Nanjing Requiem

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.

We turned onto Hanzhong Road and headed east. At the doors of some restaurants stood girls and young women in blue dresses and gingham aprons, with little flowers in their hair, smiling at potential customers who passed by. This was something new. Were they not afraid of the soldiers? Why did their menfolk let them run such a risk? People had to do anything to survive, I guessed.

When we arrived at the orphanage, Monica Buckley, the American nun in charge of the place, received us. She looked exhausted, her cheeks hollow but her hazel eyes vivid and bright. I’d met her before and knew she was from Pennsylvania and part of the Episcopal mission here, formerly led by John Magee. When we asked about Yulan, Monica said there was indeed a madwoman in the back, but they were not sure of her name.

We went to the backyard, fenced but open to a street through a door fastened with a bolt and a lumpy padlock. There Yulan stood among a cluster of small boys, jabbering and puffing on a cigarette. At the sight of us she chanted, “Here come the missionary bastards.”

A barefoot boy said to her, “Show us how a rooster cries.”

The madwoman bunched her lips and stretched her thin neck. She let out, “Cock-a-doodle-do, cock-a-doodle-do!”

“That’s nice,” the same boy said.

Another one asked, “How about a duck?”

Yulan screwed up her mouth and shrieked, “Qua, qua, qua—ka ka ka ka!”

That cracked up all the boys. I noticed that one of Yulan’s teeth was missing. Despite that, she was still somewhat attractive, with a heart-shaped face, long hair, clear skin, and a small waist.

“That sounds more like a goose, too loud and too slow,” the tallest boy said. “Let’s see how a pig does it.”

The madwoman lifted her face to the sky and squealed, “Oink, oink, oink!”

“That’s not how a piggy cries,” said another boy.

Miss Lou shouted at them, “Stop it! Don’t tease her anymore!”

Yulan turned to the little woman, flapping her long eyelashes. “Nice to see you, Aunt Lou. How’re you doing?”

“Come with us, Yulan,” I begged.

“No, you have a big-nosed spy with you. I’m not going with you and her.” She pointed at Minnie.

“Yulan,” Minnie said, “you know I’d never hurt you.”

“Liar. All you foreign devils are liars.”

That made Minnie tongue-tied. She and I stood by as Miss Lou tried to persuade the deranged woman. By now most of the boys had left; only two were still around, one holding a soccer ball under his arm and the other wearing a bamboo whistle around his neck. As Miss Lou patted Yulan’s shoulder and murmured something to her, the madwoman burst into sobs, nodding continuously.

A few minutes later she left with us. She was quiet now, though her eyes still radiated a fierce light. Minnie told Monica that we were taking Yulan back to Jinling. The nun rubbed her hands together and said, “Oh, that’s good. Something ought to be done for her, poor thing.”

Minnie flagged down a two-seater rickshaw and let Miss Lou and Yulan take it, saying that we preferred to walk. She also told the little woman to leave Yulan with Shanna when they arrived at Jinling. The rickshaw rolled away and disappeared beyond a crossroads.

Minnie and I headed west. My left shoulder was sore again, and we both grew pensive. In my mind’s eye arose the scene of willowy Yanying embracing the foreleg of the stone lion while a Japanese soldier punched her in the gut and her little sister, Yanping, bawled.

“If only we had acted bravely,” Minnie said. “We might’ve saved some of the women.”

I knew she was thinking of the same event, but I kept silent.

We began talking about how to help Yulan. I asked, “What should we do about her?”

“Any suggestions?” Minnie said.

“We’d better find out whether she still has some relatives here.”

“She’s an orphan now, Miss Lou told me. Jinling should at least shelter her and take care of her needs.”

Minnie’s tone of voice allowed no argument, so I didn’t go further. For the time being this might be the only solution.

But I had my reservations because our hands were already full. The madwoman might stir up disturbances and frighten the students, so I kept wondering if there might be a better arrangement. Minnie seemed to have gone out of her way to accommodate Yulan, who was not our responsibility, strictly speaking. Everyone knew that the Japanese had deceived Minnie and would have seized those “prostitutes” one way or another. To care for the demented woman might be to ask for trouble.

Uneasy about those thoughts, I didn’t let them out. We went to see Shanna when we arrived back at the college. Minnie asked her to put Yulan in a homecraft class, stressing that the woman used to be a refugee at Jinling and ought to remain in our care. To our relief, Shanna gladly accepted Yulan as a student.

“You did me a huge favor,” Minnie told the young dean.

“No big deal. I hope she’s a quick learner.” Shanna twisted the end of her glossy braid, in which she seemed to take great pride. She was quite a beauty, with silken skin, a sunny face, and a dancer’s figure, though her eyes were spaced wide apart, which gave her a nonchalant look. Somehow I didn’t like her that much. She seemed vain and capricious, wearing powder all the time, and could be a bad model for some girls and young women.

Yulan turned out to be good at weaving. She was also literate, knowing enough characters to read newspapers. If she were not insane, Minnie might have let her teach a literacy class. Among the thirty-nine students in the weaving course, she soon excelled as one of the best. She was especially skilled at making stockings and scarves. Once in a while she’d still lose it, yelling at others or wailing without cause, but people thought she was innocuous as long as she wasn’t provoked. Some older women were even fond of her.