Peter Carey - Illywhacker

In the end, hunger might have broken the impasse, but certainly the Wongs, whose stall it was, would never have. They were nervous, polite and law-abiding. Their cousin Goon, however, was a different man and it was he who strode right in, knocking crates aside with his gold-capped stick, who grabbed me by the scruff of my dirty neck and lifted me, screaming and kicking, into the air: pale, skinny, hatchet-faced with hunger. I bit his hand and made it bleed. He laughed out loud, this giant in a butterfly collar and gold-rimmed glasses. I wet myself in terror.

I sometimes wonder if Goon would have taken me in if I had displayed less terror, if his compulsion to prove his benign intentions was not what any human will feel when confronted with a petrified wild animal one wishes to help – the mistaken terror is an insult to our good motives, a goad to greater efforts. But Goon, in any case, was a man driven by a desire to prove himself civilized to the English he despised. He adopted their dress when it suited him and spoke their language without a trace of accent. He was a giant of a man, not in the sense that he might tower over you, my long-limbed reader. Oh, he was large for a Chinese, but that is not the point – he towered over every man I ever met in the size of his spirit, his indignation, his energy, his laugh, and his ability to drink a tumbler of rough brandy in a single gulp.

He was not one of the Chinese who wrote to the legislature: "Dear kind sirs, we the Chinese miners do beg you to treat us fairly as we most respectfully beg you to do. We work hard and mean no harm…"or words to that effect.

For these Chinese, Goon had nothing but scorn.

"Roll up," he would taunt them, "roll up."

When he became an old man with a successful business in Grafton, these facts about his younger days would cause him embarrassment and he would deny it all. He joined Chinese-Australian associations and had grandchildren with names like Heather and Walter. He ate chops and sausages, roast beef on Sundays, and the only invisibility he would acknowledge was that which comes from dressing like everyone else.

The Goon of old age is not worth a pinch of shit. It is the forty-year-old Goon we want and to reach him I must walk down Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, as it was in 1896, past drays piled high with wicker baskets, shivering men with long coats and pigtails, past Mr Choo, the fortune-teller with the clever canary, to the worn wooden stoop that led to Wong's cafe. There was no sign at Wong's to proclaim its business, no window to display its wares. There was simply the stoop where old Mrs Wong sat in all weathers, breathing heavily and plucking ducks, the feathers of which drifted down Little Bourke Street and caught themselves in the nostrils of indignant mares, fresh from Port Melbourne with another load of travel-stained Chinese. Over the stoop was a small carved timber arch, its wood grey and cracked. Behind the arch was a trellised veranda, and behind this wooden skirt Wong, his family, and his customers hid their business from the English.

As you came in the door there was a small office on the right where the younger Mr Wong sat at his books, crowded in upon by bundles of goods, some in crates, some wrapped in raffia. There was the smell of dried fish, but also of steel, of grease. Long-handled shovels leaned against jute sacks of mushrooms criss-crossed with sunlight from the latticed window. You would think there was no order here until you looked at Wong's book and saw the neat rows of Chinese characters and Arabic figures and watched his bony fingers as they worked the abacus.

Further along there was the kitchen where Hing butchered and giggled and beyond that the dining room.

And there is Goon at the little table by the courtyard door. "Roll up," he calls, and everyone, all the Wongs, all the lonely single men, all nod and smile at Goon Tse Ying who was a rich man even then and respected because of it.

He had a great moon face with a high forehead and thin black hair that lifted in the slightest breeze. He had big shoulders, strong calves (which he displayed when called upon to sit) and, in Wong's at least, amongst his own kind, a voice like a gravel-crusher. Although he was in his late thirties when he adopted me it is misleading to mention it because he could look much younger and – when dressed in that formidable English suit – much older.

"I will teach you everything," Goon told me. "I will teach you how to skin a crow by blowing air into it with a piece of bamboo. I will teach you how to fight with your feet, my little Englishman," he hissed.

I sat in Wong's and was terrified. My head was full of my father's visions, his cannon balls, his patented breach locks, his naked coastline. His blue prophet's eyes looked at the ducks' feet Goon gave me to eat and saw, instead, the hands of babies.

I was not alone in my nervousness. The other Chinese did not want me there either. They did not approve of Goon Tse Ying adopting Englishmen. They were frightened of the consequences but Goon was a rich man and a natural force whose very laugh could move the brass chimes above the family table.

"I will teach you how to use garlic and ginger to remove pains from the head. I will teach you to read and write. I will teach you everything. Five languages," Goon Tse Ying said, "because I was once an orphan too. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said.

I had never sat at a table without a cloth. I had never heard mah-jong tiles clatter. I had never seen children treated kindly, touched, petted and embraced so readily. The Wong children were all younger than I was. They came and stared at me with huge brown eyes. When the sight of me made them cry they were not slapped. And – ducks' feet and dried fish included – it was this that was the most exotic thing in Wong's cafe.

"You will come to the herbalist's with me and I will make you a scholar of herbs. I will teach you to shoe a horse. I will teach you to make money. You will polish your boots like I show you. Why am I doing this for you, little Englishman?"

"Because you were an orphan, sir."

"Roll up," roared Goon Tse Ying. "Roll up, roll up. Look at them," he indicated the men playing mah-jong in the corner. "They are in gaol. They have locked themselves up in Wong's. They have made themselves prisoners. They give Wong all their money and Wong feeds them and buys what they need at the shops. They cannot speak English. They do not know what 'roll up' means. I say it and they smile. They nod at me. They think I am moon-touched, but they know I am rich. They respect me and think I am dangerous. I buy them presents because they are lonely and unhappy. Next week I will give poor Hing fifty pounds so he can have a bride come out from China. He does not know. You watch."

"Hing," he shouted in English. "Next month I give you fifty pounds."

Hing, sitting on a chair by the kitchen servery, looked up from his newspaper, took the sodden cigarette from his mouth and gave a stained smile.

"See," Goon Tse Ying said. "He does not know what I am saying. He does not know the meaning of 'fifty pounds' or 'roll up' either. Tell me, my pet Englishman, what is the meaning of 'roll up'?"

I didn't know.

"Pour me brandy, little Englishman, and eat your soup. It will warm your heart and make you forget this terrible country. Why am I kind to you?"

"Because you were an orphan, sir."

"No," Goon said quietly. His voice became soft, amber, vaporous as the brandy on his foreign breath. "It is to show I am not a barbarian like them."

In my confusion I thought he was referring to the Chinese.

"You will sleep here," Goon Tse Ying told me. "I have arranged with Wong. You will share a room with old Hing and his nephew. Hing will cook your meals. In the morning I will come and get you and we will sit at the herbalist's. He does not speak English but he is a good herbalist. I am helping him out for a while, to translate for him. He is a silly man to have bought the business with no English and I don't know what will happen to him when I leave."