Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [39]
‘I’ve used up all my new words, Basie. Is the war going to end soon?’
‘Don’t worry, Jim. I give the Japs three months at the outside.’
‘As soon as that, Basie?’
‘Maybe a little more. It takes a long time to start a war, people have a big investment to protect. Like Frank and me and this truck.’
It had never occurred to Jim that anyone might want the war to continue, and he puzzled over the bizarre logic as they set out for Hongkew. They bumped along the dirt road behind the shipyards, through a desolate area of empty godowns, garbage tips and burial mounds. Beggars lived beside the canals in hovels constructed from truck tyres and packing cases. An old woman squatted by the foetid water, scrubbing out a wooden toilet. Gazing down from the safety of the truck, Jim felt sorry for these destitute people, though only a few days earlier his plight had been even more desperate than theirs. A strange doubling of reality had taken place, as if everything that had happened to him since the war was occurring within a mirror. It was his mirror self who felt faint and hungry, and who thought about food all the time. He no longer felt sorry for this other self. Jim guessed that this was how the Chinese managed to survive. Yet one day the Chinese might emerge from the mirror.
When they crossed Nantao Creek into the French Concession they saw the first Japanese patrol, guarding the checkpoint on the northern end of the steel bridge. But Basie and Frank seemed unafraid of the armed soldiers –Americans, Jim had noticed, were not easily impressed by anyone. Frank even sounded his horn at a Japanese soldier who strolled into the road. Jim crouched below the dashboard, expecting them to be shot, but the Japanese waved them on with a surly stare, perhaps assuming that Frank and Basie were White Russian workmen.
For the next hour they toured the Hongkew markets, past the hundreds of barking dogs in their bamboo cages, not only the Chinese table-mongrels but spaniels and dachshunds, red setters and airedales released into the hungry streets of Shanghai by their allied owners. Several times they stopped for Basie to get out and approach a Chinese stall-holder, talking in his fluent dockside Cantonese. But no portholes or gold teeth changed hands.
‘Frank, what’s Basie trying to buy?’
‘It looks like he’s more interested in selling.’
‘Why can’t Basie sell me?’
‘Nobody wants you.’ Frank flicked the half-crown he had stolen from Jim’s pocket, and snapped it in his heavy hand. ‘You’re worth nothing. What do you think you’re worth?’
‘I’m worth nothing, Frank.’
‘You’re skin and bone. Soon you’re going to be sick all the time.’
‘If they did buy me, what would they do with me? They couldn’t eat me, I’m skin and bone.’
But Frank declined to answer. Basie climbed into the truck, shaking his head. They left Hongkew and crossed the Soochow Creek into the International Settlement. They drove along the main streets, losing themselves in the traffic on the Avenue Foch, following the slow, clanking trams through the wheel-to-wheel tide of pedicabs and rickshaws.
Jim tried to guide them towards the residential suburbs in the west of Shanghai, telling them about the fine houses filled with billiard tables, whisky and liqueur chocolates. But he guessed that Basie and Frank were killing time before dusk. Soon after six o’clock the light withdrew from the façades of the apartment houses in the French Concession. The two sailors wound up their windows. Frank left the Bubbling Well Road and set off into the unlit Chinese districts of north Shanghai.
‘Frank, you’re going the wrong way –’ Jim tried to point out. But Basie pressed the back of his powdered hand against Jim’s mouth.
‘Quiet, Jim. Silence is a good friend to a boy.’
Jim rested his swaying head against Basie’s shoulder. They embarked on a rambling journey through the narrow streets. Hundreds of Chinese faces pressed against the windows as they edged between the rickshaw and buffalo carts. Jim felt hungry again, and the endless bumping of the wheels over the disused tramlines