J. Ballard - Empire of the Sun

There were some thirty people in the detention centre, to which Jim had been sent after a week at the Shanghai Central Prison. Compared with the damp dormitory cell which he shared with a hundred Eurasian and British prisoners, the open-air cinema seemed as sunny as the resort beaches at Tsingtao. Jim had seen nothing of Basie since their capture by the Japanese, and was glad to be free of the cabin steward. None of the prisoners in the Central Prison, most of whom were contract foremen and merchant seamen from China coasters, had heard of Jim’s parents, but the transfer to the detention centre was a move towards them.

Soon after his capture Jim had fallen ill with an aching fever, during which he vomited blood. He guessed that he had been sent to the detention centre in order to recover. Apart from several elderly English couples there were an old Dutchman and his adult daughter, and a quiet Belgian woman whose injured husband slept next to Jim in the men’s store-room. The rest were Eurasian women who had been abandoned in Shanghai by British husbands in the armed services.

None of them was much fun to be with — they were all either very old or sick with malaria and dysentery, and few of the Eurasian children spoke any English. So Jim spent his time in the open-air cinema, roving around the wooden seats. Despite his headaches, he tried unsuccessfully to make friends with the Japanese soldiers. And every afternoon there was the shadow film of the Shanghai skyline.

Jim watched the letters of the Park Hotel’s neon sign blur and fade. Although he was hungry all the time, he was happy in the detention centre. After the months of roving the streets of Shanghai he had at last managed to give himself up to the Japanese forces. Jim had pondered deeply on the question of surrender, which took courage and even a certain amount of guile. How did entire armies manage it?

He was aware that the Japanese had seized him only because he had been with Basie and Frank. He felt frightened when he thought of the soldiers in kimonos attacking Frank with their staves, but at least he would soon see his parents again. Prisoners were constantly coming and going at the detention centre. Two British people had died the previous day, a heavily bandaged woman whom Jim had not been allowed to see, and an old man with malaria who was a retired Shanghai police inspector.

If only he could discover to which of the dozen camps around Shanghai his mother and father had been sent. He left his place and tried to speak to Mr Partridge, but the old missionary was sunk inside his head. Jim approached the two Eurasian women sitting a few benches behind him. But as always they shook their heads and brusquely waved him away.

‘Disgusting…!’

‘Dirty boy…!’

‘Go away…!’

Invariably they snapped at Jim, and tried to keep their children from him. Sometimes they mimicked his voice during his fevers. Jim smiled at them and returned to his seat. He felt tired, as he often did, and thought of going down to the store-room and sleeping for an hour on his mat. But a meal of boiled rice was served in the afternoon, and the previous day, when he had felt feverish, he had missed his ration. It surprised him how these old and sick people could manage to rouse themselves at meal times. No one had thought of waking Jim, and nothing was left in the brass cong. When he protested the Korean soldier had cuffed his head. Already Jim was certain that the Eurasian women who guarded the bags of rice in the ticket kiosk were giving him less than his fair share. He distrusted them all, and their strange children, who looked almost English but could speak only Chinese.

Jim was determined to have his share of rice. He knew that he was thinner than he had been before the war, and that his parents might fail to recognize him. At meal times, when he looked at himself in the cracked glass panes of the ticket kiosk, he barely remembered the long face with its deep eye-sockets and bony forehead. Jim avoided mirrors –the Eurasian women were always watching him through their compacts.

Deciding to think of something useful, Jim lay back on the teak bench. He watched a Kawanishi flying boat cross the river. The drone of its engines was comforting, and reminded him of all his dreams of flying. When he was hungry or missed his parents he often dreamed of aircraft. During one of his fevers he had even seen a flight of American bombers in the sky above the detention centre.

A whisde shrilled from the courtyard by the ticket kiosk. The Japanese sergeant in charge of the detention centre was holding another of his roll-calls. Jim had noticed that he seemed unable to remember the prisoners’ names for more than half an hour. Jim took Mr Partridge’s hand, and together they followed the two Eurasian women. A military truck had stopped outside the entrance to the cinema, whose high brick walls had concealed its films from the Chinese in the nearby tenement blocks. In the intervals between the sergeant’s whistles, Jim heard the crying of a British child.

A new group of prisoners had arrived. Invariably this meant that others would leave. Jim was sure that he would be on his way within minutes, probably to the new camps at Hungjao or Lunghua. In the store-room he and the old men still able to stand waited by their mats, mess-tins in hand. He listened to the new arrivals being herded from the truck. Annoyingly, there were several small children, who would cry continuously and distract the Japanese from the serious task of deciding where Jim should be sent.

Followed by two armed soldiers, the Japanese sergeant stood in the doorway. All three men wore cotton masks over their faces — there was a foul smell from the young Belgian asleep on the floor — but the sergeant’s eyes inspected each of them in turn and counted the exact number of mess-tins. The daily radon of rice or sweet potatoes was allocated to the mess-tin and not to the person attached to it. Often, when Mr Partridge was tired after feeding his wife, Jim would collect the old man’s ration for him. Once, without realizing it, he had found himself eating the watery gruel. Jim had felt uneasy, and stared at his guilty hands. Parts of his mind and body frequently separated themselves from each other.

Masking the tic in his cheek, he smiled brightly at the Japanese sergeant, and tried to look strong and healthy. Only the healthier people tended to leave the detention centre. But as usual the sergeant seemed depressed by Jim’s cheerful gaze. He stepped aside as the new arrivals reached the store-room. Two Chinese prison orderlies bore a stretcher carrying an unconscious Englishwoman in a stained cotton dress. She lay with her damp hair in her mouth, while her two sons, boys of Jim’s age, held the sides of the stretcher. A trio of elderly women hobbled past, unsure of the smell and the grey light. Behind them came a tall soldier wearing lumpy boots and British army shorts. He was bare-chested, and his emaciated ribs were like a birdcage in which Jim could almost see his heart fluttering.

‘Well done, lad…’ He gave Jim a rictus of a smile and patted his head. Quickly he sat down against the wall, his cadaverous face turned to the damp cement. A second team of orderlies lowered a stretcher on to the floor beside him. From the cradle of roped straw they lifted a small, middle-aged man in a bloodstained sailor’s jacket. Strips of Japanese rice-paper bandages were stuck to the wounds on his swollen hands, face and forehead.

Jim stared at this derelict figure, and raised his forearm to his mouth to shut out the unpleasant smell. Several of the Eurasian women were leaving the detention centre with their children. Looking round at the sick and dying men in the store-room, and at the orderlies and Japanese soldiers with their cotton face-masks, Jim began for the first time to grasp the real purpose of the detention centre.