Ha Jin: Nanjing Requiem

A VERY QUALIFIED APPLICANT named Yan Ning accepted the dean’s position at the Homecraft School and would come to Nanjing in late April. She had a good deal of experience in this kind of adult education in Fujian Province. We felt a bit relieved. As long as we could get through this semester, there’d be a whole summer for us to look for qualified teachers and administrators.

One morning in early April (three days after the national puppet government headed by Jingwei Wang had been installed in Nanjing), I received a note from Mrs. Dennison that said she wanted to see Minnie and me at once. I went to Minnie’s place in the main dormitory and then together we headed out to Eva’s bungalow. Light fog swayed over the treetops while the warm, moist air dampened the birds’ tumultuous songs. A rain frog rattled like a broken bellows. We chatted as we walked, disturbing some warblers, which took off, darting away.

Neither Minnie nor I had any idea why Mrs. Dennison wanted to see us. Had she heard that Minnie had purchased the land from Boren and abandoned the plans for our visit to Japan? If so, Minnie said she ought to appear composed and conciliatory. She wouldn’t mind, if necessary, apologizing to the old woman, since it was she, Minnie, who’d lost self-control a few days earlier.

“Yes,” I said. “Remember that the bride will become the mother-in-law in due time.”

Minnie laughed and swatted me on the shoulder.

Mrs. Dennison looked sullen: without makeup, her face was slack and creased, her neck appeared more freckled than usual, and a small dewlap was noticeable on her throat. The second we sat down, the old woman took out a newspaper, The Purple Mountain Evening News , and handed it to Minnie. “Look at the article on the second page,” she said. “I’m totally scandalized.”

Minnie began reading while I drank tea and glanced at her now and again. Her face darkened, then went pallid, as if she had aged all of a sudden. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dennison scowled and fixed her furious eyes on me. My heart shuddered. Did I do something wrong? I wondered. Why is she staring at me like that?

Finally Minnie sat up. “A pack of lies!” she said, and threw the newspaper on the glass coffee table, glaring at Mrs. Dennison, her eyes smoldering.

The old woman grimaced, which crinkled her upper lip and crimped her droopy brows. She said, “I can see there might be some exaggeration in the article, but you never mentioned the incident in your reports to the board of founders. I was appalled to read that you actually let the Japanese choose one hundred women.”

“No, it didn’t happen like that.”

“Stop dodging. I asked a number of people, and they said you’d made a mistake in believing the Japanese. But to me, it’s not a mistake. It’s a sin and a crime, unpardonable because you’ve tried to cover it up all along.”

Dumbfounded, Minnie groped for words but couldn’t find any. She got up and dragged herself out the door.

I picked up the article. It was titled “The Real Criminals” and attacked the Westerners in Nanjing. It condemned the establishment of the refugee camps in the former Safety Zone, claiming that the camps had gathered women together so it would be easier for the Japanese to “defile them.” As a consequence, even Chinese pimps would lead the soldiers to the camps for girls. “This was a sneaky American way of procuring women for the Japanese,” the author declared. He then singled out Minnie as a chief collaborator. The writer, who called himself Truth Preserver, recalled the incident on December 24, 1937, and stated: “Minnie Vautrin, the deputy principal of Jinling College, agreed to provide 100 good-looking young women for the Japanese, and on that dark day they abducted 21. Acting like a madam of a brothel, she later kept apologizing to the officers and promised to let them choose the other 79 women. To add insult to injury, she assured them that the school’s gate would always be open to them. Small wonder the Jinling camp entertained dozens of Japanese policemen every night with hot tea, meat pies, and roasted peanuts even after they had raped girls there. Brothers and sisters, it’s high time to reevaluate the tragedy that happened to our city and to see through the so-called Goddess of Mercy. Minnie Vautrin is actually a trader in human beings and a traitor to the Chinese people. We must expose her and hold her accountable for the numerous women and girls whom she proffered to the soldiers.”

Putting down the paper, I told Mrs. Dennison, “This is hogwash! I was at the scene when it happened. Minnie did her best to protect the women and girls.”

“I knew she and you were hand in glove in this crime,” she said, pointing at my nose. “I did my investigation. As an accomplice, you cannot cover up for her anymore.”

I realized there was no way to reason with this madness, so I stood up and strode out of the house.

FOR THREE DAYS Minnie worked without respite. She’d neither eat nor go to bed — she was tormented by insomnia — and yet she kept busy in order to quell her miserable feelings and thoughts. Then, on the fourth day, she collapsed and had to lie down. From then on, she wouldn’t come out of her apartment and wore felt slippers and velveteen pajamas all the time. We made chicken soup and yam porridge for her, which Minnie hardly touched. Time and again she tried to work on a schedule for the middle school’s class meetings, but her mind couldn’t focus. Sometimes she talked about the setbacks and disasters that had befallen Jinling. She was convinced that she was to blame for most of them, especially for those young women taken by the Japanese soldiers. She kept saying to me, “I saw the handwriting on the wall long ago. Now I’m coming to the end of my energy and can’t continue anymore. I’ve failed, failed miserably.” Whenever she dozed off, she’d have nightmares.

Big Liu often went to see her and even offered to speak to Mrs. Dennison about the twenty-one “prostitutes” and about the circumstances in which Minnie couldn’t have responded otherwise. But she adamantly forbade him to intercede for her, saying Mrs. Dennison had become a maniac and might turn on him. I didn’t think it would be wise for him either. The old woman seemed to have lost her mind, unable to listen to reason.

On April 10, Minnie handed in her resignation to Mrs. Dennison. Afterward Minnie refused to see anyone except for Big Liu, Alice, and me. We all tried talking her out of her decision. But to whatever we said, she’d merely reply, “I’m responsible for their deaths. I’ll answer to God.”

In the evenings she listened to Radio Shanghai and heard the news that Germany had invaded Denmark and Norway and that the British navy and the German fleet were engaged in a fierce battle. “What’s the world coming to?” she kept musing aloud. Everything seemed to be crumbling. And she would talk about those countries she’d been to or that she imagined she’d been to, saying lots of people would be killed and many towns and cities would be flattened. Her mind was no longer coherent.

Alice brought in her mail one afternoon in mid-April. A letter from Yan Ning informed Minnie that she had decided to withdraw her acceptance of the dean’s position for family reasons. Minnie flung the letter to the floor and shouted, “I’m sick of this, sick of it all!”

Silently Alice set down a bunch of white azaleas in a vase and backed out of the room.

Mrs. Dennison came one morning, but Minnie didn’t speak to her. The old woman told her that Aifeng Yang was coming back, her efforts to rescue her fiancé having come to nothing — the man had died in jail. Minnie didn’t respond to the news. Afterward the former president and I talked briefly; she told me to spend more time with Minnie and keep watch over her.