Free Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard Page A

Hurricanes circling above his head. Their motion soothed him, easing the pain in his jaw, and he was tempted to stay there, sleeping quietly in the bedroom of his departed friend until the war was over.
    But already Jim realized that it was time to find his mother and father. Failing them, any other Britons would do.
    Facing the Maxteds’ apartment building on the opposite side of the Avenue Joffre was the Shell Company’s compound, almost all of its houses occupied by British employees. Jim and Patrick often played with the children, and were honorary members of the Shell gang. As Jim pushed his bicycle from the Maxteds’ drive he could see that the British residents had gone. Japanese sentries stood in the entrance to the compound behind a box fence of barbed-wire. Supervised by a Japanese NCO, a gang of Chinese coolies were loading furniture from the houses into an army truck.
    A few feet from the barbed-wire box an elderly man in a shabby coat stood under the plane trees and watched the Japanese. Despite his threadbare suit, he still wore white cuffs and a starched shirt front.
    ‘Mr Guerevitch! I’m over here, Mr Guerevitch!’
    The old White Russian was the Shell Company caretaker, and lived with his aged mother in a small bungalow beside the gate. A Japanese officer now stood in the front room, cleaning his nails as he smoked a cigarette. Jim had always liked Mr Guerevitch, although the elderly Russian remained unimpressed by him. Something of an amateur artist, in the right mood he would draw elaborate sailing ships in Jim’s autograph album. His grey cupboard of a kitchen was filled with starched collars and their miniature front panels, and Jim was sorry that Mr Guerevitch could not afford a real shirt. Perhaps he would come back to live with him in Amherst Avenue?
    Jim checked this thought as Mr Guerevitch waved him across the road with his newspaper. His mother might like the old Russian, but Vera would not – the Eastern Europeans and White Russians were even more snobbish than the British.
    ‘Hello, Mr Guerevitch. I’m looking for my mother and father.’
    ‘But how could they be here?’ The old Russian pointed to Jim’s bruised face and shook his head. ‘The whole world is at war and you’re still riding your bicycle around…’ As the Japanese NCO began to abuse one of the coolies, Mr Guerevitch drew Jim behind a plane tree. He opened his newspaper to reveal an extravagant artist’s sketch of two immense battleships sinking under a hail of Japanese bombs. From the photographs beside them Jim recognized the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, the unsinkable fortresses which the British war newsreels always claimed could each defeat the Japanese Navy single-handed.
    ‘Not a good example,’ Mr Guerevitch reflected. ‘The British Empire’s Maginot line. It’s right that you have a red face.’
    ‘I fell off my bicycle, Mr Guerevitch,’ Jim explained patriotically, though he disliked having to lie to defend the Royal Navy. ‘I’ve been busy looking for my mother and father. It’s rather a job, you know.’
    ‘I can see.’ Mr Guerevitch watched a convoy of trucks speed past. Japanese guards with fixed bayonets sat by the tailboards. Behind them, their heads resting on each other’s shoulders, groups of British women and their children huddled over their cheap suitcases and khaki bedrolls. Jim assumed that they were the families of captured British servicemen.
    ‘Young boy! Ride your bicycle!’ Mr Guerevitch pushed Jim’s shoulder. ‘You follow them!’
    ‘But Mr Guerevitch…’ The shabby luggage unsettled Jim as much as the strange wives of the British privates. ‘I can’t go with them – they’re prisoners.’
    ‘Go on! Ride! You can’t live in the street!’
    When Jim stood firm by his handlebars, Mr Guerevitch solemnly patted him on the head and set off across the road. He resumed his vigil behind his newspaper, watching the Japanese strip the houses in the compound as if