The Yellow Papers

by Dominique Wilson

  With the dams dried up and the river now no more than a stagnant waterhole, Matthew Dawson had ridden out with his men each morning, and rifle shots had silenced the pitiful lowing of thirst-crazed cattle. Those remaining – the breeding stock – he’d taken to graze the long paddocks. Now the air stank of rotting carcasses, and each evening great rolling clouds descended from the mountains, and though the air crackled with electricity no rain ever fell.

  From the house came the raised voice of the housekeeper. Chen Mu put down his spade and went to investigate.

  ‘Well, I’m not staying and that’s a fact,’ she said as he entered the kitchen. ‘My sister in Adelaide’s been on at me to join her, ever since her husband died. That’s where I’m going. Miss Victoria or the little ones could be carrying it, and you can’t tell me otherwise.’ She turned and pushed past Chen Mu.

  Mrs Hannigan was sitting at the table, tears rolling down her face, the thin pale yellow paper of a telegram just visible in her clenched hand. Sahira stood behind her, comforting the old woman.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  Sahira took the telegram from Mrs Hannigan’s hand, smoothed it flat and handed it to Chen Mu.

  ‘Miss Victoria … Mrs Billings I mean – she’s coming back. With the children. They’ve got the plague up in Sydney.’

  ‘Those poor babies!’ Mrs Hannigan cried. ‘The plague!’

  ‘But they haven’t got it, have they?’

  Sahira shook her head. ‘That’s why they’re coming.’ She put more wood in the stove and put on the kettle. ‘Come on, Mrs Hannigan. They’ll be here tomorrow, and those little ones will have hollow bellies.’

  The cook nodded and dried her eyes. If those little ones got sick, it wouldn’t be through lack of food.

  Victoria returned to her father’s property with her children – Robert, now nine years old, and Rose, three years younger. She also brought her personal maid and Winnie, the children’s nurse. James Billings had recently been made manager of his bank, and so felt it important he stay in Sydney.

  With the housekeeper gone, Sahira was promoted and Nora took over Sahira’s role. Lizzie, a young girl from Melbourne, was taken on as skivvy. These extra people and her new responsibilities gave Sahira much extra work, and she would often come home pale and exhausted.

  Chen Mu too found his workload increased. Hans had disappeared without warning the day after Victoria’s return, and McBain, the head gardener, was getting old and senile – more a hindrance than a help. There was more wood needed for the stove than before, more rabbits to shoot for meat, and there were times Chen Mu wondered if the crops in the kitchen garden and glasshouses would last the season, and memories of the famine he’d experienced in China haunted his mind. Mrs Hannigan, however, was in her element. All day she cooked, and spoiled the children to her heart’s content, while in Sydney rats spread the bubonic plague first through The Rocks then on towards Darling Harbour, and outwards towards Woolloomooloo and Paddington, Redfern and Manly.

  And with the plague came renewed presumptions that the Chinese were at the root of it all. Chen Mu read with trepidation newspaper articles approving Honolulu’s way of dealing with the problem – they had simply burnt the whole Chinese quarter to the ground. But eventually the plague was contained, and local residents were employed to disinfect, burn or demolish the infected areas. When the city was once more declared safe, Victoria Billings and her children returned to Sydney.

  On the first day of the next year a new country was born when Australia became a federation, and barely three weeks later, on the other side of the world in the Old Country, an old queen died. But for the people of Walpinya, this news had little effect, for still the drought continued.

  9

  ‘Why do you want to scare the birds?’

  Chen Mu looked at the small boy standing before him with hands on hips, frowning fiercely.

  ‘Because, Master Edward, they eat your strawberries.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Chen Mu buttoned the jacket of the scarecrow he was making. Edward Billings was nearly four years old and Victoria’s youngest. He was also expert at escaping Winnie, his nursemaid, to find Chen Mu, whom he’d follow all day long if allowed. Sahira believed Edward to be lonely.

  Edward Billings was born two years after The Great Drought – or the Federation Drought, as some called it. It had lasted until 1903 – seven years of heatwaves, bushfires and dust storms that spread through the eastern part of Australia, from Queensland to Victoria and even to South Australia and Tasmania. Then, a further two years after that, when Victoria Billings’ husband died in his sleep, she’d placed her two older children in boarding school and returned with Edward to her father’s homestead. Matthew Dawson was now sixty and had never remarried, but he still loved to entertain – he appreciated having his daughter as hostess to his guests. For young Edward, however, it was a lonely world populated only by adults.

  The first time Edward had realised Chen Mu was not a Westerner, he’d asked him why he looked different, and Chen Mu had explained that he came from a country far away, where everyone looked like him. The child had nodded and accepted Chen Mu’s answer, but it had led to more and more questions so that Chen Mu told him about life in his village and the way people did things there, though he wondered at times if the boy understood any of it. But Edward still wanted to know why people looked different in other parts of the world. At a loss for an acceptable explanation, Chen Mu had told him instead the story of Creation, as his mother had told him when he’d been no older than Edward.

  ‘The Great Potter, he went to a lot of trouble to make the world a beautiful place, to make everything just right. And he was happy with what he had done – all the beautiful trees and flowers, the mountains and valleys and deserts, the birds and the fish. Even the tiniest insect was beautifully done.’ He’d picked a ladybird from a rose and put it in the boy’s hand. ‘Don’t you think so?’ and Edward had nodded eagerly as he watched the ladybird crawl up his arm.

  ‘Then he decided it was time to make people, because what’s a world without people? So he took some clay and moulded it, and as he was the Greatest Potter of all, that too was perfect. So he placed it in the Celestial Kiln to bake.

  ‘But while the clay was baking he was called away to attend to something. He was away for a long time, and when he came back he found the clay burned to a dark brown.’

  ‘Mrs Hannigan burned the bread once. She gave it to the pigs.’

  Chen Mu smiled. ‘Well, the Great Potter didn’t throw those away, or give them to any pig – they were dark brown and he thought they were beautiful, so he polished them up and found a place on earth where he knew they would be happy. Then he took some more clay and started again.

  ‘This time, when he came to take them out of the kiln, he found that someone had let the fires go out, so that the clay was still white – just like you.’

  ‘Like me!’

  ‘Yes, like you. He didn’t want to waste that clay either, so he found a place for them too.’

  ‘You forgot to say we were beautiful too!’

  ‘Of course the white clay was beautiful – everything the Great Potter made was always beautiful. But he decided to make one more lot, and this time he watched the kiln closely and fed the fires carefully, and he refused to leave, until at last he took the clay out and saw it was a beautiful golden colour. He was so pleased with that lot that he decided to place them in the most beautiful place he’d made on earth. And so he placed them in China.’

  ‘That’s not fair! Why didn’t he put us there?’

  Chen Mu hadn’t known what to answer. He hadn’t thought of how Edward would view the end of the story. ‘Because …’

  ‘Because,’ Sahira’d answered, coming up behind them to cut flowers for the house, ‘Chen Mu didn’t tell you the whole story. Every place was equally beautiful. It’s just that the people thought theirs was the most beautiful of all.’

  Edward had run off the
n, satisfied with her answer and excited at having a new story to tell Winnie.

  One day Edward found the dairy cat had given birth to kittens, one of which was stillborn. He’d taken it to Chen Mu, who had buried the tiny body and told Edward about funerals in China.

  ‘Funerals last a long time in China,’ he’d explained. ‘Forty-nine days, if you can afford it. But the first thing you must do is cover all the statues of deities with red paper, then hide all the mirrors.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ahh! Because it’s very bad luck to see the coffin in the mirror.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because whoever see the reflection of the coffin will soon have a death in his family. And no one wants that …’

  ‘No! You don’t want that!’

  ‘No, you don’t. And then you have to look after the person who died.’

  ‘But they’re dead already!’

  ‘Yes, they are. But we want to make it easy for them to get into heaven, so we clean them, and dress them in their best clothes. We even bring them food.’

  ‘That’s silly!’

  ‘You might think it’s silly, Master Edward, but we don’t. We also say prayers, and play music on flutes and gongs and trumpets. Yes, there’s a lot to do when somebody dies …’

  ‘What else do you do?’

  ‘Well, we burn incense, and then there’re the petitions to the Gods—’

  ‘What’s a pepition?’

  ‘Pe-ti-tions. They’re like letters to the gods that the priests write on pieces of yellow paper. There are a whole lot of different ones, depending on how old the person who died was, how he died, whether he was a good man or not – all sorts of different letters. And the very first one you burn is the one before the person has died, to let the king of Hades know that a new soul will soon be coming to him.’

  ‘You burn them?’

  ‘Yes, of course! Think about it, Master Edward – what happens to the smoke when you burn a piece of paper?’

  ‘It goes up.’

  Chen Mu did not comment, but kept looking at Edward, waiting. Edward frowned, thinking, then ‘Ohhh! That’s how they get the letters!’, and the small boy had then insisted they burn scraps of yellow paper on which he’d scribbled his own meaningless signs, so that this kitten, too, would reach Heaven with ease.

  And still the boy had wanted to know more, so that Chen Mu dug deep in his memory and told him stories and myths he remembered from so long ago.

  Chen Mu finished making the scarecrow then stood it up to face the boy.

  ‘Shall we paint a face on him?’

  Edward nodded. ‘A monkey’s face!’

  Chen Mu hid a smile. A week earlier Edward had thrown a rock at the hothouse in a fit of temper, and Chen Mu had told him the story of Sūn Wùkōng, the Monkey King – one of Hsuan Tsang’s four disciples who accompanied him on his journey to the West. When Chen Mu told Edward how Buddha had pinned Sūn Wùkōng under a mountain for five centuries as a punishment for his bad behaviour, the small boy had run screaming to Winnie, convinced Chen Mu would do the same to him. So Chen Mu then told him the rest of the story, and since then Edward brought up monkeys at every opportunity.

  ‘And “a monkey” is …?’

  ‘Yìzhï hizi’

  ‘Yìzhï hóuzi’

  ‘Yìzhï hóuzi then.’

  Chen Mu nodded and went to the shed for paint and a brush.

  ‘How’s that, Master Edward?’ he asked when he’d finished painting the face. Edward nodded seriously. ‘You know,’ Chen Mu added as he carried the scarecrow to the strawberry patch, ‘there are those in my village who believe the monkey can keep witches and goblins away.’

  Not hearing a response, he stopped and looked back. Edward was staring at him round-eyed, his mouth forming an ‘o’ of astonishment. Chen Mu continued walking and Edward ran to catch up.

  ‘Winnie will be looking for you, Master Edward,’ he said when the scarecrow was finally positioned, ‘and I have to get cleaned up for lunch.’ The boy shrugged and made no move to return to the homestead.

  As he made his way to the cottage he and Sahira had occupied since he’d replaced McBain as head-gardener, Chen Mu took in the changes that had occurred since the Great Drought. He would never forget the sound of shrivelled grass crunching under his feet, the cracked flaking clay sucked dry by the sun. Australia’s wheat crop had been all but lost, and everywhere dust heaps that had once been pastures had blown away to reveal the tangled roots of trees.

  Stock numbers had fallen drastically as only the best of the breeders were kept, and butchers around the country went out of business through lack of meat. Those with cash bought up leaseholds in different regions to reduce risk – they said the Kidman brothers now had land all the way from the Barkly tableland near the Gulf of Carpentaria right through to Maree in South Australia – but for most there was just hopelessness.

  Then one day by the creek banks Chen Mu noticed long armies of ants carrying their eggs to higher ground, and the air smelt strongly of eucalyptus oil as the leaves of trees opened their pores and looked to the sky to quench their thirst. Back at the homestead chickens oiled their feathers and cattle bellowed with renewed energy. That night thunder rumbled in the distance for hours on end. Chen Mu and Sahira had sat outside watching the stars disappear behind ever-growing clouds that rolled and billowed until the sky seemed an angry sea. Lightning ripped the sky and great fat drops of rain fell, slowly at first then with more and more intensity until they’d had to shelter inside the cottage.

  The rains, however, didn’t bring relief. There was still no feed for livestock and many of the animals left simply starved to death. Men cut down leafy branches from trees as well as prickly pear to use as fodder. Now the prickly pear had so infected some properties that they could no longer be used for grazing. But the men had learned their lessons. They realised provision had to be made in these times of plenty, so they’d built fences to restrict access and conserve feed, and they cut and stored hay, and built extra dams to collect runoff. Now Walpinya Station looked green and prosperous once more.

  ‘Chen Mu! Wait for me!’

  Chen Mu pretended not to hear the boy – this had become a daily routine. Edward would lag behind, stopping to watch a beetle crawl by or a bird overhead, then expect Chen Mu to wait. Chen Mu never did. He reached his cottage and poured water into the bowl outside the door, and washed his hands and face, then put the bowl on the ground and washed his feet.

  ‘You didn’t stop.’ This wasn’t a complaint – simply a statement of fact.

  Chen Mu entered the cottage and the boy followed.

  ‘Wait here, Master Edward.’ He went into the bedroom to change his shirt.

  When he came back to the front room he saw the boy sitting on the floor, looking up at the objects on the shelf above the fireplace. This too was routine. Chen Mu made a show of deciding which objects to pick up this time – a pottery jar, two small bowls, a Chinese coin. Then his hand made to reach for the little brush-rest. Withdrew. Reached again. He heard a whispered yes! and smiled.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite the boy, and pointing at the jar now on the floor between them.

  ‘A jar,’ Edward mumbled, looking at the brush-rest.

  ‘What sort of jar?’

  ‘A clay one.’

  Chen Mu waited. He knew the boy was not interested in the Chinese pickling jar, and only slightly more so in the rice crockery and coin – it was always the brush-rest that held his attention. But to get to the brush-rest, he would first have to go through the other items. At last Edward looked away. He gave an exaggerated sigh, then took a deep breath and pointed to the objects in front of him.

  ‘That’s-made-of-clay-you-put-vegetables-in-it-with-salt-or-they’ll-go-bad-the-drawing-is-bamboos-and-that’s-a-yíge-wăn-and-that’s-a-yíge-wăn-too-to-eat-rice-in-and-that-drawing-is-double-happiness-and-that-one-is-four-flowers-oh-yes-I-forgot-and-that’s-made-of
-porcelain-and-that’s-made-of-porcelain-too.’

  Chen Mu stared out of the cottage doorway, keeping a straight face. ‘He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions,’ he reminded himself, quoting Confucius. He heard Winnie near the homestead calling for her charge. Edward heard her too and looked at Chen Mu, alarmed – he hadn’t held the brush-rest yet.

  ‘We have time,’ Chen Mu said, choosing to ignore the fact that Edward had said nothing about the Chinese coin. ‘Tell me quickly, what does the Daodejing say about clay vessels?’

  Edward looked at Chen Mu, horrified. He didn’t want to quote this classic Chinese text; he simple wanted to hold the brush-rest. He heard Winnie calling again, but Chen Mu simply sat calmly on the floor, his hands resting on his lap. Edward breathed a long sigh of surrender.

  ‘We turn clay to make a vessel; but it is … it is … nothing?’

  ‘But it is on the space where there is—’

  ‘… on the space where there is nothing that depends!’

  ‘… on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends. Now say it properly with me all the way through.’

  ‘We turn clay to make a vessel; but it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends,’ Edward recited with Chen Mu.

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘Things that aren’t there are important too.’

  ‘That will have to do, for now …’ Chen Mu knew that the boy was probably too young to be learning from this ancient philosophical text that dated back to the 4th Century BC, and he doubted Edward understood much of its meaning – to Edward, Chen Mu realised, these sayings were nothing more than words to be learned and regurgitated, parrot fashion, so as to be allowed to hold the brush-rest as a reward. But he hoped that if he quoted and explained these saying often enough, Edward would absorb them by osmosis, and they would be there for him later in life.