As the Earth Turns Silver
Read As the Earth Turns Silver Online
Authors: Alison Wong
Alison Wong was born and raised in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, after her great grandparents on both sides migrated from China's Guangdong province in the 1890s. She studied mathematics at Victoria University in Wellington, worked in IT, and spent several years in China. In 1996 she held a Reader's Digest NZ Society of Authors Fellowship in the Stout Research Centre, and in 2002 the Robert Burns Fellowship at Otago University. Her poetry collection,
Cup
, was shortlisted for the Best First Book for Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and her poetry was selected for
Best New Zealand Poems
2006 and 2007. She currently lives in Porirua, Wellington, with her son.
As the Earth Turns Silver
is her first novel.
Reading Group Notes for this book are available at
www.picador.com.au
First published 2009 in New Zealand by Penguin Group (NZ)
This Picador edition published 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney
Copyright © Alison Wong Family Trust 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Wong, Alison, 1960â
As the earth turns silver/Alison Wong.
978 0 330 42488 2 (pbk.)
NZ823.3
Designed by Mary Egan
Typeset by Pindar New Zealand
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group
The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
These electronic editions published in 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
Copyright © Alison Wong 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.
As the Earth Turns Silver
Alison Wong
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For my father Henry Wong, who did not live to see this come to fruition, for my mother Doris Wong and the generations that came before, and for my son Jackson Forbes and the generations that come after.
Wong Chung-shun, 1896
It is a lonely place where the Jesus-ghosts preach. They preach about love, about a god who died of love, yet in the street the people sneer and call out and spit, then on Sundays sing in the Jesus-house.
Their god is a white ghost. You see the pictures. He has pale skin and a big nose and a glow of moonlight round his long brown hair. He has many names, just as we
Tongyan
have many names. We have a milk name, an adult name, perhaps a scholar or chosen name. The Jesus-ghosts call their god Holy Ghost. Even they know he is a ghost. People are like their gods, just as they are like their animals. They even call him Father. We do not need to name them, these
gweilo
. Even they know they are ghosts.
Yung says, We do not need to recognise their words; we do not need to interpret the raised syllable. It is there in a flicker of the eyes, the slight curl of a lip, in the muscles of the face, the way they set against us. He says, The body has its own language, as fluid as poetry, as coarse as polemic.
Yung has a way with words. He says the language of the body can be used as a weapon.
Now that Yung is here, I do not have to pay a clansman. One of us can go to the market while the other keeps shop; one can sort bananas while the other trims vegetables. Now that he is here, I can save to bring out a wife. I can save the fare and the poll tax. It will take a good many years.
When Yung first arrived we did not recognise each other. We had not seen each other for over ten years. He is eighteen now, and books have affected his brain. He dreams big, impossible dreams. He does not understand life, and he does not understand this land. He is full of too many feelings like wild animals caught and caged in a zoo. He likes to talk, and his words are quick, quicker than his understanding. He is very young â fifteen years younger. My brother is like a son, an only, foolish son.
They had just turned into Tory Street, past Mount Cook Police Station, Chung-shun and his younger brother Chung-yung, on their way to Haining Street for soupy wontons and noodles. A late Sunday morning, the sun shining with the heat of ripening fruit, the wind for once not too vigorous. Yung whistled some folk ditty, oblivious to
gweilo
rules that made whistling, singing anything but hymns, and playing the piano on Sundays frowned upon. Shun merely frowned. His leg ached and made him lose all appreciation of the one day of the week when the shop was closed. He did not notice the calmness of the day, the lack of dust and grit swirling from the road to assail their eyes and coat their skin and clothes and hair. He did not notice the man approach them.
Yung saw the man coming. Even from a distance there was something strange about the way he walked, an ambling stiffness. As they got closer, Yung saw the man's eyes focus upon him, saw his face spread into a toothless grin. He watched as the man walked up to them, stood too close (the stink of stale piss and unwashed clothes) and said through sunken cheeks, âGif me a shilling.'
Yung held his breath and stepped back, looked the man over. He was a good four inches shorter and very thin, and there was something wrong with his eyes. His hands were hidden in the pockets of his dirty, oversized coat, and for a moment Yung considered whether he might be concealing a weapon.
âWhat for?' he asked.
Yung could see him thinking. âHaaaf yoou aaany muun-neee?' the man said slowly, his face loose, his lips hollowing into his gums. âMuun-neeee.'
Yung smiled. âI haaf muuneee,' he said. He slapped his pocket, rattling the coins.
The man pulled his hands out of his pockets, held up his fists. âGif it to me or I'll . . .'
Yung laughed.
Muuneee.
He turned and walked back towards the police station. He hummed. He liked the solid red brick building, the black and white brickwork forming arches above the windows and doors, the imprints of arrows stamped into the bricks. If he didn't think about the prisoners who'd made them, then he found it amusing, the way the bricks were placed so randomly, sometimes with the arrow facing inwards and hidden from sight, sometimes out, sometimes pointing to the left, sometimes to the right. They were like clues left behind at the scene of a crime, a scene that had been contaminated by reporters, curious onlookers, bumbling policemen.
He walked into the coolness of the building, across the geometric tiled floor, past the staircase, to the room where Constable Walters sat in the depths of the building. They knew each other well. The constable often passed by the shop on his nightly patrol and Yung would offer him a banana or a ripe pear, taking comfort from knowing the police were around.
Constable Walters rose from his desk, and as they came back out onto the street they saw the man hurry in the opposite direction and disappear down Frederick Street. The constable followed but soon lost him.
When he returned, red faced and breathing heavily, he asked what the man had looked like. Yung described a man in his forties, no, thirties (
gweilo
always look older than
Tongyan
), about this high â he motioned with his hand â light hair, no teeth . . . Shun described the man's big red nose.
âShun Goh,' Yung said, addressing him politely as elder brother, âall
gweilo
have big red noses.' He turned back to the constable. âNose just like you,' he said, âand here . . .' He touched the right side of his jaw, trying to describe a scar but not knowing the words. âHe velly stupid,' he added.
After the constable had gone, Shun berated his brother, throwing his hands in the air. Why tell the
gweilo
he had money
la
? Why shake his pockets? Was he mad? After he walked off the
gweilo
harassed him for money too!
Yung wanted to laugh but he had to show respect. He tried to explain â after all the man was harmless, a simpleton, no more â but Shun wasn't listening. How come Yung was so stupid? Just two months ago Ah Chan was beaten up in the street. Didn't he know how dangerous it was?
Yung closed his ears. Already he was dreaming up a couplet. About a man with no teeth and half a mind, about a confusion of arrows and no idea which way to go.