ON THE WAY TO THE CAMPS
ON THE DAY of the Englishwoman’s death, a fresh consignment of prisoners arrived at the detention center. Jim was hovering in the doorway of the women’s storeroom, as Mrs. Blackburn and the daughter of the old Dutchman tried to comfort the two sons. The mother lay on the stone floor in her drenched frock, like a drowned corpse raised from the river. The brothers kept turning toward her, as if expecting her to give them some last instruction. Jim felt sad for the boys, Paul and David, though he hardly knew them. They seemed much younger than Jim, but in fact both were more than a year older.
Jim had his eyes on the mother’s mess tin and tennis shoes. Most of the Allied prisoners had far better shoes than the Japanese soldiers, and Jim had noticed that the bodies leaving the detention center had bare feet. But as he sidled into the room, there was a shrill whistle from the courtyard and a series of barked shouts. Sergeant Uchida was working himself up to the pitch of anger that he needed to attain in order to issue the simplest instructions. Masks over their faces, the Japanese soldiers began to herd from the storerooms everyone who could walk. A truck had stopped outside the cinema, and its prisoners stood unsteadily in the road.
All designs on the dead woman’s tennis shoes vanished from Jim’s head. At last he would be leaving for the camps in the countryside around Shanghai. Pushing past the two boys, Jim dived between the guards and raced up the steps. He lined up beside his fellow prisoners—Mr. Partridge with his wife’s suitcase, as if about to take his memories of her on a long journey; Paul and David; the Dutch woman and her father; and several of the old missionaries. Basie stood behind them, his white cheeks hidden behind the collar of his seaman’s jacket, so self-effacing as to be almost invisible. He had erased himself from the small world of the detention center, which he had manipulated for a few weeks, and would re-emerge like some marine parasite from its shell once he reached the more succulent terrain of the prison camps.
The new arrivals appeared, two Annamese women and a group of older Britishers and Belgians, the sick and elderly carried on stretchers by the Chinese orderlies. Counting their yellow eyes, Jim knew that there would soon be extra mess tins.
His cotton mask over his face, Sergeant Uchida began to select prisoners for transport to the camps. He shook his head at Mr. Partridge and kicked the suitcase in an exasperated way. He passed the Dutch woman and her father, Paul and David, and two elderly missionary couples.
Jim licked his fingers and wiped the soot from his cheeks. The sergeant motioned Basie toward the truck. Without a glance at Jim, the cabin steward stepped between the guards, his arms around the shoulders of the two boys.
Sergeant Uchida pressed his fingers against Jim’s grimy forehead. With his constant bowing and smiling, his eagerness to run errands, Jim had been a perpetual nuisance to the sergeant, who was clearly glad to be rid of him. Then he glanced at the party of new arrivals, who stared listlessly at the cold stove, at the scum of boiled rice around the rim of the cong.
The sergeant cupped his hand around Jim’s neck. With a shout muffled by his cotton mask, he propelled Jim toward the stove. As Jim picked himself from his knees, the sergeant kicked the coal sacks, scattering briquettes across the stone floor.
Jim sieved the clinkers from the firebox. The new arrivals wandered among the benches and took their seats facing the empty cinema screen, as if expecting a film show to begin. Basie and the Dutch couple, Paul and David, and the old missionaries stood in the street behind the open army truck, watched at a distance by a crowd of rickshaw coolies and peasant women.
“Basie!” Jim called. “I’ll still work for you!” But the steward had lost interest in him. Already he had befriended Paul and David, inducting them into his entourage. They helped Basie as he clambered on his bruised knees over the tailgate of the truck.
“Basie . . .” Jim sieved fiercely. He glared at the cinema screen, crossed by the first shadows of the Shanghai hotels. A Japanese soldier in a face mask counted out a stack of mess tins. As the injured prisoners were carried past on their stretchers, Jim knew that most of the inmates of the detention center had been sent there because they were very old or were expected to die, either of dysentery and typhoid, or whatever fever he and Private Blake had caught from the foul water. Jim was certain that many of the prisoners would soon die, and that if he stayed at the detention center he would die with them. Already the Annamese women had collected the mess tins from the soldier. They were pointing to the stove and the sacks of briquettes. When they took over the cooking of the rice and sweet potatoes, they would not give Jim his fair ration. He would see the American aircraft again, and he would die.
“Basie?” Jim threw down the sieve. The last of the departing prisoners had taken their seats in the truck. The Japanese soldier by the tailgate lowered the Dutch woman onto the wooden floor. Basie sat between the two English boys, making a toy from a piece of wire in his hand. The truck started up, moved forward a few feet and stopped. The Japanese driver shouted from his window. He waved a canvas map wallet and slapped the metal door with his fist. The guards on the pavement shouted back, eager to close the gates of the detention center and put their feet up in the orderly room. Then the engine stalled, and there was an instant clamor of angry voices, the soldiers and driver arguing over the destination of the truck.
“Woosung . . .” Sergeant Uchida lowered his cotton mask. His face was reddening, and drops of spittle formed on his lips, like pus forced from a wound. Already in a fury with the driver, he strode through the open gates. The driver had stepped from his cabin, unaware of the tornado about to engulf him. He dusted the map and spread it against the fender of the truck, shrugging hopelessly at the maze of nearby streets.
Jim followed Sergeant Uchida to the gates. He could see that neither the sergeant nor the Japanese driver had any idea of the whereabouts of Woosung, an agricultural district at the mouth of the Yangtze that lay beyond the northern suburbs of Shanghai. The driver gestured toward the Bund and Nantao, and climbed into his cabin. He sat passively when Sergeant Uchida pushed through the bored guards and began to scream abuse at him.
Standing beside the guards, Jim waited for Sergeant Uchida to reach the climax of his tirade, when he would be forced to make a decision. Sure enough, the sergeant searched the crowded skyline of tenement buildings and godowns, then pointed at random to a cobbled street with a disused tramline. Unimpressed, the driver cleared his throat. Wearily he started his engine and spat a ball of phlegm into the road, where it lay at Jim’s feet.
“Straight on!” Jim called up to him. “Woosung—it’s over there!” He pointed to the street with the rusty tramlines.
Sergeant Uchida cuffed Jim on the head, bruising both his ears. He cuffed him again, bringing blood from his mouth. At that moment a cloud of smoke billowed through the gates. The Annamese women had lit the stove with the rain-soaked firewood, and the smoke filled the open-air cinema, drifting across the benches as if the screen were ablaze.
Glad to be rid of Jim, Sergeant Uchida seized him in his strong hands. He swung him over the tailgate of the truck, shouting to the Japanese guard who sat with the prisoners. The soldier dragged Jim across the laps of the Dutch woman and her father. As the truck pulled away from the detention center, its wheels already locked in the tramlines, Jim clambered forward to the camouflaged driving cabin. He steadied himself against the pitching roof and ignored the stream of oaths hurled at him by the driver. He raised his bloody mouth to the wind, letting the foul odors of Shanghai flush his lungs, happy to be on the way to his parents again.