Nanjing Requiem

6




THE NEXT DAY heavy artillery pounded the city without letup. On campus our staff was unsettled but kept working. Long sheds were being put up between the two northern dormitory buildings, and under them we let vendors sell food to the refugees. Steamed rice was five cents a bowl and shaobing, wheaten cakes no longer dotted with sesame seeds, were also five cents apiece; no one was allowed to buy more than two of each. The local Red Cross had promised to open a porridge plant here, but it had not materialized yet. Some people, without any food or money on them, had to go hungry. By noon on December 11 we had admitted about two thousand refugees, and so far had been able to accommodate them.

While I was serving hot water with a wooden ladle to the exhausted newcomers, John Magee arrived. I let a staffer take over the work and went up to the reverend. “I just came from downtown,” he said to Minnie and me. “It’s horrible out there, dozens of bodies lying in front of Fu Chang Hotel and the Capital Theater. A teahouse got hit, and some legs and arms were hanging in the air, tangled in the electric wires and treetops. The Japanese will be coming in at any moment.”

“You mean the Chinese troops just gave up resisting?” Minnie spoke with sudden anger, her eyes ablaze.

“I’m not sure,” Magee said. “Some of them had appeared in the Safety Zone, looting stores for food and supplies.”

“They just disbanded?” I asked, enraged too as I remembered the suburban villages they had burned in the name of defending the city.

“It’s hard to tell,” Magee replied. “Some of them are still fighting.”

He told us that a good part of Hsia Gwan was on fire. The Communications Ministry building, which had cost two million yuan to construct and, with its magnificent ceremonial hall, was the finest in the capital, had been gutted and torched. The Chinese army was destroying whatever they couldn’t take with them. They had set fire to many houses and buildings, including the generalissimo’s summer headquarters, the Military Academy, the Modern Chemical Warfare School, the agricultural research laboratories, the Railway Ministry, the Police Training School—all were burning. Probably it was their way of venting their rage, since by now they knew that Chiang Kai-shek and all the generals were gone.

As John Magee was speaking, a stooped man wearing a felt hat with earflaps and holding a walking stick turned up, leading a small girl with his other hand. “Please let us in?” the man asked in a listless voice.

“This place is only for women and children,” Minnie said.

The man smiled, his eyes gleaming. He straightened up and said in a bright female voice, “I am a woman. Look.” She took off her hat, pulled a bandanna out of her pocket, and wiped her face to get rid of the dirt and tobacco tar. We could now see that she was quite young, in her mid-twenties. Although her angular face was still streaked, her neck seemed longer now and her supple back gave her a willowy figure.

We let her and the little girl in.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Yanying,” she said. “This is my kid sister, Yanping.” She threw her arm around the girl.

Yanying told us, “Our town was burned by the Japs. They took lots of women and men. Our neighbors Aunt Gong and her daughter-in-law were tortured to death in their home. My dad told us to run. Our brother was too scared to travel in broad daylight, so my sis and I came without him.”

Minnie sent them to Holly in the Central Building. Then George Fitch appeared, wearing a corduroy coat and smoking a cigarette with a holder that resembled a small curved pipe. He looked exhausted, his hair messy and his amber eyes damp. Fitch was the head of the YMCA in Nanjing and the administrative director of the Safety Zone Committee; he had been born in Suzhou and spoke the local dialect so well that some Chinese mistook him for a Uighur. He told us that hundreds of Chinese soldiers had gone to the University Hospital camp to surrender. Many men dropped their weapons and begged the staff to let them in; otherwise they’d break into the buildings. He was sure that more soldiers, thousands of them, would come into the Safety Zone for protection, and this might get the committee into serious trouble with the victorious Japanese, so Magee and Fitch wasted no time and set off together for the hospital camp. Viewed from the rear, spindly Fitch seemed more stooped today, while Magee was stalwart with a sturdy back. Minnie said to me, “I hope no Chinese soldiers come to Jinling for refuge.”

“There won’t be any room left for them anyway,” I said.

That evening three buildings on campus were already filled, while the others continued taking in new arrivals. The Arts Building, the last one in reserve, was just opened. The Red Cross still hadn’t set up the porridge plant. The soup kitchen we had put together two days ago could meet only a fraction of the need. Minnie had proposed that we assemble the porridge plant by ourselves, but the local Red Cross people, who controlled the staffing of the kitchens and the distribution of some rations, insisted that they build the porridge plant. Apparently there was money to be made in this. Infuriated by their concern with profit under such circumstances, Minnie again sent Luhai to the local Red Cross headquarters to ask for permission.

THE NEXT MORNING it was quiet, as though the battle was over. We wondered if the Japanese had breached the city walls and gained full control of Nanjing. Word got around that the Chinese defense had collapsed after Japanese units had scaled the city walls and then dynamited them open in places. Soldiers swarmed in, shouting “Banzai!” and waving battle flags, but met little resistance. Big Liu said he’d seen the streets in the Aihui Middle School area littered with bodies, mostly civilians and some children—other than that, the downtown looked deserted.

For the whole morning Minnie scratched the nape of her neck continually. She felt itchy and sticky all over. She’d slept with her clothes on several nights in a row and hadn’t taken a shower since her visit to the wounded soldiers at the train station five days before. She hadn’t been able to sleep for two hours straight without being woken by gunfire or emergencies she had to cope with in person. Whenever she was too tired to continue, she’d take a catnap, and luckily she’d always been able to fall asleep the moment her head touched a pillow. If the battle was over today, she said she’d draw a hot bath and sleep for more than ten hours.

I was a light sleeper and had spent most of the night at the gatehouse and in different buildings. Thank God I was in good health and needed only three or four hours of sleep a day; still, I had underslept. Sometimes when I was too exhausted to continue working, I’d go into a storage room in the Practice Hall and doze off in there. These days my head was numb, my eyeballs ached, and my steps were unsteady, but I had to be around the camp. There were so many things I had to handle. My husband and daughter joked that I had become “homeless,” but they could manage without my help.

Late in the afternoon Minnie wanted to go to the riverside to look at the situation. Big Liu offered to accompany her, yet she told him, “No, you’d better stay.” Holly volunteered to go with her too, but Minnie said, “You should be around in case of emergency. Let Anling keep me company. No troops will hurt two old women.” In fact, I was fifty, one year younger than Minnie, but she looked like she was in her early forties, while my hair was streaked with gray, though I hadn’t lost my figure yet.

So I set out with her in a jeep, a jalopy given to us by Reverend Magee. Minnie was driving, which impressed every one of us, because she seemed clumsy with her hands and, unlike Holly, was not the kind of woman who could handle a car nimbly.

“Let’s hope this car won’t break down,” said Minnie. Indeed, the jeep was rattling like crazy.

“I wish I could drive,” I said.

“I’ll teach you to drive when the war is over.”

“Hope I won’t be too old to learn by then.”

“Come on, don’t be such a pessimist.”

“Okay, I might take you up on that.”

We dropped into the headquarters of the Safety Zone Committee and found John Rabe, Searle Bates, and Eduard Sperling there. They looked glum and told us that the Chinese army had been withdrawing. In fact, just three hours earlier, Sperling, a German insurance broker, had returned from the Japanese lines, where he had offered to negotiate a cease-fire on behalf of the Chinese army. But General Asaka, Emperor Hirohito’s uncle, had rejected the proposal, saying he meant to teach China a bloody lesson. He intended to “soak Nanjing in a bloodbath,” so that the Chinese could all see what an incompetent leader Chiang Kai-shek was.

More appalling was the story Rabe told us. The previous day, General Tang had received Generalissimo Chiang’s order that he organize a retreat immediately. Tang’s troops were already in the thick of battle, so it was impossible to withdraw them. If he carried out the order, it would amount to abandoning his army. He contacted the generalissimo’s headquarters to double-check with Chiang, who was adamant and reiterated the message, dictating that he must execute the retreat to preserve his army and cross the river without delay. Tang couldn’t even pass the order on to some of his troops. Besides having lost their communications equipment, some of the divisions had come from remote regions, such as Guangdong, Sichuan, and Guizhou, and spoke different dialects, so they couldn’t communicate with one another or relay instructions. Worse still, earlier that morning the Japanese fleet was steaming upriver. The Chinese army’s route of retreat would be completely cut off soon, since we had no warships to repulse the enemy’s navy. Desperate, General Tang approached the Safety Zone Committee and pleaded with the foreigners to intervene on China’s behalf for a three-day cease-fire. Eduard Sperling started out early in the afternoon, trudging west toward the Japanese position and raising a flag made from a white sheet and inscribed TRUCE & PEACE! in Japanese by Cola, a yellow-eyed young Russian man. Sperling carried the weight of our capital on his roundish shoulders in hopes of preventing further bloodshed.

General Asaka, the button-nosed prince wearing a patch of mustache that made him look like he had a harelip, received Sperling and spat in his face. He drew his sword halfway and barked, “Tell the Chinese that they have brought death on themselves. It’s too late for them to employ a peace broker like you. If they want peace, hand Sheng-chi Tang over to me first.”

“Please inform General Matsui of our request,” Sperling pleaded again.

“I am the commander here. Tell Sheng-chi Tang that we won’t spare even a chicken or dog in Nanjing.”

So Sperling returned to report back to General Tang. The emissary was in such a hurry that he sprained his ankle and had to use a stick to walk. By this time, some of the defending troops must have heard of the withdrawal order and had begun pulling out, but many units were isolated, fighting blindly with their flanks open, doomed to annihilation.

A prolonged silence followed Rabe’s account of the failed effort for a cease-fire. I wanted to weep but took hold of myself, covering my face with one hand. I could hardly breathe.

“An army in flight collapses like a landslide,” Searle said to Minnie, using the Chinese idiom.

“Chiang Kai-shek should be held accountable for this catastrophe,” she huffed.

“Yes, he should be court-martialed,” said Sperling.

“The problem is that he’s the judge in his own court,” Rabe added in a bantering tone, fingering the strap of his binoculars. In spite of his attempt at levity, he sounded grim.

Searle had to leave for the temporary hospital established the week before at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The city government had given the International Red Cross Committee, of which both Searle and Minnie were members, fifty thousand yuan for setting up hospitals, but even with such generous funding there was no way to staff them. Searle had yet to figure out how to get hold of some medical personnel and couldn’t stop grumbling about the Chinese doctors who had fled. At the moment only one surgeon, Robert Wilson, a recent graduate of Harvard Medical School, remained in town, and he’d been working around the clock at the Nanjing University Hospital. Minnie and I went out with Searle and then headed for our jeep. The two of us got in the car and pulled onto Shanghai Road, driving northeast.

The moment we turned left onto Zhongshan Road, which led to Yijiang Gate, the route to Hsia Gwan and the wharves, we were struck by a horrific sight. The entire city was fleeing toward the waterside. Every street we passed was strewn with uniforms shed by our soldiers. Both sides of the road were lined with burned vehicles, artillery pieces accompanied by boxes of shells, and heavy machine guns still tied to dead donkeys. A pack of mules stood loaded with parts of an antiaircraft gun and ammunition, too confused to move. A roan horse, still saddled, was neighing toward the clouds as though it were being attacked by some invisible beasts of prey. The soldiers were swarming north, mostly empty-handed but some still wearing enamel rice bowls on their belts. The street was littered with helmets, rifles, pistols, canteens, Czech machine guns, knapsacks, swords, grenades, overcoats, boots, small mortars, flamethrowers, short spades, and pickaxes. Beside a brass bugle lay a pig’s head, its snout pointing skyward but both ears missing. As we were approaching the International Club, the street was so jammed with overturned automobiles, three-wheeled motorcycles, animal-drawn carts, and electric poles and tangled wires that it was impossible to drive farther. So we decided to walk. We veered right, pulled into the compound of the German embassy, and parked our jeep there with permission from Georg Rosen, the hot-tempered secretary of political affairs and one of the three German diplomats remaining behind. Unlike his colleagues, Rosen was half Jewish and not allowed to wear a swastika.

Minnie and I headed north on foot to see whether our army still controlled its route of retreat. The Metropolitan Hotel appeared, swathed in smoke and flames. The instant we passed it, a squad of soldiers ran up to us, still bearing arms. The nine men, all wearing straw sandals, stopped in front of us, dropped their rifles, and, with hands clasped before their chests, begged Minnie to accept their capitulation as though she were a conqueror as well. Their leader, his face tear-stained, pleaded with Minnie, “Auntie, please save us!”

That flustered her, and I intervened, telling her, “They must think every foreigner has access to sanctuary. Poor fellows, all abandoned by their officers.” As I was speaking, tears streamed down my face. I was so sad that I doubled over sobbing.

Patting my head, Minnie said to the men in Mandarin, “We are not entitled to accept your weapons. If you want to stay in town, go to the Safety Zone, where you can find protection.”

The men waggled their heads as if they were too frightened to move back in that direction. They did an about-face and ran away, leaving their guns behind. Minnie picked up a rifle, which was quite new; its stock bore these characters: “This embodies your people’s blood and sweat.” Those words were instructions from the generalissimo, engraved on many weapons in the Nationalist army. Minnie, her thick eyebrows knotted, dropped the gun and sighed.

Still wiping my eyes, I told her, “In this country a peasant’s lifetime’s earnings can buy only a rifle. Imagine all the equipment they have abandoned—what a horrendous waste.”

“Yes. Lewis said he had seen some heavy cannons left on the outskirts of the city that had never been fired.”

We continued toward the gate. It was gut-wrenching to see the entire area destroyed, most of the buildings and houses burned down and some still smoldering. After passing the British embassy, with Yijiang Gate already in view, we were too exhausted to push farther and realized that it would be impossible to get beyond the city wall to see what it was like on the riverside, so we stopped. In the distance, on both sides of the gate, blocked by sandbags and machine guns, strings of men were scaling the fifty-foot-high wall with ropes, fire hoses, and connected ladders. The top of the wall and the two-story pavilion on it were dotted and blurred against the smoky sunset by the scramblers. From the way the crowds were moving, we could tell that the piers must still be in Chinese hands. We turned back and headed for the German embassy.

Dusk was falling and a few bats were flitting around, zigzagging like ghostly butterflies. We had to slog against the crowds; Minnie was ahead of me, jostling and shouting, “Let us pass! Let us pass!” People were so desperate that some cursed us for moving against the human torrents. Suddenly automobiles began honking and guards, waving Mauser pistols but dressed in civvies, shouted, “Make way! Make way!”

Those unable to move fast enough were shoved aside by the guards. Following them came two long cars. “Look, General Tang!” Minnie told me, pointing at the lean-faced man in the back of the second Buick. The general hung his head as if nodding off.

As we were observing the commander of the Nanjing defense, a half brick hit his car, followed by a voice yelling, “Bastard, f*ck your ancestors up to eight generations!”

The brick left only a powdery spot on the side window, and without a word the guards glared at the swearing man, then went ahead to clear the obstacles. A few minutes later we lost sight of the two sedans after they made a left turn. General Tang must have had his own way to cross the river when it was dark.