Nanjing Requiem

by Ha Jin

  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.”

&n
bsp; 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.