Ha Jin - Nanjing Requiem

To our bafflement, once the three soldiers entered the building, they looked through a few rooms perfunctorily and didn’t even bother to go up to the top floor. Within five minutes the search was done. As we stepped out the side door, we saw another two soldiers pulling three Chinese men away, their hands tied behind their backs. I recognized the captives, who were all our employees. Minnie rushed over and said, “They work for us.”

“Chinese soldiers, enemy of Japan,” one of the captors declared.

“No, no, they’re gardeners and coolies,” she countered, and then pointed at Jian Ding. “He’s our janitor and just lost his fifteen-year-old son to your Imperial Army.”

That didn’t help matters. The soldiers continued dragging the men away. Wide-framed Ding somehow made no protest, as if he didn’t care where they were taking him.

The bespectacled soldier motioned for us to follow them, and together we headed to the front entrance, beyond which human shadows were moving.

Outside the gate, I saw more than forty Chinese kneeling on the side of the street, a few weeping. Rulian and Luhai were among them, though Luhai was on his feet, speaking and gesticulating to a soldier. Two squads of Japanese stood around, most of them toting rifles and one holding a bloody-tongued German shepherd on a leash. A cross-eyed sergeant came over and demanded, “Who is the head of this place?” His interpreter translated the question.

“I’m in charge.” Minnie stepped forward.

As they were speaking, more of our staffers were escorted over and made to kneel down. Three soldiers came up to us and grabbed Rong, Miss Lou, and me, dragged us to the crowd, and forced us to our knees. Why are they rounding us up? I wondered. Are they taking over the school? What are they going to do to us and to the refugees? Where are Yaoping, Liya, and Fanfan? A wave of dizziness came over me, and I nearly keeled over; I grasped Miss Lou’s arm to steady myself.

The sergeant asked Minnie to identify all the employees among us. She named several and told him their duties. As she continued, she stalled time and again; apparently she couldn’t remember the names of all these people, especially the part-timers hired in the past few days. One of the servants, young and straight-shouldered, was quite burly. Minnie stopped in front of him, unable to come up with his name. If the man had already given the soldiers his name, she mustn’t name him randomly. As she was deciding, they took him to the other side of the street and made him kneel down.

“His name is Ban!” Minnie cried at the sergeant. That was a smart choice — surely nobody among us had the same name as our disappeared messenger boy.

Luhai said, “He’s our coal carrier.”

“Shut up!” The sergeant punched him in the chest. Then two soldiers clutched Luhai’s arms, dragged him away, and forced him to his knees next to the “coal carrier.”

At this point a jeep pulled over. Off jumped three Americans: Lewis Smythe, George Fitch, and Plumer Mills, the vice chairman of the Safety Zone Committee. At once the troops surrounded the new arrivals, lined them up, and began searching them for pistols, which none of them had.

When the search was finished, George said, “Wir sind Missionare,” to which the sergeant didn’t respond. George said again, “Nous sommes tous americains.”

“Oui, je sais.” The sergeant chortled, his squinty eyes blinking.

The two of them carried on an exchange in broken French for a few moments, but George didn’t look pleased. Meanwhile, a pair of flashlights kept shining at the other foreigners’ faces, forcing them to shut their eyes. George told his American colleagues, “They want us all to leave right away.”

Then more than ten soldiers rushed up and pushed the Americans into the jeep. Two men clutched Minnie’s arms and forced her into the passenger seat, but she scrambled out, throwing up her hand and shouting at the sergeant, “Damn it, this is my home! I have nowhere to go.”

“Me either!” Holly cried out, gripping the top of the tailgate and refusing to get in the car. “My house was burned down by your Imperial Army, and I’ve become a refugee, still waiting for you to make reparations.” Her eyes widened fiercely and her face flushed with rage.

George interpreted their words loudly to the sergeant, who then ordered all the foreign men to leave at once.

Several rifles were trained on the three men, who climbed into the jeep. Lewis waved to assure us that everything would be all right. Slowly they pulled away.

The sergeant cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at George’s back, “Au revoir!”

Two of his men yipped delightedly.

As soon as the vehicle disappeared, women’s cries and muffled screams came from inside the wall. Through the gate I saw some Japanese hauling people toward our campus’s side exit. The small ironclad gate there was always locked, so it must have been forced open. I looked around and caught sight of machine guns posted at the windows across the street. For some reason the soldiers at the front entrance suddenly withdrew, taking with them only Luhai and the hefty “coal carrier,” and then trucks started revving their engines beyond the southern wall— kakh-kakh-kakh-kakh . I realized that the Japanese had held all the responsible staff here while other soldiers were seizing people inside the campus. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a machine gun still propped there, and I dared not move a muscle, my heart beating in my throat.

We were still kneeling, some sobbing. For a long time no one stirred. I glanced at Minnie and Holly, whose heads sagged, their eyes nailed to the ground.

Then Big Liu ran over, shouting, “Minnie, Minnie, they took some people from East Court.”

“Who are the people?” She got up to her feet.

“I can’t say for sure.”

At that, I jumped up and raced away, my head in a whirl. Some people followed me while I was running and running, my steps as unsteady as if I were treading clouds. I hoped nothing had happened to my family.

Everything was topsy-turvy in my home, tables and chairs overturned and the floors scattered with utensils, books, shoes, tableware, and laundered clothes. All the paintings were gone from the walls, and nobody was there. “Oh, I’m sorry, Anling,” Minnie said. Her voice suggested she assumed that all my family had been taken.

In spite of my fitful sobs, I told myself that Liya was coolheaded, and they might still be somewhere on campus. It never pays to get upset ahead of time.

I didn’t see any trace of struggle — nothing was smashed or crushed — so there was a possibility that my family had escaped abduction. But where were they?

Then my husband and Liya, with Fanfan in her arms, appeared in the doorway. “Mom” was all she could say. Her oval face was ghastly pale and her eyes flared. Her bangs and brow were wet with perspiration.

“They almost caught us,” Yaoping told me, shaking his grizzled head.

“Thank God you’re safe,” Minnie said.

Liya told us that the instant they heard the commotion on campus, they slipped out of East Court and ran into a ditch behind an apartment house under construction, hiding among the refugees there. I closed my eyes, held my hands together, and said, “Lord, thank you so much for returning my family to me!”

Then Big Liu’s wife came and wailed, “They took Meiyan, our daughter!” The small, round-faced woman pressed her right flank with her hand as though in severe pain. Her husband was behind her, wordless and in shock, his lumpy face bathed in tears and sweat.

The girl was fifteen and used to be a good helper in the kindergarten. We had no idea how to console her parents. If only we hadn’t been held at bay by the soldiers and had been able to stay on the campus to stop the abductors. Now what could we say to Big Liu and his wife? I glanced at Minnie, who seemed to be struggling with the same question but couldn’t find words. No matter what, she must say something.