THE EURASIAN
A RESTFUL SUNLIGHT warmed the stadium. From the cloudless sky fell a squall of hail, a flurry of frozen vapor dislodged from the wings of an American aircraft three miles above the Yangtze valley. Lit by the sun, the crystals fell onto the football field like a shower of Christmas decorations.
Jim sat up and touched the hailstones, nuggets of white gold scattered on the grass. Beside him, Mr. Maxted’s body was dressed in a suit of lights, his ashen face speckled with miniature rainbows. But within a few seconds the hail had melted into the ground. Jim listened for the aircraft, hoping that it might launch another cascade of hail, but the sky was empty from horizon to horizon. A few of the prisoners in the stadium knelt on the grass, eating the hail and talking to each other across the bodies of their dead companions.
The Japanese had gone. The NCOs and soldiers of the gendarmerie had taken their equipment and vanished during the night. Jim stood in his bare feet on the icy grass, staring at the exit tunnel. The shallow sunlight veered against the concrete walls from the deserted parking lot. Already one of the British prisoners hobbled through the tunnel on his worn clogs, followed by his wife in her ragged dress, hands pressed to her face.
Jim waited for a rifle shot to throw the man at his wife’s feet, but the couple stepped into the parking lot and gazed at the lines of bomb- damaged vehicles. Jim left Mr. Maxted and walked along the running track, intending to follow them, but then cautiously decided to climb one of the stands.
The concrete steps seemed to reach beyond the sky. Jim paused to rest among the terraces of looted furniture. He sat on a straight-backed chair beside a dining-room table and drank the warm rainwater from the polished blackwood. Below him, the thirty or so prisoners on the football field were rousing themselves as if from a disheveled picnic. The women sat on the grass, quietly straightening their hair among the bodies of their former friends, while a few of the husbands peered through the dusty windows at the instrument panels of the parked cars.
More than a hundred prisoners were dead, scattered on the football pitch as if they had fallen from the sky during the night. Turning his back on them, Jim climbed through the pools of water to the top tier of the stand. Now that he had left Mr. Maxted he felt guilty that he had died, a guilt in some way connected with his missing shoes. He stared at his wet footprints and told himself that he should have sold his shoes to the Japanese for a little rice or a sweet potato. As it was, by pretending to be dead he had lost both Mr. Maxted and his shoes.
Yet the dead had protected Jim and saved him from the night march. Lying with their bodies through the dark hours, both asleep and awake, he had felt closer to them than he felt to the living. Long after Mr. Maxted had grown cold, Jim had continued to massage his cheeks, keeping away the flies until he was sure that his soul had left him. During the next days he had stayed close to Mr. Maxted, despite the flies and the smell from the body of the dead architect. The prisoners resting in the center of the field waved Jim away whenever he approached. Drinking the rainwater that dripped from the furniture in the stands, he had survived on a single potato he had found in the trouser pocket of Mr. Wentworth, and on the rancid rice scattered toward him by the Japanese soldiers.
Jim leaned against the metal rail and looked down at the parking lot. The British couple were staring at the lines of derelict vehicles, alone in a silent world. Jim laughed at them, a harsh cough that spat a ball of yellow pus from his mouth. He wanted to shout to them: The world has gone away! Last night everyone jumped into their graves and pulled the earth over themselves!
Good riddance . . . Jim stared at the moribund land, at the water-filled bomb craters in the paddy fields, at the silent antiaircraft guns of Lunghua Pagoda, at the beached freighters on the banks of the river. Behind him, no more than three miles away, was the silent city. The apartment houses of the French Concession and the office blocks of the Bund were like a magnified image of that distant prospect that had sustained him for so many years.
Chilled by the river, a cool wind moved across the stadium, and for a moment that strange northeastern light he had seen over the stands returned to dim the sun. Jim stared at his pallid hands. He knew that he was alive, but at the same time he felt as dead as Mr. Maxted. Perhaps his soul, instead of leaving his body, had died inside his head?
Thirsty again, Jim walked down the concrete steps, scooping the water from the tables and cabinets. If the war had ended, it was time to look for his mother and father. However, without the Japanese to protect them, it would be dangerous for the British to set off on foot for Shanghai.
Beyond the goalposts, a British prisoner had managed to lift the hood of one of the white Cadillacs. Watched by his companions, he bent over the engine and touched the cylinders. Jim roused himself and raced down the steps, eager to be the driver’s navigator. He could still remember every street and alleyway in Shanghai.
As he crossed the athletics track, he noticed that three men had entered the stadium. Two were Chinese coolies, bare-chested, with black cotton trousers tied at the ankles above their straw sandals. The third was the Eurasian in the white shirt whom Jim had seen with the Japanese security troops. They stood by the tunnel while the Eurasian inspected the stadium. He glanced at the prisoners sitting on the grass, but his attention was clearly fixed on the looted furniture in the stands.
The Eurasian carried a heavy automatic pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers, but he smiled at Jim in an ingratiating way, as if they were old friends separated by the misadventures of war.
“Say, kid . . . You’re OK?” He surveyed Jim’s ragged shirt and shorts, his legs and bare feet covered with dirt and sores. “Lunghua C.A.C.? I guess you’ve had to tough it out.”
Jim stared stolidly at the Eurasian. Despite the smile, there was no sympathy in the man’s eyes. He spoke with a strong but recently acquired American accent, which Jim assumed he had learned while interrogating captured American air crews. He wore a chromium wristwatch, and the Colt pistol in his waistband was like those that the Japanese guards at Lunghua had taken from the pilots of the downed Superfortresses. His baggy nostrils quivered in the stench rising from the football field, distracting him from his scrutiny of the stands. He stepped aside for two British prisoners who hobbled through the tunnel.
“It’s some setup,” he reflected. “You’re ma and pa here? Looks like you could use a couple of bags of rice. Ask around, kid, if they have any bracelets, wedding rings, charms. We can work together on it.”
“Is the war over?”
The Eurasian’s eyes lowered, eclipsed by some passing shadow. He rallied himself and smiled keenly. “That’s for sure. Anytime now the whole U.S. Navy is going to tie up at the Bund.” When Jim looked unconvinced, the Eurasian explained: “Kid, they dropped atom bombs. Uncle Sam threw a piece of the sun at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killed a million people. One great big flash . . .”
“I saw it.”
“Kid? Did it light up the whole sky? Could be.” The Eurasian sounded doubtful, but turned his eyes from the booty in the stands and began to examine Jim. For all his easy manner he was unsure of himself, as if aware that the incoming U.S. Navy might be less than convinced by his pro-American act. He glanced warily at the sky. “Atom bombs . . . too bad for all those Japs, but lucky for you, kid. And for your ma and pa.”
Jim pondered this as the Eurasian stepped to the concrete rubbish bin by the entrance tunnel and began to root around inside it. “Is the war really over?”
“Yeah, it’s over, finished, we’re all friends. The Emperor just announced the surrender.”
“Where are the Americans?”
“They’re coming, kid; they have to get here with their atom bombs.”
“A white light?”
“That’s correct, kid. The atom bomb, U.S. superweapon. Maybe you saw the Nagasaki bomb.”
“Yes, I saw the atom bomb. What happened to Dr. Ransome?” When the Eurasian seemed puzzled, Jim added: “And the people who left on the march?”
“Too bad, kid.” The Eurasian shook his head, as if regretting a small oversight. “The American bombing, some diseases. Maybe your friend will make it . . . .”
Jim was about to walk away when the Eurasian turned from the rubbish bin. In one hand he held a pair of worn clogs which he threw onto the track. In the other he carried Jim’s leather golf shoes, tied together by their laces. He was about to speak to the waiting coolies when Jim stepped forward.
“Those are mine—Dr. Ransome gave them to me.” He spoke flatly and pulled the shoes from the Eurasian’s hands. Jim waited for him to draw his gun or order the coolies to knock him to the ground. Though exhausted by hunger and by the effort of climbing the stand, Jim was aware that he was once again asserting the ascendancy of the European.
“That’s OK, kid.” The Eurasian was genuinely concerned. “I was keeping those shoes in case you turned up. Tell your ma and pa.”
Jim walked past the coolies and entered the light-filled tunnel. Groups of British men and women were wandering among the tanks and burned-out trucks in the parking lot. They followed the faded marker lines, with no idea of where they were going, as if they had survived the entire war only to expire in this shabby maze. Outside the stadium, the August sunlight was made even more intense by the complete silence that lay over the paddy fields and canals. A white glaze covered the derelict land. Had the fields been seared by the flash of the atom bomb that the Eurasian had described? Jim remembered the burning body of the Mustang pilot, and the soundless light that had filled the stadium and seemed to dress the dead and the living in their shrouds.