Minnie got up, but before she could speak, we had already let out “Cheers!” and touched cups.
She sipped her apricot wine and said, “Please consider what we’ve been doing as our Christian duty. Any one of us, given the same circumstances, would do the same. The other day I came across this aphorism in the Quaker calendar Mrs. Dennison sent me, and I want to share it with you: ‘Doing what can’t be done is the glory of living.’ ”
Big Liu proposed, “Yes, let’s drink to the impossible task ahead.”
Some of us laughed, and we drained the last drops in our cups.
For dessert, we had walnuts, honey oranges, roasted chestnuts, and jasmine tea. I brought out a small basket of spiced pumpkin seeds, which we cracked while conversing.
The fake Five Grain Sap went to Dr. Chu’s head and loosened him up. Now tipsy, he kept saying he felt ashamed of being a man. For him, the cause of Nanjing’s tragedy was clear and simple, and no one but the Chinese men should be held responsible — because they couldn’t fight back the invaders, their women and children were subjected to abuse and killing, so a foreign woman like Minnie had to step up to save lives and to do superhuman work. He even wept for a few moments, insisting that he wasn’t a man either and wished he hadn’t rushed back from Germany, driven by his youthful aspiration of saving his beloved China. This country was a hopeless quagmire and an endless nightmare. “It’s an eternal heartache!” he declared. He should have gone to Italy or Switzerland or to an eastern European country, since with a medical degree from a top German university he could practice anywhere. In short, he claimed that he was a weakling, plus an idiot, who had put himself at the enemy’s disposal. No wonder some people viewed him as a traitor.
His ravings pained my heart because I was reminded of my son. Haowen must have moments of despair like this; he might even feel worse, for he was actually serving in the Japanese army. Soon Dr. Chu calmed down and resumed speaking with the others in an amiable voice. When dinner was over, he refused to let Big Liu accompany him home. He said, “No Japs in town dare stop me.”
32
IN LATE DECEMBER we heard from Haowen again. A photograph enclosed in the letter showed that Mitsuko had given birth to a baby, so we now had a grandson who carried our family’s name. I had mixed feelings, though Yaoping was happy and even reminisced about his student days in Japan, of which he still had fond memories. He used to say that a Japanese woman could make a good wife. I had nothing against our daughter-in-law, who seemed to be a fine girl, but I was unsure if she and Haowen, now plus a baby, would have a happy life together. The hostility between the two countries would cast a long shadow on their marriage.
On the back of the photo my son had inscribed “Mitsuko and Shin.” The baby had Haowen’s round eyes and wide nose, not his mother’s smooth cheeks and tapered eyes. Mitsuko’s egg-shaped face had the calm and mild expression of an older woman, someone who already had a bunch of children. As I was observing her, her mouth seemed to be moving, saying something I couldn’t understand. I put down the picture, my eyes misty.
Yaoping and I talked about whether to ask Haowen for Mitsuko’s address so we could write to her, but we decided not to contact her directly while the war was still going on. That might get our family, and perhaps hers as well, into hot water. Someday we might go to Japan to see our grandson if he and his mother couldn’t come to visit us. Ideally, Haowen would be able to bring his wife and son back to China. But for the time being we kept the matter secret. If people knew of it, our family would be disgraced.
I showed the photograph to nobody but Minnie. “What a nice picture,” she said. “Mother and son look so content. What does Mitsuko do for a living?”
“She teaches primary school.”
“If I were you, I’d go see them right away.”
“Minnie, you’re American, but few Chinese can do that while the war is going on. Please don’t reveal my family’s Japanese relations to anyone, okay?”
“Sure, I’ll keep my lips zipped.”
We went on to talk about the three teenage girls — Meiyan and two classmates of hers — who had just run away, claiming that they wanted to join the resistance force in some interior region. Our staffers intercepted them at the train station in Hsia Gwan, because they didn’t have the travel papers necessary for purchasing tickets and were stranded there. I reprimanded the girls and wanted to make them do kitchen duty for a week, which Big Liu supported, but Minnie intervened, saying they had to take the finals they had missed. She gave them a few days to review their lessons.
Meiyan came to our home to see Liya that evening, to return the ten yuan she had borrowed from her for the secret journey. They were friends now, but Meiyan would remain reticent in my presence, so I stayed in the kitchen feeding Fanfan while listening in on the two of them in the sitting room.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you my plan,” Meiyan said. “I was afraid your mom would let my dad know.”
“No big deal,” Liya replied. “If I didn’t have a child, I might run away too.”
“Where would you like to go? To join your husband?”
“I have no clue where he is. I just want to join our army.”
“Which one — the Nationalists or the Communists?”
“It makes no difference as long as I can fight the Japanese. They killed my baby, and I still see my daughter now and then.” Liya believed that the lost baby had been a girl, perhaps because she’d never had morning sickness during the pregnancy.
“I’m glad you’re not mad at me.”
“Where were you three headed?”
“We just planned to go upriver. We really didn’t have a concrete destination in mind.”
“Didn’t you want to join the resistance force?” asked Liya.
“We did, but to be honest, I wouldn’t mind settling down in a peaceful place where nobody knows me. I want to live a quiet life too.”
“Where can you find a place like that now?”
“That’s the problem — the only option left is to join the resistance. If there were a convent that’s intact, I wouldn’t mind going there.”
“Come on, don’t you want to find a good man and have a family?”
“Not until we drive the Japanese out of our country.”
I mulled over their conversation, which changed my impression of Meiyan somewhat. I used to think she was just a hothead, but now I could see that she was also longing for a normal life.
SOON AFTER CHRISTMAS, a former schoolmate of Yaoping’s back in Japan came to see him. The man was tall and well turned out, wearing a business suit and patent-leather shoes. He looked like a middle-aged dandy, his hair pomaded shiny and his face somewhat bloated, but he was agreeable, spoke amiably with a northeastern accent, and called me sister-in-law. He used a long umbrella as a walking stick. Yaoping took him into our inner room, where they talked over tea and spiced sunflower seeds for hours, deep into the night. Now and then I went in with the teakettle and refilled the pot for them. I didn’t go to bed but instead drifted off in a chair in the sitting room. Their voices rose and fell; at times they seemed to be arguing.
After the man left, my husband became restless, pacing the floor and smoking his pipe. He let out a long sigh and shook his head.
“What did he want?” I asked Yaoping about the visitor.
“They’re preparing to establish a new national government, and he asked me to join them.”
“So they offered you a job?”
“Yes.”
“In what office?”
“The Ministry of Culture or the Ministry of Education.”
“Doing what?”