Nanjing Requiem (30 page)

Taken aback, Minnie said, “I have only your safety in mind. If the Japanese find out about this, they’ll start an investigation, and you all will get into trouble.”

“Let them come. Who cares?”

“Don’t boast like that,” Minnie warned.

“Stop it, Meiyan!” I said almost in a cry.

Mrs. Dennison came over and intervened. “Girls, don’t do anything rash. Listen to Dean Vautrin. It’s for your own good—she just wants to keep you out of harm’s way.”

“There’re no spies here,” another girl said.

“You never know,” Minnie went on.

The girls looked around to see whether some of the puppet officials’ daughters were still among them. None of those rich students was around, though a few had been here half an hour ago, clapping their hands while watching the gorgeous fireworks. One of them had even mocked the demonstrators by sliding her index finger across her throat. Now the girls seemed swayed by Minnie’s words; some even took off their black armbands, and some turned, leaving for the dormitories and the classroom buildings. Although the crowd was dwindling, Meiyan and about thirty others continued chanting patriotic songs.

I left with Minnie and Mrs. Dennison, and as we neared the front entrance, we saw a company of cavalry passing by on the street. We stopped to watch the tall horses galloping away and fading into the dark while their hooves clattered on the asphalt. Then we continued toward the south of campus, the two American women’s long shadows mingling on the ground bleached by the moonlight.

39

I
NOTICED
that the students liked Alice very much, not because of their fondness for English but because of the way she conducted her classes. Although thirty-seven, Alice was so youthful and vivacious that if viewed from the rear and with a kerchief over her corn-silk hair, you could easily take her for a student, especially when she was among the girls. She often taught them hymns and American folk songs, staged miniature scenes of American life—shopping, asking for directions, visiting the post office, canvassing—and even showed them how to make lemonade, cakes, and fruit pies. One evening in early May, Minnie, Alice, and I took a stroll through campus while talking about how to monitor the students, particularly the few firebrands, so that they wouldn’t run away again or endanger themselves. Alice agreed to often engage them in small talk to follow their concerns. As the three of us were approaching the south dormitory, we saw a crowd in front of the building.

“Yeah, smash her mug!” someone urged. I recognized Meiyan’s rasping voice.

We hurried over and saw two students rolling on the ground. One was a tall girl named Yuting, whose father had been among the six IRC men arrested by the Japanese and had died in prison recently. The other was the mousy girl who’d slid her forefinger across her throat on the night of the emperor’s birthday, mocking the singers of patriotic songs. “Damn you,” Yuting gasped, pulling the girl’s hair. “Tell your dad we’ll get rid of him sooner or later.”

The small girl kicked her assailant aside, rolled away, and scrambled to her feet. “He had nothing to do with your father’s death, all right? You’re going out of your mind.”

“Rip her tongue out of her trap!” Meiyan told Yuting.

The runty girl turned to the crowd. “My dad just designs boats. He only supervises twelve people in his institute. You’ve blamed the wrong man.”

“He builds patrol boats for the Japs,” someone said.

“Yeah, your dad is a stooge,” added another.

“But he has to work to support our family,” the girl wailed, her nose bleeding. “He has no direct contact with the Japs.”

“I’m gonna to finish you off right here!” Yuting yelled, and rushed toward her again.

All of a sudden, the cloudless night became darker, the moon fading away. The whitish boles of the ginkgos and aspens around us disappeared. A handful of yellowish stars blinked faintly, as if the invisible chains connecting them had all at once snapped, scattering them across the sky. Everybody turned silent, awestruck. It took me a while to realize that a full eclipse was under way. Dogs began barking, and a tremendous din rose from the neighborhood in the southwest. Then came the sounds of people beating pots, pans, and basins while firecrackers exploded and horns blared. Every household in the area seemed to be engaged in the great commotion, which threw the girls into a panic. They all stood there listening; some moved their heads this way and that, totally confused. I felt embarrassed by the racket, which showed how backward we Chinese were in understanding this natural phenomenon.

“What’s going on?” Alice asked in a guarded whisper.

“It’s an eclipse,” Minnie said.

“That I know.”

“People believe that some animal in the sky is swallowing the moon, so they’re making all that noise to scare it away.”

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.

40

M
RS. 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.

There had been shelling in the south, where even the skyline seemed to be jumping with ruddy-edged clouds. Fighting had been going on outside the city since the previous day. It was said that the New Fourth Army, the Communist force liked by the country people because of its strong discipline, was active within ten miles of Nanjing and had been exchanging fire with the Japanese. That afternoon three truckloads of wounded soldiers had been brought back into the city. We’d also heard that many Japanese women and children were leaving Nanjing, which might herald something ominous for the occupiers. Rumor had it that the Japanese military was about to abandon the city, but none of us believed that this would happen.

That evening we visited Mrs. Dennison. We found her in a buoyant mood, and she received us warmly. Seated on a leather sofa, I looked around, admiring the bright, spacious living room. There was carved furniture, and a tall Ming vase stood beside the door. The floor was glossy, just waxed, and the built-in bookshelves, freshly painted, still held hundreds of Eva’s books. What a splendid place for entertaining friends. Mrs. Dennison was so lucky. I glanced at Minnie, who must have been nettled by envy. She avoided eye contact with the old woman.

I wondered if Mrs. Dennison had planned to move in all along. Had Eva said she could use this house as well? Unlikely. A careful person, Eva wouldn’t have made such a blunder. Should I tell the old woman that Eva had promised the bungalow to Minnie? What was the good of that? Minnie couldn’t possibly chase Mrs. Dennison and Aifeng out. God willing, I hoped they might soon find this place lonesome and too far from everything and might move back to their apartment. Nothing could be done for now.