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By Root 1341 0

pulled a rusty biscuit tin from below his bunk. As he removed the lid Jim saw that the tin was packed with hundreds of the prophylactics, as the Americans called them. Once the original stock of cigarettes was exhausted, these grubby rubbers formed Lunghua Camp’s main unit of currency. The number in circulation had barely fallen in three years, not because there was little sexual intercourse at Lunghua, but for the reason that the contraceptives were too valuable as units of exchange to be used for idle purposes. Playing poker, the American sailors used stacks of the condoms as chips. It was doubly ironic, as Jim had heard Dr Ransome remark, that their value continued to rise even though almost all the prisoners in the camp were either impotent or infertile.

Basie inspected the condoms, suspicious of their pristine condition.

‘Where did you get these, Jim?’

‘They’re good ones, Basie. That’s the best type.’

‘Is that so?’ Basie often accepted Jim’s expertise in unlikely areas. ‘Perhaps you were looking inside Dr Ransome’s medical cabinet?’

‘There weren’t any tomatoes, Basie. The air raid spoiled them.’

‘Those Filipino pilots…Never mind. Tell me about Dr Ransome’s cabinet. There were medicines there, I imagine.’

‘Basie, there were a lot of medicines. Iodine, mercurichrome…’ In fact the cupboard was bare. Jim tried to remember the medicine chest in his father’s bathroom, and the strange names that summed up the mysterious world of the adult body. ‘…pessaries, linctus, suppositories…’

‘Suppositories? Lie down, Jim. You’re getting tired.’ Basie put an arm around Jim’s shoulders. Together they gazed through the window at the crowd of prisoners waiting for the overdue ration truck from Shanghai. ‘Don’t worry, Jim, there’ll be plenty to eat soon. Forget all this talk about the Japs cutting our rations.’

‘They might do it, Basie. We’re an embarrassment to them.’

‘An embarrassment? Dr Ransome is worrying you with all these words. Believe me, Jim, it’s going to take more than us to embarrass the Japs.’ He reached under his pillow and brought out a small sweet potato. ‘You eat this while I work out our jobs. When you’ve finished I’ll give you a Reader’s Digest you can take back to G Block.’

‘Say, thanks, Basie!’ Jim devoured the potato. He liked Basie’s cubicle. The abundance of objects, even if they were useless, was reassuring, like the abundance of words around Dr Ransome. The Latin vocabulary and the algebraic terms were useless too, but they helped to make up a world. Basie’s confidence in the future encouraged him.

Sure enough, as he licked the last pith from his fingers, saving the skin for the evening, the military truck arrived from Shanghai with the prisoners’ food ration.

27

The Execution

Two Japanese soldiers with fixed bayonets stood behind the driving cabin of the truck, their thighs lost among the sacks of potatoes and cracked wheat. However, as he leaned from Basie’s window, Jim could see that the ration had been halved. He was glad that some food had come, but at the same time he felt almost disappointed. A crowd of several hundred prisoners followed the truck towards the kitchens, hands in the pockets of their ragged shorts, their clogs clattering. How would they have behaved if the truck had been empty? None of the prisoners, not even Dr Ransome, seemed able to rally themselves for the last stages of the war. Jim almost welcomed the hunger, when he would see again the curious light the Mustangs had brought with them…

Around him the Americans were leaving their cubicles and pressing against the windows. Demarest pointed to the columns of smoke that rose from the dockyard districts of northern Shanghai. Although they were more than ten miles away, Jim could hear a hard rumble across the deserted paddy fields, a forgotten thunder that reverberated over the land long after the bombs had exploded. The sounds drummed at the windows, a vague ultimatum to the listless prisoners of Lunghua.

Jim searched the smoke clouds for any signs of American aircraft. None of the dozen serviceable Zeros at Lunghua