse-tung” or even “Long live Stalin.” we would give it to them, but what we thought was a different matter.
When we started to take part in study almost all of us began by saying what we thought our wardens would like to hear. Land reform was wonderful. The Korean war was just. America was imperialistic and Chiang Kai-shek was a dirty traitor. It was a long time before most of us came to realize how much we had underestimated our captors.
In the meantime, after the terrible strain I had been under during the first few weeks in prison, life in this new cell seemed almost pleasant. The schedule broke up the day enough so that time went rather quickly. It was especially a relief no longer to be the object of “help.” This time the attention of the cell was centered on the landlords, Wang and Sung, or the bandit, Ning. My greatest worry was that I still did not know for certain what had happened to Dell. The other prisoners assured me that she had not been bothered. After all, they said, she was only a housewife, completely inconsequential— but I was not sure.
A few days after having made my confession I was called before the investigating judge to sign a Chinese translation. When I finished, I decided to seize the bull by the horns and ask the judge whether Dell had been arrested or not. He looked at me steadily from under his heavy eyebrows for what seemed like a long time, and then said, “Did she do anything she should have been arrested for?” My stomach turned over with fear and, as I fumbled for an answer, I wished to heaven I had kept my mouth shut. Hesitantly, I said, “Well, I forced her to type those letters which I sent out.”
Then, to my surprise, he waved his hand as though brushing aside the entire matter and said perfunctorily, “What you forced her to do is no crime. No, she hasn’t been arrested and you can write her a letter asking for whatever you need here.”
With that he dismissed me and as I left the room I was almost floating on air. Short of being told that I could leave, this was the best news possible.
When I returned to the cell I wrote out a long list—blankets, winter clothes, soap, toothpaste, and as many books as I thought I dared ask for. A week or so later the things arrived with a brief note from Dell letting me know she was all right. I was set now to make the most of my time in prison. I began using every spare minute to improve my Chinese and learn what I could about China, because I soon found that the opportunities for collecting information in prison were better than I had ever had outside. More and more I looked upon my arrest as a stroke of luck. My capital for becoming an “expert on China” was growing daily, my dreams of Hong Kong and after even more expansive.
I decided it would be best to appear as much a model prisoner as possible. Outside of class I complied with the rules of discipline and tried to act the “good Joe” by encouraging the others to use my soap and toothpaste when they had none themselves. I also made up my mind to forgo the rice gruel which the authorities had continued to give me and which I no longer needed but had been continuing to eat simply because it added a little variety to the usual wo-tou and millet.
Actually, my action was not so hypocritical as it might have been, because I had already begun to feel that there was something wrong in the way we foreigners insisted we were something special and could not live like the Chinese. This had been one of the main factors in forming the gulf which had always separated me from them before, and I could sympathize to a certain extent with Ju’s resentment over my special treatment. If hundreds of millions of Chinese could live on wo-tou, why couldn’t a strong, healthy person like me do it?
In class it was also easy to act the model prisoner, since we mostly discussed problems far removed from me, such as the Communists versus the Nationalists, or land reform. There was little mention of such things as the Korean war, where I was liable to encounter trouble. The ease of imposition was further enhanced by the fact that, since I was the only one in the group who had made a formal study of Chinese history, I was able to expound at great length about the evils of the pre-war foreign exploitation in China, the unequal treaties, military intervention, extraterritoriality, etc., as well as the dastardliness of the war lords and the Nationalists.
One day the door opened as I was talking and Supervisor Shen strode brusquely into the room to slouch in ungainly fashion on the edge of the kang, back against the wall. The roughness of his movements was in contrast to the patience he displayed while listening to me with half-closed eyes. When I had finished he looked vaguely at the ceiling for a moment; then, fixing me with his gaze, he said in a hoarse, rasping voice:
“You’re very clever. You’ve read a lot of books, but just repeating things you learned in school isn’t going to solve anything. You’d do better to start telling what you yourself really think about the problems of today. Do you really believe imperialism is bad? Obviously you don’t, or you wouldn’t have come here. You must reveal your own opinions.”
With an awkward, sweeping movement of his hands, as if to emphasize his words, he continued, “Put them out there on the table for everyone to take a look at. See whether they are right or wrong. Only in that way are you being honest. You think all we want to hear is a lot of nice things about the Communists. That’s where you’re wrong. What we want to hear is what you honestly think. Nobody has ever been reprimanded here for being honest. But if you lie and hedge and try to pretend to be something you aren’t, then we don’t like that.
“On the other hand, of course, we don’t allow this place to be turned into a platform for spreading Nationalist or Voice of America propaganda. It’s your attitude that counts. If you really want to solve a problem and find out what’s right and what’s wrong we’ll give you all the help we can. If you can’t come to a conclusion here, Liao can report it to us and we’ll see what we can do. And another thing— don’t get the idea you’ll be leaving here soon. Your coming here wasn’t simple and your leaving here won’t be a simple matter either. You’ve committed a serious crime and you’d better start thinking about whether it was right or wrong. Now talk it over among yourselves.”
After the supervisor had gone Liao turned to me, “Well, what do you think of it?”
I tried to smile in order to cover my chagrin, but my words revealed my ill temper. “I don’t understand it. I thought we were supposed to study. How can you study without books?”
Liao chose to ignore my petulance and replied, “I, too, once had the same question and I was told that books wouldn’t solve many problems for people like us. There are prisoners here who’ve even memorized Marx, but that didn’t keep them from being counterrevolutionaries or committing the filthiest crime. You’re here to learn why you turned out to be a criminal and how you can become a decent person. That’s a personal problem and you won’t find the answer to it in any book. Of course, books sometimes help increase your understanding, but they are secondary. You’ve got to think it out yourself.”
Every time he and the supervisor had used the word “criminal” I had winced inwardly. It was bad enough having to admit I was a spy without any crime involved in it. However, I said nothing and we turned back to our original discussion. But for the rest of the morning the supervisor’s concluding remarks remained uppermost in my mind. I had been thinking all along that at most I would be out in about six weeks. That would certainly be long enough for them to review my case and make sufficient propaganda use of my confession. Now it looked as though I were going to be in for some indoctrination. That might take a little longer— perhaps even as much as six months.
Preoccupied as I was with the idea of leaving, and having no conception of what thought reform actually entailed, I was unable to grasp the real point of the supervisor’s speech. I could only search his words for some indication as to how I should act in order to gain my release in the quickest way possible. He said I should express my true thinking. Perhaps I could give the impression of being sincere by revealing a little of what I thought. But not too much— I was certain I would be shot on the spot if I revealed the hostility I had felt toward the Communists during the past year, notwithstanding what the supervisor had said.
I accordingly drew up an elaborate plan. For two months I would pretend to be unconvinced; for another two months I would appear to be changing my ideas; then for the final two-month period I would be completely changed. Arriving at this conclusion I settled back and tried to concentrate on the droning voices around me.