The Yellow Papers Page 4

  When first released from his cell, Chen Mu had tried to get to know the other Chinese on board, craving companionship and hoping to learn about this new country, but these men were always exhausted, and suspicious of his educated speech and manners. They’d barely acknowledged his presence, and rather than being ignored Chen Mu had left his bunk that was no larger than a coffin, and its cockroach-infested mattress, and gone to sleep on deck. He thought it ironic that these nine years of Western education, years that were meant to elevate him from peasant to mandarin, had in fact resulted in him being a fugitive – a murderer. So when Wainwright questioned him about his past he’d answered in monosyllables, not trusting the captain – he expected to see the police waiting for him at every port. Chen Mu knew he’d developed a reputation on this ship as being brooding and uncommunicative, but so be it. It was safer this way.

  And now he’d made it to the other side of the world. So many journeys! From his village to Shanghai. Then Shanghai to Connecticut, Connecticut to Carolina, Carolina to Australia. He wondered what his mother would have thought of all this travelling, had she still been alive.

  The ship sailed into Cooktown Harbour and dropped anchor. An offshore breeze blew heavy with the sickly, pungent odour of molasses. The captain ordered the ship’s gun fired, signalling for smaller boats to come from shore to unload cargo and take anyone going ashore. Their next stop would be Townsville, and then the ship would begin its return journey.

  Chen Mu looked at the trees and hills in the distance, and the feeling of panic he’d only just managed to contain during their slow navigation through the reefs grew stronger by the minute. He didn’t want to sail on to Townsville – he couldn’t shake the feeling that danger awaited him there. What was there to stop the captain using his free labour for the whole journey, then at the end of the journey sent word ahead that he had a stowaway? The police could be waiting to arrest him as soon as they docked. He watched the small boats reach the steamer and make fast, the crew begin to unload cargo. He came to a decision.

  From his case he removed his copy of Tom Sawyer and pushed it down the front of his trousers. He opened the box with the jade brush-rest and laid the carving on the palm of his hand; it still was the most beautiful thing he had ever owned. He ran his finger along the sculpted edge of the leaf and remembered the words of the old schoolmaster: Remember, Chen Mu. Without being worked, jade cannot be shaped into a vessel; without being educated, people cannot be shaped into virtuous citizens. With a wry smile he tucked the brush-rest back in its box and put it down the front of his shirt. He would have liked to take his notebooks as well, but they were already becoming mouldy from the damp air. He checked his pocket for his wallet. He didn’t need anything else.

  He heaved a bag of shell intended for the mainland onto his back, pulling it forward to hide his face, and climbed down the Jacob’s ladder to one of the waiting boats, already almost full. Stacking the sack onto the others already there, he sat down beside them as he’d seen others do who would go onshore to help unload. The boat disengaged itself from the steamer and headed for shore.

  6

  ‘Barmy, the lot of them! They’ll all be dead by the time they’re forty.’

  Chen Mu fished a fly out of his mug of tea and watched the bullock driver stir the stew simmering on the campfire. He’d been travelling for weeks, mostly on foot, stopping at a town or property for never more than a day or so, when casual work was available. He didn’t know where he was going – only aware that he had to get as far from Queensland as possible, to a place where he’d feel safe. He’d crossed into the colony of New South Wales some time back and had just kept heading south. Then, this evening, he’d come upon a bullocky setting up camp, and the man had offered to share a cup of tea and a meal.

  ‘It’s the lead, you know, gets in the dust. Saw it in the old country. My father was a miner, back in Cornwall. Then he got that blue line, on his gums like, and he knew he was a dead man. Killed him in no time, it did …’

  But Chen Mu didn’t want to know about the lead. He wanted to know about the silver that the bullocky told him had been discovered recently on the other side of the Barrier Ranges. Silver that could make a man rich.

  ‘I’ll get work in the mines,’ he said, staring into the campfire.

  ‘Nah lad, you can’t and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘On account of you being a Chinaman and all, you see. Gov’ment won’t let you.’ He quickly dipped a finger into the pot on the fire. ‘Here, that’s hot enough. Pass us that bowl.’

  The bullocky piled a ladleful of chunky mutton stew into the metal bowl that was his only dish, in which he’d previously mixed flour and water to make a damper. He pulled a spoon and a fork out of his kit, wiped them on the leg of his trousers and handed Chen Mu the spoon.

  ‘There’s been trouble with you lot in the goldfields, you see. So they passed a law – said you could work if you got permission from the mines minister, but he ain’t about to let you, now is he? Not if he wants to keep in good with the miners and the Trade Union he won’t.’ He held the bowl between them and took a forkful. ‘Well come on lad, eat up.’ He chewed his mutton, nodding, then pointed his fork at Chen Mu. ‘Now if you really want to work, old Yu Ping can probably do with some help.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘One of you lot. Mad as a hatter, they say.’ He broke off a piece of the damper cooling on the log between them, and passed the rest to Chen Mu. Dunked his piece in the stew and ate in silence, then continued talking as if there had been no break in the conversation. ‘But he’s all right, Yu Ping. Reckons he can grow vegetables out there, in the rocks and the sand. Reckons he’ll get richer selling that to the miners than the miners will with all their silver.’

  ‘Will he?’

  ‘Dunno. They all think he’s barmy. But you know, I reckon he will. I reckon old Yu Ping knows what he’s doing.’ He put his fork back in the bowl, pulled out his tobacco pouch and rolled a cigarette that he lit from the end of a stick from the fire. When he finished his smoke he kicked dirt over the campfire to smother it, and went to check his cattle.

  Chen Mu sat up long into the night, thinking. For the first time in a long while, here in the middle of the bush, listening to the sounds of night creatures and looking up through the silhouettes of trees to a sky so filled with stars, he felt something resembling peace. Not true peace, like when he was a very little boy, safe in the belief that his mother would always be there. Nor the kind of peace he’d experienced in Hartford, visiting the Clemens, surrounded by books and plants and people who were interested in his thoughts and ideas. No, he didn’t think he’d ever have that kind of peace again, but for a moment – just a fleeting moment – he could simply be, and feel a brief instant of calm.

  But soon questions that had plagued him these past months shattered this fragile illusion, and he could no more ignore them than he could reach out and catch one of those stars above. Because he didn’t know what he was anymore – not truly Chinese, for he had spent too long in the West, adopted too many Western ideas, but neither did he feel truly Westernised. There had been times when he had thought himself so, but a glimpse at his reflection quickly showed him the impossibility of such thoughts. No, rather, he felt suspended between two worlds, never to truly belong to either. And maybe that was what he had to accept – that he would never again be part of what he’d known, that he would always be scurrying on the outer edges, careful not draw attention to himself, not to get caught. They had nicknamed him well. ‘Mouse’. And like a mouse, he would live forever within proximity of people, but never truly belong, doomed to scuttle away into a hole at the first sign of danger. So maybe the bullocky was right – maybe he should go and work for this Yu Ping. At least, in the middle of a desert, he should be safe …

  Chen Mu lay back and stared at the sky for a long time, until at last sleep overcame him. In the morning he joined the bullocky on his journey west to deliver supplies to the
silver mines of Umberumberka, and each was glad of the other’s company, though neither would have admitted it.

  The afternoon sun beat down onto the barren and desolate land, giving the dust-filled air a light purple hue. Chen Mu lowered the buckets of water onto the ground and eased the yoke from his back. He straightened and stretched his aching muscles, then shaded his eyes and looked towards the horizon, still mesmerised by this surreal landscape. The red desert seemed to stretch to the end of the earth, except for the humped-backed ridge in the distance that the miners had nicknamed ‘the broken hill’.

  Chen Mu thought of Wang, the oldest man in his village – was he even still alive? If he were, and happened upon this place, Wang would argue that the myths were wrong – Zhù Róng, the fire god, could not possibly live on Kunlun Mountain. Zhù Róng must live right here, in this very desert. He would say it was his fire reflected upon these rocks, his hot breath scorching the air. It would make sense, for was not Zhù Róng also the god of the southern hemisphere?

  Chen Mu smiled to himself, thinking of Wang. Up above, two square-tailed kites silently rode the thermals on splay-tipped wings. Yes, Wang would probably be right, for Zhù Róng was also responsible for making sure men stayed in their appointed position, in the universal order of things, and since coming to work for Yu Ping in his market garden nearly two years ago, Chen Mu had discovered a sense of inner peace – he’d lost that feeling of danger that had stalked him in Queensland. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, he felt safe. And if, sometimes, he felt there should be more to his life, he quickly reminded himself that he had no right to ask for more. Yes, he should be grateful – he had work, savings, and more importantly, he had Yu Ping’s respect. This was his place in the universal order of things. But did he really believe this? Would he really be happy doing this work, digging this rock-hard ground, rationing out water to plants, one ladle at the time, for the next five years? Ten years? Twenty years? Until he was as old as Yu Ping? And even if he chose to go on like this – what if circumstances changed? Already things were changing …

  Shortly after his arrival, the miners had moved their tents closer to Umberumberka Creek, and had built huts out of iron and canvas. There was even a store and a hotel there now, as well as two boarding houses. They’d change the name of the place to Silverton, and more and more miners had arrived, so that the initial population had doubled then doubled again, until now there were more than a thousand people here.

  ‘Too many people,’ Yu Ping had told Chen Mu. ‘Too much trouble.’ And he’d refused to move with the others. He’d positioned his garden to capture the storm-water flow as it ran along eroded gullies, channelling it into the two dams he’d built at either end of it. During the dry he’d dug soakage wells, and between both of these water sources he’d managed to persuade the red desert soil to produce fruit and vegetables. Over the years he’d expanded his garden, and taken on three more Chinese men to work for him, so that now he grew enough to sell to the whole Silverton community. But recently they’d heard that seven mineral leases had been pegged on the broken hill thirteen miles to the east, and Chen Mu knew Yu Ping was worried in case a new township established itself there, and with it more market gardens.

  ‘I’m getting old, Chen Mu. Too tired for competition.’ He even needed a cane to get about now, and it happened more and more often that he would ask Chen Mu to take his chair to the corner of the field where the men were working, and from there call out his instructions.

  Every day Chen Mu worked alongside the other men, digging and planting and harvesting, and in the late afternoons they watered the garden with long-handled wooden ladles dipped in the buckets they carried on either end of yokes. He’d go to bed at sundown, then wake in the early hours of the morning to harness Yu Ping’s horse to the cart, and drive the mile to Silverton where he’d collect night soil from the houses and cesspits in town, and horse and cow manure from the stables. He’d bring it all back to the garden and they would spread it on the ground before covering it with loose soil, and they had to do this before dawn because there were some who questioned this method of fertilising the ground. It was a job Chen Mu despised. Though it had never bothered him in his own village, now the stench of human excrement lingered in his nostrils long after he’d finished for the day, and sometimes he felt that the thin veneer of Western civilization he had cultivated in Connecticut was being washed away in the slops of night soil. But Yu Ping paid him well for this job, and trusted only him with the horse, so he didn’t complain.

  The muffled belch of an explosion reached Chen Mu from the direction of the mines, indicating another lode loosened from the rock face. Soon, he knew, pickeyboys as young as eight would make their way down the shaft to sort the ore from the rocks; it would be dark in less than an hour, but 190 feet below the surface daylight had no meaning. As Chen Mu lifted the yoke back onto his shoulders the wail of a siren bemoaned an accident at the mines. He looked towards Yu Ping sitting at the edge of the field, who signalled for him to go but for the others to keep watering. Chen Mu ran for the horse and buggy.

  The air around the mines smelt of rotten egg. Dust particles floated in the late afternoon light, and human figures rushed to and fro, hardly distinguishable from the ground they worked, their clothes coated with earth, their faces and beards spattered with clay. Chen Mu arrived just as they were hauling someone to the pithead – a haggard looking man covered in mud. They sat him on a nearby log and handed him a pannikin of whisky. He took a long swallow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shook his head.

  ‘The slabs gave out,’ he said. ‘So did the uprights. The whole roof’s come down. Ted didn’t ‘ave a hope.’ He held out his cup and his whole arm shook. Someone refilled it and he downed it in one go.

  At the pithead Ted’s body was pulled out then carried unceremoniously to the jail where he’d be put in the undertaker’s bathtub until morning.

  Poor Ted – God rest his soul, and the crowd melted towards the grog-shop. They would drink to Ted’s memory, silently thankful it wasn’t them that ended with their faces pressed in the sticky mud below. Tomorrow they would bury him, and pass around a hat for his wife, if he had one. Accidents were too common here to spend more time than that on anyone.

  Chen Mu didn’t go with the others to the grog-shop. He sat in the buggy watching the man on the log stare at nothing with eyes as glassy as marbles. He was secretly relieved the fall-in had only resulted in one death. He knew that if there had been more men below, they’d have worked all night if need be, and all day too, until they’d reached every one of them. He’d helped before and he hated the musty, slippery slopes, the constant smell of sulphur, the narrow passages through which he’d had to wriggle like a snake, which would suddenly open up to massive chambers so intensely dark that he would have lost his sense of balance if not for the dim glow of candles attached to the men’s hats. He was about to pick up the reins when the man spoke.

  ‘It’s ‘ell – that’s what it is.’

  Chen Mu nodded, not knowing what to answer.

  ‘ ‘ell’s own backyard, that’s what this place is …’ The man roughly wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked into his cup. Finding it empty he let it fall to the ground. He looked up and noticed Chen Mu. ‘I was a lamplighter, you know, back ‘ome. Ted too. We was mates since we was little tackers, me and Ted. Then we heard about this country. They said you only had to stoop down to pick up nuggets of gold with your bare hands, and me and Ted decided. We left our missus and came here. We’ll come back rich, we told them, then you old women can take it easy.’ The man shook his head and shrugged. ‘Well, we didn’t find any gold. Then we heard about the silver …’ He picked up the cup from the ground and looked into it, as if he expected it to have refilled itself. Finding it still empty he dropped it back to the ground, stood up, and headed towards the grog-shop.

  Chen Mu held the reins loosely, allowing the horse to make its way back home at its own pace. He normally co
uldn’t get out of there quickly enough – the cesspit odour and the stink of garbage thrown in the streets sickened him, as did the decomposing carcasses of animals thrown in the now dry creeks, but tonight he wanted time to think about his future. The last time he’d brought vegetables to the boarding houses, he’d been told a Mr Matthew Dawson wanted to speak to him. The man was a rich pastoralist who also had interests in the mines.

  ‘They tell me you’re not afraid of hard work, and that you know your plants,’ Dawson had said. ‘They also say you don’t touch the grog.’ And he’d offered Chen Mu a job as an undergardener on Walpinya Station, his property further east at the foot of the Snowy Mountains, just a few miles from the small township of Macoomba. ‘Think about it. I’ll be back this time next month. Be here if you want the job.’

  And ‘this time next month’ was tomorrow.

  If he was honest with himself, Chen Mu did want that job. Silverton was a harsh and uncompromising place, and he wanted more than a life of night soil, desert heat and ground so rocky it could break a man’s back. He wanted more than dust storms and saltbush. He missed the life he’d known in Connecticut – the nice clothes, the books, the deep frequent baths and plentiful water. He wanted a home somewhere green, where plants had a chance to thrive. He wanted to thrive. To make friends. To know a woman. Maybe even to marry, have children. Instead, he was nearly twenty and still a virgin.

  In Connecticut, under the sharp supervision of the tutors, the young women he’d met were ‘proper’ young ladies who were not above flirtations, but who’d pretend to be shocked if anyone ever made further advances. Xi Tang had told him it was only a game – that if he persisted they would eventually allow him further liberties – but he’d been too unsure of himself to persist.