Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [119]
A rifle shot rang out across the paddy fields, followed by two more in quick succession. Leaving the naked barman to protect their treasure store, Tulloch and the Seaforth Highlander ran from the guardhouse and climbed the ladder of the watch-tower.
Jim began to straighten the magazines on the floor of the commandant’s office, but the barman shouted at him and waved him away. Left to himself, Jim stepped into the cell-yard behind the orderly room. The warm Spam in his hand, he peered into the empty cells, at the dark blood and dried excrement that stained the concrete walls.
In the cell at the far end of the yard, shaded by a straw mat hung from the bars, was the body of a dead Japanese soldier. He lay on the cement bench that was the cell’s only furniture, his shoulders lashed to the remains of a wooden chair. His head had been bludgeoned to a pulp that resembled a crushed water melon, filled with the black seeds of hundreds of flies.
Jim stared through the bars at the soldier, shocked that one of the Japanese who had guarded him for so many years should have been imprisoned and then beaten to death in one of his own cells. Jim had accepted Private Kimura’s death, in the anonymity of the flooded paddy field, but this reversal of all the rules governing their life in the camp at last convinced Jim that the war might be over.
He left the cell-yard and returned to the orderly office. He sat behind Sergeant Nagata’s desk, a luxury he had never once been allowed, and began to read the discarded copies of Life and the Saturday Evening Post. For once the lavish advertisements, the headlines and slogans – ‘When Better Cars are built, Buick will build them!’ – failed to touch him. Despite the food he had eaten, he felt numbed by the task of finding a way to Shanghai, and by all the confusions of the arbitrary peace imposed on the settled and secure landscape of the war. Peace had come, but it failed to fit properly.
Through the broken windows Jim watched a B-29 cross the river two miles away, searching the warehouses of Pootung for any groups of Allied prisoners. The peasants outside the gates of Lunghua ignored the bomber. Jim had noticed that the Chinese never looked up at the planes. Although they were nationals of one of the Allied powers at war with Japan, they would not share in these relief supplies.
He listened to the angry voices of the Britons returning from their foray across the paddy fields. Despite all their efforts, they had seized only two of the parachute canisters. While Lieutenant Price stood guard by the gates, rifle trembling in his hands, the others dragged the canisters into the camp. The sweat dripped from their bodies on to the scarlet silk. The remaining parachutes had vanished into the countryside, spirited from under Price’s nose by the secret tenants of the burial mounds.
As large as bombs, the canisters lay on the floor in the commandant’s office. The naked barman sat astride them, the sweat from his buttocks dulling the silver, while the Seaforth Highlander struck off the nose cones with the rifle butt. The men tore the cartons apart, loading their emaciated arms with cans of meat and coffee, chocolates and cigarettes. Lieutenant Price hovered among them, the bones in his shoulders shaking like castanets. He was excited and exhausted at the same time, eager to work up his irritation again and put to good use all the violence he had found within himself on beating the Japanese to death.
He noticed Jim quietly reading his magazines behind Sergeant Nagata’s desk. ‘Tulloch! He’s here again! The boy with the Packard
‘The lad was in the camp, Lieutenant. He skivvied for one of the doctors.’
‘He’s roaming around everywhere! Lock him up in one of the cells!’
‘He isn’t the talkative type, Lieutenant.’ Tulloch held Jim’s arm, reluctantly pulling him towards the cell-yard. ‘He’s walked all the way from Nantao Stadium.’
‘Nantao…? The big stadium?’ Price turned to Jim with interest, gazing at him with all the guilelessness