集中营记（二）
入集中营
日军命令我们全体离开学校被集中的那情景我记忆犹新。战爭的演变使我们成了日本的敌人，那时香港，星加坡，马来亚已全入敌手，缅甸方面也吃着败仗。美国陆军上将史提威直截了当的说，“我们被人家打得落花流水，实在惨得很！”最后，菲岛也完了。
记得那是次年（1942）十一月的某天，我们被一些身穿草绿色制服的日本军导路，过市区，约三英里之遙，进到我们初次被集中的地方。路上，这个由二百多学生组成的队低看起来既不整齐，步伐又散漫，老师，传教士们一同前往。老师们平素生活拘谨而有规律，态度严肃，衣服讲究。那些传教士更是敬虔专诚，现在一体成了战俘。我们边走边唱诗篇之句“上主是我的避难所和力量…我们不必惧怕…”
按规定，每人须缠臂章，美国人专用A字，英国人用B字。在日本士兵和老师监视疏忽之下，美国学生就将臂章倒转，取粉笔涂去橫划，成了代表胜利的V字。
集中的四所住处各原为容纳一个家庭的楼房，今令每一所強纳六十至七十人，真是如同挤罐头沙丁鱼似的。我们在此受了十个月的罪（此处原为煙台美国长老会教士住宅，在我母校─益文商专，即今日的第二中学之北─译者）我们常用诗歌来舒畅惆怅的心灵：
还未遭贬远方，
也未被送还家乡，
现今在煙台受些龌龊，
无非因为暂时作了俘虏！
每逢唱到末句，就把喉咙使到顶点，然后做个鬼脸，傻笑一番。
在肉食供应逐日而減的当儿，一名学校的工友偷偷地从牆头上送进来两头乳豬和几只雏鸡，我们恐日岗兵查觉，起初餵以镇靜药片，免得牠们吵叫，晚上就藏之阳台上。后来经他们发现，但未以此为意，料想我们蓄几只可供玩赏的爱畜沒甚不当处。
日间，我们用铁箱子当做椅凳，挤着，支撐着，来学习英语课，又将俘虏生活的感受试写雅韻句子长短不齐的四行诗：
小豬儿奧古斯都，
祇吃些废食剩粥；
圣诞日到─我们有点儿忧苦，
可是舒坦了大家的肚腹。
十个月的时间过去了。像一捆捆地柴火似的，我们被送进了一艘轮船的统舱里，是装货的地方，经过山东半岛（经青岛）到了潍县，那是至终的集中营所在。俘虏人数约一千四百人（包括未成年的幼童和学生五百名以上。─译者）其中英国人最多，其次为欧洲各国人，来自天津，北京和华北各地。
你若问我：“在营里怎样来消除忧惧呢？”我们的老师会以行动来作答案。我们被组织起来，有连绵不断的讲授，学课和戶外工作，等於将我们的精神全盘集中动员，使之无余暇来思想那些忧惧的事。
组成的团体多，花样也多。
老师继续教导我们怎样勇对现实。我们晨起列队同进高粱粥揭锅盖后充满了水蒸气的饭堂（高粱米是中国本家餵家畜用的）。饭后各带着自己的饭杯羹匙再列队回到宿舍，第一件事就是洗刷地板，下一步是去参加早祷。
上主高坐祂的宝座！
但也看顾尘世上的我；
祂有信实的应许，
不会让你孤独或飢饿。
上主高坐祂的宝座！
我们排队，接受清洁检查。夠干淨吗？是否衣，发外观整齐？衣袜破了，缝好了未？完毕，我们天坐在箱子上学习功课：英，拉丁，法文，历史，圣经。每天的课程是继续不停的。
营中的节目永远不变的一项是每晨的集合点名。钟一敲过，全体齐集操场上，分六组，也可说六队，各有固定的地方，胸前有別针別上的号头牌子。点查时，各自报自己的牌号。经值日的士兵核对名簿，六队相加总数无误，听钟敲过才得散去。
我们这一队，小孩子佔一百名以上。对於已婚思家的日本士兵来说，每天看到我们，算是一件赏心快事。每逢有长官来营视察，我们这一群小洋鬼儿就列队相迎，纯小学生姿势，目不斜视，腰版直挺，先行注目礼，然后用日语报数：日奇，泥，散，西，告…
点名时间有时会拖得很长。夏天每感热不可耐：冬季，在冰天雪地里几乎冻殭了人。天真无邪的孩子们则习以为常，将战爭逆境下被迫做出的老套当作遊戏。日士兵查点人数，我们趁机会打弹子，作跳蛙之戏。曾受过男女童军训练的孩子彼此打旗语和信号。
潍县集中营用的房舍和场地原为美国长老会的财产，此处设有，中，小学，医院和教会。校舍佔用楼房四至五座，另有饭厅，廚房三处，烤面包室一间和供寄宿生用的宿舍房间多不胜数。（潍县本教会，学校区建於1881年，於1883年完成，正称是“乐道院”。义和团时期，全部被毀，事后重建，並扩大，1904年完成。广文大学同年设於此，十三年后迁济南，成立齐鲁大学，将旧址为中小学保留使用直到日本佔领。──译者）昔日，作家赛珍珠和时代，生活週刊主人鲁斯先后随其父母居於此地。（鲁斯於1898年出生登州，今称蓬莱。六岁时移居潍县，十岁入“芝罘学校”读书，十四岁升学英国，后转耶鲁。──译者）
集中营（乐道院）楼房一角
本营长约二百码，宽一百五十码，建筑外观虽好，但自中日战爭以来经过两交战国不同单位的驻军，內部的设备和器物早已荡然无存。现今取作集中营用，安置了俘虏一千四百名以上，实在拥挤得不堪言状。
宿舍里，每铺床相隔的空隙祇十八吋。打鼾，打嗝，小解时冲击便盆的声音，成了夜间的音乐。对一切成年人来说，私隐权利之被剝夺最难忍受。
一般成年人都对这场遙无止日的战爭深怀恐惧。也可能有少数的人在被捕的初期因受污辱或折磨而对日本人的暴虐十分忿恨。可是透过我们这些天真稚子的眼睛所见，战爭无非是整天穿着便衣去集合上课，开会，举行节目和戶外遊戏等等玩意儿罢了。我们都相信老师会安排一切来照顾我们。如果她们不能，上主一定会的！
我们的心灵时刻向天上奔驰，坚信上主数不尽的应许和保证，举例：“万事都互相效力叫爱祂的人得益处”。
还有许多事实来证实保护和救助決不是空虛徒然的事。摩西领导被埃及王奴役的以色列人进入应许之地；荒年，有乌鸦来餵养先知以利亚；先知但以理被扔在狮子洞中为上主所保护。现今也有足堪低诉将要预期的：我们至终被救助的事实定必与历代的神蹟奇事同列一起。
小学部的主任卡尔女士多年后在信上写着：“我当年面对日军本身和被拘禁这两件事全不惧怕。为着未来的事怀忧，是於己无益，於事无补的。不管朝向哪一方面走，有时感到已经面临人生终点。是否不久会被迫自掘墓穴，就地被处決而葬於此？那么我就为我自己名列最早的一批而祈祷。”
每当傍晚，日军练习冲刺术，孩子们群习左右观看而毫无惧色。这件事后来想起，实在感到难以理解。
我怕的是那些俗称狼狗种的军犬。四十年后还未忘淨那次令人震悸的夜晚。小貓维亚蜷伏着活像一只小毛球儿。多时它夜间伴我入眠。床单下，它会吮吸我的手指好像吃着奶。我想，母亲在授乳婴儿时会必有同一溫馨的感觉。在同房间十一名小同伴的签字纪念冊里，每人都将小维亚的蹄爪拿来打印章似的印下来。维亚是我们女校校长布鲁豪女士的爱畜。
和日卫兵你可嬉戏，和军犬卻不能。军犬是训练来行凶杀人的，所以我恨牠。
那夜，我蜷臥在放下的蚊帐里，在枕上倾听窗外操场上的动靜。沙沙的漫步声由远而近，这是一位天主教神父作例行沉思和晚祷的时候。我又听见笨重的皮靴大踏砾石路发出嘎吱嘎吱声，那也是我熟识的：巡夜的日士兵。他们总是带着军犬同行。人犬怎能相亲？我想不开。
突然间，我窗前一片強烈的嚎叫声划破了夜寂，动物相捕捉，抵抗声起，继之以咽喉淤塞发出的吠声，分明维亚这小毛球的全身已进入两组血齿之间了。我感到全身发僵，惊叫塞於喉间，声音卻发不出来。同伴们也许会飞奔窗前外看，我自埋於被枕之间，摀住了耳朵，不敢去听。
有人晨起将肮脏清理了。我们的校长是一位明智，易感，循规行事的人，自从痛失爱畜之后，我们发现她走路不如以前那么轻快了。（下期续）
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...）
（英文原文经原作者同意在本报发表）