THE WATER RATION
WERE THEY LOST? For an hour, as they trundled through the industrial suburbs of northern Shanghai, Jim gripped the wooden bar behind the driving cabin, his head filled with a dozen compass bearings. He grinned to himself, forgetting his illness and the desperate weeks in the open-air cinema. His knees ached from the constant swaying, and at times he had to hold on to the leather belt of the Japanese soldier beside him. But at last he was moving toward the open countryside and the welcoming world of the prison camps.
The endless streets of Chapei ran past, an area of tenements and derelict cotton mills, police barracks and shantytowns built on the banks of black canals. They drove below the overhead conveyors of a steel works decorated with dragon-festival hoardings, dreams of fire conjured from its silent furnaces. Shuttered pawnshops stood outside the abandoned radio and cigarette factories, and platoons of Chinese puppet troops patrolled the Del Monte brewery and the Dodge truck depot. Jim had never been to Chapei. Before the war a small English boy would have been killed for his shoes within minutes. Now he was safe, guarded by the Japanese soldiers—Jim laughed over this so much that the Dutch woman reached out a hand to calm him.
But Jim relished the fetid air, the smell of human fertilizer from the open sewage congs that signaled the approach of the countryside.
Even the driver’s hostility failed to worry him. Whenever they stopped at a military checkpoint, the driver would put his head out of the cabin and wave a warning finger at Jim, as if this eleven-year-old prisoner were responsible for the absurd expedition.
Watching the sun’s angle, as he had done for hours in the detention center, Jim made certain that they were moving north. They passed the ruins of the Chapei ceramics works, its kilns shaped like the German forts at Tsingtao. Its trademark stood beside the gates, a Chinese teapot three stories high built entirely from green bricks. During the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 it had been holed by shellfire and now resembled a punctured globe of the earth. Thousands of the bricks had migrated across the surrounding fields to the villages beside the works canal, incorporated in the huts and dwellings, a vision of a magical rural China.
These strange dislocations appealed to Jim. For the first time he felt able to enjoy the war. He gazed happily at the burned-out trams and tenement blocks, at the thousands of doors open to the clouds, a deserted city invaded by the sky. It only disappointed him that his fellow prisoners failed to share his excitement. They sat glumly on the benches, staring at their feet. One of the missionary women lay on the floor, tended by another prisoner, a sandy-haired Britisher with a bruised cheek who held her wrist with one hand and pressed her diaphragm with the other. The two English boys, still barely aware of their mother’s death, sat between Basie and the Dutch couple.
Jim waited until Basie looked up, but the cabin steward seemed hardly to recognize Jim. His attention had turned to the two boys, and he had moved deftly into the vacuum in their lives. From the page of a Chinese newspaper he folded a series of paper animals, chuckling when the boys gave a weak laugh. Like a depraved conjurer, he slid his hands into the pockets of their school trousers and cardigans, searching for anything of use.
Jim watched him without resentment. He and Basie had collaborated at the detention center in order to stay alive, but Basie, rightly, had dispensed with Jim as soon as he could leave for the camps.
The truck struck a deep gulley in the cobbles, slewed across the road and came to a halt by the grass bank. They had left the northern outskirts of Shanghai and were entering an area of untilled fields and rice paddies. Beyond a line of burial mounds two hundred yards away, a canal ran toward a deserted village. The Japanese driver jumped from his cabin and bent over the front wheels of the truck. He began to talk to the steaming engine, now and then including Jim in his mutterings. He was only twenty years old but had clearly suffered a lifetime of exasperation. Jim kept his head down, but the driver stepped onto the running board, leveled a finger at Jim and delivered a long harangue that sounded like a declaration of war.
The driver returned to his cabin, grumbling over his map, and Basie commented: “Add that up any way you like and we’re still lost.” Already his attention had moved from the boys to whatever advantage could be gained from their situation. “Jim, do you know where you’re taking us?”
“Woosung. I’ve been to the country club there, Basie.”
Basie played with his paper animals. “We’re going to the country club,” he told the boys. “If Jim can find it for us.”
“As long as we reach the river, Basie. Then it’s either east or west.”
“That’s a big help, Jim. East or west . . .”
The sandy-haired Briton beside the missionary woman rose from his knees. There was a large, leaking bruise on his forehead and left cheekbone, as if he had recently been struck in the face by a rifle stock. In some pain, he settled himself on the bench. Long freckled legs emerged from his khaki shorts and ended in a pair of thonged sandals. In his late twenties, he carried no luggage or possessions, but he had the self-assured manner of the Royal Navy officers who cut such a dash at the Shanghai garden parties, thrilling the mothers of Jim’s friends. He ignored the Japanese guard, talking across him as if he were a mess boy who would soon be dismissed to his quarters. Jim assumed that he was one of those tiresome Englishmen who refused to grasp that they had been defeated.
The man touched the bruise on his face and turned to Jim, whose ragged figure he appraised without comment. “The Japanese have captured so much ground they’ve run out of maps,” he remarked amiably. “Jim, does that mean they’re lost?”
Jim thought about this. “Not really. They just haven’t captured any maps.”
“Good—never confuse the map with the territory. You’ll get us to Woosung.”
“Can’t we go back to the detention center, Dr. Ransome?” one of the missionaries asked. “We’re very tired.”
The physician stared at the abandoned paddy fields, and at the prostrate old woman at his feet. “It might be for the best. This poor soul can’t take much more.”
The truck moved forward again, trundling at a halfhearted pace down the empty road. Jim returned to his post by the driving cabin and scanned the fields for anything that might remotely resemble Woosung. The doctor’s words unsettled him. Even if they were lost, how could he want them to go back to the detention center?
Jim knew that the fury of Sergeant Uchida made it unlikely that the driver would dare to turn back. But he kept a careful watch on Dr. Ransome, trying to guess whether he spoke enough Japanese to demoralize the driver. He seemed to have difficulty with his sight, especially when looking at Jim, at whom he squinted in a curious way. Jim decided that he had entered the war at a later stage than Basie and himself. He had probably come from one of the missionary settlements in the interior and had no idea of what went on at the detention center.
But were they lost or on course? The direction of the shadows cast by the wayside telegraph poles had barely changed—Jim had always been interested in shadows, ever since his father had shown him how to calculate the height of even the highest building by pacing out its shadow on the ground. They were still heading northwest and would soon reach the Shanghai-Woosung railway line. Steam hissed from the truck’s radiator. The spray cooled Jim’s face, but the driver’s fist drummed warningly against his door, and Jim knew that he was deciding when to stop and turn back for Shanghai.
Resigning himself to the wasted journey and to their return to the detention center, Jim studied the guard’s bolt-action rifle and its imperial chrysanthemum crest. The Dutch woman pulled at his soot-stained blazer.
“Over there, James. Is that . . .?”
A burned-out aircraft lay on the banks of a disused canal. Wild grass and nettles grew through its wings, almost invading the cockpit, but the squadron insignia were still legible.
“It’s a Nakajima,” he told Mrs. Hug, pleased by this shared interest in plane spotting. “It only has two machine guns.”
“Only two? But that’s very many . . . .”
The Dutch woman seemed impressed, but Jim had turned his attention from the aircraft. On the far side of the paddy field, hidden by the nettles, was the embankment of a railway line. A squad of Japanese soldiers rested on the concrete platform of a wayside station, cooking a meal on a fire of sticks. A camouflaged staff car was parked beside the tracks. It was loaded with coils of wire which these signals engineers were restringing between the telegraph poles.
“Mrs. Hug . . . that’s the railway to Woosung!”
As steam bathed the driving cabin, the truck had stopped. It began to reverse. Beside Jim, the Japanese guard was lighting a cigarette for the return journey. Jim pulled at his belt and pointed across the paddy field. The soldier followed Jim’s outstretched arm and then pushed him onto the floor. He shouted to the driver, who tossed his map wallet onto the seat beside him. Engine steaming, the truck strained at the camber, made a half-circle and set off along the dirt track to the railway station.
Dr. Ransome steadied the English boys as they slipped from Basie’s grasp and swayed against the missionary woman. He helped Jim from the floor.
“Good work, Jim. They’ll have water for us—you must be thirsty.”
“A bit. I had a drink at the detention center.”
“That was sensible. How long were you there?”
Jim had forgotten. “Quite a long time.”
“So I imagine.” Dr. Ransome brushed the dirt from Jim’s blazer. “It used to be a cinema?”
“But they didn’t show films.”
“I can see that.”
Jim sat back, patting his knees and beaming at Mrs. Hug. The prisoners sat weakly on the facing benches, jerked to and fro like life size puppets that had lost their stuffing. Far from reviving them, the drive from Shanghai had made them look sallow and nervous. But Jim smiled at the rusting aircraft on the canal bank. There was now no danger that they would return to the detention center. The Japanese soldier had thrown away his cigarette and held his rifle in a military way. A signals corporal jumped from the railway platform and crossed the track.
“Mrs. Hug, I don’t think we’ll be going back to Shanghai.”
“No, James—you must have very sharp eyes. When you grow up you should be a pilot.”
“I probably will. I have been in a plane, Mrs. Hug. At Hungjao aerodrome.”
“Did it fly?”
“Well, in a way.” Confidences given to adults often led further than Jim intended. He was aware that Dr. Ransome was watching him. The doctor sat beside Mrs. Hug’s father, whose painful breathing he was trying to help. But his eyes were fixed on Jim, taking in his sticklike legs and ragged clothes, his small, excited face. As they reached the railway line he gave Jim an encouraging smile, which Jim decided not to return. He knew that for some reason Dr. Ransome disapproved of him. But Dr. Ransome had not been to the detention center.
They stopped by the railway tracks. The driver saluted the corporal and followed him to the station, where he spread his map across the cabinet of the field telephone. The prisoners sat in the warm sunlight as the corporal pointed to the drained paddies. A haze of dust rose from the untilled earth, a white veil that screened the distant skyscrapers of Shanghai. A convoy of Japanese trucks drove along the road, a brief blare of noise that merged with the distant drone of a cargo aircraft.
Jim changed benches and sat beside Mrs. Hug, who supported her aged father against her breast. Two of the missionary women lay on the floor of the truck as the other prisoners dozed and fretted. Basie had lost interest in the English boys and was watching Jim over the bloodstained collar of his coat.
Thousands of flies gathered around the truck, attracted by the sweat and by the urine running across the wooden boards. Jim waited for the driver to return with his map, but he sat on a bale of telephone wire, talking to two soldiers who cooked the midday meal. Their voices and the clicks of the burning wood carried across the steel tracks, magnified by the dome of light that enclosed them.
Jim fidgeted in his seat as the sun pricked his skin. He could see the smallest detail of everything around him: the flakes of rust on the railway lines, the sawteeth of the nettles beside the truck, the white soil bearing the imprint of its worn tires. Jim counted the blue bristles around the lips of the Japanese soldier guarding them and the globes of mucus which this bored sentry sucked in and out of his nostrils. Jim watched the damp stain spreading around the buttocks of one of the missionary women on the floor, and the flames that fingered the cooking pot on the station platform, reflected in the polished breeches of the stacked rifles.
Only once before had Jim seen the world as vividly as this. Were the American planes about to come again? With an exaggerated squint, intended to annoy Dr. Ransome, he searched the sky. He wanted to see everything, every cobblestone in the streets of Chapei, the overgrown gardens in Amherst Avenue, his mother and father, together in the silver light of the American aircraft.
Without thinking, Jim stood up and shouted. But the Japanese guard pushed him roughly against the bench. The soldiers on the railway platform sat amid the clutter of signals equipment, cramming their mouths with rice and fish. The corporal called to the truck, and the guard stepped over the missionary women and jumped from the tailgate. He rested his rifle on the railway line and moved with his bayonet through the dried stubble of the wild sugarcane. As soon as he had gathered sufficient kindling for the fire, he joined the soldiers on the platform.
For an hour the smoke rose into the sunlight. Jim sat on the bench and brushed the flies from his face, eager to explore the railway station and the crashed aircraft near the canal. Whenever anyone moved, the Japanese shouted from the platform and pointed their cigarettes in a warning way. The prisoners had taken no rations or water with them, but there were two jerricans in the staff car from which the soldiers filled their canteens.
When Mrs. Hug’s father was forced to lie on the floor, Dr. Ransome protested to the Japanese. He stood unsteadily by the tailgate, ignoring their abuse and pointing to the exhausted passengers at his feet. The bruise on his cheek had been inflamed by the sun and the flies, and had almost closed his eye. Standing there stoically, he reminded Jim of the beggars parading their wounds on the streets of Shanghai. The Japanese corporal was unimpressed, but after a leisurely stroll around the truck he allowed the prisoners to dismount. Helped by the husbands, Basie and Dr. Ransome eased the old women onto the ground, where they lay in the shade between the rear wheels.
Jim squatted on the white earth, tracing the tire patterns with a stick. How many times would each tire have to rotate before it wore itself through to the canvas? The problem, one of a host that perpetually bothered Jim, was, in fact, fairly easy to solve. Jim smoothed the white dust and made a start at the arithmetic. He gave a cheer when the first fraction canceled itself, and then noticed that he was alone in the open sunlight between the truck and the railway embankment.
Tended by a weary Dr. Ransome, the prisoners huddled in the scanty shade below the tailgate. Basie sat slumped inside his seaman’s jacket, and he and the old men looked as dead as the discarded mannequins Jim had often seen in the alley behind the Sincere Company’s department store.
They needed water, or one of them would die and they would all have to return to Shanghai. Jim watched the Japanese on the platform. The meal had ended, and two of the soldiers uncoiled a bale of telephone wire. Kicking a stone in front of him, Jim wandered toward the railway embankment. He stepped across the rails and without a pause climbed onto the concrete platform.
Still savoring their meal, the Japanese sat around the cinders of their fire. They watched Jim as he bowed and stood to attention in his ragged clothes. None of them waved him away, but Jim knew that this was not the time to treat them to his brightest smile. He realized that Dr. Ransome could not approach the Japanese so soon after their meal without being knocked down or even killed.
Jim waited as the driver spoke to the signals corporal. Pointing repeatedly to Jim, he delivered what seemed to be a long lecture on the enormous nuisance to the Japanese Army caused by this one small boy. The corporal laughed at this, in a good humor after his fish. He took a Coca-Cola bottle from his knapsack and half filled it with water from his canteen. Holding it in the air, he beckoned Jim toward him.
Jim took the bottle, bowed steeply and stepped back three paces. Masking their smiles, the Japanese watched him silently. Beside the truck, Basie and Dr. Ransome leaned from the shadows, their eyes fixed on the sun-bright fluid in the bottle. Clearly they assumed that Jim would carry the water to them and share out this unexpected ration.
Carefully, Jim wiped the bottle on the sleeve of his blazer. He lifted it to his lips, drank slowly, trying not to choke, paused and finished the last drops.
The Japanese burst into laughter, chortling to each other with great amusement. Jim laughed with them, well aware that only he, among the British prisoners, appreciated the joke. Basie ventured a wary smile, but Dr. Ransome seemed baffled. The corporal took the Coca-Cola bottle from Jim and filled it to the neck. Still chuckling to themselves, the soldiers climbed to their feet and returned to the task of stringing the telephone wire.
Followed by the driver and the armed guard, Jim carried the bottle across the tracks. He handed it to Dr. Ransome, who stared at him without comment. He drank briefly and passed the tepid liquid to the others, helping the driver to refill the bottle from the canteen. One of the missionary women was sick and vomited the water into the dust at his feet.
Jim took up his position behind the driving cabin. He knew that he had been right to drink the first water himself. The others, including Basie and Dr. Ransome, had been thirsty, but only he had been prepared to risk everything for the few drops of water. The Japanese might have thrown him onto the track and broken his legs across the railway lines, as they did to the Chinese soldiers whom they killed at Siccawei Station. Already Jim felt himself apart from the others, who had behaved as passively as the Chinese peasants. Jim realized that he was closer to the Japanese, who had seized Shanghai and sunk the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. He listened to the sound of a transport plane hidden beyond the haze of white dust and thought again of carrier decks out on the Pacific, of small men in baggy flying suits standing by their unarmored aircraft, ready to chance everything on little more than their own will.