by Alison Wong
The man took a grape and placed it delicately in his mouth. He smiled again. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘I’ll take two bunches.’ Then he looked around again. ‘How is the pineapple?’
Yung lifted a pineapple to his nose and sniffed. He tugged gently at one of the inner leaves, then put the pineapple back on the stack. He picked up another, smelled it and tugged at a leaf, which came away. ‘Good pineapple,’ he said. ‘Lipe and sweet.’
As he handed over the packaged fruit, the man thanked him.
‘Good luck,’ Yung said.
The man looked at him quizzically.
‘Your land,’ Yung said.
‘Yes,’ the man said.
They almost bowed to each other before the man walked out into the southerly.
What gweilo had ever treated him as respectfully? How many had even looked in his eyes?
Each day he worked in the shop. Each day but Sunday white ghosts came in and out. He handed them vegetables wrapped in newspaper or paper bags filled with fruit. They put money on the wooden counter and he counted out their change. Good day. Good day.
He wanted to talk. He wanted to understand. But how to say? His English was improving. But how many customers truly invited his stumbling conversation?
On Sundays and other afternoons or nights when his brother gave him time off, he would go to a clansman’s – to another fruit and vegetable shop or laundry – or go down Haining Street, Taranaki, Frederick or Tory. They called the area Tongyangai – Chinese people’s street, where people of the Tong dynasty lived. In shop or cook-house or gambling joint, or even outside on a warm summer evening, they’d gather together to gossip and drink tea. His best friend Ng Fong-man, Cousin Gok-nam, everyone would be there. Everyone but women. Chinese women, wives. Even as he visited greengrocery, laundry, market garden, as he drummed up support and donations for the Revolution, how many women did he see? Who could afford the poll tax or even the fare?
Yung shut his eyes. He tried to remember his wife’s face, the way her brow furrowed in concentration when he wrote the first line of a couplet, when he challenged her to complete it. He tried to remember her voice, the sound of her laughter . . .
No, everyone would be there in Haining Street, and gweilo also, placing bets, or after work, crowded in with Tongyan, checking their pakapoo tickets. Aaaaiyaa. Aaaaiyaa. The thumping of tables. The smell of pork soup. The sizzle of garlic and ginger. White ghosts shoulder to shoulder, familiar faces without names. Their only intercourse green-inked characters marked on white tickets.
‘Beetroot cooked la! What are you doing? Why aren’t the carrots out in the shop?’
Yung started. ‘All right la!’ He dropped the last of the carrots into the basket. Watched the back of his brother’s head as it disappeared inside again, his shiny shaven skin, the long oiled braid running down.
Dreams of Sun Yat-sen
Shun Goh had given him the rest of the afternoon off – enough time to walk to Fong-man’s, have a cup of tea, play a game of cards and maybe argue about politics. Yung was relieved to get away from his brother, and out of doors. Usually spring was windy, unpredictably wet, yet today he didn’t have to hold his hat to stop it from flying away. He almost had to squint for the blue glare of sky.
He walked around the Basin Reserve where he’d seen men in funereal white play a strange game with a piece of wood and a ball. Once he’d seen the ball hit three sticks in the ground and all the men cry out and throw their hands in the air – everyone except the man holding the flat piece of wood. Today there were only children rolling down the grassy banks and a group of boys on the common with a stick. He continued up Webb Street, then turned right into Cuba, delighting in the warmth of the day, in the jostle of horse and cart and tram, in the noisy ducking and weaving of humanity.
He paused outside the fishmonger’s with its window piled high with rabbits, the little curtain of them that hung across the top of the entrance. Rabbit tails would brush his face when he entered, the soft fur smelling of grass and gaminess against his skin. Rabbit stewed in an earthenware pot. One shilling each, or maybe only tenpence. He licked his lips and walked on, humming a song he couldn’t quite remember the name of, a song that had lost its words but not its tune. He hummed as if he had all the time in the world – waving to Mr Paterson, breathing in the yeasty smell of hot bread as he drove past in his cart, only just becoming aware of children behind him.
He turned, saw the boys – half a dozen of them, maybe more, seven- to ten-year-olds, one fat, the rest skinny, each with a little tweed cap and dirty knees. The tallest was carrying a stick.
‘Ching Chong Chinaman,’ they sang. ‘Born in a jar, christened in a teapot, ha, ha, ha.’
Yung kept walking. He felt his hat being knocked to the ground, his braid uncoiling, falling down his back, hands grabbing and yanking. Bursts of laughter and another yank.
He turned around and charged at them. ‘Pigs! Dog-shit!’ he shouted in Chinese. ‘Drop dead in the street!’
The kids laughed and ran off. He wanted to chase them, grab hold of them, push their faces in the dirt. The tall one, the one who’d pushed his hat off with the stick. The redhead or, even better, the fat one – he would have been easy to catch.
‘Ignore the barbarians,’ his brother always said. ‘Never give them an excuse to retaliate.’
But he was sick of it. He was educated. He was respected. Back home he could have been an official. Even now people came to him to read and write their letters, their New Year couplets. He went to meet the newcomers off the ships, to help them with customs and immigration.
One night when his brother was down Haining Street a couple of young hooligans had come to the shop and started throwing cabbages around. Yung had been so incensed he’d tossed them out, both of them, into the street. He could still see the dust settle round them. They never came back.
Yung smiled. His brother never knew. He picked up his hat, recoiled his braid and covered it again, carried on.
He had walked this way so many times before – past the drapery, the pharmacy, over the tram tracks – yet only now did the saloon catch his attention. It was the veranda posts at first, the bright red, white and blue spiralling paint, and a similarly painted pole sticking out from above the doorway with the sign S. Gibson hanging from it. In the window there was a poster of a man in a suit and bun hat, pipe hanging from his mouth: pipe tobacco in its most enjoyable form.
Yung appreciated a well-laid out display, the aesthetics of colour and shape and categorisation. Arranged on shelves were blue tins of Capstan, Marcovitch Black and White, pale lemon State Express 555. There were matches in cardboard containers shaped like miniature hatboxes, as well as copper and tin versions, cylindrical and rectangular, wooden pipes and a brown ceramic tobacco jar inscribed with writing. Yung couldn’t see all the words, and he didn’t recognise them all either – When all Things were made . . . better than Tobacco . . . a Bachelor’s Friend (what did Bachelor mean?) – but he did recognise the different tins and packets they sold in the greengrocery. He admired the china shaving mugs, each displayed with its own brush, the chrome hand clippers, Rolls Razors, cigar cutters, long leather razor strops, bottles of Scurf and Dandruff Lotion, and a Black Beauty Razor Hone with a long blue fish decorating the box.
A wooden partition separated the display from the interior. Even from the door onto the street he could only see another lead-light door with the words Gents’ Saloon in the stained glass. He stepped back as the inner door opened, as a man emerged from the yellow-tinged, smoky light. As he walked past, Yung saw how neatly cut he was, how smoothly shaved. Yung smelled the tobacco and cinnamon. Another man entered the shop, and the smell of tobacco puffed out again before the door closed.
Yung could see his reflection in the window, his forehead shaved smooth, nothing of his tonsure or of the hair coiled under his hat. He’d had the braid for as long as he could remember. Some men cut theirs off. Some to stop the hair pulling, some for the Revoluti
on. Even back home there were those who cut off their braids and then had to wear hats or wigs when they went out or chance execution.
Yung dreamed of the end of the dynasty. He dreamed of a new and powerful China, free of corruption, free from Manchu and foreign domination. He dreamed of Sun Yat-sen heading the new Republic, a man from Heung Shan who spoke English and not only the Peking dialect of the northerners, but also Yung’s language, their language, Cantonese. Now he dreamed of a haircut like Sun Yat-sen’s, like that of the man he’d seen walking out of the shop.
But gweilo saloons didn’t cut Chinamen’s hair, everyone knew that; and if, even if he had the courage, the foolhardiness, what would happen then? He would sit back in a chair, waiting for a barbarian to run a blade across his cheek, over his jaw, across his throat. The room would be wreathed with smoke. He would be surrounded by ocean ghosts, looking, watching, in an afternoon of no natural light, just the yellow glow of gas mantles. He thought of Fong-man, beaten in his shop in this very same street. He would sit back in the chair and feel the blade as it cut across his throat, and no one would notice if he didn’t come out.
That night, Yung took the scissors from the drawer in the kitchen and cut off his braid. He heard the swish of the blades and the crunch as he cut through, his head strangely light, hair falling loosely at the back of his neck. He held the braid heavy in his hand, feeling terrifyingly liberated, and yet as if he had amputated a limb, as if already the sword had come down on his neck. He didn’t know what to do. He looked in the mirror, the one he used every few days for plucking facial hair. He did not recognise himself. He felt as if he were growing paler or maybe pinker – because that was the true colour of barbarians, not white but pink, something like the colour of domesticated pigs. He looked at his face, at his hair. He felt as if even his name was translating. He put the braid at the bottom of a drawer and covered it with his most intimate apparel.
Why had he looked in the window of that saloon? Why had he not simply gone to Ah Fung’s, the Haining Street barber, like everyone else? Why did he always want whatever he could not have?
He swallowed his shame. It would take time for the shaven parts of his head to grow, but tomorrow he would go. He would get Ah Fung to style his hair. He would buy bay rum. He would go out into the street, slick and sweet, smelling of bay oil and cinnamon.
Oníons
Edie McKechnie was digging in the woodpile searching for slaters, spiders, beetles, anything wriggly with lots of legs, when her brother, Robbie, came racing home with his friends: the show-off big kid, Billy, who always bossed the others around; Wally, who looked like he’d eaten a chelsea bun too many; some other silly, dirty boys.
‘Want to see a trick, Edie?’ Billy asked.
Edie glanced up, then ignored him. She lifted a piece of wood. Underneath, in the dirt and damp wood dust, she found four slaters. She flipped one onto its back with her nail, watched the pale eyelash legs wave, the soft grey armour curl.
‘Look!’ yelled Billy.
Edie noticed the stick for the first time when Billy reached out and flicked off Wally’s cap.
‘Hey,’ said Wally as he scrambled to catch it, then picked it up from the ground.
‘Let me, let me try,’ said Robbie.
As he grabbed the stick and aimed at Wally’s head, Edie noticed dirt all over her brother’s clothes, grass and who-knows-what in the mess of his thick red hair.
‘Ow! Ya bounder!’ yelled Wally. ‘I’ll knock yer blimmin’ head off!’
‘No blimmin’ way!’ Robbie laughed and ran off, with Wally and the other boys chasing.
‘Was that Robbie?’ Their mother stood in the doorway, her face flushed from thumping irons onto sheets, shirts, petticoats, skirts, swapping them as they cooled with a hot iron from the range.
‘He’s taken off with Wally and Billy again.’
‘Bother. I need him to chop wood. You’d better come in and help me cook dinner.’
Edie looked down. Her slaters had disappeared, even the one she’d flipped onto its back. She’d have to come out later with a jar. She wiped her hands on her skirt, stood up and went into the house, trying to remember what slaters ate for dinner.
*
Katherine McKechnie’s neck and shoulders ached. She still felt the effects of hauling yesterday’s wet washing and today the effort of lifting heavy irons. In winter, the range and the irons and the work kept her warm, but now sweat plastered her bodice, her petticoats, to her skin.
She stood at the bench and lopped the top and bottom off an onion, peeled away the skin. She should have started earlier, not finished ironing shirts that Donald wouldn’t need till Thursday or Friday . . . Ow! She examined her nail. Thank goodness, no blood. She blinked. What was God thinking when he created onions? She wiped her eyes, hurriedly chopped, shoved the pieces into the hot fat, tossed a second onion into the bottom of the pantry. Glanced at Edie.
‘Careful . . . If you cut off a finger it won’t grow back, you know . . . Here . . .’ She took the knife from her daughter and showed her again. ‘Keep your fingers out of the way. As you cut, you have to keep moving your hand down the carrot away from the knife . . . That’s more like it . . . When it gets too little, just leave it and start another. I’ll finish off.’
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘What do slaters eat?’
Katherine looked up from the kidney she was slicing. ‘Well, I don’t know. What do other insects eat?’
Edie stopped chopping. ‘They’re not insects, Mum.’
‘What?’
‘Insects have six legs.’
Katherine stared at her daughter. She wasn’t even seven. ‘Where did you get that from?’ she asked.
‘You know – that book we got from the library.’
Katherine laughed. Of course. Both the children could read beyond their years. How could they not with their father a newspaperman, a purveyor of words, as he liked to say. But it was Edie, the youngest, who seemed the most eager, dragging Katherine to the Newtown library each week, bringing her novels by Jane Austen or George Eliot – surely she couldn’t really understand them – and non-fiction books with beautiful colour illustrations on any subject – ornithology, Egyptian history, Etruscan architecture. Robbie, on the other hand, seemed to thrive on the exploits of Revolver Dick or Jim, the Slayer of the Prairies. If he’d been old enough, one of his favourite pastimes would have been the games evenings at the library. But they were shut down for ‘destructiveness and rowdiness’. Katherine smiled grimly. Give him a few years and he’d likely be one of the chief culprits.
She scraped chunks of beef and kidney into the pot, looked across at Edie. ‘So how many legs do slaters have?’
‘Fourteen.’ Edie grinned. ‘I counted.’
‘So what do you call slaters if they’re not insects? Did it tell you that in—?’
The front door slammed and Robbie came running down the hall to the kitchen. Peered into the smoking pot. ‘Steak and kidney . . . Can I have something to eat?’ He reached for the biscuit tin.
Katherine smacked away his hand. ‘Go and chop some wood and bring it in, and then you can help yourself to a slice of bread and dripping.’ She looked at his filthy face, the grass stains and dirt on his clothes, his black-edged nails. ‘But wash your hands first. I don’t want dirty marks on the loaf.’
After he’d gone out, Edie asked, ‘Do you think slaters might like bread?’
‘I don’t know, dear. Ants do. And birds.’ She noticed a chunk pulled out of the loaf. ‘And naughty boys.’
An hour later, Robbie put down his fork after just one mouthful. ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said.
Katherine sighed. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have eaten so much bread then, should you? I did say one slice.’
Donald McKechnie spat into his plate. ‘No wonder the boy can’t eat! How long did you cook this for? Five minutes? How many times do I have to tell you?’
‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t ins
ist on steak and kidney on Tuesdays. It takes all day to do the ironing and that doesn’t leave much time for cooking.’
‘Then put the dinner on in the morning, woman! Haven’t you got anything in that skull of yours?’
Katherine examined Donald’s red face, his twitching moustache. She had more teeth in that skull of hers than he did, that’s for sure. What did he say? Fed up to the back teeth? It was his back teeth, or lack thereof, that was the problem. She imagined his mouth stuffed full of tough, sinewy stew, his jaw working and working, gravy leaking from the corner of his mouth, from his ears. She looked down and tried not to smile.
‘Eat it tomorrow,’ she muttered without meeting his eyes.
She took his plate into the kitchen and scraped the stew back into the pot, sliced the last piece of Sunday’s roast, cooked till it fell from the bone (thank goodness on wash days they ate leftover roast), and laid it on the remains of Donald’s gravy. She could have told him that Mac had run out of kidneys, that he’d told her to come back in the afternoon. She could have told him to wait another hour for dinner instead of always insisting it be on the table at six. She spooned more gravy over the top and took the plate back out.
Donald was telling Robbie about some incident at work: ‘. . . and then the peabrain . . .’
Katherine could hear them laughing but she didn’t know, didn’t care why. She felt tired. Very tired.
She’d met him at her sister’s wedding. She noticed the way people listened to his stories, laughed at his jokes. The way women could not help but flirt with him. Even her mother and sister. She watched, fascinated, almost horrified at how he moved through the room, a steamer moving through water, leaving a wake behind him.
Did he feel her watching? He looked up, directly at her, made some excuse and made his way across the dance floor.
