Nanjing Requiem

48




MONICA BUCKLEY DIED in early February, and the missionary community, regardless of denomination, assembled in the Shigu Road Cathedral for her funeral. The nave had a domed roof and stained-glass windows, which were high and narrow with arched tops, the panes iridescent like peacock feathers. More than two hundred Chinese also attended.

Reverend Wei presided over the ceremony. People stood up and sang the hymn “O Thou Whose Own Vast Temple Stands.” Next, Pastor Daniel Kirk read out Psalm 23. Minnie was moved by the solemn, serene poem, which she said she’d never before thought so sublime. Then a few friends of Monica’s went to the chancel lined with winter plum blossoms to deliver their eulogies and to reminisce about her. Among them was Alice, who had started her missionary career at the same time as the dead woman back in Anhui, though they belonged to different denominations. She told the audience that Monica had often missed her hometown in rural Pennsylvania but never lost sight of her real home in heaven, in God’s mansion, because she believed we were all virtually foreigners or guests on earth. After Alice, a tall American man with graying hair and sagging cheeks spoke. He declared that he’d known Monica for almost two decades, and in spite of her languid appearance, she had a good sense of humor and an extraordinary memory, and she enjoyed telling stories, especially to children. Once he’d told an anecdote from his childhood in which a man got drunk and exchanged his ulster for a puny catfish. A few weeks later he heard Monica telling the same story to a group of small girls but with a more dramatic ending: the man gave away his team of mules and wagon for a salmon, so now he couldn’t go home anymore and had to sleep in the open air with snow falling—he almost froze to death and lost two fingers. What had happened was that Monica had overheard him in the adjacent room when he was telling the anecdote. “Now,” the man concluded, “I hope she will entertain angels up there with all the jokes and stories she can make up with such grace and ease.”

That brought out laughter among the foreigners, while most Chinese remained quiet, bewildered. Indeed, a funeral was a sorrowful, solemn occasion. How come these foreigners wisecracked and gave belly laughs?

After the reminiscences, Searle, his face freshly shaved and his hair combed back, went to the pulpit and delivered a sermon in honor of Monica titled “The Christian Duties in the Time of War.” He spoke in Mandarin about the Japanese annexation of some Asian countries and about their brutalities. I knew that the Japanese kept a watchful eye on him because of his writings about their exploiting the narcotics business, and that they had also demanded that he surrender all the paperwork of the International Relief Committee—including the records of nine hundred cases of murder, rape, and arson within the Safety Zone perpetrated by Japanese soldiers during the first weeks after the fall of Nanjing—but he had told them that Eduard Sperling had taken all the files back to Cologne. Searle talked about the situation in Europe. He said, “Under the threat of a world war, what should we Christians do? First, we must strive to make peace and oppose war. Some of you were here when Nanjing fell two years ago and saw with your own eyes what it was like. Men can be more vicious than beasts of prey if they’re put in the extreme situation of war. No rules will be followed, and all kinds of evil will be unleashed. War is simply the most destructive force we human beings can produce, so we must make every effort to prevent it.

“However, if we survey human history, we can see that there were times when war was unavoidable, even necessary. There have been some wars that can be called just wars. For example, if people take up arms against foreign invaders, can we blame them? Should we attempt to dissuade them from fighting their national enemy? Of course not. Therefore, the Christians in those countries should fight like common citizens and should combine their fulfillment of Christian duties with the survival of their nations. As for those Christians whose countries are aggressors, they should do the opposite—work against war and do their utmost to make peace.”

After hearing Searle’s words, I was sure that the Japanese wouldn’t leave him alone from now on, but he must have become accustomed to dealing with them.

Searle concluded, “As for those Christians in countries that are not involved in war, like the Americans among you, we must align ourselves only with the weak and the victims, just as our late Sister Monica did for the orphans in Nanjing. This is the only moral stand we should take. The true Christian position should be standing between humanity and the unregarding force.”

The audience liked his sermon, especially the Chinese. The instant Searle had finished, a few people clapped their hands, then stopped short, realizing this wasn’t an occasion for applause.

Reverend Wei gave a closing prayer, imploring God to receive Monica’s soul and to grant her eternal joy. Then everyone stood and sang “O God of Love, O King of Peace.”

After the funeral, Minnie said she hoped that when she died, she could have a similar service, full of warmth and dignity, like the one we had just attended to celebrate the ascent of Monica’s soul. The dead woman must be at peace now.

MISS LOU CAME to the main office the next morning, because some families in the neighborhood had run out of food and their children were starving. I stepped out of the inner room and joined the little woman. Seated in her chair with the unfinished paperwork for student scholarships on her desk, Minnie yawned. “Excuse me,” she said, covering her mouth with her palm. “I get tired so easily these days that I often drop off. And my eyes throb with double vision.” Lately she often joked that she looked sixty and felt eighty.

“You’ve worked too hard,” Miss Lou said. “You need a long vacation.”

“Yes, you owe yourself one,” I agreed.

“I’m supposed to be on furlough in the summer, but it’s unlikely I can do that,” Minnie said. “I’ll have to stay around to take care of things here. Now, Miss Lou, what should we do for your neighbors without food? We must make sure they will at least have a decent meal on the Spring Festival’s Eve.”

“That’s why I came to see you. I’m also wondering if your college has an extra quilt. A poor woman lost her only quilt yesterday afternoon, stolen by a thief who broke into her home. Her husband disappeared and she’s too ill to scratch out a living. Actually, she sewed all her savings, ten yuan in total, into her quilt, so the money is gone too.”

Minnie turned to me. “Do we have enough rice to spare some?”

“Sure,” I answered. The previous fall I’d bought eleven wagon-loads of rice at twenty-five yuan per picul (133.33 pounds), a smart move at two-thirds of the current price, so we could offer some to the destitute. “But we might have given away all the quilts we made last fall,” I said. “I’ll have to check.”

We went to the main dormitory and found no extra quilts. So Minnie turned into her own apartment in the same building and grabbed the one from her bed. “Take this,” she said to Miss Lou.

“You have another quilt for yourself?” the little woman asked.

“I have a duvet and a warm blanket.”

Miss Lou left happy, having said she would come with a wheelbarrow to pick up the rice the next day.