Empire of the Sun (15 page)

The endless streets of Chapei ran past, an area of tenements and derelict cotton mills, police barracks and shanty towns built on the banks of black canals. They drove below the overhead conveyors of a steel works decorated with dragon-festival hoardings, dreams of fire conjured from its silent furnaces. Shuttered pawnshops stood outside the abandoned radio and cigarette factories, and platoons of Chinese puppet troops patrolled the Del Monte brewery and the Dodge truck depot. Jim had never been to Chapei. Before the war a small English boy would have been killed for his shoes within minutes. Now he was safe, guarded by the Japanese soldiers – he laughed over this so much that the Dutch woman reached out a hand to calm him.

But Jim relished the foetid air, the smell of human fertilizer from the open sewage congs that signalled the approach of the countryside. Even the driver’s hostility failed to worry him. Whenever they stopped at a military checkpoint the driver would put his head out of the cabin and wave a warning finger at Jim, as if this eleven-year-old prisoner was responsible for the absurd expedition.

Watching the sun’s angle, as he had done for hours in the detention centre, Jim made certain that they were moving north. They passed the ruins of the Chapei ceramic works, its kilns shaped like the German forts at Tsingtao. Its trademark stood beside the gates, a Chinese teapot three storeys high built entirely from green bricks. During the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 it had been holed by shell-fire, and now resembled a punctured globe of the earth. Thousands of the bricks had migrated across the surrounding fields to the villages beside the works canal, incorporated in the huts and dwellings, a vision of a magical rural China.

These strange dislocations appealed to Jim. For the first time he felt able to enjoy the war. He gazed happily at the burnt-out trams and tenement blocks, at the thousands of doors open to the clouds, a deserted city invaded by the sky. It only disappointed him that his fellow prisoners failed to share his excitement. They sat glumly on the benches, staring at their feet. One of the missionary women lay on the floor, tended by another prisoner, a sandy-haired Britisher with a bruised cheek who held her wrist with one hand and pressed her diaphragm with the other. The two English boys, still barely aware of their mother’s death, sat between Basie and the Dutch couple.

Jim waited until Basie looked up, but the cabin steward seemed hardly to recognize him. His attention had turned to the two boys, and he had moved deftly into the vacuum in their lives. From the page of a Chinese newspaper he folded a series of paper animals, chuckling when the boys gave a weak laugh. Like a depraved conjuror, he slid his hands into the pockets of their school trousers and cardigans, searching for anything of use.

Jim watched him without resentment. He and Basie had collaborated at the detention centre in order to stay alive, but Basie, rightly, had dispensed with Jim as soon as he could leave for the camps.

The truck struck a deep gully in the cobbles, slewed across the road and came to a halt by the grass bank. They had left the northern outskirts of Shanghai and were entering an area of untilled fields and rice-paddies. Beyond a line of burial mounds two hundred yards away a canal ran towards a deserted village. The Japanese driver jumped from his cabin and bent over the front wheels of the truck. He began to talk to the steaming engine, now and then including Jim in his mutterings. He was only twenty years old, but had clearly suffered a lifetime of exasperation. Jim kept his head down, but the driver stepped on to the running board, levelled a finger at him and delivered a long harangue that sounded like a declaration of war.

The driver returned to his cabin, grumbling over his map, and Basie commented: ‘Add that up any way you like and we’re still lost.’ Already his attention had moved from the boys to whatever advantage could be gained from their situation. ‘Jim, do you know where you’re taking us?’

‘Woosung. I’ve been to the country club there, Basic’

Basie played with his paper animals. ‘We’re going to the country club,’ he told the boys. ‘If Jim can find it for us.’

‘As long as we reach the river, Basie. Then it’s either east or west.’

‘That’s a big help. East or west…’

The sandy-haired Briton beside the missionary woman rose from his knees. There was a large, leaking bruise on his forehead and left cheekbone, as if he had recently been struck in the face by a rifle stock. In some pain, he settled himself on the bench. Long freckled legs emerged from his khaki shorts and ended in a pair of thonged sandals. In his late twenties, he carried no luggage or possessions, but he had the self-assured manner of the Royal Navy officers who cut such a dash at the Shanghai garden parties, thrilling the mothers of Jim’s friends. He ignored the Japanese guard, talking across him as if he were a mess-boy who would soon be dismissed to his quarters. Jim assumed that he was one of those tiresome Englishmen who refused to grasp that they had been defeated.

The man touched the bruise on his face and turned to Jim, whose ragged figure he appraised without comment. ‘The Japanese have captured so much ground they’ve run out of maps,’ he remarked amiably. ‘Jim, does that mean they’re lost?’

Jim thought about this. ‘Not really. They just haven’t captured any maps.’

‘Good – never confuse the map with the territory. You’ll get us to Woosung.’

‘Can’t we go back to the detention centre, Dr Ransome?’ one of the missionaries asked. ‘We’re very tired.’

The physician stared at the abandoned paddy fields, and at the prostrate old woman at his feet. ‘It might be for the best. This poor soul can’t take much more.’

The truck moved forward again, trundling at a halfhearted pace down the empty road. Jim returned to his post by the driving cabin, and scanned the fields for anything that might remotely resemble Woosung. The doctor’s words unsettled him. Even if they were lost, how could he want to return to the detention centre?

Jim knew that the fury of Sergeant Uchida made it unlikely that the driver would dare to turn back. But he kept a careful watch on Dr Ransome, trying to guess whether he spoke enough Japanese to demoralize the driver. He seemed to have difficulty with his sight, especially when looking at Jim, at whom he squinted in a curious way. Jim decided that he had entered the war at a later stage than Basie and himself. He had probably come from one of the missionary settlements in the interior, and had no idea of what went on at the detention centre.

But were they lost, or on course? The direction of the shadows cast by the wayside telegraph poles had barely changed – Jim had always been interested in shadows, ever since his father had shown him how to calculate the height of even the highest building by pacing out its shadow on the ground. They were still heading north-west, and would soon reach the Shanghai-Woosung railway line. Steam hissed from the truck’s radiator. The spray cooled Jim’s face, but the driver’s fist drummed warningly against the door, and Jim knew that he was deciding when to stop and turn back for Shanghai.

Resigning himself to the wasted journey, and to their return to the detention centre, Jim studied the guard’s bolt-action rifle and its imperial chrysanthemum crest. The Dutch woman pulled at his soot-stained blazer.

‘Over there, James. Is that…?’

A burnt-out aircraft lay on the banks of a disused canal. Wild grass and nettles grew through its wings, almost invading the cockpit, but the squadron insignia were still legible.

‘It’s a Nakajima,’ he told Mrs Hug, pleased by this shared interest in plane-spotting. ‘It only has two machine-guns.’

‘Only two? But that’s very many…’

The Dutch woman seemed impressed, but Jim had turned his attention from the aircraft. On the far side of the paddy field, hidden by the nettles, was the embankment of a railway line. A squad of Japanese soldiers rested on the concrete platform of a wayside station, cooking a meal on a fire of sticks. A camouflaged staff car was parked beside the tracks. It was loaded with coils of wire which these signals engineers were re-stringing between the telegraph poles.

‘Mrs Hug…that’s the railway to Woosung!’

As steam bathed the driving cabin, the truck had stopped. It began to reverse. Beside Jim the Japanese guard was lighting a cigarette for the return journey. Jim pulled at his belt and pointed across the paddy field. The soldier followed his outstretched arm and then pushed him on to the floor. He shouted to the driver, who tossed his map-wallet on to the seat beside him. Engine steaming, the truck strained at the camber, made a half circle and set off along the dirt track to the railway station.

Dr Ransome steadied the English boys as they slipped from Basie’s grasp and swayed against the missionary woman. He helped Jim from the floor.

‘Good work, Jim. They’ll have water for us – you must be thirsty.’

‘A bit. I had a drink at the detention centre.’

‘That was sensible. How long were you there?’

Jim had forgotten. ‘Quite a long time.’

‘So I imagine.’ Dr Ransome brushed the dirt from Jim’s blazer. ‘It used to be a cinema?’

‘But they didn’t show films.’

‘I can see that.’

Jim sat back, patting his knees and beaming at Mrs Hug. The prisoners sat weakly on the facing benches, jerked to and fro like life-size puppets that had lost their stuffing. Far from reviving them, the drive from Shanghai had made them look sallow and nervous. But Jim smiled at the rusting aircraft on the canal bank. There was now no danger that they would return to the detention centre. The Japanese soldier had thrown away his cigarette and held his rifle in a military way. A signals corporal jumped from the railway platform and crossed the track.

‘Mrs Hug, I don’t think we’ll be going back to Shanghai.’

‘No, James – you must have very sharp eyes. When you grow up you should be a pilot.’

‘I probably will. I have been in a plane, Mrs Hug. At Hungjao Aerodrome.’

‘Did it fly?’

‘Well, in a way.’ Confidences given to adults often led further than Jim intended. He was aware that Dr Ransome was watching him. The doctor sat beside Mrs Hug’s father, whose painful breathing he was trying to help. But his eyes were fixed on Jim, taking in his stick-like legs and ragged clothes, his small, excited face. As they reached the railway line he gave Jim an encouraging smile, which Jim decided not to return. He knew that for some reason Dr Ransome disapproved of him. But Dr Ransome had not been to the detention centre.

They stopped by the railway tracks. The driver saluted the corporal and followed him to the station, where he spread his map across the cabinet of the field telephone. The prisoners sat in the warm sunlight as the corporal pointed to the drained paddies. A haze of dust rose from the untilled earth, a white veil that screened the distant skyscrapers of Shanghai. A convoy of Japanese trucks drove along the road, a brief blare of noise that merged with the distant drone of a cargo aircraft.

Jim changed benches and sat beside Mrs Hug, who supported her aged father against her breast. Two of the missionary women lay on the floor of the truck, as the other prisoners dozed and fretted. Basie had lost interest in the English boys, and was watching Jim over the bloodstained collar of his coat.

Thousands of flies gathered around the truck, attracted by the sweat and the urine running across the wooden boards. Jim waited for the driver to return with his map, but he sat on a bale of telephone wire, talking to two soldiers who cooked the midday meal. Their voices and the clicks of the burning wood carried across the steel tracks, magnified by the dome of light that enclosed them.

Jim fidgeted in his seat as the sun pricked his skin. He could see the smallest detail of everything around him, the flakes of rust on the railway lines, the saw-teeth of the nettles beside the truck, the white soil bearing the imprint of its worn tyres. Jim counted the blue bristles around the lips of the Japanese soldier guarding them, and the globes of mucus which this bored sentry sucked in and out of his nostrils. He watched the damp stain spreading around the buttocks of one of the missionary women on the floor, and the flames that fingered the cooking pot on the station platform, reflected in the polished breeches of the stacked rifles.

Only once before had Jim seen the world as vividly as this. Were the American planes about to come again? With an exaggerated squint, intended to annoy Dr Ransome, he searched the sky. He wanted to see everything, every cobblestone in the streets of Chapei, the overgrown gardens in Amherst Avenue, his mother and father, together in the silver light of the American aircraft.

Without dunking, Jim stood up and shouted. But the Japanese guard pushed him roughly against the bench. The soldiers on the railway platform sat amid the clutter of signals equipment, cramming their mouths with rice and fish. The corporal called to the truck, and the guard stepped over the missionary women and jumped from the tail-gate. He rested his rifle on the railway line and moved with his bayonet through the dried stubble of the wild sugar-cane. As soon as he had gathered sufficient kindling for the fire he joined the soldiers on the platform.

For an hour the smoke rose into the sunlight. Jim sat on the bench and brushed the flies from his face, eager to explore the railway station and the crashed aircraft near the canal. Whenever anyone moved, the Japanese shouted from the platform and pointed their cigarettes in a warning way. The prisoners had taken no radons or water with them, but there were two jerry-cans in the staff car from which the soldiers filled their canteens.

When Mrs Hug’s father was forced to lie on the floor Dr Ransome protested to the Japanese. He stood unsteadily by the tail-gate, ignoring their abuse and pointing to the exhausted passengers at his feet. The bruise on his cheek had been inflamed by the sun and the flies, and had almost closed his eye. Standing there stoically, he reminded Jim of the beggars parading their wounds on the streets of Shanghai. The Japanese corporal was unimpressed, but after a leisurely stroll around the truck he allowed the prisoners to dismount. Helped by the husbands, Basie and Dr Ransome eased the old women on to the ground, where they lay in the shade between the rear wheels.