Nanjing Requiem

35

MRS. DENNISON CAME BACK to Jinling in mid-March 1939. With her was Aifeng Yang, who served as her assistant and had taught extensively at the college, including horticulture, children’s education, and domestic hygiene. Minnie gave them a welcome-home party, attended by all the faculty and staff. People were excited to see Mrs. Dennison again.

Officially the old woman was just an adviser at our college, but she thought of the college as hers. Already sixty-nine, she was healthy and in good shape despite her grizzled flaxen hair and a little stoop due to chronic back pain. She looked much thinner than before. When she spoke to you at length, she’d gesticulate unceasingly, her longish face would begin adopting an expression between smiling and crying, and her tawny eyes would turn fiery. Yet most of the time she looked miserable, as if something unfortunate had just happened to her. She told us that many wealthy families in the States that used to donate to Jinling had become reluctant to give on account of our school’s uncertain future, so she was resolved to restore the college and to attract American donations again.

The next morning I took her around campus. We went to the poultry center, where Rulian enthusiastically greeted Mrs. Dennison, who had once taught her. The old woman was satisfied to see that Rulian still conducted experiments and to hear that some hens could lay two eggs a day. Imagine what an extraordinary contribution this project would make to China’s larder if a third of the hens in our country were that productive! Suddenly a chicken broke out cackling. “That must be Matchmaker,” Rulian said, rolling her almond-shaped eyes, and went into the shack of coops. She had named every bird in her charge. Matchmaker, a black pullet, often brought other young hens to roosters.

In a flash Rulian came back with a huge brown egg. “See, this hen often lays a double-yolk thing.” She showed it to Mrs. Dennison.

The old woman held it with both hands. “Oh dear, it’s still warm.”

“You can have it,” Rulian said.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, a double-yolk egg can’t hatch.”

Mrs. Dennison took out a linen handkerchief and wrapped it around the egg. Rulian found a pastry box and handed it to her. “This is good,” the old woman said, putting the bundle into the small paperboard container.

We went to the gardens in the back of campus, where the damage left by the refugees was still visible, although the trees were all leafing and some shrubs were fluffy with wet blossoms. After looking through various parts of the college, the old woman was not pleased, except with the two-hundred-yard macadam road that ran through the expanse between the front gate and the quadrangle — Minnie had gotten it paved for only one-third of the regular price.

“This still looks like a refugee camp,” Mrs. Dennison said, furrowing her brow.

I didn’t reply, knowing she must dislike the large number of poor students in the Homecraft School. We were standing on the short bridge over the creek that meandered from the pond behind the Library Building to the pond beside Ninghai Road, near the Faculty Residence. Below us a flock of white ducks paddled by, all in silence. In the bushes nearby, orioles were twittering merrily as if crazed with spring joy, but in the south a squadron of bombers was droning, now visible and now lost in the clouds billowing above a wooded hill. Some city, such as Ningbo or Fuzhou, would be bombed today.

“We must bring the college back,” Mrs. Dennison said, and shook her head. Her face was slightly gray while her eyes glazed with pain and anger.

“Yes, we must,” I echoed.

“Damn the Japanese — they destroyed everything.”

“Do you think they’ll let us restore the college, given their anti-Christian policy?”

She gave a deep sigh. “I don’t care. I just want Jinling to be what it was.”

Minnie had assigned Mrs. Dennison the large provost’s office. For the time being, the old woman and Aifeng lived at the South Hill Residence, in a five-room apartment on the first floor. They both liked the arrangement. Mrs. Dennison didn’t teach, but Aifeng started a course in child guidance in the Homecraft School. Many students who were mothers wondered how this unmarried woman with a lithe figure, a flat belly, and smiling eyes could teach them childcare and child welfare, but after a few classes they were all eager to listen to her, amazed that she knew so much about the subject. I liked Aifeng, who was easygoing and didn’t gossip.

Minnie sent Alice to the U.S. embassy to fetch Mrs. Dennison’s wedding silver. The large portmanteau, recovered by a Russian diver from the sunken Panay, was misshapen and the silver pieces were tarnished, but the old woman wasn’t upset and merely said, “I’ll sell the whole set if someone offers a good price. Our college needs funds anyway.”

I admired her largesse. Mrs. Dennison praised Minnie for having our college’s most important documents duplicated before sending them away, particularly those that were ruined in the water-damaged portmanteau. I was glad that the two women seemed to be getting along.

Then, a week later, the old woman came down with an illness no doctor could diagnose. I was worried that she might have had a stroke, for she suffered some kind of emotional incontinence: she was unable to control her tears and laughter even in front of visitors. According to Aifeng, Mrs. Dennison was heartbroken about the condition of our college, and when alone, she couldn’t help sighing and often wept. She confessed to Aifeng, “Even when my husband died, I didn’t feel so sad. It’s like my life is over.” She lay in bed most of the time and took her meals in her bedroom. We all knew she had always wanted Jinling to be the number one women’s college in China. From the outset she had emphasized, “We aspire to become China’s Wellesley.” That had pleased Madame Chiang, who had graduated from Wellesley, so much that the first lady, together with her two sisters and in memory of their mother, donated the funds for a dormitory building and the Practice Hall, both of which were built under Minnie’s supervision.

Meanwhile, Minnie received word from Plumer Mills that the six IRC men might be released from prison soon, though there was no progress in Yulan’s case. In his letter Plumer wrote that the madwoman was classified as a mental patient, so the Japanese would not consider releasing her on the basis that she might disrupt public order. Plumer said farewell to us, as he was about to leave for the States.

Minnie and I went to see Yulan again. The young woman looked sickly and six or seven years older than her age; evidently they wouldn’t let her out for fresh air and sunlight. She was now kept in a small room with a teenage girl, who was also demented. They each had a cot, and with permission, visitors could go in and see them. Minnie handed Yulan a bag of dried persimmons, which the madwoman tore open with her teeth. She took a bite of the sugar-frosted fruit, and said, “Wow, this is amazing! I haven’t tasted anything like this in ages.” Her elongated eyes glittered, and her chin moved from side to side as she munched. In spite of the warm weather, she still wore Minnie’s light woolen coat, though its fur collar was gone. What happened to the jacket we brought her last time? I wondered, but didn’t let the question out.

“I’m glad you like it,” Minnie said about the fruit, seated on the only stool in the room while I was sitting on the other girl’s cot.

Yulan asked her ward mate, “Little Catty, d’you want some?”

“No, I eat fresh fruit only,” the teenager muttered, and kept picking her ear with a long matchstick.

“Actually she only eats rice, not even vegetables,” Yulan told Minnie. “Sometimes she won’t eat for two or three days in a row, so they have to tie her up and force-feed her.”

“What happened to her?” Minnie asked.

“She’s a mental case. The Japs killed her folks in front of her and stabbed her in the neck.” Indeed, on the girl’s nape was a purple scar that still looked raw.

Minnie asked Little Catty, “Do you want me to bring you something when I come next time?”

“Bring me a knife, a long sharp knife,” the girl said through her teeth, her eyes glinting.

“See, see, she’s a crackpot,” Yulan cried. “But I also could use a big knife so no man will dare to come close to me.”

After promising Yulan that we would come to see her again and bring her another jacket and a dress, we left. Stepping out of the doorway, for some reason Minnie said, “I wish we could set this building on fire so in the middle of the mayhem, we could smuggle Yulan and Little Catty out of here.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said.

She grinned and the corners of her mouth crinkled a bit.

We stopped by Tianhua Orphanage to see Monica, who welcomed us effusively, but her cheeks were flushed, her blond hair thinner than before and the rings under her eyes darker. She confessed that she had tuberculosis; yet she smiled, saying, “If God wants me back, I’m ready — I’m willing to go anytime.” She spoke as though longing for relief, dabbing her mouth with a hand towel whenever she coughed.

I wondered whether it was appropriate for Monica to stay with the children. Wouldn’t she spread the germs and give them the disease? The Japanese were obsessed with sanitation and hygiene — why wouldn’t they intervene in this case? Well, to them, these babies must be no more than bastards.

We didn’t touch the tea a nurse had poured for us, but chatted with Monica for a good while. The orphanage kept fewer children now, seventeen in total; eleven of them couldn’t walk or talk yet. They all looked undernourished, and some stared at the grown-ups with dumb, unblinking eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were retarded.

“This boy’s father is Japanese,” Monica told us, pointing at a bony baby whose face was a little shriveled.

“You mean his mother threw him away?” Minnie asked in surprise.

“Yes, some Chinese women, especially the unmarried ones, are too ashamed to keep babies fathered by Japanese soldiers.”

“I don’t blame them, but it’s a sin to abandon innocent children.”

Monica heaved a sigh. “We have eight babies of mixed blood.”

“I can’t tell a Chinese baby from a Japanese baby,” Minnie said.

“Neither can I,” I put in.

“It’s hard to differentiate them indeed,” Monica told us. “Five of them were given to us by their mothers, and three were brought over by a Chinese policeman, who picked them up at the doorstep of a temple.”

“What happened to those older orphans?” Minnie asked.

“You mean those six- and seven-year-olds?”

“Yes.”

“They were sent to our mission school in Changsha.”

Minnie’s face brightened. “Monica, you’ve been doing an angel’s work.”

“You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to?” The nun smiled, her deep-set eyes gleamed, and her gaunt face wrinkled a bit but was calm. “Be careful. The Japanese and their flunkies hate you. They don’t want Christianity to take root and flourish in China.”

“I’ll try not to be afraid,” Minnie said.

“Right, to be afraid is not a way of living. If the soul lives forever, death is no more than a stage of life and we have nothing to fear.”

“You’re right.”

I was impressed by Monica’s remarks. The nun was in her late thirties at most but exuded so much serenity that the orphanage, shabby as it was, reminded me of an oasis in tumbling waves.

Back on campus, I filled a glass jar with cod-liver oil. I was in charge of two large barrels of it, given to us by John Magee long ago, and every student at Jinling had been taking a teaspoon of the oil a day since last winter, as Robert Wilson had instructed after he’d examined some of the girls. Minnie dispatched Ban to deliver the cod-liver oil to Monica with a note saying she needed to take it every day.

36

MY HUSBAND HAD WRITTEN me that he had left Sichuan for Kunming and joined the faculty of the National Southwest Associated University. He couldn’t write regularly, because he was afraid those who wanted him to serve in the puppet government might find out his whereabouts and mistreat us here. As long as he was safe, Liya and I could feel at ease. My son-in-law, Wanmu, also wrote. He’d been moving around a lot with his intelligence unit but was well and devoted to fighting the Japanese. He missed his wife and son but couldn’t possibly come back to see them. Liya sometimes got depressed and cried at night, though during the day she always looked normal and did what she was supposed to do. She once confessed to me that she had often dreamed of Wanmu and was worried that they might never be together again. What if he hit it off with another woman? she asked me. Nowadays the servicemen tended to live an unrestrained life, grasping at every small pleasure that came their way, because they might be killed at any time. I told Liya to scrap such silly thoughts. Wanmu was a dependable man, though I had never liked him that much. He was capable but somewhat nondescript, with a curved scar beside his nose. Liya could have done better than accepting his proposal. Yet I was certain he’d take good care of his family; that’s why I agreed to her marrying him.

To my astonishment, I received a letter from Mitsuko in late March. It contained a photograph and a piece of paper stamped with a baby’s handprints and footprints in black ink. Those must be Shin’s. Apparently Mitsuko didn’t know enough Chinese to write a note. The photo showed Shin smiling, with his eyes glittering a little and his mouth widening. He looked happy and healthy. On the back of the picture his mother penned: “Shin, 100 days.” Seeing those words, I couldn’t help my tears. If only I could hold him.

At night after Fanfan went to sleep, Liya and I sat in our large bed leaning against each other and talked about Mitsuko and Shin. I wondered if we should write to them. “Mom, Mitsuko probably can’t read Chinese,” Liya said. “Maybe we should send her something instead.”

“But what can we send?” I thought aloud. Besides the difficulty in coming by something nice, I wasn’t sure that the international mail was reliable.

We stuck to our former decision not to write Mitsuko, because we still had to keep our Japanese relations secret here. If people knew about Haowen’s Japanese wife and child, they might find out where he was and then condemn us as a traitor’s family. As long as the war was going on, we’d better not exchange letters with Mitsuko. On the other hand, I felt uneasy just ignoring her.

“Do you think you can accept Mitsuko as a member of our family?” I asked Liya.

“She’s Shin’s mother, so we may not have a choice.”

I liked her answer. Liya had her father’s head, acute and rational. “Plus Haowen loves her,” I said.

“I hope I can have a Chinese sister-in-law, though.” Her pointy chin jutted aside while her short nose twitched.

“You mean Haowen should have a second wife?” I had never liked the custom of polygamy, which was still practiced.

Liya smiled, displaying an eyetooth. “I don’t know. We’re in the middle of a war and anything can happen.” She drew the toweling coverlet up to Fanfan’s chin and then pulled the string to turn off the light.

“Sleep tight,” I said.

Outside the latticed window an owl was hooting. I thought about Liya’s words. What she’d said about a Chinese sister-in-law could be a possibility, but that should be up to Haowen and Mitsuko. According to what I knew about her, she was a good girl and a loving mother. If only I could get to know her. I would try to persuade her to come to live here after the war.

I SHARED my grandson’s new photograph with Minnie. She observed him carefully and told me, “He has your mouth.”

“Liya said the same.”

“If I were you, I’d go to Tokyo this summer.”

“I can’t get travel papers,” I said, without telling her that I couldn’t afford such a trip either. We used to have a few valuable paintings, but the Japanese soldiers had made off with them, and there was nothing else I could sell to raise the money.

“What are you going to do, then?” She put her elbow on the glass desktop and looked me in the face, her eyes clear and warm.

“I’ve no idea.” I sighed.

“Can’t you write to Mitsuko?”

“She doesn’t know Chinese, Haowen told me. If my husband were home, he could write to her in Japanese, but I don’t think it’s safe to get in touch with her at this time.”

“Why not? She’s your family, isn’t she?”

“You know how crazy people could get here if they knew we have Japanese relations. We have to be very cautious.”

“Oh, I see. Everything becomes complicated when it happens in China. But if you’re afraid of using your own address, you can use mine and let Mitsuko send her letters to my care. I’ll pass them on to you.”

“That’s a wonderful idea. It’s so kind of you, Minnie. When Yaoping’s back, we might need your help with the letters that way. Thank you in advance.”

“No problem. Anything I can do, just let me know.”

I dared not write to Mitsuko in Chinese, because she’d have to ask someone to translate such a letter and then our family’s connection with Japan would become known. After that conversation with Minnie, I felt even closer to her. I knew that Mrs. Dennison disapproved of her, but I’d do anything to help my friend.

37

TWO WEEKS LATER, Mrs. Dennison, having recuperated, offered to keep the books for Jinling. Minnie was pleased, because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t balance the accounts. Mrs. Dennison was far better at managing money than Minnie. Yet I grew somewhat apprehensive and wondered why the old woman was so eager to take over the treasury. This could be a step toward her taking full control of the college. As a matter of fact, she had always been the real power here, because the donations we got from the States came by and large through her hands. In addition, most of the deans and department heads of our college had been her students.

I offered to take Mrs. Dennison downtown, as ever since she’d gotten back she’d been saying that she would love such a trip. She welcomed my idea but preferred a walk to a rickshaw. We set out for the Confucius Temple in the former amusement district in the southern part of the city, each carrying a shoulder bag printed with JINLING WOMEN’S COLLEGE. She was wearing a long silk dress, her arms spattered with freckles. I was amazed that she was in summer clothes because it wasn’t that warm yet. I had on a vest and poplin slacks. The moment we stepped out the front gate, we came face-to-face with a crowd — more than one hundred women were kneeling there, all poor and underfed. Minnie was standing in front of them. They were crying out, “The Goddess of Mercy, help us! Help us, please!”

“Please get up,” Minnie shouted. “Get up, all of you.”

“Take pity on us, the Goddess of Mercy!”

“Give us some work to do!”

“Help us, please!”

“Get up, all of you get up!” Minnie shouted again.

None of them obeyed and all kept begging her, a few even kowtowing.

“Please get to your feet so we can talk,” she said loudly, “or I’ll go back to my office.”

At last some of them rose and a few stepped closer. “What’s this about?” Mrs. Dennison asked.

“I don’t have the foggiest idea,” I answered.

Minnie said to the women at the front of the crowd, “Why are you doing this?”

“Principal Vautrin, aren’t you gonna open a shoe factory?” asked a middle-aged woman wearing puttees.

“Who told you that? We can hardly continue with our current programs.”

“Please hire some of us, Principal,” a small woman begged. “We all have hungry kids to feed.”

“There’s no principal here,” Mrs. Dennison said. “We’re a college that has only a president.”

The women looked baffled, having no idea about the difference between a president and a principal. Minnie told them, “Mrs. Dennison is right. Don’t call me that again. Just call me Miss Hua, all right? We have no plan for any factory. What you heard is a rumor.”

Seeing that they were still unconvinced, Minnie added, “If a factory opens here in the near future, you all can call me a liar. We’re a college. We’re not supposed to run a factory. Understood?”

Some of the women turned, starting to move away. Several came over to say hello to Minnie, while Mrs. Dennison stood at a distance from them. She kept glancing their way with a frown, her face colored in blotches.

Mrs. Dennison and I continued on to Ninghai Road, which the locals called Christian Way for its superb quality. We were very proud of this road, which the city had built especially for our college in 1921, when Jinling was under construction. The private contractor for the campus buildings, Ah Hong, had distrusted the official team of engineers and workmen, afraid that the foundation they were to lay for this street might not be firm enough for his trucks, so he turned to Minnie. She read every word on road construction in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and gave detailed directives, from the type of gravel to the use of a steamroller instead of stone rollers pulled by men. As a result, this road, costing about ten times as much as the one originally planned, was still intact, whereas other roads built at around the same time had fallen apart within two or three years and had had to be repaved.

Mrs. Dennison and I headed south toward the Zhan Yuan Garden area, where the Confucius Temple stood. She seemed unhappy about the incident that had just taken place at Jinling’s front entrance, which showed that the Homecraft School might have given these women the wrong impression, since it produced soaps, candles, towels, and umbrellas. The old woman remained silent, which made me uncomfortable. I knew Minnie must have felt embarrassed by the poor women calling her the Goddess of Mercy. To Mrs. Dennison, that must have smacked of idolatry.

As we walked along Zhongzheng Road, the old woman said finally, “Minnie is outrageous. She shouldn’t have indulged in that kind of personality cult.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t like it at all,” I ventured. “Those women embarrassed her.”

“She ought to feel abashed. Nobody alive should be dubbed a goddess.” Her upper lip puckered as she spoke.

I didn’t know how to continue and turned reticent again, feeling uneasy because I hadn’t told Minnie about this downtown trip with Mrs. Dennison. Along the street I noticed that some Japanese stores had closed, perhaps because business was bad — their goods were too expensive and couldn’t be shipped out to the countryside. I’d heard that some Japanese shop owners and restaurateurs had left Nanjing. Many who remained followed the practice common in Manchuria of joining some Chinese as business partners or acting as their protectors or liaisons so as to profit without investing any capital.

We saw a lot of peddlers and small stores, some even selling looted objets d’art — paintings, calligraphy scrolls, marble sculptures, antique bronzes. Mrs. Dennison could not believe her ears when a vendor asked only two yuan for a pair of small Ming vases. She examined the vessels for a long time, turning them this way and that, but finally put them down, perhaps reluctant to let me see her buy purloined things. I told her, “Nowadays only food is expensive.” Indeed, a bony capon sold for two yuan as well.

The area around the Confucius Temple had again become a marketplace, bustling with people, wheelbarrows, panniered donkeys, and carts drawn by animals. On both sides of the streets a number of buildings remained roofless, some with the top stories gone, but shops were open on the ground floors. There were restaurants, grocery stores, teahouses, opium dens, barbershops, pet stores full of birdcages and aquariums, herbal pharmacies, pawnshops, and even a bathhouse. Anywhere you turned, vendors would shout their wares in singsongy voices. At a street corner a clutch of people stood before a wide bulletin board; today’s newspapers had been tacked to it for those who couldn’t afford to buy one. Beyond the board, the narrow Chinhuai River flowed almost invisibly, its greenish water wrinkled a little by a breeze. On the opposite bank, a few middle-aged women were beating laundry on flat rocks with wooden paddles. A red-roofed boat came through a bridge arch, and on it two gentlemen were playing chess while a teenage boy at the stern rowed with a scull.

In a small alley, its entrance decked with two strings of tiny sun-disk flags, I noticed a number of brothels, all on the top floors with balconies, some of which, as the photos on their windows showed, employed women from Japan as well. The Japanese prostitutes, though mostly in their thirties and forties, charged twice as much as the Chinese women doing the same work and fifty percent more than the Korean prostitutes. I’d heard of such places but had not expected to see them here. It was Jimmy Pan, the most active official in the puppet municipality, who’d been instrumental in setting up these bordellos. In private the Chinese often argued about his role in this matter, some saying that Jimmy had done the city a service by finding a way to protect the good honest women, while others maintained that he’d sold his soul to the devil and become the number one traitor here. Personally, I believed he should be punished for helping to set up the brothels. A poster once appeared on the city wall announcing that he would be beheaded as soon as our army came back and retook Nanjing. Jimmy Pan had also been a board member of the former International Relief Committee and was actively involved in charity work. He was one of the few officials whom the foreigners could trust. To be fair, he was at most a smalltime traitor, similar to many of the officials in the municipality; the major traitors were those who had been collaborating with the Japanese to form a national puppet government, which was still in the making. Yet however a traitor, minor or major, might try to justify himself, the Nationalists had issued a clear, indisputable definition of treason: insofar as the enemy’s army occupies the land of China, whoever works for them is a traitor.

By now Mrs. Dennison had recovered from the scene she had witnessed with Minnie, saying, “Amazing, you Chinese can survive anything.”

“Just a year ago,” I said, “everything here lay in ruins. Every house was gutted and had lost its roof, and many were burned down. Who could have imagined that this district would come back to life so soon?” As I was speaking, anger again surged in me. I had lived in Nanjing long enough to consider it my new hometown.

“I guess,” Mrs. Dennison went on, “this city was destroyed time and again in history, so people here must be accustomed to all sorts of devastations.”

“True, that may explain why we can survive a catastrophe like this Japanese occupation.”

The Confucius Temple had been repainted crimson, and even the huge stone lions in front of it and the placards hanging beside its doors had been washed clean. The gateway, with its flying eaves and colored tiles, was decorated with two rows of lanterns, each printed with the character HAPPINESS, below which people hustled to and fro. The Japanese seemed to mean to preserve this shrine and restore its popularity.

We entered a stationery store on the waterside to see if there was something we could buy for the college. The owner, a fleshy-faced man with a hairy mole on the wing of his broad nose, said delightedly, “Welcome to this hovel. President Dennison, I’m so happy to see you back.” He nodded at her, beaming.

“Nanjing’s home,” she said. “I’ve nowhere else to go.”

She was so pleased by his words that she bought a pack of Dearer Than Gold ink sticks.

I knew she couldn’t use a writing brush, so she had probably purchased them as a present.

We took a rickshaw back. When we arrived at Jinling, dinner was already over at the dining hall, so we had chicken noodles at my home. After the meal, we drank pu-erh tea while Liya, who knew English, since she had attended a missionary school, read an article in the North China Daily News out loud. It reported that the Japanese army had just captured Guling, a hill-encircled resort town in Jiangxi Province, where foreigners and Chinese officials used to flock to escape the summer heat, though it was unclear how many men our army had lost this time. The Japanese claimed that they had eliminated all five thousand defenders, but that was unlikely, because the Nationalist troops were already familiar with the Japanese tactics and knew how to avoid annihilation.

Mrs. Dennison thanked me for a wonderful afternoon and evening. I was glad but unsure if this meant she would now treat me better. If Dr. Wu were around, she could mediate between the old president and Minnie, whom she was fond of, but I was only a forewoman and couldn’t possibly perform that function. I just wanted to be on decent terms with Mrs. Dennison. Not only did I need to make sure my family could stay in its safe haven; I also hoped I could calm the old woman if she became upset or angry.

38

FIVE OF THE SIX IRC men were released from jail on April 27, thanks to an amnesty in honor of Emperor Hirohito, whose thirty-eighth birthday was two days away. Our part-time math teacher was among those released, though one student’s father was still in jail. The returned men had all been instructed not to talk about their ordeal in prison, or else they would be brought in again. One of them had a broken wrist, and another, his face partially paralyzed, could no longer speak coherently. Yet none of them would disclose what had happened to them, and each one just said he was lucky to come back alive.

In private, one told me that the torturers had often tied him to a bench, then stacked bricks on his feet and filled him with water mixed with chili powder until his stomach was about to burst. At first he denied all of the charges, but later he confessed to whatever crime they said he’d committed. He even said that he had helped John Magee and Holly Thornton embezzle relief funds and had single-handedly stolen a military truck, though he didn’t know how to drive. “I just didn’t want to be killed by those savages,” he said, and shook his head, which was afflicted with favus and reminded me of a molting bird.

“Did they believe what you told them?” I asked him.

“Perhaps not. They once said I lied to them, so they punched and kicked me till I passed out.”

“Who beat you, Japanese or Chinese?”

“Some Chinese running dogs man the torture chamber. Every now and then one or two Japanese officers showed up too.”

No rally would be allowed on the emperor’s birthday except for those organized officially. To keep the girls preoccupied, Minnie declared April 29 a big cleaning day. Then the Autonomous City Government demanded that we send one hundred people downtown to take part in the celebration of the emperor’s birthday. They didn’t specify that the participants from our campus must be young students, so Minnie believed we should pick a hundred women from the Homecraft School. Mrs. Dennison objected, saying they were not students and must not represent Jinling College. She insisted on sending middle schoolers instead.

We discussed this, and everyone, including the American teachers, supported Minnie’s idea, because we knew some of the girls were loose cannons and might take the public celebration as an insult. If some of them started an anti-Japanese chant or song, it would get us into deep water. What’s more, Alice and Donna had informed us that some young girls were planning to demonstrate against the Japanese occupation. We didn’t want to kindle their anger by sending them to the official rally, so we chose the women from the Homecraft School.

As we were setting out the next morning, bearing a large banner that displayed the characters JINLING WOMEN’S COLLEGE, Mrs. Dennison blocked the procession outside the front gate. She said to Minnie, “I won’t let you bear our flag, because these are not students of our college.”

Minnie grimaced but caved in. “Okay, we won’t carry it, then.”

So we continued downtown without the flag, while Mrs. Dennison held it with both hands, standing there alone and watching us march away. The white silk flapped a little, shielding a part of her thin shoulder. It was almost midmorning, the sun already high and hot. The women all knew we were going to demonstrate in honor of Emperor Hirohito, so they looked dejected and walked silently, some hanging their heads low.

In the city, martial law was already in force to prevent protests and to control drunken soldiers. We stood in the plaza before the city hall, each given a tiny sun-disk flag made of paper. The celebration started with a review of Japanese troops — one thousand cavalry, three columns of mountain guns, and a regiment of infantry marched past the platform near the templelike building with three tiers of flying eaves. Every officer raised a gleaming sword, its back against his collarbone, to lead his unit forward. The band was blasting out “Japan’s Army.” As the troops passed the platform, they shouted, “Long live the emperor!” and “Japan must conquer Asia!” and “Wipe out our enemies!” On the platform stood two Japanese generals in high boots and some Chinese officials, including Jimmy Pan, a tall, intelligent-looking man despite his slightly lopsided eyes. Pan always claimed that he’d taken the office of vice mayor because it was the only way he could help protect the local citizens’ interests, but the Nationalist government had already set the price of two thousand yuan on his head. Some of the puppet officials on the stage kept their eyes on the floor throughout the ceremony, though they applauded from time to time.

One such official, Yinmin Feng, a scraggy man with jug ears who had earned a master’s in archaeology from Tokyo University, gave a short speech, which, despite its brevity, was empty prattle. He praised the Japanese authorities for their efforts to restore order and normalcy in the city. He also insisted that all Chinese support “the New Order of East Asia.” He stepped down from the rostrum in less than ten minutes, after shouting “Heaven bless the emperor!” and “Long live the cooperation between Japan and China!” Then the Nanjing garrison commander, Major General Amaya, delivered a speech through an interpreter, in which he listed several causes for the suffering the Chinese here had gone through. Among them two were primary. First, the Chinese forces were responsible for the devastation of Nanjing, because they had resisted the Imperial Army, which was renowned for its bravery and invincibility. And once defeated, the Chinese soldiers had disappeared among the civilians, exploiting women and children as camouflage. That was very unprofessional. Also, Chiang Kai-shek had instilled in the entire population so much hatred for the great Japanese nation that most civilians became hostile to the Imperial Army, refusing to cooperate or give provisions. Worse yet, there were snipers everywhere, who mainly targeted Japanese officers; consequently, many commanders had to wear the uniforms of the rank and file to disguise themselves. When Nanjing was taken, the army had no alternative but to “mop up” all the stragglers and deserted soldiers. The second cause was that some foreigners from a certain country — namely the United States — remained here, and their presence emboldened the Chinese to oppose the victorious troops. Those foreigners actually provoked the Japanese soldiers to break rules and vent their frustration on civilians, so the Westerners were the real troublemakers for China and should be repatriated.

The pudgy general wore circular glasses and two rows of ribbons on his chest. As he was reading from the written speech, his eyes were so close to the paper and the microphone that the audience could hardly catch a glimpse of his doughy face. What’s worse, his voice was drowned out by the interpreter, a young dandy with slick hair and powdered cheeks, whose delivery in Mandarin was much more impressive.

After the speeches there was a large demonstration against communism, which the women from our school didn’t join. We just stood there as spectators. Even Chiang Kai-shek was labeled an arch-Communist who’d taken up the hammer and sickle of the Russians, and some placards with his portrait crossed out in red ink were raised among the civilians who lined up in front of the platform.

As soon as the celebration was over, Minnie and I led our students back to campus. John Allison from the U.S. embassy telephoned Jinling and urged the American women to be vigilant and to avoid the downtown area for a few days.

We wouldn’t let any students go there either, and instead held a service late in the afternoon. More than three hundred people gathered in the chapel, and some of them were girls from the middle school. The service started with the hymn “He Leadeth Me.” Next was a prayer led by Minnie — for peace in Asia and Europe and for the reduction of the suffering inflicted on the Chinese. Then Lewis Smythe preached his last sermon here, as he was leaving for Chengdu in two days. He wore a gray tunic, which made the narrowness of his shoulders more pronounced. He read out Matthew 5:11–12 and spoke about slander against the righteous as an indication of their virtue. He declared in a cadenced voice, “True Christians should rejoice when evildoers vilify them, for the Lord says that you shall be hated by men for his name’s sake. The vilification is proof that you have been doing something right. In fact, all the wicked tongues cannot really discredit you. What they can accomplish is just an emphatic verification of your righteousness. Let the vilifiers wag their tongues and waste their breath while we do our work with a clear conscience.” He went on to speak about God as the only qualified judge for the upstanding who would always make fair judgments.

I could tell he was still troubled by the malicious rumors about his collaboration with the Japanese. He had worked so hard for the benefit of the needy and the weak that he deserved to be honored, not slandered. He had recently completed his survey of the damage to our city and its suburbs and secretly published the results in a booklet with the small Mercury Press in Shanghai.

The service ended with the hymn “I’m a Pilgrim.” Afterward Mrs. Dennison invited Lewis to a wonton dinner, which Minnie, I, and four others also attended.

That evening the middle-school girls got restless. A few wore black armbands, and some sang patriotic songs in the open. In the south, salvos rumbled while fireworks cascaded over ragged clouds, bringing to mind towering willow crowns and dangling bean sprouts. The racket of the official celebration outraged the girls. A group of them, led by Meiyan, began singing “The Big Sword March,” which had been a battle song popular among the troops defending Shanghai twenty months before. Arm in arm, the girls stood in rows, swaying from side to side while belting out: “Big swords chop off the devils’ heads. / All the patriotic compatriots, / Now’s the time to fight the Japanese invaders!” As they were chorusing, tears bathed their faces and their voices grew shrill. Meiyan was the loudest among them and even kept time with a tiny national flag. She was half a head taller than most of the other participants.

We observed them from the windows of the dining room. After the battle song, Meiyan shouted, “Topple the puppet municipality!”

The crowd, more than a hundred strong, repeated the slogan together, all thrusting their fists into the air. Luhai stood beyond them, massaging his nape with his hand, as if he couldn’t decide whether to join in. I could see that he was excited, but why did he just lurk around watching? Did he have a hand in this?

“Repay blood debts in blood!” Meiyan cried again.

All the voices shouted after her in unison.

“Drive the invaders out of China!” she went on.

Again the others followed her in one voice.

Mrs. Dennison said about Meiyan, “I like that girl. She’s full of fire and can become a fine leader.”

“She’s Big Liu’s daughter, very hot-blooded,” Minnie told her.

“Yes, I saw her and two other girls cursing a Japanese woman on the street the other day,” Mrs. Dennison continued. “I’ve always admired Chinese women more than Chinese men.”

“We should stop them,” Minnie said. Without waiting for the old woman to respond, she set out. Some of us followed her.

Minnie went up to the girls and said, “All right, enough for today. You all go back to your dorms.”

Meiyan, her face burning with passion, stepped forward and blasted, “Why are you so scared of the Eastern devils?”

Taken aback, Minnie said, “I have only your safety in mind. If the Japanese find out about this, they’ll start an investigation, and you all will get into trouble.”

“Let them come. Who cares?”

“Don’t boast like that,” Minnie warned.

“Stop it, Meiyan!” I said almost in a cry.

Mrs. Dennison came over and intervened. “Girls, don’t do anything rash. Listen to Dean Vautrin. It’s for your own good — she just wants to keep you out of harm’s way.”

“There’re no spies here,” another girl said.

“You never know,” Minnie went on.

The girls looked around to see whether some of the puppet officials’ daughters were still among them. None of those rich students was around, though a few had been here half an hour ago, clapping their hands while watching the gorgeous fireworks. One of them had even mocked the demonstrators by sliding her index finger across her throat. Now the girls seemed swayed by Minnie’s words; some even took off their black armbands, and some turned, leaving for the dormitories and the classroom buildings. Although the crowd was dwindling, Meiyan and about thirty others continued chanting patriotic songs.

I left with Minnie and Mrs. Dennison, and as we neared the front entrance, we saw a company of cavalry passing by on the street. We stopped to watch the tall horses galloping away and fading into the dark while their hooves clattered on the asphalt. Then we continued toward the south of campus, the two American women’s long shadows mingling on the ground bleached by the moonlight.

39

I NOTICED that the students liked Alice very much, not because of their fondness for English but because of the way she conducted her classes. Although thirty-seven, Alice was so youthful and vivacious that if viewed from the rear and with a kerchief over her corn-silk hair, you could easily take her for a student, especially when she was among the girls. She often taught them hymns and American folk songs, staged miniature scenes of American life — shopping, asking for directions, visiting the post office, canvassing — and even showed them how to make lemonade, cakes, and fruit pies. One evening in early May, Minnie, Alice, and I took a stroll through campus while talking about how to monitor the students, particularly the few firebrands, so that they wouldn’t run away again or endanger themselves. Alice agreed to often engage them in small talk to follow their concerns. As the three of us were approaching the south dormitory, we saw a crowd in front of the building.

“Yeah, smash her mug!” someone urged. I recognized Meiyan’s rasping voice.

We hurried over and saw two students rolling on the ground. One was a tall girl named Yuting, whose father had been among the six IRC men arrested by the Japanese and had died in prison recently. The other was the mousy girl who’d slid her forefinger across her throat on the night of the emperor’s birthday, mocking the singers of patriotic songs. “Damn you,” Yuting gasped, pulling the girl’s hair. “Tell your dad we’ll get rid of him sooner or later.”

The small girl kicked her assailant aside, rolled away, and scrambled to her feet. “He had nothing to do with your father’s death, all right? You’re going out of your mind.”

“Rip her tongue out of her trap!” Meiyan told Yuting.

The runty girl turned to the crowd. “My dad just designs boats. He only supervises twelve people in his institute. You’ve blamed the wrong man.”

“He builds patrol boats for the Japs,” someone said.

“Yeah, your dad is a stooge,” added another.

“But he has to work to support our family,” the girl wailed, her nose bleeding. “He has no direct contact with the Japs.”

“I’m gonna to finish you off right here!” Yuting yelled, and rushed toward her again.

All of a sudden, the cloudless night became darker, the moon fading away. The whitish boles of the ginkgos and aspens around us disappeared. A handful of yellowish stars blinked faintly, as if the invisible chains connecting them had all at once snapped, scattering them across the sky. Everybody turned silent, awestruck. It took me a while to realize that a full eclipse was under way. Dogs began barking, and a tremendous din rose from the neighborhood in the southwest. Then came the sounds of people beating pots, pans, and basins while firecrackers exploded and horns blared. Every household in the area seemed to be engaged in the great commotion, which threw the girls into a panic. They all stood there listening; some moved their heads this way and that, totally confused. I felt embarrassed by the racket, which showed how backward we Chinese were in understanding this natural phenomenon.

“What’s going on?” Alice asked in a guarded whisper.

“It’s an eclipse,” Minnie said.

“That I know.”

“People believe that some animal in the sky is swallowing the moon, so they’re making all that noise to scare it away.”

Indeed, this was the locals’ way of driving off the mystical creatures, a dragon or a divine hound, who was attempting to eat up the moon. If they’d still had firearms, I was sure they’d have fired volleys of bullets and pellets into the sky. There was simply no way to convince them that the moon’s momentary disappearance was merely due to Earth’s passing between the moon and the sun.

Alice told the girls in her stern contralto voice, “You all see that the Lord of Heaven doesn’t approve of your fighting like wild animals. Now, go back to your dorms.”

Meiyan, who knew English better than the others, told the girls what the teacher meant. At once the crowd dispersed, disappearing into the dark or into the nearby dormitories. A few scraps of paper were fluttering on the ground in the dim light shed through several windows.

Once the girls were out of earshot, we couldn’t help laughing. “You scared the heck out of them,” Minnie told Alice.

“We had to break up the fight. The eclipse came in handy.”

“You’d better explain to them that it’s just a natural phenomenon — that there’s no such thing as a dragon or divine dog.”

“Okay, I’ll speak about it in class tomorrow.”

A couple of minutes later, the moon came out again, bright and golden like a huge mango. In the distance a line of electric poles reappeared with the wires glistening, and the distant din subsided. We headed back to Minnie’s quarters. Alice told us, “I once saw an eclipse in Kyoto, but nobody made a fuss about it. People just went out and watched.”

“That’s why I sometimes wonder how a backward country like China could fight Japan,” Minnie said.

“Do you believe China will win this war?” Alice asked.

“Only in the long run and with international help.”

“I’m sure we’ll win eventually,” I said.

We entered the flower garden encircled by a white picket fence that Minnie had designed a decade before. The air was intense with the scent of lilacs, sweetish and slightly heady. Alice was worried about her job here. Her former girls’ school, sponsored by our denomination, had shut down, and she felt that Mrs. Dennison was always lukewarm about her, probably because it was Minnie who had hired her. Minnie assured her that Jinling needed English teachers and she’d be in demand for a long time, so there was no reason to worry.

“She’s such a pain in the ass,” Minnie said about Mrs. Dennison. “I’m wondering if she’s the empress dowager reincarnated.”

We all cracked up. I said, “Minnie, you must avoid clashing with her. Keep in mind that she’s pushing seventy and will retire soon.”

“I don’t think she’ll ever leave China,” said Alice.

“That’s true,” I agreed, “but she’ll be too senile to interfere with the college’s affairs.”

“Sometimes it’s so hard to control my temper,” Minnie admitted.

“Remember our Chinese saying — a bride will become a mother-in-law one day?”

“I may never have that kind of patience,” Minnie said.

“There’s no way to remove Dennison,” I went on. “All you can do is outlive her. Just don’t provoke that crone.”

Minnie turned to Alice. “Someday I’ll become your crazy mother-in-law and kick you around. Will you still put up with me?”

“Only if you find me a husband first,” Alice replied, poker-faced. “Do you have a grown-up son somewhere?”

We all laughed.

40

MRS. DENNISON and Minnie were discussing how to use the funds at hand. I happened to be in the provost’s office, and the old president wanted me to join their discussion. Jinling had just received four thousand yuan, which the donor specified should be spent on education programs for the poor. I listened to the two American women without expressing my opinion. Mrs. Dennison talked excitedly, as she always enjoyed making financial plans and was particularly fond of the Chinese saying “Money is like bastards — the more you get rid of, the more will come.”

The old woman had been supervising renovation and construction projects on campus. She wanted to have the half-finished apartment house near East Court completed and all the buildings repaired. In addition, she’d have the four ponds cleansed of weeds and algae. All the lotuses and water hyacinths would be eradicated too. She just wanted limpid ponds with some goldfish in them. Because people needed jobs and labor was cheap, she was eager to get the work done without delay.

Minnie sipped the green tea I had poured for her, and said, “What we really need is a neighborhood school for children.”

“How are we going to staff it?” Mrs. Dennison asked.

“We don’t need to hire any faculty. We can let some students teach the classes. It won’t cost much.”

“Who will run it?”

“How about letting Meiyan head the school?” Minnie suggested. “It will train the girl to be a leader.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

“Well, I don’t know,” the old woman said. “I don’t think we should have a neighborhood school at the moment. We must make every effort to bring our college back.”

“As long as our faculty’s away, we can do nothing about that.”

“But we can prepare for them to return. I’m sure they will in the near future.”

I worried that the old woman would want to hear my opinion. I felt we should start a school for the poor kids in the neighborhood, some of whom had been running wild, since most of the primary schools were gone. On the other hand, I dreaded offending the former president. Luckily, she didn’t ask me.

Mrs. Dennison thought that if we renovated the faculty’s houses and apartments, we would have an incentive to draw the teachers back. The renovation would include all the classroom buildings as well so as to justify the use of the funds specified for educational purposes. I also missed the former college, particularly the regular schedules and the peaceful academic life, which were so different from the current disorder. I could see why Mrs. Dennison had always emphasized that leisure was essential for the faculty’s intellectual and professional growth. Minnie seemed to share that belief and agreed to shelve the plan for the children’s school.

Nevertheless, Minnie and I felt uneasy about the renovation, because the future of the college was still uncertain and it might never pay off to bank so much on such an effort.

THREE YEARS AGO our college had decided to build a bungalow for Minnie so that she could meet with faculty and students in small groups in her own home, but because funds were in short supply after the war had broken out, she’d offered to suspend the project. Several faculty members already had houses for their personal use, including Eva Spicer, a professor of history and religion who was a graduate of Oxford. At present, she was teaching in Wuchang and couldn’t come back. Her bungalow had been damaged by the three hundred refugees who had sheltered in it for half a year. At Eva’s request, Mrs. Dennison decided to have it repaired. The decision pleased Minnie, since Eva was her friend, used to send Minnie birdfeed via British gunboats, and had written that Minnie could borrow her house for the summer. Minnie had told me several times that she was tired of living in the dormitory with more than eighty students, listening to all the noise they made and the wake-up bell at six a.m.

A team of workers came to renovate Eva’s bungalow, replacing the broken terra-cotta tiles on the roof, refinishing parts of the floors, fixing the leaky pipes, resealing some panes of glass with putty, and repainting the interior and exterior of the house. A week later it was like new again. Minnie was excited and packed everything, ready to move. She wouldn’t mind the sour smell of the paint and couldn’t wait to sleep in Eva’s queen-size bed. But early in the afternoon, when she was about to ship the first batch of her belongings, Luhai came and told me that Mrs. Dennison had just moved into the bungalow, together with Aifeng. I hurried to Minnie’s to brief her about that. She was nonplussed, and also outraged.

There had been shelling in the south, where even the skyline seemed to be jumping with ruddy-edged clouds. Fighting had been going on outside the city since the previous day. It was said that the New Fourth Army, the Communist force liked by the country people because of its strong discipline, was active within ten miles of Nanjing and had been exchanging fire with the Japanese. That afternoon three truckloads of wounded soldiers had been brought back into the city. We’d also heard that many Japanese women and children were leaving Nanjing, which might herald something ominous for the occupiers. Rumor had it that the Japanese military was about to abandon the city, but none of us believed that this would happen.

That evening we visited Mrs. Dennison. We found her in a buoyant mood, and she received us warmly. Seated on a leather sofa, I looked around, admiring the bright, spacious living room. There was carved furniture, and a tall Ming vase stood beside the door. The floor was glossy, just waxed, and the built-in bookshelves, freshly painted, still held hundreds of Eva’s books. What a splendid place for entertaining friends. Mrs. Dennison was so lucky. I glanced at Minnie, who must have been nettled by envy. She avoided eye contact with the old woman.

I wondered if Mrs. Dennison had planned to move in all along. Had Eva said she could use this house as well? Unlikely. A careful person, Eva wouldn’t have made such a blunder. Should I tell the old woman that Eva had promised the bungalow to Minnie? What was the good of that? Minnie couldn’t possibly chase Mrs. Dennison and Aifeng out. God willing, I hoped they might soon find this place lonesome and too far from everything and might move back to their apartment. Nothing could be done for now.

Minnie remained quiet for the whole visit, while the old woman talked at length about the Rockefeller family. Despite the lethargic stock market in the States, they had just promised to donate more to our college once the war was over. But when would that be?

Mrs. Dennison was so pleased with her new residence that she began to host dinners a few times a week and always invited Minnie. Minnie was grateful at first, but soon she told me that the old woman might be utilizing her popularity to draw visitors. No wonder Mrs. Dennison appeared so friendly to her in front of the guests. The old woman’s dinners began to feel more and more onerous to Minnie, who was increasingly chafing under Mrs. Dennison’s continual interventions.

In early June Mr. Morrison of the United Christian Missionary Society approached Minnie and proposed that she return to the States to serve as the vice president of their organization, in charge of education.

“What do you think I should do?” she asked me.

“I would accept it if I were you.”

“It’s hard for me to leave.”

“A boat missed may never come again.”

She gave it serious thought for some days — it was an opportunity to disentangle herself from the mess here. Though she would still supervise a good number of missionary schools in China, she feared that it would distance her from Jinling. The previous summer another job had been offered her as well — to work on Jinling’s executive committee in New York, and although she’d declined, her friend Rebecca Griest had written that the position wasn’t filled yet. So New York could be another option for Minnie. She would love to use the libraries at Columbia again, for which she still had an alumni card. She had earned her master’s in school administration from that university’s Teachers College.

After long consideration, she decided to stay, saying she couldn’t possibly abandon Jinling, especially the six hundred poor women in the Homecraft School who regarded her as their protector. Jinling had become her home and China her adopted homeland. She wrote back to Mr. Morrison, stating that she didn’t have the training and experience for such a consequential position; that her departure from Jinling would put more burden on Dr. Wu’s shoulders, which she would never allow to happen; that a younger and more energetic person would likely be more suitable for the job, since the society needed new blood; and that, above all, she ought to remain here in China’s hour of trials. In short, she simply couldn’t cut her losses and leave. She showed me her letter and also the reply from Mr. Morrison, who wrote that he understood Minnie’s decision and was full of admiration.

As the summer vacation was approaching, some faculty members planned to go elsewhere to escape the sweltering heat. From Aifeng, we learned that she and Mrs. Dennison were leaving for Shanghai soon, and from there they would travel north by ship to a beach resort on Bohai Bay. This news gladdened Minnie, because she believed that once they left, she’d be able to live in Eva’s bungalow for the rest of the summer.

It rained on and off for a whole night — enough to revive the withered shrubs and flowers on campus, but not enough to flood the paddies so rice seedlings could be planted, which should have been done two months before. Farmers had been having a tough time this spring. Besides the drought, the turmoil of the war still persisted. During the day many Japanese planes flew by to drop bombs outside the city. It was said that the guerrillas had been active in the vicinity of Nanjing, but the Japanese were determined to keep them away. For a whole week gunfire could be heard in the south.

Mrs. Dennison and Aifeng left a few days later, together with Ban. The boy had never been to Shanghai, so Mrs. Dennison, who was childless, wanted him to visit the metropolis. She was fond of him, having seen him grow up.

On the same day they left, Minnie moved into Eva’s bungalow. She was excited to have the entire house to herself now, but when I went to see her the next evening, she said the place felt somewhat isolated. She wasn’t sure she would like it.

41

TO OUR ASTONISHMENT, Mrs. Dennison came back with Ban a week later. Her return embarrassed Minnie, and yet it would be humiliating to move out of the bungalow right away.

Though flustered, Minnie decided to stay in the house with Mrs. Dennison in Aifeng’s absence. Aifeng had gone alone to the beach resort in the north to meet her fiancé there. Mrs. Dennison showed no sign of resentment and only told us, “There’s so much to do here that I’d better not leave — I won’t have a summer vacation anymore. I’m used to the heat here anyway.” She still had her personal possessions in the bungalow and hardly needed to unpack.

Minnie soon realized that she couldn’t possibly live under the same roof with the old woman for the whole summer, sharing breakfast and supper with her every day, so Minnie applied for a permit from the city’s travel office.

The permit arrived the following week. Minnie decided to go to Tsingtao by way of Shanghai, because it would be easier to travel by boat from there. We all were surprised by her sudden decision to spend the summer elsewhere. Rulian decided to give her a picnic send-off at the poultry center and invited seven other young faculty members and me. The main course was zongzi, pyramid-shaped dumplings made of glutinous rice, dates, peanuts, and ham. There were also steamed shrimp, sautéed vegetables, and fresh dates. Minnie loved zongzi and peeled away the reed leaves, which were wrapped around the rice to give it an herby aroma, but she wouldn’t dip it into a plate of brown sugar as we did. She said she liked the natural flavor better. In the center of the table stood a glass jar holding daisies mixed with young dog-tail grass. The flowers were delicate and fluffy, each displaying a disk of white petals that surrounded a golden heart, and they gave off a faint fragrance. Rulian had thoughtfully asked Old Liao to cut a bunch.

It had rained heavily the night before; the air was washed clean and shimmering a little. A few gnats were flickering around. Rulian had not invited Mrs. Dennison. Minnie enjoyed socializing with the young faculty. If Mrs. Dennison were here, Minnie wouldn’t have had a peaceful meal. These days, whenever the two of them ran into each other, the old woman would smirk, probably relishing her small victory in chasing Minnie out of the bungalow. I also noticed that Mrs. Dennison would speak louder, with forced cheerfulness, whenever Minnie happened to be within hearing, as if everybody were her friend. I knew the crone meant to provoke her.

THE WEEK AFTER Minnie left, I again heard from Holly. To my surprise, she was in the Zhenjiang area now, working at a refugee relief center. She invited me to visit, saying she lived outside Gaozi, a suburban town that had a train station. Not having seen her for more than a year, I was eager to visit, so I set out a few days later, taking the train early in the morning. It was just a thirty-mile trip to the east, and I brought two pounds of barley taffy along with an umbrella, as it was cloudy.

The refugee relief center was easy to find, in a village outside the town of Gaozi. Holly was ecstatic to see me. She hugged me for half a minute, as if afraid I might disappear the instant she released me. She took me to a ramshackle cottage, into a room she shared with a young woman named Siuchin, whom Holly had mentioned in her letters as her friend. Siuchin turned up a moment later, fetched a thermos of boiled water, and began brewing tea in a porcelain pot. She was tall and had a squarish face, in her mid-twenties. Untying the thin paper string, Holly opened the package I’d brought and poured some of the barley taffy, each piece covered with sesame seeds, onto an enamel plate. I observed her closely and found her aged a bit but in full health, her eyes brighter and her broad face more vivid, though it showed more wrinkles when she smiled. Siuchin had to leave to finish wrapping some iodine tablets, so after telling Holly she would arrange lunch, she went out with a fistful of the taffy.

It was already past midmorning, and Holly and I were reminiscing about people we both knew while munching the sticky candy. I usually don’t like sweets that much, but, affected by my friend’s great relish, I kept chewing one piece after another. Holly remembered Minnie fondly for her big kind heart and straightforwardness, and she also praised Rulian as a fine young woman, mild and gracious. I saw Holly’s violin in its sky-blue case hanging on the wall; a Bible sat below the instrument on her bed, which was just a sheet spread over a blanket and a straw mattress on some boards supported by three small trestles. The Bible, bound in morocco, was the only book in the room. It was the American Standard Version, which I hadn’t read yet, since I always used the King James version. Amazed, I asked, “You belong to a denomination now?”

“No, I’m still on my own.” Holly smiled, the same old nonchalance on her heavy-boned face. “So far I’ve always attached myself to a mission group for protection.”

“But you dip into the Scriptures.”

“Sometimes I enjoy reading them.”

“Then why not join the church?”

“Do I need an institution to communicate with God?”

I closed my eyes and announced: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” I paused and opened my eyes to look at her.

“Gosh, you sound like a priest.”

“For the nonce I am a bishop.” I chuckled, then went on, “Even if you don’t need the church, you still need Christ, don’t you?”

“That’s why I’ve been looking for him.”

“So you’ve been wandering around in search of the Lord?”

“I also look for him in my heart.”

“You’re a strange woman, Holly.”

“That I won’t deny. It was an irony that the Japanese burned my house and set me free.”

“How do you mean?”

“Without my old home anymore, I can go anywhere I want to and live a different life.”

I’d heard her say that before, so I shifted the subject a little. “I admire your devotion to our people. You’ve become one of us.”

“Not really. I belong to myself only.”

“But you’re a Chinese citizen, aren’t you?”

“Citizenship is just a piece of paper. I belong neither to China nor to America. Like I said, I’m on my own.”

“Still, you’ve been helping us in our cause.”

“That’s because I believe it’s the right thing to do. I’ve followed only my heart.”

“Come on, Holly, you’re living a hard life, and so is your friend Siuchin. You cannot say you two haven’t made sacrifices for this country.”

“We’ve been doing the work only because we believe it’s worth our effort. One doesn’t have to love a country to do what’s right.”

“So you like this kind of life and will live as a widow forever?”

She laughed. “I know what it was like to live with a man I loved. It’s enough to love once in a lifetime.”

“You still miss your husband?”

“Yes, I do. My husband, Harry, was a poet, although he didn’t publish many poems. He was a good man and we enjoyed each other so much that we’d like to be a couple again if we meet after this life.”

I chuckled, amused by that quaint notion, as if she were a Buddhist. “So after he died you never found a better man?”

“No. I dated a few, but they were nothing compared to Harry. So my heart gradually shut itself to men.”

“How about your friend Siuchin? Doesn’t she want to marry and have a family? She’s still so young.”

“Her late fiancé must’ve been a splendid fellow or she wouldn’t live this way.”

“You told me about her loss.” I knew Siuchin’s fiancé had been an officer, killed in battle by the Japanese.

“She’s often said she would’ve been happy to die for him. She loved him that much. I urged her to settle down somewhere, but she likes wandering around and doing mission work. She feels safer this way.”

Siuchin stepped in and announced that it was time for lunch. She had asked the cook to prepare a pork dish, which we should eat before lunchtime; otherwise we might make others crave meat and cause trouble for the kitchen. I followed them out to the shed that served as a dining room.

A small basin of rice and two dishes — one of sautéed tofu mixed with scallions and baby bok choy and the other of pork cubes stewed with pole beans — sat on a makeshift table constructed of two naked boards nailed onto the tops of six short wooden poles. The pork tasted so-so, but I liked the tofu dish and put some of it on my rice and mixed it with chopsticks. Holly used a spoon instead, chewing the meat with relish. I could see that this was a treat for her and Siuchin.

The air smelled of cow dung and freshly sickled grass. In the distance a pond spread beyond rice paddies, dotted with a couple of white geese. As we were eating and chatting, a knot of children appeared, all skin and bones, watching us with hunger-sharpened eyes. Yet none of the kids made a peep or stepped closer. A girl, six or seven years old, with one bare foot on top of the other, opened her mouth halfway, saliva dripping from its corner. As I wondered if I should give them some food, Holly and Siuchin glanced at each other. Then the young woman stood and turned to the five children, saying, “You all go get bowls and chopsticks, and come back in a few minutes. We’ll leave you some. But everybody must promise that you won’t fight over the food, all right?”

They nodded and raced away. Hurriedly we finished the rice in our bowls and left the benches. Siuchin covered the rest of the rice with a towel and the dishes with a bamboo basket to shield them from the bluebottles droning around. A few of the flies, stripped of their wings, were crawling about on the table. Holly told the cook to keep an eye on the food for the children. “Fine,” the man said. “What can I say if you mean to spoil them again?”

“Make sure they share everything.”

“I will.” The cook’s palm was cupped behind his ear as he spoke; he appeared to be slightly hard of hearing.

Holly and Siuchin would have to work in the afternoon as some refugees had just arrived from Anhui, so I stayed another hour and then headed back to the train station. It had begun sprinkling, fat raindrops spattering on treetops, roofs, and my striped umbrella. All the way home, I pondered the two women’s lives. I admired them but couldn’t say that their way of living was better than mine or Minnie’s. Even if we had wanted to live like they did, we were no longer free to do so. In Minnie’s case, on her shoulders was the responsibility for those underprivileged women and girls at Jinling, who viewed her as their protector.

42

THE SUMMER MOVED ON almost uneventfully until early July, when a letter arrived from Luoyang. It contained a handwritten note and a newspaper clipping that had my son’s snapshot on it. The title of the brief article announced: “Traitor Killed by the Partisans.” I read the contents while my heart began thumping so violently that I had to sit down. The article stated that Haowen had been murdered outside a theater in that city. “We are glad that another traitor got his comeuppance,” the author declared.

Liya read out the note, written in pencil, which said: “Aunt Gao, your son, Haowen, was killed. He was a good man and they stabbed him when he went out to see a civilian patient in the suburbs. This was probably because a Chinese colonel, a POW, had died in his care. Haowen really did his best for the man, but he had been wounded fatally in the stomach. I am very sorry about your loss.” Strangely, the sender of the letter hadn’t signed his name, but the fluid handwriting indicated that he must be Chinese, probably a comrade of Haowen’s who also served in the Japanese army and therefore was afraid to identify himself.

Both Liya and I burst out weeping. This scared Fanfan, who started bawling too. Liya held him up, her hand covering his mouth. “Don’t cry, don’t cry, Fanfan. Mom has goodies for you,” she said, and took him to the sitting room. When she threw him a half-empty pack of toffee, he stopped blubbering.

Our world was turned upside down, but we dared not make too much noise. We locked the doors and closed the window curtains. Then Liya and I collapsed on the bed, sobbing our hearts out. Our heads touched each other and our hair mingled, wet with tears. “Mom, why did this happen to us? Why?” she went on wailing.

Similar questions were rising in my mind as well, but I was too distraught to say anything coherent. By instinct we knew we must not let our neighbors hear us, so we continued weeping in a subdued way, muffling our voices with our palms.

It would be hard for Liya and me to conceal our grief. I already felt half dead and might not be able to go to work the following day. What should we tell others about the death in our family? We could not say that Haowen had been assassinated by the partisans. That would amount to admitting that he’d been a traitor and deserved the punishment. But wasn’t his death already known to lots of people? True, yet it might be known only in Henan Province. Here no one but Minnie knew he had been a doctor in the Japanese army. We might be able to guard the secret of his identity, even if others saw us mourn his death. Liya and I decided to tell people that Haowen had been killed by the Japanese on his way back to China. It was a lie, but it might protect us and also keep his name clean.

We wouldn’t be able to do anything about bringing Haowen’s body home, and would have to leave him somewhere like a nameless ghost wandering in the wilderness. The Japanese didn’t ship their dead soldiers back to Japan. At most they would cut off a finger from a body, burn it with other dead men’s fingers, and then send a bit of the ash to each family. The thought of my son’s body not being interred properly suddenly seized my heart with a piercing pang, and I cried again.

That night, after Fanfan had gone to sleep, Liya and I talked about Haowen’s wife and son in Tokyo. The more we thought about their future, the more hopeless we felt. For the time being, there was no way we could help Mitsuko and Shin. As a matter of fact, as long as the war continued, we dared not even acknowledge their existence publicly. We believed that the Japanese army must already have notified Mitsuko of her husband’s death. I couldn’t help but imagine the miserable widowhood awaiting her. From now on Shin would have no father and might be treated as a Chinese bastard by other children, who might ridicule and bully him. As though several hands were twisting my insides, I tossed in bed, sobbing again.

The next day I stayed in bed, my limbs so weak that I felt partly paralyzed. Liya cooked rice porridge and brought it to the bedside, but I couldn’t eat, choked by a hot lump in my throat. Mrs. Dennison came late in the afternoon and was apparently perturbed by my sickness. I told her that my son had just been killed by the Japanese on his way back to see us, so I needed a couple of days to grieve and recuperate. She was surprised to hear that Haowen had been in Japan, but knowing he’d been my only son, she could see that the loss was colossal to our family. She sighed and cursed the Japanese, saying she’d have wiped out Tokyo if she could.

“Rest well, Anling,” Mrs. Dennison said. “I’ll ask Rulian to step into your shoes for a while.”

I insisted that I’d be up and about soon. In the meantime, I could have Liya act in my stead, since my job didn’t need much expertise and I could tell her what to do. The old woman thought about my suggestion, then said, “That’s true. You could manage things even if you’re in bed. Let Liya be your deputy for a few days.”

For a week I lay in bed. In my diary I just mentioned Haowen’s death as a crime committed by the Japanese and that Yaoping and I were sonless now. I was afraid that someone might read what I’d written, which was always a possibility. I woolgathered a lot, indulging in memories of the old days. I remembered that twenty years before, in the fall, we’d gone often to Purple Mountain to look for mushrooms. At that time the grand mausoleum in honor of Sun Yat-sen wasn’t there yet, as he was still alive. We’d bring along a small hamper of food, fruits, and bottles of drink and would picnic at the lakeside or under the huge stone animals and the immense maples in the royal park. The weather always seemed to be gorgeous and the sky blue and high, while warm breezes shook the grass and leaves from time to time. We’d also go to the Yangtze for boating. Yaoping was so happy on those outings that he often played a bamboo flute while I sat at the stern of a rented dinghy, applying an oar noiselessly. Meanwhile, Haowen and Liya would dive and float in the shallows. The boy invented a swim style he called frog-paddle, which combined the arm movement of the breaststroke with the kicking of the butterfly. He tried to teach Liya how to do it, but she couldn’t synchronize her limbs that way. Joyful occasions like those felt as remote as if they had belonged to another life.

I also recalled the times we’d gone to fly kites on the embankment. Yaoping was good with his hands and made various types of large creatures, like a hawk, a multicolored butterfly, a phoenix, a centipede. People would enviously watch him flying them. Haowen was always excited about those trips. Once he came down with a raging fever for two days afterward, thanks to running in the summer’s heat for hours. Now he was dead, and we had no idea where his body was. Even if he were alive, I suspected he could never be a happy man again.

Had he not been a family man, he could have abandoned his wife by deserting the Imperial Army soon after he’d landed in China. He might have joined the resistance force and survived. People might even have respected him as “a real man” who put his country above his family, devoting himself to fighting our national enemy. But he’d been doomed by his nature as a good, faithful, average man.

43

A WEEK LATER I returned to work. Neither Liya nor I wore a black armband lest we draw attention to our situation. I put on the gold bangle Haowen had given me and no longer cared whether it had been ill-gotten. Now it became something my son had left me, something precious, so I’d wear it all the time, though I’d keep it under my sleeve.

One morning toward the end of July Mrs. Dennison summoned me to her office. She had been occupied with the housing renovation, and by now the half-built apartment house was finished but not yet inhabited. The second I sat down by her mahogany desk, she said, “Anling, I want you to help us reduce the enrollment in the Homecraft School.”

“Why?” I asked in surprise.

“The next stage of our development will be reinstating our college.”

“But where will those poor women go?”

“That’s not our problem. We cannot remain a refugee camp forever.”

“Does Minnie know of this?” I said.

“She has no say in this matter. It’s already been decided by our board in New York. They wrote to me and agreed to our school’s proposal.”

“What proposal?” I played the fool and tried to put on a blank face.

Her jaw fell, as if she were holding something hard to swallow. “Stop beating around the bush. Anling, I know you — you’re smart and understand everything. I need your help.”

I was speechless, although my mind raced. The old woman could have me fired if I refused to cooperate. For some reason, Minnie hadn’t sent me a word after she’d left. Now what should I say to Mrs. Dennison?

“Anling,” she continued, “you’ve been with us for more than ten years and I’d hate to see you leave. But this time you must help us put our college back on its feet.” While speaking, she turned teary, her eyes fierce.

“I’ll do my best,” I mumbled.

She went on to explain that we’d have a much smaller budget for the Homecraft School, and therefore we must persuade some of the women to leave. She wanted me to announce that the work-study arrangements would no longer be available for most of them, so they needed to go elsewhere. I had no choice but to agree to participate in this plan.

I talked with Big Liu about Mrs. Dennison’s instructions in hopes that he might have Minnie’s address in Tsingtao, but he hadn’t heard from her either. We didn’t know how to resist the old president’s move.

When I told the students about the enrollment cut in the fall, they were stunned. Some begged me not to drive them away. I told them, “Look, I’m just a forewoman here and have no say in such a matter. I merely passed the decision from above on to you. Sisters, I cannot help you. You should gripe to Mrs. Dennison, who has direct contact with New York.”

While speaking, I tried to remain emotionless, but I felt awful and hated to see them so desperate. I knew that none of them would dare to make a peep in front of the old president, who wouldn’t even bother to listen to them. Within a week some women began leaving Jinling. Gnawed by guilt, I’d give them a towel or a bar of soap as a little keepsake, but some wouldn’t touch the presents or speak to me. They must have viewed me as a bogeywoman.

To make matters worse, Shanna reported that a good number of the middle schoolers had dropped out, because the schools in the city funded by the puppet municipality were free and had lured our students away, especially those who couldn’t afford the forty-yuan annual tuition. I still had no idea how to communicate all the changes to Minnie.

MINNIE DID NOT RETURN until mid-August. I arranged a car to pick her up and went to the train station myself. She looked tanned and thinner — she must have swum quite a bit during her stay in the coastal city. Her suitcase contained two thousand yuan and a hundred tubes of toothpaste. She was fearful that the guards might discover the money and confiscate it, but no one asked her to open the bag when we exited the Hsia Gwan station. Most of the cash had been donated by Jinling’s alumnae in Tsingtao and Shanghai, whereas the toothpaste had been given by the five blind girls, who were all well but said they missed Nanjing. Three hundred yuan of the money was from the sale of Mrs. Dennison’s wedding silver, also donated to our college. At Yijiang Gate, however, an officer pulled Minnie aside, because her typhoid papers had expired. He took her to a nearby cabin, where a nurse was to give her an inoculation. Several Chinese were already in there waiting for injections. The nurse jabbed the same needle into everyone’s arm, and each time wiped it only with a cotton ball soaked with rubbing alcohol. The sight of the same needle being used again and again made Minnie cringe, but she took the injection without a murmur.

Minnie handed the two thousand yuan to Mrs. Dennison, who was delighted and said that Jinling’s strength lay in the fact that we could always find donors for projects, and that with enough funding, the college should regain its eminence in the near future.

Minnie sensed the reduction of the student enrollment at the two schools. She asked me, “Why do we have fewer students now?”

“Mrs. Dennison said we wouldn’t have financial aid for many of the women anymore, so they’d have to leave.”

“How about the girls in the middle school?”

“Some dropped out because the schools in town are free.”

“I’m not worried about the girls who can have an education anyway. But what will happen to those poor women who are gone? Some of them have small children.”

“I feel sorry for them too.”

“How many do we still have in the Homecraft School?”

“Less than half, two hundred seventy-three.”

“What a betrayal. I take this personally, as an insult.” She glared at me, her eyes flashing.

I was embarrassed but countered, “Look, Minnie, you didn’t send me a single word. Big Liu and I were both worried about this but couldn’t find a way to contact you. How could I oppose Mrs. Dennison alone? She could’ve laid me off without a second thought.”

That quieted Minnie. Lowering her eyes, she said, “I’m sorry, Anling. I was sick in bed for weeks and couldn’t write.”

“What was the trouble?” I asked.

“I was depressed, listless, and couldn’t get out of bed, but I’m well now after swimming for two weeks.”

“What should we do?” I went on, hoping we could find some remedies for the reduction of the enrollment in both schools.

“I’ll speak to Mrs. Dennison and demand an answer.”

“No, you’d better not. She said she received permission from the board of founders. Plus there’s no way we can bring those poor women back.”

“What a mess! I hate myself for this,” Minnie said. “I feel so trivial. How could I care so much about my personal feelings and bolt to Tsingtao? Just because I couldn’t use that damned bungalow for the summer, I left the two schools open to dismantling.”

“Don’t reproach yourself,” I said. “You’re not made of iron and needed a vacation. Nobody should blame you. What’s done is done. Let’s keep calm and figure out what to do.”

“We must be more careful from now on.”

I told her about my son’s death. She hugged me and then wiped away her tears. “Anling,” she said, “you’re a tough woman, steady like a statue. If only I could be like you.”

I didn’t know how to respond in words and cried too. From then on I felt we were closer than ever. When she was depressed or frustrated, she often disclosed her feelings to me. I promised her that I’d write to Dr. Wu to apprise her of the developments here. We were both certain that the president would not align herself with Mrs. Dennison, though the old woman had once been her mentor. If we had Dr. Wu’s understanding and support, we should be able to manage Mrs. Dennison.

Before the fall semester started, Minnie and I decided to visit Yulan. To our horror, the hospital was gone. The building was under construction, encaged in bamboo scaffolding and being converted into a hotel for the military. Minnie asked a foreman what had happened to the patients and the staff of the hospital. The man shook his shaved head and said, “I heard they all left.”

“Do you know where they went?” she said.

“I’ve no clue, ma’am. They all might’ve gone home. You know the Japanese — they change plans every month.”

I tugged at Minnie’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”

Many of the medical personnel had been Japanese and couldn’t possibly repatriate in the midst of the war, not to mention the Chinese patients who no longer had a home to return to.

We left the construction site and stopped at Tianhua Orphanage in hopes that Monica might know something about the disappearance of the hospital, but the nun, paler than ever, had no idea either. In fact, she hadn’t even heard it was gone and kept apologizing. “Don’t blame yourself, please,” Minnie said. She left a box of walnut cookies — intended for Yulan — with Monica and told her to be more careful about her health. The woman looked even more consumptive, with sunken cheeks and feverish eyes; yet she was in good humor, so glad to see us that she couldn’t stop beaming. I was afraid she might not be able to work much longer.

Back on campus, Minnie telephoned Dr. Chu and asked him what had happened to the hospital. “Can you help me find out where the patients are?” she asked.

He agreed to look into it, and Minnie invited him to have tea with us.

Dr. Chu came the next afternoon. He seemed under the weather, his eyes dull and his face drawn to the point of being emaciated. I poured oolong tea for him and placed a dish of small dough twists on the coffee table. He said he had looked into the dissolution of the hospital but didn’t know for sure where all the staff had gone. Seated on an old canvas sofa in the main office, he went on, “They might have merged with other hospitals.”

“How about the patients?” Minnie asked.

“There weren’t many to begin with.”

“I want to know where Yulan is.”

“What can I say?” He sighed and put his teacup down. “I heard they had shipped some patients to Manchuria.”

“Why there?”

“A unit specializing in germ warfare needed human guinea pigs.”

“ ‘Germ warfare’? That’s horrible. Is the place they were sent to like an experiment center?” Minnie asked. That was the first time I’d heard the term “germ warfare.”

“I don’t know much about it,” he replied, “but I’m told there’s a Japanese army unit somewhere in the northeast that uses people for testing bacteria and viruses. They’ve been collecting marutas, human logs, for experiments.”

“So whoever ends up there won’t come out alive?” Minnie asked him.

“I’m sorry. In a way, the sooner Yulan and the other mad girl die, the better for them.”

“That’s an awful thing to say!”

“They were both afflicted with venereal diseases — very severe cases, to my knowledge. The girls were actually kept as sex slaves. What kind of life was that? I’m not like most Chinese who believe that the worst life is better than the best death. If life is insufferable, one had better end it. If I were them, I must say, I’d have killed myself long ago.” He gazed at me as if to see whether I wanted to challenge him. I had to say I agreed.

“But both of them were no longer clearheaded,” said Minnie.

Dr. Chu didn’t respond. He laced his fingers together on his lap and averted his melancholy eyes as though ashamed of what he had said.

Minnie continued, “I have a favor to ask you. Can you find out that unit’s name and its whereabouts?”

“You mean the one doing germ experiments?”

“Yes, please do this for me.”

“I’ll try my best.”

The conversation threw Minnie into a depression. For several days she kept wondering whether she might have been able to rescue Yulan if she had returned sooner from her summer vacation. She believed that what had happened to Yulan from the start was partly due to her negligence. If only she had spent her summer here. She could have returned to her apartment so she wouldn’t have to rub shoulders with Mrs. Dennison every day. Minnie rebuked herself for caring too much about her personal feelings and about losing face. How could she let petty personal disputes stand in the way of more important matters, such as saving a woman’s life and protecting the two schools? She could at least have written to Big Liu or me to stay informed of any development here. She couldn’t escape feeling small-minded. How could she make amends? The more she thought about her faults, the more disappointed she was in herself.

Her laments got on my nerves. However hard I tried to dissuade her from reproaching herself, she wouldn’t stop talking about Yulan and the students we’d lost. I felt Minnie was somewhat obsessed and told her that even if she’d been here, she might not have been able to save Yulan. Why would the Japanese military let an American woman interfere with their plan?

I knew Minnie was close to Big Liu and might have talked to him about these problems as well. He still taught her classical Chinese twice a week. But these days he had his hands full, because Meiyan again wanted to flee Nanjing, either to Sichuan to join the Nationalists or to Yan’an, the Communists’ base in the north. Meiyan hated everything here, even the air, the water, the grass, and the trees, let alone the people. She called Jinling a rathole. She had stopped going to church and had thrown away her Bible, claiming she was convinced that God was indifferent to human suffering. She’d told Liya that she no longer believed in Christianity, which in her opinion tended to cripple people’s will to fight. Big Liu used to have high hopes for his daughter, whose mind was as sharp as a blade, but now she had become his heartache. Worse yet, it was whispered that she’d begun carrying on with Luhai and wouldn’t come home until the small hours. Mrs. Dennison had spoken to Luhai, who promised to stop seeing Meiyan and claimed that there was absolutely nothing going on between them; yet people still saw them sneak off campus together.

44

ON SEPTEMBER 18, John Allison invited Minnie to the U.S. embassy for tiffin. She asked if she could bring me along, and he welcomed me. When we arrived, Allison was still at a meeting but had us sent into the dining room, which had wide windows, a swirled stucco ceiling, brass revolving fans, and two pots of cacti in the corners. A moment later he joined us.

A few minutes after we had started eating creamed spinach and macaroni mixed with seafood, the host opened his briefcase, took out a small brocade box, and placed it in front of Minnie. “I’m supposed to present you with this,” Allison said, and spread his palm toward it, a chased ring on his fourth finger.

“For me?” she asked.

“Yes. Open it.”

She did. Inside the box’s silk interior, a gold medallion was perched like a sunflower, its center inlaid with lambent blue jade. “How many of us got a medal like this?” she asked Allison, pointing at the gold corolla.

“Only you and John Rabe, the Living Buddha.”

“I wish Holly Thornton got one too.”

Allison grinned, revealing his strong teeth. “Maybe Holly will be among the next batch of recipients. To my mind, Lewis Smythe also deserves such an award.”

“John Magee should get one too,” Minnie added.

I picked up the medallion, turned it over, and saw Minnie’s name engraved on its back. Together with the medal was a certificate inside a leather-covered booklet. I opened it and saw the citation saying that the Chinese Nationalist government had awarded her this prize for saving ten thousand lives in Nanjing. “It’s gorgeous,” I said.

Allison smiled and put down his fork, his domed forehead shiny. “This is called the Order of the Jade, the highest honor the Chinese government can bestow on a foreigner.”

“What does this mean?” I asked him.

“It means that the recipient is China’s honorable friend and is welcome to live anywhere in this country.”

I said to Minnie, “Congratulations!”

“I just did what I was supposed to do. Any one of us would do the same given the circumstances.”

Allison continued, “I want both of you to be quiet about this award. The public mustn’t know of it until the war is over.”

“Sure, I won’t let it slip,” I said.

“You feel the war will be over soon?” she asked him.

“I don’t think so. The Russians have just invaded Poland. The situation in Europe looks dire and a war might break out there.”

This was the first time we had heard about the Russian invasion, although we knew that the Germans had already occupied western Poland. We were so dumbfounded that we both could only gasp.

Beyond the window screen the hissing of cicadas was swelling and ebbing. A donkey brayed on the street, shaking its harness bell fitfully. “People seem to have lost their minds,” Minnie said with a sigh.

“Why does evil always get the upper hand?” I said.

“We prayed for peace every day,” she went on. “Evidently the prayers didn’t help.”

“No one in Europe is prepared to stop Hitler,” Allison said. “I’m afraid there’ll be a world war.”

“How about Stalin?” asked Minnie.

“He looks in cahoots with Hitler.”

For the rest of the lunch we talked about the situation in China, where the Japanese invasion seemed to have bogged down, but a peaceful solution was unlikely. The Communist troops kept harassing the Nationalist army, and that forced Chiang Kai-shek to fight the Reds as well. The generalissimo was also bedeviled by the scandal that resulted when the Nationalist army had breached the dike along the Yellow River at Huayuankou the previous year to stymie the advancing Japanese forces. According to newly revealed statistics, eight hundred thousand civilians had perished in the flood — no military strategy could justify that. In addition, the Nationalist government had levied too much from the poor farmers in the northern provinces who had been struck by droughts and famine. It was reported that some people in the countryside, unable to pay the heavy taxes, had begun to support the Japanese.

When lunch was over, Allison hugged us and climbed the carpeted stairs to the third floor for a meeting. We walked back to Jinling, talking about the ominous future of Europe, foreshadowed by the German and Russian invasions of Poland. We knew Mrs. Dennison planned to visit Germany the next summer and might have to cancel her trip to Dresden, Vienna, and Prague. I teased Minnie, saying she’d better find a safe place for her medallion or someone might steal it.

“I would sell it if I could,” she said. “If Mrs. Dennison hears of this, she’ll get madly jealous.”

“That’s true. We must keep it secret.”

This topic discomfited Minnie, so she changed the subject, talking about some projects we had to undertake in the fall, such as storing enough rice and fuel for the two schools and providing shoes and winter clothes for some children of poor families in the neighborhood.

Before the first frost we’d need to buy a lot of vegetables for the women in the Homecraft School to pickle. We would also organize them to make quilts and cotton-padded clothes. I’d have to get more coal, because Mrs. Dennison had instructed that no more trees be felled — we would hire people to guard them against thieves if need be. She said it took just a few minutes to cut down a tree that had resulted from many years of growth, so we’d better protect them.

I had tried to buy coal from some mines but without success, because the Japanese, besides controlling the supply, shipped a good amount of the product directly to Japan. The coal dealers I had spoken with all told me they would only retail it, selling two or three hundred pounds at a time. I guessed that must be more profitable for them.

Finally, about a month later, I managed to get twelve tons of anthracite. This meant that at least the offices would be heated in the winter.

DR. CHU WROTE to Minnie that the Japanese germ warfare program, codenamed Unit 731, was headed by General Shiro Ishii, known as “the Doctor General.” It was located in the Pingfang area south of Harbin City. Some foreigners — Russians and Koreans — were also confined there, being used as test subjects. Since the research project was top secret, Dr. Chu had the note carried by Ban directly to Jinling and instructed that the messenger boy must destroy it, either by swallowing it or tearing it to bits, if he was detained by the Japanese on the way. He also urged Minnie to burn the note after reading it and not to divulge its contents to anyone. She read it twice, then shared it with me because she wanted to hear my opinion. After I read it, she struck a match and set it afire.

For days she’d been thinking about going to the northeast, fantasizing that her visit might help get Yulan out of that place. Minnie revealed her thoughts to nobody but me.

I vehemently objected to her plan. “Look, this is insane,” I told her. “Why run such a risk? Your very presence there will endanger yourself and others.”

“How so?”

“The Japanese will jail you too and won’t let you go until you tell them how you came to know about their secret program. In fact, they might even kill you to eliminate an eyewitness.”

“I don’t care what happens to me. It’s in God’s hands — if I’m supposed to die, I’ll die. But do you think my being there might help Yulan get out?”

I shook my head and sighed. “To be quite honest, you’re too obsessed. We don’t even know if Yulan is still alive. The truth is that once they put her in there, she’ll never be able to come out.”

“So I should just give up?”

“What else can you do? Also, you must consider the repercussions of such a trip. Your absence from campus will cause a sensation, and all sorts of rumors will fly. What’s worse, Mrs. Dennison will take you to task if you’re lucky enough to come back. Your trip will just give rise to a scandal.”

Finally Minnie saw the logic of my argument, so she agreed to drop the plan. Yet thoughts about Yulan kept eating away at her. She couldn’t help but imagine other possibilities of rescuing her and often discussed them with me. “Don’t be so obsessed,” I reminded her. “Sometimes we must learn to forget so that we can keep on going.”

All the same, she remained tormented and couldn’t stop talking about Yulan when we were alone.

45

AIFENG YANG had not returned from her summer vacation yet, though the fall semester was already in its third month. Nobody had heard from her since July. According to the information provided by the U.S. embassy, she’d gotten involved in some resistance activities and was apprehended by the Japanese. In early November Mrs. Dennison finally received a letter from Aifeng, which said she was well but her fiancé, a journalist based in Beijing, was imprisoned in Tianjin, accused of espionage by the Japanese police. She said he wasn’t a spy at all and that there must have been a miscommunication, or misunderstanding, or backstabbing by some Chinese. For the time being she had to stay there trying to rescue him, but she promised to come back to Nanjing as soon as he was released. Mrs. Dennison shook her head of flaxen hair and said to us, “Aifeng is smart and resourceful and she’ll be all right.” Because of our reduced enrollment, she wasn’t needed for teaching.

A week later we heard from Dr. Wu, who was pleased by the smaller size of the Homecraft School now — she must have assumed that this was a step closer to restoring the college.

Ever since she returned from her summer vacation, Minnie got frazzled easily. Sometimes she nodded off at her desk, and once she missed an appointment with a reporter from the Chicago Tribune. Every Monday morning she would give Big Liu her weekly schedule so he could remind her of the important matters and arrangements every day.

More Japanese came to visit our campus. Most of them were civilians, some were Christians, and one even brought his children with him. Among the visitors was a fortyish man named Yoguchi, slightly hunched and beaky-faced, whose eyes would disappear when he smiled, as if afraid of light. He came often and would converse with us whenever he could. He spoke Mandarin with a sharp accent, having lived in Manchuria for more than a decade. In the beginning Yoguchi would not believe what we told him about the atrocities the soldiers had committed, but Minnie took him to some women in the Homecraft School and let him interview them. They told him their stories, which gradually convinced him. He even bowed to some of them apologetically when they collapsed, sobbing, unable to speak anymore.

One afternoon Yoguchi said to us, “The army has taken measures to control its men and make sure they’re better supplied. I’m quite certain that no orgy of burning, rape, and bloodshed will happen again.”

“What do you mean?” Minnie asked.

“An officer told me that since last winter, the army has been sending the military police ahead of the troops whenever they are about to take a city. And also, officers have been ordered to treat their men like brothers so they won’t vent their spleen on civilians like they did here two years ago. You see, the army has been trying to prevent brutalities.”

That sounded stupid; Yoguchi was a civilian but still attempted to defend the Imperial Army.

Minnie said, “Do you think they can simply slam the brakes on violence?” Seeing him flummoxed and with two vertical lines furrowing his forehead, she added, “The atrocities will continue to take place in the victims’ minds for many years. They’re not something that can be put behind easily. Hatred begets hatred as love begets love.”

Silence ensued while Yoguchi’s face reddened. Then he said, “I’m sorry. I never thought of it that way.”

He didn’t raise the topic again. He ordered three cotton-padded robes from the tailoring class at the Homecraft School as Christmas presents for his children. I arranged the order for him but didn’t tell the seamstresses anything about the customer, afraid that they might refuse to work on the garments if they knew they were making them for a Japanese family.

Minnie and I were glad to see the change in Yoguchi, which further convinced her that only through the fully informed Christians in Japan could the people of that country be persuaded to see that the war was wrong and make peace. Yoguchi brought other Japanese Christians to Jinling, and some of them were impressed by the classroom buildings, the library, and the gardens. Minnie would tell them, “Come again in the spring — our campus will be like a beautiful park. In fact, that was what I wanted it to become when I joined the faculty here.”

Yoguchi suggested that Jinling send some people to Japan to speak to the Christians there about what had happened in Nanjing. This could be a good step toward mutual understanding between the Chinese and the Japanese. The suggestion amazed us, but Minnie didn’t respond right away. After Yoguchi left, we talked about it. I admitted, “If my grandson and daughter-in-law were not there, you’d have to cut off my legs before you could make me step foot in that country.”

“You mean you don’t want to go?” Minnie asked.

“Of course I’d like to go. I want to see Mitsuko and Shin if I can locate them.”

“Then we’ll make you the head of our delegation.”

Minnie also spoke to Alice to see if it would be safe for Chinese people to travel to Japan. “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Alice assured her. “The Japanese there are not the same as the soldiers here.”

Heartened by Alice’s support, Minnie talked with Searle Bates. He had spent a summer in Japan three years ago and liked the country, though he was still documenting the Japanese war crimes and exposing their manipulation of the narcotics trade as a way to weaken the Chinese mentally and physically. He worked as an official of Nanjing University now, in charge of the school’s properties, because as a foreigner he could deal with the Japanese in person. Searle thought that the trip was a good idea and added that it would be more productive if some Chinese could speak at seminaries and colleges in Japan, but he was unsure if we could get the travel papers. The Japanese military meant to keep the truth of the Nanjing atrocities from spreading internationally and might deny citizens here entry to Japan, where the war was being propagated as seisen, “sacred war,” waged against communism and Western colonialism and led by the emperor himself.

To Minnie’s amazement, the young Chinese faculty members received the idea of the reconciliatory trip warmly. Both Shanna and Rulian were happy at the prospect of visiting Japan. They each spoke English well and were appropriate candidates to accompany me. Minnie and I discussed the matter with Yoguchi on his next visit. The man smiled and said, “Don’t worry about the travel permits. We’ll try to get them. We have some pull at the embassy. You know Mr. Tanaka?”

“Yes, he’s better than the other officials,” Minnie replied, though we hadn’t seen him for months.

“Tanaka is a Christian. This is just between us.” Yoguchi put his bony hand on a large package sent to Jinling’s nursery by the kindergarten of a church in Nagasaki. He had come to deliver the gifts today.

“Oh, no wonder Tanaka was so helpful,” I said. “We won’t breathe a word about him, of course.”

We then talked about how to fund the trip. Yoguchi said he could get some money from a Christian association, but it might not be enough to cover all the expenses. Minnie told him that she would look for funds too. “For the time being,” she said, “let’s split the cost fifty-fifty.”

“That’s fine. I hope we can work this one out.”

We thought that Jinling should sponsor the trip, since we had quite a bit of cash at the moment. But when we broached this subject without mentioning me as part of it, Mrs. Dennison said, “No, we won’t give a penny. If Shanna and Rulian want to visit Japan, they should pay for the trip out of their own pockets, or the Japanese side should pick up the bill. We must spend every yuan on restoring our college.”

“I want to go with them too,” I blurted out.

The old woman looked amazed. “Why do you want to be part of this? What’s in it for you?”

“I want to see what that country’s like,” I mumbled. “To know the enemy is a necessary step toward victory.”

“But you’re not an officer.”

Minnie said, “Rulian and Shanna were your students, Mrs. Dennison.” She must have assumed that the old woman resented her friendly relations with the young faculty members.

“That’s why I won’t play favorites,” the old woman responded.

“We have a good amount of cash now, and I cannot see why we shouldn’t sponsor the trip,” Minnie said.

“Remember we’ve both agreed to devote all our efforts and resources to rebuilding the college.”

“Their visit to Japan will help improve the communication and mutual understanding between the Japanese and the Chinese. That’s more meaningful and necessary — I mean, to make peace. Besides, our delegates will find ways to form relations with the churches there, and our direct contact with Japan will strengthen our college’s position here in the long run. In other words, this trip would also help to rebuild Jinling.”

“I just don’t want to deal with the Japanese. They’ve done enough damage. I would also warn you not to mix too much with them.”

“What do you mean?” Minnie asked.

“The Japanese are the enemy of the Chinese. If you get too chummy with them, you will arouse animosity among our employees and make us vulnerable. You need to be more careful about receiving Japanese visitors.”

“That’s ludicrous.” Minnie flung up her hand. “The Chinese know I love China and work only in their interest.”

“Then you should concentrate on restoring our college. This is the best we can do for this country.”

“You’re too obsessed with the restoration.”

“To be frank, obsession is what you lack. You always want to be praised by everybody, but you don’t understand that no human being can please everybody. Worse still, you don’t get much done — you’re just busy all the time.”

“Do you mean I’m not efficient?”

“Also inadequate.” The old woman’s eyes flared while her face remained wooden.

At this point Ban poked his head in the door. “Yes, what do you want?” Mrs. Dennison asked him.

“Mr. Yoguchi wants to see Miss Vautrin.”

Minnie glanced at the old woman’s smirking face, then stood and went out to see the visitor. I wondered if I should follow her, but resisted. Mrs. Dennison seemed to have known of our travel plans beforehand and was intent on thwarting them. She had been to Japan before the war and been deeply impressed by it. It was “clean, charming, and well ordered,” in her own words. What’s more, she believed in the exchange of ideas and information. That was why she had always encouraged faculty members to visit foreign countries during the summer and even had funds earmarked for that purpose when she was in office. Why this sea change in her attitude? Why had she become so hostile to the trip? She seemed determined to scuttle whatever Minnie attempted to accomplish.

Disappointed, I just sat there without saying a word. How I wished I could go see my grandson Shin.

Finally Mrs. Dennison said, “We cannot keep Minnie Vautrin here anymore. She has become an obstacle.”

Those words astounded me. When I later told Minnie what the ex-president had said, she frowned and wondered aloud, “What’s next? What do you think she might do?”

“I’ve no clue,” I said. “But don’t provoke her. Remember what I told you? Wait patiently till the day the bride becomes the mother-in-law.”

“Okay, I’ll try to keep cool.”

Despite her frustration, Minnie attempted to be conciliatory toward Mrs. Dennison. For better or worse, the two of them would have to work together until Dr. Wu came back from Chengdu; our college could not afford to be polarized by their conflict. Minnie also said it felt like it was beneath her to quarrel with the old woman. Indeed, in people’s eyes Minnie was like a saint, the Goddess of Mercy, and she must not diminish herself with petty squabbles.

We did not discourage Yoguchi from getting the travel papers for Rulian, Shanna, and me. Minnie said she would raise funds for us if necessary. For the time being, there was too much to do before Christmas. If we went to Japan, it would not be until the summer.

46

ON SUNDAY, the day before Christmas, Big Liu came to the president’s office and flopped into a chair. “Meiyan and Luhai ran away,” he croaked. “I didn’t mean to spoil your holiday mood, Minnie, but I thought you should know so you could find someone for the job left by Luhai.”

“Heavens, you mean they just eloped?” Minnie asked.

“I don’t know if they’re close like a couple. Apparently Luhai has been a bad influence and misled her. The girl has been in terrible shape ever since she was taken by the Japanese.”

“She must’ve been traumatized.”

“She’s hatred itself and kept saying China needed a revolution if we wanted to defeat Japan.” Big Liu’s face contorted as if he were suppressing a hiccup caused by heartburn.

“Do you think she’s really fond of Luhai?” I asked.

“I can’t tell, but she said they were just friends. Luhai must have connections with some resistance force. Who could’ve imagined he would abandon his family? I just hope he’ll treat Meiyan well, but that man has shifty eyes — he’s not reliable.”

“Are you going to hunt them down?” Minnie said.

“Where would I look? She’s grown enough to choose her own way of living.”

“Luhai’s family must be in a muddle.” Minnie turned to me. “Should we do something for his wife and kids?”

“Maybe we should,” I said.

The door opened and Donna stepped in, holding a letter. “Minnie,” she panted, “this is for you.”

“From whom?” Minnie took it.

“A young boy handed it to me and said it was from Ban, who left with Luhai. I was told to give it to you immediately.”

“You mean Ban also ran away?” I asked Donna, whose face was flushed.

“Apparently so.”

Minnie unfolded the sheet of yellow paper and found that Luhai had written the letter in English. I knew he had often perused the North China Daily News and other English papers, but I’d never heard him speak the language, which I’d been unsure he could read. Probably he had composed the letter in English to keep other Chinese from learning its contents. Nonetheless, Minnie read it out loud to us:

Dear Dean Vautrin:

Meiyan, Ban, and I decide to escape Nanjing. We want to be in the force fighting for our motherland, so we prepare to sacrifice everything, including family. If the country is lost, our home can not be same any more and our individual success mean nothing. Please do not trouble yourself and find us, because we are going very, very far away, under different name. But I have

favors

a favor to beg you — please give some helps to my wife and children, because I can do nothing for them from today on. One day I shall return like a fighter and a hero. Thank you from bottom of my heart. I shall remember your kindness

forever

.

Donna burst into laughter. “What kind of nonsense is that?” she snorted. “A man dumped his wife and kids on the pretext of sacrificing for his country.”

“The rascal is shameless,” Big Liu grunted.

“This is a bizarre letter,” Minnie admitted. “But why would Ban flee with them as well?”

“That boy hates the Japanese,” I said.

“Where do you think they might go?” Minnie asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Big Liu answered. “I hope they won’t head for the Communists’ base in Yan’an. Meiyan said she’d join any kind of resistance force as long as she could get out of Nanjing.”

“By why did the three of them flee together?” I said.

“Luhai was unhappy about his marriage, because his parents had picked his wife for him,” replied Big Liu.

Donna tittered, her face shiny and slightly fleshy. “So to fight an invader is a fine solution to marital trouble.”

“Stop it, Donna,” Minnie said. “Don’t be so sarcastic. I don’t think Luhai ran away because he wanted to dump his family. He’s not that kind of man.”

“That’s true,” I chimed in. “He wants to fight the Japanese, and so must Meiyan and Ban.”

We all agreed that no matter what, we ought to do something for Luhai’s wife. So Minnie and I went to see Mrs. Dennison to brief her about the runaways. To our relief, the old woman suggested that Jinling offer Fuwan, Luhai’s wife, a hundred yuan and persuade her to return to her folks in the countryside. We both felt this would be a reasonable solution.

“Son of a gun!” Mrs. Dennison said about Ban. “He took off without leaving me a word.”

With little difficulty, I convinced Fuwan to leave for her parents’ home. The poor woman, her eyes puffy, said that she was tired of city life anyway — if she stayed here, her two small sons might grow up to be bad like their father. In addition, Nanjing was such a horrible place that she was often depressed, so she wouldn’t mind returning to the countryside.

But a week later Luhai’s father, a trim man with beetle eyebrows, came from Shenyang to fetch his grandsons. He claimed that nobody could separate his grandkids from him and his wife. Fuwan and the boys left with him on the sly. This baffled us, and Mrs. Dennison regretted having given away a hundred yuan too easily.

With the old woman’s approval, Minnie offered Big Liu the business manager’s job left open by Luhai’s departure, but Big Liu wouldn’t take it, saying he preferred to teach. He had a good reputation as a teacher and used to be on the faculty of the language school, which had shut down long ago. Since there were more foreign academics and diplomats in town now, he could have earned more than his current salary — fifty yuan a month — by offering Chinese lessons (we all drew eighty percent of our normal pay now). To our relief, he told Minnie a few days later that he would continue working as Jinling’s Chinese secretary, because he felt this was more meaningful and also it was safer for his family to stay on campus. Mr. Rong, the assistant manager, was promoted to the position abandoned by Luhai.

AFTER THE NEW YEAR a bullnecked man named Boren, a friend of Luhai’s, came to see Mrs. Dennison and Minnie. He lived in the neighborhood and had always been hostile to Jinling and the local missionary groups. He had come to visit Luhai every once in a while. Boren was respected by the locals as a community leader of sorts and had been quite vocal about the missionary work, which he believed had brought about chaos in China. He had disliked Miss Lou and accused her of always toadying to the foreigners. He and I had never been on good terms either. But the moment he sat down in the president’s office, he was all smiles and even thanked me as I poured tea for him from a red clay teapot. He told us that the fall of our city had changed him, because Jinling had sheltered his family of seven for four months while he was away in Hunan Province taking care of his bedridden mother. His home, which was three hundred years old, had been burned down by the Japanese, and most of his antique furniture had been fed to the bonfire in the center of his courtyard.

He wanted to sell us a piece of land because he needed cash. His dog had snapped at a Japanese soldier’s heel and gotten its master into trouble. The bite was nothing serious, just two tiny punctures on the foot, but the Japanese police had hauled Boren in and beaten him up, despite his promise to kill the dog and let them have its meat.

“I sent everything, including its skin, to those bastards,” Boren said, “but they still won’t leave me alone. They said I had disabled a soldier and must accept the full consequences.”

“What does that mean?” Minnie said.

“I asked a friend of mine. He suggested I spend some money to appease the Japanese. But I don’t have any cash on hand. Everybody’s hard up for cash these days. My neighbor works in a factory and is paid in pots and ladles because they can’t ship their products out of Nanjing anymore. Every evening he has to peddle utensils downtown. If your school can buy a piece of land from me, you’ll save my life, and also my family.”

This came as a surprise. Both Mrs. Dennison and Minnie were intrigued. When the college was being founded, the old president had tried in vain to purchase land from Boren’s father; now this offer could be an opportunity, but Mrs. Dennison and Minnie wanted to look at the property again before deciding.

47

A FEW DAYS LATER we set out for the southwestern end of Jinling’s property to see the land Boren was offering. Apple and pear trees were bulky despite their leafless branches, and in the depths of the orchard some rooks were cawing like crazy. Old Liao appeared, trundling a load of bricks in a wheelbarrow. Even on such a wintry day the gardener wouldn’t stop working. He seemed ignorant of idleness, a typical peasant. Pointing at a path he’d newly paved with bricks, Mrs. Dennison said, “Nice job.” The man smiled without a word, then nodded at Minnie.

The land Boren offered was bumpy and overgrown with brambles, different from what we had expected. It would have to be leveled before it could be used. Also, because it was separated from Jinling’s property by a brook, it wouldn’t be easy to incorporate the land into the campus unless our college owned a length of the stream as well. Mrs. Dennison puckered her brow while the outer corners of her eyes drooped. I could tell she had misgivings.

“We will discuss this with the trustees and will let you know our answer soon,” Mrs. Dennison told Boren.

“Sure, no need to rush,” he said.

When the two women talked about the offer again, Mrs. Dennison was against buying it, saying it was just an acre of wasteland. Actually, it was 1.3 acres, at half price — four hundred yuan. Despite its bumpiness and its separation from our campus, Minnie believed we should jump at this opportunity. She said to Mrs. Dennison, “We’ll figure out how to use the land eventually. Let’s grab it.”

“No. At this time we mustn’t acquire anything we don’t need.”

“We have the money.”

“We must be frugal. The renovation will cost a fortune. You never know where an extra amount will have to be put up.”

“Please, it’s just four hundred yuan, a bargain.”

“No, I don’t want it.”

“I’m the dean of this college — my opinion doesn’t count at all?”

“Well, I don’t have to listen to you.”

“Don’t you remember how hard you used to haggle with those landowners over tiny parcels of land?”

“That was then. Things have changed and we have to concentrate on the task at hand.”

“Since when have you become so shortsighted?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Can’t you see this is a windfall? We’ll need a lot of land for future development.”

“I don’t want to spend the money now.”

“It’s not your money.”

“Neither is it yours. If you love that piece of dirt so much, why not buy it for yourself?”

Mrs. Dennison’s last sentence put Minnie in mind of acquiring the land on her own. She talked with me about this. Since she wanted to spend the rest of her life here, she could build her home on that slope beside the babbling brook. From that spot you could see a good part of campus and enjoy peace and quiet. If the college provided her with a bungalow someday, the land still wouldn’t be wasted — she could donate it to Jinling or build a small folk school on it. She had been making one hundred yuan a month since the previous winter and had saved about eleven hundred yuan, too little to build her own house. But she would save more and buy the lot first.

Her reasoning made sense, so I encouraged her to buy the land. At such a low price she could sell it and make her money back whenever she wanted. We went to Boren’s three days later and wrapped up the purchase. The man was elated and even called Minnie “the goddess of generosity” when she told him she was acquiring the land for herself. This unnerved her. “Please don’t call me that,” she said, but he merely grinned, showing his square teeth.

48

MONICA BUCKLEY DIED in early February, and the missionary community, regardless of denomination, assembled in the Shigu Road Cathedral for her funeral. The nave had a domed roof and stained-glass windows, which were high and narrow with arched tops, the panes iridescent like peacock feathers. More than two hundred Chinese also attended.

Reverend Wei presided over the ceremony. People stood up and sang the hymn “O Thou Whose Own Vast Temple Stands.” Next, Pastor Daniel Kirk read out Psalm 23. Minnie was moved by the solemn, serene poem, which she said she’d never before thought so sublime. Then a few friends of Monica’s went to the chancel lined with winter plum blossoms to deliver their eulogies and to reminisce about her. Among them was Alice, who had started her missionary career at the same time as the dead woman back in Anhui, though they belonged to different denominations. She told the audience that Monica had often missed her hometown in rural Pennsylvania but never lost sight of her real home in heaven, in God’s mansion, because she believed we were all virtually foreigners or guests on earth. After Alice, a tall American man with graying hair and sagging cheeks spoke. He declared that he’d known Monica for almost two decades, and in spite of her languid appearance, she had a good sense of humor and an extraordinary memory, and she enjoyed telling stories, especially to children. Once he’d told an anecdote from his childhood in which a man got drunk and exchanged his ulster for a puny catfish. A few weeks later he heard Monica telling the same story to a group of small girls but with a more dramatic ending: the man gave away his team of mules and wagon for a salmon, so now he couldn’t go home anymore and had to sleep in the open air with snow falling — he almost froze to death and lost two fingers. What had happened was that Monica had overheard him in the adjacent room when he was telling the anecdote. “Now,” the man concluded, “I hope she will entertain angels up there with all the jokes and stories she can make up with such grace and ease.”

That brought out laughter among the foreigners, while most Chinese remained quiet, bewildered. Indeed, a funeral was a sorrowful, solemn occasion. How come these foreigners wisecracked and gave belly laughs?

After the reminiscences, Searle, his face freshly shaved and his hair combed back, went to the pulpit and delivered a sermon in honor of Monica titled “The Christian Duties in the Time of War.” He spoke in Mandarin about the Japanese annexation of some Asian countries and about their brutalities. I knew that the Japanese kept a watchful eye on him because of his writings about their exploiting the narcotics business, and that they had also demanded that he surrender all the paperwork of the International Relief Committee — including the records of nine hundred cases of murder, rape, and arson within the Safety Zone perpetrated by Japanese soldiers during the first weeks after the fall of Nanjing — but he had told them that Eduard Sperling had taken all the files back to Cologne. Searle talked about the situation in Europe. He said, “Under the threat of a world war, what should we Christians do? First, we must strive to make peace and oppose war. Some of you were here when Nanjing fell two years ago and saw with your own eyes what it was like. Men can be more vicious than beasts of prey if they’re put in the extreme situation of war. No rules will be followed, and all kinds of evil will be unleashed. War is simply the most destructive force we human beings can produce, so we must make every effort to prevent it.

“However, if we survey human history, we can see that there were times when war was unavoidable, even necessary. There have been some wars that can be called just wars. For example, if people take up arms against foreign invaders, can we blame them? Should we attempt to dissuade them from fighting their national enemy? Of course not. Therefore, the Christians in those countries should fight like common citizens and should combine their fulfillment of Christian duties with the survival of their nations. As for those Christians whose countries are aggressors, they should do the opposite — work against war and do their utmost to make peace.”

After hearing Searle’s words, I was sure that the Japanese wouldn’t leave him alone from now on, but he must have become accustomed to dealing with them.

Searle concluded, “As for those Christians in countries that are not involved in war, like the Americans among you, we must align ourselves only with the weak and the victims, just as our late Sister Monica did for the orphans in Nanjing. This is the only moral stand we should take. The true Christian position should be standing between humanity and the unregarding force.”

The audience liked his sermon, especially the Chinese. The instant Searle had finished, a few people clapped their hands, then stopped short, realizing this wasn’t an occasion for applause.

Reverend Wei gave a closing prayer, imploring God to receive Monica’s soul and to grant her eternal joy. Then everyone stood and sang “O God of Love, O King of Peace.”

After the funeral, Minnie said she hoped that when she died, she could have a similar service, full of warmth and dignity, like the one we had just attended to celebrate the ascent of Monica’s soul. The dead woman must be at peace now.

MISS LOU CAME to the main office the next morning, because some families in the neighborhood had run out of food and their children were starving. I stepped out of the inner room and joined the little woman. Seated in her chair with the unfinished paperwork for student scholarships on her desk, Minnie yawned. “Excuse me,” she said, covering her mouth with her palm. “I get tired so easily these days that I often drop off. And my eyes throb with double vision.” Lately she often joked that she looked sixty and felt eighty.

“You’ve worked too hard,” Miss Lou said. “You need a long vacation.”

“Yes, you owe yourself one,” I agreed.

“I’m supposed to be on furlough in the summer, but it’s unlikely I can do that,” Minnie said. “I’ll have to stay around to take care of things here. Now, Miss Lou, what should we do for your neighbors without food? We must make sure they will at least have a decent meal on the Spring Festival’s Eve.”

“That’s why I came to see you. I’m also wondering if your college has an extra quilt. A poor woman lost her only quilt yesterday afternoon, stolen by a thief who broke into her home. Her husband disappeared and she’s too ill to scratch out a living. Actually, she sewed all her savings, ten yuan in total, into her quilt, so the money is gone too.”

Minnie turned to me. “Do we have enough rice to spare some?”

“Sure,” I answered. The previous fall I’d bought eleven wagon-loads of rice at twenty-five yuan per picul (133.33 pounds), a smart move at two-thirds of the current price, so we could offer some to the destitute. “But we might have given away all the quilts we made last fall,” I said. “I’ll have to check.”

We went to the main dormitory and found no extra quilts. So Minnie turned into her own apartment in the same building and grabbed the one from her bed. “Take this,” she said to Miss Lou.

“You have another quilt for yourself?” the little woman asked.

“I have a duvet and a warm blanket.”

Miss Lou left happy, having said she would come with a wheelbarrow to pick up the rice the next day.

49

IN MID-MARCH Yoguchi informed us that Mr. Tanaka couldn’t get the travel permits for the three of us anymore, because the officer in charge of travel papers, Tanaka’s fellow townsman, had left Nanjing. Also, citizens here, especially the Christians, were discouraged from visiting Japan. The cancellation of the trip disappointed me and aggravated my temper, and my antagonism toward Shanna and Rulian flared up again. If they got on my nerves, I didn’t hesitate to give them a piece of my mind to let off some steam. I knew they would bad-mouth me behind my back, but I didn’t care. Minnie said I sometimes deliberately picked fights with them. That might be true, but she couldn’t see the main cause: there was this anger seething in me because the canceled trip had dashed my hopes of going to Japan.

Rulian was tolerable on the whole, but I found Shanna insufferable. She was from a well-to-do family and had the extravagant habit of dining out every weekend. She often boasted about the dishes she ordered in restaurants downtown. One day at recess, I overheard her speaking about the Osaka Terrace to a bunch of women in the Homecraft School. “Believe it or not,” she said, “I wanted to puke when I tried sushi for the first time. It tasted like a dead slug in my mouth, especially the tuna. But my friend urged me to go on, and by and by I began to like it. Now I can taste different kinds of sushi. I like the eel most.”

“My goodness, even if they paid me I wouldn’t eat raw fish,” a short woman said.

“It’s actually more nutritious,” replied Shanna.

“That’s wild,” said a spindly woman.

“You don’t believe me?”

The bell rang, and the women started back for the classrooms. After they were gone, I said to Shanna, “You shouldn’t have talked about fancy Japanese food in front of them.”

She pulled a long face. “They asked me about it.”

“But you’re not supposed to be a salesgirl for Japanese restaurants.” My gorge was rising as I spoke.

“You know what? That place is owned by two Chinese men who’re brothers.” Her nose, the shape of a big clove of garlic, quivered, but she avoided looking me in the face.

“Still, you went too far. Lots of people in Nanjing are starving, while you brag about raw seafood.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“It is my business to stop you from making others feel cheap and abject.”

“Nuts!” She turned and strode away, her hands in the pockets of her flannel jacket.

Exchanges like that often broke out between us. Whenever she went out of bounds, I would let her have it, though I always spoke to her privately. I simply couldn’t tolerate her kind of extravagance and foolishness.

Then one afternoon Shanna came to see Minnie and said she had decided to resign immediately. Minnie was flabbergasted, never having expected that a dean would quit before the semester was over; no matter how she tried to dissuade her, Shanna wouldn’t change her mind. From the inner office I overheard her say, “I’m just sick of all this. My family needs me.” She claimed that her father was bedridden and wanted to see her back in Shanghai.

Minnie could do nothing. Shanna left two days later, and Minnie had to take over the administrative work of the Homecraft School. Although Donna was the dean of the middle school, she needed a lot of help because she didn’t know Chinese and couldn’t even figure out the girls’ names on paper. With the additional work, Minnie had to put in extra hours every day and often didn’t go to bed until early in the morning.

This situation could not continue. If only Aifeng would come back. But her fiancé was still jailed in Tianjin, and she couldn’t leave in the midst of all the efforts to rescue him. Mrs. Dennison came and talked with Minnie about how to bring Shanna back. The old woman was also worried, seeing that it was impossible for Minnie alone to handle so many things. Mrs. Dennison had tried to help, but the bookkeeping and the housing renovation were almost more than she could manage. I hardly spoke a word and, cheek on fist, just listened to them. Having considered the pros and cons, the two leaders decided to send Alice to Shanghai on behalf of Jinling to beg Shanna to come back. “We should have trained more leaders,” Mrs. Dennison said, and sighed.

In fact, a good number of Jinling’s graduates had served as middle school principals throughout China, but none of them would come and work in occupied Nanjing. As soon as Mrs. Dennison left, I burst out at Minnie, “You shouldn’t have made that suggestion!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You shouldn’t send Alice to Shanghai to get Shanna back. That will make the little bitch more insolent and forget who she is.”

“We need her.”

“All right. In that case, I’ll leave when the semester’s over.”

“Come on, Anling, I know you’re unhappy and frustrated. Everybody here has frayed nerves, but we have to work together to survive the hard times and prevent this place from lapsing into a loony bin.”

“I’ll leave. Don’t say I didn’t tell you beforehand.” I stood up and made for the door.

Minnie didn’t take my threat seriously. She must have understood I couldn’t possibly resign, because my family lived on campus and I might not be able to find a safe place elsewhere. She often said I had “an iron mouth but a tofu heart,” using the idiom that refers to a person who is harsh only on the outside. She also lamented that China’s greatest obstacle was not the war or corruption but the so-called face — everyone was afraid of losing face, unwilling to make concessions; as a result, too much energy and time were wasted on trivial matters. For that Chiang Kai-shek had her sympathy, having to save so much face constantly, for both himself and others.

Four days later Alice came back without Shanna, though she’d met with Dr. Wu in Shanghai. The president was on her way to New Delhi to attend a conference, representing Chinese women. Dr. Wu wrote me a letter, chastising me mildly and urging me to help Minnie keep things together on campus. As for Mrs. Dennison, she wrote that we should just humor her and avoid any confrontation. Minnie went to Rulian and begged her to take over a part of the work left by Shanna for the time being. Rulian agreed and also promised her not to bicker with me again. Both she and Minnie ran the Homecraft School.

I felt sorry about the trouble I’d brought about and told Minnie that I wouldn’t lose my temper again.

Mrs. Dennsion was also frustrated by the loss of Shanna. Despite fretting about the Homecraft School, the old woman knew we had to pull the program through the academic year. To calm everybody down, she gave a party at her place, to which all the faculty and many staffers were invited.

Minnie arrived later than the others, having had to accompany a group of visitors through a class that taught how to preserve duck eggs with mud and lime. In the living room of Eva’s bungalow hung a long horizontal scroll that read SET THINE HOUSE IN ORDER. This was something new, added by Mrs. Dennison. The Chinese faculty members praised the calligraphy in the scroll. “Sturdy like trees and fluid like floating clouds,” one enthused. “August and masterful,” another echoed. Most of them assumed that it was a quotation from Confucius, since the sage had also said something about cultivating yourself and putting your household in order as the first step toward governing a state. I knew that those words were from the book of Isaiah, but I made no comment.

Everybody enjoyed the buffet dinner, and I felt conciliatory and spoke with Rulian at length. When we were eating apples and honey dates for dessert, Donna brought out a bunch of letters addressed to Jinling that had just arrived. She opened them one by one and read the contents out loud to the room. Most of the letters were from people interested in the relief work, expressing their admiration and good wishes. A few inquired about China missions. One, however, was written by a high school sophomore in Camden, New Jersey, and it impressed everybody. The writer, Megan Stevens, knew about Minnie Vautrin’s deeds and declared that Minnie was her hero. The girl said she would learn stenography and improve her typing skills because she dreamed of becoming Minnie’s secretary someday.

“Listen to this.” Donna went on in a lilting voice: “ ‘Last month our town’s paper published an article on what you did, and the people of our church all know about you. You are a great woman, a model for young girls who want to follow the way of the Lord. We all love you.’ ”

“My, you’re an international celebrity, Minnie,” Alice said.

“Come on, don’t embarrass me.”

In the postscript Megan asked: “Is it true that a missionary woman is not allowed to marry? My parents told me that, but I am not convinced. Besides serving God, I also want to have a family and children.”

“That’s so sweet,” Donna said, and put the letter on the octagonal dining table.

“Maybe we should give her an interview,” Minnie quipped. “We could use a secretary like her if she’s good.”

“We’d better not,” Mrs. Dennison snorted to no one in particular. “We mustn’t indulge in a personality cult.”

Minnie’s thick eyebrows shot up. Possessed by a sudden fit of anger, she burst out, “Why don’t you say idolatry?”

“It does smack of that. A human being should not aspire to become the Virgin Mary or a bodhisattva.” Mrs. Dennison stared Minnie in the face.

“You simply cannot abide anyone who’s doing better than you. You’re envy personified.”

“At least I’ve never used personal notoriety to keep our college as a refugee camp.”

“Who made those poor women come here — me or the Japanese?”

Without waiting for Mrs. Dennison to answer, Minnie walked away. I kept stealing peeks at the old woman, whose face was changing colors, now pink, now chalky, and now yellow, while everybody remained silent. The air was so charged that I felt a bit queasy. Minnie went into the kitchen and stayed there awhile, then slipped out the side door.

50

A VERY QUALIFIED APPLICANT named Yan Ning accepted the dean’s position at the Homecraft School and would come to Nanjing in late April. She had a good deal of experience in this kind of adult education in Fujian Province. We felt a bit relieved. As long as we could get through this semester, there’d be a whole summer for us to look for qualified teachers and administrators.

One morning in early April (three days after the national puppet government headed by Jingwei Wang had been installed in Nanjing), I received a note from Mrs. Dennison that said she wanted to see Minnie and me at once. I went to Minnie’s place in the main dormitory and then together we headed out to Eva’s bungalow. Light fog swayed over the treetops while the warm, moist air dampened the birds’ tumultuous songs. A rain frog rattled like a broken bellows. We chatted as we walked, disturbing some warblers, which took off, darting away.

Neither Minnie nor I had any idea why Mrs. Dennison wanted to see us. Had she heard that Minnie had purchased the land from Boren and abandoned the plans for our visit to Japan? If so, Minnie said she ought to appear composed and conciliatory. She wouldn’t mind, if necessary, apologizing to the old woman, since it was she, Minnie, who’d lost self-control a few days earlier.

“Yes,” I said. “Remember that the bride will become the mother-in-law in due time.”

Minnie laughed and swatted me on the shoulder.

Mrs. Dennison looked sullen: without makeup, her face was slack and creased, her neck appeared more freckled than usual, and a small dewlap was noticeable on her throat. The second we sat down, the old woman took out a newspaper, The Purple Mountain Evening News, and handed it to Minnie. “Look at the article on the second page,” she said. “I’m totally scandalized.”

Minnie began reading while I drank tea and glanced at her now and again. Her face darkened, then went pallid, as if she had aged all of a sudden. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dennison scowled and fixed her furious eyes on me. My heart shuddered. Did I do something wrong? I wondered. Why is she staring at me like that?

Finally Minnie sat up. “A pack of lies!” she said, and threw the newspaper on the glass coffee table, glaring at Mrs. Dennison, her eyes smoldering.

The old woman grimaced, which crinkled her upper lip and crimped her droopy brows. She said, “I can see there might be some exaggeration in the article, but you never mentioned the incident in your reports to the board of founders. I was appalled to read that you actually let the Japanese choose one hundred women.”

“No, it didn’t happen like that.”

“Stop dodging. I asked a number of people, and they said you’d made a mistake in believing the Japanese. But to me, it’s not a mistake. It’s a sin and a crime, unpardonable because you’ve tried to cover it up all along.”

Dumbfounded, Minnie groped for words but couldn’t find any. She got up and dragged herself out the door.

I picked up the article. It was titled “The Real Criminals” and attacked the Westerners in Nanjing. It condemned the establishment of the refugee camps in the former Safety Zone, claiming that the camps had gathered women together so it would be easier for the Japanese to “defile them.” As a consequence, even Chinese pimps would lead the soldiers to the camps for girls. “This was a sneaky American way of procuring women for the Japanese,” the author declared. He then singled out Minnie as a chief collaborator. The writer, who called himself Truth Preserver, recalled the incident on December 24, 1937, and stated: “Minnie Vautrin, the deputy principal of Jinling College, agreed to provide 100 good-looking young women for the Japanese, and on that dark day they abducted 21. Acting like a madam of a brothel, she later kept apologizing to the officers and promised to let them choose the other 79 women. To add insult to injury, she assured them that the school’s gate would always be open to them. Small wonder the Jinling camp entertained dozens of Japanese policemen every night with hot tea, meat pies, and roasted peanuts even after they had raped girls there. Brothers and sisters, it’s high time to reevaluate the tragedy that happened to our city and to see through the so-called Goddess of Mercy. Minnie Vautrin is actually a trader in human beings and a traitor to the Chinese people. We must expose her and hold her accountable for the numerous women and girls whom she proffered to the soldiers.”

Putting down the paper, I told Mrs. Dennison, “This is hogwash! I was at the scene when it happened. Minnie did her best to protect the women and girls.”

“I knew she and you were hand in glove in this crime,” she said, pointing at my nose. “I did my investigation. As an accomplice, you cannot cover up for her anymore.”

I realized there was no way to reason with this madness, so I stood up and strode out of the house.

FOR THREE DAYS Minnie worked without respite. She’d neither eat nor go to bed — she was tormented by insomnia — and yet she kept busy in order to quell her miserable feelings and thoughts. Then, on the fourth day, she collapsed and had to lie down. From then on, she wouldn’t come out of her apartment and wore felt slippers and velveteen pajamas all the time. We made chicken soup and yam porridge for her, which Minnie hardly touched. Time and again she tried to work on a schedule for the middle school’s class meetings, but her mind couldn’t focus. Sometimes she talked about the setbacks and disasters that had befallen Jinling. She was convinced that she was to blame for most of them, especially for those young women taken by the Japanese soldiers. She kept saying to me, “I saw the handwriting on the wall long ago. Now I’m coming to the end of my energy and can’t continue anymore. I’ve failed, failed miserably.” Whenever she dozed off, she’d have nightmares.

Big Liu often went to see her and even offered to speak to Mrs. Dennison about the twenty-one “prostitutes” and about the circumstances in which Minnie couldn’t have responded otherwise. But she adamantly forbade him to intercede for her, saying Mrs. Dennison had become a maniac and might turn on him. I didn’t think it would be wise for him either. The old woman seemed to have lost her mind, unable to listen to reason.

On April 10, Minnie handed in her resignation to Mrs. Dennison. Afterward Minnie refused to see anyone except for Big Liu, Alice, and me. We all tried talking her out of her decision. But to whatever we said, she’d merely reply, “I’m responsible for their deaths. I’ll answer to God.”

In the evenings she listened to Radio Shanghai and heard the news that Germany had invaded Denmark and Norway and that the British navy and the German fleet were engaged in a fierce battle. “What’s the world coming to?” she kept musing aloud. Everything seemed to be crumbling. And she would talk about those countries she’d been to or that she imagined she’d been to, saying lots of people would be killed and many towns and cities would be flattened. Her mind was no longer coherent.

Alice brought in her mail one afternoon in mid-April. A letter from Yan Ning informed Minnie that she had decided to withdraw her acceptance of the dean’s position for family reasons. Minnie flung the letter to the floor and shouted, “I’m sick of this, sick of it all!”

Silently Alice set down a bunch of white azaleas in a vase and backed out of the room.

Mrs. Dennison came one morning, but Minnie didn’t speak to her. The old woman told her that Aifeng Yang was coming back, her efforts to rescue her fiancé having come to nothing — the man had died in jail. Minnie didn’t respond to the news. Afterward the former president and I talked briefly; she told me to spend more time with Minnie and keep watch over her.

Day by day Minnie’s condition was deteriorating. We called in an American doctor, who, together with Dr. Chu, diagnosed stress, fatigue, trauma, and malnutrition during menopause as the causes of her breakdown. After receiving a few hormone injections, Minnie refused to continue. She became more depressed, telling us that she was responsible for all the problems Jinling had encountered and for all the suffering the refugee women and girls had gone through; she felt she was a total failure, disgusting even to herself. We tried in vain to convince her that she was more capable than any of us and was a leader we all looked up to. She was our beloved principal.

Mrs. Dennison reported Minnie’s illness to both Jinling’s board of founders in New York and the United Christian Missionary Committee, based in Indianapolis. Minnie had no close family except for a somewhat estranged brother in Shepherd, Michigan, who still resented that she had not returned to care for their father before the old man died. The plan was for Minnie to go back to the States for treatment, and the two institutions agreed to split her medical bills. Alice was assigned to accompany her back to America, but Minnie refused to leave before the semester was over. Not until Mrs. Dennison promised her that she and Aifeng would keep the Homecraft School and the middle school intact did Minnie agree to go.

The day of her departure was wet and a little chilly, though spring was at its peak — trees all green, flowers in clusters, the ground velvety with sprouting grass, and the air atremble with the trills of birds. About a dozen people gathered at the front gate to see her off, mostly her friends and colleagues. I burst into tears and wailed, “Minnie, you must come back. Remember, you and I planned to spend our last years here together. You promised to teach me how to drive.” Beside me stood Donna and Rulian, their tearful eyes fastened on Minnie. Beyond the two young women was Old Liao, staring at her, his neck stretched forward and his bronzed face taut, as if he was trying hard to comprehend what was going on.

“We will wait for you to come back!” Rulian cried.

Minnie didn’t reply, but simply smiled vaguely, as though all emotion had seeped out of her. Big Liu watched her in silence, his glasses flashing while his lips twisted. He waved at our friend, but she didn’t respond.

Mrs. Dennison placed her hand on the door of the black car and said with a glum face, “Minnie, try to get well soon. Remember you’re one of us and Jinling is your home — we’ll always take you back.”

Minnie gazed at her with a faraway look, the corners of her mouth wrinking a little. She didn’t seem to register the meaning of the old woman’s words. Then the car rolled away, leaving behind the faint smell of the exhaust and all the waving hands in the powdery rain.