Illywhacker_ A Novel Part 23

85.

Colonel Barret had long ago abandoned the manufacture of his Barret car in order to be an agent for King Henry Ford. And now, in 1923, he a.s.sembled us amongst the spare-part bins on the first floor and made a speech to us, the details of which I forget, but the gist of which I still retain.

"It would appear," he told us, "that Mr Ford is strapped for cash, and now wishes me to pay cash in advance for every car I order. In short, he wishes me to finance his venture and I find I am unable to raise the money he requires. I have informed the Ford company of my position and they have cabled me to say that I may no longer be an agent for the company's vehicles. I have therefore decided to close down the business and retire to Rosebud. I am sorry to have let you down."

It was quiet and still inside that dusty s.p.a.ce. Outside we could hear the Chinese children bouncing a ball against the wall. Barret hated that noise but today he sent no one to chase them off.

"I will pay you all your week's wages and a small bonus," he said. "It's the best I can do."

Then he shook hands with all of us. I did not, like the other fellows did, go to the pub and get drunk. I handed in the key of my demonstration model, shook Colonel Barret by the hand, wished him well in his retirement, and caught the tram out to Haymarket. As far as I am concerned that day was the first of the Great Depression.

I was walking down the little lane beside the stockyards when I ran into Horace who was walking the other way, banging a heavy suitcase against his chubby thigh. He was embarra.s.sed to see me.

I told him I had been dismissed and asked him where he was off to.

"I'm sorry," he said, "you have been very kind to me."

I understood that he was leaving. I a.s.sumed it was because of Annette whom I imagined he did not like.

"Sonia will miss you."

"Yes."

"And Charles."

"Yes. I'll miss him."

"Where are you off to?" I pushed my hand into my pocket, in search of jiggling keys which were not there.

Horace s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably and kicked at a stone.

"Sydney," he said.

"I hear it's a beautiful city."

I should have known that something odd was happening. He wanted to make a speech, but he could not get the words together.

"I want to thank you," he said, "and to say I never bore you any ill will or did anything I was ashamed of either."

"Thank you, Horace, but if you're leaving because of Annette, she'll be gone soon."

"Oh no," he said, "not Annette. Just time to be pus.h.i.+ng on."

We shook hands. He picked up his suitcase. He opened his little red mouth, closed it, hesitated, and then went out of my life, trudging up the pot-holed track towards the Haymarket terminus.

I was still three hundred yards from the house. Phoebe and Annette were at the Morris Farman. The motor was turning, running rough with too much choke. The craft was straining at the chocks.

As I watched, Annette threw a bag into the pa.s.senger compartment and pulled out the chocks. Charles came trundling towards her like a little wombat, dense, solid, screaming. My wife opened the throttle. She took a course downwind, away from her bellowing son who tripped and fell. She was lucky the wind was only blowing a knot or two-ten yards from the boundary fence she got the craft into the air.

She left me with two children and a savage poem.

86.

I learned a lot about poets and poetry that day and it is my contention that poets are weak shy people who will not look you in the eye. They are like Horace, scribbling spidery things in dark corners, frightened of their fathers, the law, and everything else. They are women who expect their husbands to be mind-readers. They are resentful and cruel. They spend sunny days planning dark revenges where they will punish those who wish them well.

They sit like spiders in the centre of their pretty webs. They are harsh judges with wigs and buckled shoes. They place black caps upon their heads but let others attend the executions for them.

The poem that taught me so much is not the set of rhyming words I found clasped to the king parrots' cage, skewered with a pin from Sonia's dirty napkin. This was just the mud-map, just enough to make sure I did not miss the turning to the Scenic View. While Charles tugged at my trouser legs and bellowed I stared at this crumpled paper as if I could take in its meaning by the sheer force of my will. It would not reveal itself. It contained nothing I recognized, neither the word Badgery or Ford, and it was two hours before Molly arrived to read it to me.

No, this was not the poem. She had no talent for poetry, never did.

Witness: King Parrot Then beauty were declared a crime King Parrot locked with key Barred and caged on wasted land Oh angry jewel. Desolate. Ennui.

Do not rush to your bookshop for more of the same. There is none. Phoebe's great poem was not built from words, but from corrugated iron and chicken wire. She did not even build it herself but had me, her labourer, saw and hammer and make it for her. She had me rhyme a cage with a room, a bird with a person, feathers with skin, my home with a gaol, myself with a warder, herself with the splendid guileless creatures who had preened themselves so lovingly on the roof on one sad, lost, blue-skied day.

And it does not matter that she sold the Morris Farman for one hundred pounds and used the money to buy a dress for the Arts Ball in Sydney in 1924. Nor is it of any importance that she spent the rest of her life putting all her wiles and energies into being kept, cared for, loved or that the love she gave in return was of such a brittle quality that Annette Davidson would finally take her own life rather than endure its cutting edges.

It is of no importance that she would reveal herself to be self-indulgent, selfish, admiring herself like a budgie in a cage.

She was a liar, but who cares? The poem was made, set hard, could never be dismantled or unravelled, although on that dreadful night in September 1923 I did not understand, and battled against its timbers with an axe, howling more loudly than my terrified son. I did not guess how long I was destined to live with it.

BOOK 2.

1.

In a moment I must tell you how, competing with my son for the affection of a woman, I misused the valuable art I had learned from Goon Tse Ying and brought misfortune on my daughter. I would rather not repeat it. It is bad enough to have done it and I would as soon tear it up, wipe my a.r.s.e with it, hide it under my lumpy mattress or feed it to my neighbour, the three-legged goanna with bad breath.

Yet, I see, I can postpone it a moment. For first I must tell you how I learned the art itself. I refer to the ability to become invisible, and you may wonder, if I really did possess such an unlikely power, why I should not have already used it to my own advantage.

To explain this I must go back to the days when my father's horses had to be shot at the bottom of the Punt Road Hill and I, a self-appointed orphan, was living, thin, half wild, cunning as a s.h.i.+t-house rat amidst the crates and spoiled vegetables at the back of the Eastern Market. I cannot have lived there for more than a week, but it seems like months that I lay amidst that stinking refuse, making tunnels and nests for myself at night, lying sleepless listening to the rats, s.h.i.+vering amidst the smell of bad cabbage in the early morning, peering through gaps at the family of Chinese whose stall was next to my midden heap. They knew I was there. They left me a bowl of milk on the first day but I would not touch it. I was my father's son. My head was full of stories about John Chinaman: opium, slavery, how they ate the hands of Christian babies.

In the end, hunger might have broken the impa.s.se, but certainly the Wongs, whose stall it was, would never have. They were nervous, polite and law-abiding. Their cousin Goon, however, was a different man and it was he who strode right in, knocking crates aside with his gold-capped stick, who grabbed me by the scruff of my dirty neck and lifted me, screaming and kicking, into the air: pale, skinny, hatchet-faced with hunger. I bit his hand and made it bleed. He laughed out loud, this giant in a b.u.t.terfly collar and gold-rimmed gla.s.ses. I wet myself in terror.

I sometimes wonder if Goon would have taken me in if I had displayed less terror, if his compulsion to prove his benign intentions was not what any human will feel when confronted with a petrified wild animal one wishes to help-the mistaken terror is an insult to our good motives, a goad to greater efforts. But Goon, in any case, was a man driven by a desire to prove himself civilized to the English he despised. He adopted their dress when it suited him and spoke their language without a trace of accent. He was a giant of a man, not in the sense that he might tower over you, my long-limbed reader. Oh, he was large for a Chinese, but that is not the point-he towered over every man I ever met in the size of his spirit, his indignation, his energy, his laugh, and his ability to drink a tumbler of rough brandy in a single gulp.

He was not one of the Chinese who wrote to the legislature: "Dear kind sirs, we the Chinese miners do beg you to treat us fairly as we most respectfully beg you to do. We work hard and mean no harm ..." or words to that effect.

For these Chinese, Goon had nothing but scorn.

"Roll up," he would taunt them, "roll up."

When he became an old man with a successful business in Grafton, these facts about his younger days would cause him embarra.s.sment and he would deny it all. He joined ChineseAustralian a.s.sociations and had grandchildren with names like Heather and Walter. He ate chops and sausages, roast beef on Sundays, and the only invisibility he would acknowledge was that which comes from dressing like everyone else.

The Goon of old age is not worth a pinch of s.h.i.+t. It is the forty-year-old Goon we want and to reach him I must walk down Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, as it was in 1896, past drays piled high with wicker baskets, s.h.i.+vering men with long coats and pigtails, past Mr Choo, the fortune-teller with the clever canary, to the worn wooden stoop that led to Wong's cafe. There was no sign at Wong's to proclaim its business, no window to display its wares. There was simply the stoop where old Mrs Wong sat in all weathers, breathing heavily and plucking ducks, the feathers of which drifted down Little Bourke Street and caught themselves in the nostrils of indignant mares, fresh from Port Melbourne with another load of travel-stained Chinese. Over the stoop was a small carved timber arch, its wood grey and cracked. Behind the arch was a trellised veranda, and behind this wooden skirt Wong, his family, and his customers hid their business from the English.

As you came in the door there was a small office on the right where the younger Mr Wong sat at his books, crowded in upon by bundles of goods, some in crates, some wrapped in raffia. There was the smell of dried fish, but also of steel, of grease. Long-handled shovels leaned against jute sacks of mushrooms criss-crossed with sunlight from the latticed window. You would think there was no order here until you looked at Wong's book and saw the neat rows of Chinese characters and Arabic figures and watched his bony fingers as they worked the abacus.

Further along there was the kitchen where Hing butchered and giggled and beyond that the dining room.

And there is Goon at the little table by the courtyard door. "Roll up," he calls, and everyone, all the Wongs, all the lonely single men, all nod and smile at Goon Tse Ying who was a rich man even then and respected because of it.

He had a great moon face with a high forehead and thin black hair that lifted in the slightest breeze. He had big shoulders, strong calves (which he displayed when called upon to sit) and, in Wong's at least, amongst his own kind, a voice like a gravel-crusher. Although he was in his late thirties when he adopted me it is misleading to mention it because he could look much younger and-when dressed in that formidable English suit-much older.

"I will teach you everything," Goon told me. "I will teach you how to skin a crow by blowing air into it with a piece of bamboo. I will teach you how to fight with your feet, my little Englishman," he hissed.

I sat in Wong's and was terrified. My head was full of my father's visions, his cannon b.a.l.l.s, his patented breach locks, his naked coastline. His blue prophet's eyes looked at the ducks' feet Goon gave me to eat and saw, instead, the hands of babies.

I was not alone in my nervousness. The other Chinese did not want me there either. They did not approve of Goon Tse Ying adopting Englishmen. They were frightened of the consequences but Goon was a rich man and a natural force whose very laugh could move the bra.s.s chimes above the family table.

"I will teach you how to use garlic and ginger to remove pains from the head. I will teach you to read and write. I will teach you everything. Five languages," Goon Tse Ying said, "because I was once an orphan too. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said.

I had never sat at a table without a cloth. I had never heard mah-jong tiles clatter. I had never seen children treated kindly, touched, petted and embraced so readily. The Wong children were all younger than I was. They came and stared at me with huge brown eyes. When the sight of me made them cry they were not slapped. And-ducks' feet and dried fish included-it was this that was the most exotic thing in Wong's cafe.

"You will come to the herbalist's with me and I will make you a scholar of herbs. I will teach you to shoe a horse. I will teach you to make money. You will polish your boots like I show you. Why am I doing this for you, little Englishman?"

"Because you were an orphan, sir."

"Roll up," roared Goon Tse Ying. "Roll up, roll up. Look at them," he indicated the men playing mah-jong in the corner. "They are in gaol. They have locked themselves up in Wong's. They have made themselves prisoners. They give Wong all their money and Wong feeds them and buys what they need at the shops. They cannot speak English. They do not know what 'roll up' means. I say it and they smile. They nod at me. They think I am moon-touched, but they know I am rich. They respect me and think I am dangerous. I buy them presents because they are lonely and unhappy. Next week I will give poor Hing fifty pounds so he can have a bride come out from China. He does not know. You watch."

"Hing," he shouted in English. "Next month I give you fifty pounds."

Hing, sitting on a chair by the kitchen servery, looked up from his newspaper, took the sodden cigarette from his mouth and gave a stained smile.

"See," Goon Tse Ying said. "He does not know what I am saying. He does not know the meaning of 'fifty pounds' or 'roll up' either. Tell me, my pet Englishman, what is the meaning of 'roll up'?"

I didn't know.

"Pour me brandy, little Englishman, and eat your soup. It will warm your heart and make you forget this terrible country. Why am I kind to you?"

"Because you were an orphan, sir."

"No," Goon said quietly. His voice became soft, amber, vaporous as the brandy on his foreign breath. "It is to show I am not a barbarian like them."

In my confusion I thought he was referring to the Chinese.

"You will sleep here," Goon Tse Ying told me. "I have arranged with Wong. You will share a room with old Hing and his nephew. Hing will cook your meals. In the morning I will come and get you and we will sit at the herbalist's. He does not speak English but he is a good herbalist. I am helping him out for a while, to translate for him. He is a silly man to have bought the business with no English and I don't know what will happen to him when I leave."

My bedroom was on the other side of the muddy courtyard, a long lean-to made from corrugated iron with an earth floor. I could not shut my eyes. Hing coughed all night. His nephew snored. I cried in the dark, a.s.sailed by garlic and the sweet smell of Hing's evening pipe.

When, at last, I did sleep, I dreamed the Chinese came and ate my hands.

2.

The herbalist was Mr Chin, the uncle of the Mr Chin to whom I would later sell my snakes. He was very handsome with his blue waving hair and his gold tooth but when he saw me his forehead scarred itself with a frown as messy as a bulldog's. Goon Tse Ying listened to what Mr Chin had to say and then he explained to me that I would not be permitted to sit in the consulting room. This was because all of Mr Chin's patients were English gentlemen and ladies and they would be embarra.s.sed, Goon told me sternly, to repeat their complaints in front of a boy.

So I never learned the art of herbalism, nor, for that matter, did I master any of the five languages Goon had promised, although I did learn to count from one to ten in Hokein.

Goon was neither embarra.s.sed nor apologetic about this setback. He announced that I was to return to the Eastern Markets and learn about vegetables. He himself had been a hawker in the Palmer River rush in Northern Queensland.

It is the nature of childhood to continually encounter things one does not understand, to be thrown here, to be put there, to offend without meaning to, to be praised without understanding why, and I do not remember being unduly unhappy to be sent to the Eastern Markets.

I remember the cold, the paraffin lamps in the early mornings, the chatter of Wong Li Ho, the spitting of Nick Wong. I remember the red-faced Scot with big ears who roared the virtues of his cabbages from dawn till afternoon, the gaunt women with red fingers protruding from their dirty mittens. I remember knocking my chilblains against boxes of cauliflowers. I remember bags of potatoes I could not lift. But most of all I remember that no one hit me and that when noon arrived I was permitted to depart and then I would walk up through the busy streets to Nicholson Street in Carlton and wait for Goon Tse Ying. When the last consultation was finished he would take me by the hand and escort me back to the cafe within whose walls, it seemed, there was contained everything in the world I would need to know.

In the muddy courtyard, amidst indignant hens, he not only taught me how to fight with my feet but also how to skin a crow by putting a nick in its neck, inserting a bamboo rod between skin and flesh, and blowing. Both of these skills were useful to me in later life. He took me to the kitchen and showed me how to make soup from the crow. He sat me on his knee while Hing butchered a pig and showed me how every part of it could be used for food.

He took me to the front office to instruct me in abacus, but, finding Wong busy with it, demonstrated the pressure points of the body instead, showing me how these could be used to immobilize an opponent. While Wong entered the single men's wages into his ledger, Goon Tse Ying taught me to stand in such a way that I would appear bigger than I was, or, conversely, how to appear smaller. Wong did not complain once. There was such clutter in this dark front room, such a tangle of rope and canvas, incense for jossing, shoes for horses, even a monkey foetus in a bottle of green liquid whose purpose I never discovered, such a disorder of goods, such a tangle of raffia, that the presence of a noisy rich man and a quiet sharp-faced boy did nothing extra to distract him from the wonderful order of his ledgers.

In the dark pa.s.sage, looked upon by the alien visage of the King of England, Goon taught me the different accents of this King's language and how to use each one. He also instructed me in the importance of clean shoes and how a pair of very s.h.i.+ny shoes can give the appearance of great wealth even if the rest of one's clothes are nothing but rags.

And in the steamy dining room, with rain combing the brick-damp air outside, he taught me history and geography.

"Roll up," he called to the other Chinese. "Look at them, they grin, they do not know. If they were at Lambing Flat they would be dead men. They would hear the English calling to each other: roll up, roll up, and they would go on with their work. What is Lambing Flat, little Englishman?"

"I don't know."

"Of course you don't know. Lambing Flat is near Young in New South Wales. It was a big rush. I was there. We were all there. Roll up, roll up, that is what the English miners called to each other. May you never hear it. May you die never having heard the English come in their horses and carts. They carried the English flag, an ugly thing. They had a band. They had pipes and drums and they came in their thousands. They did not like the Chinese, little Englishman, because we were clever. They sold us their old mines. They thought they would cheat us, but we made money. They drew a line across the diggings and said we must not cross it. Still we made money. We worked hard, even us children. My father was sick. He had ulcers on his feet, and still he worked. My mother worked too, alongside the men. Her feet had been bound. They were tiny pretty things, but she carried rocks in baskets and helped make the big water race. But the Englishmen thought it was all their country and all their gold and they played their band and came out to get us. They drove the Chinese down the river bank. They had axe handles and picks. They ran over my uncle Han in a cart and broke his leg and they broke my father's head open with a water pipe. You will meet people who say that none of this happened. They will say they gave John Chinaman a fright, but they are liars. Roll up, roll up," he bellowed, "roll up. Kill John Chinaman," he roared at the Wongs, the Wongs' giggling children, the dark-eyed single men with no backsides in their English trousers. "My father's brains," he whispered while the thin hair lifted in the draught from the courtyard, "like in the pig Hing cut up. Pour me brandy. What would you do?"

"I would run," I said.

"My uncle Han ran. They had horses and carts. They ran their wheel across him."