Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [18]
Once there, Jim’s sole thought was to leave the hospital and return to his mother at Amherst Avenue. The French doctor who mercurichromed his knees and the sisters who bathed him saw immediately that Jim was a British schoolboy, and tried to have him released. The Japanese, however, had taken over a complete wing of the hospital, cleared out the Chinese patients and installed a guard on each floor. A young soldier was posted outside the children’s ward on the top floor, and passed the time asking the nuns for cigarettes and calling out the names of the aircraft overhead.
A Chinese nun told Jim that his father was with the other civilians in a ward below, still recovering from the effects of heart strain and exposure, but would be ready to leave in a few days. Meanwhile, for reasons of their own, the Japanese High Command had begun to eulogize the bravery of Captain Polkinhorn and his men. On the second day the commander of the Idzumo sent a party of uniformed officers to the hospital, who paid tribute to the wounded sailors in the best traditions of bushido, bowing to each one of them. The English-language Shanghai Times, British-owned but long sympathetic to the Japanese, carried a photograph of the Petrel on its front page, and an article extolling the courage of its crew. The main headline described the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the bombing of Clark Field at Manila. Pencil drawings supplied by a neutral news agency showed apocalyptic scenes of smoke rising from the slumped American battleships.
Now that the Japanese had won the war, Jim mused, perhaps life in Shanghai would return to normal. When the young soldier showed him the newspaper he carefully studied the photograph of fighter-bombers taking off from the Japanese carriers, scenes that he seemed to remember from his own dreams in his bedroom at the Palace Hotel on the eve of the war.
Lounging on the bed beside him, the soldier pointed to the assault aircraft, keen to impress Jim with this staggering feat of arms.
‘…ah…ah…’
‘Nakajima,’ Jim said. ‘Nakajima Hayabusa.’
‘Nakajima…?’ The soldier sighed deeply, as if the subject of military aviation was far beyond the grasp of this small English boy. In fact Jim recognized almost all the Japanese aircraft. British newsreels of the Sino-Japanese War openly derided the Japanese planes and their pilots, but Jim’s father and Mr Maxted always spoke of them with respect.
Jim was wondering how he could see his father when the guard corporal bellowed a command up the stairwell. The young private was terrified of this small and unpleasant corporal, clearly the most important rank in the Japanese Army. He put away his cigarette butt, picked up his rifle and dashed from the ward, waving a warning finger at Jim.
Glad to be alone, Jim immediately climbed out of bed. Through the window he could see a group of convalescent Chinese orphans on the balcony of the adjacent wing. In their European dressing-gowns – like Jim’s, donated by a local French charity – they spent all day staring at him. A metal fire-escape linked the two wings, blocked by heaps of sandbags packed against the windows in 1937 to protect them from stray shells fired across the river.
Bare-footed, Jim crossed the ward to its rear door. A narrow catwalk led between the sandbags, and the loose sand was littered with hundreds of cigarette ends thrown down by the bored French doctors. Picking his way through the pieces of broken glass, he set off along the fire-escape. A metal staircase ran to the opposite wing, linked by a rusting bridge to the ward below Jim’s.
Jim moved swiftly down the steps and crossed the bridge. Somewhere on this floor were his father and the survivors of the Petrel. The windows of the wards overlooking the gangway had been painted with blackout tar. Watched by the wide-eyed orphans, he followed the gangway around the wing. The rear door into the ward was bolted, but as he pulled at the handle the Chinese children ducked below their balcony. An armed Japanese soldier stood on the roof, shouting