Ha Jin - Nanjing Requiem

As we were approaching Ninghai Road, two Japanese soldiers appeared, cackling with gusto. One was squat and the other skinny. They wobbled up to us and blocked our way. “Girls, purty girls,” the scrawny one shouted in Mandarin.

Minnie shone her flashlight on them. Neither carried a gun, but each wore a three-foot-long saber on his waist. The squat one shoved Minnie in the chest and snatched the flashlight from her while the other man stepped closer and put his hand on my shoulder. As the bar of light was scraping our faces, I began trembling, too petrified to say a word. They both looked drunk, and the alcohol on their breath mixed with the smell of raw turnip and boiled peanuts. The thin man burped resoundingly, then lowered his hand to my chest, fondling me. I was too transfixed to make any noise and tried to step aside, but his comrade rushed up and clutched my arm.

“Purty girl.” The squat one patted my backside and pinched me there.

“Stop!” Minnie said, and wedged herself between them and me. “Look, she has gray hair.” She pointed at me. “She isn’t a girl, she’s a grandmother.”

“Chinese women must serve Emperor’s soldiers,” the dumpy man said, still holding my wrist.

His comrade gripped my other arm again. “Yes, we need her service. She can do laundry for us.”

I was struggling to get out of their clutches but in vain. Minnie pushed the scrawny man, who attempted to kiss me, and shouted, “Damn it, you can’t harass women on the street. I’m going to report you to your higher-ups tomorrow morning.”

They both looked amazed but continued dragging me away. Minnie began yelling at the top of her lungs, “Help, help! Police, come and stop these hoodlums!”

The stocky man slapped her on the face while the other one took out a pack of unused Old Sword cigarettes and handed it to me, saying, “We pay for your service, lots lots.”

I was still in shock and just kept shaking my head speechlessly, my heartbeat rattling in my throat. Minnie went on shouting, “She’s working for me, all right? She’s an employee of the U.S. embassy.”

“Embassy,” the squat man stammered while the other one let go of me.

“Yes, she’s our interpreter.”

“Interpreter, eh?” the skinny man asked.

“Yes, I work for Americans.” At last I found my words in English. “Please let me go, officers.”

They could tell that I was speaking a foreign tongue, which suddenly worked magic. They looked at each other and bowed a little at us. “Working at embassy?” the stocky man mumbled while nodding his head. “Good, good, smart woman.” His index and middle fingers cranked at his temple.

“If you don’t leave her alone,” Minnie went on, “I am going to report you to Mr. Tanaka first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Okay, okay, we know Tanaka. No trouble, no more trouble.” The squat man bowed and pulled his comrade away. They both had bowlegs. Perhaps they were cavalrymen stationed nearby.

I hugged Minnie and burst into tears. “It’s over, Anling. It’s all right now,” she murmured, patting my back.

Leaning against her shoulder, I followed her and headed back toward Jinling. Now and again I cried and giggled uncontrollably. I was kind of hysterical and kept trembling. My right calf had cramps, which forced us to stop twice on the way.

“Damn those bandits, they took my flashlight,” Minnie muttered when we reached campus.

THANKS to the increased number of new cars in the city, Cola’s auto-repair business was booming. The Russian man had a Korean partner, who managed the garage and the four Chinese mechanics for him while Cola went out to meet people for business every day. He came to Jinling one morning in mid-October and brought along a little hunchbacked girl, who was blind and frail like a bird, wearing a threadbare sweat suit with the cuffs of the shirt and pants all rolled up. He’d found her begging on the streets, he told us, so he’d taken her in.

“Can you keep her here?” he asked Minnie, smiling engagingly. He always smiled like that.

“My, you’ve been collecting blind girls,” she said.

“I hate to see her running around. Any of the soldiers and gangsters can hurt her, you know.”

So we accepted the girl and had her sent to my daughter in the main dormitory. The girl joined the other four blind ones, whom Liya looked after. Cola didn’t stay for tea in spite of Minnie’s invitation. He was busy, having an appointment with some Japanese logistics officers. Apparently he was on good terms with them. I knew that this yellow-eyed fellow liked the Japanese and looked down on us Chinese. He felt that we had little sense of order, didn’t abide by rules and contracts, lacked consistency, and on the whole were unpredictable. He used to tell other foreigners, “You can’t take the Chinese seriously.”

Before leaving, Cola asked for a bunch of marigolds, which Old Liao gladly went to cut for him. Unlike in the years prior to the occupation, our college no longer held its annual show of a thousand pots of chrysanthemums, an event that both Minnie and the old gardener used to work together passionately to arrange. Now we had plenty of surplus flowers.

As we were waiting for Old Liao in the quadrangle, Yulan appeared, wearing rubber boots and a canary rain cape with a hood in spite of the cloudless sky. At the sight of Cola, she stopped midstride, then shouted at the top of her voice, “Bestial Jap, go back to your tiny home island!” She stabbed her fist in the air while stamping her foot. “Wild beast, get out of here!”

Startled, Big Liu and I ran over to her. Before we could reach her, Miss Lou emerged, grabbed the madwoman by the arm, and dragged her away. Yulan, her eyes blazing with hatred, kept yelling, “Motherless Japs, get out of China!” while the little evangelical worker raised her hand to muffle that furious voice. Together they scrambled away toward the front gate. I was amazed by Miss Lou’s strength — she was hauling Yulan away with one hand.

Big Liu and I returned to Minnie and Cola, who knew Chinese and must have sensed Yulan’s hostility. He asked us what that was about. Boiling with anger, I spat out, “That young woman was raped by the Japs and lost her mind.”

“She took me to be Japanese?” Cola asked.

“Apparently so,” Minnie said.

“Good heavens, I’m a Western devil, not an Eastern devil.” He laughed out loud, but none of us responded. Indeed, he was tall and blond, and even his eyebrows were yellow, as were the tiny tufts of hair in his ears.

While waiting for Old Liao, we gave Cola a brief tour through a homecraft class in which the women were weaving blankets. He was impressed and touched the looms and the wool time and again, saying that his mother and aunts in Siberia had done this kind of work too, though they used smaller looms. He got so excited that he stepped on the treadle of an idle machine to see how easily the beams revolved. He also spoke to a few women in Mandarin, asking their opinions on the war looming over Europe. None of them had thought of that; in fact, some of them didn’t even know where Europe was. When we came out of the building, Old Liao was waiting with a bunch of marigolds. He handed it to Cola. Together we headed for the front gate.

We stopped at the nursery, where toddlers were playing a game called Dropping a Hanky. A little girl was running around a circle of kids, holding an orange handkerchief and laughing, while the others were clapping their hands and chorusing a song.

As we were watching the children, Minnie told Cola, “Most of these kids have no fathers anymore.”

“I have to say you’ve been doing a saint’s work,” he said. Then to our amazement, he bowed deeply to her with the golden flowers held before his chest.