13
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. He had already carried out a full reconnaissance of the detention centre, and in a disused office above the projection room were reels of dusty film. Perhaps the Japanese corporal from the signals corps who was now trying to dismantle the projector would show one of Yang’s films?
His 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 grey-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 store-room 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 store-room and chased away the Eurasian children who ran in to play.
There were some thirty people in the detention centre, to which Jim had been sent after a week at the Shanghai Central Prison. Compared with the damp dormitory cell which 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 centre was a move towards them.
Soon after his capture Jim had fallen ill with an aching fever, during which he vomited blood. He guessed that he had been sent to the detention centre 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 store-room. 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, he was happy in the detention centre. 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?
He 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 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 centre. 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. He 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 him away.
‘Disgusting…!’
‘Dirty boy…!’
‘Go away…!’
Invariably they snapped at Jim, and tried to keep their children from him. Sometimes they mimicked his 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 store-room 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 him how these old and sick people could manage to rouse themselves at meal times. 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 meal times, 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 him 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 centre.
A whisde shrilled from the courtyard by the ticket kiosk. The Japanese sergeant in charge of the detention centre 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 store-room he and the old men still able to stand waited by their mats, mess-tins in hand. He 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 radon of rice or sweet potatoes was allocated to the me
ss-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, he smiled brightly at the Japanese sergeant, and tried to look strong and healthy. Only the healthier people tended to leave the detention centre. But as usual the sergeant seemed depressed by Jim’s cheerful gaze. He stepped aside as the new arrivals reached the store-room. 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 grey 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 birdcage 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 on to the floor beside him. From the cradle of roped straw they lifted 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 centre with their children. Looking round at the sick and dying men in the store-room, and at the orderlies and Japanese soldiers with their cotton face-masks, Jim began for the first time to grasp the real purpose of the detention centre.
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 then-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 centre and make their way to the safety of the prison camps.
‘Basie!’ he cried. ‘Everything’s all right!’
14
American Aircraft
‘The war’s going to be over soon, Basie. I’ve seen American planes, Curtiss bombers and Boeings…’
‘Boeings…? Jim you’re – ‘
‘Don’t talk, Basie. I’m working for you now, just like Frank.’
Jim squatted by the American sailor, trying to remember the amahs of his early childhood. He had never looked after anything before, except for an angora rabbit that had died tragically within a few days. He tilted the mess-tin and tried to pour a little water into Basie’s mouth, then dipped his fingers in the murky fluid and let Basie suck them.
For three weeks Jim had devoted himself to the cabin steward, bringing his ration of boiled rice and sweet potatoes, fetching water from the tap in the corridor. He sat for hours beside Basie, fanning the sailor as he lay on his mat below the transom window. The stream of fresh air soon revived him, and one by one he pulled away the paper bandages fluttering on his face and wrists. Helped by Jim, he moved his mat from the English soldier dying against the wall. Within a week he had recovered enough of his strength to keep an eye on the Japanese guards and the comings and goings of the Eurasian woman who cooked for the prisoners.
As he cleaned Basie’s mess-tin Jim wondered if the sailor really recognized him. Did he know that Jim had managed to trick him? Perhaps he would report Jim to the other prisoners, but there was little that they could do. Relieved that at last he had an ally in his struggle with the Eurasian women, he rested his head on his knees.
He felt Basie nudge him with the mess-tins.
‘Chow time, Jim. Get in line.’ As Jim sat up, hoping that he had not talked in his sleep, Basie wiped some of the dirt from his cheek. The steward’s canny eyes took in every detail of Jim’s shabby state. ‘Make yourself useful to Mrs Blackburn, Jim. Ingratiate yourself a little. A woman always needs help with her fire.’
Somehow, during his visits to the latrine, Basie had learned the Eurasian woman’s name. Jim ran from the store-room with the two mess-tins. The other prisoners followed, the old men stirring from their mats. Mr Partridge took the mess-tin from the hand of the English soldier who sat in a pool of urine by the wall.
Smoke rose from the courtyard behind the ticket kiosk. The Eurasian woman fanned the briquettes in her stove, but the rice and sweet potatoes in the congs had gone off the boil. A Japanese soldier stared gloomily at the tepid swill, and shook his head at the hungry prisoners. They shuffled among the teak benches of the cinema, sat down and stared at the smoke drifting across the empty screen.
Holding the mess-tins, Jim hovered around Mrs Blackburn and treated her to his keenest smile. She disliked Jim, but allowed him to chop the basket of firewood. He pushed the spills into the stove and blew hard to ignite them. He fanned the embers until the briquettes caught light again. Half an hour later, with the Japanese soldier’s approval, Jim was rewarded with his first fair ration.
Basie was satisfied but unimpressed. After finishing his meal he propped himself on his elbows. He gazed at his fellow prisoners, some too exhausted to eat their rations, and tore the last of the paper bandages from the cuts over his eyes. Whatever had befallen him in Shanghai Central Prison – and Jim never dared to ask about Frank – he had once again become the ex-steward of the Cathay-American Line, ready to assemble a small part of a ramshackle world around himself. He surveyed Jim again, taking in his ragged clothes and scarecrow appearance, his deepset and yellowing eyes. Without comment, he gave Jim a piece of potato skin.
‘Say, thanks, Basie.’
‘I’m looking after you, Jim.’
Jim devoured the shred of potato. ‘You’re looking after me, Basie.’
‘You helped Mrs Blackburn?’
‘I ingratiated myself. I made myself very useful to Mrs Blackburn.’
‘That’s it. If you can find a way of helping people you’ll live off the interest.’
‘Like this piece of potato…Basie, when you were in Shanghai Central did anyone talk about my mother and father?’
‘I think I did hear something, Jim.’ Basie cupped his hand conspiratorially. ‘Good news, they’re in one of the camps and looking forward to seeing you. I’ll find out which one for you.’
‘Thanks, Basie!’
From then on Jim regularly helped Mrs Blackburn. Every morning he was up at dawn to rake the ash from the stove, chop firewood and lay the briquettes. Long before the water in the congs began to boil Jim had already earmarked sweet potatoes for Basie and himself, selecting those with the least blight and fungus. He saw to it that Mrs Blackburn served them the thicker rice, into which, at Basie’s suggestion, he had been careful to stir the minimum of water. After their meal, when the other prisoners rinsed their tins at the latrine tap, Basie always sent Jim to fill their mess-tins with the tepid water in the potato cong. Basie insisted that he and Jim drank only this grey, pithy liquid.
Although, like everyone else, Basie was never keen for Jim to come too close to him, he clearly approved of Jim’s efforts. At the end of his second week at the detention centre Basie allowed him to move his sleeping mat beside his own. Lying at Basie’s feet, Jim could intercept Mrs Blackburn on her way to the kiosk.
‘Always look light on your toes, Jim.’ Basie lay back as Jim fanned him. ‘Whatever happens, keep moving around the court. Yo
ur dad would agree with me.’
‘Actually, he would agree with you. After the war you can play tennis together. He’s really good.’
‘Well…What I meant, Jim, is that I’m trying to keep up your education. Your dad would appreciate that.’
‘I think he’ll give you a reward, Basie.’ Jim assumed that the notion of a reward would spur Basie in his search for his father. ‘Once he gave five dollars to a taxi-driver who brought me home from Hongkew.’
‘Did he, Jim?’ At times Basie seemed unsure whether Jim was having him on. ‘Tell me, did you see any planes today?’
‘A Nakajima Shoki and a Zero-Sen.’
‘And American planes?’
‘I haven’t seen those again. Not since you came, Basie. I saw them for three days and then they went away.’
‘I thought they had. They must have been a special kind of reconnaissance flight.’
‘To see how we all are? Where did they come from, Basie? Wake Island?’
‘A long way, Jim. It must have been just about the end of their range.’ Basie took the fan from Jim’s hand. An elderly Australian had arrived to talk to Basie about the war. ‘Go and help Mrs Blackburn. And remember to bow to Sergeant Uchida.’
‘I always bow, Basie.’
Jim hovered around the conversation, hoping to catch the latest news, but the two men waved him away. Basie was surprisingly well informed about the progress of the war, the fall of Hong Kong, Manila and the Dutch East Indies, the surrender of Singapore and the unbroken advance of Japan across the Pacific. The only good news in all this were the flights of American planes that Jim had seen over Shanghai, but for some reason Basie never mentioned them. He liked to talk out of the side of his mouth, telling the old Britishers about the other inmates at Shanghai Central Prison, who had died and who had been handed over to the Swiss Red Cross. Basie even sold information for small scraps of food. Mr Partridge gave him his potato for news of his brother-in-law in Nanking. Inspired by this, Jim tried to tell Mrs Blackburn about the American aircraft, but she merely sent him back to the briquettes.
Empire of the Sun Page 10