Nanjing Requiem

by Ha Jin

  Startled, the man pulled out his hand and rose to his feet, still smiling with his lips quivering. The woman, moaning in agony, closed her eyes and turned her head to the wall, a small birthmark below her right ear. Her body reminded me of a large piece of meat ready for cutting, except for the spasms that jolted her every two or three seconds.

  When the major came in, Minnie shouted at him, “Look at what your man did to her!” She pointed at the woman on the floor. I was so enraged that for a moment my vision blurred.

  The officer stepped over and looked at the woman’s mutilated body. He then turned to the perpetrator and slapped him across the face while yelling something. The bearded soldier stood straight, sweating all over but not daring to wipe his face with his hands, from one of which drops of bloody liquid dripped onto the floor. Then, to our bewilderment, he muttered something apologetically, sidled away to grab his rifle, which was leaning against the wall, and ambled to the door. Before he could get out, a junior officer called to him and handed him his bayonet. Meanwhile, a middle-aged woman covered the victim with a tattered blanket.

  Is that all? I wondered. They let him get away like that?

  “Why did you let him go?” Minnie asked the officers.

  The interpreter, also an officer, told her, “Our commander scolded him. You saw, he also punished him.”

  “But no more punishment?” she said. “How come you didn’t even take down his name?”

  “There’ll be more disciplinary action, of course.”

  “How can you identify the man?”

  “We know him. Not many men wear a beard like that. He’s nicknamed Obstetrician.” The interpreter grinned at us lasciviously, displaying his buckteeth. I throttled my impulse to spit in his face, and averted my eyes to suppress my tears and revulsion.

  The mutilated woman groaned again, holding her sides with both hands. Minnie told three women to accompany her to the infirmary. Then she furiously said to the major, “I’m going to file a protest with your embassy.” We all knew they had let the perpetrator go.

  The officer nodded without a word, his face dark and slightly lopsided. He waved at his men, and they followed him out of the room.

  That evening, twenty-five policemen were sent over by the Japanese embassy. Their leader handed Minnie a letter from Vice-Consul Tanaka, which said that Jinling must treat these men well, providing for them charcoal fires, hot tea, and refreshments throughout the night. Minnie sighed. Where on earth could we get those things? Besides, we didn’t need so many policemen. Four would be enough to keep the marauding soldiers away. Looking at these men, some of whom seemed quite rough and could easily frighten the women and children, we wondered if they were real police. Probably they were just a bunch of regular troops assigned to the embassy for guard duty. We had no option but to accept them.

  By now the camp had more than eight thousand refugees, and it seemed certain that more would come.

  11

  EARLY ON THE MORNING of December 22, Miss Lou informed us that the policemen from the embassy had assaulted two girls in the Practice Hall the night before. Five of them had dragged the girls out of the building and raped them beyond an oval flowerbed encircled with serrated bricks. We were shocked and outraged, but we were caught and couldn’t see a way out. We needed the police to deter the soldiers and had to handle this matter discreetly; nevertheless, Minnie would protest to Tanaka. By now more than seventy women and girls had been raped in our camp alone, and Minnie had submitted a report on those cases to both the Japanese embassy and the Safety Zone Committee.

  Around ten a.m., Minnie and Big Liu again went to the U.S. embassy to ask to be driven to the Japanese embassy, where they would present another protest. But they didn’t find Tanaka there and left word with Consul-General Katsuo Okazaki that we didn’t need so many policemen—six would be enough. Okazaki, who was also the diplomatic adviser to General Matsui, promised Minnie he’d pass both the message and the protest letter on to the vice-consul, though he was in a hurry to catch the train to Shanghai, where he’d been residing since last fall.

  This time the Cadillac didn’t send Minnie and Big Liu back to our college, because the chauffeur feared that the Japanese might take away the car. Any vehicle driven by a Chinese without a foreigner in it was subject to confiscation. So Minnie and Big Liu walked back from the U.S. embassy, which was less than a mile from Jinling.

  I was outside the front entrance bandaging a woman’s neck when Minnie and Big Liu returned. The woman had been stabbed seven times by two soldiers but was still breathing. I planted a Red Cross flag on the horse cart on which she was lying before it set off for the University Hospital. Minnie told me that they’d seen more destruction in town, that Chef Wang at the U.S. embassy had lost his father to a knot of soldiers who had also plundered the old man’s small collection of antique coins. Minnie went on, “Who could imagine such atrocities! I’m wondering if there’s a home in this city that hasn’t been looted.”

  “We shall settle accounts with them someday,” Liu said through his teeth.

  Never had I seen him so full of hatred. I didn’t know how to respond.

  Minnie wondered if we should drop in to see John Rabe at the Safety Zone Committee’s headquarters and find out if there was news about Ban and the six girls taken five days before. We headed for 5 Ninghai Road, which was nearby, a grand templelike house with wide windows and glazed roof tiles, owned by the former foreign minister Chun Chang and now used as the main office of the Safety Zone Committee.

  We found Rabe sobbing at his desk, his bald head in both hands. He was a cheerful man who loved jokes and wisecracks, and I had never expected to see him so distraught.

  “What’s the trouble, John?” Minnie asked, and sat down.

  “Oh, damn the Japs, they killed my workers. They lied to me and promised to give them good pay, so I went and found fifty-four men for them.”

  “How many did they kill?”

  “Forty-three.”

  We were stunned, knowing that Rabe had agreed to help the Japanese restore the city’s power service and had drummed up some experienced electricians and engineers for them. Those men worked day and night, repaired the turbines, and got the facilities running again. Once the electricity was back, the Japanese tied up most of them, dragged them to the riverside, and shot them, claiming that they had served the Chinese government.

  “Don’t they need the experienced hands to maintain the power supply?” Minnie asked Rabe.

  “That’s what I thought too, so I promised my workers personal safety plus good pay. Now how can I face their parents, their widows and children? People will believe I sold the men for some favors from the Japanese. Damn the Japs, they’ve lost their minds and simply can’t stop killing.”

  Rabe hadn’t heard anything about Ban and the six girls. On his desk lay a swastika flag beside a typewriter, on which was an unfinished letter. Whenever Rabe went out to confront the Japanese, he’d carry the flag and sometimes flutter it at the soldiers committing crimes. He would cry “Deutsch” and “Hitler,” but even that failed to serve as a deterrent. Rabe had telegraphed the Führer before the fall of our city, imploring him to intervene on behalf of the Chinese. He even bragged to the Americans, “Just one word from Hitler and the Japanese will behave.” But so far the supreme leader had not responded to his request.

  “My worst fear,” Rabe told us, “is that if one Chinese man in the Safety Zone kills a Japanese soldier for violating his wife or daughter, then the entire neutral district will be bathed in blood. That would end all our relief efforts.”

  “I’m worried about that too,” Minnie agreed.

  Thank God no Chinese man here had been bold enough to do that. Part of the reason for this was that no Japanese soldier would rape alone but would always be covered by at least one other man. They would loot in groups as well.

  On our way back to Jinling, Big Liu said to Minnie, “The Japs kill, rape, and burn just because they can.” Again his
eyes glowed as if he were crazed.

  I knew that his daughter Meiyan must have been harmed, but in Minnie’s presence I didn’t say anything. She still believed that our prayers had worked a miracle—six of the girls had returned unharmed.

  THAT EVENING the same twenty-five policemen came to our camp again. We were unsure if the consul-general had passed our message on to Tanaka. Minnie talked with Holly and me, and we all thought it wise to accommodate the police, whose presence here would at least keep the soldiers away. Minnie managed to persuade the policemen to stay outside the campus. From now on, a potbelly stove would be fired for them in the house across the street from the front entrance, and there was also tea, sunflower seeds, and bean-jam pies made by our college’s kitchen. These things seemed to please the policemen some. Maybe they wouldn’t sneak into campus to molest women again. Minnie believed that Tanaka had rebuked them.

  By December 23 the camp had ten thousand refugees. In fact, we’d lost count, unable to keep track of the traffic anymore, so the number could have been larger. The Arts Building alone housed more than a thousand now. When Rulian said that the attic of that building held about three hundred people, Minnie got apprehensive but didn’t insist on calculating the numbers, since there were also people who would leave without notifying us. When it rained or snowed all the refugees crowded indoors, and many had no place to lie down at night, so they just sat on the stairs and in the corridors. During the daytime a lot of them lounged outside, content to take a spot somewhere. Minnie used to live in a three-room apartment, but now she had only one room and let the other two rooms be used by tens of women with small children. She told me that sometimes in the middle of the night she was awakened by crying babies and got annoyed, but as far as I could see, she would always greet the mothers pleasantly the next morning.

  Our greatest difficulty was feeding so many refugees. There was never enough rice. To make matters worse, some people would get two helpings while others had nothing to eat for a whole day. When the porridge stands opened, many women would swarm over—pushing and elbowing others, they wouldn’t bother to stand in line. For days Holly, Miss Lou, and I, together with some young staffers, had tried teaching the refugees to form lines at mealtimes. We had made some progress in this, having assigned many young refugee women to take charge of lining up others outside the porridge plant.

  Tickets for free food were issued to those who had no money, and more than sixty percent of the refugees received free meals. Still, some didn’t have the strength to reach the porridge cauldrons. Our staff sewed red tags on their sleeves so they could go to the heads of the lines when the afternoon meal was served. In this way they could at least have one meal a day.

  12

  TO EVERYONE’S SURPRISE, Ban, the messenger boy, returned early on the morning of December 24. I took him back to his quarters at East Court. Minnie joined me to find out what had happened to him. But Ban, seated at a table in the room that he shared with three others, wouldn’t talk. He’d lost a good deal of weight and looked skeletal, his eyes sluggish and his nose clogged. Bundled in a threadbare overcoat cinched around the waist by a straw rope, he was more like a scarecrow, and time and again he convulsed with wheezing coughs. “Please give me some solid food!” he begged. “I’m still starving.”

  We had given him only some porridge for fear of hurting his stomach. I said, “You must eat liquid food for a day before you can have anything solid.”

  He didn’t seem to recognize some of us, though he knew me for sure. He just looked at everyone with large dazed eyes. Minnie touched his forehead, which was damp with sweat. “He must be running a temperature,” she said.

  “He must’ve gone through a lot,” I added.

  “Let him rest well and don’t assign him any work for the time being,” Minnie told me, then turned to Ban. “You’re home now. Let us know if you need anything, all right?”

  The boy grinned without a word, but as Minnie and I were leaving, he lifted his hand and waved. That was something he wouldn’t have done before.

  We went to the main office to make plans for Christmas. As we were talking and Minnie was jotting down our ideas on a notepad, a group of Japanese soldiers headed by a colonel appeared. She let them into the office and asked a servant to serve tea. A scrawny teenage boy, hired temporarily as a messenger, told me that there were at least a hundred soldiers outside the front gate. I whispered to Minnie, “Lots of them are on campus now.”

  Why had so many of them come today? I pulled the errand boy aside and told him to run to the Central Building and the dormitories to inform the staffers about the soldiers’ presence—they must make sure that young women and girls all kept a low profile. The boy set out straightaway.

  As soon as the Japanese delegation sat down, the chunky-faced colonel introduced himself as a vice chief of the Logistics Department of the Sixth Division, commanded by Tani Hisao, the ruthless general we Chinese called Tiger Hisao. The colonel said they needed our cooperation. A Chinese interpreter, a fat man in his mid-forties, was translating for him, while three junior officers sipped tea. Minnie said, “I’ll be glad to help if what you want is reasonable.”

  The officer cackled and continued, “We intend to keep better discipline among our men. After the fall of Nanjing, our troops became unruly for a short while, mainly because the soldiers had lost many comrades in the battle on Purple Mountain and couldn’t stop carrying out vengeance. Now that they’ve calmed down, it’s time to establish order and peace in this city. We’re going to start the entertainment business and need some women.”

  When the interpreter finished translating, Minnie said firmly, “We don’t have that kind of women here.”

  “According to our information,” the colonel continued, “there are some streetwalkers in your camp. We came to collect them and will give them licenses so they can entertain men and also make a living.”

  “I’m not aware of any prostitutes among the refugees.”

  “We can recognize them easily. Don’t worry about that. Besides, don’t you think this will be an effective way to protect good and honest women like this one?” He pointed at me. That set my heart pounding. “Truth be told,” he went on, “our soldiers are all strong young fellows and need women to release their tension, so to set up a professional service will be the ultimate solution. Don’t you think?” His cat eyes crinkled into a smile.

  To my surprise, the heavy-lidded interpreter paused after rendering the officer’s words, then added, “Miss Vautrin, this is an order. It’s no use to argue.” He coughed, touching his mouth with the back of his hand.

  I was worried but dared not put in a word. Did they really intend to open brothels by hiring some women? I’d heard of that sort of service organized by the Japanese military, but how could they decide who was a hooker? On second thought, I remembered seeing several painted faces among the refugees, especially two women who always jostled for position at a porridge stand or cut in line, and who still glossed their lips, penciled their eyebrows, and powdered their cheeks every day. Worse, their perfume smelled like rotten vegetables. Those two in their garish satin robes might even be willing to return to their former walk of life if they could make money.

  The colonel was waiting. What should Minnie say? She looked at me inquiringly, but I lowered my eyes, at a loss about what to do. Could these men really distinguish prostitutes from other women? What if they made a mistake or took some innocent ones on purpose?

  Finally Minnie said, “I don’t know how you can figure out who did that type of work before.”

  The officer gave a barking laugh. “Don’t worry about that. We’re experienced in this matter and can identify them pretty accurately.”

  “How many women do you plan to have for your entertainment business?”

  “Many, the more the better, but one hundred from your camp.”

  “I don’t think there are that many former prostitutes here.”

  “We insist, because we know how to
identify them.”

  “On one condition, though—the women must be willing to continue to do the work.”

  “Of course, they’ll be well paid besides.”

  “In that case you can pick them.”

  Suddenly a female voice shrieked outside, then screams and shouts came from every direction. While we were talking, the troops had broken into the camp to seize women. Minnie and I both realized in horror that the colonel had been detaining her while his men were at the devil’s work. How could we stop them? The door was blocked by two junior officers, one of them with a face scarred by shrapnel.

  Minnie stood up, went to the window, and looked outside. I stepped across the room to join her. We could see the soldiers hauling away young women, all of whom seemed to have fine figures and relatively good looks. Some were crying and struggling to break loose, while one with an angular face hugged the foreleg of a stone lion in front of the Arts Building, screaming and refusing to let go. A soldier punched her in the gut twice, knocking her off the stone animal, and pulled her away. A little girl with two tiny brushes of hair behind her ears followed them, hollering madly, but two older women restrained her. I recognized the young woman, Yanying, and her little sister, Yanping.

  Minnie spun around and sputtered to the colonel, “This is abduction. I’m going to protest to your superiors.”

  He smirked contemptuously, one side of his mouth tilting up. He said, “As you wish.” With a toss of his head and a sweep of the kid gloves in his hand, he strutted out of the office, followed by his underlings. The interpreter waved at Minnie, shaking his double chin and unable to say a word as he turned toward the door.