Ha Jin - Nanjing Requiem

Indeed, this was the locals’ way of driving off the mystical creatures, a dragon or a divine hound, who was attempting to eat up the moon. If they’d still had firearms, I was sure they’d have fired volleys of bullets and pellets into the sky. There was simply no way to convince them that the moon’s momentary disappearance was merely due to Earth’s passing between the moon and the sun.

Alice told the girls in her stern contralto voice, “You all see that the Lord of Heaven doesn’t approve of your fighting like wild animals. Now, go back to your dorms.”

Meiyan, who knew English better than the others, told the girls what the teacher meant. At once the crowd dispersed, disappearing into the dark or into the nearby dormitories. A few scraps of paper were fluttering on the ground in the dim light shed through several windows.

Once the girls were out of earshot, we couldn’t help laughing. “You scared the heck out of them,” Minnie told Alice.

“We had to break up the fight. The eclipse came in handy.”

“You’d better explain to them that it’s just a natural phenomenon — that there’s no such thing as a dragon or divine dog.”

“Okay, I’ll speak about it in class tomorrow.”

A couple of minutes later, the moon came out again, bright and golden like a huge mango. In the distance a line of electric poles reappeared with the wires glistening, and the distant din subsided. We headed back to Minnie’s quarters. Alice told us, “I once saw an eclipse in Kyoto, but nobody made a fuss about it. People just went out and watched.”

“That’s why I sometimes wonder how a backward country like China could fight Japan,” Minnie said.

“Do you believe China will win this war?” Alice asked.

“Only in the long run and with international help.”

“I’m sure we’ll win eventually,” I said.

We entered the flower garden encircled by a white picket fence that Minnie had designed a decade before. The air was intense with the scent of lilacs, sweetish and slightly heady. Alice was worried about her job here. Her former girls’ school, sponsored by our denomination, had shut down, and she felt that Mrs. Dennison was always lukewarm about her, probably because it was Minnie who had hired her. Minnie assured her that Jinling needed English teachers and she’d be in demand for a long time, so there was no reason to worry.

“She’s such a pain in the ass,” Minnie said about Mrs. Dennison. “I’m wondering if she’s the empress dowager reincarnated.”

We all cracked up. I said, “Minnie, you must avoid clashing with her. Keep in mind that she’s pushing seventy and will retire soon.”

“I don’t think she’ll ever leave China,” said Alice.

“That’s true,” I agreed, “but she’ll be too senile to interfere with the college’s affairs.”

“Sometimes it’s so hard to control my temper,” Minnie admitted.

“Remember our Chinese saying — a bride will become a mother-in-law one day?”

“I may never have that kind of patience,” Minnie said.

“There’s no way to remove Dennison,” I went on. “All you can do is outlive her. Just don’t provoke that crone.”

Minnie turned to Alice. “Someday I’ll become your crazy mother-in-law and kick you around. Will you still put up with me?”

“Only if you find me a husband first,” Alice replied, poker-faced. “Do you have a grown-up son somewhere?”

We all laughed.

MRS. DENNISON and Minnie were discussing how to use the funds at hand. I happened to be in the provost’s office, and the old president wanted me to join their discussion. Jinling had just received four thousand yuan, which the donor specified should be spent on education programs for the poor. I listened to the two American women without expressing my opinion. Mrs. Dennison talked excitedly, as she always enjoyed making financial plans and was particularly fond of the Chinese saying “Money is like bastards — the more you get rid of, the more will come.”

The old woman had been supervising renovation and construction projects on campus. She wanted to have the half-finished apartment house near East Court completed and all the buildings repaired. In addition, she’d have the four ponds cleansed of weeds and algae. All the lotuses and water hyacinths would be eradicated too. She just wanted limpid ponds with some goldfish in them. Because people needed jobs and labor was cheap, she was eager to get the work done without delay.

Minnie sipped the green tea I had poured for her, and said, “What we really need is a neighborhood school for children.”

“How are we going to staff it?” Mrs. Dennison asked.

“We don’t need to hire any faculty. We can let some students teach the classes. It won’t cost much.”

“Who will run it?”

“How about letting Meiyan head the school?” Minnie suggested. “It will train the girl to be a leader.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

“Well, I don’t know,” the old woman said. “I don’t think we should have a neighborhood school at the moment. We must make every effort to bring our college back.”

“As long as our faculty’s away, we can do nothing about that.”

“But we can prepare for them to return. I’m sure they will in the near future.”

I worried that the old woman would want to hear my opinion. I felt we should start a school for the poor kids in the neighborhood, some of whom had been running wild, since most of the primary schools were gone. On the other hand, I dreaded offending the former president. Luckily, she didn’t ask me.

Mrs. Dennison thought that if we renovated the faculty’s houses and apartments, we would have an incentive to draw the teachers back. The renovation would include all the classroom buildings as well so as to justify the use of the funds specified for educational purposes. I also missed the former college, particularly the regular schedules and the peaceful academic life, which were so different from the current disorder. I could see why Mrs. Dennison had always emphasized that leisure was essential for the faculty’s intellectual and professional growth. Minnie seemed to share that belief and agreed to shelve the plan for the children’s school.

Nevertheless, Minnie and I felt uneasy about the renovation, because the future of the college was still uncertain and it might never pay off to bank so much on such an effort.

THREE YEARS AGO our college had decided to build a bungalow for Minnie so that she could meet with faculty and students in small groups in her own home, but because funds were in short supply after the war had broken out, she’d offered to suspend the project. Several faculty members already had houses for their personal use, including Eva Spicer, a professor of history and religion who was a graduate of Oxford. At present, she was teaching in Wuchang and couldn’t come back. Her bungalow had been damaged by the three hundred refugees who had sheltered in it for half a year. At Eva’s request, Mrs. Dennison decided to have it repaired. The decision pleased Minnie, since Eva was her friend, used to send Minnie birdfeed via British gunboats, and had written that Minnie could borrow her house for the summer. Minnie had told me several times that she was tired of living in the dormitory with more than eighty students, listening to all the noise they made and the wake-up bell at six a.m.

A team of workers came to renovate Eva’s bungalow, replacing the broken terra-cotta tiles on the roof, refinishing parts of the floors, fixing the leaky pipes, resealing some panes of glass with putty, and repainting the interior and exterior of the house. A week later it was like new again. Minnie was excited and packed everything, ready to move. She wouldn’t mind the sour smell of the paint and couldn’t wait to sleep in Eva’s queen-size bed. But early in the afternoon, when she was about to ship the first batch of her belongings, Luhai came and told me that Mrs. Dennison had just moved into the bungalow, together with Aifeng. I hurried to Minnie’s to brief her about that. She was nonplussed, and also outraged.