Nanjing Requiem

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.

Minnie slumped in an armchair and cried, “What should we do, Anling?”

I didn’t know what to say. She went on, “Oh, I should never have let them pick the women. This is terrible, terrible!”

“They’d already started grabbing them before you gave permission,” I said.

“That’s not an excuse. How could I be so stupid?”

“Whether you allowed them or not, they were going to take some women. Everybody could see that.”

“Oh, what should I do?”

“It’s not your fault. Come on, Minnie, you mustn’t talk like this now. We must find out what happened to the camp.” Without waiting for her response, I rushed out to check with our staffers in various buildings.

This time we’d lost twenty-one young women.

ALTHOUGH MINNIE JOINED Lewis, Searle, and Plumer for the Christmas dinner, she was in no mood for the holiday. Old Liao had brought over a miniature fir and set it up in her room. Minnie liked the sight of the tree, the lit candles under it, and the Nativity scene arranged by the gardener, yet it didn’t cheer her up. She said she felt drained and powerless in her limbs. At the sight of her, a group of girls asked if the Japanese would come for the other seventy-nine “prostitutes” to make up the number, one hundred, as they had mentioned. She cried out, “Over my dead body they will!” Still, the girls looked unconvinced and frightened, and people wouldn’t stop talking about the women just abducted by the Japanese.

After the holiday Minnie took to her bed for three days, suffering from a sore throat and inflamed eyes. A bone-deep fatigue had sunk into her. She was so weak that she couldn’t even hold a pen. Yet she wanted to write a letter to the Japanese embassy on behalf of several women whose family members had been seized by the soldiers. She had promised to intercede for them, though she told me that she wouldn’t be much help.