In mid-May the Autonomous City Government ordered that all the refugee camps close down by the end of the month. At the same time, the Japanese embassy invited the foreigners working in the camps to dinner. At first Minnie was reluctant to go, but on second thought, she felt it might be an opportunity to exchange views with the officials and earn their sympathy. She brought a copy of the petition to the dinner in hopes of presenting it to the top diplomat there.
Consul-General Okazaki didn’t show up at the banquet, which was hosted by Tanaka and Fukuda and attended by John Allison and some American missionaries, including Minnie and Holly. Tanaka spoke about the necessity of shutting down the camps and praised the foreigners for what they’d been doing for the refugees. Minnie presented the petition to the vice-consul, who riffled through the paperwork and agreed to look into the matter. His promise was welcomed by a round of loud applause from the guests. All the camp workers among them agreed to close down the refugee camps. Minnie was grateful for her colleagues’ support, which could be viewed as a favor in return for Tanaka’s promise.
Three days later we heard from Tanaka. He said that Sufen’s son and four of the eight men identified by the women would be released from jail within a week, but the other four men, according to the prison’s files, were associated with the Chinese army and had to remain in prison. Minnie countered, “Look, our information shows that those men are completely innocent.”
“Miss Vautrin,” Tanaka said, “I’ve done my best. The prison agreed to let your women come and see whether their husbands and sons are there. I believe that more of them will be liberated.”
Minnie didn’t press him further and instead fixed a time for the women to visit the prison. Hanging up, she looked elated. I was delighted too. We hugged for half a minute.
After five months’ struggle, at last there was some progress. We hoped this might lead to the release of hundreds of men and boys. Minnie looked into Big Liu’s office to tell him the good news, but he was not there. Together we went out and strolled around campus for a while.
When we returned half an hour later, we found Big Liu smoking in the hallway. He told us, “Someone from the Quaker Mission came and said there was a mad girl in their hospital. He said she was from our college.”
“What’s her name?” asked Minnie.
“No idea.”
“What should we do?” she asked me.
“Maybe we should go have a look,” I said.
“All right, let’s go.”
The two of us hailed a rickshaw and set out for the small hospital in the south, outside the former Safety Zone, which had been terminated a fortnight before. As we rode along Paolou Lane, four Chinese planes suddenly appeared, flying east to bomb the airfield near Jurong. Immediately antiaircraft guns started shooting at them, drawing blazing arcs. The Japanese flak artillery was weaker than our army’s, though their planes were much more effective at intercepting Chinese bombers. This was the third time our planes had flown over Nanjing since last December. Some people watched them glide away with beaming faces, but no one made any celebratory sounds.
“Hope they’ll destroy some Japanese aircraft,” I said.
“I only hope they’ll return to base safely after their mission,” responded Minnie.
Our air force, small though it was, must have been emboldened by the recent success in the Xuzhou area, where our army had thwarted the Imperial Army’s offensive and forced it to retreat. Newspapers in Nanjing had reported the regional defeat as “a regrouping” of the troops, but we had learned the facts from the radio — the Chinese army had sent sixty-four divisions into battle, too large a force for the Japanese to fight.
The Quaker Mission’s hospital was in an abandoned school building, which looked boxy but neat, giving an impression of being half deserted. On arrival, we were taken to the second floor. The deranged woman, wearing a flannel shirt and a black silk skirt, was kept in a small room with a south-facing window. She was skinny and in her early twenties, with bedraggled hair, a wide forehead, and a thin-lipped mouth. At the sight of us, she rolled her elongated eyes and chanted, “Here come the American spies.”
“What’s her name?” Minnie whispered to a nurse.
“She told us different names — sometimes she’s Aiyu Tan and sometimes she’s Manyu Fu. Last week she said she was from Manchuria, but this week she claims to be a local girl.”
“Then how could you believe she was from our school?” I asked.
“She often mentions Principal Vautrin.”
“What did she say about me?” asked Minnie.
“You don’t want to hear it.” The nurse shook her graying head.
“She looks familiar, though,” I said.
“She does,” Minnie agreed. “I think I’ve met her. She might have been one of the twelve girls taken by the soldiers last December.”
“Yes, I remember her,” I said. “But I don’t think she was one of the six who came back. She must be from this area — her accent shows. Miss Lou introduced her to me, and I saw her making origami creatures. She was good at it. Her name is something like Yulan.”
At that, the madwoman stopped mumbling, then snickered and touched her small chin with her fingertips. She cried out, “I’m not Yulan. Yulan’s dead, sold by the American missionaries and murdered by the officers.”
“What officers are you talking about?” I asked.
“Japanese colonels.”
The madwoman went on muttering something unintelligible. What should we do? Should we bring her back to Jinling? Minnie and I stepped aside and talked it over. We decided to wait and contact Miss Lou; we should identify the demented woman first and then see what to do. Nowadays there were so many unhinged people that you couldn’t possibly take care of every one of them.
We told the nurse to keep a good watch on Yulan and that we would return to see her soon.
MISS LOU CAME the next evening and confirmed that Yulan was from a local neighborhood. Her father, a widower, had been an electrician and had joined the group assembled by John Rabe five months ago to restore the city’s power service; later, when the job was done, the Japanese shot the man together with forty-two others. A few days before the arrival of the Japanese, at a neighbor’s suggestion, Yulan’s father had sent her to our camp and even dropped off a bag of rice — fifty pounds — and a jar of fish paste as rations for the girl. Miss Lou was certain that Yulan had been taken on December 24 last year, among the twenty-one “prostitutes.” The young woman had been helping a refugee family wad a quilt with used cotton in the Arts Building when the soldiers burst in and grabbed her.
Astonished, we regretted not having brought the madwoman back. The following afternoon Minnie and I went to the Quaker Mission’s hospital again, but to our dismay, Yulan was no longer there. The medical personnel said she’d snuck out but left word with a patient that she was going to see her cousins in Wuhu. That didn’t make much sense, because that city was already occupied by the Japanese and her relatives might no longer be there.
“Please notify us if she surfaces again. She’s from our school,” Minnie said to the gray-haired nurse.
“We’ll do that, Principal Vautrin.”
“By the way, she called me names, right?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say? Tell me. I won’t mind.”
“She said you’d sold her to the Japanese for two hundred yuan. Don’t take it to heart. We all know that was drivel.”