J. Ballard - Empire of the Sun

Posted as look-out by the Japanese driver, Jim watched the front tyre forcing the planks into the water. He had always enjoyed the sight of water rising through grilles or climbing the steps of a jetty. The brown steam washed the dust from the worn tyre, and revealed the manufacturer’s name embossed on its side — befitting Jim’s quest for his parents, a British company, Dunlop. The truck tilted sideways, leaning on its weak springs. Somewhere behind him a body rolled across the floor of the truck, but Jim was fascinated by the water sluicing across the dented hubcap, streaming through the wheel like the jets of a secret fountain.

‘Left… left…!’ Jim shouted, but the soldier at the tail-gate was already bellowing in alarm. With a weary sigh, the Japanese driver pulled on the handbrake, ordered Jim from the cabin and stepped on to the river-washed planks.

Jim crawled through the rear window on to the deck of the truck. He crossed Dr Ransome’s outstretched legs and knelt on the bench, ready to take a close interest in the mounting argument between the driver and the Japanese guard.

Two hundred yards downstream the unit of field engineers was raising the central span of the old railway bridge. Jim was happy to watch them at work. Most of the morning he had felt lightheaded, and the steady flow of water through the pontoons soothed his eyes. He counted his pulse, wondering if he had caught beri beri or malaria or any other of the diseases that he had heard Dr Ransome discussing with Mrs Hug. He was curious to try out some new disease, but then remembered the detention centre and the American planes he had seen over Shanghai. The previous night, when they had camped next to a pig farm run by the Japanese gendarmerie, Jim suspected that even Dr Ransome had seen the planes.

Certainly Dr Ransome did not look too well. Since leaving Woosung the wound in his face had infected the whole of his jaw and nose. He now lay on the floor of the truck, his freckled legs ominously white in the bright sun. He was asleep, but seemed to be thinking very hard about something with one half of his head. He had last spoken to Jim before their evening meal, when he made sure that Jim received the prisoners’ full ration from the Japanese guard. By an enormous effort of will he had told Jim to strip and had washed his clothes in the pigs’ water trough, using a piece of scented soap he borrowed from Mrs Hug.

Basie sat on the floor beside him, the two English boys asleep with their heads in his lap. The cabin steward was still conscious but had withdrawn into himself, his soft face like the flesh of a fading fruit. Often he was sick, and the floor of the truck was covered with vomit and urine which he nagged at Jim to clear away.

Mrs Hug and her father also lay on the floor, rarely speaking to each other, and concentrating on every bump in the road. Fortunately the two missionary couples had stayed behind at Woosung. Their places were taken by a middle-aged Englishman and his prim wife from the British Consulate at Nanking. They sat next to the Japanese guard at the rear of the truck, their faces drained of expression by some tragedy that had overtaken them. Between them was a wicker suitcase filled with clothing, which the driver and the guard searched every evening, helping themselves to the shoes and slippers. The couple stared without ever speaking at the landscape of paddy fields and canals, and Jim assumed that they had lost interest in the war.

Twice a day, when the Japanese stopped to make themselves a wayside meal, the guard ordered Jim to pass an earthenware water jar around the prisoners. For the rest of the time he was left to himself, free to concentrate on the task of guiding this antiquated truck towards the internment camp that held his mother and father.

For days now they had been on the road, making an erratic circuit of the countryside ten miles to the north-west of Shanghai. Jim had lost count of the exact number of days, but at least they were moving forward, and luckily the Japanese were not in any way discouraged by the worsening condition of their prisoners.

On the first day, after setting out from Woosung, a three-hour drive through the open country took them to the former St Francis Xavier seminary on the Soochow Road, one of the first prison camps established by the Japanese in the weeks after Pearl Harbor. The seminary was already filled with military personnel. All afternoon they waited behind a queue of commandeered Shanghai Transit Company buses, which together carried several hundred Dutch and Belgian civilians. Jim peered keenly through the double wire fence. Gangs of British soldiers lounged by their huts, or sat out on the assembly ground in the polished pews taken from the seminary chapel, like the congregation of an open-air cathedral. But there were no male civilians, women or children. The Japanese guards were busy taking an endless series of roll-calls, and had no time for the new arrivals hoping to be admitted. Jim stood on the seat, waving over the wire so that everyone in the camp could see him.

However, the hundreds of bored soldiers were not interested in these civilians and their Shanghai buses. Jim was relieved when they were turned away. As they set off towards Soochow the driver allowed him to sit in the front cabin. In some way this restless English boy, who had so aggravated him, now offered a small measure of security. Jim was unable to read the map, printed in Japanese characters, or understand a word of the long monologues addressed to the insect-smeared windshield. But he knelt on the front seat, clicking his teeth and leaning out of the window to watch any passing aircraft. The enure Japanese air force seemed to be on its way to attack the Chinese armies in the west.

The flat countryside by the Shanghai-Soochow road had been a war ground, and the miles of rotting trenches and rust-stained blockhouses reminded Jim of encyclopaedia illustrations of Ypres and the Somme, an immense museum of battle that no one had visited for years. The debris of war, and the flights of bombers and fighter planes, revived him. He wanted to soar like a fighting kite over the winding parapets and land on one of the massive forts built out of thousands of sandbags among the burial mounds. It disappointed Jim that none of his fellow prisoners was interested in the war. It would have helped to keep up their spirits, a task which Jim was finding more and more difficult.

In many ways, Jim liked to imagine, he was the real leader of this troupe of travelling prisoners. At times, as he carried the heavy water jar and lit the stove in the evening, he knew that he was little more than their Number Two Coolie. But without Jim to gather the firewood and boil the sweet potatoes even Dr Ransome and Basie would have gone the way of the missionary women. He noticed that after leaving the gendarmerie station at the pig farm they all allowed themselves to become ill. During the night the Japanese had been beating a Chinese thief; the man’s voice screamed across the water-filled paddies, shaking the dark surface. The next day everyone lay on the floor of the truck, Basie with his lungs and Dr Ransome unable to see through his infected eye.

Jim felt feverish, but he watched the Japanese planes overhead. The sound of their engines cleared his mind. Whenever his spirits flagged or he felt sorry for himself he thought of the silver aircraft he had seen at the detention centre.

The truck was moving across the pontoon bridge, manhandled by a squad of Japanese field engineers. Unable to steady himself, Jim slipped from the bench. Dr Ransome reached out weakly to hold him.

‘Hang on, Jim. Stay up front with the driver — make sure he keeps going…’

Dozens of flies festered on Dr Ransome’s face, feeding on the wound around his eye. Beside him Basie lay with Paul and David, Mrs Hug and her father. Only the English couple with the wicker suitcase full of shoes sat beside the soldier at the rear of the truck.