THE OPEN-AIR CINEMA
HIS ARMS WARMED by the spring sun, Jim rested comfortably in the front row of the open-air cinema. Smiling to himself, he gazed at the blank screen twenty feet away. For the past hour the blurred shadow of the Park Hotel had been moving across the white canvas. After a long journey through the godowns and tenement blocks of Chapei, the shadow of the neon sign above the hotel had at last reached the screen. The immense letters, each twice the height of the young Japanese soldier patrolling the stage, moved from left to right at a brisk pace, incorporating the silhouette of this slim sentry and his rifle in a spectacular solar film.
Delighted with the display, Jim laughed behind his grimy knees, feet up on the slatted teak bench. The afternoon diorama staged in collaboration by the sun and the Park Hotel had been Jim’s chief entertainment during the three weeks he had spent at the open-air cinema. Here, before the outbreak of war, cartoons and adventure serials made by the Shanghai film industry were projected at night to audiences of Chinese mill girls and dockyard workers. It often occurred to Jim that Yang, the family chauffeur, might have appeared on this very screen. Jim had already carried out a full reconnaissance of the detention center, and in a disused office above the projection room were reels of dusty film. Perhaps the Japanese corporal from the signal corps who was now trying to dismantle the projector would show one of Yang’s films.
Jim’s giggles brought a sour glance from the soldier on the stage. He clearly mistrusted Jim, who kept out of his way. Shielding his eyes, the soldier scanned the wooden benches, where a few detainees sat in the afternoon sun. Three rows behind Jim was the gray-haired husband of the dying missionary woman who lay on her mat in the concrete dormitory under the seats. She had not moved from the former storeroom since her arrival, but Mr. Partridge looked after her patiently, bringing water from the tap in the latrine and feeding her the thin rice gruel which two Eurasian women cooked once a day in the yard behind the ticket office.
Jim felt concerned for the old Englishman with his patchy hair and deathly skin. At times he seemed unable to recognize his wife. Jim helped him to erect a screen around Mrs. Partridge, who never spoke and had an unpleasant smell. They used Mr. Partridge’s English overcoat and his wife’s yellowing nightdress, suspending them from a length of electric flex that Jim pulled from the wall. If he was bored, Jim went down to the women’s storeroom and chased away the Eurasian children who ran in to play.
There were some thirty people in the detention center, to which Jim had been sent after a week at the Shanghai central prison. Compared with the damp dormitory cell that he shared with a hundred Eurasian and British prisoners, the open-air cinema seemed as sunny as the resort beaches at Tsingtao. Jim had seen nothing of Basie since their capture by the Japanese and was glad to be free of the cabin steward. None of the prisoners in the central prison, most of whom were contract foremen and merchant seamen from China coasters, had heard of Jim’s parents, but the transfer to the detention center was a move toward them.
Soon after Jim’s capture, he had fallen ill with an aching fever, during which he vomited blood. Jim guessed that he had been sent to the detention center in order to recover. Apart from several elderly English couples, there were an old Dutchman and his adult daughter, and a quiet Belgian woman whose injured husband slept next to Jim in the men’s storeroom. The rest were Eurasian women who had been abandoned in Shanghai by British husbands in the armed services.
None of them was much fun to be with—they were all either very old or sick with malaria and dysentery, and few of the Eurasian children spoke any English. So Jim spent his time in the open-air cinema, roving around the wooden seats. Despite his headaches, he tried unsuccessfully to make friends with the Japanese soldiers. And every afternoon there was the shadow film of the Shanghai skyline.
Jim watched the letters of the Park Hotel’s neon sign blur and fade. Although he was hungry all the time, Jim was happy in the detention center. After the months of roving the streets of Shanghai, he had at last managed to give himself up to the Japanese forces. Jim had pondered deeply on the question of surrender, which took courage and even a certain amount of guile. How did entire armies manage it?
Jim was aware that the Japanese had seized him only because he had been with Basie and Frank. He felt frightened when he thought of the soldiers in the kimonos attacking Frank with their staves, but at least he would soon see his parents again. Prisoners were constantly coming and going at the detention center. Two British people had died the previous day, a heavily bandaged woman whom Jim had not been allowed to see, and an old man with malaria who was a retired Shanghai police inspector.
If only he could discover to which of the dozen camps around Shanghai his mother and father had been sent. Jim left his place and tried to speak to Mr. Partridge, but the old missionary was sunk inside his head. Jim approached the two Eurasian women sitting a few benches behind him. But as always they shook their heads and brusquely waved Jim away.
“Disgusting!”
“Dirty boy!”
“Go away!”
Invariably they snapped at Jim and tried to keep their children from him. Sometimes they mimicked Jim’s voice during his fevers. Jim smiled at them and returned to his seat. He felt tired, as he often did, and thought of going down to the storeroom and sleeping for an hour on his mat. But a meal of boiled rice was served in the afternoon, and the previous day, when he had felt feverish, he had missed his ration. It surprised Jim how these old and sick people could manage to rouse themselves at mealtimes. No one had thought of waking Jim, and nothing was left in the brass cong. When he protested, the Korean soldier had cuffed his head. Already Jim was certain that the Eurasian women who guarded the bags of rice in the ticket kiosk were giving him less than his fair share. He distrusted them all, and their strange children, who looked almost English but could speak only Chinese.
Jim was determined to have his share of rice. He knew that he was thinner than he had been before the war, and that his parents might fail to recognize him. At mealtimes, when he looked at himself in the cracked glass panes of the ticket kiosk, he barely remembered the long face with its deep eye sockets and bony forehead. Jim avoided mirrors—the Eurasian women were always watching him through their compacts.
Deciding to think of something useful, Jim lay back on the teak bench. He watched a Kawanishi flying boat cross the river. The drone of its engines was comforting and reminded Jim of all his dreams of flying. When he was hungry or missed his parents, he often dreamed of aircraft. During one of his fevers he had even seen a flight of American bombers in the sky above the detention center.
A whistle shrilled from the courtyard by the ticket kiosk. The Japanese sergeant in charge of the detention center was holding another of his roll calls. Jim had noticed that he seemed unable to remember the prisoners’ names for more than half an hour. Jim took Mr. Partridge’s hand, and together they followed the two Eurasian women. A military truck had stopped outside the entrance to the cinema, whose high brick walls had concealed its films from the Chinese in the nearby tenement blocks. In the intervals between the sergeant’s whistles, Jim heard the crying of a British child.
A new group of prisoners had arrived. Invariably this meant that others would leave. Jim was sure that he would be on his way within minutes, probably to the new camps at Hungjao or Lunghua. In the storeroom he and the old men still able to stand waited by their mats, mess tins in hand. Jim listened to the new arrivals being herded from the truck. Annoyingly, there were several small children, who would cry continuously and distract the Japanese from the serious task of deciding where Jim should be sent.
Followed by two armed soldiers, the Japanese sergeant stood in the doorway. All three men wore cotton masks over their faces—there was a foul smell from the young Belgian asleep on the floor—but the sergeant’s eyes inspected each of them in turn and counted the exact number of mess tins. The daily ration of rice or sweet potatoes was allocated to the mess tin and not to the person attached to it. Often, when Mr. Partridge was tired after feeding his wife, Jim would collect the old man’s ration for him. Once, without realizing it, he had found himself eating the watery gruel. Jim had felt uneasy and stared at his guilty hands. Parts of his mind and body frequently separated themselves from each other.
Masking the tic in his cheek, Jim smiled brightly at the Japanese sergeant, and tried to look strong and healthy. Only the healthier people tended to leave the detention center. But as usual the sergeant seemed depressed by Jim’s cheerful gaze. He stepped aside as the new arrivals reached the storeroom. Two Chinese prison orderlies bore a stretcher carrying an unconscious Englishwoman in a stained cotton dress. She lay with her damp hair in her mouth, while her two sons, boys of Jim’s age, held the sides of the stretcher. A trio of elderly women hobbled past, unsure of the smell and the gray light. Behind them came a tall soldier wearing lumpy boots and British army shorts. He was bare-chested, and his emaciated ribs were like a bird cage in which Jim could almost see his heart fluttering.
“Well done, lad . . . .” He gave Jim a rictus of a smile and patted his head. Quickly he sat down against the wall, his cadaverous face turned to the damp cement. A second team of orderlies lowered a stretcher onto the floor beside him. From the cradle of roped straw they lifted out a small, middle-aged man in a bloodstained sailor’s jacket. Strips of Japanese rice-paper bandages were stuck to the wounds on his swollen hands, face and forehead.
Jim stared at this derelict figure and raised his forearm to his mouth to shut out the unpleasant smell. Several of the Eurasian women were leaving the detention center with their children. Looking round at the sick and dying men in the storeroom, and at the orderlies and Japanese soldiers with their cotton face masks, Jim began to grasp for the first time the real purpose of the detention center.
Mr. Partridge and the old men stood by their mats, shaking their mess tins at the guards, rattling for their evening meal. The wounded sailor beckoned to Jim with his bandaged hands, beating his empty tin with the same rhythm that the dying beggar had used outside the gates of Amherst Avenue. Even the emaciated soldier had found the lid of a mess tin. With his face pressed to the wall, he banged the lid on the stone floor.
Jim began to rattle at the Japanese watching behind their white masks. Yet, at that moment when he was about to despair of ever finding his parents, he felt a surge of hope. He knelt on the floor and took the mess tin from the injured sailor, aware of a faint scent of cologne and certain now that together they could leave the detention center and make their way to the safety of the prison camps.
“Basie!” he cried. “Everything’s all right!”