The Yellow Papers Read online

  ‘Mu?’ Sahira whispered.

  Chen Mu lay still. Quiet. Should he tell her to leave? Pretend to sleep? She came into the hut, bumped into the table that was the only other piece of furniture beside his bed, and swore quietly. He felt her hand on the corner of his bed, over his feet as she felt her way around, but still he didn’t move. A rustle of fabric, then no sound.

  She slipped into his bed and lay still. Now Chen Mu wished he’d spoken earlier – if he spoke now, she’d know he’d been pretending to sleep. But he couldn’t pretend for much longer. Already he could feel himself grow hard against her warm skin.

  ‘I couldn’t come earlier,’ she whispered.

  Still Chen Mu didn’t answer, unsure of how to react.

  ‘I had to.…’ she kissed his chest, dozens of little soft kisses barely touching his skin, then put her lips around a nipple and played with it with her tongue ‘… take my turn …’ she moved down to his belly and Chen Mu groaned and arched with pleasure ‘… looking after Mrs Dawson … ‘ and she wriggled further down the bed and licked the inside of each thigh. Chen Mu forgot about losing face, and gave himself up instead to the heightened sensations of moist lips on hot flesh, and the musky odour of passion mingled with sweat.

  Each night, as Matthew Dawson sat beside his wife’s bed, watching her fight for breath and slide into delirium, Sahira slipped into Chen Mu’s bed and guided him through the mysteries of her sex. Then they would talk, often till dawn, and she told him of her life as a child in India and on the goldfields, where both her parents died of typhoid, and how she entered service when barely ten years old in order to survive.

  ‘I didn’t cry, you know, when my father died. And I didn’t cry when my mother died, either … Do you think I’m heartless?’

  Chen Mu shook his head and continued stroking her hair.

  ‘So many were dying, you see. You could tell the tents that had typhoid – that horrid pea-soup smell of the diarrhoea … And when someone close to you got it, well, you knew what was coming. But you were too busy looking after them, trying to cool their fever, changing their bedclothes … No, I didn’t cry then. And I didn’t cry when the missionary women came and took some of us to Sydney – to the Randwick Asylum for orphans. Do you know when I cried?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When they cut my hair, that very first day. They said we had lice. I never had lice! They sat us on a stool and they hacked away at it and I looked at my long plait lying on the floor, and all the extra hair beside it, and that’s when I finally realised my mother was dead. Does that sound silly? But you see, my mother used to spend hours brushing my hair in the evenings, and as she brushed she would tell me stories, and tell me what her dreams were for me. It was always a special time, her brushing my hair. And if she’d been alive, she would have never allowed them to cut it off like they did …’

  ‘My mother cut her hair. For me. To sell so that she could give me money for my journey.’

  ‘She must have loved you very much …’

  Chen Mu nodded. ‘I think that’s when I first realised that she must. She wasn’t an affectionate woman, my mother. Not like your mother. She was always very strict – cold, almost. I didn’t understand, then, that she had to be.’ And Chen Mu told her about his life in China. He told about his village, and about his father and brothers following the great Tso Tsungt’ang to the northwest provinces, never to return. He told her of the famine that followed and his sisters being sold as slaves, and he – only four years old – sent to work in the fields until that fateful day three years later when he had been chosen for the Mission.

  ‘I can still remember that trip down the river. It took three days from my village to Shanghai, and they were the most miserable three days I ever spent. I’d never been outside of my village before, so I should have been excited, but I wasn’t. I remember soon after we left, a river dolphin started swimming by the junk. The snows had started to melt further west, making the water turbulent, but the dolphin still gambolled beside the junk. It made me angry – I didn’t want anyone, anything, enjoying themselves when I felt so miserable!’

  ‘Poor boy! Seven isn’t very old …’

  ‘Oh, it’s not so young for people like you and me …’ Chen Mu said, smiling gently at Sahira and stroking her cheek. ‘But this was the very first time ever I was on my own. And though I’d never have admitted it, I was scared. Then thunder began to rumble, and rain covered the river like a grey curtain, and the dolphin disappeared. The rain continued, so thick you couldn’t see the banks, and still I sat there in my misery, wet and shivering. When the rain finally stopped we were passing a village, and the sight of the market stalls, the pigs and the chickens in bamboo cages and people going about their business – it reminded me of my own village, and made me feel so lost and alone that I crept to the back of the junk where no one would see me, to the rows of fish drying on bamboo poles, and there I finally cried.’

  Then he told her of his anger and frustration in Connecticut, when he’d found out his mother had died. And he told her about old Yu Ping and of the backbreaking work in the heat of the desert, and the stench of night soil that seemed to ooze from his very pores. He even told her of his resentment that no matter what he thought, what he learned, all people would ever see were his Chinese features, so that he felt he had two faces: a private one and a public one. But he never told her of the man he had killed.

  By the time they buried the Mistress next to those small graves on the hill, Chen Mu could not imagine living without Sahira. He would gladly have done anything for her. He decided to leave his fate to the gods – the universal order of things. After the funeral he waylaid the Baptist pastor and asked that he marry them, the next time the pastor came this way.

  When Sahira came to his bed that night, he told her what he had done. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her, and pulled from under his bed a large Chinese tea caddy he’d rescued from Silverton, which he used to protect his most valued possessions from the mice and the rats. He took the lid off and withdrew the little brush-rest made of translucent apple-green jade

  ‘What’s that?’ Sahira asked, but Chen Mu didn’t answer.

  Cradled in the palm of his hand, shadowed by his fingers from the candlelight, it was difficult to see the intricate carvings, but he didn’t need light – he knew them as well as he knew the contours of Sahira’s body. He closed his eyes and ran his finger over the conical seedpod, feeling each tiny round pointed seedhead, each curve of the leaf, remembering that day so long ago. He knew he would never return to his village, but now, with Sahira at his side, it no longer seemed important.

  Sahira sat up and swung her legs to the side of the bed. ‘Show me …’

  Chen Mu flattened his palm and held the brush-rest close to the candle’s flame.

  ‘Oh Mu! It’s so beautiful!’ Like him she gently ran her fingers across the seed head. ‘What’s it for? Where did you get it?’

  Chen Mu explained to her the use of a brush-rest, then told her the meaning of the lotus. ‘It means rebirth and enlightenment,’ he said, suddenly feeling shy. He placed the brush-rest in her hands then cupped his own around hers. ‘I want you to have it …’

  ‘Mu, are you sure?’

  ‘I want you to have it,’ he repeated, ‘because without you, it has no meaning.’

  8

  Four years after the Mistress’ death Miss Victoria, who had been sent to finishing school for the last year of her education, returned home. She married James Billings, a banker from Sydney, just before the financial crash in Argentina. When the ripples of that crash reached Australia, resulting in half the banks and building societies in the colonies closing their doors forever, and the wool prices dropping by half, Victoria Billings and her husband returned to Walpinya Station, she heavy with child. While the rest of the nation went on strike and starved, Matthew Dawson, with his cattle and mining interests, supported his family and survived.

  For Chen Mu, however,
it was a worrying time.

  ‘Listen to this,’ he told Sahira one evening, reading from The Argus, ‘here’s another union that’s blacklisting us:

  ‘The Furniture Trade Union, alarmed at the competition of the Chinese tradesmen, intends taking action to secure the sympathies of the public against them. The chief cause of complaint is that the Chinese work on Sundays, and that many of them toil in their gardens during daylight, and make furniture at night.

  ‘Of course they’re going to work day and night! Most came here with nothing, and send money home to their families in China, as well as trying to survive here! Is it against the law to work hard now? But listen …

  ‘The unions have appointed a vigilance committee to bring the matter under the notice of the authorities … it proposes to start a blacklist of manufacturers who purchase goods made by Chinese, and to advocate that all furniture shall have a mark showing the factory where it is made.

  ‘Cooks and gardeners in Queensland last month, now furniture makers. They’re slowly squeezing us out of every possible occupation!’

  ‘It may settle down …’

  ‘No, it won’t. Listen …’ Chen Mu reached for a pile of newspapers stacked on the table and flipped through them until he found the one he wanted. ‘Here, only last week: “The Australians point out the high level of comfort, culture, and morality which has been reached among the working classes in Australia and ask if they are not justified in keeping out those who would lower it …

  ‘We are going to lower their culture and morality?! Our culture is thousands of years older than theirs, and we’re going to—’

  ‘Calm down, Mu. Getting angry won’t change things.’

  ‘No, it won’t.’ But he’d read of the legislations being put in force throughout the country to stop further Chinese immigration, and he knew only too well the effects of prejudice. He feared this would soon spread to include Indians as well.

  ‘I really think it’s going to get worse, Sahira. Please, for my sake – don’t do anything to upset anyone. And when there are guests, try not to show yourself …’

  And he followed his own advice.

  By 1894 the depression slowly ended and Victoria returned to Sydney with her husband and two children, the youngest just born.

  On a warm early summer evening some twelve months later, Chen Mu was walking past the side of the homestead on his way back to his hut. On the broad veranda, settled in large wicker chairs, sat Matthew Dawson and a guest. Chen Mu quickly lowered his gaze and hurried past, aware that he needed to remain invisible to the Master and his guest, but as he walked past he heard Dawson’s guest say:

  ‘Went to that Mark Twain fellow’s lecture when I was in Sydney a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Yes, I heard he was touring the colonies,’ Dawson answered. ‘Very amusing fellow, I believe …’

  Chen Mu forced himself to continue walking at the same pace, fighting panic. Where was Samuel Clemens touring, exactly? Chen Mu knew Matthew Dawson to be an avid reader – what was the likelihood that he may invite the writer to Walpinya station for supper? But even as he thought this, he realised how improbable this was. No, Samuel Clemens wasn’t about to come to Walpinya, but it was possible for Chen Mu to be sent to town for supplies, and there come across the man. And he couldn’t take the chance of being recognised. When he came to the end of the veranda he circled the homestead until he was once again within hearing distance of the two men, but unseen.

  ‘… you’ll never get the sugar industry to agree,’ he heard Dawson’s guest say, ‘they’re too worried about losing their Kanaka labour. They say it’ll be the end of the sugar industry.’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll be the end,’ Dawson argued. ‘But don’t they realise how powerless we are if we don’t unite? We wouldn’t have lost New Guinea to the Germans if we’d become a federation before now …’

  But Chen Mu had already heard and read the arguments for and against Federation; he didn’t need to hear more. All he wanted to know was how long Samuel Clemens would be in Australia. He hurried back to his hut and pulled the newspapers from under his bed. He flipped through the papers, page after page, scanning the ‘Lectures, Sermons and Soirées’ sections – sections he never normally read. At last he found an article about Samuel Clemens – it advertised Clemens’ last lecture, stating the man would leave Australia for New Zealand on the 31st of October. He was still safe. He put the papers away and sat on the steps of his hut.

  He watched huge cumulus clouds glow rose and gold as the sun sunk behind the mountain ridge. Somewhere in the distance a koala growled. A flutter of wings, a bird chirped, then silence. Across at the homestead, the windows of each room glowed, one room after the next, as the gaslights were lit.

  Calmer now, Chen Mu re-evaluated his reaction to hearing that Clemens was in Australia. He was being foolish. A gut reaction. He was 33 years old and had worked for the same man for more than a decade, even been promoted to senior kitchen-gardener. No one was looking for him – if they had been, they would have found him by now. No, he was a lucky man, and sometimes it seemed to him that all his ancestors and all the gods in the heavens, approving of his union to Sahira, had woven an impenetrable cocoon around them, to shield them from the misfortunes of the world. And although Chen Mu knew he would never feel completely safe, he also realised now that no one from his past was after him.

  In the quiet of the evening a cicada began its click-click-clickclicking song, to be joined by another, then a dozen more, until the whole night was filled with their distinctive song. Chen Mu smiled, remembering the Journey to the West, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature he’d studied in Connecticut. In it, Hsuan Tsang, the Priest of Tang, is named the Golden Cicada, and is sent with his four disciples to travel west to India in search of Buddhist Sutras. In this story, the symbolic shedding of the cicada skin represents the transformation he goes through as he evolves to enlightenment. Chen Mu wondered how many skins he still had to shed …

  If he were honest with himself, there was only one thing that he didn’t have that would have made his life complete – children of his own. He’d married Sahira on a cool, soft grey day in the last week of autumn, even though the Dawson family was still in mourning. Matthew Dawson had insisted – It’ll do everyone good. A bit of happiness for a change. So Matthew Dawson had given the staff a couple of hours off, and they’d had a simple ceremony under the big mountain ash by the river, then everyone enjoyed the wedding luncheon, set up on long trestle tables at the side of the homestead. Mrs Hannigan had outdone herself in the kitchen, and even Dawson joined them for a while, bringing bottles of wine from his cellar with which to toast the happy couple.

  ‘I wish to make an announcement,’ he’d then said, ‘regarding the employment of this happy couple. I realise that they are now expected to leave my employ – and if she were alive, Mrs Dawson would surely point out the reasons for such rules where I can see none.’ The housekeeper gasped in horror, guessing what was coming, whilst Mrs Hannigan grinned. ‘But sadly, Mrs Dawson is not here to advise me, so I have decided to continue their employ.’ Not waiting to see their reaction, Dawson placed his glass on the table and left.

  ‘I can see your hand in this!’ the housekeeper snapped to Mrs Hannigan before following Dawson back to the homestead, but Mrs Hannigan had already turned her back and was wishing Sahira every happiness.

  During those early years of marriage, after a night of particularly fiery passion, Chen Mu would think surely tonight my seed will take root. But it never did. Sometimes he’d wait until Sahira had fallen asleep, and he’d lift the sheet and gently feel her belly, hoping to find a soft swelling to indicate that his longyearned-for son was indeed growing there. One night Sahira woke and when she realised what he was doing she cried, calling herself a useless barren woman, but he knew it wasn’t her fault. Deep down, he knew it was his punishment for the life he’d taken. He’d felt ashamed, then, of making her cry, and he’d com
forted her, telling her he didn’t need children to make his life complete, and when she finally fell asleep he swore he would never again feel her belly for the child he would never have.

  Chen Mu watched Sahira finish hanging out the wash, then returned to his planting. They’d had a very dry summer, and though it was April already still no rains had come. Many predicted a drought, and Chen Mu agreed with them; he’d seen the level of the river drop, and the water run slower and slower. He wondered if it had ever dried up completely, and what they would do if this was to happen. He looked across at the vegetable beds, already discarding in his mind those that required too much water and would be left to die, should he need to make that decision.

  A movement close by caught his eye – a kangaroo, thin with lacklustre fur, stood on the other side of the vegetable paddock fence, staring at him. Everywhere the grass grew brown then dried, so that wild animals overcame their fear of humans to come close to the homestead where they fed on his crops, and only last week Mrs Hannigan had been frightened first thing in the morning by an emu near the woodheap.

  ‘Waaaa!’ he yelled, waving his arms, and the roo turned and slowly hopped away. Chen Mu looked at the sky. It would soon be night and clouds were sweeping down from the mountains, but no rain would fall. He went to the laundry to collect the last rinse-water for his crops.

  A new century dawned, but with the country in its second year of drought there was nothing to celebrate. One hot February day, Chen Mu was working near the kitchen when he saw a postal officer come galloping to the homestead. What now? he thought as he watched the man dismount, hurry into the house, then leave again at a gallop, his horse kicking up a cloud of dust. The sun beat remorselessly on the shrivelled land, and hot winds blew from the very furnaces of hell. The sound of the horse’s gallop died away, to be replaced by the ever-present drone of blowflies.