Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [26]
Jim checked this thought as Mr Guerevitch waved him across the road with his newspaper. His mother might like the old Russian, but Vera would not – the Eastern Europeans and White Russians were even more snobbish than the British.
‘Hello, Mr Guerevitch. I’m looking for my mother and father.’
‘But how could they be here?’ The old Russian pointed to Jim’s bruised face and shook his head. ‘The whole world is at war and you’re still riding your bicycle around…’ As the Japanese NCO began to abuse one of the coolies, Mr Guerevitch drew Jim behind a plane tree. He opened his newspaper to reveal an extravagant artist’s sketch of two immense battleships sinking under a hail of Japanese bombs. From the photographs beside them Jim recognized the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, the unsinkable fortresses which the British war newsreels always claimed could each defeat the Japanese Navy single-handed.
‘Not a good example,’ Mr Guerevitch reflected. ‘The British Empire’s Maginot line. It’s right that you have a red face.’
‘I fell off my bicycle, Mr Guerevitch,’ Jim explained patriotically, though he disliked having to lie to defend the Royal Navy. ‘I’ve been busy looking for my mother and father. It’s rather a job, you know.’
‘I can see.’ Mr Guerevitch watched a convoy of trucks speed past. Japanese guards with fixed bayonets sat by the tailboards. Behind them, their heads resting on each other’s shoulders, groups of British women and their children huddled over their cheap suitcases and khaki bedrolls. Jim assumed that they were the families of captured British servicemen.
‘Young boy! Ride your bicycle!’ Mr Guerevitch pushed Jim’s shoulder. ‘You follow them!’
‘But Mr Guerevitch…’ The shabby luggage unsettled Jim as much as the strange wives of the British privates. ‘I can’t go with them – they’re prisoners.’
‘Go on! Ride! You can’t live in the street!’
When Jim stood firm by his handlebars, Mr Guerevitch solemnly patted him on the head and set off across the road. He resumed his vigil behind his newspaper, watching the Japanese strip the houses in the compound as if itemizing his lost world for the Shell Company.
‘I’ll come and see you again, Mr Guerevitch.’ Jim felt sorry for the old caretaker, but during his return journey to Amherst Avenue he was more concerned about the two battleships. The British newsreels were filled with lies. Jim had seen the Japanese Navy sink the Petrel, and it was obvious now that they could sink anything. Half the American Pacific Fleet was sitting on the bottom at Pearl Harbor. Perhaps Mr Guerevitch was right, and he should have followed the trucks. His mother and father might already have arrived at the prison to which they were being taken.
So, reluctantly, he decided to give himself up to the Japanese. The soldiers guarding the Avenue Foch checkpoint waved him on when he tried to speak to them, but Jim kept his eyes open for one of the corporals in charge of everything.
For some reason, that day there seemed to be a shortage of Japanese corporals in Shanghai. Although he was tired, Jim took the long route home, along the Great Western and Columbia Roads, but no Japanese at all were there. However, when he reached the entrance to his house in Amherst Avenue he saw that a Chrysler limousine had parked outside the front door. Two Japanese officers stepped from the car and surveyed the house as they straightened their uniforms.
Jim was about to pedal up to them and explain that he lived in the house and was ready to surrender. Then an armed Japanese soldier stepped from behind the stone gatepost. He seized the front wheel of the cycle with his left hand, his fingers gripping the tyre through the spokes,