Ha Jin: Nanjing Requiem

“It is my business to stop you from making others feel cheap and abject.”

“Nuts!” She turned and strode away, her hands in the pockets of her flannel jacket.

Exchanges like that often broke out between us. Whenever she went out of bounds, I would let her have it, though I always spoke to her privately. I simply couldn’t tolerate her kind of extravagance and foolishness.

Then one afternoon Shanna came to see Minnie and said she had decided to resign immediately. Minnie was flabbergasted, never having expected that a dean would quit before the semester was over; no matter how she tried to dissuade her, Shanna wouldn’t change her mind. From the inner office I overheard her say, “I’m just sick of all this. My family needs me.” She claimed that her father was bedridden and wanted to see her back in Shanghai.

Minnie could do nothing. Shanna left two days later, and Minnie had to take over the administrative work of the Homecraft School. Although Donna was the dean of the middle school, she needed a lot of help because she didn’t know Chinese and couldn’t even figure out the girls’ names on paper. With the additional work, Minnie had to put in extra hours every day and often didn’t go to bed until early in the morning.

This situation could not continue. If only Aifeng would come back. But her fiancé was still jailed in Tianjin, and she couldn’t leave in the midst of all the efforts to rescue him. Mrs. Dennison came and talked with Minnie about how to bring Shanna back. The old woman was also worried, seeing that it was impossible for Minnie alone to handle so many things. Mrs. Dennison had tried to help, but the bookkeeping and the housing renovation were almost more than she could manage. I hardly spoke a word and, cheek on fist, just listened to them. Having considered the pros and cons, the two leaders decided to send Alice to Shanghai on behalf of Jinling to beg Shanna to come back. “We should have trained more leaders,” Mrs. Dennison said, and sighed.

In fact, a good number of Jinling’s graduates had served as middle school principals throughout China, but none of them would come and work in occupied Nanjing. As soon as Mrs. Dennison left, I burst out at Minnie, “You shouldn’t have made that suggestion!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You shouldn’t send Alice to Shanghai to get Shanna back. That will make the little bitch more insolent and forget who she is.”

“We need her.”

“All right. In that case, I’ll leave when the semester’s over.”

“Come on, Anling, I know you’re unhappy and frustrated. Everybody here has frayed nerves, but we have to work together to survive the hard times and prevent this place from lapsing into a loony bin.”

“I’ll leave. Don’t say I didn’t tell you beforehand.” I stood up and made for the door.

Minnie didn’t take my threat seriously. She must have understood I couldn’t possibly resign, because my family lived on campus and I might not be able to find a safe place elsewhere. She often said I had “an iron mouth but a tofu heart,” using the idiom that refers to a person who is harsh only on the outside. She also lamented that China’s greatest obstacle was not the war or corruption but the so-called face — everyone was afraid of losing face, unwilling to make concessions; as a result, too much energy and time were wasted on trivial matters. For that Chiang Kai-shek had her sympathy, having to save so much face constantly, for both himself and others.

Four days later Alice came back without Shanna, though she’d met with Dr. Wu in Shanghai. The president was on her way to New Delhi to attend a conference, representing Chinese women. Dr. Wu wrote me a letter, chastising me mildly and urging me to help Minnie keep things together on campus. As for Mrs. Dennison, she wrote that we should just humor her and avoid any confrontation. Minnie went to Rulian and begged her to take over a part of the work left by Shanna for the time being. Rulian agreed and also promised her not to bicker with me again. Both she and Minnie ran the Homecraft School.

I felt sorry about the trouble I’d brought about and told Minnie that I wouldn’t lose my temper again.

Mrs. Dennsion was also frustrated by the loss of Shanna. Despite fretting about the Homecraft School, the old woman knew we had to pull the program through the academic year. To calm everybody down, she gave a party at her place, to which all the faculty and many staffers were invited.

Minnie arrived later than the others, having had to accompany a group of visitors through a class that taught how to preserve duck eggs with mud and lime. In the living room of Eva’s bungalow hung a long horizontal scroll that read SET THINE HOUSE IN ORDER. This was something new, added by Mrs. Dennison. The Chinese faculty members praised the calligraphy in the scroll. “Sturdy like trees and fluid like floating clouds,” one enthused. “August and masterful,” another echoed. Most of them assumed that it was a quotation from Confucius, since the sage had also said something about cultivating yourself and putting your household in order as the first step toward governing a state. I knew that those words were from the book of Isaiah, but I made no comment.

Everybody enjoyed the buffet dinner, and I felt conciliatory and spoke with Rulian at length. When we were eating apples and honey dates for dessert, Donna brought out a bunch of letters addressed to Jinling that had just arrived. She opened them one by one and read the contents out loud to the room. Most of the letters were from people interested in the relief work, expressing their admiration and good wishes. A few inquired about China missions. One, however, was written by a high school sophomore in Camden, New Jersey, and it impressed everybody. The writer, Megan Stevens, knew about Minnie Vautrin’s deeds and declared that Minnie was her hero. The girl said she would learn stenography and improve her typing skills because she dreamed of becoming Minnie’s secretary someday.

“Listen to this.” Donna went on in a lilting voice: “ ‘Last month our town’s paper published an article on what you did, and the people of our church all know about you. You are a great woman, a model for young girls who want to follow the way of the Lord. We all love you.’ ”

“My, you’re an international celebrity, Minnie,” Alice said.

“Come on, don’t embarrass me.”

In the postscript Megan asked: “Is it true that a missionary woman is not allowed to marry? My parents told me that, but I am not convinced. Besides serving God, I also want to have a family and children.”

“That’s so sweet,” Donna said, and put the letter on the octagonal dining table.

“Maybe we should give her an interview,” Minnie quipped. “We could use a secretary like her if she’s good.”

“We’d better not,” Mrs. Dennison snorted to no one in particular. “We mustn’t indulge in a personality cult.”

Minnie’s thick eyebrows shot up. Possessed by a sudden fit of anger, she burst out, “Why don’t you say idolatry?”

“It does smack of that. A human being should not aspire to become the Virgin Mary or a bodhisattva.” Mrs. Dennison stared Minnie in the face.

“You simply cannot abide anyone who’s doing better than you. You’re envy personified.”

“At least I’ve never used personal notoriety to keep our college as a refugee camp.”

“Who made those poor women come here — me or the Japanese?”

Without waiting for Mrs. Dennison to answer, Minnie walked away. I kept stealing peeks at the old woman, whose face was changing colors, now pink, now chalky, and now yellow, while everybody remained silent. The air was so charged that I felt a bit queasy. Minnie went into the kitchen and stayed there awhile, then slipped out the side door.