Nanjing Requiem

by Ha Jin

  The search started with the Science Building, and the Japanese wanted to go through every room. If a door was locked and the key was not available right away, a soldier carrying a hefty ax would smash the lock. My heart was hammering as we followed them around. In the second-floor office of the Geography Department were stored six hundred cotton-padded garments for the Chinese troops, made by the neighborhood women the previous fall. Minnie and I had decided to keep them because we believed that the refugees might need winter clothes. Now those jackets and pants could be criminal evidence. How should we explain if they were discovered? Could we say that the Chinese army had forced us to make them? If the Japanese found the clothes, I’d have to step up and invent an excuse before Minnie could respond. She was such a poor liar that they would see through her.

  Fortunately, the officer did not insist on searching the room containing the clothes first when Minnie offered to take the men directly to the attic, which sheltered two hundred women and children. The refugees up there seemed to have distracted the soldiers, since on their way down they forgot to go left and search the offices on the second floor.

  As we came out of the building, one soldier grabbed hold of a water carrier we’d just hired. The poor man was too petrified to holler for help; his buckets were overturned and his shoulder pole smudged with mud. The soldier slapped him across the face and sneered in Mandarin, “Serviceman, huh?”

  “No, no,” Minnie intervened. “He’s a coolie, our waterman. Damn it, he’s already over forty, how can he be a soldier?”

  A junior officer ripped open the man’s collar to look at his left shoulder. Luckily no mark was on it, and they let him go. The fellow was so shaken that he tore away without a word, leaving behind the buckets, the carrying pole, and the two buttons from his jacket, all dropped in the wet mud.

  Minnie and I followed the Japanese. As we were approaching the front entrance, a small group of soldiers appeared, pulling away a young boy, the repairman Tong’s nephew, who had often come to campus to do odd jobs. Minnie hurried over and blocked their way. “He’s our errand boy, not a soldier,” she cried, having hit upon the job title for him on the spur of the moment.

  The interpreter, a soft-faced Chinese man in a trench coat, told the Japanese what she had said. One of them stepped over and shoved Minnie in the chest with his fist. The tall officer shouted something at him, and the man yelped “Hai!” and stood at attention. So the boy ran away to join his uncle. The officer scribbled a note and handed it to Minnie. The interpreter told her, “You can show this to other groups if they come in to search again.” She thanked the officer, then seemed to flinch suddenly. She turned and whispered to me, “There’re machine guns everywhere.” Her chin pointed at the front entrance.

  I looked and caught sight of six of them propped on both sides of the front wall. I shivered as I realized that the Japanese had meant to shoot if a commotion took place here.

  After the officer and his entourage had gone out the front gate, we saw a squad of soldiers passing by with four Chinese men strung together by iron wire around their upper arms. One of them wasn’t wearing pants, his legs spattered with blood. We went over to the entrance to take a closer look but weren’t able to tell if the captives were former soldiers, although the youngest of them couldn’t have been older than sixteen. The group proceeded in single file toward the hillside in the west, and ten minutes later came a volley of gunfire—all those men were executed.

  “They shot people like that—without a trial or any evidence of crime?” Minnie said.

  I realized that the Japanese felt justified in treating us in any way they wanted. A lot of people must have expected this would happen. That must be why they had scrambled away before the Japanese arrived.

  More refugees had been let in. By now Jinling held more than four thousand. The newcomers recounted horrifying stories: Plundering, rape, bloodshed, and arson had taken place everywhere in the city and its suburbs in the past three days. Some girls who hadn’t reached their teens yet had been snatched away from their parents. In the east and south dark smoke kept rising—thousands of houses and stores had been torched to get rid of the evidence of pillage. Some soldiers would rob pedestrians of whatever they had on them: money, food, cigarettes, coats, fountain pens, even hats and gloves. An old woman told us, “A Jap yanked my brass thimble off my finger. He must’ve thought it was a ring or something. I showed him it was just for sewing, but he couldn’t understand. Such a half-wit, he almost broke my finger.” One of our janitors, a man with a catlike face named Jian Ding, sat on his heels and wouldn’t stop weeping, no matter how people tried to console him, because his fifteen-year-old son had been taken that morning.

  That evening, on the way to the Safety Zone’s headquarters, Minnie and I saw a stake-bed truck with double tires rumbling by. It carried a dozen or so teenage girls, who called out, “Help us! Save our lives!” One of them wore an eyeshade. Some had blackened faces and cropped hair, which still hadn’t been able to disguise them from the soldiers.

  We froze in our tracks, watching the vehicle until it disappeared. I closed my eyes, my eyeballs aching, while Minnie pressed the sides of her neck with both hands and groaned, “God, when will you show your anger?”

  We went to see Rabe to find out if he’d heard about Ban. He had no news for us.

  9

  ON THE MORNING of December 17, small groups of Japanese soldiers popped up on different parts of the campus, grabbing women and girls. There’d been more than thirty rape cases in our camp. Emergencies had sprung up continually, forcing Minnie and me to run around together to confront the soldiers. By now we had admitted more than six thousand refugees. All the buildings were packed, and most classrooms brought to mind train stations crowded with stranded passengers, while the people in the open were noisy, especially the children, milling around like at a temple fair. We were worried about how to maintain sanitation and feed so many. The porridge plant was totally inadequate.

  Minnie had persuaded Searle to open another dormitory at Nanjing University for newcomers and to ensure that a foreign man would stay there at night. Between four and six that afternoon, she and I led two large groups of women and children there; we also had a seventeen-year-old girl sent to Dr. Wilson—this young wife, five months pregnant, had been raped by a bunch of soldiers and had miscarried. A donkey cart shipped her to the hospital, followed by her shrieking mother-in-law.

  When we returned from our second trip to Searle’s new camp, we found Holly chatting with Miss Lou at the door of the main dormitory. We joined them and entered the dining hall in that building. Supper was dough-drop soup with soybean sprouts in it. Most of the staff had not eaten anything since breakfast, as we often skipped meals during the day. On the table were cruets of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and oil thick with chili flakes. While we were eating, a boy rushed in and panted, “Principal Vautrin, lots of Japs are on campus, beating up people.”

  “Where are they exactly?” Minnie asked.

  “On their way to the dorms in the north.”

  We all put down our bowls and went out. It was getting dark, and the air was smoky—some houses nearby must have been burning. A flock of rooks cawed lustily in treetops, while women’s and children’s shrieks were rising from the west and north. Bang, bang, bang, bang! Three Japanese were pounding the front door of the Central Building with their fists. Minnie went up to them, but before she could say a word, a bespectacled soldier said to us in broken Mandarin, “Open this.”

  “I have no key,” Minnie told him.

  “Soldiers in there, enemy of Japan.”

  “No soldiers, only women and children.”

  Minnie produced the note written by the officer the day before, but the man glanced at it, then tore it three times and dropped the pieces to the ground. He turned to speak to the other two men. One of them came up and slapped Minnie, Holly, and me while yelling something we couldn’t understand. He then shoved Miss Lou and nearly sent her to the grou
nd. Holly muttered in English, “Bastard!” Her eyes were teary and her bulky nose twitched. A pink-fingered handprint surfaced on her left cheek.

  “Open this,” the man wearing glasses insisted.

  At this point rectangular-faced Rong, the assistant business manager, arrived. With my ear still buzzing and hot from the slap, I asked him, “Do you have the key?”

  He shook his creased forehead. “I don’t. Usually we don’t lock this door from outside.”

  Minnie said to the soldiers, “We really don’t have the key.”

  The man blinked behind his glasses and ordered Rong in a cry, “Open it!”

  “I don’t know how.”

  At that, the soldier punched Rong in the face. The other two began beating and kicking him too. One of them kept smirking while he slapped Rong, as if having some fun with him. Then he raised his rifle, the bayonet pointed at Rong’s throat.

  “Stop, stop!” Minnie said. “All right, let’s use the other door.” She pointed at the side of the building, then led them away to that entrance. We followed them. I glanced at Rong, who was trembling and swallowing, his swollen eyes almost sealed.

  To our bafflement, once the three soldiers entered the building, they looked through a few rooms perfunctorily and didn’t even bother to go up to the top floor. Within five minutes the search was done. As we stepped out the side door, we saw another two soldiers pulling three Chinese men away, their hands tied behind their backs. I recognized the captives, who were all our employees. Minnie rushed over and said, “They work for us.”

  “Chinese soldiers, enemy of Japan,” one of the captors declared.

  “No, no, they’re gardeners and coolies,” she countered, and then pointed at Jian Ding. “He’s our janitor and just lost his fifteen-year-old son to your Imperial Army.”

  That didn’t help matters. The soldiers continued dragging the men away. Wide-framed Ding somehow made no protest, as if he didn’t care where they were taking him.

  The bespectacled soldier motioned for us to follow them, and together we headed to the front entrance, beyond which human shadows were moving.

  Outside the gate, I saw more than forty Chinese kneeling on the side of the street, a few weeping. Rulian and Luhai were among them, though Luhai was on his feet, speaking and gesticulating to a soldier. Two squads of Japanese stood around, most of them toting rifles and one holding a bloody-tongued German shepherd on a leash. A cross-eyed sergeant came over and demanded, “Who is the head of this place?” His interpreter translated the question.

  “I’m in charge.” Minnie stepped forward.

  As they were speaking, more of our staffers were escorted over and made to kneel down. Three soldiers came up to us and grabbed Rong, Miss Lou, and me, dragged us to the crowd, and forced us to our knees. Why are they rounding us up? I wondered. Are they taking over the school? What are they going to do to us and to the refugees? Where are Yaoping, Liya, and Fanfan? A wave of dizziness came over me, and I nearly keeled over; I grasped Miss Lou’s arm to steady myself.

  The sergeant asked Minnie to identify all the employees among us. She named several and told him their duties. As she continued, she stalled time and again; apparently she couldn’t remember the names of all these people, especially the part-timers hired in the past few days. One of the servants, young and straight-shouldered, was quite burly. Minnie stopped in front of him, unable to come up with his name. If the man had already given the soldiers his name, she mustn’t name him randomly. As she was deciding, they took him to the other side of the street and made him kneel down.

  “His name is Ban!” Minnie cried at the sergeant. That was a smart choice—surely nobody among us had the same name as our disappeared messenger boy.

  Luhai said, “He’s our coal carrier.”

  “Shut up!” The sergeant punched him in the chest. Then two soldiers clutched Luhai’s arms, dragged him away, and forced him to his knees next to the “coal carrier.”

  At this point a jeep pulled over. Off jumped three Americans: Lewis Smythe, George Fitch, and Plumer Mills, the vice chairman of the Safety Zone Committee. At once the troops surrounded the new arrivals, lined them up, and began searching them for pistols, which none of them had.

  When the search was finished, George said, “Wir sind Missionare,” to which the sergeant didn’t respond. George said again, “Nous sommes tous americains.”

  “Oui, je sais.” The sergeant chortled, his squinty eyes blinking.

  The two of them carried on an exchange in broken French for a few moments, but George didn’t look pleased. Meanwhile, a pair of flashlights kept shining at the other foreigners’ faces, forcing them to shut their eyes. George told his American colleagues, “They want us all to leave right away.”

  Then more than ten soldiers rushed up and pushed the Americans into the jeep. Two men clutched Minnie’s arms and forced her into the passenger seat, but she scrambled out, throwing up her hand and shouting at the sergeant, “Damn it, this is my home! I have nowhere to go.”

  “Me either!” Holly cried out, gripping the top of the tailgate and refusing to get in the car. “My house was burned down by your Imperial Army, and I’ve become a refugee, still waiting for you to make reparations.” Her eyes widened fiercely and her face flushed with rage.

  George interpreted their words loudly to the sergeant, who then ordered all the foreign men to leave at once.

  Several rifles were trained on the three men, who climbed into the jeep. Lewis waved to assure us that everything would be all right. Slowly they pulled away.

  The sergeant cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at George’s back, “Au revoir!”

  Two of his men yipped delightedly.

  As soon as the vehicle disappeared, women’s cries and muffled screams came from inside the wall. Through the gate I saw some Japanese hauling people toward our campus’s side exit. The small ironclad gate there was always locked, so it must have been forced open. I looked around and caught sight of machine guns posted at the windows across the street. For some reason the soldiers at the front entrance suddenly withdrew, taking with them only Luhai and the hefty “coal carrier,” and then trucks started revving their engines beyond the southern wall—kakh-kakh-kakh-kakh. I realized that the Japanese had held all the responsible staff here while other soldiers were seizing people inside the campus. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a machine gun still propped there, and I dared not move a muscle, my heart beating in my throat.

  We were still kneeling, some sobbing. For a long time no one stirred. I glanced at Minnie and Holly, whose heads sagged, their eyes nailed to the ground.

  Then Big Liu ran over, shouting, “Minnie, Minnie, they took some people from East Court.”

  “Who are the people?” She got up to her feet.

  “I can’t say for sure.”

  At that, I jumped up and raced away, my head in a whirl. Some people followed me while I was running and running, my steps as unsteady as if I were treading clouds. I hoped nothing had happened to my family.

  Everything was topsy-turvy in my home, tables and chairs overturned and the floors scattered with utensils, books, shoes, tableware, and laundered clothes. All the paintings were gone from the walls, and nobody was there. “Oh, I’m sorry, Anling,” Minnie said. Her voice suggested she assumed that all my family had been taken.

  In spite of my fitful sobs, I told myself that Liya was coolheaded, and they might still be somewhere on campus. It never pays to get upset ahead of time.

  I didn’t see any trace of struggle—nothing was smashed or crushed—so there was a possibility that my family had escaped abduction. But where were they?

  Then my husband and Liya, with Fanfan in her arms, appeared in the doorway. “Mom” was all she could say. Her oval face was ghastly pale and her eyes flared. Her bangs and brow were wet with perspiration.

  “They almost caught us,” Yaoping told me, shaking his grizzled head.

  “Thank God you’re safe,” Minnie said. />
  Liya told us that the instant they heard the commotion on campus, they slipped out of East Court and ran into a ditch behind an apartment house under construction, hiding among the refugees there. I closed my eyes, held my hands together, and said, “Lord, thank you so much for returning my family to me!”

  Then Big Liu’s wife came and wailed, “They took Meiyan, our daughter!” The small, round-faced woman pressed her right flank with her hand as though in severe pain. Her husband was behind her, wordless and in shock, his lumpy face bathed in tears and sweat.

  The girl was fifteen and used to be a good helper in the kindergarten. We had no idea how to console her parents. If only we hadn’t been held at bay by the soldiers and had been able to stay on the campus to stop the abductors. Now what could we say to Big Liu and his wife? I glanced at Minnie, who seemed to be struggling with the same question but couldn’t find words. No matter what, she must say something.

  Finally she announced: “I’ll go to the Japanese embassy first thing tomorrow morning. They must return our people immediately.”

  No one responded.

  I left with Minnie to look at the other parts of campus and to make sure that the south exit was locked again. At the Central Building we ran into Rulian and two women staffers. They told us that in total twelve girls had been taken, and all the refugees in the building were terrified. I noticed Yanying, the young woman who had arrived a week ago in disguise as an old man, patting her little sister Yanping’s back and whispering to the girl. The child couldn’t stop crying, probably because what had just happened reminded her of the havoc back home. Around us, several voices were cursing and wailing. Minnie and I couldn’t stop our tears either. What’s worse, we didn’t even know most of the names of the abducted girls.