As the Earth Turns Silver (9 page)

It was Mrs McKechnie who first told Yung of petitions for Lionel Terry's release. She pointed out articles in the newspapers, letters to the editor. Soon every Chinese in Wellington, in the whole damned country, knew. Yung organised a counter-petition. He wrote the Chinese version and got Annie Wong to translate it into English.

‘This is the man who murdered one of us in Haining Street,' he told Mei-lin. ‘He'll do it again without hesitation.'

‘But I don't know how to write,' Mei-lin said. ‘I don't even know how to sign my name.' Her hand rested on her pregnant belly.

‘Make a mark like this,' Yung said, drawing a cross on the back of his hand. ‘I'll write your name beside it.'

‘Why ask her?' Shun said, as he walked past carrying a box of oranges.

‘Shun Goh,' Yung said, ‘does not Liang Ch'i-chao say if China's 200 million men are joined by 200 million women, then what can stand in our way? We are few in this land. How much more do we need our women?'

Shun shrugged and carried the box into the shop.

Mei-lin took the pen and made a wavering cross on the petition. She smiled at Yung, who did not meet her eyes. Yung could see why his brother bought her.

How many Chinese women were there in this town? Fifteen? Maybe not even that. Even when you included Mei-lin and Annie Wong and Cousin Gok-nam's wife and the babies and young girls.

There were
hundred men's women
, dirty uncouth
gweilo
women who sold their services, and a few of the men went to them, or the women came directly to the men. But who wanted to share his woman?

As Yung trimmed sack after sack of cauliflowers and cabbages, he sighed. Sometimes when he looked at Mei-lin, when he heard the softness of her voice, when he lay at night alone, he felt an ache. Of desolation.

‘So, do you play sport?' Katherine asked as he weighed her carrots. She mimed running, kicking a ball, bowling, then laughed at her own clumsiness. Just as well Robbie had plenty of friends to play with. The speed of his bowling terrified her.

Mr Wong laughed too. He admired her lack of embarrassment – she was so . . . unlike
Tongyan
. ‘This Games, what do you call?' he asked.

‘The Olympics,' she said again. ‘Women are participating for the first time. Mrs Newman – my boss – she celebrated by giving me a glass of sherry and the rest of the day off.'

She giggled. (She didn't usually drink.) ‘So, do you?'

He looked at her, puzzled.

‘Do you play sport? And don't ask me to go through all that again!'

‘No horley foe of moose,' he said, smiling.

She frowned.

He motioned for her to wait, went out the back of the shop and came back with a small orange book,
Glossary of English Phrases with Chinese Translations
, printed in Shanghai. He opened it and showed her.

Hoary foe of the Muse, the
, she read. ‘The Time, who is generally represented as an old man with hoary hair . . .' She burst out laughing, then saw the look on his face and stopped herself quickly. ‘Just say,
I don't have time
,' she said. ‘Keep it very simple.'

Now when she came into the shop he would ask her about this phrase or that and they would communicate with pidgin English, wild gestures, drawings on the unprinted edges of newspapers, even his loud Chinese that she never understood.

‘Please
collect
talking,' he said. ‘I want talking
ploper
English.' And he gave her such an earnest look, then such a mischievous grin, she laughed.

‘All right,' she said. ‘Speak slowly and try to say
rrrr
.
Prrroper
English. I want to speak
prrroper
English.'

‘I want to speak
ploper
English.'

‘
Prrroper
English.'

‘
Plroper
English.'

‘That's getting better. You need to
prrractice
. Say it over and over till you get it
rrright
.
Prrractice
makes
perrrfect
.'

‘
Plactice
makes
perfect
.' He grinned. ‘Look,' he said, opening his little orange book. ‘
Take at one's word
. Yes?'

Katherine nodded, her eyes slipping to the opposite page.
Take a shine to
– To take a fancy or liking to (S.); then there were strange markings she couldn't read, she presumed they were Chinese, and then the example: The coachman said he had
taken
quite
a shine to
the cook.

Katherine blushed. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘you can say that.'

He worked hard. Katherine could see it. Hear it. He remembered the phrases she taught him; his accent became less pronounced. When he took his time he could almost say,
Ernest Rutherford
,
Roderick the rat catcher, practice makes perfect
.

She noticed that when he moved across the shop floor she could not hear his footfalls, just the slightest ruffle of his clothing and her own shoes clipping the linoleum. His eyes were dark, so dark that after a time she found she could see her own reflection. This was unsettling, seeing herself in the eyes of another.

One day when she walked into the shop and Mr Wong, the elder, came out to serve her, she realised with dismay how disappointed she was. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Wong,' she said, trying to smile, and at that moment she discovered she did not know their names, that she had no way to distinguish them except as young Mr Wong; tall Mr Wong; Mr Wong with the western hairstyle; Mr Wong and the little orange book; talking, laughing Mr Wong . . .

And then he came out also, carrying a box of spring carrots still with their leaves attached, and suddenly she could not help but smile.

‘
Dang ngor lei la. Lei tau ha la
,' he said to his brother, and she did not understand a word, but the elder Mr Wong gave her a strange look and went back inside.

She chose three bananas, half a cauliflower and a small bag of potatoes. He smiled and picked out a bunch of carrots, told her they were very good, very fresh. He wrapped them with the leaves exposed and held them out to her with both hands. ‘No money,' he said.

‘Better to say,
No charge
,' she said. ‘
No money
means
you
have no money, not that I don't need to pay.'

She took the carrots, feeling as if the feathery tops spilling out of the newspaper were spring blooms. Why was she so light-headed? He was a Chinaman. A sallow-faced, squinty-eyed foreigner. The dregs of society. Heavens, he didn't even make it into society. And yet when she was with him she forgot who he was. After all, he had a strong, almost European nose. He was tall. He didn't
really
look Chinese.

Wong Chung-yung

My heart is a string of firecrackers. It explodes at random: a mixed bag of Tom Thumbs, Double Happys, Mighty Cannons. Sky rockets whiz and flare, sparklers, Jumping Jacks head over heels. Not even Spring Festival, yet I hold all of this within me. I press my lips in a crooked smile, try to stop a songburst, a whoop, a torrent of blessings and curses.

I cannot understand this.

All for a devil woman. A devil woman.

Her nose is too big, and her breasts, and her feet. She doesn't walk like a woman. She has red devil hair. And yet she has kind, sad, beautiful blue-green eyes and full, luscious lips – and she calls me by name. Mr Wong, she says, as if I am a man and not a Chinaman.

Firecrackers are to frighten away devils. But she walks into the shop, and these explosions go off inside me, and she does not run away.

Today she comes with her daughter. I show them the best apples. ‘Red Delicious nice and red but what is taste? No taste
la
! Red Delicious soft, like old wet cake. But Jonathan, crisp and juicy. Good taste. Try some
la
, please try.'

I cut off slices and wait for them to smile, to nod in agreement. She turns and calls to her son. Only then do I see him. He loiters by the doorway and does not want to come in. She insists. Taste apple, she tells him. Come and choose fruit.

I hold open the brown paper bag and let her daughter choose four, five, six apples, weighing them on the scales. ‘One and threepence,' I say, adding one more apple to the bag, swinging it round, twisting the corners like cat's ears.

‘Robbie,' she is calling. And at last he comes, holding a diabolo his father gave him. ‘This was a craze,' she says, ‘everyone played it.' But she doesn't know how.

‘We play in China,' I say. ‘Uncle bring from Peking.' And I'm crazy,
going crazy
– I show her.

I flick the string and send the wooden reel spinning into the air.

When I was a boy I could throw the diabolo high, do a cartwheel, a somersault or a backward flip, and then I'd catch it again. But now my body moves this much more slowly. I can still throw it in the air and catch it behind me, I know I can. But this shop is small and the ceiling low: the reel would plummet – a bird struck by stone.

The boy stares at me with a curled lip, a lip you could rest an oil bottle on. He holds one hand in his pocket, and now I know what it is. I have seen this boy. With his fatboy friend. They run behind horses and scoop up horse shit with iron shovels. ‘Penny a bucket! Penny a bucket!' they shout. ‘Do yer garden good!' I know this boy. I know what he hides in his pocket.

A grey day, brown dust, the gust of a northerly. Fraser's milk cart, the tired old horse pulling the steel urns. The rock came out of nowhere. The houses across the street, the horses, and kicked-up, blown-up dust. My beautiful window with the best polished fruit: the apples turned to show the reddest cheeks, the oranges, bananas and pears. My shatter-webbed window, my gorgeous fruit, sliced with glass. I ran out and there he was, smirking, running away, slingshot in his hand.

‘Thank you, Mr Wong,' she says. ‘Say thank you, Edie, Robbie.'

The girl hesitates, says thank you. I give the diabolo to her.

Mrs McKechnie. Kind-heart, bad-luck woman. Mother of a redhead, bad-heart boy. Wife of a dead man.

Edie was sure Robbie had taken her teddy bear. Where had he hidden it? Had he ripped off his head like the porcelain doll Nana gave her? Not that she particularly cared for Minnie, apart from as the recipient of imaginary lifesaving operations. When Robbie fractured her skull there was no blood or white or grey matter, no interesting convolutions of the frontal lobe, only shards of painted china and a disappointing hollowness.

But Teddy was different. Everybody who was anybody had their own teddy. Even Mrs Newman had one – she took him to the opera. Mrs Newman told her he was named for the US President.

While Robbie was out with Billy, Edie searched his room. Under his bed amid dirty shoes, cricket balls, wickets, marbles, a football and dead spider, she found three very smelly socks in varying shades of brown and black, which she picked up between the tips of her thumb and forefinger and placed under his pillow. She washed her hands, came back and searched his wardrobe. At the back, under cricket pads, gloves, a slingshot, train set and old jersey, she found a cardboard box marked in large black capitals:

R. D. MCKECHNIE
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
KEEP OUT!

Inside were two slim soft-covered booklets –
The Shadow
and
God or Mammon?
– and a collection of tracts, home-made cards and letters:

Sunnyside Lunatic Asylum,
29 August 1909

Dear Robbie, – Thanks for yours of the 19 August. I remember your father well and was sad to hear of his passing. I still recall his hospitality and excellent conversation. You must not let this loss set you back, as would be the case of lesser mortals. Your father was a true Briton and you would do well to follow his example.

I enclose my books and a card which I have made for your instruction.

With every good wish,

Yours as ever,

Lionel Terry.

The Shadow
had a watercolour on its cover, all black and grey and off-whites. In the top left corner, a man with mad, pinprick eyes flew in the air, holding a scimitar high over his head, ready to sweep down from the clouds and strike. Below, only spires, domed roofs and crosses were visible. Inside were the words:

To
my Brother Britons
I Dedicate this Work
L. T.
July, 1904

then a prayer, an introduction which continued for eleven pages, and a long rhyming poem full of words like
vile traducer
,
plague-fraught offal of the earth
and
stinking swamp of black iniquity
.

A card read:

Many fools have many moods,
And follies great and small,
But the fools who swallow foreign foods,
Are the biggest fools of all!

Another:

The patriot is governed by his brain, the traitor by his stomach.

Edie put the cards, letters, everything back in the box in exactly the same order. Replaced the box in the wardrobe.

That night she found Teddy. He was in the top drawer of her dresser, one of her own stockings pulled over his head.