Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin

Author:Ha Jin [Jin, Ha]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-17T21:00:00+00:00

25

LOCAL AUTHORITIES, uprooted by the war, no longer existed in many areas. According to what refugees told us, guerrillas had caused a good deal of trouble in the country. Villagers were being ground on the millstone, pressed hard from the top and the bottom. If the guerrillas blew up a section of a road, the Japanese would come and order the villagers to repair it within a short period of time. Meanwhile, the guerrillas would warn them that if they did the work, some of them would be executed, so the only thing left for the villagers to do was to pull up stakes and leave, but many of them didn’t have the supplies or funds for travel.

Most of the guerrillas were backed by the Communists, but some were also remnants of the Nationalist army. They plagued the Japanese occupiers incessantly, doing things like attacking their sentry posts at night and cutting the transport lines to Nanjing. They would also punish farmers who sold rice and other grains to the enemy. The Japanese would occasionally bribe the guerrillas so foodstuffs could be shipped into our city. Every now and then the local newspapers announced that twenty-five thousand yuan had just been paid to the guerrillas, who had agreed to keep all the roads open, so the citizens shouldn’t worry about the supply of rice for months to come. Still, the price of rice kept rising, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether to buy more for the two schools now or to wait for the price to drop.

Fuel was another problem. We had difficulty getting coal for the winter because only one hundred tons were allowed each dealer. Worse yet, the price was doubled now—forty yuan a ton for the soft and fifty for the hard. We decided to try to get forty tons from a mine near Wuhan for twenty yuan per ton, though we were unsure if the Japanese would let it enter the city. The good news was that the U.S. embassy approved of our plan and agreed to help us bring the coal in.

Minnie had hired another nurse, so I didn’t have to do anything for the infirmary anymore. I was pleased, though I still had my hands full, supervising the servants and the cooks. Somehow I tended to be at odds with the younger women on the faculty. Many of them complained about my bossiness, and Shanna and Rulian even nicknamed me the Ancient One. Ban, the messenger boy, told me that.

I often complained to Minnie that the madwoman, in addition to the four blind girls, was too much of a burden to us. I suggested sending Yulan to the mental asylum funded by the puppet municipality. “The Japanese destroyed her mind,” I said, “so their lackeys should take care of her.” But Minnie wouldn’t listen.

One afternoon Ban complained to me about the madwoman, and I took him to the president’s office. I said to Minnie, “Yulan is making trouble again.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Tell her,” I urged Ban.

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