Nanjing Requiem (15 page)

Minnie apologized to Rabe for such a shabby party, without cheese or wine. We all knew he loved cheese and nowadays often groused to his cook about a cheeseless table. He even missed potatoes.

“This is wonderful and memorable,” Rabe said. “Thank you, Miss Vautrin.”

He had grown thinner lately, but still sported a small paunch. Holly often joked about him in private, “If he was single, I’d chase him to the end of the globe.” I’d say to her, “Oh, come now, he’s too old for you, not a good catch.” Rabe was fifty-five, older than Holly by a good fifteen years.

He and Lewis were quite close, having worked together on a daily basis since November. Lewis admired his large heart, his common sense, and his ability to get things done, while Rabe liked Lewis for his energy and unflagging enthusiasm for whatever he undertook. But the two of them wouldn’t stop chaffing each other. Lewis would call Rabe Rockefeller on account of the grand house, the headquarters of the Safety Zone Committee, where he stayed during the daytime. Whenever his loyal assistants, Han or Cheng, came in to hand Rabe a telegram, Lewis would quip, “From Hitler?”

Now, teacup in hand, Lewis came over and smiled quizzically, crunching popcorn. Rabe swatted him on the shoulder and said, “I know what you’re going to say: Hilter summoned me back. Right?”

“He must have a big job waiting for you,” Lewis said, his face straight. We chuckled, knowing Rabe was a leader of the Nazi Party in Nanjing.

“As a matter of fact, the Führer may not want to see me. Chancellor Scharffenberg was in the embassy the other day and summoned me. He chastised me, urging me to stop tangling with the Japanese. He stressed that what the Japanese were doing here should not concern us Germans, because he believed that the Chinese, once left alone to cope with the Japanese, would cooperate with them. I guess by now even Hitler might be tired of me.”

Minnie raised her teacup and said to Rabe, “John, regardless of your political persuasion, you’re a man I look up to.”

We touched cups with him and each took a mouthful. Then Robert Wilson came over, his balding crown pinkish, and rested his hand on Eduard Sperling’s shoulder. “John, I have something for you,” Bob said. Because the Japanese would let few medical personnel come into the city, for almost six weeks Bob had been the only surgeon in town. He actually lived at the University Hospital so he could work around the clock. His face creased a little as he smiled; he looked frazzled as a result of having to operate on patients day and night. Sometimes his hands got swollen from overwork, yet he had to continue.

“What’s that?” Rabe asked. “I hope it’s not another house. I cannot bring any real estate back to Germany, you know.” There’d been so many houses “given” to him recently that he was sick of them, because the owners also meant to have the properties protected by him, knowing he’d have to leave them behind when his stint here was over.

Bob touched a canvas satchel under the table with the side of his boot. “I have one hundred ampoules of insulin for you—don’t you want them?”

“Good Lord, I’m delighted,” Rabe said. “But don’t you need them for other patients?”

“We only treat people with gunshot and bayonet wounds. I feel like a butcher, doing nothing but cutting and stitching bodies.” He lifted the satchel of insulin, put it on the table, and told Rabe, “Use them soon—they’ll expire in a year.”

“I will. Thanks very much,” Rabe said.

While people were talking, Searle Bates dozed off in a chair in a corner, his veiny hand still holding a teacup. His bumpy Adam’s apple jigged from time to time. Usually he was the most convivial one among the Americans, thanks to his sharp wit and vast learning, but this afternoon he was too exhausted to remain on his feet. These days, besides managing the camps at Nanjing University, he drove a truck to deliver rice and firewood and coal to porridge plants within the Safety Zone, which fed more than two hundred thousand refugees. Because only foreigners could transport the rations without being robbed, Searle and several others had to do the driving. Now none of us disturbed him.

When the party was about to end, Minnie suggested that Allison leave first because he had a Japanese guard in tow, so the diplomat left before the others. Then Rulian came in and, her almond-shaped eyes smiling, whispered to me that some women gathering outside wanted to say farewell to Rabe.

I went up to him and said, “Mr. Rabe, some women in our camp want to say good-bye to you. Can you spare a minute?”

“Okay, I’m coming.” He drained his cup, then followed us to the door. The others were also coming out.

What we saw in front of the Science Building staggered us. More than three thousand women and girls were kneeling on the ground, wailing and begging, “Please don’t go! Please don’t abandon us!”

“Don’t leave us in the lurch!” a voice rang out.

“Don’t stop protecting us!” shouted another.

Rabe was flustered. He approached the front row of the crowd and said, “Please get up.”

But none of the women budged. He bent down a little and said a few more words in English to them; still nobody moved. Then he bowed three times to the crowd in the Chinese fashion. He straightened up and waved at the women and girls, some of whom were crying louder now. He asked Minnie, “What should I do?”

“Say something to them.”

“What can I say? There’s no way I can justify my leaving. If only I could stay like you.” He swallowed, a film of sweat on his broad forehead. Unable to speak Chinese, he turned to the crowd and made another three deep bows.

Still, the crowd wouldn’t get up and many kept crying. Rabe said to Minnie, “I’d better go.”

“Okay, this way. You can use the side gate,” said Minnie.

I beckoned Luhai over and told him to open that small exit for Rabe. Rabe followed him along the roofed path and went out of the yard through a moon gate, leaving his car behind. He had to walk all the way home, as did the other guests.

Afterward Minnie talked about the crowd with me. “I didn’t expect they’d have such deep feelings for John Rabe.”

“Yes, they’re more than grateful,” I said. “Also, they must be scared and want to be protected.”

To many of the women and girls, Rabe must have been like a protective father who had never hesitated to confront the soldiers and even risk his own life. He was more than a hero to the refugees.

17

O
NE AFTERNOON
in late February, a fortyish refugee woman named Sufen came to the president’s office and said she had spotted her fifteen-year-old son in a labor gang in the Model Prison downtown. Surprised, Minnie asked her, “Are you sure he was your son?”

“Absolutely, he called me Ma and hollered he missed home. Principal Vautrin, please help me—help get him out of jail.”

“Relax. Tell us more about that place.”

That stumped Sufen, who turned tongue-tied.

“How many men are in there?” I asked her, having stepped out of the other inner room, which was my office.

“Hundreds, some wearing burlap sacks like rain ponchos. Some are just teenage boys like my son.” As she spoke, Sufen’s large eyes shone with excitement and her sunburned nose quivered. I knew she had filed her petition with Big Liu.

“What else did your son tell you?” Minnie went on.

“Nothing more. Two guards took them away before he could say another word. I’m gonna wait for him there tomorrow morning.”

“Try to find out something about the other men too.”

“Sure I will.”

“Don’t tell others you saw your son there yet. We must figure out what to do before we spread the word.”

“I’ll do whatever you say.”

I admired Minnie’s discretion. If we broke the news at once, we might bring about a chaos among the petitioners that Big Liu and his team would not be able to handle.

Sufen dragged herself out of the office, her shoulders bent and her knees knocking a little as she walked. I remembered speaking with her weeks ago, and knew that she had come with a group of refugees from Danyang and that her husband was a chef in the Nationalist army, though the man was somewhere in the southwest of China now. That made me feel closer to her because my son-in-law was also in the army. Sufen told me that a shell had landed in her backyard and killed her mother-in-law, who had been feeding a milk goat there. The moment Sufen and her son carried the old woman indoors and covered her with a sheet, word came that the Japanese were approaching. So she and the boy took flight with the other villagers. But before reaching the road that led to a nearby town, they were intercepted by a company of soldiers, who detained all the able-bodied men among them, saying that the Imperial Army needed “many, many hands” and would give them good food and pay them handsomely. Sufen begged an officer to spare her son. He was just a kid, not even fifteen yet, skinny like a starved chicken. “Please, please don’t take him away!” she pleaded, holding both hands together before her chest. But the heavyset officer kicked her and threatened to cut off her ear if she made any more noise. She was too frightened to say another word, and all she could do was give the boy the biscuits and water she carried.

Now the information about her son in the Model Prison, a standard penitentiary built by the Nationalist government but used as a military jail by the Japanese, cast a ray of hope on the petition. It also made me see the reason for Minnie’s insistence on the endeavor. If my son were behind bars, I’d have done anything to get him out. I thought that I ought to be more involved in helping those poor mothers and wives.

Minnie and I wondered if the jail also held other men and boys belonging to some petitioners’ families. She called together Big Liu, Holly, and me and floated the idea of sending scores of women to the Model Prison to see if they could find their menfolk as well. Both Big Liu and Holly thought that this might be too rash and might endanger the women.

I believed that we could make the petition a much stronger case if more men and boys were found in that jail. Maybe we could send over just three or four plain-looking women? I suggested. They all seconded my suggestion.

With the help of Lewis Smythe, Minnie got in touch with Dr. Chu, who had his clinic in the center of downtown and was well connected and eager to help the women get their menfolk back. Most of the foreigners thought highly of this man, though I had mixed feelings about him. He had earned his medical degree from the University of Leipzig and spoke fluent German but very little English. Reverend Magee said Dr. Chu was warm and trustworthy—unlike most Chinese, he never minced his words and always cut to the chase. Despite working for the Autonomous City Government, he had a decent reputation among the locals, partly because he held no official title and spent most of his time seeing patients. Magee had recommended him to several Americans as a family physician. On a windy afternoon in early March, Minnie and I arrived at his office downtown, carrying the six hundred signatures and thumbprints of the petitioners.

To our surprise, Dr. Chu had met with Big Liu two days before and was familiar with the case. He was in his late thirties, with urbane manners. His three-piece suit was baggy on him, though his boots were shiny. He spoke while drumming his long fingers on the glass desktop as if tapping out a telegram. “I went to the Model Prison yesterday and chatted with an officer,” he told us in a low-timbred voice. “The man said that fifteen hundred prisoners were held there as forced labor. Many of them are civilians, and more than forty are young boys. But the officer wouldn’t let me speak to any of them. He feared that his Japanese superior might suspect him of leaking information.”

“Do you think there might be a way we can get some of them released?” Minnie asked. I was amazed that he was already involved.

“That’s possible. Try to get more women to participate and send the petition to Shanghai if the Japanese here ignore you. There must be a way to push them.”

“We’ll do that.”

“The prisoners are underfed and malnourished. Some were too ill to work. Maybe you should have some rice and salted vegetables delivered to those recognized by the petitioners.”

“So far only one boy was spotted by his mother,” I told him.

“I’m pretty sure more will be found.”

“We’ll try our best,” Minnie said.

“I’ll do everything I can to help.” He sighed, his eyes dimmed, and his patchy brows drooped.

Dr. Chu was one of the best doctors of Western medicine here, and even some Japanese officers had gone to him for treatment since he had come back to Nanjing a month before. With his help, we hoped that our petition might produce some results.

18

O
NE AFTERNOON
in mid-March, Minnie and I headed for the garden in the back of campus to look at the double daffodils that were about to unfold. She’d brought the bulbs back from America a decade before and Old Liao had helped to cultivate them. She was fond of flowers, particularly those that bloomed in fall and winter. Passing the small pond, we saw some goldfish, each about a foot long, lying belly-up in the water, and realized they must have been poisoned by soapsuds and night soil. A broken washboard was floating among them. Many women would scrub toilet buckets in the pond. In the beginning we had urged them not to do that, but so many people kept doing it that by now it had become a common practice. The refugees also laundered clothes and diapers in the water. There were three other ponds on campus—one behind the library, another near Ninghai Road and south of the Faculty Residence, and the third before the Practice Hall. But those three were much bigger than this one, and therefore not as polluted.

Although there were 3,328 refugees in the camp now, the 7,000 who were gone had left behind a good amount of garbage and waste. Feces were strewn in the grass and along some hedges, and a group of refugee girls had been collecting them with wicker baskets and small dung forks and piling them behind some buildings. As the weather was getting warmer day by day, the excrement had to be disposed of without further delay or an epidemic might break out. The girls had been digging pits to bury the waste they had collected, but we knew that even this was not a permanent solution. We needed lime, tons of it, to cover the feces and kill the germs, but to date we hadn’t been able to come by any.