Nanjing Requiem

by Ha Jin

  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.

  44

  ON SEPTEMBER 18, John Allison invited Minnie to the U.S. embassy for tiffin. She asked if she could bring me along, and he welcomed me. When we arrived, Allison was still at a meeting but had us sent into the dining room, which had wide windows, a swirled stucco ceiling, brass revolving fans, and two pots of cacti in the corners. A moment later he joined us.

  A few minutes after we had started eating creamed spinach and macaroni mixed with seafood, the host opened his briefcase, took out a small brocade box, and placed it in front of Minnie. “I’m supposed to present you with this,” Allison said, and spread his palm toward it, a chased ring on his fourth finger.

  “For me?” she asked.

  “Yes. Open it.”

  She did. Inside the box’s silk interior, a gold medallion was perched like a sunflower, its center inlaid with lambent blue jade. “How many of us got a medal like this?” she asked Allison, pointing at the gold corolla.

  “Only you and John Rabe, the Living Buddha.”

  “I wish Holly Thornton got one too.”

  Allison grinned, revealing his strong teeth. “Maybe Holly will be among the next batch of recipients. To my mind, Lewis Smythe also deserves such an award.”

  “John Magee should get one too,” Minnie added.

  I picked up the medallion, turned it over, and saw Minnie’s name engraved on its back. Together with the medal was a certificate inside a leather-covered booklet. I opened it and saw the citation saying that the Chinese Nationalist government had awarded her this prize for saving ten thousand lives in Nanjing. “It’s gorgeous,” I said.

  Allison smiled and put down his fork, his domed forehead shiny. “This is called the Order of the Jade, the highest honor the Chinese government can bestow on a foreigner.”

  “What does this mean?” I asked him.

  “It means that the recipient is China’s honorable friend and is welcome to live anywhere in this country.”

  I said to Minnie, “Congratulations!”

  “I just did what I was supposed to do. Any one of us would do the same given the circumstances.”

  Allison continued, “I want both of you to be quiet about this award. The public mustn’t know of it until the war is over.”

  “Sure, I won’t let it slip,” I said.

  “You feel the war will be over soon?” she asked him.

  “I don’t think so. The Russians have just invaded Poland. The situation in Europe looks dire and a war might break out there.”

  This was the first time we had heard about the Russian invasion, although we knew that the Germans had already occupied western Poland. We were so dumbfounded that we both could only gasp.

  Beyond the window screen the hissing of cicadas was swelling and ebbing. A donkey brayed on the street, shaking its harness bell fitfully. “People seem to have lost their minds,” Minnie said with a sigh.

  “Why does evil always get the upper hand?” I said.

  “We prayed for peace every day,” she went on. “Evidently the prayers didn’t help.”

  “No one in Europe is prepared to stop Hitler,” Allison said. “I’m afraid there’ll be a world war.”

  “How about Stalin?” as
ked Minnie.

  “He looks in cahoots with Hitler.”

  For the rest of the lunch we talked about the situation in China, where the Japanese invasion seemed to have bogged down, but a peaceful solution was unlikely. The Communist troops kept harassing the Nationalist army, and that forced Chiang Kai-shek to fight the Reds as well. The generalissimo was also bedeviled by the scandal that resulted when the Nationalist army had breached the dike along the Yellow River at Huayuankou the previous year to stymie the advancing Japanese forces. According to newly revealed statistics, eight hundred thousand civilians had perished in the flood—no military strategy could justify that. In addition, the Nationalist government had levied too much from the poor farmers in the northern provinces who had been struck by droughts and famine. It was reported that some people in the countryside, unable to pay the heavy taxes, had begun to support the Japanese.

  When lunch was over, Allison hugged us and climbed the carpeted stairs to the third floor for a meeting. We walked back to Jinling, talking about the ominous future of Europe, foreshadowed by the German and Russian invasions of Poland. We knew Mrs. Dennison planned to visit Germany the next summer and might have to cancel her trip to Dresden, Vienna, and Prague. I teased Minnie, saying she’d better find a safe place for her medallion or someone might steal it.

  “I would sell it if I could,” she said. “If Mrs. Dennison hears of this, she’ll get madly jealous.”

  “That’s true. We must keep it secret.”

  This topic discomfited Minnie, so she changed the subject, talking about some projects we had to undertake in the fall, such as storing enough rice and fuel for the two schools and providing shoes and winter clothes for some children of poor families in the neighborhood.

  Before the first frost we’d need to buy a lot of vegetables for the women in the Homecraft School to pickle. We would also organize them to make quilts and cotton-padded clothes. I’d have to get more coal, because Mrs. Dennison had instructed that no more trees be felled—we would hire people to guard them against thieves if need be. She said it took just a few minutes to cut down a tree that had resulted from many years of growth, so we’d better protect them.

  I had tried to buy coal from some mines but without success, because the Japanese, besides controlling the supply, shipped a good amount of the product directly to Japan. The coal dealers I had spoken with all told me they would only retail it, selling two or three hundred pounds at a time. I guessed that must be more profitable for them.

  Finally, about a month later, I managed to get twelve tons of anthracite. This meant that at least the offices would be heated in the winter.

  DR. CHU WROTE to Minnie that the Japanese germ warfare program, codenamed Unit 731, was headed by General Shiro Ishii, known as “the Doctor General.” It was located in the Pingfang area south of Harbin City. Some foreigners—Russians and Koreans—were also confined there, being used as test subjects. Since the research project was top secret, Dr. Chu had the note carried by Ban directly to Jinling and instructed that the messenger boy must destroy it, either by swallowing it or tearing it to bits, if he was detained by the Japanese on the way. He also urged Minnie to burn the note after reading it and not to divulge its contents to anyone. She read it twice, then shared it with me because she wanted to hear my opinion. After I read it, she struck a match and set it afire.

  For days she’d been thinking about going to the northeast, fantasizing that her visit might help get Yulan out of that place. Minnie revealed her thoughts to nobody but me.

  I vehemently objected to her plan. “Look, this is insane,” I told her. “Why run such a risk? Your very presence there will endanger yourself and others.”

  “How so?”

  “The Japanese will jail you too and won’t let you go until you tell them how you came to know about their secret program. In fact, they might even kill you to eliminate an eyewitness.”

  “I don’t care what happens to me. It’s in God’s hands—if I’m supposed to die, I’ll die. But do you think my being there might help Yulan get out?”

  I shook my head and sighed. “To be quite honest, you’re too obsessed. We don’t even know if Yulan is still alive. The truth is that once they put her in there, she’ll never be able to come out.”

  “So I should just give up?”

  “What else can you do? Also, you must consider the repercussions of such a trip. Your absence from campus will cause a sensation, and all sorts of rumors will fly. What’s worse, Mrs. Dennison will take you to task if you’re lucky enough to come back. Your trip will just give rise to a scandal.”

  Finally Minnie saw the logic of my argument, so she agreed to drop the plan. Yet thoughts about Yulan kept eating away at her. She couldn’t help but imagine other possibilities of rescuing her and often discussed them with me. “Don’t be so obsessed,” I reminded her. “Sometimes we must learn to forget so that we can keep on going.”

  All the same, she remained tormented and couldn’t stop talking about Yulan when we were alone.

  45

  AIFENG YANG had not returned from her summer vacation yet, though the fall semester was already in its third month. Nobody had heard from her since July. According to the information provided by the U.S. embassy, she’d gotten involved in some resistance activities and was apprehended by the Japanese. In early November Mrs. Dennison finally received a letter from Aifeng, which said she was well but her fiancé, a journalist based in Beijing, was imprisoned in Tianjin, accused of espionage by the Japanese police. She said he wasn’t a spy at all and that there must have been a miscommunication, or misunderstanding, or backstabbing by some Chinese. For the time being she had to stay there trying to rescue him, but she promised to come back to Nanjing as soon as he was released. Mrs. Dennison shook her head of flaxen hair and said to us, “Aifeng is smart and resourceful and she’ll be all right.” Because of our reduced enrollment, she wasn’t needed for teaching.

  A week later we heard from Dr. Wu, who was pleased by the smaller size of the Homecraft School now—she must have assumed that this was a step closer to restoring the college.

  Ever since she returned from her summer vacation, Minnie got frazzled easily. Sometimes she nodded off at her desk, and once she missed an appointment with a reporter from the Chicago Tribune. Every Monday morning she would give Big Liu her weekly schedule so he could remind her of the important matters and arrangements every day.

  More Japanese came to visit our campus. Most of them were civilians, some were Christians, and one even brought his children with him. Among the visitors was a fortyish man named Yoguchi, slightly hunched and beaky-faced, whose eyes would disappear when he smiled, as if afraid of light. He came often and would converse with us whenever he could. He spoke Mandarin with a sharp accent, having lived in Manchuria for more than a decade. In the beginning Yoguchi would not believe what we told him about the atrocities the soldiers had committed, but Minnie took him to some women in the Homecraft School and let him interview them. They told him their stories, which gradually convinced him. He even bowed to some of them apologetically when they collapsed, sobbing, unable to speak anymore.

  One afternoon Yoguchi said to us, “The army has taken measures to control its men and make sure they’re better supplied. I’m quite certain that no orgy of burning, rape, and bloodshed will happen again.”

  “What do you mean?” Minnie asked.

  “An officer told me that since last winter, the army has been sending the military police ahead of the troops whenever they are about to take a city. And also, officers have been ordered to treat their men like brothers so they won’t vent their spleen on civilians like they did here two years ago. You see, the army has been trying to prevent brutalities.”

  That sounded stupid; Yoguchi was a civilian but still attempted to defend the Imperial Army.

  Minnie said, “Do you think they can simply slam the brakes on violence?” Seeing him flummoxed and with two vertical lines furrowing his forehead, she adde
d, “The atrocities will continue to take place in the victims’ minds for many years. They’re not something that can be put behind easily. Hatred begets hatred as love begets love.”

  Silence ensued while Yoguchi’s face reddened. Then he said, “I’m sorry. I never thought of it that way.”

  He didn’t raise the topic again. He ordered three cotton-padded robes from the tailoring class at the Homecraft School as Christmas presents for his children. I arranged the order for him but didn’t tell the seamstresses anything about the customer, afraid that they might refuse to work on the garments if they knew they were making them for a Japanese family.

  Minnie and I were glad to see the change in Yoguchi, which further convinced her that only through the fully informed Christians in Japan could the people of that country be persuaded to see that the war was wrong and make peace. Yoguchi brought other Japanese Christians to Jinling, and some of them were impressed by the classroom buildings, the library, and the gardens. Minnie would tell them, “Come again in the spring—our campus will be like a beautiful park. In fact, that was what I wanted it to become when I joined the faculty here.”

  Yoguchi suggested that Jinling send some people to Japan to speak to the Christians there about what had happened in Nanjing. This could be a good step toward mutual understanding between the Chinese and the Japanese. The suggestion amazed us, but Minnie didn’t respond right away. After Yoguchi left, we talked about it. I admitted, “If my grandson and daughter-in-law were not there, you’d have to cut off my legs before you could make me step foot in that country.”

  “You mean you don’t want to go?” Minnie asked.

  “Of course I’d like to go. I want to see Mitsuko and Shin if I can locate them.”

  “Then we’ll make you the head of our delegation.”

  Minnie also spoke to Alice to see if it would be safe for Chinese people to travel to Japan. “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Alice assured her. “The Japanese there are not the same as the soldiers here.”