After hearing Searle’s words, I was sure that the Japanese wouldn’t leave him alone from now on, but he must have become accustomed to dealing with them.
Searle concluded, “As for those Christians in countries that are not involved in war, like the Americans among you, we must align ourselves only with the weak and the victims, just as our late Sister Monica did for the orphans in Nanjing. This is the only moral stand we should take. The true Christian position should be standing between humanity and the unregarding force.”
The audience liked his sermon, especially the Chinese. The instant Searle had finished, a few people clapped their hands, then stopped short, realizing this wasn’t an occasion for applause.
Reverend Wei gave a closing prayer, imploring God to receive Monica’s soul and to grant her eternal joy. Then everyone stood and sang “O God of Love, O King of Peace.”
After the funeral, Minnie said she hoped that when she died, she could have a similar service, full of warmth and dignity, like the one we had just attended to celebrate the ascent of Monica’s soul. The dead woman must be at peace now.
MISS LOU CAME to the main office the next morning, because some families in the neighborhood had run out of food and their children were starving. I stepped out of the inner room and joined the little woman. Seated in her chair with the unfinished paperwork for student scholarships on her desk, Minnie yawned. “Excuse me,” she said, covering her mouth with her palm. “I get tired so easily these days that I often drop off. And my eyes throb with double vision.” Lately she often joked that she looked sixty and felt eighty.
“You’ve worked too hard,” Miss Lou said. “You need a long vacation.”
“Yes, you owe yourself one,” I agreed.
“I’m supposed to be on furlough in the summer, but it’s unlikely I can do that,” Minnie said. “I’ll have to stay around to take care of things here. Now, Miss Lou, what should we do for your neighbors without food? We must make sure they will at least have a decent meal on the Spring Festival’s Eve.”
“That’s why I came to see you. I’m also wondering if your college has an extra quilt. A poor woman lost her only quilt yesterday afternoon, stolen by a thief who broke into her home. Her husband disappeared and she’s too ill to scratch out a living. Actually, she sewed all her savings, ten yuan in total, into her quilt, so the money is gone too.”
Minnie turned to me. “Do we have enough rice to spare some?”
“Sure,” I answered. The previous fall I’d bought eleven wagon-loads of rice at twenty-five yuan per picul (133.33 pounds), a smart move at two-thirds of the current price, so we could offer some to the destitute. “But we might have given away all the quilts we made last fall,” I said. “I’ll have to check.”
We went to the main dormitory and found no extra quilts. So Minnie turned into her own apartment in the same building and grabbed the one from her bed. “Take this,” she said to Miss Lou.
“You have another quilt for yourself?” the little woman asked.
“I have a duvet and a warm blanket.”
Miss Lou left happy, having said she would come with a wheelbarrow to pick up the rice the next day.
49
IN MID-MARCH Yoguchi informed us that Mr. Tanaka couldn’t get the travel permits for the three of us anymore, because the officer in charge of travel papers, Tanaka’s fellow townsman, had left Nanjing. Also, citizens here, especially the Christians, were discouraged from visiting Japan. The cancellation of the trip disappointed me and aggravated my temper, and my antagonism toward Shanna and Rulian flared up again. If they got on my nerves, I didn’t hesitate to give them a piece of my mind to let off some steam. I knew they would bad-mouth me behind my back, but I didn’t care. Minnie said I sometimes deliberately picked fights with them. That might be true, but she couldn’t see the main cause: there was this anger seething in me because the canceled trip had dashed my hopes of going to Japan.
Rulian was tolerable on the whole, but I found Shanna insufferable. She was from a well-to-do family and had the extravagant habit of dining out every weekend. She often boasted about the dishes she ordered in restaurants downtown. One day at recess, I overheard her speaking about the Osaka Terrace to a bunch of women in the Homecraft School. “Believe it or not,” she said, “I wanted to puke when I tried sushi for the first time. It tasted like a dead slug in my mouth, especially the tuna. But my friend urged me to go on, and by and by I began to like it. Now I can taste different kinds of sushi. I like the eel most.”
“My goodness, even if they paid me I wouldn’t eat raw fish,” a short woman said.
“It’s actually more nutritious,” replied Shanna.
“That’s wild,” said a spindly woman.
“You don’t believe me?”
The bell rang, and the women started back for the classrooms. After they were gone, I said to Shanna, “You shouldn’t have talked about fancy Japanese food in front of them.”
She pulled a long face. “They asked me about it.”
“But you’re not supposed to be a salesgirl for Japanese restaurants.” My gorge was rising as I spoke.
“You know what? That place is owned by two Chinese men who’re brothers.” Her nose, the shape of a big clove of garlic, quivered, but she avoided looking me in the face.
“Still, you went too far. Lots of people in Nanjing are starving, while you brag about raw seafood.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“It is my business to stop you from making others feel cheap and abject.”
“Nuts!” She turned and strode away, her hands in the pockets of her flannel jacket.
Exchanges like that often broke out between us. Whenever she went out of bounds, I would let her have it, though I always spoke to her privately. I simply couldn’t tolerate her kind of extravagance and foolishness.
Then one afternoon Shanna came to see Minnie and said she had decided to resign immediately. Minnie was flabbergasted, never having expected that a dean would quit before the semester was over; no matter how she tried to dissuade her, Shanna wouldn’t change her mind. From the inner office I overheard her say, “I’m just sick of all this. My family needs me.” She claimed that her father was bedridden and wanted to see her back in Shanghai.
Minnie could do nothing. Shanna left two days later, and Minnie had to take over the administrative work of the Homecraft School. Although Donna was the dean of the middle school, she needed a lot of help because she didn’t know Chinese and couldn’t even figure out the girls’ names on paper. With the additional work, Minnie had to put in extra hours every day and often didn’t go to bed until early in the morning.
This situation could not continue. If only Aifeng would come back. But her fiancé was still jailed in Tianjin, and she couldn’t leave in the midst of all the efforts to rescue him. Mrs. Dennison came and talked with Minnie about how to bring Shanna back. The old woman was also worried, seeing that it was impossible for Minnie alone to handle so many things. Mrs. Dennison had tried to help, but the bookkeeping and the housing renovation were almost more than she could manage. I hardly spoke a word and, cheek on fist, just listened to them. Having considered the pros and cons, the two leaders decided to send Alice to Shanghai on behalf of Jinling to beg Shanna to come back. “We should have trained more leaders,” Mrs. Dennison said, and sighed.