Illywhacker

In the dark passage, looked upon by the alien visage of the King of England, Goon taught me the different accents of this King's language and how to use each one. He also instructed me in the importance of clean shoes and how a pair of very shiny shoes can give the appearance of great wealth even if the rest of one's clothes are nothing but rags.

And in the steamy dining room, with rain combing the brick-damp air outside, he taught me history and geography.

"Roll up," he called to the other Chinese. "Look at them, they grin, they do not know. If they were at Lambing Flat they would be dead men. They would hear the English calling to each other: roll up, roll up, and they would go on with their work. What is Lambing Flat, little Englishman?"

"I don't know."

"Of course you don't know. Lambing Flat is near Young in New South Wales. It was a big rush. I was there. We were all there. Roll up, roll up, that is what the English miners called to each other. May you never hear it. May you die never having heard the English come in their horses and carts. They carried the English flag, an ugly thing. They had a band. They had pipes and drums and they came in their thousands. They did not like the Chinese, little Englishman, because we were clever. They sold us their old mines. They thought they would cheat us, but we made money. They drew a line across the diggings and said we must not cross it. Still we made money. We worked hard, even us children. My father was sick. He had ulcers on his feet, and still he worked. My mother worked too, alongside the men. Her feet had been bound. They were tiny pretty things, but she carried rocks in baskets and helped make the big water race. But the Englishmen thought it was all their country and all their gold and they played their band and came out to get us. They drove the Chinese down the river bank. They had axe handles and picks. They ran over my uncle Han in a cart and broke his leg and they broke my father's head open with a water pipe. You will meet people who say that none of this happened. They will say they gave John Chinaman a fright, but they are liars. Roll up, roll up," he bellowed, "roll up. Kill John Chinaman," he roared at the Wongs, the Wongs' giggling children, the dark-eyed single men with no backsides in their English trousers. "My father's brains," he whispered while the thin hair lifted in the draught from the courtyard, "like in the pig Hing cut up. Pour me brandy. What would you do?"

"I would run," I said.

"My uncle Han ran. They had horses and carts. They ran their wheel across him."

"I would hide."

"They would burn down your tent."

"I would fight them."

"There were too many. What would you do?"

I was caught in the terror of Lambing Flat which I imagined to be a great wilderness of rocks as sharp as needles. I had no trouble imagining the terror, the bands of men with my father's merciless eyes.

It was quiet for a moment in Wong's. Hing's mah-jong tiles stood in an unbroken wall.

"Do you know what to do?" he whispered.

"No."

"You disappear," Goon Tse Ying hissed, his great hand totally enclosing his glass. "Completely."

In the courtyard, old Mrs Wong wrung the neck of a Rhode Island Red and in the dining room Hing spat and broke open the wall of mah-jong tiles. I could not take my eyes from the glass that peeked through the fingers of Goon's hand. I did not doubt he could disappear.

"I will teach you too, little Englishman. It will do two things of great merit. The first of these things is to make you safe, and I do this for goodness, because I care for you, because you have no father to help you. But I do it also to show you the terror of we Chinese at Lambing Flat. Because it is only possible to disappear by feeling the terror. So I tell you now that I am giving you this gift as revenge. Are you old enough to understand what I am saying to you?"

"I am ten."

"Why am I telling you?"

"So I can feel the terror." I shivered.

"It is a magician's gift," Goon Tse Ying said. "It is both good and evil. It is because I love and hate you. Will you accept it?"

"I am only ten," I pleaded.

"It is old enough," Goon Tse Ying announced. "We will start tomorrow."

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