Minnie’s face stiffened and she didn’t utter another word. I said to the nurse, “Let us know if you hear anything about her.”
Without further delay we left the hospital. Minnie kept quiet the whole way as if lost in thought.
DURING THE FOLLOWING DAYS we were occupied with disbanding the camp and persuading the refugees to go home. Many women, especially those with small children, had left. On the other hand, owing to the disappearance of the other camps, some young girls came to our college begging to be admitted. We accepted them temporarily, so there were still more than one thousand refugees on campus. Many of those women expected their menfolk to return and so didn’t leave, and some went to the Model Prison every morning to plead with the officer in charge.
One afternoon in late May, Mr. Tanaka came in person and told us that some thirty men and boys would be released from the prison. We were dubious because the four men and the boy he had promised would be released before were still in jail.
“How can I believe you?” Minnie asked him. “The women are frustrated and angry. The boy’s mother comes to my office every day to see why he’s still there. I’m afraid some of the women might call me a liar behind my back.”
“Why should I lie to you?” Tanaka said, his dyspeptic face puckering. “This time the prison will let them out. It’s final, period.”
He sounded so sincere that we were convinced. Minnie thanked him, bowing a little. He added in a toneless voice that he wished there were more civilians qualified for release.
We shared the good news with Big Liu, Holly, Rulian, and Miss Lou, and everybody was thrilled, although we didn’t spread the word further right away, not wanting to get the women’s hopes up again and because we had no list of the names. Minnie reminded us that we shouldn’t celebrate too soon. I exhaled a sigh of relief, saying, “Thirty lives saved is worth any effort. Minnie, you were right about the petition from the outset.”
My tone of voice was so earnest that it cracked everybody up. Big Liu said, “Anling, you owe me a good dinner.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied.
That night I mentioned Tanaka’s visit to Yaoping. My husband knew the vice-consul personally and said the man was reliable and would make good on his promise. In fact, we’d all heard that last December Tanaka was almost attacked by some Japanese soldiers who threatened to burn their embassy, because Tanaka had reported their brutalities to Tokyo.
22
IT WAS ALREADY beastly hot by the end of May, the air muggy and stagnant. The sun beat down on everything relentlessly, fueling the internal fire in every creature. Sometimes I saw the soldiers on the streets sweating so much that their uniforms were dappled with wet patches. Some of them, heat-raddled, would unconsciously scratch their throats as they walked, as if they were having difficulty breathing. I hoped it would get hotter and hotter so the semitropical heat Nanjing was famous for might drive them away. The Japanese didn’t know what they had bargained for and would have to live in this “furnace” for many years before they could acclimate themselves. I bet a lot of them would have heatstroke and sweat rash this summer. Surely the heat would get rid of some of them just as it had killed thousands of Mongols centuries before.
The hot weather, however, made the children in our camp comfortable, especially small boys who scampered around barefoot — some didn’t have even a stitch on, not in the least bothered by the mosquitoes that were becoming ubiquitous. As Minnie and I were standing outside the Faculty House, a clamor went up on the side of the pond behind the Central Building. A naked boy, six or seven, had been caught by a group of women who were attempting to force him into a new pair of pants. “I won’t, I won’t!” he hollered, kicking and struggling to break loose. Around them, people were laughing, some whooping and clapping their hands. His mother yelled at him, “Don’t you feel ashamed? You’re too big to run around like a wild animal! If your dad were here, he’d spank the pee out of you.” But the boy kept bawling and resisting and finally managed to get away, still buck naked.
“Goodness, that boy has lots of lung power,” a woman said.
“He should join a church choir,” another told his mother.
Minnie had just presented nine pairs of children’s shoes to some mothers who were about to leave the camp. They’d definitely have a hard time breaking their kids of going around barefoot. Or perhaps they shouldn’t trouble themselves about that at all. When the cold weather set in, the children would automatically wear shoes. I didn’t mind seeing the boys barefoot, but I thought they ought to wear something to cover up their weenies. I said to Minnie, “There should be a law forbidding anyone older than six to go naked in public.”
Rulian, smiling and clucking her tongue, came and joined us, followed by a puff of midges that began circling around our heads. We talked about the men and boys promised to be released. Would Tanaka have lied to us? Minnie was certain that he’d been in earnest; otherwise he wouldn’t have come in person to deliver the news. We also discussed how to help those refugees who had no home anymore, and those who did but couldn’t support themselves and their children. Our college had received some small funds recently, and Minnie had been giving them away to a few women who didn’t have any means of livelihood. She gave each person five or six yuan with which they might start a small business, like a little laundry, or a tea stand, or a stall selling fans, soaps, incense, pencils, and candles.
There was so much to talk about that we decided to go to the main office and resume conferring there. Seated at the president’s desk and on straight-back chairs, we began reviewing the cases of the women and girls in need of support. A few days earlier, Minnie had proposed to the International Relief Committee the plan for a summer school for one hundred “students,” a kind of professional training program, which would be called the Homecraft School, the same as the one we used to run for the local peasant girls whose parents were too poor to give them a formal education. Minnie had kept the proposal on a small scale because she didn’t want the campus to continue resembling a refugee camp, but now evidently there were many more who had nowhere to go and therefore our plan had to be expanded to include them. After considering some cases, we figured that there’d be more than two hundred refugees remaining here. For them, some educational program would have to be formed to justify their presence at Jinling.
In addition, Minnie had agreed to take in eighty young women from the Dafang camp, which was shutting down. All together there would be about three hundred refugees on campus, though they’d be called “students.”
“Well,” Minnie said, “it looks like we’ll have to reinstate our Homecraft School, in combination with a kind of folk school.”
Rulian and I agreed, because we also wanted to help the refugee women achieve literacy. By “folk school,” Minnie had in mind something like the public education programs popular in northern Europe, which she had visited in the summer of 1931. She’d been impressed by the folk schools in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, where people would attend the adult classes a few months a year, studying sciences, literature, arts, and practical skills without the burden of earning grades or taking exams. In those small countries people went to that type of school just to improve themselves and enrich their lives. Since that trip, Minnie had often talked about how to adopt that model in our country, where only fifteen percent of the populace could read. Ironically, now we had an opportunity.
The next day the camp was closing, and most of the women and girls were leaving. Some slung their bedrolls over their backs, and some carried their belongings with shoulder poles. I admired the husky ones among them, who would become good farmhands back in their villages. Many of them came to thank us for their six months’ stay at Jinling, which was an experience they cherished. Around ten a.m., a large crowd assembled before the Central Building to say good-bye to Minnie. She hurried out to meet them.