Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [106]
To Jim, these shabby trophies seized from the houses and nightclubs of Shanghai seemed to gleam with a showwindow freshness, like the floors filled with furniture through which he and his mother had once wandered in the Sincere Company department store. He stared at the stands, almost expecting his mother to appear in a silk dress and run a gloved hand over these terraces of black lacquer.
He sat down and shielded his eyes from the glare. He massaged Mr Maxted’s cheeks with his thumb and forefinger, pinching his lips and hooking out the flies trapped in his mouth. Around them the inmates of Lunghua Camp lay on the damp grass, staring at this display of their former possessions, a mirage that grew more vivid in the steepening August sunlight.
Yet the mirage soon passed. Jim wiped his hands on Mr Maxted’s shorts. The Japanese had frequently used the stadium as a transit camp, and the worn grass was covered with oily rags and the ash of small fires, strips of canvas tent and wooden crates. There were unmistakable human remains, bloodstains and pieces of excrement, on which feasted thousands of flies.
The engine of a hospital truck began to run noisily. The Japanese soldiers had come down from the stands and were forming themselves into a march party. Pairs of guards climbed the tail-gates, cotton masks over their faces. Helped by three English prisoners, Dr Ransome lifted down those patients either dead or too ill to continue the day’s journey. They. lay in the tyre-ruts that scored the grass, as if trying to fold the soft earth around themselves.
Jim squatted beside Mr Maxted, working his diaphragm like a bellows. He had seen Dr Ransome bring his patients back from the dead, and it was important for Mr Maxted to be well enough to join the march. Around them the prisoners were sitting upright, and a few men stood beside their huddled wives and children. Several of the older internees had died in the night – ten feet away Mrs Wentworth, who had played the part of Lady Bracknell, lay in her faded cotton dress, staring at the sky. Others were surrounded by shallow pools of water formed by the pressure of their bodies on the soft grass.
Jim’s arms ached from the effort of pumping. He waited for Dr Ransome to jump down from the hospital truck and look after Mr Maxted. However, the three vehicles were already leaving the stadium. Dr Ransome’s sandy head ducked as the truck lumbered through the tunnel. Jim was tempted to run after it, but he knew that he had decided to stay with Mr Maxted. He had learned that having someone to care for was the same as being cared for by someone else.
Jim listened to the trucks crossing the parking lot, their gearboxes gasping as they gathered speed. Lunghua Camp was at last being dismantled. A marching party formed itself beside the tunnel. Some three hundred British prisoners, the younger men with their wives and children, had lined up on the running track and were being inspected by a sergeant of the gendarmerie. Beside them, on the football pitch, were those prisoners too exhausted to sit or stand. They lay on the grass like battlefield casualties. The Japanese soldiers strolled among them, as if searching for a lost ball, uninterested in these British nationals who had strayed into a cul-de-sac of the war
An hour later the column moved off, the prisoners plodding through the tunnel without a backward glance. Six Japanese soldiers followed them, and the rest continued their casual patrol of the blackwood cabinets and refrigerators. The senior NCOs waited by the tunnel and watched the American reconnaissance planes that flew overhead, making no attempt to mobilize the prisoners in the stadium. Within fifteen minutes, however, a second group had begun to assemble, and the Japanese came forward to inspect them.
Jim wiped his hands on the damp grass and put his fingers into Mr Maxted’s mouth. The architect’s lips trembled around his knuckles. But already the August sun