The China Coin

by Allan Baillie

  ‘Australia.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone from there. We have family in Vietnam, England and America. You were born here? Not here?’

  ‘I was born in Penang. My father, Ji Lian Fu, left here about 1936 …’

  ‘Ah, that was the time of the Japanese. Very many people left here then. Grandfather left for Vietnam, but he came back. But you come from Australia?’

  ‘I was sent to school in Sydney, and stayed.’

  ‘Your husband? Where is he?’

  ‘He died.’

  Just shrugging it off. Like always.

  ‘Ah. Very bad.’

  ‘Yes.’ Joan pulled the half-coin from her handbag. ‘My father gave me this a long time ago. Said it was a family treasure and should be returned to its other half. Have you ever seen anything like this?’

  Jade looked at the half-coin and shook her head. ‘I do not know much about the family history, but Grandfather knows everything. He will return soon.’

  After a while Leah became exhausted with the effort of translating the Cantonese in her head and let the conversation flow over her. The two women were babbling on as if they had been neighbours for years. Joan Waters was now Ji Feng Hua, and Leah felt suddenly alone.

  A small ginger cat rubbed itself against Leah’s leg, enticing her slowly from her chair and toward the sun in the centre of the house. She looked back at Jade in guilt, but Jade smiled at her, and nodded. She joined the cat at the edge of the sunken square, tickled it behind the ear and sat with cat on her lap.

  ‘Hello …’ The cat stared at her like a little old man then burrowed its head into her hand.

  A chicken, a ball of yellow fluff, tumbled past Leah in pursuit of some insect. The cat was not interested but the chicken was pursued by other chickens, leading to a tiny twittering brawl around the well. Two hens strutted majestically through the front door, past Leah and under Joan’s chair in the kitchen. Leah remembered the jammed cages of hens on the bicycle, the cages of frightened cats in the market, waiting to become some person’s meal.

  Nothing like that here. But this was still China, wasn’t it?

  Suddenly Leah was aware that she was being watched. She turned to see a little girl with a red ribbon squatting half way out of the family room. She smiled and the little girl disappeared. When curiosity drove the little girl to poke her head out again Leah waved at her with her fingers and she stayed.

  Leah pointed at herself. ‘Leah?’

  The little girl frowned. ‘Li?’ Then she nodded gravely, pointed at herself. ‘Fei Yan.’

  Leah fumbled. ‘How are you, Little Swallow?’

  Swallow giggled and beckoned Leah into the family room. The TV, an old couch, a drinks cupboard, a woven grain winnow, an open bedroom door showing a white cascade of mosquito netting. And, almost at Leah’s feet, a box of sleeping ginger kittens. Swallow pointed proudly at the cat in Leah’s hands. The mother? But the cat was not much bigger than the kittens.

  Swallow chattered on as she led Leah past the locked door and out of the house. Something about ‘wanting a big sister’. A few ducklings were skittering over the rubble, ignoring them. Swallow dismissed them with a shrug. The ducklings were not hers, but the cat and the kittens and the chickens were. Swallow was showing off the family possessions. The sleepy bullock by the reservoir was not theirs, but the lumbering sow with the eight piglets in the brick sty was. The mandarin orchard near the village was not theirs, but the struggling plum tree by the back door was, and it was so easy for a little girl and her strange big sister to climb.

  Some older children ran down a track toward the village, red scarves bouncing about their necks. School was out. Some ran into their houses and almost immediately ran out again without the scarves and with small nets on long poles – something like the line fisherman on the grey Pearl River. The children glanced at Leah and Swallow and forgot about them as they lined up on the concrete edge of the reservoir and started to fish.

  Imagine Joan living here … Leah smiled and stretched into the slightly swaying fork of the tree. And stopped smiling. This was her family, all her family. She might want to stay.

  Leah stared at the two women still talking in the shadows of the kitchen, the brown woman in the simple cotton trousers and grey shirt, and the elegant woman in the tinted glasses, the silk scarf and the gold watch.

  Don’t be silly. She would not be able to live here for longer than a week.

  Leah shook her head and Swallow watched her curiously.

  And that is a bit of a pity. You can take some of this place without pain.

  Leah eventually swung out of the tree and was persuading Swallow to introduce her to the kids by the reservoir when Joan called her. Two men were standing in the sun beside her, one old, nearly bald, with a lightly mottled face, the other young and grinning like a schoolboy. Leah walked over with a touch of reluctance, but Swallow ran up to her and took her hand, claiming Leah for her own.

  Jade presented the younger man with a wave. ‘My husband, Ji Cheng Long.’ Chained Dragon.

  Dragon dusted his hands and squeezed Leah’s free hand.

  ‘And Grandfather.’

  The old man nodded at her, then turned to Joan, and spoke in English, with a faint French accent. ‘I am very pleased to meet you. You are thinking you may be of our family.’

  ‘We are Ji.’

  Grandfather pursed his lips. ‘There are many Ji families in this village.’

  Joan fumbled in her bag and pulled out the half-coin. ‘Have you seen anything like this?’

  Grandfather looked at the half-coin, then flicked his eyes away. ‘No. It means something?’

  Joan sighed. ‘Father said it was a key to a family secret. He sent it to me in Australia when he was very sick.’

  ‘And now he is dead.’ He nodded slowly. ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Yes. A long time ago.’

  ‘Or you would know more about your family than you know now. Your father lived where?’

  ‘Singapore.’

  ‘Only Singapore.’

  ‘We lived in Penang. Before the riots.’

  ‘I received a letter from Penang. Just one. So long ago.’ Grandfather looked up slowly. ‘What was your father’s name?’

  ‘Ji Lian Fu.’ Pearl Connected to Wealth.

  Grandfather smiled. ‘Ji Lian Fu,’ he repeated softly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your mother was Kuang Mei.’

  Joan stopped breathing. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am Ji Lian Zhong.’ Pearl Connected to Property.

  A distant boy shouted and splashed.

  ‘Ji Lian Fu was my brother,’ Grandfather said.

  Joan’s face was changing, a sparkle in the eye, the mouth curving slowly. A little girl before a Christmas tree, not quite believing the gifts before her.

  Grandfather took one sweeping step and wrapped his arms about Joan. ‘Welcome back, Sister.’

  4 Family

  Joan produced the letter over cups of tea. Leah wondered why she had not shown it to Grandfather at the beginning.

  ‘Oh, you would like to see my father’s last letter. Of course, of course …’ and she burrowed deep into her bag. She pulled out a tattered airmail letter, the ink fading with age, and passed it to Grandfather.

  Grandfather blinked at the letter, holding it at arm’s length. ‘This is my brother’s letter? Lian Fu’s last letter?’

  ‘Yes.’ Softly.

  ‘You read it.’ Grandfather passed it back.

  Leah wiped the surprise from her face. He can’t read.

  Joan took the letter with sudden fright in her eyes.

  And neither can she! That was why Joan had delayed showing the letter. Self preservation.

  ‘Well, it – ah – goes like this,’ said Joan. ‘Dear Fragrant Flower … In all his other letters he called me Joan.’

  Leah could remember them. Stilted and polite as if he was writing to a customer, sometimes typed, sometimes written in ink but always in Eng
lish. He had paid to educate his daughter in English and he was making sure she had not forgotten. But she had forgotten what little old Chinese she had brought from Singapore. Joan had had to find a friend to read this letter to her.

  And now, after almost two years of study, she still could not read her father’s last letter. Joan’s father had left China with the elaborate, full form characters of his ancestors, but China had since developed simplified modern characters. Joan had learnt these in Sydney University. She and her father had been writing and reading in two different languages.

  Leah watched Joan stare at the letter, not really seeing it, trying to remember exactly what it had said. Leah began to smile, then she remembered and looked away.

  ‘Dear Fragrant Flower,

  I am ill. Very ill.’

  Joan stopped for a moment and pressed her lips together.

  ‘I do not – do not think I will see you again. I am sending to you my little piece of China. There is nothing else. Your mother and I came from a village two hours north-east from Canton. It is called Good Field and you may find our family there. If you want. It is a long time. This broken coin has been in our part of the family for a long time. The other half of the coin is kept by the family in our ancestral village. Perhaps the parts of the coin should become one again. I do not know anything else. I am sorry …’

  Joan looked up. ‘That is all.’

  There’s more, Leah thought.

  Grandfather grunted. ‘He does not mention me. He seemed to be forgetting a lot.’

  ‘I wanted to go home to Singapore, but when I got the letter he had already gone.’

  The family was quiet and Leah tried to remember how it had been then.

  But Jade broke into the mood. ‘Well, we must make a place for you tonight,’ she said brightly.

  ‘We’re staying at the hotel,’ Joan said.

  ‘Oh no, no. You can’t go back to the hotel. We have only just found you!’

  ‘But where can we place you?’ Chained Dragon said.

  Then Swallow ran from the kitchen and banged on the locked door and hugged herself for cleverness.

  ‘Of course,’ Grandfather said. ‘The rooms of Xiao.’ Tiny. ‘Tiny will not mind. You will stay in Tiny’s half of the house. The daughter of my brother will take the place of the brother of my son. It is quite fitting.’

  So the locked door was unlocked and Jade whirled into the rooms while Dragon and Grandfather kept talking to Joan and Leah. Swallow just hung onto Leah’s arm and looked up in wonder at the funny words her ‘sister’ was trying to say. When the taxi-truck driver came, Joan arranged for him to come back tomorrow – after all there were suitcases to collect and bills to pay …

  As the sun set the expanded family ate small paddy fish, salted pork and rice under the plum tree.

  ‘We are sorry for such a poor meal,’ Jade said.

  ‘It is lovely. Great,’ said Leah. And she meant it.

  Joan seemed surprised.

  ‘You have come at a lazy time,’ Grandfather said. ‘The rice is planted and growing, the last harvest is out and sold – ’

  ‘Except for the government levy,’ said Dragon with a shrug.

  ‘Yes. We must pay the government for the use of its land. It is now too bad.’

  Dragon snorted.

  ‘Far, far better than the landlords! But now there is no work around the village that Silver Jade cannot do by herself. Chained Dragon and I must look for work in the town.’

  ‘I am helping build a house,’ Dragon said. ‘Not my own.’

  ‘Finding work at this time is hard.’

  ‘But not for brother Tiny!’

  Grandfather laughed. ‘Tiny is a soldier. He does not have to worry about finding work or growing good crops.’

  ‘But he is the poorest of us all,’ Jade said.

  ‘They break rocks on his head,’ Dragon said with mischief in his eyes.

  Grandfather frowned. ‘As part of his training.’

  ‘Bang!’ Dragon slapped the top of his head.

  ‘Why doesn’t the village do something in the slack period?’ Joan said. ‘Make bricks, or weave rugs, or something.’

  Jade snatched at a passing mosquito. ‘We have done that. Chairman Mao said, ‘Make iron for China!’ So we cut down all the trees on our hill for our backyard furnaces and my mother had to buy new pots to melt down for Mao’s iron. And the iron was no good. It was stupid.’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Grandfather said.

  ‘Not so long ago. I can remember eating leaves from trees boiled with white earth, we were so hungry.’

  ‘That was the communes, the troubled years,’ Grandfather said stiffly.

  ‘Oh yes! Communes were when we grew rice on Mao’s land for Mao’s soldiers. It got better when we were given back our land and left alone. But could they leave it that way? Eh?’

  ‘That is enough, Silver Jade.’

  ‘Oh no! Then the teachers had to leave school and clean toilets and cleaners of toilets came to school to tell us all about Chairman Mao – all the time! School was so dull.’

  Jade saw Leah smiling and jabbed a finger at her. ‘And Dragon had to march about with a piece of wood and pretend it was a gun and he was defending China from you Western imperialists. He was thirteen.’

  Leah’s smile faded until she saw it reflected in Jade.

  ‘And Tiny is still marching,’ Dragon said. He did not seem to particularly like his brother.

  ‘It is all over now,’ said Grandfather. ‘The Five Year Leaps, and the hunger. The Cultural Revolution – The Decade of Chaos – and the stupidity.’ He looked sideways at Joan. ‘It is all over now, but we are poor.’

  ‘Not so poor!’ Jade swept her hand round the table. ‘This is the best time of all. We have very little money, but we are never hungry now.’

  A sudden bright light spilled from the kitchen and a radio blared from the centre of the village.

  ‘And tonight we even have electricity!’ Dragon laughed.

  The table was cleared and brought inside. The dishes were washed in a basin of hot water in the sunken square and the remains of the food was taken to the cat and the pig. Then the entire family gathered in the lounge, a simple room with off-white stucco walls, tiled floor, sagging vinyl couches, a stained-glass cupboard, a rice winnow and a television set.

  ‘Two signs of success,’ Grandfather said. ‘A Hong Kong house and a colour TV. If your house has two storeys, it means you have relatives in Hong Kong, with all that Hong Kong money. If you have colour TV it means that you know important people.’ Grandfather nodded at the black and white image on the TV and smiled sadly. ‘We know nobody.’

  Joan lifted her head but said nothing.

  They watched a serial about a turbulent romance between an opium-running English captain and a girl from a fishing village on the Pearl River. The head villain was a leader of Chinese soldiers who spent most of his time persecuting the fishing village and almost none in fighting the marauding English.

  Then the news. A parade of factories being opened, delegations from other countries being entertained, a cyclist killed by a car, and the students carrying banners in distant Beijing.

  Joan was staring, motionless, at the screen.

  ‘What are they protesting about?’ said Grandfather, bristling.

  ‘They are protesting about corruption and our leaders,’ said Jade.

  ‘Deng? The Boss? They are stupid. Without Deng Xiaoping those students would be starving on a commune, making bricks of bad iron.’

  ‘It is all right,’ said Joan faintly, as if to herself. ‘They are not angry.’

  Five minutes later the electricity failed, but the Ji family expected that. Joan and Leah said goodnight and groped their way to their beds. Just before she dropped the white veil of mosquito netting Leah saw a spotted photo of a pleasant-faced young man wearing a crisp uniform and a cap too big for his head. He did not look as if he broke stones on his head.

  ‘Thanks
, Tiny, for having us,’ she said, and rolled over.

  5 Grandfather

  Leah woke to the screaming laughter of Swallow outside her door. There seemed to be a great deal of splashing.

  The ducks and the geese are attacking the house in platoons … Oh, get up.

  She pushed through the mosquito netting, tottered to the door and watched Jade chasing Swallow round the well with a plastic bucket of water and some soap. Swallow slipped near the kitchen but Jade dropped the bucket, scooped her up while she was falling and kissed her on the nose.

  Leah stayed in the shadows of Tiny’s room and smiled, a little wistfully. Once she and Joan had been like that, playing tag with the waves at Manly beach, and Dad an indestructible old bear. Once.

  Joan grunted in the bed and Leah padded back to the sleeping woman. She had forgotten how it was. The time when they were the same size and they could shop like sisters. Both giving so much advice that the shop assistant wanted to give up and go home. Joan caught her once, red-eyed and breaking pencils over a crab-hearted Maths teacher and then she had to stop Joan from storming the school. She was forced to say nice things about the teacher to quieten Joan down! And the times when they cooked together. Dad said it sounded like the Titanic going down, but he never complained about the results.

  Leah sat on the bed and reached for her mother’s hand, and wondered what had gone wrong.

  Joan opened an eye and smiled and said: ‘Well, what is our new family doing today?’

  And it all trickled away.

  After breakfast Dragon rode alone to his building site and Grandfather stayed home to show Joan and Leah about the village. Grandfather said there was nothing he could do in the town. There had been nothing for weeks. Swallow scampered around them as they walked toward the bamboo forest, holding her arms out.

  ‘You’re a plane!’ Leah called.

  ‘A swallow,’ corrected Swallow, banking around them.

  ‘She has not yet seen a swallow,’ said Grandfather.

  Leah frowned and listened to the quiet rustle of the leaves, the click of the bamboo. There was no other sound. ‘Where are they, then? All the birds?’