Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [120]
‘Three days,’ Jim replied. ‘Or I think it was six days. Until the war ended.’
‘He can’t count.’
‘He must have had a good look, Lieutenant.’
‘I bet he had a good look. Roaming around all the time. Boy, what did you see in the stadium?’ Price treated Jim to a roguish grimace. ‘Rifles? Stores?’
‘Cars, mostly,’ Jim explained. ‘At least five Buicks, two Cadillacs, and a Lincoln Zephyr.’
‘Forget about the cars! Were you born in a garage? What else did you see?’
‘Just a lot of carpets and furniture.’
‘Fur coats?’ Tulloch interjected. ‘There was no ordnance there, Lieutenant. What about Scotch whisky, son?’
Price pulled the copy of Life from Jim’s hands. ‘For God’s sake, you’ll ruin your eyes. Listen to Mr Tulloch. Did you see any Scotch whisky?’
Jim stepped back, keeping the silver canisters between himself and this unstable man. As if excited by the booty in Nantao Stadium, the lieutenant’s hands were bleeding through their bandages. Jim knew that Lieutenant Price would have liked to get him alone and then beat him to death, not because he was cruel, but because only the sight of Jim’s pain would clear away all the agony that he himself had endured.
‘There might have been Scotch whisky,’ he said tactfully. ‘There were a lot of bars.’
‘Bars…?’ Price stepped across the cartons of Chesterfields, ready to slap Jim. ‘I’ll give you bars…’
‘Cocktail bars – at least twenty of them. There might have been whisky there.’
‘Sounds like a hotel. Tulloch, what sort of war did you people have here? Right, boy, what else did you see?’
‘I saw the atom bomb drop at Nagasaki,’ Jim said. He spoke in a clear voice. ‘I saw the white flash! Is the war over now?’
The sweating men put down their cans and cartons. Lieutenant Price stared at Jim, surprised by this statement but prepared to believe it. He lit a cigarette as an American aircraft flew over the camp, a Mustang returning to its base on Okinawa.
Through the noise Jim shouted: ‘I saw the atom bomb…!’
‘Yes…you must have seen it.’ Lieutenant Price fastened the bandages around his bleeding fists. He sucked fiercely on his cigarette. Gazing hungrily at Jim, he picked up the copy of Life and left the commandant’s office. As the Mustang’s engine faded across the paddy fields they could hear Price striding up and down the cell-yard, striking the doors of the cells with the rolled magazine.
36
The Flies
Did Lieutenant Price believe that he had been poisoned by the atom bomb? Jim walked across the parade ground, looking up at the empty barrack huts and dormitory blocks. The windows hung open in the sunlight, as if the tenants had fled at his approach. The mention of the Nagasaki raid, and its confusion with the booty waiting for Price in Nantao Stadium, had calmed this former officer in the Nanking Police. For an hour Jim had helped the men to unpack the parachute canisters, and Price had not objected when Tulloch gave their young recruit a bar of American chocolate. Images of hunger and violence fused in Price’s mind, as they had done during the years of his imprisonment by the kempetai.
Holding his tin of Spam and a bundle of Life magazines, Jim climbed the steps into the foyer of D Block. He paused by the notice boards with their fading camp bulletins and commandant’s orders. In the dormitories he strolled along the lines of bunks. The home-made lockers had been looted by the Japanese after the departure of the prisoners, as if there were still something of value to be found in this rubbish of urine-stained mats and packing-case furniture.
Yet despite the emptiness of the camp it seemed ready for instant occupation. Outside G Block he looked at the baked earth, at the worn ruts of years left by the iron wheels of the food cart, pointing their way to the camp kitchens. He stood in the doorway of his room, barely surprised to see the faded magazine cuttings pinned to the wall above his bunk. In the last minutes before joining the march Mrs Vincent had torn down the curtain of his cubicle, satisfying a long-held need to occupy the