Nanjing Requiem

25




LOCAL AUTHORITIES, uprooted by the war, no longer existed in many areas. According to what refugees told us, guerrillas had caused a good deal of trouble in the country. Villagers were being ground on the millstone, pressed hard from the top and the bottom. If the guerrillas blew up a section of a road, the Japanese would come and order the villagers to repair it within a short period of time. Meanwhile, the guerrillas would warn them that if they did the work, some of them would be executed, so the only thing left for the villagers to do was to pull up stakes and leave, but many of them didn’t have the supplies or funds for travel.

Most of the guerrillas were backed by the Communists, but some were also remnants of the Nationalist army. They plagued the Japanese occupiers incessantly, doing things like attacking their sentry posts at night and cutting the transport lines to Nanjing. They would also punish farmers who sold rice and other grains to the enemy. The Japanese would occasionally bribe the guerrillas so foodstuffs could be shipped into our city. Every now and then the local newspapers announced that twenty-five thousand yuan had just been paid to the guerrillas, who had agreed to keep all the roads open, so the citizens shouldn’t worry about the supply of rice for months to come. Still, the price of rice kept rising, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether to buy more for the two schools now or to wait for the price to drop.

Fuel was another problem. We had difficulty getting coal for the winter because only one hundred tons were allowed each dealer. Worse yet, the price was doubled now—forty yuan a ton for the soft and fifty for the hard. We decided to try to get forty tons from a mine near Wuhan for twenty yuan per ton, though we were unsure if the Japanese would let it enter the city. The good news was that the U.S. embassy approved of our plan and agreed to help us bring the coal in.

Minnie had hired another nurse, so I didn’t have to do anything for the infirmary anymore. I was pleased, though I still had my hands full, supervising the servants and the cooks. Somehow I tended to be at odds with the younger women on the faculty. Many of them complained about my bossiness, and Shanna and Rulian even nicknamed me the Ancient One. Ban, the messenger boy, told me that.

I often complained to Minnie that the madwoman, in addition to the four blind girls, was too much of a burden to us. I suggested sending Yulan to the mental asylum funded by the puppet municipality. “The Japanese destroyed her mind,” I said, “so their lackeys should take care of her.” But Minnie wouldn’t listen.

One afternoon Ban complained to me about the madwoman, and I took him to the president’s office. I said to Minnie, “Yulan is making trouble again.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Tell her,” I urged Ban.

The boy, two inches taller than he had been the previous winter but still slight like a rake, said in disgust, “That crazy bitch follows me wherever I go and calls me ‘Little Jap.’ ”

Minnie looked bemused. “You shouldn’t let this trouble you so much. She won’t hurt you.”

“She scares me.”

“Now, come on, she’s thin and small. How can she hurt you?”

“She calls him a Jap,” I said, “because she has confused him with some soldier.”

Ban continued, “She always shouts at me, ‘Strike down Little Jap! Go back to your tiny home island.’ ”

“Try to avoid her,” Minnie suggested.

“That won’t help. She tells others I did lots of bad things to girls. She also calls me a brazen pimp.”

I told Minnie, “Some people don’t know her mind was damaged by the Japanese, so they take Ban for a hoodlum.”

“She’s ruining my reputation!” the boy wailed. “I can’t figure out how I offended her. She threatens me at every turn.”

“She sees enemies everywhere,” I added.

“She bullies me,” Ban sniveled.

“Yes, he’s a convenient scapegoat for her,” I said.

At last Minnie seemed to consider this seriously. She asked me, “What do you think we should do?”

“Send her to the mental home.”

“If that place was decent, we might do that. But you know what the lunatic asylum is like. It’s like a prison—it’s being used as a jail. We can’t just throw her into it. I’ll never let that happen.”

“But we cannot keep Yulan on campus forever. She gives us too much extra work and makes everybody tense.”

“I will speak to Shanna about this.”

“She’s another loony.”

“Come on, Anling, we can’t just dump Yulan. You know that will go against the grain with me.”

I exhaled a deep sigh, my cheeks hot. “You’re incorrigible—hopelessly softhearted,” I told her.

I took Ban away, feeling unhappy because Minnie would speak to Shanna before making any decision about Yulan, as though this were an academic matter. On the other hand, I admired Minnie for sticking to her principles.

To everyone’s surprise, Shanna also felt uneasy about the madwoman’s presence on campus now, saying that a lot of students had become unnerved by Yulan, that some were teasing her, inciting her to spew obscenities.

Minnie asked Miss Lou to take responsibility for the crazy girl. The evangelical worker had known Yulan’s mother, who’d died of cirrhosis two years before. Miss Lou agreed to keep Yulan as a helper in relief work since she was dexterous and could sew and knit. As long as she was not provoked, she’d be a fine worker.

Our college gave food and clothes to the destitute in the neighborhood every season, and the donations would be distributed through Miss Lou, who knew which people were in desperate need, so there should be no problem about Yulan’s keep. We felt relieved and also grateful to Miss Lou.