Nanjing Requiem

by Ha Jin

  In addition, Minnie had agreed to take in eighty young women from the Dafang camp, which was shutting down. All together there would be about three hundred refugees on campus, though they’d be called “students.”

  “Well,” Minnie said, “it looks like we’ll have to reinstate our Homecraft School, in combination with a kind of folk school.”

  Rulian and I agreed, because we also wanted to help the refugee women achieve literacy. By “folk school,” Minnie had in mind something like the public education programs popular in northern Europe, which she had visited in the summer of 1931. She’d been impressed by the folk schools in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, where people would attend the adult classes a few months a year, studying sciences, literature, arts, and practical skills without the burden of earning grades or taking exams. In those small countries people went to that type of school just to improve themselves and enrich their lives. Since that trip, Minnie had often talked about how to adopt that model in our country, where only fifteen percent of the populace could read. Ironically, now we had an opportunity.

  The next day the camp was closing, and most of the women and girls were leaving. Some slung their bedrolls over their backs, and some carried their belongings with shoulder poles. I admired the husky ones among them, who would become good farmhands back in their villages. Many of them came to thank us for their six months’ stay at Jinling, which was an experience they cherished. Around ten a.m., a large crowd assembled before the Central Building to say good-bye to Minnie. She hurried out to meet them.

  At the sight of her, the four hundred women and girls sitting on the ground in a semicircle rose to their knees. Rulian stood up and shouted in a strong voice, “The first knock!”

  The crowd kowtowed, their heads touching the ground.

  “The second knock!” Rulian cried out again, and the crowd repeated the same act. Unlike them, Rulian, our Lady Fowler, was on faculty, but she acted as if she too were leaving.

  “Get up, get up, please!” Minnie shouted, standing in the middle of the semicircle and gesticulating, her palms upward and her fingers wiggling, but nobody listened to her. Holly stepped aside and joined me. I was watching with my hands crossed on my abdomen, wondering how in the world Rulian had become their leader.

  “The third knock,” she chanted, and the crowd kowtowed again.

  “Rulian, tell them to get up!” Minnie pleaded.

  By now the crowd had begun crying in mixed voices, “Good-bye, the Goddess of Mercy!”

  “Long live our savior, Principal Vautrin!” a voice called out.

  The crowd repeated in unison, some swaying their heads from side to side.

  “Long live our Goddess of Mercy!” the same voice went on.

  All of them shouted together again.

  Dumbfounded, Minnie didn’t know what to do. I saw Luhai standing in the back of the crowd and smiling, a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He seemed to be relishing this sight.

  Minnie took a deep breath and addressed the crowd loudly: “All right, get to your feet now. I have something to say.”

  They began picking themselves up, some rubbing their knees and some lifting their bedrolls. “Although you are leaving today,” Minnie began, “you have all stayed here for several months and have become part of the Jinling family. Remember our motto: ‘Abundant Life.’ From now on, wherever you go and whatever you do, you must carry on the Jinling spirit to cherish and nurture life and to help the needy and the underprivileged. You must also remember that you are Chinese and the fate of your country rests on the shoulders of every one of you. As long as you do not despair, as long as you all do your share to serve China, this country will survive all misfortunes and will grow strong again.

  “When you have an opportunity, do come back to see us. The gate of Jinling will always be open to you.” She had to stop because a rush of emotion choked her.

  I stepped forward and cried to them, “Now, you all go home to be loving mothers, devoted wives, and filial daughters. Good-bye, everyone, God bless you all.”

  As the crowd was dissolving, Minnie grabbed hold of Rulian, whose face was filmed with perspiration. “Why did you let them do that?” Minnie asked her.

  “They made me lead them—they wanted to express their gratitude. What else could I do?”

  Holly and I went up to them. “Minnie, it’s over,” Holly said. “You handled it perfectly.”

  “They made me uncomfortable, as though they turned me into an idol.”

  “Come now,” I spoke up, “we all know they love and respect you.”

  “But they should show that kind of love and respect only to God,” Minnie said thoughtfully.

  “God’s spirit is embodied in humans,” I continued sincerely.

  Holly giggled and slapped Minnie on the shoulder, saying, “Our Goddess of Mercy, what a wonderful title. I wouldn’t mind if they dubbed me that. I’d do my darnedest to live up to it.”

  Minnie reached out and gave Holly’s ear a tweak. “Ouch!” Holly let out.

  “I hate to see them confuse humanity with divinity,” Minnie said. “It’s not right to be called a goddess while I’m doing mission work.”

  The previous week Miss Lou had told us that a woman of eighty-seven in the neighborhood, blind as a bat, would at night sit in the lotus pose and pray to Minnie’s photograph, wishing the American principal a hundred years of life so that she could help and protect more poor women and girls. Many Chinese cannot think of divinity divorced from humanity. Indeed, for them anyone could grow good and better and eventually into a god or goddess.

  23

  THE NEWS that thirty-four men and boys had been released from the Model Prison was carried by two papers run by the Autonomous City Government, which hoped to show the Chinese that it was making every effort to protect the citizens. Most of the reunited families were about to head back for the countryside, where their homes used to be. We thought about throwing a tea party for them, but then the anxious faces of those women, more than six hundred of them, whose menfolk remained unaccounted for, got the best of us.

  The next morning Sufen and her son came to say good-bye. The scrawny boy, short for fifteen, had a man’s face, which was sallow and scabbed in places, a little knot of wrinkles on his forehead. He just repeated what his mother told him to say—“Thank you, Principal Vautrin, for saving me.” He seemed still in shock, unable to speak a full sentence on his own. His eyes were dull and kept blinking as if he couldn’t see clearly. Even when others around him smiled or laughed, his face showed no response. He wore a white collarless shirt that had short sleeves and several holes, and long mud-colored shorts, which displayed his calves, thin like broomsticks. Seeing his big toes peeking out of his tattered canvas sneakers, Minnie gave him a pair of new cloth shoes that looked like they would fit his feet. He took them with both hands and, on his mother’s instructions, mumbled, “Thank you very much.” I felt sad for him, knowing it would take a long time for him to recuperate. Mother and son were going back to their home village near Danyang, though Sufen wasn’t sure if their house was still there.

  By early June all the refugee camps had been closed, and some foreigners were leaving. John Magee was returning to the United States by way of Shanghai after twenty-eight years of service in China. His Nanjing International Red Cross Committee had been dissolved months earlier, and most of its members were gone. The reverend was anxious to leave because the Japanese military hated him, particularly for the hospital he had managed—a number of foreign reporters had visited it and published photos of victims of the war atrocities in newspapers in the West. What the authorities didn’t know was that Magee owned a 16mm movie camera and had shot some footage of the Japanese atrocities last December. The eight reels of films had been sewn into an overcoat by us and smuggled out of Nanjing by his fellow missionary George Fitch in late February, when he left for the States. Magee would have been detained, even killed, if the Japanese military had known about the films. In early June he left
with Mr. Tanaka in the same railroad car, so no police bothered him.

  HOLLY TOO WAS LEAVING. She came to say good-bye. I had never suspected that we’d part company so soon. My husband was napping in the inner room while Liya was out with Fanfan. When we sat down, Holly said, “I’ll leave early next week.”

  “Why?” I asked in surprise, sipping chrysanthemum tea. “What makes you want to go? Did someone mistreat you?”

  “The camp is shut down and I’m no longer needed here.”

  “Nonsense, you can teach for us in the fall. We don’t have a music teacher yet, and I’m sure you’re the most qualified person. When the college reopens, they’ll let you continue teaching here.”

  “I don’t want to make trouble for Minnie—the ex-president will be mad at her if she finds me here.”

  “Even though Mrs. Dennison doesn’t like you, she’s smart enough to see that you’re useful, indispensable, to Jinling. She won’t let her personal feelings interfere with the college’s business. She’ll do anything to make this school stronger. Does Minnie know you’re leaving?”

  “I told her last night, and we argued a bit.”

  “About what?”

  “About how to live in China. Minnie takes Nanjing as her hometown now and can hardly imagine living elsewhere. She loves this city and this college. But for me home can be anyplace and I don’t need a hometown. To be honest, I no longer hate the soldiers who burned my house. I’m leaving for Hankou in four days.”

  “You’re crazy! Isn’t a battle about to break out there?”

  “That’s why I’m going.” She tilted her head, which glistened with luxuriant ginger hair, and smiled with her mouth widened. Her eyes were shiny and bold.

  “You don’t like Nanjing anymore?” I asked.

  “After I lost my house, I realized that my life was entwined with the Chinese, whether I like it or not. This is my adopted country and I’ll serve where I’m needed most.”

  “I admire your large heart, Holly.”

  “The admiration is mutual.”

  “Write to me when you have time.” I wanted to say more, but an upsurge of emotion overcame me.

  “I will,” she said.

  Liya came back with my grandson in her arms, panting a little. I took Fanfan and put him on my lap. He was still sleeping, his lips parted. I told my daughter to cook noodles with leeks for Holly and me. The two of us started to chat again, over a bowl of mulberries.

  THREE

  All the Madness

  24

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

  “What is it, Yaoping?” I asked.

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

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

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

  He wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

  “If only I could do something.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Where is she?” Minnie asked in surprise.

  “In Tianhua Orphanage.”

  “Can we go see her?”

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

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