The Yellow Papers (11 page)

‘Waaaa!' he yelled, waving his arms, and the roo turned and slowly hopped away. Chen Mu looked at the sky. It would soon be night and clouds were sweeping down from the mountains, but no rain would fall. He went to the laundry to collect the last rinse-water for his crops.

A new century dawned, but with the country in its second year of drought there was nothing to celebrate. One hot February day, Chen Mu was working near the kitchen when he saw a postal officer come galloping to the homestead.
What now?
he thought as he watched the man dismount, hurry into the house, then leave again at a gallop, his horse kicking up a cloud of dust. The sun beat remorselessly on the shrivelled land, and hot winds blew from the very furnaces of hell. The sound of the horse's gallop died away, to be replaced by the ever-present drone of blowflies.

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 then, 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.