J. Ballard - Empire of the Sun

Towers of smoke shuddered from the cruiser’s funnels as it prepared to raise anchor. Were his parents on board? Aware that he might now be alone in Shanghai, on this steamer he had always dreamed of visiting, Jim gazed from the bridge towards the shore. The tide was beginning to run, and the flower-decked corpses were following their heels to the open sea. The freighter leaned in the stream, and its rusty hull creaked and sang. The plates sawed against each other, and the trailing hawsers swung across the foredeck, the halyards of invisible sails still hoping to propel this ancient hulk to the safety of some warm sea a world away from Shanghai.

Happily, Jim felt the bridge shudder under his feet. As he laughed to himself at the rail he noticed that someone was watching him from the shipyard beyond the funeral piers. A man wearing the coat and cap of an American seaman stood in the wheelhouse of one of three partly constructed colliers. Shyly, but captain to captain, Jim waved to him. The man ignored him, and smoked the cigarette concealed in his hand. He was watching, not only Jim, but a young sailor in a metal dinghy which had cast loose from the next steamer in the boom.

Eager to welcome his first passenger and crewman, Jim left the bridge and made his way down to the deck. The sailor drew nearer, rowing in strong, short movements, careful not to disturb the water. Every few strokes he looked over his shoulder at Jim, and peered through the portholes as if he suspected that this rusty freighter was infested with small boys. The dinghy sat low in the water, weighted down by the sailor’s broad back. He pulled alongside, and Jim saw a crowbar, spanners and hacksaw between his boots. On the bench seat were the brass rings of porthole mounts prised from the ships’ hulls.

‘Hello, kid — going for a run up the coast? Who else is with you?’

‘Nobody.’ For all the hope of safety that this young American offered, Jim was not eager to leave the ship. ‘I’m waiting for my mother and father. They’ve been… delayed.’

‘Delayed? Well, maybe they’ll come later. You look like you need some help.’

He reached out to climb aboard, but as Jim took his hand the sailor pulled him roughly into the dinghy, jarring his knees against the brass portholes. He sat Jim upright and fingered his blazer lapels and badge. His loose blond hair framed an open American face, but he scanned the river in a furtive way, as if expecting a Japanese naval diver in full gear to break surface alongside the dinghy.

‘Now, why are you trying to bother us? Who brought you out here?’

‘I came by myself.’ Jim straightened his blazer. ‘This is my ship now.’

‘Some kind of crazy British kid. You’ve been sitting on that pier for two days. Who are you?’

‘Jamie…’ Jim tried to think of something that would impress the American; already he realized that he should stay with this young sailor. ‘I’m building a man-flying kite… and I’ve written a book on contract bridge.’

‘Wait till Basie sees this.’

As they drifted from the freighter the American drew on his oars. With a few powerful strokes he pulled the dinghy towards the mud-flats. They entered a shallow creek between the funeral piers, a black and oil-stained channel that wound past the shipyards. The American stared morosely at an empty coffin that had jettisoned its occupant. He spat into it for good luck, and fended it off with an oar. Expertly he steered the dinghy behind the white hull of a mastless yacht lashed to a beached lighter. Hidden below the swanlike overhang of the yacht’s stern, they tied up at a wooden stage. The American looped the porthole mounts on to his arm, gathered his tools together and beckoned Jim from the dinghy.

They crossed the floor of the shipyard, past stacks of steel plate, coils of chains and rusting wire, towards the shabby hulls of the three colliers. Jim scurried along, imitating the American’s aggressive gait. At last he had met someone who could help him find his parents. Perhaps the American and his companion in the wheelhouse had also been trying to surrender? The three of them together would be too many for the Japanese to ignore.

An antique Chevrolet truck was parked under the propeller of the largest collier. They stepped through a missing plate into the hull. The American lifted Jim on to a bamboo platform laid along its keel. They climbed a companionway to the next deck, walked across the wheelhouse and ducked through a narrow hatch into a metal cabin behind the bridge.

Faint with hunger, Jim swayed against the door frame. A familiar scent hung in the air, reminding him of his mother’s bedroom in Amherst Avenue, the odours of face-powder, cologne and Craven A cigarettes, and for a moment he was sure that she would emerge from this dark cubbyhole like the Christmas fairy and tell him that the war was over.

A charcoal stove burned softly in the centre of the cabin, its sweet fumes lifting through an open skylight. The floor was covered with oily rags and engine parts, brass portholes and stair-rails. On either side of the stove were a deck-chair with ‘Imperial Airways’ stitched into its fading canvas, and a camp-bed covered with a Chinese quilt.

The American flung his tools into the heap of metal parts. His large head and shoulders almost filled the cabin, and he slumped restlessly in the canvas chair. He peered into the saucepan on the stove and then gazed gloomily at Jim.

‘He’s getting on my nerves already, Basie. I don’t know whether he’s hungrier or crazier…’

‘Come in, boy. You look like you need to lie down.’

A small, older man emerged from beneath the quilt and motioned to Jim with the cigarette he was holding in his white hand. He had a bland, unmarked face from which all the copious experiences of his life had been cleverly erased, and soft hands that were busy powdering each other under the quilt. His eyes took in every detail of Jim’s mud-stained clothes, the tic that jumped across his mouth, his pinched cheeks and unsteady legs.

He dusted the talc from the bed and counted the pieces of salvaged brass. ‘Is that all, Frank? That’s not a lot to take to market. Those Hongkew merchants are charging ten dollars for a bag of rice.’

‘Basie!’ The young sailor drove a heavy boot into the heap of metal, exasperated more with himself than with the older man. ‘The boy’s been sitting on the pier for two days! Do you want the Japs in here?’

‘Frank, the Japs aren’t looking for us. Nantao Creek is full of the cholera — that’s why we came here.’

‘You practically put up a sign. Maybe you want them to look for us? Is that it, Basie?’ Frank dipped a rag in a can of cleaning fluid. He began to rub vigorously at the grime that covered a porthole mount. ‘If you want to work so hard try going out there — with that kid watching you all the time.’

‘Frank, we’ve got my lungs, you agreed that.’ Basie inhaled a little smoke from his Craven A, soothing these delicate organs. ‘Besides, the boy didn’t even notice you. He had other things on his mind, boy’s things that you’ve forgotten, Frank, but I can still remember.’ He made a warm place for Jim on the bed. ‘Come over here, son. What did they call you, before the war started?’

‘Jamie…’

Frank threw down his rag. ‘All this scrap isn’t going to buy us a sampan to Chungking! We’d need the Queen Mary out there.’ He treated Jim to a dark glare. ‘And we don’t have enough rice for you, kid. Who are you? Jamie — ?’

‘Jim…’ Basie explained. ‘A new name for a new life.’ As Jim sat beside him he reached out a powdered hand and gently pressed his thumb against the hunger tic that jumped across the left corner of Jim’s mouth. Jim sat passively as Basie exposed his gums and glanced shrewdly at his teeth.