J. Ballard - Empire of the Sun

‘Frank, you’re going the wrong way—’ Jim tried to point out. But Basie pressed the back of his powdered hand against Jim’s mouth.

‘Quiet, Jim. Silence is a good friend to a boy.’

Jim rested his swaying head against Basie’s shoulder. They embarked on a rambling journey through the narrow streets. Hundreds of Chinese faces pressed against the windows as they edged between the rickshaw and buffalo carts. Jim felt hungry again, and the endless bumping of the wheels over the disused tramlines made him giddy. He wished that they would return to Nantao, to the charcoal-stove with its pot of rice.

An hour later, Jim woke to find that they had reached the western suburbs of Shanghai. The last of the sun touched the rooftops of the Columbia Road. As they cruised past the parked Opels and Buicks of the German compound Basie pointed to the unoccupied houses.

Jim revived, and blew into his hands to warm them. They had completed a pointless circuit of the city, but he realized that he had tempted these devious men with his chatter about the grand life. Like a courier with a party of gullible tourists, he began a commentary on the houses in which he had camped during the past two months.

‘That has whisky and gin, Basie. That has whisky and gin and a white piano — no, just whisky.’

‘Never mind the alcohol. Frank and I aren’t planning to open a bar. Were you a choirboy, Jim? We’ll stand you on the white piano, you can sing “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.’

‘That has a cinema,’ Jim continued. ‘And that one is full of teeth.’

‘Teeth, Jim?’

‘It belonged to a dentist. Maybe there are gold teeth, Basie.’

They turned into Amherst Avenue and drove past the deserted mansions. The electricity supply to the street was still disconnected, and the houses in their overgrown gardens seemed even more sombre in the early evening, stranded here like the scuttled freighters in the boom. But Basie stared at them with obvious respect, as if his years as a cabin steward on the Cathay-American Line had taught him the true worth of these beached hulks. Clearly he was glad to be associated with Jim.

‘You had good sense, Jim, being born here. I admire a boy who appreciates a good home. Anyone can pick his own parents, but to have the sense to see beyond that…’

‘Basie…’ Frank interrupted this reverie. They had stopped under the trees two hundred yards from the entrance to Jim’s drive.

‘Right, Frank.’ Basie opened his door and stepped into the road. There were no Japanese patrols, and the Chinese bodyguards had retreated behind their walls for the evening. Basie pointed to a narrow cul-de-sac that ran between uncut privet hedges towards one of the houses.

‘Jim, time to stretch our legs. Take a stroll up there and see if anyone’s playing that white piano.’

Jim listened to the low but stressed sound of the truck’s engine. Frank sat back in a casual way, but his huge foot was poised above the accelerator. Basie’s pallid face hung like a lantern below the trees. Jim knew that they planned to leave him there. Having failed to sell him to the Chinese traders, they would abandon him to the avenues of the Shanghai night.

‘Basie, I…’ Frank had placed a hand on his shoulder, ready to hurl him into the road. ‘Could we go to my house? It’s even more luxuriant.’

‘Luxuriant?’ Basie savoured the word in the grey air. He gazed at the houses around them, at the Tudor gables and white modern façades, at the replica chateaux and the haciendas with green tiled roofs.

He climbed aboard, and held the door to the frame without engaging the lock. ‘All right, Frank, we’ll look at Jim’s house.’

They moved forward under the trees, and turned into the unguarded drive. As they approached the silent house Jim could see that Basie was disappointed. He eased open the door, ready to seize Jim and throw him out on to his own steps.

Jim clung to the dashboard, and at that moment two figures stepped from the entrance porch. They wore white gowns, with deep sleeves that floated from their arms. Jim was sure that his mother had come home and was greeting one of her guests.

‘Basie! They’re Japs…’

Jim heard Frank shouting, and saw that the two figures were off-duty Japanese soldiers in their military kimonos. The soldiers had seen them, and were bellowing at the open door. A uniformed sergeant emerged from the kerosene light that filled the hall. He stood on the top step, a Mauser holster against his stocky thigh. Frank was trying to reverse the truck when the soldiers in the kimonos jumped on to the running boards and struck with their fists at the glass. Two more soldiers carrying bamboo staves ran down the steps of the porch.

As the engine stalled, Jim felt himself pulled from the truck and hurled to the ground. Japanese in kimonos were running from the house, like a party of outraged women fresh from their baths. Jim sat on the sharp gravel between the polished boots of the Japanese sergeant, whose angry thighs rapped, against his holster. The soldiers had trapped Frank within the cabin of the truck. His legs kicked out as they lunged at him with their bamboo staves, striking his bloody face and chest. Two soldiers watched from the steps of the house, taking turns to punch Basie who knelt at their feet in the drive.

Jim was glad to see the Japanese. Through the open doorway he could hear, between the heavy blows and Frank’s cries, the scratchy sounds of a Japanese dance band playing on his mother’s picnic gramophone.

His arms warmed by the spring sun, Jim rested comfortably in the front row of the open-air cinema. Smiling to himself, he gazed at the blank screen twenty feet away. For the past hour the blurred shadow of the Park Hotel had been moving across the white canvas. After a long journey through the godowns and tenement blocks of Chapei, the shadow of the neon sign above the hotel had at last reached the screen. The immense letters, each twice the height of the young Japanese soldier patrolling the stage, moved from left to right at a brisk pace, incorporating the silhouette of this slim sentry and his rifle in a spectacular solar film.

Delighted with the display, Jim laughed behind his grimy knees, feet up on the slatted teak bench. The afternoon diorama staged in collaboration by the sun and the Park Hotel had been Jim’s chief entertainment during the three weeks he had spent at the open-air cinema. Here, before the outbreak of war, cartoons and adventure serials made by the Shanghai film industry were projected at night to audiences of Chinese mill-girls and dockyard workers. It often occurred to Jim that Yang, the family chauffeur, might have appeared on this very screen. He had already carried out a full reconnaissance of the detention centre, and in a disused office above the projection room were reels of dusty film. Perhaps the Japanese corporal from the signals corps who was now trying to dismantle the projector would show one of Yang’s films?

His giggles brought a sour glance from the soldier on the stage. He clearly mistrusted Jim, who kept out of his way. Shielding his eyes, the soldier scanned the wooden benches, where a few detainees sat in the afternoon sun. Three rows behind Jim was the grey-haired husband of the dying missionary woman who lay on her mat in the concrete dormitory under the seats. She had not moved from the former store-room since her arrival, but Mr Partridge looked after her patiently, bringing water from the tap in the latrine and feeding her the thin rice gruel which two Eurasian women cooked once a day in the yard behind the ticket office.

Jim felt concerned for the old Englishman with his patchy hair and deathly skin. At times he seemed unable to recognize his wife. Jim helped him to erect a screen around Mrs Partridge, who never spoke and had an unpleasant smell. They used Mr Partridge’s English overcoat and his wife’s yellowing nightdress, suspending them from a length of electric flex that Jim pulled from the wall. If he was bored Jim went down to the women’s store-room and chased away the Eurasian children who ran in to play.