Nanjing Requiem Read Free Page B

secretary, Mr. Kong, went back to his home village and left hundreds of letters unanswered.”
    “You want me to be on your staff?” Big Liu asked.
    “Yes, to be our Chinese secretary.”
    “For real?”
    “She’s in charge now,” I told him.
    “Yes, I just offered you the job.” As Minnie was speaking, I heard a thrill in her voice. Evidently she took great pride in her new role.
    “Wonderful! I’m delighted, delighted.” Big Liu’s rugged face lit up.
    Big Liu, who’d been looking for work in vain, had a teenage daughter and small son to support. He would start the following Monday, with a monthly salary of twenty-five yuan for the time being. That was plenty, compared to the other staffers, since we had all taken a sixty percent pay cut. Minnie now was making fifty yuan a month while I was making thirty. She suggested that Big Liu’s family live at East Court, a group of houses set around a courtyard in the southeast part of campus. It was Minnie, as a construction supervisor a decade ago, who had designed that servants’ residence, which had been built so well that later some Chinese faculty members complained that those quarters were superior to their own. My family was also living at East Court, so the Lius would be our neighbors.
    As the three of us were talking, our business manager, Luhai Bai, appeared and waved at Minnie. Despite that impressive title, Luhai mainly handled external business dealings, because it was I who managed most of the logistics on campus. The young man, limping slightly, hurried up to us, a little out of breath. He said, “Madame Chiang has sent us her piano and Victrola.”
    “Oh, as gifts?” Minnie asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Where are they?” I said.
    “Some men are unloading them in front of the Music Hall.”
    “Let’s go have a look,” said Minnie.
    As the four of us headed to that building, which also housed the chapel, I realized that Madame Chiang must be evacuating. This upset me, because it confirmed the rumor about the Chiangs’ secret departure. I wondered if Dr. Wu had known all along about their plan to leave. Would the generalissimo’s withdrawal affect the defending troops? Wouldn’t the soldiers feel deserted? On second thought, I realized that it would be unreasonable to expect the generalissimo to remain on the battle line. If he were killed or captured, it would be catastrophic.
    In front of the Music Hall stood a six-wheeled truck and five soldiers smoking self-rolled cigarettes, their overcoats piled on the ground. The piano, a Baldwin, had already been unloaded. Its finish was dull and it looked well used, but the Victrola was spanking new, in an oxhide case and accompanied by a gleaming brass horn and two boxes of records. Minnie lifted the piano’s keyboard cover and tickled out a couple of random notes. “Sounds powerful. This behemoth is what we need for the chapel service,” she said, then motioned to the men. “Please carry it in and put it next to the organ.”
    We were glad about the gifts, but I couldn’t think of anyone on campus able to play the piano. Not a single person among us could do that. My friend Holly was a musician, but she was occupied with the radio station. Even Minnie couldn’t punch out a tune. She often said that all her life she had wished she could play an instrument, ideally the cello—as a child, how she had envied the children who could take art and music lessons after school. She seemed to still suffer from the privation in her girlhood (she’d lost her mother at six, and even before her teens had to keep house for her father, a blacksmith in Secor, Illinois), as though this were an illness she couldn’t get over. That’s why, whenever possible, she’d have the underprivileged children in the Jinling neighborhood learn something more than reading, arithmetic, and practical skills, even if it was just a song or a ball game. I admired her for that, for her large heart, which set her apart from the other