J. Ballard - The Kindness of Women

‘Olga, you really scared me. You haven’t changed.’ I was glad to see her, though time seemed to be running in all directions. If I was three years older, Olga was both in her early twenties and late thirties. A procession of faces had been let into the bones of her face, layers of paint and experience through which gleamed a pair of pointed and hungry eyes. I guessed that she spent her days fighting off American sailors in the backs of the Nanking road pedicabs. Her silk suit was torn around the armpit, exposing a large bruise under her shoulder blade, and a smear of lipstick marked the strap of her brassiere. As she looked me up and down I knew that she had already dismissed my own experiences of the war.

‘So … such a smart suit. Mr Sangster said you had a good time in Lunghua. I guess you miss it.’

‘Well … a little. I’ll take you there, Olga.’

‘No, thanks. I heard enough about those camps. All those dances and concerts. Here it’s been real hell, I can tell you. The things my mother had to do, James. We didn’t have the Japanese looking after us.’ She sighed headily, swayed by the memory. She was sober, but I guessed that for the past three years she had been slightly drunk.

‘Do you work here, Olga? Are you the owner?’

‘One day. Bars, hotels, sing song parlours, everywhere. Believe me, James, these American boys have more money than Madame Chiang …’

‘I hope they give you plenty, Olga.’

‘What? Well, we won the war, didn’t we? Tell me, James, is your father still rich?’

‘He definitely isn’t.’ The thought of money had rekindled her waning interest in me. ‘He’s been in Soochow camp all through the war.’

‘He can still be rich. Take it from me, you can find money anywhere. Just look hard enough and give a big pull.’

She wiped the lipstick from her teeth, appraising me anew. Already I felt aroused by Olga, as confused as ever by her changes of temper. In every sense she was more wayward and exciting than the women in Lunghua. Before the war, when I undressed, she had glanced at my naked body with the off-hand curiosity of a zoo-keeper being shown a rare but uninteresting mammal. I took for granted now that no male body would rouse even a flicker of interest. Yet her eyes were sizing me up as if she were about to place a large physical burden on my shoulders.

‘I can see that you’re still a dreamer, James. I’m thinking about your father. He can make a good investment right now, while the Americans are here. There’s a small restaurant in the Avenue Joffre, only six tables …’

She stepped forward on her high heels, stumbling across the cut-glass pendants of the chandelier. She steadied herself, holding my arm in a strong grip. Her hip pressed against mine, trying to remind me of something I had forgotten. A potent scent of sweat and powder rose from her shabby dress, a quickening odour that I had noticed in the women’s huts at Lunghua.

I let her lean against me as we walked across the dance floor, our shoes breaking the glass. A rush of ideas filled my head as she worked her thigh into my leg. The war had accelerated everything, and I felt that I was surrounded by moving trains all beyond my reach. I wanted to have sex with Olga, but I had no idea how to approach her, and I knew that she would enjoy laughing at my gaucheness.

At the same time, something more than shyness held me away. Part of her attraction was the thought of going back to my childhood, but if I was certain of anything it was that I was no longer a child, and that the games of hide-and-seek through the streets of pre-war Shanghai were over for ever. Being brought up by servants, supposedly the gift of privilege, in fact exposed a child to the most ruthless manipulation, and I had no wish to be manipulated again, by sex or hunger or fear. When I made love for the first time it would be with Peggy Gardner.

I listened to the pendulum-like motion of the waiter’s broom. Olga’s free hand had slipped under my jacket and was pressed against my abdomen. She was hesitating, as if aware that she might find herself cast again as my governess, reminded of her parents’ penury in their pre-war tenement and the boring hours she had spent looking after this little English boy with his cycle and free-wheeling imagination.

From the hollows of Olga’s neck and the enlarged veins in the skin of her breasts I guessed that she had eaten as little as I had in the past three years. I put my arm around her shoulder, suddenly liking this tough young woman with her rackety ideas. Only the first-class private at the railway station had looked at me so intently. I wanted to tell Olga about the dead Chinese, but already the lost Japanese patrol was moving into the rear of my mind.

‘Are you going back to England, James?’

‘After Christmas – I’m sailing on the Arrawa with my mother.’ This troopship, a former refrigerated meat carrier, would repatriate the British nationals in Shanghai. ‘My father’s staying on here.’

‘He’ll stay? That’s good. I’ll talk to him about my restaurant. Will you study in England?’

‘If I have to.’ On an impulse, I said: ‘I’m going to be a doctor.’

‘A doctor? That’s very good. When I’m sick you can look after me. It’s your turn now.’

As I left, promising to introduce her to my father, Olga said: ‘Now you can play hide-and-seek in the whole world.’

A week after Christmas I left Shanghai for ever. Some six hundred former internees, mostly women and children, sailed for England in the converted meat carrier. My father and the other Britons staying behind in Shanghai stood on the pier at Hongkew, waving to us as the Arrawa drew away from them across the slow brown tide. When we reached the middle of the channel, working our way through scores of American destroyers and landing craft, I left my mother and walked to the stern of the ship. The relatives on the pier were still waving to us, and my father saw me and raised his arm, but I found it impossible to wave back to him, something I regretted for many years. Perhaps I blamed him for sending me away from this mysterious and exhilarating city.

When the last of the banks and hotels faded into the clouds above the Bund I carried my suitcase to one of the men’s mess rooms. At night we slung our hammocks across the open decks where the refrigerated carcases of New Zealand meat had hung. In the darkness the hundreds of sleeping bodies swayed together like sides of lamb packed in canvas.

After our evening meal I returned to the stern rail, almost alone on the deck as the Arrawa neared the entrance to the Yangtse. Shanghai had vanished, a dream city that had decided to close itself to the world. The rice fields and villages of the estuary stretched to the horizon, with only the sea to separate them from the nearest landfall at Nagasaki.

The Arrawa paused at Woosung, readying itself to join the great tide of the Yangtse as it flowed into the China Sea. As we waited on the swell, edging closer to the eastern bank of the Whangpoo, we drifted past a large American landing craft beached on the shore. A tank-landing vessel scarcely smaller than the Arrawa , its flat prow lay high on the streaming mud-flat, as if it had been deliberately beached on this isolated coast. The Arrawa was in no danger of striking the craft, but a signal lamp flashed from its bridge. American military police patrolled its decks, their weapons levelled as they waved us away.

A fetid stench floated on the air, as if vented from an exposed sewer filled with blood. Leaning from the stern rail, I saw that the hold of the landing craft was filled with hundreds of Japanese soldiers. They sat packed together in rows, knees pressed against each other’s backs. All were in a bad way, and many lay down, crushed by the mass of bodies. They ignored the Arrawa , and only a group of handcuffed NCOs turned their eyes towards the ship.