Nanjing Requiem

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.”

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.

Back on campus, Minnie telephoned Dr. Chu and asked him what had happened to the hospital. “Can you help me find out where the patients are?” she asked.

He agreed to look into it, and Minnie invited him to have tea with us.

Dr. Chu came the next afternoon. He seemed under the weather, his eyes dull and his face drawn to the point of being emaciated. I poured oolong tea for him and placed a dish of small dough twists on the coffee table. He said he had looked into the dissolution of the hospital but didn’t know for sure where all the staff had gone. Seated on an old canvas sofa in the main office, he went on, “They might have merged with other hospitals.”

“How about the patients?” Minnie asked.

“There weren’t many to begin with.”

“I want to know where Yulan is.”

“What can I say?” He sighed and put his teacup down. “I heard they had shipped some patients to Manchuria.”

“Why there?”

“A unit specializing in germ warfare needed human guinea pigs.”

“ ‘Germ warfare’? That’s horrible. Is the place they were sent to like an experiment center?” Minnie asked. That was the first time I’d heard the term “germ warfare.”

“I don’t know much about it,” he replied, “but I’m told there’s a Japanese army unit somewhere in the northeast that uses people for testing bacteria and viruses. They’ve been collecting marutas, human logs, for experiments.”

“So whoever ends up there won’t come out alive?” Minnie asked him.

“I’m sorry. In a way, the sooner Yulan and the other mad girl die, the better for them.”

“That’s an awful thing to say!”

“They were both afflicted with venereal diseases—very severe cases, to my knowledge. The girls were actually kept as sex slaves. What kind of life was that? I’m not like most Chinese who believe that the worst life is better than the best death. If life is insufferable, one had better end it. If I were them, I must say, I’d have killed myself long ago.” He gazed at me as if to see whether I wanted to challenge him. I had to say I agreed.

“But both of them were no longer clearheaded,” said Minnie.

Dr. Chu didn’t respond. He laced his fingers together on his lap and averted his melancholy eyes as though ashamed of what he had said.

Minnie continued, “I have a favor to ask you. Can you find out that unit’s name and its whereabouts?”

“You mean the one doing germ experiments?”

“Yes, please do this for me.”

“I’ll try my best.”

The conversation threw Minnie into a depression. For several days she kept wondering whether she might have been able to rescue Yulan if she had returned sooner from her summer vacation. She believed that what had happened to Yulan from the start was partly due to her negligence. If only she had spent her summer here. She could have returned to her apartment so she wouldn’t have to rub shoulders with Mrs. Dennison every day. Minnie rebuked herself for caring too much about her personal feelings and about losing face. How could she let petty personal disputes stand in the way of more important matters, such as saving a woman’s life and protecting the two schools? She could at least have written to Big Liu or me to stay informed of any development here. She couldn’t escape feeling small-minded. How could she make amends? The more she thought about her faults, the more disappointed she was in herself.

Her laments got on my nerves. However hard I tried to dissuade her from reproaching herself, she wouldn’t stop talking about Yulan and the students we’d lost. I felt Minnie was somewhat obsessed and told her that even if she’d been here, she might not have been able to save Yulan. Why would the Japanese military let an American woman interfere with their plan?

I knew Minnie was close to Big Liu and might have talked to him about these problems as well. He still taught her classical Chinese twice a week. But these days he had his hands full, because Meiyan again wanted to flee Nanjing, either to Sichuan to join the Nationalists or to Yan’an, the Communists’ base in the north. Meiyan hated everything here, even the air, the water, the grass, and the trees, let alone the people. She called Jinling a rathole. She had stopped going to church and had thrown away her Bible, claiming she was convinced that God was indifferent to human suffering. She’d told Liya that she no longer believed in Christianity, which in her opinion tended to cripple people’s will to fight. Big Liu used to have high hopes for his daughter, whose mind was as sharp as a blade, but now she had become his heartache. Worse yet, it was whispered that she’d begun carrying on with Luhai and wouldn’t come home until the small hours. Mrs. Dennison had spoken to Luhai, who promised to stop seeing Meiyan and claimed that there was absolutely nothing going on between them; yet people still saw them sneak off campus together.