Illywhacker

I got up, bawling loudly. "I want my daddy."

"You have no daddy, little Englishman. You have only me. Now pay attention and I will show you how to stand so that you will disappear."

It was a terrible day. I learned to stand in the way he showed me, quite the opposite to what you'd expect for, rather than make me less conspicuous, it seemed to make me more so. I teetered on one leg, with one foot raised and resting on my knee. I stretched one hand in the air as if waving for attention. It did not work. He hit me time and time again. I wept. I begged. I tried to run away, but he caught me effortlessly.

"I will run you down," he bellowed as he chased. "You will go beneath my wheel."

But that night, as I nursed my wounds, he was kind to me. He stroked my head and told me stories about China to which he must return before his death. "To have amassed great wealth," he said, "and not return home is comparable to walking in magnificent clothes at night." He rubbed a cold camphor ointment on my bruises. He wrapped me in a blanket and made a soup heavy with duck. He fed me milk and brandy and put me to bed in the tent.

But on the next morning his great face had transformed. The skin was tight and waxy and the bones beneath it seemed as hard and cold as marble. The camp fire was cold and he showed no inclination to light it. He had rubbed grease in his hair.

"I have no time to play games," he told me, kicking at the dead ashes as if to deny the warmth of the night before. "I am buying a business in Grafton from a man I do not trust. You are slow and stupid. You are too English. You do not believe harm will come to you. Well, I give you my word that if you do not disappear this morning, first time, I will kill you. I do not have time to play games. I am thirty-seven years old and soon I must get married."

If you had seen him you would not have doubted him. He did not look at me. He took out his gold watch and spat on it. He rubbed its glass with a white handkerchief. Then he held it to his small flat ear and listened to it. It was obvious my death had no interest to him.

"Go and play by the creek," he said.

I did not beseech him. I did not cry. I walked down to the creek.

He did not come immediately. He squatted on his haunches and sang "Waltzing Matilda" in a wavering falsetto. I loathe the song to this day.

I did not look at him. When he had finished the song I heard him clear his throat and spit.

"No Chinese," he yelled.

I stood as I was taught. I held my shaking arm high. I teetered on my foot. Urine ran down my leg. I heard the swish of the axe handle. I began to quiver. My whole body began to hum like a tuning fork. My bones vibrated. I was a steel bridge marched on by an army. I was a glass held before a famous soprano.

I disappeared and the world disappeared from me. I did not escape from fear, but went to the place where fear lives. I existed like waves from a tuning fork in chloroformed air. I could not see Goon Tse Ying. I was nowhere.

I cannot tell how long I was like this, but finally the world came back to me and Goon Tse Ying was squatting a little way away from me grinning.

"Now," he said, "we will have a feast and I will teach you to eat chicken's innards."

4

I know for a fact that there are easier methods of disappearing than facing a Chinaman with an axe handle. It is no more difficult to learn than driving a car and does not require real danger for its accomplishment. The terror can be summoned up in the mind, and one does not need to adopt the peculiar stance of Goon Tse Ying: all that is needed is to tense the muscles in a certain way so that they begin to quiver. His odd method of standing helped produce this state but I was a resourceful young chap and soon found I could do it even while lying down in my bed.

Yet only twice did I disappear as a trick and the two incidents are separated by thirty years.

If you know what winter's mornings are like in Melbourne, if you have seen the blue fingers of the Chinese protruding from their grey mittens as they handle the cauliflowers and kale in the Eastern Market, if you have seen their breath suspended before kerosene lights, you might understand why an eleven-year-old might choose to disappear in order to lie in bed of a winter's morning.

I had not calculated the upset I would cause: the prodding hands, the chattering voice of old Hing, the running feet of his timid nephew, the shriek of old Mrs Wong whose heart was bad. I lay, invisible, in the heart of a storm.

When I finally regained my normal consciousness Goon Tse Ying was sitting on old Hing's bed reading the racing form.