The Kindness of Women by J. G. Ballard Page B

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 occurred 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