The Yellow Papers (32 page)

Ming Li nodded but didn't trust herself to speak.

‘It's happening everywhere now. Every day. People here one day, gone the next.'

Ming Li didn't want to speak of MeiMei. The silence between them lengthened.

‘I should see the priests,' she said at last, ‘to help my daughter's soul. But I don't know which papers to ask for – the ones for those assassinated, or the ones for those who died in prison …'

‘Why do you want those? Your daughter's not dead!'

Ming Li stared at the man. The alleyway, the old people asleep on the pavement, all faded into darkness. Only the man's face registered. Surely he was lying. But to be so cruel – why? She felt light-headed, knew she was about to faint.

‘Are you all right? Wait. Sit down.' He pulled the small stool towards her. ‘Here, sit down. Did you think your daughter dead? Why? It's my mother, isn't it? She told you your daughter's dead. And you believed her.'

Ming Li could only stare at his face.

‘You did, didn't you? Did she tell you your family's been shot? She tells everyone that. Her mind's going and she's seen too much. Your daughter is MeiMei, right? Huang Feng's wife?'

Ming Li nodded.

‘That's right. And they have a boy. Lived in the apartment above ours. They're not dead; they've been sent to live in a factory in Yibin. To teach the workers about Communism; get them to join the Party.'

‘But you said you were sorry …'

‘I meant I was sorry they had to lose their apartment; it was one of the best in the building. Apartments are nearly impossible to get nowadays. I didn't mean—'

‘But your mother – she said she heard banging and shouting.'

‘There's always banging and shouting in that building. When she noticed them gone, she put two and two together and came up with five. But I know; I talked to Huang Feng just before they left.'

‘They're in Yibin?'

‘That's where he said they were going.'

‘And they have a son?'

‘Yes. A boy. Three – four years old maybe?'

‘Do you know … do you know what they named him?'

‘Ho. They call him Ho – Huang Ho. After the Yellow River.'

Yes
, thought Ming Li.
Huang Ho – the Yellow River
. But if she knew her daughter, there could be another meaning to her grandson's name – the Yellow River had killed millions with its flooding, again and again, so that the Huang Ho was also known as China's Sorrow.

In the brazier the coals were now covered with white ash. The son joined his family to sleep on the pavement, leaving Ming Li to her thoughts. Lights in windows went out one by one.

MeiMei's alive!
Ming Li thought.
MeiMei's alive, and she has a son!
She hugged this thought to herself, and with this thought came another –
I'm a grandmother!
– and she felt the beginning of a laugh deep in her belly. How long since she had laughed? She couldn't remember.

She glanced at the family huddled by the wall.
They'll think me crazy if they hear me laugh
, and the thought made her want to laugh even more.

It was then she remembered the money deep in the pocket of her coat. She moved the stool so that her back was to the family, and pulled out the notes. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Twenty US dollars – a fortune! Quickly she calculated in her head – twenty US dollars was around a hundred and thirty Hong Kong dollars. Stupid boy – stupid wonderful boy! What a naïf! He'd paid her nearly three times what she knew was the going rate. At this pace the girls of Wan Chai would have sent him broke in no time. But what did she care? She'd been surviving – barely – on around a hundred Hong Kong dollars a month, nearly thirteen dollars in American currency. What she could do with this money! She could buy
foreign
cigarettes to sell – no, forget selling on the streets. She could rent an apartment – a ‘single space'. But the money wouldn't last more than a week or so going on rent … Unless …

Until MeiMei and the boy joined her – and she was sure, now, that they would one day – she could sub-let the extra space. How many could she fit in a ‘single space'? Then use
that
money to rent a shop as well. Sell something of quality. Food? Clothes? No, not that. Antiques maybe. No, something smaller, cheaper to stock … Chinese knickknacks. Pots and vases as well, maybe. And she might sell smaller antiques after all – Edward had paid a fortune in China for such artefacts, and she knew something about them from Xueliang's collections. Here in Hong Kong refugees were selling anything of value, for whatever money they could get, and Westerners were always looking for souvenirs, though few knew the real worth of such things. She would mark up the price and allow them to barter her down, and they would still pay too much but leave happy, thinking they had bought a bargain. She smiled. The omens in the fire had been right – the Goddess Kuan Yin had represented MeiMei and the boy, and the tortoise had told her she had the strength and endurance to create a new life.

Tomorrow, she would not sell cigarettes, one at the time, in the streets of Hong Kong. Tomorrow, she would look for an apartment.

25

‘You can't not go. Honestly Dad, I can't believe you'd do that to him!' Charlotte wrapped another of Edward's wineglasses in newspaper and carefully placed it in the wooden tea chest. ‘You'll regret it for the rest of your life, you know. You're not being fair. Poor Chen Mu …'

She frowned, frustrated at her father's stubbornness. When he'd first returned from Korea three years ago, she'd understood, then, that he needed to time to rest – to heal – and though she hadn't understood why he'd refused to see Chen Mu at the time, she'd respected his decision. But three years was a long time, and now he was moving interstate, but still he refused to see his old friend. She couldn't help think he was running away.

Edward picked up his cup of coffee, kissed his daughter on the forehead, and went into his bedroom. Though he appreciated Charlotte coming to Sydney to help him pack, he didn't want to discuss his feelings about Chen Mu. How could she ever understand what he now felt towards the man? That he was afraid to face him because he couldn't guarantee how he'd react. To her, Chen Mu was – and always had been – a friend. But to Edward, the thought of acting in a friendly manner to anyone Asian, no matter whom, was impossible. He could no longer look at an Asian face without feeling hatred tightening in his stomach. Without shaking. Without remembering the camp. Without flashbacks of interrogations, beatings and pretend executions.

It didn't matter from which country they were, the feeling was the same. He would feel himself go cold. Feel the beginning of panic, the pounding of his heart, the swelling of anger, the need to hide. He could manage not to be rude, but that was it. He could rationalise that not all Asians were Chinese or Korean, that war forced men to do things they never thought themselves capable of, even that he himself had done things he was not proud of, but it made no difference. No amount of rationalising could ever erase the memory of that stinkhole. Of being reduced to living like an animal. Of his body drenched in water slowly freezing to the ground as he was made to stand hour after hour in sub-zero temperatures. He could argue that to hate all Asians was an irrational feeling, that to include Chen Mu in this was not being ‘fair' to the man, but did fairness even come into it? Had they been fair when they questioned him, day after day after day? Had they been fair when they let him freeze, when they beat him, when they stuck him in that latrine for hours – days – without end? When it got so hot he could actually feel himself cooking in that stinkhole? What about when they cut off his toe with gardening shears, then left him to cope as best he could? No, fairness had nothing to do with it. He could intellectualise all he want, it made no difference. He was being ‘fair' by being polite to them, but he could do no more. In the end, Chen Mu was just another victim of war.

He could understand that for Charlotte the end of the war in Korea had meant joy – it had brought her father back. When months, then years passed with no news, she had tried to get information. She'd written to Canberra, even made the trip over, thinking she'd get better results in person, but no one would tell her what had happened to her father. Eventually, after months of worry and mourning, she came to accept that he must be dead.

Then one day, some months after the Korean war ended, she'd received a phone call – her father was in a military hospital in Japan. She'd flown over, stayed by his side whilst he recovered, then taken him back to New Zealand where he got to know his son-in-law better, and met his granddaughters for the first time. And for a while, in that peaceful, windy city of Wellington, surrounded by the love and attention of his daughter, it seemed as if he'd really recovered. But it had all been a charade, because how do you recover from what he's been through? He'd felt an overwhelming apathy, an apathy that could turn into barely controlled anger at everyone's solicitous attitude. What did she know of Korea? Of the camp? And even if he were to explain – which he had no intention of doing – how could she possibly understand? How could he tell her that every time he heard a knock at the door, a car backfiring, a sudden noise, he felt a moment of panic, a need to take cover. So he pretended to shut out the last years of his life and enjoy some simple pleasures. He'd spent his days playing with Margaret, or Maggie as everyone called her, a bubbly two-year-old who'd been fascinated by his missing toes, so that he dared not go without shoes in her presence. Or he'd rock baby Sophie to sleep then hold her for hours on end, just looking at her beautiful, perfect face, trying his hardest to superimpose his granddaughter's sweet features over the visions that were constantly present, visions of other babies, their bodies blown apart by grenades, their beautiful dark lifeless eyes already being devoured by armies of ants, but he never, never succeeded.

Only at night did he feel he could relax, but only whilst awake. He'd go to bed when the family did and read for as long as he could, sometimes even till dawn, but eventually he could no longer stay awake and nightmares would invade, and he would wake shaking and covered with sweat. But by morning he'd be in control again, and he'd take Maggie to the garden to show her a flower, or maybe a ladybird, because he'd found having something of beauty to concentrate on helped, but it never eased the guilt he felt at having sent so many to their death, and he'd pass the day pretending, keeping busy, dreading the coming of the night. He could pretend to be the father and grandfather they expected him to be, and he could be thoughtful and playful and helpful, but in all that time he could never explain to anyone what had happened to him in Korea.

Added to these feelings was Australia's fear that its freedom was being threatened. By the time he'd returned to Sydney news of the atrocities that were Korea had leaked out, and with them a new word had surfaced – brainwashing. The Australian people were concerned that returned POWs, ‘brainwashed' by Communists, would spread their beliefs in towns and cities around the country.
Reds under the beds
, the newspapers shouted, fanning the fear that communists might be everywhere, about to start a revolution. So how could Edward speak to anyone about what had happened to him? Instead, he buried his experiences even deeper within himself, so that his wounds did not heal but festered, hidden deeper and deeper within him.

‘Dad?' Charlotte knocked on his door and peeped in. ‘The removalist's on the phone. Says he can be here at ten tomorrow instead of twelve. Is that okay?'

‘That's fine.'

‘You okay?'

‘I'm okay. I'll be out in a minute.'

He looked around the room, remembering the satisfaction he'd felt every time he'd come back to this house from his trips overseas, that feeling that no matter how exciting a country may be, here was home. But home meant a history, a past, and the past was what he wanted to forget. In every room, in every corner had been curios from his travels. Souvenirs. Memories. And at the forefront of those memories, Ming Li. He couldn't bear it. He'd asked Charlotte to pack them all and either give them away or sell them, and though she agreed to pack them away, she refused to get rid of them in case he changed his mind one day. But removing the curios hadn't removed the memories …

When, true to the Brigadier's word, Edward received an invitation to lecture at the Canberra University College, he'd refused. Instead he hibernated. He spent his time reading, avoiding people, trying to stop thinking, trying to forget the past, only going out when absolutely necessary. Then his mood would change and he'd become restless, craving the state of being alive he'd felt before Korea, so he'd go out to a nightclub or a pub and more often than not pick up some woman, and before the night was out he'd have sex with her, needing to feel the life he once knew, needing to feel lust, needing to feel a body that was soft and warm and willing, but this was always just sex and never making love, and though the women could not guess his thoughts still they felt used, and so would refuse to see him again.