Nanjing Requiem

by Ha Jin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  We all laughed.

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

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

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

  “Even politicians?” she asked.

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

  “How about the Japanese?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes, she’s our interpreter.”

  “Interpreter, eh?” the skinny man asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  27

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Apparently so,” Minnie said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  We all broke up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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