Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [57]
‘Here you are, Jim.’ Dr Ransome handed Jim his potato. He had taken a small bite, but most of the sweet pith was intact. ‘It’s a good one, you’ll enjoy it.’
‘Say, thanks…’ He swiftly devoured the second potato. Dr Ransome’s gesture puzzled him. The Japanese were kind to children, and the two American sailors had befriended him in a fashion, but Jim knew that the English were not really interested in children.
He brought the pail of warm potato water for Basie and himself, and offered the pithy liquid to the others. He knelt beside the old missionary men, clicking his teeth and hoping that the sight of the Cathedral School badge would strike some religious spark in their minds and revive them.
‘They don’t look very well,’ he confided to Dr Ransome. ‘But they’ll probably eat their potatoes in the morning.’
‘They probably will. Rest, Jim – you’ll wear yourself out looking after everyone. We’ll be on our way tomorrow.’
‘Well…there might be a long way to go.’ The second potato had comforted Jim, and for the first time he felt sorry for the infected wounds on Dr Ransome’s face. Returning the favour, he confided: ‘If you ever go to the funeral piers at Nantao, don’t drink the water.’
Jim lay on the soft sawdust, with its soothing scent of pine. Through the open doors of the timber store he watched the navigation lights of the Japanese aircraft crossing the night. After a few minutes he was forced to admit that he could recognize none of the constellations. Like everything else since the war, the sky was in a state of change. For all their movement, the Japanese aircraft were its only fixed points, a second zodiac above the broken land.
18
Vagrants
‘Right…right…no…I mean left!’
Jim leaned through the passenger window of the cabin and shouted to the driver as the truck laboured on to the wooden deck of the pontoon bridge. The Japanese field engineers had built this temporary crossing over the Soochow Creek in the weeks following the Pearl Harbor attack, but already the bridge was coming apart under the heavy traffic. As the truck moved towards the first steel pontoon the wet planking began to splay in its worn ropes.
Posted as look-out by the Japanese driver, Jim watched the front tyre forcing the planks into the water. He had always enjoyed the sight of water rising through grilles or climbing the steps of a jetty. The brown steam washed the dust from the worn tyre, and revealed the manufacturer’s name embossed on its side – befitting Jim’s quest for his parents, a British company, Dunlop. The truck tilted sideways, leaning on its weak springs. Somewhere behind him a body rolled across the floor of the truck, but Jim was fascinated by the water sluicing across the dented hubcap, streaming through the wheel like the jets of a secret fountain.
‘Left…left…!’ Jim shouted, but the soldier at the tail-gate was already bellowing in alarm. With a weary sigh, the Japanese driver pulled on the handbrake, ordered Jim from the cabin and stepped on to the river-washed planks.
Jim crawled through the rear window on to the deck of the truck. He crossed Dr Ransome’s outstretched legs and knelt on the bench, ready to take a close interest in the mounting argument between the driver and the Japanese guard.
Two hundred yards downstream the unit of field engineers was raising the central span of the old railway bridge. Jim was happy to watch them at work. Most of the morning he had felt lightheaded, and the steady flow of water through the pontoons soothed his eyes. He counted his pulse, wondering if he had caught beri beri or malaria or any other of the diseases that he had heard Dr Ransome discussing with Mrs Hug. He was curious to try out some new disease, but then remembered the detention centre and the American planes he had seen over Shanghai. The previous night, when they had camped next to a pig farm run by the Japanese gendarmerie, Jim suspected that even Dr Ransome had seen the planes.
Certainly Dr Ransome did not look too well. Since leaving Woosung the wound