Minnie handed the two thousand yuan to Mrs. Dennison, who was delighted and said that Jinling’s strength lay in the fact that we could always find donors for projects, and that with enough funding, the college should regain its eminence in the near future.
Minnie sensed the reduction of the student enrollment at the two schools. She asked me, “Why do we have fewer students now?”
“Mrs. Dennison said we wouldn’t have financial aid for many of the women anymore, so they’d have to leave.”
“How about the girls in the middle school?”
“Some dropped out because the schools in town are free.”
“I’m not worried about the girls who can have an education anyway. But what will happen to those poor women who are gone? Some of them have small children.”
“I feel sorry for them too.”
“How many do we still have in the Homecraft School?”
“Less than half, two hundred seventy-three.”
“What a betrayal. I take this personally, as an insult.” She glared at me, her eyes flashing.
I was embarrassed but countered, “Look, Minnie, you didn’t send me a single word. Big Liu and I were both worried about this but couldn’t find a way to contact you. How could I oppose Mrs. Dennison alone? She could’ve laid me off without a second thought.”
That quieted Minnie. Lowering her eyes, she said, “I’m sorry, Anling. I was sick in bed for weeks and couldn’t write.”
“What was the trouble?” I asked.
“I was depressed, listless, and couldn’t get out of bed, but I’m well now after swimming for two weeks.”
“What should we do?” I went on, hoping we could find some remedies for the reduction of the enrollment in both schools.
“I’ll speak to Mrs. Dennison and demand an answer.”
“No, you’d better not. She said she received permission from the board of founders. Plus there’s no way we can bring those poor women back.”
“What a mess! I hate myself for this,” Minnie said. “I feel so trivial. How could I care so much about my personal feelings and bolt to Tsingtao? Just because I couldn’t use that damned bungalow for the summer, I left the two schools open to dismantling.”
“Don’t reproach yourself,” I said. “You’re not made of iron and needed a vacation. Nobody should blame you. What’s done is done. Let’s keep calm and figure out what to do.”
“We must be more careful from now on.”
I told her about my son’s death. She hugged me and then wiped away her tears. “Anling,” she said, “you’re a tough woman, steady like a statue. If only I could be like you.”
I didn’t know how to respond in words and cried too. From then on I felt we were closer than ever. When she was depressed or frustrated, she often disclosed her feelings to me. I promised her that I’d write to Dr. Wu to apprise her of the developments here. We were both certain that the president would not align herself with Mrs. Dennison, though the old woman had once been her mentor. If we had Dr. Wu’s understanding and support, we should be able to manage Mrs. Dennison.
Before the fall semester started, Minnie and I decided to visit Yulan. To our horror, the hospital was gone. The building was under construction, encaged in bamboo scaffolding and being converted into a hotel for the military. Minnie asked a foreman what had happened to the patients and the staff of the hospital. The man shook his shaved head and said, “I heard they all left.”
“Do you know where they went?” she said.
“I’ve no clue, ma’am. They all might’ve gone home. You know the Japanese — they change plans every month.”
I tugged at Minnie’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”
Many of the medical personnel had been Japanese and couldn’t possibly repatriate in the midst of the war, not to mention the Chinese patients who no longer had a home to return to.
We left the construction site and stopped at Tianhua Orphanage in hopes that Monica might know something about the disappearance of the hospital, but the nun, paler than ever, had no idea either. In fact, she hadn’t even heard it was gone and kept apologizing. “Don’t blame yourself, please,” Minnie said. She left a box of walnut cookies — intended for Yulan — with Monica and told her to be more careful about her health. The woman looked even more consumptive, with sunken cheeks and feverish eyes; yet she was in good humor, so glad to see us that she couldn’t stop beaming. I was afraid she might not be able to work much longer.
Back on campus, Minnie telephoned Dr. Chu and asked him what had happened to the hospital. “Can you help me find out where the patients are?” she asked.
He agreed to look into it, and Minnie invited him to have tea with us.
Dr. Chu came the next afternoon. He seemed under the weather, his eyes dull and his face drawn to the point of being emaciated. I poured oolong tea for him and placed a dish of small dough twists on the coffee table. He said he had looked into the dissolution of the hospital but didn’t know for sure where all the staff had gone. Seated on an old canvas sofa in the main office, he went on, “They might have merged with other hospitals.”
“How about the patients?” Minnie asked.
“There weren’t many to begin with.”
“I want to know where Yulan is.”
“What can I say?” He sighed and put his teacup down. “I heard they had shipped some patients to Manchuria.”
“Why there?”
“A unit specializing in germ warfare needed human guinea pigs.”
“ ‘Germ warfare’? That’s horrible. Is the place they were sent to like an experiment center?” Minnie asked. That was the first time I’d heard the term “germ warfare.”
“I don’t know much about it,” he replied, “but I’m told there’s a Japanese army unit somewhere in the northeast that uses people for testing bacteria and viruses. They’ve been collecting marutas, human logs, for experiments.”
“So whoever ends up there won’t come out alive?” Minnie asked him.
“I’m sorry. In a way, the sooner Yulan and the other mad girl die, the better for them.”
“That’s an awful thing to say!”
“They were both afflicted with venereal diseases — very severe cases, to my knowledge. The girls were actually kept as sex slaves. What kind of life was that? I’m not like most Chinese who believe that the worst life is better than the best death. If life is insufferable, one had better end it. If I were them, I must say, I’d have killed myself long ago.” He gazed at me as if to see whether I wanted to challenge him. I had to say I agreed.
“But both of them were no longer clearheaded,” said Minnie.