The Yellow Papers (36 page)

Even this early in the morning the air was hot, humid. But Edward didn't care about the weather. He was content – at peace for the first time in years. Ming Li was at his side and she held on to his arm as if their being together was the most natural thing in the world.

The open-air market was busy and they jostled their way past buyers from restaurants, housewives with children clinging to their skirts, pedlars hawking their wares. Honking geese and clucking chickens in bamboo baskets rivalled the babble of dialects. In flat bamboo baskets, pyramids of the day's offerings painted an abstraction of colours – tiny ears of corn known as jade sprouts, hot red chillies and wind-dried sausages. A huge flat basket of hens' eggs nested a smaller basket of speckled quail eggs. Further along, the silvery scales of small fish contrasted with a mountain of giant crab claws. A small girl, with a large tray suspended from wire around her neck, offered them Cantonese pastries her mother had cooked before dawn.

As Ming Li shopped, testing the plumpness of a chicken with probing fingers, or weighing a vegetable in her hand, Edward was content to watch her and wonder at her resilience. Last night, after their lovemaking had unlocked their hesitancy, they'd spoken almost till dawn, filling in the missing years. She'd told him she still lived in a tiny apartment in one of the low-cost housing estates, and though it only had two rooms and she had to share a communal bathroom, she preferred it to the high-rise, barrack-like concrete buildings of the Shek Kip Mei area. She'd taken a chance, for the rent of her small apartment was higher, but she sublet one of her rooms to a family of five, and rented floor space in the second room where she slept to two sisters as well.

With some of this money, and profits from her shop, she had bought the lease on a tiny four-roomed house on Repulse Bay on Hong Kong Island, which she also rented out, and whose value, she'd proudly told him, had doubled in the short time she'd owned it. Clever woman, his LiLi. She was becoming a woman of substance. She'd told him then, shamefaced, about losing the diamonds, and how she would sell the lease of the house on Repulse Bay to pay him back, but he'd refused. He was full of admiration for her willingness to live as she did so as to rebuild her life. The diamonds were irrelevant now.

‘Hungry?' he asked when she'd paid for a bag of dried mushrooms.

She nodded and they made their way to a stall where the cook, embraced by clouds of fragrant vapours, steamed a variety of dumplings.

They ate watching a noodle maker, ghost white from a layer of flour, twirl a sheet of thin dough into the air, stretching it, doubling then redoubling it until it divided into ribbons, each thinner and thinner, multiplying in number until he had a curtain of noodles ready to boil or fry.

They left the market then, and their mood became sombre.

‘I wish I could stay longer,' he said at last, thinking of his flight taking him back to Australia that evening.

‘I know. I wish you could, too.'

‘If the term didn't start again next week … But I'll be back. Soon. I'll look into what sabbatical I can take – I should be due for some.'

‘Sabbatical?'

‘Time off from uni to do my own work – a few months. I could rent a place here. I'll find a way.'

‘I'd like that.'

‘You're sure I can't persuade you to come to Adelaide? ‘

Ming Li smiled and shook her head – it was becoming their little joke, this pretence that she could simply pack up and hop on a plane to Australia. They'd discussed it last night, and she knew that though there had been moves to relax the White Australia Policy, change was slow in coming. He, on his part, also knew she would not leave Hong Kong as long as she believed MeiMei and the boy might one day join her. That she had heard no news of her daughter and grandson in years didn't matter. She still questioned refugees, and hoped.

‘All right, I'll come here then. As often as I can. In between, we'll write. And I'll ring you at the shop – every single day. It won't be as bad if I can speak to you every day.'

‘It'll cost you a fortune.'

He kissed the top of her head. ‘I'll just have to come back quickly then, won't I?'

He remembered the last time he'd left her, the fear and uncertainty. The unbearable pain. But this time it would be different. Both knew he'd soon be back, and both knew she'd be here when he returned.

When they reached his hotel room, she gave him a cheeky grin and went straight for the bathroom. He heard water running. When she called him a short while later she was in the tub. Bubbles overflowed and the air smelled of apple blossom. She smiled, raised an eyebrow and opened her arms out to him.

Later, as he lay back against her chest in the cooling water, her legs around his waist, he wished he had something to give her to express what he felt. And then he remembered.

‘When I get back to Adelaide, I'm going to send you a present. It was given to me by a very special man.' And he told her about the brush-rest shaped like a lotus leaf, and about how he'd come to have it, and even how he'd turned his back on his friend, until it was almost too late. ‘I think you'll appreciate its beauty,' he finished. ‘It's made of apple-green jade – so fine you can see the light through it.'

‘I'll treasure it. Not because it's made of jade, but because it comes from you.' She kissed the back of his head, the side of his neck. ‘Jade … crystallized moonlight. Do you know,' she asked, almost copying Chen Mu's words from so very long ago, ‘that it means wisdom? And truth, and loyalty. Compassion, and courage too … Your friend was right in giving it to you.'

Edward kissed the inside of her wrists, not trusting himself to speak.

28

Ming Li stood amongst the crowd gathered at the Hong Kong border of China in the New Territories, and watched the refugees trudging over the bridge crossing the Shumchun River. She had waited so long for this day. Thirteen years! From the very day she'd arrived here in ‘49 till today, she'd dreamt this day would happen. And now she refused to think past this moment – this minute – in case the gods took it all away from her. But even as she thought this her mind drifted back to Edward.

True to his word, he'd taken some sabbatical leave after their first meeting and moved to Hong Kong for six months. They'd been together constantly then, and he'd proposed marriage, but she'd refused because she knew it was impossible for her to follow him to Australia whilst there was a chance that MeiMei and Huang Ho could join her. When he'd returned to his classes at the University, they'd begun a routine where they spoke on the phone nearly every day, then spent hours writing to each other, continuing their conversation.

In these past two years Edward came to Hong Kong anytime he could, even saving up his sick leave to extend his trip for a few more days. With his commitments, these trips were few and far between, and both yearned for the time when he could take another sabbatical. But that was years away. When together they were happy, and when apart they grieved, so that there were times she thought that maybe she was fooling herself – that MeiMei would never come to Hong Kong, and that she should grab whatever chance she had at happiness with Edward.

But then, ten months ago, she'd received news that both MeiMei and Huang Feng, her husband, had died. Ironically, it was Huang Feng who'd been denounced as counterrevolutionary, and he'd been publicly executed. MeiMei and her son had been sent to the Jiangxi Province, where massive canal and irrigation projects were taking place, and they'd joined thousands of the wretches of China who moved billions of cubic metres of rock and soil by hand to create massive dams and canals. MeiMei had died of illness and starvation, but Huang Ho was still alive.

This time there was no questioning the reliability of this news. The person who'd brought it to her had been a friend of MeiMei, and when this woman had confided that she was going to try to escape to Hong Kong, MeiMei had asked she contact Ming Li. A few days later MeiMei had died. Her friend had been there. Had seen the body. There was no doubt.

‘Are you sure the boy is still alive?' Ming Li had asked.

‘Still alive when I left. By now, of course, he could have joined his mother.'

There had been little she could do at the time, except send parcels of food that she doubted would reach him. She refused to accept that Huang Ho could also be dead – believing her grandson alive was the only thing that helped her cope with the grief of losing her daughter. So she planned her life around the possibility of getting him out of China.

She rented a better apartment – three rooms, running water, a bathroom and a private balcony, and even a telephone – and she didn't sublet as before. It was absolute luxury after the places she'd lived in these past years, but properties on Hong Kong Island had risen so much in value that she could charge astronomical rent for the house in Repulse Bay, and the shop brought in a healthy profit. She then set about finding those in Hong Kong who went back and forth into China on a regular basis. Few would risk it, not even to visit their ancestral homes during festival time, for fear of not being allowed back, but there were some – amahs and labourers – who regularly took the risk so as to take to their families food and clothing, all wrapped in large cloth bundles to ease the strict cloth rations. They would obtain a re-entry permit from the Hong Kong police, make the journey, and on their return would start scrimping all over again so that they could make the journey one more time.

When she found such a person going to the Jiangxi Province, she would give them a parcel of food for Huang Ho, and beg them to urge him to apply for an exit permit, even though she knew those were almost impossible to get. Then she would slip a few notes into their hand for their trouble, and to help convince them to do as she asked. She knew, of course, that the likelihood of them finding Huang Ho was almost nil, and that many of her parcels would end elsewhere, but she had to try. Finally word came back that Huang Ho was alive, but that he had no intention of leaving China.

‘He says he's a man,' the old labourer told Ming Li, ‘and as a man it's his duty to help Chairman Mao build China into a prosperous nation. He says he doesn't owe anything to a grandmother he's never seen, but he does owe his loyalty to The Great Leader.'

‘But he's just a boy – he's barely thirteen!'

The man shrugged. ‘To you he's a boy, but he's a man. But I tell you, he's not well. Already he walks like an old one.'

How she'd wished she could go into China then! Find Huang Ho and bring him back herself, but she knew she couldn't chance being recognised. Anyone who'd known her and Xueliang would label her as ‘ultra-rightist' – she would be denounced in no time. The very fact that she'd escaped to Hong Kong would be seen as an admission of guilt, and how would that help Huang Ho? She had to find a better way. Until then, she'd continue to send food parcels. He was MeiMei's son, her grandson. That was all the reason she needed.

Then last week, like wildfire, word had spread that both China and Hong Kong would open their borders. It was only to be for a few days – rumours said it was to ease the famine in China – and no one was sure when they'd close again, but it was her only chance. This time she would risk it – she would go into China herself and fetch Huang Ho. She'd rung Edward to tell him the news.

‘Don't! I beg you, LiLi, don't go. I don't care what they say, if you go in you may never come out. I don't think I could live if I were to lose you again.' He knew people in Hong Kong. He would arrange for someone to go in her place. ‘I have a friend – you remember the Springwells – Jonathan and Olivia from Shanghai? One of their daughters married a Chinese man – Mike Wang – they're in Hong Kong. Mike will help. I'll chase him up right away. Huang Ho may be more willing to listen to a man.'