Nanjing Requiem

24

IN EARLY AUGUST we finally got a letter from our son, Haowen. After reading it, my husband fell silent. His eyes fixed on the table, though his lids were jumping a little. He gave a long sigh.

“What is it, Yaoping?” I asked.

“You don’t need to read this now.” He folded the two sheets and put them back into the envelope.

“Let me see it,” I said. Before he could hide the letter, I snatched it from his hand and began reading.

Haowen informed us that he was in the Japanese army now, garrisoned outside Suzhou, serving in a field hospital as an assistant doctor. He’d left the medical school half a year ago and married a girl in Tokyo. Then the army forced him to join up or his bride and in-laws would suffer, so he had come back to China a month ago.

He wrote:

I am miserable here but dare not complain. They told me that I would serve for only two years, but it looks like that, insofar as the war continues, they won’t let me go home. I also feel ashamed of my current role. How could I work for China’s enemy fighting my own people? But I love Mitsuko and cannot do anything that might endanger her and her family. In other words, I cannot afford to desert. Please forgive me for marrying her without your permission. I wrote you three times but never heard from you. I guess that the war must have disrupted the mail service in China and my letters went astray. Mitsuko is a good girl and absolutely loyal to me. I don’t think I could marry a better woman who unites all the positive qualities I want to find in my wife. Someday you will meet her and see if I told you the truth. Do pray for me and for the war to end soon.

Haowen’s letter devastated us. I flung myself on the bed and buried my face in a pillow, crying wretchedly. Grief came over me fit after fit. I’d always hated those Chinese who served in the Japanese army, but now my own son had become “a running dog,” “a half Eastern devil.” It was proper for him not to endanger his in-laws, but he had disgraced us and put us in potential danger. He must have been madly in love with that girl and not been able to think straight. Yet I mustn’t blame him too much, since he couldn’t possibly have foreseen that he would be forced into the service. Still, why did he have to marry her in a hurry? Something must have been wrong with him. I brooded on his life in Tokyo but couldn’t make any sense of this. His marriage seemed to have doomed him.

Yaoping tried to comfort me, saying that our son must have been isolated and lonely in Japan, that maybe he had found a first-rate daughter-in-law for us, so it was too early to tell whether this was a good fortune or a misfortune. I wouldn’t buy any of his conjectures and screamed at him, “Don’t you see that our son is ruined? He might never become a normal man again.”

That shut Yaoping up. I couldn’t eat supper that evening and lay in bed, weeping and dozing alternately. If only I could figure out a way to bring Haowen home.

The next day at work Minnie noticed my grief-stricken face and asked me what was wrong. I had recently confided to her that my son was a medical student in Tokyo. Now, since there was no one else in the office, I told her about Haowen’s plight. She was astounded and massaged her temples with both thumbs while murmuring, “This is terrible, Anling, terrible.”

“If only I could do something.”

“Are you sure you can work today? You should take a few days off.”

“That would make me more heartsick — when I’m alone, I can’t stop crying.” I averted my hot eyes.

Calming down some, I asked her not to divulge my family’s trouble to anyone. “If people know of this, I won’t be able to work here anymore,” I said, believing that the secret was a scandal that, if disclosed, might jeopardize my family.

“I’ll keep my mouth sealed,” she promised.

Minnie was the only person on campus to whom I could speak my heart, and she would also share her thoughts with me. Sometimes I could guess what she was thinking even before she let on.

IN SEPTEMBER we started another program in addition to the Homecraft School — a middle school for local girls. Despite the original plan for admitting no more than three hundred adult students, almost twice as many had enrolled in the homecraft program. The large number of poor women made the campus still seem like a refugee camp of sorts, and we depended on donations to keep them here. Among the 143 students in the middle school, only a third could afford the full fees: forty-six yuan a semester — twenty for tuition, twenty for board and lodging, and six for miscellaneous expenses. The rest of the girls were on partial or full scholarships provided through work-study arrangements.

A recent Jinling graduate named Shanna Yin had returned to the college. She was capable and had taken many classes in Jinling’s former Homecraft School, so Minnie put her in charge of that program. Donna Thayer, a young biology teacher who had come back, was now the dean of the middle school, but she didn’t know Chinese and Minnie had to help her with some of the administrative work. Minnie had also hired Alice Thompson, an English teacher, together with a dozen or so Chinese faculty, who were part-timers. Alice had taught at girls’ schools in China and also in Japan for a year, and belonged to our denomination, the Disciples of Christ. Shanna and Donna worked well together and had created a routine so the schools could run more or less on their own.

As for the lodging and board on campus, I was in charge of them. I had four kitchens built in the expanse between the Faculty House and the northwest dormitory, and these cookhouses were run by the students in the Homecraft School, some of whom had been learning how to cook professionally. The women students also took courses in tailoring, weaving, shopkeeping, fabric dyeing, and child guidance. Above all, we urged the illiterate ones among them to attend the literacy class.

One afternoon in mid-September, Miss Lou came and told us, “Yulan, the mad girl, is in town again.”

“Where is she?” Minnie asked in surprise.

“In Tianhua Orphanage.”

“Can we go see her?”

“Of course, that’s why I came to tell you.”

The orphanage was just beyond the southern border of the former Safety Zone, less than a mile away, so we set out on foot. The city seemed to be bustling with life again, though many houses still lay in ruins, grass growing on the crumbling walls and shards of terra-cotta tiles everywhere. We saw some Japanese civilians and even a couple of Koreans, but there were fewer troops than a month ago because many of them had left for the front. The previous day martial law had been declared to prevent any unofficial rallies on September 18, the seventh anniversary of the Mukden Incident, which had started the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. A balloon, which held a man and a radio set, was hovering in the air to monitor troop movements in the surrounding areas, mainly those of the guerrillas. Rumors were that our army was coming back to retake Nanjing (Chinese soldiers were said to have been spotted inside the city walls), and a lot of people believed that this was about to happen, so most of the Japanese flags disappeared from the houses and buildings that used to fly them. There was even talk of attacking the Japanese embassy and nabbing those puppet officials when the Nationalist troops marched in. Yet whenever the Chinese raised this topic, most foreigners would disabuse them of such hopes, saying that only the guerrillas posed a minor threat to the Japanese here. Unlike the other Americans, Minnie would keep mum about this and let the locals indulge in the fantasy.

We turned onto Hanzhong Road and headed east. At the doors of some restaurants stood girls and young women in blue dresses and gingham aprons, with little flowers in their hair, smiling at potential customers who passed by. This was something new. Were they not afraid of the soldiers? Why did their menfolk let them run such a risk? People had to do anything to survive, I guessed.

When we arrived at the orphanage, Monica Buckley, the American nun in charge of the place, received us. She looked exhausted, her cheeks hollow but her hazel eyes vivid and bright. I’d met her before and knew she was from Pennsylvania and part of the Episcopal mission here, formerly led by John Magee. When we asked about Yulan, Monica said there was indeed a madwoman in the back, but they were not sure of her name.

We went to the backyard, fenced but open to a street through a door fastened with a bolt and a lumpy padlock. There Yulan stood among a cluster of small boys, jabbering and puffing on a cigarette. At the sight of us she chanted, “Here come the missionary bastards.”

A barefoot boy said to her, “Show us how a rooster cries.”

The madwoman bunched her lips and stretched her thin neck. She let out, “Cock-a-doodle-do, cock-a-doodle-do!”

“That’s nice,” the same boy said.

Another one asked, “How about a duck?”

Yulan screwed up her mouth and shrieked, “Qua, qua, qua — ka ka ka ka!”

That cracked up all the boys. I noticed that one of Yulan’s teeth was missing. Despite that, she was still somewhat attractive, with a heart-shaped face, long hair, clear skin, and a small waist.

“That sounds more like a goose, too loud and too slow,” the tallest boy said. “Let’s see how a pig does it.”

The madwoman lifted her face to the sky and squealed, “Oink, oink, oink!”

“That’s not how a piggy cries,” said another boy.

Miss Lou shouted at them, “Stop it! Don’t tease her anymore!”

Yulan turned to the little woman, flapping her long eyelashes. “Nice to see you, Aunt Lou. How’re you doing?”

“Come with us, Yulan,” I begged.

“No, you have a big-nosed spy with you. I’m not going with you and her.” She pointed at Minnie.

“Yulan,” Minnie said, “you know I’d never hurt you.”

“Liar. All you foreign devils are liars.”

That made Minnie tongue-tied. She and I stood by as Miss Lou tried to persuade the deranged woman. By now most of the boys had left; only two were still around, one holding a soccer ball under his arm and the other wearing a bamboo whistle around his neck. As Miss Lou patted Yulan’s shoulder and murmured something to her, the madwoman burst into sobs, nodding continuously.

A few minutes later she left with us. She was quiet now, though her eyes still radiated a fierce light. Minnie told Monica that we were taking Yulan back to Jinling. The nun rubbed her hands together and said, “Oh, that’s good. Something ought to be done for her, poor thing.”

Minnie flagged down a two-seater rickshaw and let Miss Lou and Yulan take it, saying that we preferred to walk. She also told the little woman to leave Yulan with Shanna when they arrived at Jinling. The rickshaw rolled away and disappeared beyond a crossroads.

Minnie and I headed west. My left shoulder was sore again, and we both grew pensive. In my mind’s eye arose the scene of willowy Yanying embracing the foreleg of the stone lion while a Japanese soldier punched her in the gut and her little sister, Yanping, bawled.

“If only we had acted bravely,” Minnie said. “We might’ve saved some of the women.”

I knew she was thinking of the same event, but I kept silent.

We began talking about how to help Yulan. I asked, “What should we do about her?”

“Any suggestions?” Minnie said.

“We’d better find out whether she still has some relatives here.”

“She’s an orphan now, Miss Lou told me. Jinling should at least shelter her and take care of her needs.”

Minnie’s tone of voice allowed no argument, so I didn’t go further. For the time being this might be the only solution.

But I had my reservations because our hands were already full. The madwoman might stir up disturbances and frighten the students, so I kept wondering if there might be a better arrangement. Minnie seemed to have gone out of her way to accommodate Yulan, who was not our responsibility, strictly speaking. Everyone knew that the Japanese had deceived Minnie and would have seized those “prostitutes” one way or another. To care for the demented woman might be to ask for trouble.

Uneasy about those thoughts, I didn’t let them out. We went to see Shanna when we arrived back at the college. Minnie asked her to put Yulan in a homecraft class, stressing that the woman used to be a refugee at Jinling and ought to remain in our care. To our relief, Shanna gladly accepted Yulan as a student.

“You did me a huge favor,” Minnie told the young dean.

“No big deal. I hope she’s a quick learner.” Shanna twisted the end of her glossy braid, in which she seemed to take great pride. She was quite a beauty, with silken skin, a sunny face, and a dancer’s figure, though her eyes were spaced wide apart, which gave her a nonchalant look. Somehow I didn’t like her that much. She seemed vain and capricious, wearing powder all the time, and could be a bad model for some girls and young women.

Yulan turned out to be good at weaving. She was also literate, knowing enough characters to read newspapers. If she were not insane, Minnie might have let her teach a literacy class. Among the thirty-nine students in the weaving course, she soon excelled as one of the best. She was especially skilled at making stockings and scarves. Once in a while she’d still lose it, yelling at others or wailing without cause, but people thought she was innocuous as long as she wasn’t provoked. Some older women were even fond of her.

25

LOCAL AUTHORITIES, uprooted by the war, no longer existed in many areas. According to what refugees told us, guerrillas had caused a good deal of trouble in the country. Villagers were being ground on the millstone, pressed hard from the top and the bottom. If the guerrillas blew up a section of a road, the Japanese would come and order the villagers to repair it within a short period of time. Meanwhile, the guerrillas would warn them that if they did the work, some of them would be executed, so the only thing left for the villagers to do was to pull up stakes and leave, but many of them didn’t have the supplies or funds for travel.

Most of the guerrillas were backed by the Communists, but some were also remnants of the Nationalist army. They plagued the Japanese occupiers incessantly, doing things like attacking their sentry posts at night and cutting the transport lines to Nanjing. They would also punish farmers who sold rice and other grains to the enemy. The Japanese would occasionally bribe the guerrillas so foodstuffs could be shipped into our city. Every now and then the local newspapers announced that twenty-five thousand yuan had just been paid to the guerrillas, who had agreed to keep all the roads open, so the citizens shouldn’t worry about the supply of rice for months to come. Still, the price of rice kept rising, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether to buy more for the two schools now or to wait for the price to drop.

Fuel was another problem. We had difficulty getting coal for the winter because only one hundred tons were allowed each dealer. Worse yet, the price was doubled now — forty yuan a ton for the soft and fifty for the hard. We decided to try to get forty tons from a mine near Wuhan for twenty yuan per ton, though we were unsure if the Japanese would let it enter the city. The good news was that the U.S. embassy approved of our plan and agreed to help us bring the coal in.

Minnie had hired another nurse, so I didn’t have to do anything for the infirmary anymore. I was pleased, though I still had my hands full, supervising the servants and the cooks. Somehow I tended to be at odds with the younger women on the faculty. Many of them complained about my bossiness, and Shanna and Rulian even nicknamed me the Ancient One. Ban, the messenger boy, told me that.

I often complained to Minnie that the madwoman, in addition to the four blind girls, was too much of a burden to us. I suggested sending Yulan to the mental asylum funded by the puppet municipality. “The Japanese destroyed her mind,” I said, “so their lackeys should take care of her.” But Minnie wouldn’t listen.

One afternoon Ban complained to me about the madwoman, and I took him to the president’s office. I said to Minnie, “Yulan is making trouble again.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Tell her,” I urged Ban.

The boy, two inches taller than he had been the previous winter but still slight like a rake, said in disgust, “That crazy bitch follows me wherever I go and calls me ‘Little Jap.’ ”

Minnie looked bemused. “You shouldn’t let this trouble you so much. She won’t hurt you.”

“She scares me.”

“Now, come on, she’s thin and small. How can she hurt you?”

“She calls him a Jap,” I said, “because she has confused him with some soldier.”

Ban continued, “She always shouts at me, ‘Strike down Little Jap! Go back to your tiny home island.’ ”

“Try to avoid her,” Minnie suggested.

“That won’t help. She tells others I did lots of bad things to girls. She also calls me a brazen pimp.”

I told Minnie, “Some people don’t know her mind was damaged by the Japanese, so they take Ban for a hoodlum.”

“She’s ruining my reputation!” the boy wailed. “I can’t figure out how I offended her. She threatens me at every turn.”

“She sees enemies everywhere,” I added.

“She bullies me,” Ban sniveled.

“Yes, he’s a convenient scapegoat for her,” I said.

At last Minnie seemed to consider this seriously. She asked me, “What do you think we should do?”

“Send her to the mental home.”

“If that place was decent, we might do that. But you know what the lunatic asylum is like. It’s like a prison — it’s being used as a jail. We can’t just throw her into it. I’ll never let that happen.”

“But we cannot keep Yulan on campus forever. She gives us too much extra work and makes everybody tense.”

“I will speak to Shanna about this.”

“She’s another loony.”

“Come on, Anling, we can’t just dump Yulan. You know that will go against the grain with me.”

I exhaled a deep sigh, my cheeks hot. “You’re incorrigible — hopelessly softhearted,” I told her.

I took Ban away, feeling unhappy because Minnie would speak to Shanna before making any decision about Yulan, as though this were an academic matter. On the other hand, I admired Minnie for sticking to her principles.

To everyone’s surprise, Shanna also felt uneasy about the madwoman’s presence on campus now, saying that a lot of students had become unnerved by Yulan, that some were teasing her, inciting her to spew obscenities.

Minnie asked Miss Lou to take responsibility for the crazy girl. The evangelical worker had known Yulan’s mother, who’d died of cirrhosis two years before. Miss Lou agreed to keep Yulan as a helper in relief work since she was dexterous and could sew and knit. As long as she was not provoked, she’d be a fine worker.

Our college gave food and clothes to the destitute in the neighborhood every season, and the donations would be distributed through Miss Lou, who knew which people were in desperate need, so there should be no problem about Yulan’s keep. We felt relieved and also grateful to Miss Lou.

26

ONE MORNING in early October I found Luhai waiting in my office. He looked anxious but was well dressed as usual, wearing a checkered necktie and leather shoes. He took a folded sheet of paper out of his pants pocket and said to me, “I came across this yesterday evening.”

I skimmed the article. It was a short piece printed on a flyer titled “White Devils, Go Home!” I’d seen similar, though less insulting, writings in recent newspapers — apparently some locals, maybe backed by different political factions, had been campaigning against the foreigners. I put the sheet on the desk and said to Luhai, “Thanks for sharing this.”

“I’m afraid there might be secret moves against our friends,” Luhai said, his high Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Yes, we should let them know. I’ll pass this on to Searle Bates.” I knew that most Americans in town frequented the professor’s house.

Luhai was also worried about how to come by coal for the winter. He had just gotten Minnie’s permission to take down some trees in case the coal from Wuhan didn’t arrive and we had to heat classrooms on the coldest days. The trees on the border of our college’s grounds could be felled by thieves at any time.

Luhai left half an hour later. I liked him better than I had before. I used to think that he was a little callow, probably on account of his young age — twenty-six — but in the past months he seemed to have grown more mature and less talkative. Teachers and students thought well of him, especially the girls, some of whom even had a crush on him, despite his little limp and the fact that he was married and had two small children. Once in a while he spoke at the chapel and taught people hymns. He still talked about how he hated the Japanese. Who could fault him? He’d lost relatives outside Dalian City the previous fall. His cousin, a kung fu master, had defeated a Japanese officer at a sports meet and was celebrated as a local hero. But the next day a platoon of Japanese soldiers went to his home, caught him and his only child, tied them to a tree with iron wire, poured a can of kerosene on father and son, and set them aflame.

The article left by Luhai attacked the foreign men on the former Safety Zone Committee, claiming that they had conspired with the Japanese to oppress and persecute the Chinese, so the neutral zone had never been neutral. The author cited several examples of the Westerners’ collaboration with the invaders, such as disarming the Chinese soldiers and then handing them over to the Imperial Army, attending its celebratory ceremonies and concerts, and teaching Japanese in Christian schools. The article claimed that some of these foreigners often visited the Japanese embassy and even feasted there while making evil plans against China, and that, more outrageously, they’d made a huge profit from selling food to the refugees despite the free rations they had obtained from the former municipality. It was a fact that a white face could serve as a pass and a guarantee of personal safety here. The article singled out Lewis Smythe as a key collaborator, claiming that he’d met with the Japanese officials as often as twice a day. It also highlighted an incident at the police academy when 450 cadets were “betrayed” by the white men. “Those young officers were well equipped with German-made rifles (not handguns), and even their uniforms, helmets, and brass-buckled belts were German in style,” the author wrote. “We all knew how strong and well trained those men were. If they had put up a fight, they could at least have resisted the enemy to earn the precious time for the Chinese army to withdraw fully, or for more of them to break away. But the American missionaries lied to those men and said that the Japanese had granted them clemency, so they all laid down their weapons and capitulated. Later, we saw the Japanese take them through the streets. Most of them were stronger and better fighters than their captors, but they were disarmed and roped together, given the illusion of safety. All had their hands up in the air, and they were marched to the riverside and mowed down by machine guns so that the Japanese could dump them into the water without bothering to bury them. Fellow compatriots, who should be blamed for their stupid deaths and for our tragedy? The American missionaries, who are not our friends but a gang of double-crossers.”

I wondered whether the Communists were behind this article, since they were also eager to see the Americans leave.

When I showed Minnie the flyer, she was not disturbed, having seen this type of attack before. That evening she called on Searle. I accompanied her because I wanted to thank him personally for saving my husband’s life. Yaoping had been depressed ever since we received our son’s letter, and I had urged him to go out and meet some people to ease his mind, so he’d begun frequenting Nanjing University and had even resumed teaching a course in Manchu history there. A week ago, as soon as his class was over, a group of Japanese soldiers arrived and grabbed hold of him, saying he could speak their language and must serve as a part-time interpreter. Obviously someone had ratted on him. As they were dragging him away, Searle appeared and blocked the door, insisting that Yaoping was on the faculty, so as the provisional head of the History Department, he could not release the lecturer to anyone. The leader of the group cursed Searle, but he wouldn’t give in. Finally the Japanese became so angry that they pushed both Searle and Yaoping down the stairs. Seeing the two men lying on the landing, Searle groaning and Yaoping unconscious, they left without him. These days my husband stayed home, too frightened to go to the university again, though he promised he would resume teaching in a week or so.

When Minnie and I arrived at Searle’s, we found both Lewis Smythe and Bob Wilson in the historian’s spacious study, which was full of the fragrance of incense but topsy-turvy, books and framed photographs scattered around and the walls bare. The previous day the Japanese police had ransacked Searle’s home because they suspected that he had contributed to a book just published in London about the war atrocities in Nanjing and other southern cities. Minnie had disclosed to me that Searle did write under a pseudonym a portion of What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China. The police found few of the documents and eyewitness statements they were seeking, because Searle had deposited the materials in the U.S. embassy.

“So they didn’t take anything?” I asked him.

“They took some of my books and the calligraphy scrolls,” he said with a grimace, his chin slightly cleft. “I should’ve sold them. They also confiscated my son’s toy popgun. He’ll be mad at me.”

I knew he had owned some rare books, which must also be gone. He had filed a protest with the police headquarters, but it would be of no use.

He was still wearing a sling for a dislocated shoulder. I handed him a bag of pork buns and thanked him for rescuing my husband.

“This is great,” he said. “Thank you for these buns, Anling, but there’s no need to bring me these. Yaoping and I are friends and I ought to help.”

He placed the bag on the coffee table strewn with soda bottles. As Lewis and Bob reached out for the buns, Searle said, “No, no, this is for me only. You just wiped out my pumpkin stew.” He hugged the bag and then put it under the table. These grass widowers had sent their families away and ate irregularly nowadays, wherever they could find a meal. The three of them had aged quite a bit lately, and Bob, merely thirty-two, had lost nearly all his hair.

I sat down near a window while Minnie showed them the flyer, which they had heard about. But when he read it, Lewis looked quite shaken, became pale, and his eyes flickered, moist. He frowned and said, “I knew something like this might happen, but I didn’t expect to be labeled as a major collaborator. I went to the Japanese embassy every day to file protests. It’s true I walked with Tanaka on the streets from time to time, but that was just to show him what the soldiers had done.”

He covered his face with one hand and fought to maintain his composure. “This hurts, really hurts. It gets me right here,” he moaned, and his left hand touched his heart.

Silence fell in the study. Minnie went into the bathroom, brought back a clean hand towel, and gave it to him. “I know this is awful, Lewis,” she said. “But don’t let this rattle you. That’s what they’re hoping for.”

“Yes, we must take heart, Lewis,” Searle said. “We’ve done nothing we should feel ashamed of and can hold our heads high.”

“Thanks, thanks, I’ll be okay,” Lewis mumbled, and wiped his face with the towel.

A moment later Bob said, “I saw this sort of propaganda crap in Shanghai too, in the newspapers.”

“Do you think the Communists have something to do with this article?” Minnie asked.

“The puppet municipality is more likely behind it,” Searle said.

“But only the Reds dare to condemn the Japanese and the Americans like this author,” Bob went on.

Minnie agreed. “This does sound like Communist propaganda.”

“I’m not that sure,” Searle said. “There’s no way we can identify the author or authors — anyone can use a pseudonym.”

Lewis told us that the Autonomous City Government had been trying to break up the International Relief Committee, because the IRC had too much local power, organizing more than fourteen hundred members to do charity work. The puppet officials didn’t want to take over the task of helping the needy, but they were eager to get hold of the resources that the IRC had inherited from the former Safety Zone Committee. Some of the puppet officials had been reaping huge profits from one kind of monopoly or another. For example, those in charge of the city’s housing had seized vacant homes and other buildings and had rented them out. For every thousand yuan they collected, the Japanese allowed them to keep four hundred, so the officials had grown unscrupulous in possessing properties. Similar monopolies occurred in other trades as well, such as foodstuffs, medicines, alcohol, and fuel.

The four Americans fell to talking about the brand-new cars that were appearing in the city these days, mostly German-made Fords, Mercedes-Benzes, and Buicks. All of a sudden Nanjing seemed full of officials, who all had chauffeurs and servants. To me, those bigwigs looked more like opium addicts and ne’er-do-wells from wealthy families. Minnie said, “I don’t understand why so many Chinese are willing to serve their national enemy.”

“The rich must find a way to protect their wealth,” Lewis explained, “so their sons must control the government.”

“That must be true,” Bob agreed. “The other day I ran into one of those sons in the city hall. His dad presented a fighter-bomber to Chiang Kai-shek on his birthday two years ago.”

“To be fair,” Searle said, “some of the officials in the puppet municipality are not necessarily bad. They may have been disillusioned by the Nationalist regime. I know a man in charge of cultural affairs. He graduated from Rikkyo University, a very fine man who knows Greek and Latin and writes beautiful essays. He doesn’t like his current role, but he has to survive.”

“That’s true,” Bob said, waving his large hand. “If I had eight mouths to feed, I’d work for whoever paid me. The belly cries louder than principles.”

We all laughed.

Before we left, Searle told his fellow Americans to take precautions and avoid mixing too much with the puppet officials lest the Japanese attack them through the hands of their Chinese stooges and then blame it on the Communists. As Americans, they needed to appear neutral. Searle gave Bob and Lewis each three of the pork buns I’d brought him. He then offered to accompany Minnie and me back to Jinling, but we wouldn’t let him, saying it wasn’t nine o’clock yet and it was all right to walk back by ourselves. Besides, Minnie had a long flashlight.

We said good night to them and stepped out onto the dark street littered with sycamore leaves. Two pairs of searchlights like four giant rapiers went on stabbing into the depths of the moonlit sky, although no Chinese planes had come for more than a month. I wondered why the Japanese seemed fearful and on the defensive — perhaps because there were not enough troops to defend Nanjing at this time. As we walked along, Minnie talked about the situation in Europe, where she felt a holocaust had just been averted by the Munich Conference. She said, “I’m so glad that a lot of young men’s lives have been spared and many cities and towns have escaped destruction.”

“Everyone hates war, I guess,” I said.

“Even politicians?” she asked.

“Sure, few people are really hungry for blood.”

“How about the Japanese?”

“I’m still thinking whether I can take them as human beings.”

“Come on, Anling. You shouldn’t let hatred rule your life.”

Along Hankou Road not a single house had a light on. It seemed as if no one were living here, though from time to time a child’s cry would rise from somewhere. This small street used to be a sort of promenade for lovers, especially for university students in this area. Young couples would come here at night, strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or nestling with each other on the benches under the parasol trees. Sometimes they’d sing love songs in low voices. Now, most of the benches were gone, and we did not encounter a single soul here. I couldn’t help wondering if this place would ever be the same again. That seemed unlikely. Most things can’t stop changing once they have been changed.

As we were approaching Ninghai Road, two Japanese soldiers appeared, cackling with gusto. One was squat and the other skinny. They wobbled up to us and blocked our way. “Girls, purty girls,” the scrawny one shouted in Mandarin.

Minnie shone her flashlight on them. Neither carried a gun, but each wore a three-foot-long saber on his waist. The squat one shoved Minnie in the chest and snatched the flashlight from her while the other man stepped closer and put his hand on my shoulder. As the bar of light was scraping our faces, I began trembling, too petrified to say a word. They both looked drunk, and the alcohol on their breath mixed with the smell of raw turnip and boiled peanuts. The thin man burped resoundingly, then lowered his hand to my chest, fondling me. I was too transfixed to make any noise and tried to step aside, but his comrade rushed up and clutched my arm.

“Purty girl.” The squat one patted my backside and pinched me there.

“Stop!” Minnie said, and wedged herself between them and me. “Look, she has gray hair.” She pointed at me. “She isn’t a girl, she’s a grandmother.”

“Chinese women must serve Emperor’s soldiers,” the dumpy man said, still holding my wrist.

His comrade gripped my other arm again. “Yes, we need her service. She can do laundry for us.”

I was struggling to get out of their clutches but in vain. Minnie pushed the scrawny man, who attempted to kiss me, and shouted, “Damn it, you can’t harass women on the street. I’m going to report you to your higher-ups tomorrow morning.”

They both looked amazed but continued dragging me away. Minnie began yelling at the top of her lungs, “Help, help! Police, come and stop these hoodlums!”

The stocky man slapped her on the face while the other one took out a pack of unused Old Sword cigarettes and handed it to me, saying, “We pay for your service, lots lots.”

I was still in shock and just kept shaking my head speechlessly, my heartbeat rattling in my throat. Minnie went on shouting, “She’s working for me, all right? She’s an employee of the U.S. embassy.”

“Embassy,” the squat man stammered while the other one let go of me.

“Yes, she’s our interpreter.”

“Interpreter, eh?” the skinny man asked.

“Yes, I work for Americans.” At last I found my words in English. “Please let me go, officers.”

They could tell that I was speaking a foreign tongue, which suddenly worked magic. They looked at each other and bowed a little at us. “Working at embassy?” the stocky man mumbled while nodding his head. “Good, good, smart woman.” His index and middle fingers cranked at his temple.

“If you don’t leave her alone,” Minnie went on, “I am going to report you to Mr. Tanaka first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Okay, okay, we know Tanaka. No trouble, no more trouble.” The squat man bowed and pulled his comrade away. They both had bowlegs. Perhaps they were cavalrymen stationed nearby.

I hugged Minnie and burst into tears. “It’s over, Anling. It’s all right now,” she murmured, patting my back.

Leaning against her shoulder, I followed her and headed back toward Jinling. Now and again I cried and giggled uncontrollably. I was kind of hysterical and kept trembling. My right calf had cramps, which forced us to stop twice on the way.

“Damn those bandits, they took my flashlight,” Minnie muttered when we reached campus.

27

THANKS to the increased number of new cars in the city, Cola’s auto-repair business was booming. The Russian man had a Korean partner, who managed the garage and the four Chinese mechanics for him while Cola went out to meet people for business every day. He came to Jinling one morning in mid-October and brought along a little hunchbacked girl, who was blind and frail like a bird, wearing a threadbare sweat suit with the cuffs of the shirt and pants all rolled up. He’d found her begging on the streets, he told us, so he’d taken her in.

“Can you keep her here?” he asked Minnie, smiling engagingly. He always smiled like that.

“My, you’ve been collecting blind girls,” she said.

“I hate to see her running around. Any of the soldiers and gangsters can hurt her, you know.”

So we accepted the girl and had her sent to my daughter in the main dormitory. The girl joined the other four blind ones, whom Liya looked after. Cola didn’t stay for tea in spite of Minnie’s invitation. He was busy, having an appointment with some Japanese logistics officers. Apparently he was on good terms with them. I knew that this yellow-eyed fellow liked the Japanese and looked down on us Chinese. He felt that we had little sense of order, didn’t abide by rules and contracts, lacked consistency, and on the whole were unpredictable. He used to tell other foreigners, “You can’t take the Chinese seriously.”

Before leaving, Cola asked for a bunch of marigolds, which Old Liao gladly went to cut for him. Unlike in the years prior to the occupation, our college no longer held its annual show of a thousand pots of chrysanthemums, an event that both Minnie and the old gardener used to work together passionately to arrange. Now we had plenty of surplus flowers.

As we were waiting for Old Liao in the quadrangle, Yulan appeared, wearing rubber boots and a canary rain cape with a hood in spite of the cloudless sky. At the sight of Cola, she stopped midstride, then shouted at the top of her voice, “Bestial Jap, go back to your tiny home island!” She stabbed her fist in the air while stamping her foot. “Wild beast, get out of here!”

Startled, Big Liu and I ran over to her. Before we could reach her, Miss Lou emerged, grabbed the madwoman by the arm, and dragged her away. Yulan, her eyes blazing with hatred, kept yelling, “Motherless Japs, get out of China!” while the little evangelical worker raised her hand to muffle that furious voice. Together they scrambled away toward the front gate. I was amazed by Miss Lou’s strength — she was hauling Yulan away with one hand.

Big Liu and I returned to Minnie and Cola, who knew Chinese and must have sensed Yulan’s hostility. He asked us what that was about. Boiling with anger, I spat out, “That young woman was raped by the Japs and lost her mind.”

“She took me to be Japanese?” Cola asked.

“Apparently so,” Minnie said.

“Good heavens, I’m a Western devil, not an Eastern devil.” He laughed out loud, but none of us responded. Indeed, he was tall and blond, and even his eyebrows were yellow, as were the tiny tufts of hair in his ears.

While waiting for Old Liao, we gave Cola a brief tour through a homecraft class in which the women were weaving blankets. He was impressed and touched the looms and the wool time and again, saying that his mother and aunts in Siberia had done this kind of work too, though they used smaller looms. He got so excited that he stepped on the treadle of an idle machine to see how easily the beams revolved. He also spoke to a few women in Mandarin, asking their opinions on the war looming over Europe. None of them had thought of that; in fact, some of them didn’t even know where Europe was. When we came out of the building, Old Liao was waiting with a bunch of marigolds. He handed it to Cola. Together we headed for the front gate.

We stopped at the nursery, where toddlers were playing a game called Dropping a Hanky. A little girl was running around a circle of kids, holding an orange handkerchief and laughing, while the others were clapping their hands and chorusing a song.

As we were watching the children, Minnie told Cola, “Most of these kids have no fathers anymore.”

“I have to say you’ve been doing a saint’s work,” he said. Then to our amazement, he bowed deeply to her with the golden flowers held before his chest.

“Gosh, what are you doing, proposing to me?” Minnie joked.

“Why not?” he said. “Principal Vaultrin, would you marry me?”

“No, you’re too young for this woman,” Minnie replied.

We all broke up.

Cola went out of the gate, got into his Mercedes with chrome lights and bumpers, and drove away.

After seeing him off, Minnie and I discussed what to do about the five blind girls. I liked them, for they were all cheerful and three of them could knit gloves and hats, and yet I felt they were becoming a burden. Up to now, my daughter had been taking care of them, but Liya might not be able to do this all by herself for long. I said to Minnie, “They’ll be better off if they go to a special school for the blind. We should find a permanent home for them.”

“I’ll write to Shanghai,” she agreed, “to see if they can find a school for the girls.”

“I’m sure there is a place that would like to have them. The girls are quick learners and can earn their own keep.”

Intuitively we both knew we’d better send the blind girls away soon, because if Mrs. Dennison came back, their presence would irritate her. She always emphasized that Jinling must educate the brightest girls in China. We had “to set the bar high for entry” if we wanted to become a preeminent college, ideally China’s Wellesley. The following day Minnie wrote to Ruth Chester, the head of the Chemistry Department who was in charge of the Jinling group in Shanghai, to ask her to look for a school for the five girls.

We felt lucky that we had established the two programs on campus; otherwise the Japanese would have seized the unoccupied classroom buildings and dormitories for military use, as they’d done to some deserted schools in town. On the other hand, we couldn’t help feeling anxious, unable to envision how long the present chaos would last and how the college could ever get back on its feet. Everything seemed to depend on when the Japanese left, which might never happen. They must have meant to make the seized land part of Japan eventually, since the whole purpose of this war was to expand Japanese territory. Was our college gone for good? We were unsure, and the uncertainty tormented us.

Recently more money had been donated by Jinling’s alumnae for setting up a program similar to the Homecraft School, but there was no way Minnie could find more teachers, as most of the educated people had not returned to Nanjing. Minnie said she was glad about the freedom Jinling enjoyed from any government’s restrictions and from the academic rigor of a first-rate college — our two programs could tailor their curricula to suit their own needs. The officials in charge of education in the puppet municipality were supposed to supervise all the schools, but some of them were too ashamed to come and instead would send their minions to do perfunctory inspections. Once in a while, an official or two did show up, but they were all quite lenient and flexible. A few were glad that their daughters had taken the entrance test last fall and been enrolled in our middle school.

IN LATE NOVEMBER the weather turned freezing. The naked branches were coated with hoarfrost in the morning, though water would drip from the trees in the rising sun. The cold weather made it hard for the students, who had to take class in unheated rooms. The coal from Wuhan had arrived two weeks before, but to everyone’s dismay, it wouldn’t burn to give heat. I didn’t know what to do with it and often condemned the dealer representing the coal mine, saying, “He’ll have enough heat in hell.”

“Can’t we get a little good coal from a local seller?” Minnie once asked me.

“There’s no coal for sale anymore, no matter how much we’re willing to pay.”

Every day I wore a pair of woolen pants underneath cotton-padded pants; still, I was chilled to the bone, simply because there was no place and no time I could ever get warm. I’d never felt this cold before. Minnie was also cold all the time. She would warm her fingers around a mug of hot water. Even so, she couldn’t sit in the office for longer than an hour at a stretch. The students suffered more, and some had chilblains on their hands and feet. In class they all crossed their arms, each hand sheathed inside the other sleeve to keep warm. When they wrote, they’d keep breathing on their fingers. We didn’t heat the classrooms yet, having to save the firewood from the felled trees for the coldest days in January. Nowadays the students envied those women in the Homecraft School who could do kitchen duties or take lessons in the four cookhouses, where it was warm.

Minnie would urge me to go out with her, walking as often as possible to quicken the circulation. One morning, as she and I were strolling around, a ruckus broke out at the front gate, and we went over to take a look. “Stop bugging me!” Ban yelled, his shoulder leaning against a stone pillar.

Outside the gate stood Yulan, her arms akimbo, her face smeared with rouge, and her hair combed back into an enormous bun that made her look seven or eight years older. She’d been living with Miss Lou and had snuck back to campus again. “Shame, shame on you, Little Jap. Come out and face justice!” she cried, licking her chapped lips. A crocheted saffron shawl was draped over her shoulders.

“Stinking slut!” Ban cursed.

Minnie went up to the sixteen-year-old boy and said, “You mustn’t let her disturb you like this.”

“She calls me all kinds of names whenever she sees me. Please, Principal Vautrin, give me something else to do so I won’t have to go off campus. I’m scared of her — she waits for me out there all the while.” He then turned to yell at Yulan, “Buzz off, psychopath!”

“Come out, shameless scum!” she shouted, jabbing her forefinger at him while squishing up her face.

“Go fuck yourself!”

“Stop deflowering girls!”

“Go to hell!”

“Monster! You’ll be fried in hell, in a big cauldron of oil!”

“Leave me alone!”

Minnie shook Ban by the shoulder. “You shouldn’t exchange words with her like this. You’re only kicking up a row.”

At this point Miss Lou appeared and pulled Yulan away, while the madwoman went on calling Ban “a pancake-faced Jap.” Hu, a gateman now, asked Minnie whether he should let Yulan in if she came to campus again. “Don’t stop her if she comes for meals,” Minnie told him.

Hu nodded his balding head without another word.

Later Minnie assigned an elderly man to step in for Ban and sent the boy to Shanna to work as a custodian for the Homecraft School, but the trouble with him was far from over. He often clashed with others, wouldn’t listen to Shanna, and even called her a “Japan worshiper” because she used a Japanese facial cream. He seemed particularly fond of fighting with girl students and wouldn’t mend his ways in spite of Shanna’s repeated warnings. As her patience was wearing thin, Shanna declared she’d have him fired sooner or later.

As I mentioned before, I didn’t like Shanna that much; she always called me “Anling,” though I’d told her time and again that she should call me Mrs. Gao. I might be even older than her mother. What’s more, Shanna often wore flowered clothes as if she were a teenager, and she’d hum silly popular songs, such as “I Want You” and “A Boat of Happiness.” As a young lady from Shanghai, she had no idea what a hell Nanjing had gone through last winter.

28

IN EARLY DECEMBER, without informing us beforehand, my son, Haowen, came to see us. He slipped through Jinling’s front gate, wearing civvies — a bowler hat, a peacoat, and suede shoes. He looked slightly taller than he had five years before, perhaps because he was much thinner and more muscular. He walked with a straight back, more like a man, yet his face was no longer bright. He was twenty-seven but looked like he was in his mid-thirties. His dad, sister, and I were all shocked but elated to see him home. At first I was somewhat unnerved, assuming that he had deserted. Then I thought that it was high time for him to quit the Imperial Army, whether it was by desertion or discharge, as long as he was back home. But he said that his hospital unit was on its way to Luoyang, that they let him off at Nanjing to deliver some documents at the army’s headquarters and also to see his parents. Tomorrow he’d have to head north to catch up with his unit.

I told Liya to sit at the front door with Fanfan in case someone barged in. Yaoping took Haowen into the inner room while I let down all the window curtains.

It was already twilight and the marketplace had closed; there was no way I could get groceries for a decent meal. I hurried to the poultry center and bought five eggs from Rulian, saying I had an important guest and needed her to do me a favor, since the eggs were not for sale. For dinner I steamed some salted dace on top of rice, fried a bowl of peanuts, sautéed napa cabbage with dried anchovies, and scrambled the eggs with scallions. Yaoping had begun restocking his liquor cabinet since he resumed teaching, though most of his wines and liquors were fake. When the table was set, I told Liya to bolt the door, and then we all sat down to the best meal I had cooked since the fall of the city.

Haowen poured rice wine for everyone and said, “Dad and Mom, forgive me for causing you so much pain and anxiety. I came home just to see if you’re well. At present, there’s no way I can do anything to make your life comfortable, but when the war is over, I’ll do my best to be a dutiful son.”

Waving his narrow hand, his father said, “No need to talk like that. Let’s just enjoy a quiet meal.”

“I’m so happy to see you home, son,” I said, with tears in my eyes. “We can’t give you a better dinner, but we will when you come back next time.”

“Brother, let’s touch cups,” Liya proposed.

We all took a drink of the wine, which tasted thin and watery. Haowen dipped a chopstick into his cup and gave Fanfan a drop of the wine. The child liked it and wanted more. That made us chuckle. Liya told her brother, “Don’t give him any more. You’ll make him drunk.”

So I poured some water into a wine cup and dropped in a tiny lump of crystal sugar. Whenever Fanfan wanted another drink, Haowen would give him a drop of the sweet water in place of the dark stuff we’d been drinking. The boy cried out, “White wine, more.” That made us laugh again.

My husband and son went on talking about the war as we ate. Now and again I would put in a word. Yaoping felt that China, poor and backward, couldn’t possibly win this war, but Haowen thought differently.

“In fact, the morale is very low among the Japanese troops,” he said.

“Why so? Haven’t they already occupied half of China?” his dad asked.

“But Japan doesn’t have the manpower to control all the territory it has seized. What’s worse, its army has suffered horrendous casualties and cannot replenish the reduced units. The Japanese did not expect China to resist so stubbornly.”

“You mean they cannot find enough soldiers?” I asked.

“Yes. They’ve been recruiting men from Korea, Taiwan, and other places, but those are not experienced troops. The army is much weaker now.” Haowen’s eyes sparkled as he spoke, reminding me of the boy he used to be. He put a shriveled peanut into his mouth and continued, “Originally they planned to finish the war in three or four months, but now they don’t even know how to bring it to an end. China is like a vast swamp into which they’ve been sinking deeper and deeper, though they’ve kept winning battles. The longer they fight, the harder it will be for them to pull out. The soldiers miss home and complain nonstop. It’s difficult for the officers to keep discipline. As a matter of fact, Japan might turn out to be a loser if this war drags on for too long. The politicians and top generals in Tokyo simply don’t have a clue how to make an end of it.”

“They should have made plans for all the possible ways to end it before they started it,” Yaoping said. “That’s common sense.”

“Human beings can be stupider than animals, which are never afflicted with megalomania,” Haowen added.

“Brother, what will you do after the war?” Liya asked, her cheeks glowing with a red sheen raised by the wine.

“I haven’t completed my degree yet. Maybe I will return to medical school.”

I knew he meant to rejoin his wife, but I made no comment. Yaoping sighed and said, “The Imperial Army is too savage. I’m afraid the two countries will remain enemies for a long time.”

After dinner, we sat at the tea table and resumed talking. Haowen was holding Fanfan and made him laugh now and again. The boy was as happy as if he had known his uncle for ages. Haowen tickled him and raised him above his head, and the three-year-old also straddled his neck for a horse ride. I could see that Haowen would be an indulgent father when he had his own children. Even before his teens, he would say he wanted to have a wife and three kids when he grew up. He had been born to become a family man and must love Mitsuko dearly.

When Fanfan fell asleep and Liya carried him to the other room, Haowen took something wrapped in a piece of tissue paper out of his inner breast pocket. “Mom,” he said, “I had nothing to bring you. Here’s a little keepsake.”

I opened the paper and found a gold bangle, smooth and solid. “You don’t need to do this,” I told him.

“Dad,” he said, turning to Yaoping, “I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you.”

“Forget about that. I’m happy just to see you safe and well. Bring Mitsuko home next time.”

“I will.”

As I was observing the bangle, I saw a tiny character, Diao, engraved on the inner side of the bracelet. My heart sank. I dropped the thing on the table with a clunk and asked, “Haowen, did you steal this from someone?”

“No, how … how can you say that?”

“It must belong to a Chinese with the family name Diao. Did you also join the Japanese in looting?” I got angrier as I spoke.

“Mom, you misjudge me. I only treat patients. There’s no way I could loot homes and rob my own people.” His face went misshapen as if something were stinging him.

“Then how come this bangle has the word ‘Diao’ engraved on it?”

“Let me take a look.” He picked it up and observed it, amazed by the character that he obviously hadn’t noticed before. He put it down. “I don’t know where it was from originally. It was an interpreter who gave it to me.”

“Is he Chinese?” his father said.

“Yes, the fellow had malaria and I took good care of him. You know the Japanese — they’d get rid of him like trash if he couldn’t get up from the sickbed within a couple of days.”

“What’s his surname?” I asked.

“Meng.”

“See, this bangle must’ve belonged to someone else,” I said.

“Meng gave it to me as a token of gratitude because I saved his life. I have no idea where he got it.”

“This might be ill-gotten,” I continued.

He looked tearful, then closed his eyes. “I’m cursed, cursed,” he muttered, his upper lip curled a little. “Even my mother rejects my present.” He sighed, lowered his head, and covered his forehead with his palm.

Pity and love stirred in my chest. I said, “All right, Haowen, I’ll keep this. But you must promise me that you’ll never rob anyone or steal from the civilians.”

“Do you think I could act freely like the Japanese? Heavens, the Japs treat me as a Chink, they don’t trust me. I’m cursed, cursed! I’m a pariah no matter where I go.” He stood up and went into the kitchen to wash his face at the sink. He blew his nose loudly.

Yaoping pursed his lips, then said to me, “Let’s treat him as our child, our only son. Can’t you see he’s miserable?”

I remained speechless and put the gold bangle away. Beyond any question, Haowen was good-natured and ill-used by the Japanese, but I didn’t want him to take advantage of his own people. Before I turned in, I said to him, “Keep in mind you’re a Christian. God will make us answer for what we did in this life.”

“I’ll remember that, Mom.”

That night he and his dad stayed in the inner room while I joined Liya and Fanfan in the other room. Haowen left before daybreak to catch the train.

29

ALTHOUGH THE MAIL was slower nowadays — sometimes it took several weeks to receive a letter sent within China — still its delivery was reliable. The Japanese had left the postal system in the southern provinces in Chinese hands, because it operated at a huge deficit, 120,000 yuan a month according to Minnie. In her official report to our New York board, Minnie said she was full of respect for the Chinese postal workers because we still received domestic mail every day.

I’d been in touch with Holly. She always sounded cheerful and had moved around, doing relief work. At present she was in Henan Province, where millions of people had become homeless because a dike along the Yellow River had been breached by the Nationalist army as a means to deter the advance of the Japanese forces. I had also been in correspondence with Dr. Wu and briefed her once a month about what was going on here. She was in Chengdu now, leading a large group of Jinling’s staff, students, and faculty. Once in a while she wrote to Minnie, who would share the letters with me. In the most recent one President Wu expressed her gratitude to Minnie for keeping the two programs in operation, but she wondered about the possibility of reopening the college in the fall.

The president wrote about the homecraft program and the middle school:

I understand that under the circumstances these two programs are the only possible arrangements. In fact, I am pleased that at least the Homecraft School, a fraction of our college, is still in place. But the middle school you are running should be only a temporary operation, and eventually it will have to be replaced by something like our former college. Mrs. Dennison wrote the other day that she was painfully concerned about the disintegration of our college and hoped we would make every effort to bring it back. In principle, I agree with her that the restoration of the college must be our goal, on which we should concentrate our effort. At the same time, I am also aware that as long as the Japanese occupy Nanjing, it will be unlikely we can realize such a goal. Damn the Imperial Army, they have destroyed everything and thrown us back to square one. These days I have often dreamed of our campus and Nanjing. How I wish I were with you again.

Dr. Wu also wrote Minnie that Mrs. Dennison would return from her yearlong furlough in the States, so we were pretty certain that the old woman would come back to Jinling. Had she been here the winter before, she might have remained behind like Minnie and opposed setting up the two current programs on campus: she’d always maintained that Jinling must grow into a top women’s college, well known internationally, so as to attract more funding.

Minnie and I agreed with President Wu that the middle school should be closed in due course, but for the time being it met the locals’ needs and there was no reason to dissolve it. More than four hundred girls had sat for the entrance test the previous fall and only a third of them were admitted, placed in four grades. For that and for the quality courses we offered, Jinling still commanded a fine reputation in Nanjing.

In her reply to President Wu, Minnie gave two reasons why restarting the college in the near future would not be feasible. First, we wouldn’t have enough freshmen, because in times like these few families would send their girls to Nanjing for college. Second, we would need a stronger faculty with college teaching experience, which again was unavailable. Minnie even asked Dr. Wu to encourage some of Jinling’s faculty members to return to Nanjing. Recently some foreigners, mostly American academics and missionaries, had arrived, but after speaking with our students and looking around, none of them had any desire to stay. Minnie added in her letter: “It was so easy for them to talk without committing themselves, and I have no choice but to depend on the Chinese faculty I assembled from the highways and byways. They are good enough for our current programs but will be inadequate for college teaching.” I totally agreed with her.

The Homecraft School had Dr. Wu’s blessing, though we had started it not long ago, in 1934, as a two-year program. Mrs. Dennison must have groused to Dr. Wu about our two ongoing programs and insisted that Jinling must excel in higher education again. Before taking her furlough the previous year, the old woman had even talked about starting some master’s programs here. Minnie had been lukewarm about that, though she’d never objected to it.

She had her letter to Dr. Wu delivered to Bob Wilson and asked him to mail it from Shanghai, where he’d go that Saturday. After the messenger left, Minnie resumed working on the accounts. Somehow, hard as she tried, she couldn’t balance the books for October. A twenty-six-yuan difference was still there. If only we could hire a bookkeeper, but that was impossible. The capital used to have all types of professionals, and yet nowadays you couldn’t find a decent accountant. Small wonder that even the Japanese complained that they didn’t have enough capable Chinese to run the government. Big Liu often said he wished his daughter, Meiyan, had studied accounting.

The messenger returned at noon and said that some people belonging to the International Relief Committee had been apprehended. Minnie telephoned Searle and Lewis and found out that the arrests were prompted by a murder at the Japanese embassy. Someone had slipped poison into a samovar there the day before; two guards died and several people were hospitalized, including a diplomat. The police rounded up some Chinese employees and interrogated them. Then they went to the IRC and arrested six of the leaders, all of them Chinese, on the grounds that they had participated in anti-Japanese activities. Now the police declared that these men were involved in the murder. Lewis and Searle were certain that none of them had had anything to do with it and that the Japanese were just exploiting the case as a pretext to disband the relief organization. One of the six IRC men was a part-time math teacher here, and three of them had their daughters in our middle school. The girls begged Minnie to intercede for their fathers.

Minnie spoke with Lewis, who helped her compose a letter of protest demanding the immediate release of the six men. The next day she delivered it to Vice-Consul Tanaka at the Japanese embassy, where she learned that the six men were being kept in the prison downtown. Even though they’d been tortured and their feet had been shackled, they still refused to admit any wrongdoing.

30

THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of Nanjing’s fall was approaching, and the city was under martial law again. People were warned not to assemble in public during the next few days except for celebration; at Jinling, the students, especially the middle schoolers, had been talking about how to commemorate the shameful day.

On the evening before the anniversary, Minnie gathered the girls in the auditorium in the Central Building. She urged them not to endanger themselves and the school. Instead they should study hard and help others, especially the destitute. That was the best way to serve China, which needed capable and rational people, not mobs. Besides, they mustn’t let hatred run their lives.

The girls listened quietly, all of them staring at Minnie; none dared speak against her. Even when she was done and invited them to voice their opinions, nobody let out a peep, but I could feel the tension in the hall. We’d thought of having a special service to commemorate the day, but, afraid that it might stir up the students’ emotions, we decided against it. Minnie told Luhai to make sure the front gate was guarded strictly.

The next morning, many girls wore black armbands. Both Donna and Alice reported that their students did the same. To Minnie’s dismay, Shanna also had on a crape. “You shouldn’t be such a leader,” Minnie reproached her.

“I might wear this even if they didn’t,” Shanna said, touching the black cloth safety-pinned to her sleeve.

Surprised, Minnie went on, “I understand your feelings, but it’s too risky to do this. Some turncoats might snitch on us.”

“I’m also Chinese.”

At that moment I loved the girl for saying those words, though I didn’t wear a black armband mainly because I wouldn’t create more trouble for Minnie. I was worried about the students’ safety besides. Fortunately, Luhai and the gatemen did a good job of preventing the girls from going out — however loudly they chorused patriotic songs and whatever slogans they chanted, they were kept on campus. We felt somewhat relieved. If the officials demanded an explanation, we could say that the school had taken measures to discourage hostility toward Japan, but many students had lost family members and mourned their losses spontaneously.

Some girls also fasted that day, and Meiyan fought with another student whose father served in the puppet municipality.

Miss Lou came early that afternoon and said that Yulan had disappeared. For several days the madwoman had wanted to go downtown, saying she must protest the Japanese occupation on the first anniversary of the city’s fall. Massaging her forehead with her claw-like fingers, Miss Lou said, “I stopped her a couple of times, but she slipped out this morning.”

“Any idea where she might be?” Minnie asked.

“She must’ve gone downtown. When she heard about the martial law, she couldn’t stop spouting curses. She said she would run away to join the guerrillas, but I didn’t take that seriously and thought she couldn’t possibly figure out where the Reds were. It was my fault — I should’ve been more vigilant and shouldn’t have let her visit my neighbors.”

Minnie had a number of people called in and asked everyone to go out and look for Yulan. I said, “That mad girl is our curse. We should’ve washed our hands of her long ago.”

“Anling, that’s rubbish,” Miss Lou said. “Now’s not the time to speak like that.” I glowered at the evangelical worker but couldn’t find a word to counter her.

Big Liu said, “I hope the girl won’t fall into Japanese hands again.”

In spite of her insanity, Yulan was somewhat good-looking, so we feared she might get hurt. We set out to look for her.

Minnie and I walked east along Zhujiang Road. The minute we passed the half-burned building that had housed the Justice Ministry a year before, we saw that most houses had disappeared, and where they’d stood were piles of bricks and stones. The Japanese had been tearing down homes to get the materials for building roads. For each house they paid two yuan as compensation; whether the owner accepted it or not, he had to move out and surrender the property. We’d heard about that operation but hadn’t expected to see such large-scale demolition.

It was a sullen wintry day, the gray clouds threatening snow. The sycamore and oak trees along the street were swaying and whistling as gusts of wind swept through them. A rusty sheet of corrugated iron tumbled across the street and fell into a roadside ditch. Here and there scummy puddles, like giant festering sores, were encrusted with ice on the edges. In the distance firecrackers were exploding while drums rolled, suona horns blared, and an array of Japanese flags flitted across the thoroughfare — a celebration of the occupation was in full swing. About a thousand Chinese, including some school pupils, were waving tiny flags and shouting slogans in support of the Japanese rule. Some even chanted “Banzai, banzai!” while a procession of men and women was performing a dance on stilts, wearing green and vermilion gowns and waving fans. The cacophonous music jarred the ears like shrieks and screams. On the sidewalk ahead stood a truck, from which a photographer pointed a bulky camera at the celebrators, the black cloth over his head and shoulders. I panted, “I hope those traitors will be rounded up and sentenced to death when our army takes this city back.”

The second I said that, I remembered my son, Haowen. A piercing pang gripped my heart and made me speechless.

Minnie shook her head in silence. As we turned a corner near the former Central Hospital, a crowd gathered ahead of us. We caught sight of Yulan and hastened our steps.

The madwoman stood in the middle of a semicircle of people, holding a small triangular flag that bore these words: WIPE OUT JAPANESE DEVILS! She was addressing the crowd, some of whom cheered her on.

Minnie and I jostled through the spectators and reached her. “Give me the flag,” Minnie said.

Yulan stared at her for a moment, then snorted, “No. Don’t you see I’m using it?”

“Come, let’s go home.” I reached out for her arm.

The madwoman stepped aside and said, “You’re just a lackey of the foreigners. You go with her, but leave me alone.” She jerked her thumb at Minnie.

“Please, Yulan. It’s dangerous here,” Minnie begged. “Come home with us.”

“I have no home anymore. Everything was burned by the Japs.”

“Don’t you respect Miss Lou? She was very upset when she found out you were gone.”

“I don’t want to live with that Bible freak anymore. She’s obsessed with Jesus Christ and says we’re all his slaves. Every day she made me memorize poems from the Old Testament. I’m sick of it. I want to be a free woman.”

“All right, you can stay with us,” Minnie offered, “and take any class you want to. We won’t force anything on you, I promise.”

“Go chase yourself, evil American!”

I grabbed Yulan’s wrist to wrench the flag from her hand, but the madwoman shoved me and cursed me loudly.

People whooped and guffawed, and some egged her on. Minnie said to them, “Don’t you feel ashamed to mislead a sick woman? She was molested by the Japanese and lost her mind. You all know what kind of risk she’s running to stand here raving aloud. If you care about your compatriots, you should go away or help us bring her back.”

Some people dropped their eyes and a few started away. Minnie tugged at Yulan’s sleeve and begged, “Please, let’s go home.”

“No! Where’s my home? You sold my parents to the Japs. I hate those Eastern devils. I’ll settle up with them one of these days.”

As if on cue, three Japanese policemen arrived, each wearing a peaked cap with a tiny rising-sun flag printed on the right side. Their appearance scattered the crowd. Even Yulan clammed up in terror.

“You come with us,” one of the police, a glassy-eyed man, ordered her in stiff Mandarin.

The madwoman let out a groan and turned to Minnie and me. “Officer,” Minnie explained, “she’s out of her mind. We’re taking her back to our school and won’t let her out again.”

“No, she attempted to incite a riot and must come with us. She’s an activist against Japan, and we shall question her before we decide what to do about her.”

“Where are you taking her?”

“That’s our business.”

“Can we come with you?”

“No, you cannot.”

“You have no right to detain her.”

“Don’t poke your nose into our work.”

By now the other two policemen had caught hold of Yulan, who was screaming helplessly, her legs bent to hold her ground. Minnie glanced sideways at me, and I felt my left cheek twitching. She rushed forward and reached out for Yulan, but the officer stretched out his arms and blocked her. Then he waved for the other policemen to drag the madwoman away. He turned to follow them.

“Let go of my hands!” Yulan yelled, struggling to break loose. “You smell like a stinky fish shop. Damn it, let your grandma go. Help, help, help me!”

“Shut up, rotten cunt!” The officer slapped her across the face, and instantly she went quiet.

Minnie set off following them, but I clutched her arm and pulled her to a stop. “It’s no use, Minnie. We’d better go back now.”

The officer spun around, having sensed Minnie’s attempt, and spread his arms again. Struggling out of my grip, Minnie lunged at him with all her might. The man dodged and punched her on the jaw. She fell and gave a cry of pain but scrambled to her feet instantly. “I won’t let you take her away!” she shouted, and plunged forward again, blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth.

A middle-aged Chinese man held her by the waist from behind, saying, “Please, Principal Vautrin, don’t follow them!” Another few people stepped over to restrain her. A woman began wiping the blood off Minnie’s face with a silk handkerchief.

Minnie stamped her feet, tears flowing down her cheeks while her nose quivered. “Damn you! Damn you, bastards!” she screamed at the backs of the receding policemen.

31

FOR DAYS Minnie called various offices and visited her friends and acquaintances to find out Yulan’s whereabouts, but nobody could tell her.

Then Lewis, who’d been leading his students in surveying the damage and losses in Nanjing and its surrounding counties, telephoned one morning and said he’d heard that Yulan was in a stopgap hospital near Tianhua Orphanage. Minnie put aside the next semester’s academic calendar she’d been working on and set out for the hospital. She asked me to come along.

The hospital was a decrepit three-story building behind a cinderblock wall topped with four lines of barbwire. It was used by the Japanese military mainly for treating tuberculosis and venereal diseases among the soldiers and prostitutes. Some of the sex workers were so-called comfort women, taken from far away, mostly from Korea and a few from Southeast Asia. We were horrified that Yulan was confined in such a place.

A baby-faced Chinese guard stopped us and demanded, “Pass, please.”

“We want to see a student of Jinling Women’s College,” Minnie said.

“You can’t go in without a pass. This is an army hospital. If I let you in, I’ll be in big trouble.”

“Can I speak to your superior, then?”

“He’s not here right now.”

“Please, let us in,” I begged. “The girl was molested by the Japanese and lost her mind. We want to take her back.”

He shook his head no.

Then we caught sight of Dr. Chu stepping out of the building and heading toward a car. Minnie called to him, and he came over, delighted to see us. He was wearing a cashmere coat and a Homburg with a curled brim and was holding a copper-tipped walking stick. Today he looked more like a rich businessman than a doctor. Minnie explained why we were there.

Dr. Chu whispered to the sentry and slipped a single-yuan bill into his palm. The guard said to us with a fawning smile, “You can go in now.”

Without thanking him, Minnie turned to Dr. Chu and shouted, “Come see us! We owe you one.”

I waved at him too. He took off his felt hat. “Bye now,” he cried. He strolled away with a measured, flat-footed gait, the ends of the long muffler around his neck flapping.

The interior of the building reeked of Lysol and carrion. My breathing instinctively went shallow, but I forced myself to relax, inhaling and exhaling to get used to the foul air. A nurse in a white gown and cap was on her way upstairs; she led us to the second floor and pointed at a door, saying, “Yulan Tan is in there. I can’t let you in, but you can meet her at the small window. You have ten minutes.”

Minnie looked through the square opening on the door and called out, “Yulan, are you in there?”

There was no sound inside. I peered in but didn’t see anyone either. I closed my eyes to adjust to the gloom, then opened them. This time I saw the madwoman cowering in a corner, her knees tucked under her chin. She was alone in the room. I called to her.

Slowly Yulan rose and came over. “What’s this?” she grunted.

I stepped aside to let Minnie speak. “How are you, Yulan?” she asked.

“I’m hungry and cold. Give me a meat pie or a pork bun. I know you have chocolates. Don’t you?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring any. I’ll remember next time.”

“Get me out of here, please. If you don’t help get me out of prison I’ll die in a day or two.”

“We’ll try our best.” Minnie took off her light woolen coat with its gray fur collar. “Here, you have this for now, all right?” She rolled it up and pushed it through the opening.

I put my head closer to the window to observe the madwoman, who threw the coat around her shoulders. She kept staring at Minnie, her pupils contracting. She wiped her dripping nose with the back of her hand. Then she grinned pathetically and said, “Get me out of here, please!”

“I will. But try to be patient for the time being, all right?” Minnie said.

“You don’t know how they torture me.”

“What do you mean?”

“They beat me if I don’t obey them.”

“Listen to them, then. Just don’t let them hurt you.”

“I don’t want to open my pants for every Jap. They burned my buttocks with cigarettes. D’you want to see it?”

“Sure.”

The madwoman dropped the coat on the cement floor, undid her belt, and turned around. On her behind were some twenty bloody burns; they looked like red beans and peanuts. Minnie closed her eyes, two big tears coursing down her right cheek.

“Beasts!” I said under my breath.

We left the hospital. Heading back to Jinling, we ran into two boys, seven or eight years old, whipping a top on the side of Canton Road. The toy jumped about while spinning and leaning sideways. As we were passing by, one of the boys lifted his scarred face and taunted Minnie, “Foreign devil! Foreign devil!”

We were surprised but didn’t respond. The other boy stopped driving the top and said to his pal, “Why call her that? She’s Miss Hua Chuan.”

“That’s right,” I spoke up. “Your mother ought to teach you some manners.”

Minnie was shivering a little from the chilly wind, holding the collar of her jacket with her hand. The scar-faced boy stared at her, then turned to his pal. “You mean she’s the American principal?”

“You bet.”

Then they both started chanting, “Principal Hua, the Goddess of Mercy! The Goddess of Mercy!”

“Shush, don’t call me that!” she told them.

But they went on shouting “The Goddess of Mercy!” as they scurried away with the top, slashing the air to make loud cracks with their leather-tipped hemp whips.

Minnie shook her head. Dried leaves were scuttling ahead of us like a swarm of mice, mixed with candy wrappers and banknotes no longer in circulation.

MINNIE SPOKE to Plumer Mills, the chairman of the semidisbanded International Relief Committee, to plead with him for help. But Yulan was just an individual; she did not belong to any organization, and her detention would not impair the relationship between Japan and any social or religious group, so Plumer couldn’t figure out a way to rescue her. Dr. Chu was the only person who might be able to help us. He didn’t work at the hospital but might have connections there.

Minnie invited Dr. Chu to dinner at Jinling, and gave me thirty yuan for the party — not much, but enough to make the occasion festive. I prepared the food in my home and had several Chinese over besides the two American teachers, Donna and Alice.

Minnie was amazed by the dinner, saying she’d never thought it would be so lavish. She wondered if I had spent some of my own money. I had, though just a few extra yuan. I joked that we Chinese were obsessed with food and face, so even in a time of distress like now, we’d still make the best use of the pleasure life could offer, turning a meal into a small feast. There was roast chicken, a large fried bass, smoked duck, and braised pork cubes. Yaoping took out his only bottle of Five Grain Sap and some apricot wine.

Minnie thanked Dr. Chu and proposed a toast on behalf of the college and the women whose menfolk had gotten out of jail in June. We all clinked cups and drank. Alice and Donna wouldn’t touch alcohol, so they chose tea instead, but Minnie had to drink some to please the guest of honor and the host, my husband, who didn’t speak much but smiled continually. At last he could enjoy himself a little. Meanwhile, I was busy making sure that every dish was served properly.

Dr. Chu was wearing a conventional quilted robe, which made him resemble a country gentleman, with his hair parted down the middle. “Tell me, Mr. Gao,” he said to Yaoping, putting down his cup after another swig, “how much did you pay for this Five Grain Sap?”

“Four yuan a bottle.”

“No way can you get the genuine stuff here for that price.”

Yaoping chortled, “I can taste it’s fake too, but this is the best available on the black market.”

“This is good enough — it tastes like it’s brewed only from sorghum. It brings back happy memories, though.”

“Yes, we can drink this as One Grain Sap,” Yaoping said flatly.

Rulian translated their exchange for Alice and Donna, who both giggled.

When Minnie mentioned Yulan, Dr. Chu told her, “I don’t know if I can help get Yulan out of the hospital, but for the time being I can get you a pass so you can visit her.”

“Thanks,” Minnie said.

I knew he was a sincere man, and if he could have done more, he would have. Dr. Chu talked about the situation in Zhenjiang, his hometown. The Japanese had taken that city a week before Nanjing the previous winter and destroyed a good part of it. “It was worse than here,” Dr. Chu said. “They killed a lot of people and the town is still rather empty. My parents’ house has become an officers’ club, a cabaret of sorts.”

Somehow everyone at the table spoke in a calm voice despite the sad topic. Donna shook her head, a mass of tawny curls, rolled her long-lashed eyes, and said, “Don’t you Chinese hate the Japanese?”

“I hate the traitors more,” Shanna replied.

Rulian said, “If the Chinese keep selling our country, we deserve to be enslaved.”

I shot her a dirty look, but she continued, “I mean, China can be conquered only from within.”

Batting her gray-blue eyes, Alice seemed to understand their conversation merely in part and said, “When I was in Japan, most people there were polite and gentle. Certainly they believed the war was good for their country, but very few of them were vicious and violent. To be honest, I felt quite safe there.”

Minnie translated her words for the guest of honor and my husband. That made the table silent for a moment. Then Dr. Chu said, “In war, victory justifies all sorts of violence. A complete victory means to have finished off the enemy. In fact, I believe that the Japanese committed all the atrocities as a celebration of their victory, as a kind of reward and gratification. That’s why they acted with so much bravado and even beheaded people as a sport.”

“That must be true,” Minnie agreed. “On the other hand, some of the soldiers who came to our campus later on were polite and well behaved, totally different from those brutes who were here last winter.”

“I just hate every one of them,” I joined in.

“Oh, come on,” Yaoping said, “you’re supposed to love your enemies.”

That had the table in stitches. In the other room, Fanfan prattled in his sleep while Liya was humming a lullaby, her voice sweet and childlike.

Dr. Chu stood, raised his cup, and proposed a toast with so much emotion that his mouth went a little askew. “Let’s drink to this great woman.” He pointed at Minnie. “She not only sheltered ten thousand women and children from harm’s way but is also devoted to educating the weak and the impoverished. Let me say this: she’s a real man — superior to any man in this city. China doesn’t lack clever people — we Chinese are way too smart and too pragmatic. This country needs people with sincere hearts willing to serve and take pains.”

Minnie got up, but before she could speak, we had already let out “Cheers!” and touched cups.

She sipped her apricot wine and said, “Please consider what we’ve been doing as our Christian duty. Any one of us, given the same circumstances, would do the same. The other day I came across this aphorism in the Quaker calendar Mrs. Dennison sent me, and I want to share it with you: ‘Doing what can’t be done is the glory of living.’ ”

Big Liu proposed, “Yes, let’s drink to the impossible task ahead.”

Some of us laughed, and we drained the last drops in our cups.

For dessert, we had walnuts, honey oranges, roasted chestnuts, and jasmine tea. I brought out a small basket of spiced pumpkin seeds, which we cracked while conversing.

The fake Five Grain Sap went to Dr. Chu’s head and loosened him up. Now tipsy, he kept saying he felt ashamed of being a man. For him, the cause of Nanjing’s tragedy was clear and simple, and no one but the Chinese men should be held responsible — because they couldn’t fight back the invaders, their women and children were subjected to abuse and killing, so a foreign woman like Minnie had to step up to save lives and to do superhuman work. He even wept for a few moments, insisting that he wasn’t a man either and wished he hadn’t rushed back from Germany, driven by his youthful aspiration of saving his beloved China. This country was a hopeless quagmire and an endless nightmare. “It’s an eternal heartache!” he declared. He should have gone to Italy or Switzerland or to an eastern European country, since with a medical degree from a top German university he could practice anywhere. In short, he claimed that he was a weakling, plus an idiot, who had put himself at the enemy’s disposal. No wonder some people viewed him as a traitor.

His ravings pained my heart because I was reminded of my son. Haowen must have moments of despair like this; he might even feel worse, for he was actually serving in the Japanese army. Soon Dr. Chu calmed down and resumed speaking with the others in an amiable voice. When dinner was over, he refused to let Big Liu accompany him home. He said, “No Japs in town dare stop me.”

32

IN LATE DECEMBER we heard from Haowen again. A photograph enclosed in the letter showed that Mitsuko had given birth to a baby, so we now had a grandson who carried our family’s name. I had mixed feelings, though Yaoping was happy and even reminisced about his student days in Japan, of which he still had fond memories. He used to say that a Japanese woman could make a good wife. I had nothing against our daughter-in-law, who seemed to be a fine girl, but I was unsure if she and Haowen, now plus a baby, would have a happy life together. The hostility between the two countries would cast a long shadow on their marriage.

On the back of the photo my son had inscribed “Mitsuko and Shin.” The baby had Haowen’s round eyes and wide nose, not his mother’s smooth cheeks and tapered eyes. Mitsuko’s egg-shaped face had the calm and mild expression of an older woman, someone who already had a bunch of children. As I was observing her, her mouth seemed to be moving, saying something I couldn’t understand. I put down the picture, my eyes misty.

Yaoping and I talked about whether to ask Haowen for Mitsuko’s address so we could write to her, but we decided not to contact her directly while the war was still going on. That might get our family, and perhaps hers as well, into hot water. Someday we might go to Japan to see our grandson if he and his mother couldn’t come to visit us. Ideally, Haowen would be able to bring his wife and son back to China. But for the time being we kept the matter secret. If people knew of it, our family would be disgraced.

I showed the photograph to nobody but Minnie. “What a nice picture,” she said. “Mother and son look so content. What does Mitsuko do for a living?”

“She teaches primary school.”

“If I were you, I’d go see them right away.”

“Minnie, you’re American, but few Chinese can do that while the war is going on. Please don’t reveal my family’s Japanese relations to anyone, okay?”

“Sure, I’ll keep my lips zipped.”

We went on to talk about the three teenage girls — Meiyan and two classmates of hers — who had just run away, claiming that they wanted to join the resistance force in some interior region. Our staffers intercepted them at the train station in Hsia Gwan, because they didn’t have the travel papers necessary for purchasing tickets and were stranded there. I reprimanded the girls and wanted to make them do kitchen duty for a week, which Big Liu supported, but Minnie intervened, saying they had to take the finals they had missed. She gave them a few days to review their lessons.

Meiyan came to our home to see Liya that evening, to return the ten yuan she had borrowed from her for the secret journey. They were friends now, but Meiyan would remain reticent in my presence, so I stayed in the kitchen feeding Fanfan while listening in on the two of them in the sitting room.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you my plan,” Meiyan said. “I was afraid your mom would let my dad know.”

“No big deal,” Liya replied. “If I didn’t have a child, I might run away too.”

“Where would you like to go? To join your husband?”

“I have no clue where he is. I just want to join our army.”

“Which one — the Nationalists or the Communists?”

“It makes no difference as long as I can fight the Japanese. They killed my baby, and I still see my daughter now and then.” Liya believed that the lost baby had been a girl, perhaps because she’d never had morning sickness during the pregnancy.

“I’m glad you’re not mad at me.”

“Where were you three headed?”

“We just planned to go upriver. We really didn’t have a concrete destination in mind.”

“Didn’t you want to join the resistance force?” asked Liya.

“We did, but to be honest, I wouldn’t mind settling down in a peaceful place where nobody knows me. I want to live a quiet life too.”

“Where can you find a place like that now?”

“That’s the problem — the only option left is to join the resistance. If there were a convent that’s intact, I wouldn’t mind going there.”

“Come on, don’t you want to find a good man and have a family?”

“Not until we drive the Japanese out of our country.”

I mulled over their conversation, which changed my impression of Meiyan somewhat. I used to think she was just a hothead, but now I could see that she was also longing for a normal life.

SOON AFTER CHRISTMAS, a former schoolmate of Yaoping’s back in Japan came to see him. The man was tall and well turned out, wearing a business suit and patent-leather shoes. He looked like a middle-aged dandy, his hair pomaded shiny and his face somewhat bloated, but he was agreeable, spoke amiably with a northeastern accent, and called me sister-in-law. He used a long umbrella as a walking stick. Yaoping took him into our inner room, where they talked over tea and spiced sunflower seeds for hours, deep into the night. Now and then I went in with the teakettle and refilled the pot for them. I didn’t go to bed but instead drifted off in a chair in the sitting room. Their voices rose and fell; at times they seemed to be arguing.

After the man left, my husband became restless, pacing the floor and smoking his pipe. He let out a long sigh and shook his head.

“What did he want?” I asked Yaoping about the visitor.

“They’re preparing to establish a new national government, and he asked me to join them.”

“So they offered you a job?”

“Yes.”

“In what office?”

“The Ministry of Culture or the Ministry of Education.”

“Doing what?”

“A vice minister.”

“That’s big!”

“I know. Obviously they’ve run out of candidates for the top jobs. Under normal circumstances no one would think of me for a position like that. But I mustn’t serve in a puppet government. That would be treason and no one would forgive me for that. Imagine what would happen to me if China wins the war.”

“Do you believe we will win?”

“I’m not sure, but the uncertainty doesn’t justify any official role in a puppet government. I cannot ruin our family’s name that way. Besides, our son’s already in the Japanese clutches.”

“I agree. Did you decline the offer?”

“Of course not. I couldn’t turn it down flatly. That would be suicidal, so I told him I would seriously consider the offer. The man talked at length about saving our country by taking a roundabout path.”

“What does that mean?”

“He said we should cooperate with the Japanese so that we could at least prevent some parts of China from being totally destroyed and annexed. I couldn’t contradict him.”

“That kind of talk is based on the assumption that Japan will win the war.”

“True, but what should I do?”

“When are you supposed to give him an answer?”

“In three days.”

“Can’t you hide somewhere? Say, go to Searle’s or Lewis’s?”

“Well, the national puppet government will be established here, so if they find out I’m still in town, they’ll never leave me alone. Heavens, it looks like I can’t stay here anymore.”

I was glad Yaoping wasn’t swayed by the temptation, though he used to talk a lot about how he liked Japan, even Japanese things (he had once owned a Seiko pocket watch with a compass on the inner side of the copper lid). But this wasn’t just a matter of his personal integrity or preserving our family’s name. If he served in the prospective puppet government, he might be killed by the underground partisans. Even if they didn’t finish him off, he would eventually be punished by the Nationalists or the Communists. He would become a public enemy and our family would suffer on his account.

Having talked for hours, we decided that he should leave for Sichuan to join his university there. We considered whether all of us should go with him, but thought that this would attract too much attention. Besides, I could not abandon my job here. I urged him to set off without delay.

The next evening he left for Cow’s Head Hill in the south, where he could stay with a friend temporarily. He took along a handbag and a duffel stuffed with half a dozen books and two changes of clothes. Having no travel permit, he would walk and hitchhike to get out of the areas occupied by the Japanese, and then eventually take a boat or train inland. I gave him all the cash we had, about eighty yuan, and told him not to drink too much tea, which might aggravate his arthritis. Before getting on the rickshaw, he hugged me, Liya, and Fanfan, saying he would miss us terribly. Then he climbed into the vehicle, waving at us. We watched his lean face blurring in the dark until it vanished.

33

RUTH CHESTER WROTE BACK, saying they’d found a place in Shanghai for the five blind girls. We were delighted, and Minnie asked Rulian to send the girls there. The blind girls were reluctant to leave, but we assured them that they’d be better educated and better cared for in the specialized school. Better yet, Shanghai was safer than Nanjing. Minnie gave them each three yuan; the cash had been donated by a Japanese officer, Major Toshikawa, who had visited Jinling twice and was moved by the classes, saying that his daughter was going to a Christian school in Kobe. We didn’t tell the girls, or anyone else, where the money was from, but the five recipients were happy.

On the afternoon of January 4, we set out for the Hsia Gwan station in a large car Minnie had borrowed from Lewis. She was at the wheel. I always admired her ability to do things most Chinese women couldn’t do: driving, cycling, playing ball games, keeping a dog, hiking. When we had pulled onto Ninghai Road, I reminded Minnie, “Remember when you said you’d teach me to drive?”

“I haven’t forgotten. Of course I’ll do that. When the war’s over, I’ll build my own house here and buy myself a little car.”

I was pleased to hear that. If only I could be as capable as she. A lot of people here regarded her as “a real man,” respecting her stately physique and her ability as a leader.

When we had passed Fujian Road and were approaching Yijiang Gate, we saw more houses leveled — the area was more desolate than it had been the previous winter. The site of the former Communications Ministry was now an immense compound fenced by barbwire, in which more than a dozen huge shacks stood as storehouses for military supplies. Along the way most of the deserted buildings had been torn down, the bricks and wood piled up ready to be shipped away. But the area near the train station was alive with people. Peddlers were hawking goods, while small shops lined the streets, offering soft drinks, fruit, snacks, cigarettes, and liquor. A handful of scalpers hung around the station, a three-story white building topped with a cupola and a spire, and were waving tickets at passersby.

All the trains ran on Tokyo time now, an hour behind China time. Inside the hall of the station, people were standing in two lines for tickets. One was short and only for Japanese passengers, while the other was long, with more than one hundred Chinese people waiting. At its end was Rulian. But the wicket at the head of the long line remained shut, and only the short line was moving. Near us stood a slim Japanese clerk in a blue uniform and a cap with a shiny black peak. We worried that Rulian and the girls might miss the train. Minnie went up to the man and said, “See those words?” She pointed at the slogan pasted above the front door, which declared in big characters: WE MUST UNITE TO BUILD A PROSPEROUS EAST ASIA!

The clerk nodded without speaking. Minnie continued, “Don’t you think the way you’re treating these Chinese passengers may contravene Japan’s policy and undermine the union of East Asia?”

He grinned knowingly, showing his tobacco-stained teeth, but he still said nothing. Then he slowly sauntered back into the office, and a minute later the other wicket opened, selling tickets to the Chinese in line.

Outside the windows a train pulled in, shuddering a little as it came to a stop and disgorged hundreds of passengers. The new arrivals didn’t have to wash their hands in Lysol or rinse their mouths with disinfectant anymore, and the guards frisked only two young men as they exited. Life was returning to normal, though the police still checked everyone’s papers.

Rulian came back with six train tickets and two platform tickets, and together we led the blind girls out of the hall. After checking in their baggage, we reached track 2; at the west end of the platform, about four hundred Japanese soldiers were lounging around, some lying on stretchers and some sitting on the ground paved with concrete slabs. A few men flailed their arms, groaning and shouting. Twenty or so young Japanese women — some in their late teens — moved among them, handing out rice cakes and water in canteens. A few fed the soldiers who were all bandaged up. Beyond them stood a sleeping car, in which some wounded officers were smoking and drinking tea, while others played cards. The windows of the car were partly fogged — it must be warm in there. Although the wounded men on the platform were cared for, to me they still looked like bundles of garbage scattered around in the glaring sunlight. The scene reminded me of the wounded Chinese soldiers I’d seen here just over a year ago. What a different sight this was. Yet these men were in some fashion similar to those Chinese men abandoned by their generals. Every one of them looked miserable, wasted, and aged.

Ahead of the sleeper for the officers stood three flatcars loaded with vehicles — trucks, sedans, ambulances, steamrollers, jeeps — waiting to be shipped to Japan. Now I understood why the Japanese confiscated automobiles driven by the Chinese.

The train to Shanghai came, and Rulian and the five blind girls got onto the third car. A window went up, through which they waved at us. Minnie stepped closer and said to them, “Take good care.”

“We’ll miss you,” one of the girls said, a catch in her voice.

I stepped over and touched their hands too. A locomotive whistled, panting heavily and crawling into the station on the other track. Before we could say more, a conductor shut the door and latched it with a clank; their train let out a long guttural hiss and a puff of vapor, then pulled away. Four hands, three small and one larger, reached out the window, waving. Minnie blew a kiss to them and I followed suit.

On our way back, we were drawn aside at Yijiang Gate because Minnie didn’t have her cholera certificate; without the papers, newcomers were not allowed to enter the city. An officer took her to a cabin nearby and ordered her to receive an inoculation. She protested, insisting that she was not a new arrival and had accidentally left her medical papers at her home inside the city. “Look,” she said to the man with a pimpled face, “I don’t have any baggage in my car. I’m living here, a resident of Nanjing.” After she argued for five minutes or so, he let her go without receiving the injection. He warned her that from now on she must carry all her vaccination certificates when she passed the city gates.

34

THE MIDDLE SCHOOLERS had left campus for the winter break. Now our staff and faculty could relax a little. Donna and Alice had gone to Shanghai for vacation. Plumer Mills left Nanjing a week after the New Year. With the International Relief Committee disbanded, he felt he was no longer needed here. Plumer had told us that in Shanghai he would look for a way to get the six IRC men out of prison. Minnie asked him to include Yulan in the group as well, and he agreed, though he said he was still unsure how to make her fit in. Every day Minnie checked the mail, hoping Plumer had made progress. She had confided to me that from now on she would lump Yulan with the six IRC men whenever we appealed to the Japanese for their release. I thought this might be a productive move to get the madwoman out of incarceration. Despite lack of word from Plumer, we were positive that he’d been working hard on the case. He was a fine man, honest and trustworthy.

Again the full moon was waning, the sky getting darker night by night. In the third week of January Mrs. Dennison’s Christmas gifts for the staff and faculty arrived, in a large parcel weighing more than eighty pounds. Every year the old woman would spend at least one hundred yuan on presents for the employees on campus — every one of us would get something from her, including the cooks and janitors. Like Minnie, she spoke fluent Mandarin, understood us Chinese, and even observed our customs. Both women had lived in China for decades, long enough for some Chineseness to have entered their bones. Yet unlike the founding president, Minnie would give presents only to a few friends at the Spring Festival. She meant to avoid competing with the old woman, knowing that too many gifts from the school leaders might raise expectations too high among the employees. She had asked me what present I’d like, and I said I wanted her to join my family for dinner on the Spring Festival’s Eve, as my husband and son were away. She agreed to come.

Two days after Mrs. Dennison’s presents arrived, the staff and faculty gathered at the South Hill Residence in the evening, and Minnie gave us a party at which she handed out the gifts. There were tins of gunpowder tea, bags of raisins and pistachios, zippered Bibles in a bilingual edition, cigarillos, candied fruits, dried pork floss, and even packs of firecrackers for some people’s children and grandchildren, but the two fresh mangoes for Minnie were already black and no longer edible. Yet she was pleased to receive a Quaker calendar again.

“What a pity. I’ve never tasted a mango,” said Luhai, who got a paisley tie.

Minnie smiled and told him, “I’ll remember to get you some one of these days.”

I received a sweater and also a flowered neckerchief for Liya and a pack of sesame toffee for Fanfan. Mrs. Dennison had written the recipients’ names on most of the gifts, so it was easy for us to distribute them. The old president was always precise about everything, especially about small favors.

Big Liu raised a double-bang firecracker and said, “Good heavens, who dares to set off this rascal nowadays? The Japanese would come and search for firearms for sure.”

That cracked people up. Everyone was happy, and the room grew noisy and hazy with tobacco smoke.

Minnie read Mrs. Dennison’s letter to us. The former president feared that the presents might arrive late, so we should take them as gifts for both Christmas and the Spring Festival, which would fall on February 19, still a month away. These presents embodied her thanks to every one of us who had worked so hard at Jinling. She also said she would join us soon.