Leah felt a tug of annoyance, but it passed.
‘See the paddy, all on its own. It’s ours, our monster.’
Funny little pride, thought Leah.
‘When father was picked up by the Red Guards, Li-Nan didn’t do much for a week. I guess we were waiting. Then she took me out here and we began to dig, digging walls, breaking up the wasteland, digging trenches back to the irrigation system. Everyone thought Li-Nan had gone a little mad and one woman tried to get me away from her. See, even now the paddy doesn’t support enough of a crop to make it worth working.’
He took off the glasses and rubbed the sides of his nose where they had been. He looked like a dozy bear.
‘But that doesn’t matter. While we were out there working – me wasting a lot of time making mud balls – we were just us and nobody could touch us. We went out to the paddy and dug and didn’t talk much about father, or where he was, or anything. Just about how to make that trench to the paddy work.
‘And when we found out from some little grey official that father had died, well, we went out and dug and dug. Until we had been friends – “mates” is it? – for long enough and the paddy didn’t matter any more.’
Ke looked at Leah. ‘Understand?’
23 The Special Day
There seemed something different in the air next morning.
Ke danced his red flags out of the village, and Leah could hear the cheering from the truck as he boarded it.
Li-Nan muttered, ‘Stupid boy,’ but the lines of strain had almost disappeared from her face.
Tong came over for breakfast with the broken coin and a pencil. ‘I am a stupid man,’ he said, making Leah run the pencil lead over the break with her eyes closed.
Leah said: ‘There seems to be a hollow here …’
‘Hollow, dip, it’s the edge of a round hole. A round hole. I should be thrown from the brotherhood of numismatists – coin collectors – for not realizing this. Look!’
Tong dropped a heavy chain of coins on the table. The coins were connected by a thick string through the square hole in the centre of all of them. ‘See, the hole takes the place of a wallet in old China and all the holes in all my coins are square. Big square holes, and I should have seen that a part of a square hole is missing in your broken coin.’
‘That means something?’
‘The only old coins with round holes are really old. From 660–336BC, when other coins in China were made in the shape of spades or swords. This coin is older than the village.’
‘Fantastic!’ As long as that doesn’t mean we have to search somewhere else, thought Leah. ‘Do we know what it is, then?’
‘Ah, no. Not yet. I’ll keep on working on it.’
‘What does it matter what the coin is?’ Li-Nan said. ‘It could be a broken button. All we need to do is find the other half.’
Tong looked embarrassed.
‘But we want to know the story,’ said Leah quickly.
‘Yes, the story,’ said Tong and he rode hurriedly to school.
Leah and Li-Nan fed the birds and the animals together, and Li-Nan talked a bit about Ke’s father, Yuan, and little Ke floating kites in the sky on a windy day like this. She had talked a lot yesterday with Joan and she had grown to like her a lot, but today Leah must go to the hospital alone.
Leah packed clothes, toiletries and Joan’s handbag, tied them on the carrier rack of Li-Nan’s bike and rode out of the village. She rode as far as Ke’s river tree, looked over her shoulder and dismounted. She pulled the letter out of the bag and sat with the Min curling before her.
Why do other people get to know Joan better than you?
She opened the letter and tried to remember what it said. There was that bit about Joan’s father being ill, very ill, the bit about Good Field, and the coin, the making of the broken pieces into one again. Joan had recited that much to Grandfather in Good Field but there was more, a block of scrawled old Full-Form Chinese characters that she could not read.
But she could remember now. Joan’s friend, Kathy, reading the letter to herself while Joan poured the tea. The face changing, would Joan like to have it written out instead? No, no, just read it.
The old man was dying and the pity of it all was that he had left so many things undone. He had left China, never returned to see his brother, never returned to find the place of his ancestors. And he had cast his daughter away among the barbarians and there was no time to see her again. Sorry, daughter, sorry.
And Joan was crying. Hanging her head, fighting it back and angrily demanding Leah go away and make another cup of tea, but she was breaking up.
Leah folded the letter and climbed back on the bike.
You have been forgetting things like that, haven’t you? Full of yourself since Dad went: Joan’s dragging you off to China, Joan’s trying to make you part of her Chinese family, Joan’s trying to bury Dad’s memory. Oh, lovely, try to think how she has been feeling! Mother’s gone and then the father and David Waters, so quick, bang-bang. How do you cope with that? And then in Shanghai, your daughter disappears …
She rode a little faster to the hospital.
Joan clapped her hands when she saw the package. ‘Glory be. Things are happening.’
‘Sorry it’s taken so long to dry.’ Leah was waiting for Joan to open up.
‘That’s all right. I had my first shower today, with a nurse holding my leg to keep the plaster dry. You should have seen us, dancing about on the tiles!’
It was different. She was different. ‘Li-Nan said you had a long talk.’
‘Widow’s talk. No, more than that. Did you know she’s been in Tibet, cooking for geologists?’ Joan tilted her head. ‘Where were you?’
Leah bit her lip. ‘Bit of a tantrum. Sorry.’
‘Oh?’
‘You talk to anybody about important things but never to me. I might as well not be here.’
Joan looked at Leah for a long time. ‘I try, Leah. But sometimes you don’t want to listen.’
Leah nodded. ‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘But you are now.’
‘Ke thought … why did we come to China, Joan? Really.’
‘To find our ancestral village. Why?’
‘But you’ve never been interested in that sort of thing before. When something happens you just keep on going.’
‘March on, always.’ Joan smiled, but with a brief shadow of pain. ‘But this was different. My father was asking me, and your father was asking you. We both have come all this way to find our ancestral village – for other people. So here we are.’
Suddenly Leah realized that she was not just here for Dad. Not any more. ‘But this is my family now!’
‘I hope so, Leah. I really hope so. We’ve got ourselves involved here, haven’t we?’
‘That blasted coin!’
‘At least we’ve made friends …’
Leah looked up, remembering her original target. ‘Ke thought there was another reason for our trip.’
‘The Teenage Terrorist would. What?’
‘He and Li-Nan dug a paddy after the death – ’
‘Oh yes, Li-Nan told me. I suppose I haven’t changed. Tried to go back for my father, but it is also “march on always”. Yes, Leah, I wanted China to be our paddy.’
‘It can be,’ Leah said slowly as she sat on Joan’s bed. ‘It is!’
When Leah returned to the house she found Li-Nan sitting on a very old metal trunk with a hammer and chisel in her hands.
‘Shh!’ she said. ‘I’m breaking in.’ She swung the hammer against the chisel. The chisel bit into a padlock, red with rust and with a broken key jammed into the keyhole.
‘What are you breaking into?’
‘This is Yuan’s, you know, my husband’s box. It should be Ah Ke’s box but if we wait for him we will never get it open. You know how it is with men.’ She struck the hammer again.
‘What are you after?’
‘The coin, of course. Give me help.’
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nbsp; Leah attempted to hold the chisel steady while Li-Nan went a little berserk with the hammer, showing no care whatsoever for her trembling fingers. Then, as Li-Nan drew back the hammer for the twenty-ninth blow the lock fell open in her hand. Li-Nan threw the lid back and brushed at the dust.
A folded yellow shirt with some black stains, several calligraphy brushes, rolls of rice paper – dry and some beginning to disintegrate – books of poetry, notebooks, a photo of Li-Nan with a small boy – Ke? – and a shy man with a wispy beard, a diploma or award, a wooden rattle, another photo, curled and spotted, of Li-Nan and the shy man without the wispy beard or Ke.
Leah realized that Li-Nan was digging back into the man’s past, slowing with every article she lifted from the chest.
More poetry in exercise books, a rolled red flag – what was he protesting about? – a carved bullock’s head, a Japanese army cap, the fossil of a river insect, an ancient spear head, joss sticks, chipped mah-jong pieces, ornaments, a bamboo cylinder, garments from another time. And that was it. The chest was empty, black and dusty, with nothing to see or move.
Li-Nan sighed. ‘Sorry, Leah. Probably someone threw it away.’
‘Yes, must have. Thanks for trying.’
‘We’d better put everything back.’ Li-Nan reached out for the old clothes: a black waistcoat with delicate stitched designs, the cap with a little gleam of maroon showing under the dust.
Leah picked up the bamboo cylinder and passed it to Li-Nan. They stopped with their hands on the bamboo and stared at each other.
Something in the bamboo had moved.
Something small and hard had moved in the thick baton of lacquered bamboo. There had been some writing in red half-way along, but there was nothing left now but a few specks on the lacquer. Both ends of the bamboo were sealed with white wax.
Li-Nan took the bamboo from Leah, rattled it and moved away for a knife …
A little later Tong stood a little apologetic outside the door, the broken coin glinting in his hand.
‘No, I just can’t place it, Leah. Cleaned it with a little lemon juice, but it doesn’t help.’
‘That’s all right Zhu Tong, you did your best.’ Li-Nan nodded at him generously and plucked the broken coin from his hand.
Leah could not stop grinning.
Li-Nan carried the broken coin like a trophy to the kitchen, to a small piece of black metal on the centre of the table. She placed the broken coin near the black metal, then nudged the coin across the wood with the nail of a finger, reducing the space between the two pieces from a lake, to a canal, to a gap, to a seam.
‘I think so,’ she said.
Leah was too weak to cheer. She leaned on the table and clung to a lop-sided leer while Li-Nan crushed her, pounded her on the back and called her ‘sister’. Tong fingered the two pieces of the coin, frowned an instant, then strode up to Leah and Li-Nan and embraced them both.
This is family, Leah thought muzzily and hugged them both back. What a great day. Where was Ke?
24 Scroll
Tong leaned back from the two halves of the coin and laughed. ‘I am a very stupid man.’
Leah and Li-Nan looked up from their tea and Tong pushed the coin toward them. The coin was now complete but it still made no sense to Leah. There was a round hole, and to the right of the hole there were crosses, the snake and the rod, and the angle had become a triangle. To the left there was now a triangle sitting on a cross and a ladder with one side missing.
‘I have been breaking my brain trying to work out what part of Sichuan this coin comes from, where it was made, what it was worth. I see the cash value of the coin in a symbol, but blink the eyes and suddenly the symbol changes and everything clicks home.’
Tong lifted his eyebrows and there was a light in his eyes. He tapped the symbols around the snake and the rod. ‘That reads “Yn”, and the other side of the hole reads “Ts’i”.’
Leah looked blankly at Li-Nan but Li-Nan was waiting patiently.
‘Or Ts’i-yn or Chi Ying, a very old town in the State of Chi, when there was a Zhou Dynasty. When China was several kings shouldering each other, before our first national tyrant. Before we built the Great China Wall, before we built armies of clay. When China was very young.’
Tong stroked the coin almost affectionately. ‘I passed through Ts’i-yn once, a long time ago. Of course, it was not called by its ancient name any more, it was Tungchang, a little town on the Grand Canal. It’s in the state of Shandong. Close to Jinan, not too far from Beijing. I don’t know how it got to Turtle Land village, perhaps it dropped from a merchant’s purse when he was on the Silk Road, bound for Rome. Well, it’s not a Sichuan coin, maybe it’s too old to be a Shandong coin too. Maybe it is just a China coin.’
If you look at it like that, thought Leah, it’s a beautiful coin.
‘But it is still a puzzle,’ Tong said. ‘Why was it cut in two?’
‘Always you have the head of a professor,’ Li-Nan said, a little smugly. ‘It does not matter. It does not matter why it is cut, it does not matter where it has come from, only where it has gone.’
She tapped the black fragment of the coin, almost under Tong’s fingers. ‘This piece has gone to Guangzhou, to the Good Field village, to Singapore, to Australia, and it has come back. Lost with a part of the old Zhou family, and found – as the family comes together again. The rest is for some dry lecture. I am impatient to tell Joan.’
Li-Nan glanced guiltily at Leah. ‘But, of course, you must tell her.’
‘We’ll tell her. Together.’ It would be a party and the doctors would throw them all out. No matter.
‘But you don’t want to know the story?’ Tong said.
‘Story? What story? Half of the coin has seen the world and the other half – like us – has stayed here.’
‘Just where?’
Li-Nan rolled the bamboo across the table. ‘In there.’
Tong picked it up casually, squinted down its barrel and looked up. ‘There is something else in there.’
‘Oh.’ Li-Nan sounded slightly annoyed. She should have found everything, completing her triumph.
‘Roll of paper.’
‘It’s probably just a lining.’
‘It has writing on it.’
Li-Nan surrendered. ‘Well? Why don’t you pull it out?’
‘I don’t know how. It’s been there for nearly a hundred years. It must be dry and brittle. I don’t want to pull it to pieces.’
‘Ah.’ Li-Nan took the bamboo from Tong and walked to the drawers. She picked up the cleaver and stood the bamboo on the table.
‘No!’ Tong reached for her.
Li-Nan struck to within a thumb’s width of her holding hand. She stared Tong down and struck at the other end. She glared at the bamboo for half a minute, gripped it, then pulled it apart. The roll of grey paper stood alone on the table.
‘All right, don’t touch it.’ Tong held up a hand. ‘Unroll it now and it will fall apart. We must make it damp and wait.’
Li-Nan looked at Leah. ‘How damp? How long for?’
‘I don’t know. Damp cloths, I …’
Ke stumbled into the kitchen. Air hissing through his teeth, face gleaming with sweat, eyes flicking around the room.
‘Hey, Ke!’ Leah jumped at him in delight. ‘We got the full coin!’
But Ke jerked back in sudden alarm.
‘What’s wrong?’ Li-Nan was suddenly looking past him, into the dark.
‘Why can’t the old men see?’ Ke was trembling.
Tong gripped Ke by the shoulders, like a bear. ‘It’s okay.’
‘All they had to do today was say they would listen to us, to move against the corruption. That is all. The marches would stop. The students would go home from Tiananmen.’
Tong eased Ke into a chair.
‘Democracy – it would come later. Open news, books, they could all come later. We don’t want much, do we?’
‘What happened?’ Tong asked.
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��Deng was behind it. But he has the flower pot – Li Peng – do it for him.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘They’ve declared martial law. Soldiers have been brought into Beijing.’
Tong and Li-Nan stared at each other in silence.
Leah woke next morning to tense whispers. She padded from her bed to see Li-Nan standing in the kitchen doorway, leaning angrily toward Ke, their noses almost touching.
‘ – got to be there!’ Ke was saying. ‘We’ve got to show – ’
‘No.’ And the whispering became a low voice. ‘It is the army now. Students cannot face the army.’
‘But we’ve got to try.’
‘You cannot. Haven’t our family paid enough?’
Li-Nan and Ke stared at each other for a long time, saying nothing, Li-Nan trembling. Then Ke looked down.
‘All right,’ he mumbled. ‘I stay.’
Li-Nan put her hand on Ke’s shoulder, steadying herself, then embracing him. She was crushing him against her body when she saw Leah.
‘But let me go to the truck, all right?’
‘Why?’
‘Got to tell the others. And I want to see what’s happened.’
Li-Nan hesitated, pushing him back to examine his face. ‘All right. But you take her.’ Pointing at Leah.
Ke started to protest but he let it go. Leah dressed quickly and they hurried to the highway on Li-Nan’s bike. The sky was lightening, high streaky clouds touched with pink, the pale wheat motionless around them.
‘You glad to be a Zhu now?’ Ke said as he stepped away from the bicycle.
‘Yes.’ She had watched Ke fingering the split coin last night, without seeming to be aware of it. He had hardly said anything.
‘I am sorry to pull you into this.’
‘I want to be a part of it.’ Leah was astonished. It seemed that someone else had said the words.
‘Not your battle,’ Ke said quickly. ‘Here it comes.’
The truck was no more than a speck on the dew-silvered highway. They waited silently while the flare of the red banners appeared above the battered grey body, then the flags and the crowded heads. The truck slowed. Before, the students had carried the air of a party on their way to a rock festival. Now they were subdued, even grim.
The China Coin Page 12