Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [28]
As Jim rode along the Avenue Foch he saw that Shanghai had changed. Thousands of Japanese soldiers patrolled the streets. Sandbagged sentry posts had been set up within sight of each other down the main avenues. Although the streets were filled with pedicabs and rickshaws, with trucks commandeered by the puppet militia, the crowds were subdued. The Chinese who thronged the pavements outside the department stores in the Nanking Road kept their heads down, avoiding the Japanese soldiers who sauntered through the traffic.
Pedalling fiercely, Jim followed a heavily laden tram that clanked along the Avenue Edward VII. Morose Chinese clung to its sides, and a crop-headed youth in a black mandarin suit spat at Jim, then leapt down and ran into the crowd, nervous that even this small act would set off a train of retribution. Bodies of Chinese lay everywhere, hands tied behind their backs in the centre of the road, dumped behind the sandbag emplacements, half-severed heads resting on each other’s shoulders. The thousands of young gangsters in their American suits had gone, but at the Bubbling Well Road checkpoint Jim saw one youth in a blue silk suit being beaten by two soldiers with staves. As the blows struck his head he knelt in a pool of blood that dripped from his lapels.
All the gambling parlours and opium houses in the side-streets behind the racecourse had closed, and metal grilles sealed the entrances to the pawn shops and banks. Even the honour guard of hunchbacks outside the Cathay Theatre had deserted their posts. Their absence unsettled Jim. Without its beggars the city seemed all the poorer. The sullen rhythms of the new Shanghai were set by the endless wailing of the Japanese klaxons. The roads felt harder than he remembered them from his previous jaunts around the city, and already he was tired. His hands felt colder than the handlebars. Trying to keep up his spirits, he decided to visit all those places in Shanghai where his parents were known, starting with his father’s office. The senior Chinese staff had always made a great fuss of Jim, and would be eager to help him.
However, the Szechwan Road had been closed by the Japanese. Barbed-wire barricades sealed off both ends of the street, and hundreds of Japanese civilians moved in and out of the foreign banks and commercial buildings, carrying typewriters and boxes of files.
Jim cycled down to the Bund, dominated now by the grey bulk of the cruiser Idzumo. It was moored four hundred yards from the quayside, its antique funnels freshly painted, canvas awnings flared over its gun turrets. A short distance upstream was the USS Wake, now flying the Rising Sun, with vivid Japanese characters on its bows. An elaborate christening ceremony was taking place in front of the Shanghai Club. Scores of senior Japanese civilians in frock coats, Germans and Italians in extravagant fascist uniforms, watched a march past of Japanese sailors and officers. Two tanks, several artillery pieces and a cordon of marines ringed the temporary parade ground on the tracks of the tramways terminal. The circling steel rails rang beneath their boots, the diagram of their victory over the British and American gunboats.
Resting his chin on the handlebars, Jim looked at the soldiers with fixed bayonets guarding the entrance to the Palace Hotel. None of them would speak any English, or have any idea that this European boy with his twisted bicycle was an enemy national. If he approached them in full view of the press-ganged Chinese audience the sentries would throw him to the ground.
Jim pedalled away from the Bund and began the long journey back to the Maxteds’ apartment. By the time he crossed the Avenue Joffre checkpoint he was too tired to cycle, and pushed the small machine through the begging peasant women and the dozing rickshaw coolies. After climbing into the apartment he sat at the dining-room table and ate