34
THE MIDDLE SCHOOLERS had left campus for the winter break. Now our staff and faculty could relax a little. Donna and Alice had gone to Shanghai for vacation. Plumer Mills left Nanjing a week after the New Year. With the International Relief Committee disbanded, he felt he was no longer needed here. Plumer had told us that in Shanghai he would look for a way to get the six IRC men out of prison. Minnie asked him to include Yulan in the group as well, and he agreed, though he said he was still unsure how to make her fit in. Every day Minnie checked the mail, hoping Plumer had made progress. She had confided to me that from now on she would lump Yulan with the six IRC men whenever we appealed to the Japanese for their release. I thought this might be a productive move to get the madwoman out of incarceration. Despite lack of word from Plumer, we were positive that he’d been working hard on the case. He was a fine man, honest and trustworthy.
Again the full moon was waning, the sky getting darker night by night. In the third week of January Mrs. Dennison’s Christmas gifts for the staff and faculty arrived, in a large parcel weighing more than eighty pounds. Every year the old woman would spend at least one hundred yuan on presents for the employees on campus—every one of us would get something from her, including the cooks and janitors. Like Minnie, she spoke fluent Mandarin, understood us Chinese, and even observed our customs. Both women had lived in China for decades, long enough for some Chineseness to have entered their bones. Yet unlike the founding president, Minnie would give presents only to a few friends at the Spring Festival. She meant to avoid competing with the old woman, knowing that too many gifts from the school leaders might raise expectations too high among the employees. She had asked me what present I’d like, and I said I wanted her to join my family for dinner on the Spring Festival’s Eve, as my husband and son were away. She agreed to come.
Two days after Mrs. Dennison’s presents arrived, the staff and faculty gathered at the South Hill Residence in the evening, and Minnie gave us a party at which she handed out the gifts. There were tins of gunpowder tea, bags of raisins and pistachios, zippered Bibles in a bilingual edition, cigarillos, candied fruits, dried pork floss, and even packs of firecrackers for some people’s children and grandchildren, but the two fresh mangoes for Minnie were already black and no longer edible. Yet she was pleased to receive a Quaker calendar again.
“What a pity. I’ve never tasted a mango,” said Luhai, who got a paisley tie.
Minnie smiled and told him, “I’ll remember to get you some one of these days.”
I received a sweater and also a flowered neckerchief for Liya and a pack of sesame toffee for Fanfan. Mrs. Dennison had written the recipients’ names on most of the gifts, so it was easy for us to distribute them. The old president was always precise about everything, especially about small favors.
Big Liu raised a double-bang firecracker and said, “Good heavens, who dares to set off this rascal nowadays? The Japanese would come and search for firearms for sure.”
That cracked people up. Everyone was happy, and the room grew noisy and hazy with tobacco smoke.
Minnie read Mrs. Dennison’s letter to us. The former president feared that the presents might arrive late, so we should take them as gifts for both Christmas and the Spring Festival, which would fall on February 19, still a month away. These presents embodied her thanks to every one of us who had worked so hard at Jinling. She also said she would join us soon.
Nanjing Requiem
Ha Jin's books
- A Brand New Ending
- A Cast of Killers
- A Change of Heart
- A Christmas Bride
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked
- A Delicate Truth A Novel
- A Different Blue
- A Firing Offense
- A Killing in China Basin
- A Killing in the Hills
- A Matter of Trust
- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
- A Nearly Perfect Copy
- A Novel Way to Die
- A Perfect Christmas
- A Perfect Square
- A Pound of Flesh
- A Red Sun Also Rises
- A Rural Affair
- A Spear of Summer Grass
- A Story of God and All of Us
- A Summer to Remember
- A Thousand Pardons
- A Time to Heal
- A Toast to the Good Times
- A Touch Mortal
- A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
- A Vision of Loveliness
- A Whisper of Peace
- A Winter Dream
- Abdication A Novel
- Abigail's New Hope
- Above World
- Accidents Happen A Novel
- Ad Nauseam
- Adrenaline
- Aerogrammes and Other Stories
- Aftershock
- Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can)
- All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)
- All the Things You Never Knew
- All You Could Ask For A Novel
- Almost Never A Novel
- Already Gone
- American Elsewhere
- American Tropic
- An Order of Coffee and Tears
- Ancient Echoes
- Angels at the Table_ A Shirley, Goodness
- Alien Cradle
- All That Is
- Angora Alibi A Seaside Knitters Mystery
- Arcadia's Gift
- Are You Mine
- Armageddon
- As Sweet as Honey
- As the Pig Turns
- Ascendants of Ancients Sovereign
- Ash Return of the Beast
- Away
- $200 and a Cadillac
- Back to Blood
- Back To U
- Bad Games
- Balancing Act
- Bare It All
- Beach Lane
- Because of You
- Before I Met You
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Before You Go
- Being Henry David
- Bella Summer Takes a Chance
- Beneath a Midnight Moon
- Beside Two Rivers
- Best Kept Secret
- Betrayal of the Dove
- Betrayed
- Between Friends
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Binding Agreement
- Bite Me, Your Grace
- Black Flagged Apex
- Black Flagged Redux
- Black Oil, Red Blood
- Blackberry Winter
- Blackjack
- Blackmail Earth
- Blackmailed by the Italian Billionaire
- Blackout
- Blind Man's Bluff
- Blindside
- Blood & Beauty The Borgias
- Blood Gorgons
- Blood of the Assassin
- Blood Prophecy
- Blood Twist (The Erris Coven Series)
- Blood, Ash, and Bone
- Bolted (Promise Harbor Wedding)