By leaving the camp I had stepped outside my own head. Had the atom bombs in some way split the sky and reversed the direction of everything? I felt uneasy in the open air, a tempting target for some brooding Japanese sentry. I jumped down from the coffins, leaving my ragged footprints in the soft quilts, and ran to the safety of the wire. Ignoring Peggy’s angry eyes, I went back to G Block and lay behind the curtain of my cubicle, glad for once to hear Mr. Vincent’s voice complaining to his wife about the failure of the allied authorities to notify us properly of the war’s end.
But did I want the war to end? The next day, when the Japanese guards returned to Lunghua, I felt secretly relieved. Already there were signs that life in the camp was breaking down. Led by the Ralston brothers, a gang of men had tried to break into the kitchens, while others had looted the guardhouse. The food stocks were almost exhausted, and our daily ration was down to a bowl of congee. The American bombing raids had imposed a kind of order, which both the prisoners and their guards had respected. Now the sky was empty and exposed, a house without its roof.
Fortunately, the Japanese commandeered the guardhouse and posted sentries outside the kitchens. But the soldiers were pale and uneasy, and Private Kimura avoided my eyes, aware now that he would never see his family again. Even Sergeant Nagata was subdued, waving me away when I hovered around the guardhouse trying to think of something to encourage him. He sat stiffly at his rifled desk and ignored the English and Belgian women who stood outside his window in their tattered cotton dresses, screaming abuse at him until necklaces of spit glistened on their breasts.
At last came the Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast, calling on his armies to lay down their weapons. At the time I laughed aloud at this. No Japanese would ever surrender. As long as he had a bayonet and grenade, or a rifle with a single round, he would fight to the end. Like everyone else, I took for granted that the Japanese forces in China would make their last stand against Chiang Kai-shek and the Americans at the mouth of the Yangtze, well within sight of Lunghua.
But the first American reconnaissance planes appeared in the sky, cruising a few hundred feet above the camp, and the antiaircraft guns at the airfield remained silent. Sergeant Nagata and his men, who had only returned to Lunghua in the hope of finding food, once again abandoned us, marching off into the night. The next day at noon, the two Shanghai Water Company engineers who had operated the clandestine radio throughout the war placed the battered Bakelite set on the balcony above the entrance to F Block. Then at last we heard the recorded victory speeches of Truman and MacArthur.
* * *
So, I told myself, the war had ended. But as I stood by the open gates I was still not convinced. The missionary women had wandered away, and Peggy gave a last hopeless shrug and went back to the children’s hut, leaving me to hover between the rotting posts. Everything within the camp was unchanged, but beyond the fence lay a different world. The wild rice growing by the roadside, the blades of sugar cane, and the yellow mud of the abandoned paddy fields were touched by the same eerie light, as if they had been irradiated by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, four hundred miles across the China Sea. I stepped forward, but the curving ruts which the supply truck had cut into the earth steered me back into the camp.
I knew, though, that it was time to leave. My mother and father would soon return to our house in Shanghai, and I wanted to meet them while there was still a faint chance that they remembered me. Shanghai was eight miles away, across a silent terrain of rice fields and deserted villages. In my pockets were a bottle of water that Peggy had boiled for me and a sweet potato I had saved. Settling them into my khaki shorts, I stepped through the gates onto the open road.
I set off along the dusty verge, trying to fix my eyes on the Shanghai skyline. Within the barbed wire another day in Lunghua was unfolding. The war might have ended, but the women worked over their washing and the men lounged on the entrance steps to the dormitory blocks. David Hunter and a group of younger children played one of their hour-long skipping games, jumping together as David whipped the ground under their feet, as always carried away by his wild humour.
Outside the children’s hut Peggy sat with one of the four-year-olds, teaching him to read. I called to her, but she was too engrossed in the book to hear me. Peggy’s parents would take weeks to travel from Tsingtao, and I would be back to look after her. If Lunghua was my real home, Peggy was my closest friend, far closer now than my mother and father could ever be, however hard the missionary women tried to keep us apart. We often quarrelled, but in the dark times Peggy had learned to rely on me and control my leaping imagination.
I passed the kitchen garden behind the hospital, with its rows of beans and tomatoes. Peggy and I had grown them to eke out our rations, fertilising the ground with buckets of nightsoil that we hoisted from the G Block septic tank, the only useful product of the Vincents’ existence. Mrs. Dwight stood on the hospital steps, lecturing a young Eurasian whose father had been chauffeur to the Dean of Shanghai Cathedral. A reluctant orderly at the hospital, he would once have deferred meekly to Mrs. Dwight, but I could see from his bored stare that he was no longer impressed by her moralising talk. British power had waned, sinking like the torpedoed hulks of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, and he could choose to become a Chinese again. As David’s father often reflected during our chess games, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had marked the first revolt by the colonised nations of the East against the imperial West. Shanghai, which had endured throughout the war, might have changed more than I realised.
Leaving the road, I turned my back on the camp and stepped into the deep grass that ran towards the canal marking the southern perimeter of the airfield. A cloud of mosquitoes rose from the stagnant water, greeting me as if I were the first person to enter this empty world. Dragonflies hunted the lacquered air, swerves of electric blue reflected in the oil leaking from a bombed freighter at Nantao.
A sunken Japanese patrol boat lay in the canal, its machine gun pointing skywards from the armour-plated turret. Already sections of the wooden decking had been chopped into firewood by the returning Chinese villagers. Strafed by the American Mustangs before the crew could take cover, the craft was dissolving into the soft mud of the canal bottom. Only the Japanese soldier lying face down in the shallow water was still himself, the brass buckles of his canvas webbing polished by the stream. I stood on the bank above him and watched the water lift the hairs from his scalp. I could see each of the ulcers on his neck and the swollen stitching of his coarsely woven shirt. Water beetles raced between his fingers, sending shimmers of light into the air, as if this dead soldier were tapping the underside of the surface and sending out some last message.
The canal turned to join the Whangpoo half a mile away. I left the bank and strode through the waist-high grass towards the circular rim of a flooded bomb crater. A white snake swam through the milky water, exploring this new realm. Beyond the crater was the boundary road of the airfield, roofless hangars standing beside the bombed engineering sheds.
Caught by the last of the American air raids, a Chinese puppet soldier lay by the embankment of a single-track railway line. Bandits had looted his body, stripping his pockets and ammunition pouches, and he was surrounded by scraps of paper, pages from his passbook, letters and small photographs, the documentation of a life he might have laid out beside himself as he waited to die.
Envying him all these possessions, I climbed the earth embankment, a spur of the Hangchow–Shanghai railway, which ran towards the northwest, losing itself in the misty light. I strode between the polished rails as they hummed faintly in the heat, adjusting my step to the wooden sleepers. I searched for Lunghua camp, but its familiar roof lines had vanished. An intense light, more electric than solar, lay over the derelict fields, as if the air had been charged by the energy radiated by that sombre weapon exploded across the China Sea. I stared at my hands, wondering if I had been affected, and tasted the tepid water in my bottle. For the first time it occurre
d to me that everyone in the world outside Lunghua might be dead, and that this was why the war was over.
Half an hour later, when I had walked a farther mile into the haze, I approached a small wayside railway station. It stood beside the track with a modest waiting room and ticket office, faded timetables hanging in the air. Sitting on the concrete platform were four Japanese soldiers. They were fully armed, rifles beside them, and wore canvas webbing and ammunition pouches over their shabby uniforms. A unit of field infantry, they were perhaps waiting for their orders at this rural station, orders that would now never come. They had cooked a simple meal on a makeshift stove, using strips of wood torn from the walls of the waiting room, and were resting in the midday heat.
Smoking their handmade cigarettes, they watched me walk towards them between the rails. I slowed my step, unsure whether to make a detour around the Japanese. Below the embankment was an anti-tank ditch partly filled with water, in which lay a dead water buffalo. The carcase of this docile beast was somehow reassuring, and I stopped to catch my breath before sliding down the embankment.
Then I noticed that one of the Japanese had raised his hand. I stared back at him, my feet slipping in the soft earth. I decided not to make a run for it—there was nowhere to go and the Japanese would shoot me without a moment’s thought. Walking up to the platform, I stopped by the private soldier who had beckoned to me. Grunting to himself over the last of his meal, he squatted beside his rifle. With his heavy workman’s hands he was coiling the telephone wire which he had cut from the wooden pole above the station.
Sitting with his back to the telephone pole, hands tied behind him, was a Chinese youth in a white shirt and dark trousers. Bands of wire circled his chest, and he breathed in empty gasps. His quick mouth and composed eyes reminded me of the clerks who had worked for my father before the war. He seemed out of place on this rural railway platform, unlike the soldiers and myself. The Japanese corporal lashing him to the telephone pole tightened the cords as if to anchor him firmly to this desolate terrain.
The Chinese choked, his throat knotting while he fought for air. Trying to ignore him, I faced the soldier coiling the wire. All my experience of the Japanese had taught me never to comment on anything they were doing, nor to take sides in any dispute involving them. I told myself that the Chinese was an important prisoner and that they had tied him up before taking their afternoon sleep.
One of the older soldiers was already dozing in the shade of the waiting room, head on his knapsack. The other sat by the stove, carefully reaming out the mess tins. Their faces were empty of all feeling, as if they were aware that the war had ended but knew that, for them, this meant nothing.
Only the first-class private coiling the wire showed any interest in me. I guessed that they had been upcountry, fighting the Kuomintang armies, and had seen few Europeans. Their food rations would have been as meagre as those in Lunghua, but the private’s broad temples were still fleshy, his cheekbones swollen like a boxer’s at the end of a hard-fought bout. He flicked his lips with a blackened finger and cleared his throat in a forced way, as if releasing to the air a stream of thoughts that no longer concerned him.
Exhausted by the long walk, I leaned against the platform, unsure whether to risk eating my sweet potato. The corporal securing the Chinese youth to the telephone pole was a short, starved man with a war-hardened face. As soon as I touched my pockets he began to watch me in a hungry way. The smells of burnt fat from the stove made my head swim, and I drew the water bottle from my trousers.
With a brief grunt, the private put out his hand. I released the cap, took a quick gulp, and handed the bottle to him. He drank noisily, spoke to the corporal, and passed the bottle back to me, disappointed that it contained nothing stronger than water. He tossed the coil of wire onto the platform beside the prisoner and then turned his attention to me. A wistful smile appeared on his roughened lips, and he pointed to the sun and to the sweat staining my cotton shirt.
“Hot?” I said. “Yes, it’s the atom bombs … you know the war’s over? The Emperor—”
I spoke without thinking. The only sound in the silent landscape, marooned in its haze, came from the Chinese. As another coil of telephone wire encircled his chest he tried not to breathe, and then began to pant rapidly, his head striking the wooden pole. His eyes were loosening themselves from his face. The corporal knotted the wire and tightened the noose with a wristy jerk. Drops of bloody saliva fell from the youth’s lips, staining his white shirt. He looked at me and gasped a word of Chinese, like a warning shout to a dog.
The first-class private scowled knowingly at the sun, urging me to drink. He appeared to be busy with his own thoughts, but every few seconds his eyes fixed on a different point in the surrounding fields. He was watching the drained paddy beside the embankment, the burial mound at its northwest corner, the stone footbridge across a canal. Did he know that the war was over, that his Emperor had called on him to surrender? Among the canvas packs and ammunition boxes piled against the waiting room was a field radio issued only to specialist troops. Perhaps they had heard that the war was over, but this simple statement, so meaningful to civilians far from the front line, meant nothing to them. Within a few weeks the American forces would reach Shanghai and the Chinese armies they had fought for so many years would take control of this derelict realm in which they waited, their minds already far beyond any future in store for them.
I decided to eat my sweet potato while I still had the chance. The private watched me approvingly, brushing a fly from my shoulder. His ragged uniform was a collection of tatters held together by the straps of his webbing, from which the smell of sweat emerged in almost intact layers. While I ate the potato skin he pointed to a piece of pith that clung to the back of my hand, and waited until I returned it to my mouth.
As he smiled at me in his simple way I felt an uneasy sense of pride. Despite myself, I admired this Japanese soldier, with his swollen temples and bruised face. He was no more than a labourer, but in his way he had risen to the challenge of the war. His heavy shoulders, marked by patches of eczema and scores of flea bites, were bursting through the fabric of his shirt, his chest restrained like an animal by the canvas webbing. He was one of the few strong men I had met, completely unlike the officers in the British forces and most of the adults in Lunghua. Only Mariner and the Ralston brothers would have been a match for this Japanese warrior.
I finished the potato and wiped my fingers on my lips, watching the sweat running from his neck into the hollows of his collarbones. I wished that I had learned enough Japanese from Private Kimura to explain that the war was over. The Chinese prisoner on the platform was now scarcely able to breathe, his ribs crushed by the coils of telephone wire. Bruises filled with congested blood stared from his forehead. Tired by the effort of knotting the heavy wire, the corporal tossed the cable onto the concrete floor and strolled stiffly along the platform.
The private’s fingers flicked at his lips, tapping a message to himself. He grimaced over some memory bothering him like a mosquito. Deciding to take the risk, I slid my clasp knife from my hip pocket. With the blade closed, I offered it to the private, hoping that he would want to test the blade, and might cut the telephone wire binding the Chinese prisoner.
But the blade was of no interest to him. He cut away a canvas flap that hung from his ragged boot and turned his attention to the clasp. He smiled at the cowboy motif carved into the mother-of-pearl handle. His thick fingers traced out the ranchhand in Stetson and high-heeled boots, and the twirling lasso that resembled the telephone wire he had been coiling at his feet.
The railway lines hummed in the heat, a sound like pain. The Chinese slumped against the pole, his neck so flushed that it was almost blue. He raised his head and looked at me in a fevered way, as if we were fellow passengers who had missed our connection. He was four or five years older than I was, his hair cut neatly in a way that Mrs. Dwight had always urged on me. Was he a Kuomintang agent, one of the thousan
ds in Shanghai, or an office clerk working for the Japanese occupation authority who had fallen foul of the kempetai?
The corporal stepped onto the track and gathered sticks for the fire. I searched the railway line, hoping that an American patrol might be approaching. From the moment I left Lunghua all the clocks had stopped. Time had suspended itself, and only the faraway drone of an American aircraft reminded me of a world on the other side of the pearly light.
The private gestured to me to empty my pockets. The corporal stood at the end of the platform, relieving himself onto the track. The drops of urine hissed as they struck the rail, sending up a fierce cloud of yellow steam. The corporal walked back wide-legged to the Chinese prisoner. He had cut his hands on the wire and shook his head ruefully as he bent down and picked up the coil, ready to return to his work.
Hurriedly I dug into my pockets and handed my tie pin to the private, hoping that the silver buckle might distract the corporal. The private’s gaze brightened again as he examined the worn image of a longhorn cow. With his thumbnail he cleared away the flaking chrome, then placed the pin against the brass clip of his ammunition pouch. Keen to display his new insignia, he shouted over his shoulder, puffing up his chest. The corporal nodded without expression, too busy with his cumbersome knots. He wrenched at the wire, spreading his legs like a rancher trussing a steer.
The private returned the tie pin to me, catching sight for the first time of the transparent celluloid belt looped through the waistband of my cotton shorts. This belt, which I had nagged out of one of the American sailors, was my proudest possession. In prewar Shanghai it would have been a rarity eagerly sought after by young Chinese gangsters.
The Kindness of Women Page 5