God's Double Agent (28 page)

“What have you done to land here?” the guy on the bench said, after getting up and walking slowly over to me. He had a thick neck and dark hair. His bushy eyebrows covered dark,
tiny eyes with glances as lethal as bullets. Everyone had beards of varying lengths, and I could tell how long someone had been in the prison by the length of their facial hair. I began to open my mouth, but the man covered it with his hand. It was wet and smelled of mildew.

“Not so fast,” he said. “You’re not allowed to talk.” After a moment, he removed his hand from my face and I realized I’d been holding my breath. He walked around the men sitting on the floor like a king walking among his peasants—if that king was missing some pretty prominent teeth and had forearms the size of tree trunks.

“They call me Da Ge,” he said, which is Chinese for “big brother,” or “head of the cell.” “Since there are only a privileged few who can talk around here, I’ll tell you what you must be wondering. They charged me with corruption, but I am innocent.”

Actually, Da Ge was wrong. I was wondering if he was going to beat me. I nodded, and no one else said a word—not to me and not to each other. I noticed the bench was Big Brother’s domain, so I tried to find a small patch of space on the wet floor. After three days without sleep, I figured I could doze even if I had to stand. Near the back of the room, close to the toilet, was about three feet of space. I crouched down, and just as I was about to lay my head on the wet tile floor, Big Brother motioned to the concrete bed, and said, “Sleep here.”

It’s hard to imagine a concrete bed was a place of honor, but everything is relative. In prison, the concrete bed—I later learned—was the most coveted position. Though I wasn’t sure why I was being treated so nicely, I didn’t have time to figure out the social strata of the cell. Instead, I laid down and finally—mercifully—succumbed to sleep.

I’m not sure how long I was out. It couldn’t have been very long, but my slumber was deep and troubled. I dreamt of Heidi, of prison, and of a man screaming in horror. It seemed distant and tortured and I wanted nothing more than to awaken myself
from it. However, when I opened my eyes I realized it was no dream.

A drug dealer named Little Tiger was holding a new inmate on the floor by his throat. “Hey boys, want to see if our new friend uses drugs?” The other prisoners cheered like they were at a sporting event. The inmate was scrawny, no match for Little Tiger, who knew kung fu. He immobilized him by holding his head to the floor while other men tore his clothes off him. Another prisoner emerged with a bucket of freezing cold water—and then another, and another. It was winter in Beijing, and the water from the sink was intolerably cold. As the naked man writhed in pain, apparently from drug withdrawal, they proceeded to pour bucket after bucket of water over him.

The other men laughed hysterically as he shrieked.

“Are you okay?” I asked, leaning down to him.
Why would freezing water cause so much agony?
I wondered. Though cold water over one’s naked body would be terrible, unpleasant, and humiliating, he was screaming like he was being tortured. “How do you feel?”

“Please just kill me!”

“We’ve got another druggie,” Little Tiger exclaimed. The jail erupted into cheers. I soon learned certain drugs, like heroin, make users much more sensitive to cold and pain. Big Brother could tell by their eyes whether new prisoners were users. If he suspected it, he’d have them stripped and pour freezing water over their naked bodies. This wasn’t because Big Brother was offended by drug use, but because the freezing water—plus the withdrawal symptoms—provided some entertainment.

“Why don’t you tell us a story,” he asked, kicking him in the side to get his attention. “The new guys are supposed to entertain us.”

“What kind of stories?” he moaned, gasping for air. “I don’t know any.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said as he drew back his
foot and kicked him in his ribs. He kicked him again and again, until the man, now listless from the pain, relented. “I’ll do what you want!” In his agony, he was forced to tell a pornographic story, while the other prisoners sat around and whooped and yelled. I don’t know if the man actually had a girlfriend or if it was all made up for the sake of the other prisoners. But even in his pain, he was able to tell some disgusting details about his sexual escapades.

After the drug addict had listlessly regaled everyone with stories, another prisoner jumped on him and began beating him mercilessly. I watched in horror as the others jumped in, making an uneven fight almost homicidal. By the time it was over, the new prisoner was left bleeding in a heap. Later, after he could collect himself, he dragged himself through the cell with a broken arm and possibly even a broken leg.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d only been in prison a few more hours than this guy. Why did they almost kill him, but not lay a finger on me? Was I imagining it, or did the other prisoners move away from me and almost seem afraid?

The second night of my imprisonment, I was on “suicide watch” with another prisoner. Our job was to stay awake all night to make sure no one woke up and tried to kill themselves. During my shift, I turned to the other prisoner and whispered.

“Why does no one talk to me?”

Before answering, he looked around the cell to make sure no one saw us. “No one talks except Big Brother,” he whispered.

“But people don’t even look at me.”

“You didn’t come here to make friends, did you?” he hissed, turning his back to me.

Though he wasn’t very forthcoming, I knew I wasn’t imagining it. As I sat there in the darkness, I was overcome with sorrow and grief. I couldn’t imagine what Heidi was going through. Had she suffered a worse fate than I had so far? Did the other women inmates attack her? Did the guards use the electric shock baton
on her? I knew from other imprisoned Christians that sometimes the guards used the baton on the women in ways that made it impossible for them to have children. Had Heidi been raped?

How long would I live in this place? Ten years? Twenty? They’d charged me with “illegal religious activities,” and they only knew a fraction of it. In addition to the illegal training center, we’d also printed thousands of Bibles without permission, had an entire underground training network, and had facilitated the smuggling of religious materials. If they connected the dots, I could be locked away forever. I sighed heavily, my mind in turmoil.

My thoughts were interrupted when I felt a hand on my arm.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” the other prisoner said, in the smallest voice possible. “Before you arrived, the guards warned us about you.”

I almost laughed. I was an intellectual, a bookworm who couldn’t see without my glasses. “Why would corrupted officials, drug dealers, and murderers stay away from me?”

“They said you carried some sort of poisonous message that could harm us if we spoke to you,” he said.

“Oh . . .” I said. “Yes, I’m a Christian.”

“A what?”

“You know, a follower of Jesus.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of that,” he said. “But we were warned not to talk to you.”

“Do you want me to explain?” I asked, motioning to the sleeping prisoners. “We’ve got nothing but time.”

“No,” he snapped. That was the last word he said for the rest of the night. However, as I sat there in the darkness, I was filled with gratitude. God had prevented me from receiving the “new prisoner treatment,” and I’d survived the first two days of my prison theology class.

Though I knew God was with me, my prison life took on a dreary pattern as the days passed. In the mornings, the guards
brought us two meals. Breakfast was one long piece of cornbread. The first time I bit into my piece, worms were burrowed into the bread. I immediately spit it out in disgust, but tried to put a spiritual spin on it.

“I’m fasting,” I explained. But Big Brother, who was a strange combination of cop, dad, and room monitor, reported me to a guard.

“Xi Yao Si, there is no God here,” the guard said through the iron door. “If you don’t eat, you’ll be fed through tubes in your nose.” Force-feeding, I learned, was a torture method the guards used on prisoners who staged hunger strikes to protest their imprisonment.

And so, I took the wormy cornbread and pretended to eat the parts I couldn’t choke down. Every day after breakfast, we were told to sit on the floor in rows. We had to keep our necks, backs, and legs completely straight. We couldn’t look to the left or the right, and had to stare straight ahead without moving at all. We sat like statues every day for ten hours. After sitting there for so long, we got blisters on our thighs and buttocks. The pain of sitting there was unbearable, especially after the blisters burst. The skin around my bottom festered with sores and my skin constantly fell off. If anyone moved, the guards beat us.

We sat motionless every day on the perpetually wet floor. (It was wet because the only way to take a shower was to dump a bucket of freezing water over one’s head.) The prison cell had no windows, but there was a very tiny hole in the high ceiling. That was the only “clock” I could use to calculate the time of day, as a tiny beam of sunshine moved through the dark cell. It first appeared at noon, and the pinhole of light would creep across the wall for hours until it was time for our second meal of the day. Those were the longest hours.

The second meal was comprised of rancid steamed bread, which was raw cornbread with moldy vegetables swimming in hot water. Once in a while, there’d be fat floating on the top.
Once, when I first saw that substance, I hungrily went for it in my bowl. It at least resembled nutrition.

“Stop!” another prisoner said, in a rare word to me. “That fatty material has been floating in the kitchen for months. Plus, that part goes to Big Brother.” Apparently he had dibs on all the “good” parts of the meals.

One day, a guard came into our cell and said to me, “Someone deposited money on your behalf.”

I was absolutely shocked. Apparently, a friend had been searching for us ever since we were taken away, going from prison to prison. His name was David Li, and he was a convert who had grown up in Beijing and was therefore familiar with all of the places where we could’ve been held. When he finally found our prison, David deposited money into an account designated for me. This allowed me to buy overpriced items from the guards. I bought a cup of Ramen noodles, which I made with the freezing water from the sink. Though the hard noodles barely softened in the water, it was the most scrumptious meal I’d ever consumed. Of course, I only ate what was left after sharing with Big Brother, who was always allowed to eat whatever he wanted first.

I tried to keep track of the days. One day I realized that it was the anniversary of my wedding to Heidi.

“Little Tiger,” I whispered to one of the more notorious inmates. He was a drug dealer able to bribe the prosecutor and police officers to smuggle in goodies. “My wife’s in prison on the women’s side and today’s our anniversary. Could you help me get a present for her?” Though it sounded improbable, I wanted to try to pass a gift along. Maybe I could convince a guard to hand it off to her, or perhaps a fellow prisoner could help me smuggle it to her cell.

“What do you want?” he asked. “Cocaine? Cigarettes? Heroin?”

“Can you get candy?” I asked, feeling a little ridiculous. Then,
thinking “candy” might be some sort of euphemism for an illegal substance, I added, “Like the sugary kind?”

By midmorning I had two hard, heart-shaped pieces of candy, which I hid in my hand the whole day. I pressed my face to the bars at the top of the door, hoping a prisoner or guard would pass by so I could ask him to pass it to Heidi. I waited and waited, straining to hear any footsteps in the corridor, but no one came. Much to my dismay, the last hours of my anniversary elapsed, and I reluctantly laid down for sleep.

“If you see anyone walk by,” I told the suicide watch team, “grab them for me.” But the next morning I woke up with the candy melted to the palm of my hand.

One day, a bribed guard brought Little Tiger a pair of shoes. A few minutes later, I saw the notorious drug dealer, who made the cell miserable for so many people, weeping in the corner. His wife apparently had hidden a loving note in the shoe. Very discreetly, I went over to him, and he actually cried on my shoulder. In fact, all of the inmates gradually softened toward me. Sometimes I was assigned the duty of cleaning the toilet with another prisoner, which was a welcome break from the monotony of prison life. We only had paper to use to clean the toilet, which meant the commode was never clean. Little Tiger sometimes made prisoners clean the toilet with their bare hands. He also sometimes stuck their faces in the toilet and made them drink the water.

The toilet, for me, was a way to share the gospel. One by one, I made some very close confidants in the cell. Some poured out their hearts to me, confessing mistresses, misdeeds, and any number of crimes, and I—in turn—told them about the saving grace of Jesus. Eventually, I’d earned the trust and respect of everyone in the cell, and I became somewhat of a “counselor” to everyone.

“Xi Yao Si!” The shout yanked me from sleep. A hand grabbed me by the collar and jerked me up. Was it finally happening?
Was I finally going to receive the beating I’d feared? When I opened my eyes, however, it wasn’t a fellow prisoner. Instead it was the prison guard, dragging me out of the cell and into the chief security guard office.