CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS AND OTHER STORIES

BY

Kenneth Chan

AN EXEGESIS AND STORIES SUBMITTED

AS A CREATIVE WRITING PH.D THESIS IN THE SCHOOL OF

CREATIVE COMMUNICATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF

AUGUST 2005 CONTENTS

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Note

PART I. CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS AND OTHER STORIES: AN EXEGESIS

ZNTROD UCTZON 2

1. CHINESENESS, IDENTITY, AND HYBRIDTY 3

[a] Framing Chineseness: Western Anxieties and Discourses 3

[b] Framing Chineseness: Issues of Authenticity and Essence 13

[c] Framing Chineseness: Some Issues of Identity I7

2. FAMILY AND SELF

[a] My Father's Family

[b] About Myself

ANAL YSING THE FICTIONS

[a] Aspects of Narrative

(i) The role of the narrator in the transmission of the narrative

(ii) The narrative unity of fiction

(iii) Narrative and time

(iv) Repetition in narrative

[b] Tone and Structure in the Fictions

[c] Between Life and Fiction: Why the stories are not a personal or family memoir [dl Making Narratives: Predominant Motifs

(i) Reconstructing memory

(ii) Identity and temperament

(iii) The sense of loss

(iv) Compulsiveness/Obsession

(v) Home as a focal point of family life

4. SITUA TING THE FICTION

5. SITUA TING MYSELF

6. LANGUAGE, SILENCE, AND VOICE

CONCL USZON

REFERENCES PART 11. CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS AND OTHER STORIES

LEICA

(DIS) TEMPER

ALL THE TEA IN CHINA

COMPULSIVE

DISLOYALTY

CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS

OTHER PEOPLE'S LETTERS

BROTHERLY LOVE

THE NAME IS CHAN, CHARLES CHAN ABSTRACT

My thesis is a creative writing doctorate which focuses on one Chinese family's adaptation to living in in the mid-twentieth century. The thesis is in two parts. Part I is an examination of Chineseness and identity within the context of the short stories that make up Part I1 of the thesis.

In Part I, I have looked at the place of the Chinese within the larger, dominant cultures of America and Australia. In particular, I have discussed the way in which the discourses of the dominant culture have framed Chineseness; and also what it might mean to describe authentic and essential qualities in Chineseness. The question I ask is whether the concept of Chineseness shifts according to time, location, history, and intercultural encounters. This leads me to try to "place" my family and myself. I provide some background on my family and on specific incidents that have served as springboards for the fiction. Part I also discusses some aspects of narrative theory in relation to the stories and considers the stories within the context of other Chinese- Australian fiction and performance.

Ln Part 11, I have written a collection of nine short stories about the lives of a fictitious family called the Tangs. The stories can be described as a cycle that is unified and linked by characters who are protagonists in one story but appear in a minor or supporting role in other stories. Composing a linked cycle of stories has given me the opportunity to extend the short story form, especially by giving me scope to expand the lives of the characters beyond a single story. The lives of the characters can take on greater complexity since they confront challenges at different stages of their lives from different perspectives. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

These stories could not have been written without the encouragement and wise counsel of Jen Webb, Jacquie Lo, Leslie Chan, and Alison Chan. Jen persuaded me to take on a creative writing thesis at the University of Canberra, assiduously read successive drafts of the stories and the exegesis, and gave, at every step, critical but always perceptive feedback. I thank her for maintaining a steady and sure tiller that has steered the work to completion. Jacquie proferred helpful feedback at an early stage when I was developing my ideas on what I wanted to write. Her encouragement has been positive and her suggestions for who to read in Chinese-Australian fiction and what to read on concepts such as Chineseness, identity, and hybridity guided me through what is a proliferating literature. Leslie and Alison, apart from having to live with the writer of the thesis, have given insightfbl comments which have greatly improved the flow of the writing. I thank, as well, others who have read drafts of the stories and provided helphl comments including Maureen Bettle, Lynn Fong, Beatrice Sochan, and Geoffiey Chan.

Some of the ideas for the exegesis were presented at postgraduate seminars in professional writing at the University of Canberra and I thank both staff and students for their critical and positive advice. Auriol Weigold was instrumental in putting my name forward to the organisers of the Independent Scholars Association of Australia Conference on diasporas in 2001. The paper I gave there on my family in Australia was published subsequently in the ISM Review in 2002 and I have drawn on parts of it for my exegesis.

The School of Creative Communication at the University of Canberra has been generous in its support during the writing of this thesis. I am gratehl to the University for the chance to visit Shanghai late in 2004 and wish to thank Sam and Xiaowei Gerovich for taking care of me so well while I was there.

Finally I want to thank my mother Sally. Her conversations about her experiences in Shanghai and have contributed greatly to my understanding of family life. NOTE

A number of the stories in this thesis have snatches of conversation in which I written in a Romanised form. My use of Romanisation has been taken from two sources: Oakman 's Cantonese-English Dictionary (1 971), : New World Publishing; and Janey Chan, (1992) A Practical English-Chinese Pronouncing Dictionary, Tokyo: Charles E Tuttle Publishing. Where the Cantonese has been translated I have done the rendering into English.

In the text of the exegesis all page references to the short stories follow the pagination in Part I1 of the thesis. INTRODUCTION

The short stories that form a substantial part of this thesis focus on one Chinese family's adaptation to living in Australia in the mid-twentieth century. In composing these stories, what it means to be Chinese was always there as a question that needed to be interrogated. It could hardly be ignored because being Chinese defined my family in many ways and shaped our response to many events. The stories explore this from different perspectives and in different settings. Stories, of course, are one way of saying. An exegesis allows other ways.

Central to what I want to examine are notions of Chineseness and identity. I have taken this as my starting point, focussing on the location of the Chinese in the larger, dominant cultures of America and Australia. 1 look at two broad issues: how the discourses of the dominant culture framed Chineseness; and what do we mean when we speak about Chineseness.

The assessment of Chineseness provokes additional questions. Are there essential qualities that define what it means to be Chinese? Does the concept of Chineseness shift according to time, location, history and intercultural encounters? In examining the last of these questions I try to "place" my family and myself.

This leads to a consideration of the fiction itself. Here, I provide some background on the family and family incidents as springboards for the fiction. At the same time, I underline the point that the fiction is not the family itself and that the stories, as written, are a fabrication in the fillest usage of that word.

In dissecting the fiction itself, I look at narrative theory and its relation to my stories as well as some of the predominant motifs in the stories. In this section I discuss some aspects of the role of the narrator, the narrative unity of fiction, the connection between narrative and time, the pattern of repetition in narrative, and tone and structure in the stories. The motifs that I consider are: the reconstruction of memory, including the elusiveness of the past; the connection between the past and the present; the use of past events as invention or reinvention; identity and temperament; the sense of loss; compulsiveness, especially in relation to gambling; and the idea of home as a focal point of family life.

Finally, I try to place my stories within the context of other Chinese-Australian fiction and performance and of my own experiences. I look briefly at the work of writers and performers like Brian Castro, Beth Yahp, Ouyang Yu, William Yang and Anna Yen. Of my own experiences, I give some accounts of how I have been misperceived by being mistaken for being Japanese, American Indian, and, on one occasion in Rome, Timothy Mo.

1. CHINESENESS, IDENTITY, AND HYBRIDITY

[a] Framing Chineseness: Western Anxieties and Discourses

What does it mean to be Chinese if you are no longer living in China? If you have arrived in a land where there are not many Chinese: a place like Australia or America? How does the new place regard you and how do you regard it? To ask these questions draws us into thinking about Chineseness and how it has been framed within the discourses of the host culture.

Andy Quan subtly captures the mystery and paradox of being the other in his poem "Mr Wong's Children":

we learned how not to stand out from insults what not to wear

we waited for silence to tell us that we were good students

though speaking with no accent was as easy as water the eyes were a little hard to hide (200 1 : 25)

How, Quan seems to be asking, do we negotiate difference if we know we are not the same? Not the same as what, you may ask? Not the same as those who don't have to try to hide their eyes. In his poem, he captures succinctly the dilemma of those who want to belong but cannot quite get there.

In Australia and North America, the Chinese were long regarded as sojourners, those who were not expected to stay. Official policies from the late 19" century onwards legally codified the host country attitudes of rejection, making it very difficult for Chinese and others of Asian descent to remain in America and Australia, even if they were keen to do so.

Frank Chin, the Chinese American playwright and novelist, refers to the Chinese sojourner as a myth born of the repressive laws that forced Chinese to conclude: die or go back to China. The Chinese who came to the US, he says, were fishermen, farmers, shoemakers, cigarrnakers, laundrymen, miners, going wherever they could until they saw that America was determined to wipe them out.

The law warred against our women to deny us our manhood, to drive us out of the country, to kill us. Our American-born women lost their American citizenship if they went to China. They lost their citizenship if they married a Chinese citizen.. .

We had been forced out of our fisheries, laundries, cigar factories, forced out of our women, forced out of American sight, mind, and culture, by blatant exclusion laws, laws designed to protect fish, secure fire safety, protect public health and morality against us.

...The only possibilities we had left were death and China. (Chln 1998: 80, 82)

Chin writes passionately about the injustices that were meted out to the Chinese from the turn of the 201h century. His version of what happened is corroborated in more detailed histories of American immigration law and practices during the exclusion era. San Francisco, a main processing centre for Chinese entering and leaving the US at the turn of the 20Ih century, enforced the exclusion laws so effectively that it became a model for how the rest of the nation should act (Lee 2003: 63).

Behind the laws lay a specific construction of Chineseness. Erika Lee describes it as a framework of racism that "was grounded in an American Orientalist ideology that homogenized as one indistinguishable entity and positioned the West and the East in diametrically opposite terms, using those distinctions to claim American and Anglo-American superiority" (2003: 25). The Chinese were painted as heathen, crafty, dishonest, and marginal members of the human race. Chinese women were an especially unsavoury version of the femme fatale, a sexualized danger and prone to cause "moral and racial pollution". Chinese men lacked masculinity because they exploited women, did not marry and establish families, and crossed gender boundaries by taking up work in laundries, restaurants, and domestic service, all of which were jobs traditionally allotted to women (Lee 2003: 25-7).

Those acquainted with the troubled history of Chinese settlement in Australia will detect a familiar ring to the diatribes against the Chinese. The Chinese had a predilection for secret societies, gambling, and opium smoking. Chinese men (in Australia and America the Chinese population was almost entirely male) were immoral, homosexual, consorted with European women, and carried diseases like leprosy and smallpox. They were transients, a source of indentured cheap labour, willing to work for lower than standard wages, and unfamiliar with the workings of parliament and democracy (Curthoys 2001 : 25-6; Evans 1988: 170-6).

These negative images of the Chinese were largely spawned in the 19'~century when there was a strongly held Protestant view of China as a country of heathens, morally degraded, untouched by the light of God, and inferior to an expanding and progressive Western civilisation (Dawson 1964: 22-3). If we step back in time we can locate a far different discourse, one that owed a great deal to the colourful exaggerations of Marco Polo in the 13'h century and was reinforced in the reports of other travellers like Galeote Pereira. And that was the picture of the Chinese as wealthy and possessed of great material prosperity (Dawson 1964: 5-7). David Walker, in Anxious Nation, refers to a different kind of concern: the mounting unease about the "yellow peril" as symptomatic of "anxious male narratives foretelling the end of Europe's dominance and the coming destruction of the 'white world' " (1999: 3). Ln these stories Australia appeared as a vulnerable continent, subject either to direct attack from the East or to a more gradual loss of its British heritage at the hands of Asian intruders (1999: 3). Exploring the text of these narratives, Walker says (1 999: 7) that " were regularly reminded that the Asia on their doorstep harboured clever, unscrupulous and resourceful opponents; none more so than the brilliant but deadly Dr Fu Manchu."

Sax Rohrner, the English inventor of Dr Fu Manchu, managed to combine several conflicting presentations of anti-Chineseness within the covers of his books. On the one hand, there is the evil genius, a super-scientist who is bent on conquering the world and eliminating the white race (Walker 1999: 177-8). On the other, there is the portrait of the Chinese as the despised other, the inhabitants of a decadent . In The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu, British agents enter a Chinese barber shop that is a cover for an opium den and is described as very dirty. It is depicted as strange in its foreignness with a Yiddish theatrical bill and another bill that "may have been Chinese." The Chinese man who meets them chatters, "simian fashion", in an invented form of broken English - "no shavee," "no habe got pipee". He has decayed teeth and a yellow paw. One agent berates him as: "you yellow scum" (Lee 1996: 209- 10).

The obverse of this type of invention is the genial detective Charlie Chan. In contrast to Dr Fu Manchu, who epitomises a type of demonised Chineseness, Charlie Chan is on the side of justice, truth, and the American way. In the mythology of American popular culture he is the exoticised, benign Oriental. Jessica Hagedorn perceives him (1993: xxi) as "a part of the demeaning legacy of stereotypes.'' Seemingly intelligent, relying on brainpower to solve murders and other crimes, he must be the only Chinese who ever learnt English from a phrasebook without notes on grammar. Charlie the detective plays to American racist pedagogy: he's the wily, inscrutable, mysterious, obsequious Oriental. The movie version of the withdrawn, rather effete, overly polite detective is as far removed fiom an American action hero as we could imagine, even asexual perhaps. Yet, like the Chinese elsewhere, he has managed to sire a tribe of offspring.

"The differences between the evil Dr Fu Manchu and the good detective Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department are," declaims Frank Chin, "superficial." They are visions of "the same mythic being, brewed up in the subconscious regions of the white Chstian's racial wet dream" (1998: 95). In the preface to Aiieeeee!, Chin and his co-editors remark (1991: xvi) that Earl Derr Biggers, the inventor of Charlie Chan, was a "subtly racist writer".

It is worth noting, however, that for much of its history from the late 19Ih century onwards, the US perceived Hawaii as a place apart, a colonised "other" that belonged more to the greater Pacific or Polynesia. When it was annexed in 1898, Hawaii ''was seen less as the last far western acquisition and more as the first outpost of a new and strange American empire" (Whitehead 1998: 43). At that time, Hawaii's population was racially diverse: 42.1% Chinese and Japanese, 36.2 % Hawaiian, and only 20.6% Caucasian (Whitehead 1998: 53). It was against such a racial backdrop that Chang Apana, the Honolulu policeman on whom Biggers based his Charlie Chan character, joined the force in 1898 (Williams 2000).

Biggers could have given his American readers a radically different fiction had he really drawn on the life and times of Chang Apana. That detective, according to reports, "was fearless and energetic", and carried scars on face and body fi-om his encounters while performing duty (Williams 2000).

The Charlie Chan archetype, who represents the image of the model Chinese citizen, meticulously well-behaved, deferential to white America, was also perpetrated in the works of Chinese writers like Pardee Lowe, Lin Yutang, Jade Snow Wong, and Leong Gor Yun (the last of these names is a pseudonym which translates, in Cantonese, as "two people".) Chin and his co-editors are scathing about the Charlie Chan persona, calling him "the fat, inscrutable, flowery but flub-tongued effeminate little detective" (1 99 1: xvi-xvii). In these portrayals, there is a tendency to essentialise, to place the Chinese and what they are perceived to stand for into a category of the excluded other. Whether it is the demonic Fu Manchu, the overly deferential Charlie Chan, or the Chinese who have already passed through the gates and are living in America and Australia, the discourses are a racial and gender shaping that presents the Chinese and Chineseness in a form that is stereotyped, marginalised, and defined as other.

Elaine Kim's observation about Asian Americans also applies to their Australian counterparts:

Asian Americans, as we renamed ourselves, have had no place in the discourse on race and culture in the United States except as "model minorities" on the one hand or as unassirnilable aliens on the other, as statements about the ultimate goodness of the dominant culture and the ultimate badness of those who refuse to go along with the program. (1993: viii)

In her 1982 study, Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context, Kim commented that: "Asian women are only sexual for the same reason that Asian men are asexual: both exist to define the white man's virility and the white race's superiority" (cited in Wong and Santa Ana 1999: 173).

The scale of Chinese migration to America was greater than it was in Australia. In 1880-1, when numbers in both countries were close to their 19'~century peak, there were 105,465 Chinese in the US and 38,533 in Australia (Wong 1995: 62; Choi 1975: 22). Because of the differences in scale we need to be careful not to assume that the American and Australian responses to the Chinese presence were the same. Nonetheless, we can say that what happened in Australia in the late 19Ihand early 20Ih century had some parallels with the situation in America. Curthoys identifies several key themes that were prevalent in Australia: the fear of an imminent invasion of Chinese hordes; the assumption that the Chinese were incapable of assimilating and absorbing the ways and values of a "fledgling British colony;" the different values and beliefs of the Chinese; the threat that Chinese workers posed to white labourers in job losses and unemployment; and the loss of racial purity through miscegenation (2001: 25-6). In Australia, restrictions on migration from the late 191h century onwards meant that the chance for a Chinese man to marry a Chinese woman was almost impossible. In 1901, there were 29,153 Chinese males and only 474 females; in 1911, there were 21,856 males and 897 females. One' interpretation of Australian policy (Choi 1975: 40) is that it was the intention of the govemment to make sure that women remained scarce among the resident Chinese population as a permanent barrier to increases in numbers. Moreover, without their families, the men would be more likely to return to China quickly.

In the US, the discrepancy between Chinese males and females was also substantial. The figure for 1900 is 85,341 males and 4,522 females. For 1910 the figure is 66,856 males and 4,657 females (Wong 1995: 64).

In the Western framing of Chineseness there was a social construction of heteronormativity that set up "a patriarchal Euro-American nuclear family as the model for citizenship and national identity" (Wong and Santa Ana 1999: 178). Yet immigration and labour laws not only blocked Chinese and other Asians from aspiring to normative conceptions of a masculinity "legally defined as white" but naturalised ideas of Asian males as emasculated and feminised in their work and their comrnunities.

The narratives describing the impact of the Exclusion Acts on Chinese-American lives tend to focus on bachelor societies, the scarcity of women, distorted male-female ratios, male sexual deprivation, enforced childlessness, and paper sons. (The last- named refers to the practice by which Chinese males who had been admitted into the US could then sponsor sons that they claimed were still living in China, even if these were not blood sons (Lee 2003: 203-6)). Such a focus underpins heterononnativity not only as a marker of what is lacking but also as allowing only two categories of sex: conjugal and nonconjugal heterosexuality (Wong and Santa Ana 1999: 176, 179).

Judith Butler's analysis of perfonnativity can provide a theoretical insight into how these discourses come to be accepted as authoritative. Drawing on the work of Austin and Derrida on speech acts as performatives, Butler acknowledges that the power of the performative comes not from an originating will but is always derivative. Could an utterance succeed - the declaration of man and wife in a wedding ceremony, the launching of a ship - if it did not repeat a "coded" utterance, if it were not identifiable as a "citation?" (Butler 1995a: 134). In other words, performatives succeed because "the action of speech echoes prior actions, and accumulates the force of authority through the repetition or citation of a prior and authoritative set ofpractices." The speech act as performative does not merely occur within a practice but is itself "a ritualised practice" (Butler 1997b: 5 1).

Race is not a natural biological category. As a social construction, it makes group relations appear as if they were "natural and unchangeable" and "gives social relations the fagade of long duration.. .essentializing and fixing difference" (Miron and Inda 2000: 99). It does this by working to constitute the racial subject performatively, procuring that subject as naturalised "through repeated reference to that subject." Thus the performativity of race "is not a singular act of racial subject constitution, but a reiterative practice through which discourse brings about the effect that it names" (Miron and Inda 2000: 99).

Such essentializing of race has a connection to gender and sex. As a number of writers on Chinese and Asian identity have pointed out, dissection of race and ethnicity cannot proceed in isolation from gender and sex. Wong and Santa Ana state:

There is no universal Asian American subject who is ethnic first, before being gender- or sexuality-identified,just as there is no such thing as a gender- or sexuality-transcending, generically ethnic history. (1999: 176; also Leong 1995: 1-22; Takagi, 1996: 26-7; Louis, 1998: 15; Chin 1998: 80-5; Quan 2004: 173)

A major concern of Butler's writing (1990: 141) is to unravel the way gender and "sexed" norms cohere around the heterosexual binary of feminine/masculine, a binary that is culturally produced but is, in her assessment, a regulatory fiction. Gender is a ritual social drama requiring a performance that is repeated. Such repetition is "at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established; and it is the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation." In the process of repetition, however, there will be an occasional discontinuity, a failure to repeat, a de-fonnity, or a parodic repetition that exposes "the phantasmatic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction" (Butler 1990: 140-141).

Here, Butler's theorising opens up the possibility of challenge and contestation. She explores how performativity might enable other gender and identity configurations to proliferate beyond that of a binary heterosexuality. If the rules governing signification "not only restrict, but enable the assertion of alternative domains of cultural intelligibility.. .then it is only within the practices of repetitive signifying that a subversion of identity becomes possible" (1990: 145).

No subject is constituted once and for all. Our identities are not "fixed" through a singular process and the fact that they are constituted again and again implies that they are open to formations "not fully constrained in advance" (Butler 1995a: 135).

Can we apply the Butler analysis to unravel the heteronormativity that coheres around the construction of race and identity? Miron and Inda, in their evaluation of race as a kind of speech act, suggest that this might be possible. They assert that since race is a social fiction, a sedimented effect of repetition, the racing of a subject is a never- ending act. It follows that since reiteration is necessary to sustain "the naturalized effect of race" the constitution of a racial subject is never complete. Adopting the theorising of Butler they argue that contestation is possible:

There are gaps and fissures that open up in the process of reiteration which make it possible for the performance of normalization to be subverted. The necessity of reiteration offers the possibility of reiterating the identity of the racial subject otherwise, against the norm, making the racial subject open to the ever-present possibility of re-signification. (Miron and Inda 2000: 101)

In her evaluation of identity politics, Lisa Lowe suggests how Asian Americans might locate a site of such contestation as a means of disrupting the stereotypes of the dominant culture. She states that within Asian American discourse, the articulation of an Asian American identity as an organizing tool "has provided a concept of political unity that enables diverse Asian groups to understand our unequal circumstances and histories as being related." She does, however, issue a warning:

. . .essentializing Asian American identity and suppressing our differences - of national origin, generation, gender, party, class - risks particular dangers: not only does, it underestimate the differences and hybridities among Asians, but it also inadvertently supports the racist discourse that constructs Asians as a homogenous group.. .

To the extent that Asian American discourse articulates an identity in reaction to the dominant culture's stereotype, even to rehte it, I believe the discourse may remain bound to, and overdetemined by, the logic of the dominant culture. (Lowe 2004: 1037)

What Lowe proposes is that we see "the making and practice of Asian American culture as nomadic, unsettled, taking place in the travel between cultural sites and in the multivocality of heterogeneous and conflicting positions." In this sense, Asian American is not a natural category but "a socially constructed unity" assumed for political reasons. Adopting Gayatri Spivak's term of "strategic essentialism", Lowe suggests that Asian American be used as a signifier of Asian American identity

for the purpose of contesting and disrupting the discourses that exclude Asian Americans, while simultaneously revealing the internal contradictions and slippages of Asian American so as to insure that such essentialisms will not be reproduced and proliferated by the very apparatuses we seek to disempower. (2004: 1045)

If we turn to the situation in Australia we can see the beginnings of a similar process of contestation. It doesn't come across much in narratives of the type laid out in Diana Giese's Astronauts, Lost Souls & Dragons which mainly focus on Chinese who have made a successful adjustment as "good" Australian citizens. Tseen Khoo notes that notions of ethnicity and culture will retain their vigour and cogency only if they are conceptualised as "unfinished social fields" and are "constantly interrogated" (2001 : 103). Chinese-Australians still grapple with being "visibly different" while remaining hegernonically "invisible" and mostly unheard "when it comes to influencing or implementing specific educational, social or governmental changes. The works of Chinese-Australian writers, however, hnction to question and re-form concepts of nationhood and citizenship" (2001: 103). Khoo cites the work of William Yang in Sadness in which he blends images and stories of his childhood, youth, and recent visits to North , where he was born, with his gay and lesbian friendships in Sydney and . The rediscovery and reinterpretation of his Chinese past, the account of gay Asians coming out, and his encounters with hends he is losing or has lost to HIV/AIDS provides us with a multi-dimensional narrative that is far removed from any image of the "good" Chinese citizen represented in Giese's Astronauts, Lost Souls & Dragons.

In drawing attention to these different narratives, Yang reminds his audiences and his readers that racial identities are also sexual identities. Moreover, the focus on loss in the gay community serves as a statement of political concern and protest in the face of public disavowal and inattention. Butler observes (1993: 233) that theatrical rage reiterates the injuries of homophobia through an "acting out" that "does not merely repeat or recite those injuries, but that also deploys a hyperbolic display of death and injury to overwhelm the epistemic resistance to AIDS and to the graphics of suffering."

What I have discussed in this opening section is the way Western culture has sought to frame Chineseness and to apply it to Chinese minorities living in Western countries. Such framing has tended to portray the Chinese in essentialist and stereotyped terms. But the writings of Butler and others demonstrate that attempts to "fix" identity and race into so-called normative categories involve a continuing reiteration, a process of perfonnativity. Such a performative process will open up the possibility of contestation and challenge exposing the fact that what is fixed as a kind of heteronormativity is actually a socially constructed "fiction."

[b] Framing Chineseness: Issues of Authenticity and Essence

Wang Gungwu asks: is there such a thing as Chineseness? His question does not imply that it is non-existent. He is sure that with its continuous history, China must have produced something that could be called Chineseness. Additionally, he thinks that Chinese both inside and outside China would have something in common that can be called Chineseness. What interests him is whether being Chinese always means the same thing or whether it changes with time and place (Wang 2003: 182-3). One thing he fixes on is the issue of ethnic identity. He argues that the only reliable test of this is if a person identifies himself as a Chinese and if others agree that he is Chinese.

Wang examines Chineseness in Shanghai, Hong Kong, , and the Bay area of San Francisco along a spectrum ranging from cities that he considers are clearly Chinese to those barely recognizable as such. The Shanghai Chinese, who are the pioneers of modern Chineseness, would be closest to what Wang regards as historically Chinese. Hong Kong would not be far distant from Shanghai. Those living in Singapore and San Francisco would be "farther along the spectrum because they have many more complex non-Chinese variables to contend with in their lives" (2003: 184-9). He declares that Chineseness is different depending on place, history, and socio-political context.

This is quite a novel approach to take. We would say that Shanghai, as a city in , is obviously Chinese. By focussing on Shanghai, Wang highlights the fact that it was the "who mastered the earliest challenges of the Western impact on China, and became indubitably the first examples of modern Chinese." They turned Shanghai into the first genuinely international city in Asia, and their success in absorbing lessons from the West while not appearing to lose their Chinese identity "was greatly admired throughout China" (Wang 2003: 190).

What is suggested here is the need to interrogate Chineseness so that even within China and certainly outside China, its disparate meanings can be examined. The Shanghainese transformed a tiny port on the yellow mudflats at the estuary of the Yangtze River (McLachlan 1989: 19) into a dynamic metropolis and, in the process, reshaped the meaning of what it was to be Chinese, often in ways that were "contradictory and perplexing to the Chinese in the interior" (Wang 2003: 190). The Shanghainese supported nationalism and revolution and promoted, within China, the latest ideas in science and the arts from all parts of the world. But they also made the city a symbol of negatives that had been taken from the West. Shanghai came to stand for "extravagance and waste, glitter and shallowness, cosmopolitan rootlessness and disloyalty, betrayal of Chinese values, even treachery towards China itself' (Wang 2003: 190).

Generalisations about the people of a whole city are enormously difficult to make and, on closer examination, would doubtless have to be qualified. What Wang is trying to convey are some major trends that reshaped Shanghai from a city that was once considered to be traditionally Chinese to one that became modern Chinese. He realises that he is on difficult terrain in trying to pin down what is Chineseness. He asks whether the numerous small traditions of rural China, with their own particular local practices, may represent things "quintessentially Chinese?" Or is Chineseness a more abstract idea, "a collection of cultural traits that can be isolated and used to measure each person's willingness to acknowledge them whether they lived inside Chinese territory or not?" (2003: 184).

Once we concede the possibility of differences in what Chineseness might mean, even inside China, we open up a debate about authenticity and contesting discourses. Who and what determines and shapes Chineseness? Is it the discourses of the Chinese mainland; of greater China comprising the triangle of China, , and Hong Kong; the Chinese overseas, such as those in North America, Australia, and ; or Sinologists and, using Said's term, Western Orientalists?

Attempts to shape the discourse will generally involve endeavours to define the essential features of Chineseness, even if those defining characteristics, on deeper examination, turn out to be fragmented, inconsistent, and irresolute. Hodge and Louie state that in the 2othcentury, critics and defenders of traditional Chinese culture have been intrigued by the concept of a "Chinese essence" found only in China. A neo- Confucianist philosopher such as Liang Shuming saw it as contained in the "Golden Mean" of Confucius (1 998: 14).

If we consider in China we find that it is embedded with ambiguities. What originated as an expression of the thoughts of the feudal lords became transformed into a system used by scholar-officials to embody their "interests, ideas, and ideals." In that change, Confucianism was used to defend the interests of the gentry, the ruling class who espoused democracy for the aristocracy but treated all other classes in a harshly authoritarian manner (Balazs 1964: 7). van der Sprenkel refers to the differences between the Confucianism of Tung Chung- shu in the second century BC and that of the philosopher in the Analects; between the neo-Confucianists in Sung philosophy from the 8'h to the 12'~centuries, who espoused the status ethic of the bureaucracy, and the philosophy of family devotion, ancestral worship, and filial piety which provided a norm for the common people for many centuries. We need to know, he adds, which Confucius is being blamed or praised and which Confucian text is under discussion. The Analects, regarded as the teachings of the master, was not put into the form known to present-day scholars until about 100 years after his death (van der Sprenkel 1975: 79, 82).

Other features that might enable us to identify Chineseness would be language, art, and cooking. Again we find that there are competing claims to authenticity. For example, an essay by Malinda Lo on "authentic" Chinese food is relevant to our discussion. She argues that 20'~century Chinese cookbooks are a site for constructing ethnic identity through the representation of Chinese cuisine. Lo examines the writings of Chinese-Americans as well as non- on the subject and demonstrates that the discourse is historically marked. There are shifts in the mode and content of presentation according to the "position" of Chinese food within mainstream American culture. She traces a movement in time from when Chinese food was viewed as strange, alien, and exotic to a contemporary era when it fits more comfortably into a multicultural America. Notwithstanding these changes, the cookbooks always stress the "authenticity" of recipes, even though what constitutes a genuine Chinese dish changes significantly (Lo 2001).

The presentations in cookbooks from 1914 to 1928 have multiple variations of chop suey, a dish that is linguistically derived from the Cantonese words jaap sui meaning odds and ends. Greg Lee says that chop suey is "as American as the hamburger. It is an invention of Chinese in America and an oddity to visitors from China in search of 'authentic' Chinese food. Chop suey is a hybrid dish. Non-Chinese think it's Chinese. The Chinese outside America think it's American" (1 996: 2 19). Chinese cookbooks of a more recent vintage delete any reference to chop suey. What the discussion of Confucianism and cookbooks demonstrate is that discourses about Chineseness will attempt to delineate the authentic and the inauthentic. The meanings in the contestation about authenticity are complicated by the political and cultural tensions within the triad of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong - China because it aspires to reabsorb Taiwan at some future date; Taiwan because it is testing the possibilities of breaking free into independence; and Hong Kong because it has been folded into China since 1997 but is treated as and sees itself as a political maverick (one country, two systems).

This contestation involves what Rey Chow refers to as China's own hegemony, its cultural centrism. China sees itself as the repository of culture and values in a way that assumes that it alone can claim to be authentically Chinese and embody Chinesenesses. Chow argues that there is a need "to disengage from the monolithic notion that China is one culture." She adds that any discussion of cultural studies and China would be inadequate if it did not seek to address "the scarcely touched issue of China's relation to those whom it deems politically and culturally subordinate." She is referring, inter alia, to Taiwan and Hong Kong, which, despite their own histories, "are simply denied identity and validity in the eyes of the People's Republic." Can these other cultures, which should be considered a vital part of what it means to be Chinese, "say no to China?" The exploration of this question would involve confronting "the contradictions of Chineseness as a constructed ethnicity" (Chow 1997).

[c] Framing Chineseness: Some Issues of Identity

Ien Ang addresses contestation and shaping in a different way in her book, On Not Speaking Chinese. The starting point for much of her theorising is the fact that although her appearance is Chinese she does not speak Chinese. And this has struck her as the experience of diaspora: being ethnic but not "authentic" (Ang 1998: 154). As she explains:

Being Chjnese is not necessarily something that comes from inside me, it is an identity that is socially constructed. But this identity formation has very concrete effects. Wherever I go people want to categorise me, and the category (deployed by my own family and by the dominant culture) is 'Chinese', which operates as a discursive structure that is always there and constantly impinges on me. (1998: 155)

What Ang wrestles with is the dilemma of identity for any marginal subject living in a dominant culture. Migration creates a shiA in perspective fiom "where you're from" (origin) to "where you're at"(location), but the framing of the dominant culture generally results in origin overwhelming and marginalizing location (Ang 1993).

When she was a child at school in and exposed to the discourses and rituals of Indonesian nationalism, she was disturbed and confused when local children told her that she didn't belong in Indonesia but "in a faraway, abstract, and somewhat frightening place called China." She says that she rebelled silently, not wanting to be Chinese, desiring, instead to fit in, to assimilate (2001: 28).

Ang alludes to "the very dfjculty of constructing a position from which I can speak as an (Overseas) Chinese, and therefore the indeterminacy of Chineseness as a signifier for identity" (2001: 24).

Among who have a symbolic attachment to the homeland, identity becomes complicated because China is presented as the cultural and geographical core in regard to which the individual is forced to adopt a humble position, even one of shame and inadequacy at her own 'impurity.' Ang cites a comment of Rey Chow that Chinese from the mainland are often seen to be more authentic than those fiom Taiwan or Hong Kong because the latter have been Westernised. In the case of Indonesian peranakan Chinese like herself, or second generation Chinese-Americans, the problem is exacerbated because their Chineseness is "even more diluted and impure." For those who are part of the Chinese diaspora there is the very strong "originary pull" of China because of both the prominence accorded to it in the Western imagination and the persistent tendencies within Chinese culture to place itself at the centre of the world, its "Middle Kingdom mentality" (2001: 32).

How can one construct a position that avoids the centrifugal pull of China and its claims to authentic Chineseness? Ang's proposal is to keep a creative tension between "where you're from" and "where you're at", by which she means filling the space of that in-betweenness "with new forms of culture at the collision of the two: hybrid cultural forms born out of a productive, creative syncretism."

Ang calls this the third space of hybridity in which the diasporic subject can never return to herlhis origins but in which the cultural context of "where you're at" informs and articulates the meaning of "where you're from." Hybridity emancipates the diaspora from China as the master-signified of Chineseness. And Chineseness becomes an open signifier invested with resource potential, "the raw material for the

construction of syncretic identities suitable for living 'where you're at' " (2001: 35).

Hybridiq and Identity

There are some considerations that Ang glides over in her analysis. Her notion of hybridity is, in the end, laid out in terms of China-as-centre and the challenge to this from those who are positioned in the diaspora.

Her notion of hybridity needs to take account of the double connection of diaspora linked to China and to the host or dominant culture. What these twin linkages bring into the analysis is the critical issue of identity: how do you see yourself in regard to China as the originary culture? And how do you see yourself in regard to the dominanthost culture whether this is Australia, America, or a Southeast Asian nation?

Ang does talk about identity in her essays on Chineseness but she does not fully allow for the complexity of it in her strategy of hybridity and the shift to the in-between space. If one has been able to say no to China, where does that place you vis-a-vis the dominanthost culture that you are currently in?

Let me expand this point. The diasporic subject, which is the position from which one speaks as a Chinese in the West, attempts to negotiate hisher in-between space and, in so doing, creates a third space that is no longer the recognition of China-as- centre. The negotiation shifts the subject from feeling the pull of China as the master- signifier of Chineseness into a new and different space. From my reading, this is how Ang sets out the strategy of hybridity.

The diasporic subject is in a more complex position than Ang seems to allow because such a subject is doubly marginalised, doubly interpellated (if we adopt Althusser's analysis of subject position). He/she is positioned as a marginalised other by the dominant host culture and as an inauthentic Chinese by China as the master-signifier. Where the analysis becomes complicated and loaded with additional meaning and rhetoric, is in the unresolved tension between China and the West. Historically, the West has perceived China and Chineseness as an exotic other, often in negative ways. Conversely, China has perceived the West as the other, feeling the pull of its technology and modernisation yet repulsed by the excesses of Western customs, morals and life. Thus, the diasporic subject has to negotiate hislher position into a new space through a double refraction, through the filters by which China and the West perceive one another.

Robert Young makes the critical point, drawing partly on the ideas of Stuart Hall, that:

Postcolonial and black identities are frequently defined in terms of the effect of the experience of living simultaneously among different cultures through shifting subject positions. In this respect, contemporary forms of cultural identity instead of aspiring to a single class identity have rather emphasized what Stuart Hall has called 'living identity through difference ...recognizing that all of us are composed of multiple social identities.' Hall has argued that the representative postmodern experience occurs when the marginal identity has become the centre, which itself emphasizes how all identities are historically constructed and potentially unstable. (1996: 141)

What this describes seems to be a process very similar to Ang's concept of hybridity and the in-between space. To borrow Susan Friedman's term, identities are "the ongoing mix of the always already mixed" (2002: 3). Additionally, the process of "making" identities is an ongoing construction. Butler would argue that this "making" is one of performativity, the reiteration of norms and conventions by drawing on and reencoding "the historicity of those conventions in a present act" (Butler 1995a: 134). Performativity can be seen as a particularly relevant concept if we think of it as operating as resistance and contestation. Friedman states that:

the oppositional performative stresses the way in which a subordinated group parodies or mimics the dominant group. Such imitation in the borders between difference...highlights the gap between the two in the form of hybrid representation. Whether consciously intended or not, the effect of this parodic performance is to denaturalise and deauthorize the structure of

domination, disclose its social construction, imply the possibility of change - all of which can be read as deliberative or unconscious acts of resistance. (2002: 6)

For the Chinese or other Asian groups, we can imagine various scenarios that signify a resistance to the dominant culture, what Bhabha has called the reversal of the "colonialist disavowal" (2004: 1176). One we have mentioned already is Lowe's proposed use, by Asian-Americans, of "strategic essentialism" as a tactic to estrange the authority of the dominant cultural power. For example, Chinese/Japanese uniting under a banner of "yellow power;" Chinese addressing one another as "chink" in much the same way that African-Americans have addressed one another as "nigger." Another tactic might be a mimesis that plays with tropes embedded in the dominant culture: reworking the spy genre to explore the Korean-American experience as Chang-Rae Lee does in his novel Native Speaker.

Then there is the challenge and resistance to China as the authentic centre of Chineseness. Here hybridisation is resistance not to China's political authority so much as its claims to be the authoritative discourse of Chineseness. Ang states that the capacity of hybridity to emancipate the Overseas Chinese from the pull of China is a postmodern notion of ethnicity. I consider that this process is different in kind from the challenge and resistance to the dominant culture. Resistance to China-as-centre is a challenge to the meaning of what is Chinese and raises issues such as the way that meaning is reshaped by being in a different cultural, historical, and social location.

While the epistemology of hybridity in cultural studies is, as Ang states, a postmodern notion, its application cannot be separated from historical contexts. As Shen Yuanfang rightly observes, "the construction of a self to a great extent relies on the subject-positions the individual is subject to, not merely a strategic 'fabrication'. In reality as well as in the literary institution, subject formation cannot be separated from the world, or worlds, it inhabits" (2001: 114).

Although Ang accepts that Chineseness is "not a static essence" and that there is an indeterminacy and changeability in the meaning of the concept as a marker of identity (1993)' she tends to operate analytically with a notion of Chineseness that is somehow fixed in the past and changeless. She states, for example, that Chinese identity "becomes confined to essentialist and absolute notions of 'Chineseness', the source of which can only originate fiom 'China', to which the ethicised 'Chinese' subject must adhere" in order to be considered 'authentic' (2001: 30).

But why does she need to discuss Chinese identity in terms of essentialist and absolute notions if Chineseness is not static but takes on different meanings according to different historical and social contexts? By adopting a static idea of Chineseness, Ang's analysis theorises hybridity in a way that removes it from a historical grounding. In doing so she overlooks historical trends in China that have been in train since the early decades of the 2othcentury.

China, as the master-signified of Chineseness, has been under challenge for some time. Within its borders, there has been the modernising role of cities like Shanghai and the layering of the Maoist version of Marxism onto Chinese traditional values. Beyond its borders, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore have served as vigorous, alternative sources of Chineseness. In other words, there has been a decentring that has been going on for at least the past 80 years. In that process of decentring, new and different shifts have occurred or started to occur.

Allen Chun writes (2003: 9) that the Taiwanese "have begun to view themselves in relation to a reinvented but still indeterminate sense of place (to replace the previous spaces of polity, discourse and culture defined by the 'Republic of China')". What this would indicate is the double shift of Taiwan: firstly, in forging a different China- as-centre concept of Chineseness from 1949 onwards; and secondly, in the reinvention that Chun has identified. In this second transformation, there may still be a blending that incorporates many elements of the first, but it will be reshaped in the ongoing process of reinvention. If there has been an ongoing challenge, a disavowing of the centre, then how strong really is the centrihgal pull of China for the overseas Chinese? By this, I don't mean the attraction of visiting China and experiencing what it is like, but the notion of Chineseness in its China-centred version as somehow significantly shaping the identity of those who are Chinese but who were born andlor reside in other countries. Even in her own case, Ang asserts, "if I am inescapably Chinese by descent, I am only sometimes Chinese by consent. When and how is a matter of politics." (2001: 36)

In questioning the centrifugal pull of China, it is useful to consider what Josephine Khu describes as an "emerging debate" over the meaning of being Chinese. (2001 : 227) There are two different lines of argument here.

One, epitomised in the work of Tu Wei-ming, sees Chineseness embodied in the concept of a "cultural China" that has been shaped through the interactions of three groups: the first group is the countries predominantly composed of Chinese populations like China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore; the second is the diaspora Chinese; and the third is the intellectuals, the Chinese and non-Chinese writers, and businessmen who share their conceptions of China with others (Khu 2001 : 227-8).

The other, which Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini have advanced, perceives Chinese identities in diaspora as transnationalist, becoming "increasingly independent of place, self-consciously postmodern." Identity, in this analysis is formed from the strategies for accumulating economic, social, cultural, and educational capital "as diasporic Chinese travel, settle down, invest in local spaces, and evade state disciplining in multiple sites throughout the Asia Pacific" (cited in Khu 2001: 228).

Ong argues that it is important to get away from the "static images" of being Chinese that essentialise notions of Chineseness as locked into a past, singular history that possesses an unchanging "cultural core" that determines Chinese identity (1998: 134- 5; also Pennycook 1998: 165-171). She is critical of Said's '"unilateral construction of the objects of orientalisms as silent participants in Western hegemonic projects," declaring, instead, that it is possible to trace the agency of Asian subjects "as they selectively participate in orientalist discourses encountered on travels through the shifting discursive terrains of the global economy" (1998: 135). Nor should the behaviour and attitudes of Chinese be interpreted as a self-reproduction of the ways they are "situated by the West" but as "complex manoeuvres that subvert reigning notions of national self and the Other in transnational relations" (1998: 135).

It is instructive, in this regard, to consider some of the personal reflections in the collection Cultural Curiosity, which deals with ethnic Chinese who speak about encountering China often for the first time. (Khu 2001 : ix) Here, we get a diversity of views on what the writers see or do not see as their Chinese identity and how they make that identification. I will look briefly at some of these.

Graham Chan, growing up in Liverpool, remarks on his lack, of an inability to speak his parents' language, Cantonese. As a child, he tended to equate being Chinese in Britain with coming from Hong Kong since all the Chinese he came across seemed to come from there. Growing up in a middle-class suburb where "the entire Chinese community was us," his interests were in Western music and English fiction. Yet he was never able to shrug off his Chineseness and "get on with being British and I doubt that any banana will ever fully succeed in that endeavour." As he explains:

Our passports say we are British, but the message we have received throughout our lives from all sections and levels of British society, ranging from politicians of both right and left to the semi-literate thugs shouting abuse at us on the streets, is that to be British, you must be white. (Chan, G. 2001: 28-9)

When there was an opportunity to work in Hong Kong, he felt compelled to take it because he believed his parents would have been deeply disappointed if he had refused and because, "in some indefinable way Hong Kong was still home, and I felt that to say no would be to slam the door forever on my Chinese identity" (2001: 32). In Hong Kong he found, in some ways, that he was quite comfortable, able to mix in crowds without feeling that he stood out. He enjoyed working and living with his Chinese colleagues and he admired their work ethic. What he couldn't cope with was the "crippling effects" of not being able to speak Cantonese (2001: 35-6). This drew him, reluctantly, back to England where he took three years to recover: he was "physically exhausted and mentally destroyed." It was only through meeting others who were, like him, between cultures, that he was able to rehabilitate himself, no longer feeling that he had to choose between Chinese and British: "I see now that we can have our own culture combining both, as valid and valuable as anyone else's" (200 1: 37-8).

Richard Chu, who was from a Hokkienese family, was born and grew up in the . He maintained some links with his Chinese heritage even as he assimilated into Filipino culture. At the Jesuit University he attended, Chu discovered that many Filipino students did not regard him as one of them, referring to him as Instik, a term for ethnic Chinese that has negative connotations. His family never saw him as Chinese enough. This weighed on him and made him want to be Chinese and maintain Chinese ways. However, when he visited China he had a strong impression of the difference between him and the mainland Chinese (Chu 2001: 128-37).

Our worldviews and beliefs, our memories and experiences, our upbringing and education - all that constitutes the deepest core of our identities - had been shaped by very different sociohistorical and political forces in the last few decades, mahg it difficult for us to find common ground. I felt much more at home with my Filipino classmates and friends who were studying in Xiamen University than with the local Chinese friends I made there. (2001: 137-8)

The feeling of being between places and cultures is one that a number of these writers have experienced. Graziella Hsu, who migrated with her parents to Denmark, says that she grew up without belonging to a single culture. This left her with a less than well-defined sense of identity for most of her life. Depending on circumstances she felt predominantly Italian, Danish, Russian, Scandinavian, and, sometimes, even Chinese. All these cultures were a part of her heritage. After her time in China, she had a need to integrate her Chinese heritage into her cultural makeup to the point where she now says, "I am half Chinese" with a sense of "belonging to a great culture" (2001 : 93-4).

Henry Chan, who was born in China but lived in and Australia for most ofhis life, says that he did not finally come to terms with his Chinese identity until he was 55 years old and spent three months in Peking. While there he felt a sense of having "returned to my real motherland." At the same time, he has realised that he has become a cultural hybrid who "will always be perceived and accepted in different ways by different people" and that he is someone whose ears are "attuned to two cultures" - England, Europe, and ancient Greece on one side, and his motherland and ancient China on the other (Chan, H. 2001: 125-7).

We can see in these narratives how differently Chinese identity is perceived and felt. Henry Chan doesn't seem to have any difficulty in absorbing two different cultures and traditions, regarding it as a virtue and a strength. Richard Chu, on the other hand, having been exposed to the Chinese in China, realises that he is more comfortable with his Filipino friends, even though he has discovered that he is not totally part of their world. Graham Chan learns to accept that he has a composite make-up that is neither wholly Chinese nor wholly British yet represents something he knows is valuable. And Graziella Hsu arrives at a similar space although her identity has more composite parts than someone like Graham Chan.

In all these narratives, many of the writers could be described as being in a space that is in-between, trying to make sense of their Chinese background and links to things Chinese while re-assessing their links to the dominant culture of which they are also a part. Whether that dominant culture is in Britain, the Philippines, Denmark or New Zealand, the experiences that are described show that the writers have a consciousness of being classified as other, as different because of their race and ethnicity. What the dominant culture does, then, is "fix" their identity according to ethnicity. Having been exposed to China first hand, they realise, that they are not and cannot be completely Chinese.

2. FAMZLYAND SELF

In the preceding section, I have argued that while the centrifugal pull of China has an impact on the identity of Chinese overseas, there are counteracting forces at play including the culture of the society in which the Chinese are living. The interplay of these different shaping forces will oRen impinge on the individual in subtle ways that he is not fully aware of until he finds himself in a situation that compels him to think about the meaning of his own identity. In my short stories, I try to do something similar by showing aspects of these shaping forces as revealed in the behaviour of the characters who are part of my fictional Chinese family. My stories can be described as a short story cycle in the sense that they are unified and linked principally by characters who are central in one story and reappear in others. Heminpay, in his Nick Adams stories, Salinger in his Glass family collection in Franny and Zooey, and Gillian Mears in Ride a Cockhorse are examples of such a cycle.

What I have sought to convey is the lived experience inside my fictional family and I have done this partly as a counterweight to the discourses that essentialise the characteristics of the Chinese and Chineseness. The Chinese experience is more varied, richer, and more layered than the discourses generally suggest or permit. Aspects of this have been discussed above in the opening section on Chineseness and the framing of Western discourses.

My stories are loosely based on my extended family experiences. While I have reshaped and transformed many of the incidents and characters that I've used in my writing, I should say that observing, experiencing and reflecting on my family have been an important influence on what I have chosen to write about. Therefore, it is pertinent to set out some of the features of that life. I do this by looking at the family and then at my own situation.

[a] My Father's Family

The account I have set out below is based on my recollection of how my father's family went about their lives fiom the late 1940s onwards. By the time my family arrived in Sydney, several years after the war, my grandparents had adapted by appropriating what they found usehl in both the Chinese and Australian culture they found around them. Their lack of English cut them off from many aspects of life in the mainstream culture. My grandparents didn't have non-Chinese friends, could not readily converse with Australians, and could not understand the radio. What understanding they would have had of Australian life and society must have been piecemeal and incomplete. They functioned within the Chinese enclave that they built, first in Darwin, then later in Sydney. The immediate family formed the core of their existence but relatives and Chinese fnends were also important. The large Sunday gatherings my grandmother organised were a form of social bonding: the Chinese village get together, far removed from its Cantonese locale, transposed to the suburbia of forties and fifties Sydney.

My grandparents' lives moved between places and spaces. Too limited in English ever to enter or engage with the dominant culture, they could never be regarded as becoming Australian. Yet they were too distant from China to appreciate or experience the changes that were going on there. The last time they had been in Canton was the early thirties. What they had done and were doing was creating their own way of operating. Michel de Certeau describes it as "ways of walking, reading, producing, speaking etc." As he explains:

These styles of action intervene in a field which regulates them at a first level.. .but they introduce into it a way of turning it to their advantage that obeys other rules and constitutes something like a second level interwoven into the first.. .These "ways of operating" are similar to "instructions for use," and they create a certain play in the machine through a stratification of different and interfering kinds of functioning. (1984: 30)

The example de Certeau provides is that of a North African living in Paris who insinuates into the system imposed on him by a low-income housing development, the ways of "dwelling" distinctive to his native Kabylia. In superimposing on these ways, he "creates for himself a space in which he can find ways of using the constraining order of the place." (1984: 30)

Yet the way my grandparents went about their lives can't have been all that different fiom thousands of other Chinese who led lives within the city precinct but who shaped a contained, Chinese space within it. Jane Lydon, describing the Chinese in the Rocks fiom 1890 to 1930, has contested what she calls

deterministic frameworks which stress colonial power over Chinese agency, not by denying their strength but by showing that there were other possibilities as well.. . In this view, 'traits' and things are manipulable; identity can be seen as positioning. The Chnese created particular personae and techniques to suit their purposes. (1999: 174-5)

The phrase, 'creating techniques to suit their purposes', conveys how I think my grandparents were: the life that is no longer wholly Chinese and certainly not wholly Australian but has its own distinctive shape. Let me explain what I mean about the distinctive shape of their lives.

There is a nexus between the family and China and the family and Australia. My mother, my elder sister, and I were born in Shanghai. My paternal great grandparents and my grandmother were born in a village in Canton. My grandfather and father were born in Darwin. My family connections are to three places. Depending on which parental tree you look at, I am either first or fourth generation Chinese- Australian.

My father came from a large family: three boys and seven girls. And a large part of my formative, early childhood experiences were shaped in this family. With the exception of three sisters who were already married, everyone lived together in one large apartment in Kingsford. There was my grandmother, four aunts, and two uncles. When my parents, my sister, and I moved in with them, the household swelled to eleven people. Having such a large family extending over three generations in one dwelling would have been a pattern atypical of most other households in the suburbs of Kingsford and Maroubra (where we moved to later.) I regard it as a replication of Chinese family living such as was more common in China. Madeline Hsu observes (2000: I 10) that the traditional Confucian standard was to have "five generations living under one roof' although this was almost never attained in Toishan.

The Kingsford apartment was on the top floor of a four level block. It was of dark brown brick, with rounded edges that may have been a token nod toward the P & 0 style that was then fashionable in Sydney architecture. When I first saw it, I thought that the apartment was enormous. There were four bedrooms, a large lounge and dining area, kitchen, and bathroom. My grandmother, generously, gave us the largest bedroom. My parents' bed was at one end and my sister and I slept in a three quarter bed closer to the entrance of the room. Despite the size of the apartment there always seemed to be innumerable adults present. Apart from the permanent household, there were visitors who called regularly on my grandmother. Almost every Sunday, there was a large gathering that included all the immediate family, relatives of my grandparents, and friends. They were all Chinese.

My grandfather didn't live in the apartment. He had his own place, a terrace house on one corner of Campbell and Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills. Before the war, my grandmother and the rest of the family had lived in the terrace before they moved to Kingsford. My grandfather shared the house for some years with my second aunt, her husband, and their children. It was in a grid of streets mostly occupied by Chinese families. Campbell Street, which ran uphill towards Bourke Street and downhill towards George Street, housed mainly Chinese families. These families all shared the same dialect, Toishan, which had its own distinctive pronunciation but was generally comprehensible to Cantonese speakers. Shirley Fitzgerald, in her history of the Chinese in Sydney, depicts the Surry Hills Chinatown as "a winding dragon with its head in Campbell Street, its body curling up Ultimo Road and its tail in Dixon Street" (1997: 124).

Of my grandfather's life there was much that I never knew. My overall impression was that he led a solitary existence after my second aunt's family shifted. All those days he passed on his own in that terrace house with its four bedrooms; the meals he ate on his own; breakfasts and lunches and dinners with no one to keep him company, his only solace the reading of his Chinese and Australian newspapers. In a story I wrote in 1999, I tried to capture some of the texture of his life:

He steps into the dining room At the table in front of him are the morning papers, while at on end is a neat pile of the weeks' newspapers, reading glasses, magnifying glass, scissors, and an English-Chinese dictionary. William begins to peruse the Daily Telegraph. It is painstaking. His knowledge of English is limited, but he understands its basic structure and can read it better than he can speak or write. (Chan, K. 1999: 72) And yet it could not have been entirely solitary. He worked in Dixon Street in the back room of a Chinese grocery store. The front of that store was the customer area where the owner stocked and sold fresh vegetables and fruit. From there you could hear the voices, sometimes excited, sometimes raucous, mingled with the sound of dominoes and the shuffling of cards, all broadcast from that back room where my grandfather worked. He was the one who held the stakes in the illegal games, the gambling that went on. The men frequenting the back room all knew him and were part of that gambling circle. The police were aware of the illicit activity but were evidently not fussed. Once in a while they made a "raid" and arrested some of the gamblers. The Chinese men would appear before a magistrate. They had to give their names and were fined. That it was purely ritual can be judged from the response of the men as they stepped up to have their names recorded. Name? Yit (one). Name? Yee (two). Name? Saam (three) and so on.

My grandfather also had hends who visited him, came to the house and shared meals with him. He didn't drink so no beer or spirits flowed but close bonds formed from those gatherings. One of those friends even lived in the terrace for a time before moving to a small room in the Haymarket. Later he made the journey back to China where he settled permanently.

When we first arrived in Sydney my grandparents had already separated. I don't know the reasons or exactly when it happened. All I know is it occurred some time in the 1930s. Yet it was not a total estrangement. They didn't break off contact with one another completely. To borrow Inga Clendinnen's description of her parents' marriage, there was "neither joy nor affection in it" (2001: 125). My grandfather would join the rest of the family for dinner once a week, riding in to Kingsford and later Maroubra from the city on the tram and returning after dinner.

For years, my grandfather made that trip from Surry Hills on the rattling La Perouse tram. That's where it terminated: La Perouse. The dinner over, he would linger a while, have some Chinese tea, then walk his way back along the neat suburban streets of Maroubra to wait for the return tram in Anzac Parade. Reflecting on my grandmother's Sunday gatherings it seemed that while there were only Chinese present, the ways of doing things, from socialising to cooking through to speaking were an eclectic mix of Australian and Chinese. Christmas and Easter celebrations were observed only in a secular way. The food prepared for Christmas was Australian - roasted chicken with gravy, ham, baked potatoes, green peas, and carrots followed by a large pudding into which coins (threepences and sixpences) had been inserted before the steaming began. Food preparation, from cutting, cleaning, chopping through to cooking and sewing was done only by the women of the household. The men relaxed, chatted, and played mahjong.

Some of the things the family did mirrored the patterns of behaviour of middle-class Australians. There was the participation in debutante balls at the Trocadero in George Street. My aunts participated in this with other young Chinese women, all attired in formal gowns, gloves, and corsage, escorted by Chinese men in tuxedos.

When my aunts were married, there was a succession of weddings that must have resembled many Australian weddings of the late forties and early fifties. The ceremony was conducted in a church with a panoply of bridesmaids, best man, groomsmen, flower girls, Anglican (or Presbyterian) minister, hymns and prayers, followed by a large reception in some city hotel where the meals were Western (roast chicken was a favoured dish). The rituals comprised speeches in English, the reading of congratulatory telegrams, ballroom dancing, and the throwing of the bouquet. All could have been adapted from any Australian book of wedding etiquette. I recall (there are photos to confirm my memory) that my grandmother's concept of formal dress was to wear a brocaded silk cheongsam, while my grandfather's was to wear a rented tuxedo. Because all the spoken formalities were in English my grandparents would not have had much idea of what was being said.

Where did my grandmother absorb these practices from? At what point had she decided that she would want to imitate and take on English customs that had been refashioned and reshaped into Australian ones? Most intriguing of all, why did she think it relevant and important to mimic these customs? Where, you may ask, were the Chinese customs? The Chinese celebrations? I can't recall that there were many apart from the giving of hung bao (red envelopes with money inside) to the children at Chinese New Year. Chinese IVew Year itself was not an event that we celebrated. There was no large family dinner either at home or in a restaurant. Certainly the rather detailed rituals that Wolfram Eberhard describes (1986: 205-6) as marking Chinese New Year were not observed in our family. We didn't visit any family graves to invite ancestral spirits into our home; no pictures of ancestors were hung; our doors were not guarded by the two genii or by lucky symbols in red (to ward off evil spirits); and no lanterns were hung to decorate the streets.

The idea of engaging in even some of these rituals may have seemed pass6 to my grandmother. Perhaps she felt she'd left such practices far behind as she learnt to accommodate and adjust her life to one spent in an Australian setting. Yet what did an "Australian setting" mean to her? After all, what was her model for the way Australians led their lives? If there were such a model, one fiom which she could shape her own mimetic practices, I am not aware what it was. She noticed details and patterns of behaviour when she went out regularly in Sydney to shop and visit her friends. In her younger days she would have done the same thing in Darwin. Going out, she would have observed Australians in their daily routines.

Would that have been sufficient for her to learn about Australian habits of observing holidays or food preparation and eating? It could have been picked up from books and from speaking to Australians, except that my grandmother never learnt to read or write (neither English nor Chinese) and she only spoke a few, fractured English phrases. In fact, her social life was grounded in family and Chinese friends. Her languages were Toishan and Cantonese.

I have a theory of her learning. She picked up things from her children, and from Chinese friends and relatives who already had some conception of what they considered to be Australian practices. It was, however, a conception that was filtered through a Chinese interpretation because her Chinese friends would never themselves have had any immersion in Australian cultural practices. The poet, Frances Chung, captures this dilemma of knowing in her poem "Riding the subway is an adventure":

Riding the subway is an adventure especially if you cannot read the signs. One gets lost. One becomes anxious and does not know whether to get off when the other Chinese person in your car does. (Your crazy logic tells you that the both of you must be headed for the same stop.) One woman has discovered the secret of one-to-one correspondence. She keeps the right amount of pennies in one pocket and upon arriving in each new station along the way she shifts one penny to her other pocket. When all the pennies in the fust pocket have disappeared, she knows that she is home. (Chung 2000)

When I first met my grandmother she was in her late fifties. Almost always, she wore Western dress, simple frocks with floral designs or solid colours. Her cooking alternated between Western and Chinese cuisines. Her home was filled with Western furniture although there was a ceramic Buddha on top of curved sideboard. She went to the local cinema on Saturday evenings to watch American and British movies.

My grandfather was able to read and write Chinese reasonably well. He could read and write English imperfectly but, like my grandmother, he communicated almost entirely in Chinese. He only ever spoke the Toishan dialect. He lived and worked in a Chinese milieu. At one stage, he sold vegetables in a stall at the Haymarket. During the Depression he worked a stall at the Melbourne markets. Later, he had his job in the gambling den behind the Chinese grocery store in Dixon Street. His social relationships were entirely with other Chinese. Yet he read the daily Australian newspapers - the Daily Telegraph, The Sun, and The Mirror - devotedly, struggling through the text with the aid of an English-Chinese dictionary. He enjoyed television, especially variety shows. It must have been for the visuals only, because the rapid- fire English would have slid past him. Did my grandparents think of eventually going back to China permanently, after they had put down some roots in Australia? Did they see themselves as sojourners and Australia as a temporary abode? The idea of return must have crossed their minds, especially when they were younger. The tug of China would have been strengthened by the fact that their eldest daughter had married and settled in Canton. But the connections to Australia were building up. My grandfather had grown up in Darwin. There was a general goods store and a tailoring business established in Cavenagh Street, in the centre of the town. He had brothers who ran the businesses with him and were also living in Australia, with their families. The birth of each successive child reinforced the links here.

In North of Capricorn, Henry Reynolds cites the observation of a Norwegian scientist, Knut Dahl, who was in Darwin in the 1890s:

Chinatown.. .was a welter of life and activity. The very air smelt of business. You heard, saw, and felt nothing but business. One had the feeling that the people one saw thronging the shops and streets, who bought and sold, and, busy as ants, carried on their trades, belonged to a race which slowly and securely was gaining opulence and power. (Reynolds 2003: xiii)

The period captured in Dahl's words was one when my grandfather was a young man working in the family business and when Chinese merchants were influential figures in the community, mixing socially with European officials, professionals, and businessmen (Reynolds 2003: 107-9). The success of the Chinese seemed to confirm the failure of the European colonisation of the and contributed to the anti-Chinese legislation later manifested in the .

Whether the racial attitudes towards the Chinese in the 1920s played a part in my grandparents' decision to go back to China, I don't really know. Nor do I know if they intended to remain. In 1928, however, my grandparents booked themselves and nine of their children on a ship that took them back. They were reunited with my grandfather's family in Toishan and lived there for a few years. My grandmother didn't like it there. Her relatives assumed that the family had found prosperity in Darwin and that they should have a share in it. What my grandmother saw was the risk of a swift depletion of the limited savings she had brought with her for the family to live on. She decided to come back to Australia. All their lives they referred to the village in Toishan as home, meaning that was where they'd come from. It was the ancestral place.

Resuming their life in Australia, my grandparents struggled through the Depression, willing to take whatever work they could find in order to get by. They had relocated to Sydney on their return from China. My grandmother sewed clothes for a living, using a front room in the Campbell Street terrace as her work space. My grandfather, having tried but failed to get a job in Sydney, decided to try his luck in Melbourne. That, too, was futile.

However, the cultural, family and historical connection to China was sufficiently strong for my grandparents to leave their three sons and second eldest daughter behind to acquire a Chinese education. Note that there is a patriarchal and traditional Chinese bias: the sons are favoured over the daughters. At the same time, there appeared to be a modernising tendency in the decision to include one of the daughters among the children who remained in China for their education.

Eventually, the financial burden of supporting four children in Canton became too great and only my father, the youngest son, remained to complete his high school studies. His siblings returned to Australia af'ter several years of Chinese schooling. Nonetheless, the third generation in Australia, my father's generation, had ties to China and its traditions because they had all lived there for a period of time. In fact, it was a much stronger link for my father because he had lived, studied, and worked in China from 1928-46, from when he was a schoolboy until he was an adult.

In my father's generation, all his Darwin-born siblings attended Australian schools. They were fluent in English and found it far easier to navigate an English-speaking environment. Even though they retained Cantonese and Toishan speaking skills, their fluency was quite limited. Apart from the siblings who had studied in Canton, none of the others could read and write in Chinese. In a paper I wrote several years ago, I described their language skills and social bonds: It can only be used to communicate basic, everyday messages, and is mainly used to speak with their parents and the relatives and friends of their parents' generation. Vocabulary and syntax is too rudimentary to convey more complex ideas. Frequently, they will use English both inside and outside the home and, more and more, it will become their link with their children and grandchildren. Their friendships transcend the narrower ethnic boundaries of their parents although there are no cross-cultural marriages, no weddings involving a non- Chinese partner. That doesn't start to happen until we come to the generation of their children: my siblings, my cousins. (Chan, K. 2002: 16)

[b] About Myself

Facts (Personal): A Very Short Autobiography

Chan Kwok Hung/Kenneth Chan

IO/ll Howitt St Kingston

Shanghai

French Hospital (photos, taken in December 2004, can be attached), Shanghai

Chan Siu Bong/Doe Syuet Lan

Cantonese/Limited MandaridErratic Italian/Can sing theJirst two verses of Die Lorelei in German

Pisces/Monkey

Left-handed when I write/Otherwise right-handed

Near-sighted/Trying to be far-sighted

Weight is appropriate to my height (chart can be attached)

5'4"/130 lbs/brown

Yes

Can attach ABN ifrequired

Married

N/A, never had a maiden name Wong Low Mei

26 August 1972

Two, daughter and son (order reversed if in China)

Teacher, casual

Doe Spet Lan

Chinese/None

None

Suburbs

Townhouse

Mould spores

Will advise

Depends whether sober or not

Jock (Budgerigar, deceased)

Charlie, Chas, Bubz (Have been mistakenly called Richard, Anton)

If, like me, you were Chinese and were growing up in Australia in the late 40s and early 50s you couldn't avoid being singled out. Around me were all these Australian kids and there was just me, the sole non-Australian. They treated me as someone different, though not necessarily in a nasty way. For example, when I started primary school I remember kids coming up to me and saying that we Chinese were "clever" implying that we knew and did things that Australians didn't know about and/or couldn't do. Or they would say that the Chinese way of writing was different and special. There were also the kids who saw my difference as something to be disparaged and put down. So, in the playground I'd get the "ching chong Chinaman" chants. Thus, there were bouquets and brickbats.

I was aware that my life both straddled and mingled two cultures. There was school and all that went with it and there was family and the life inside the home. On the one hand, I was learning to be like other Australian kids, assimilating through the language that was spoken and the rituals of games in the playground, cricket and handball and soccer; through the lessons about the country's history; and through the marking of special days, Anzac, Easter, and Christmas. On the other hand, there was the Cantonese and Toishan dialect spoken at home; the Chinese meals in the evenings eaten with chopsticks, dishes spread around the table and shared among adults and kids.

These two lives were not divided into two entirely distinct compartments. We spoke quite a bit of English and Chinese inside the house. There were radio programmes in English that we listened to regularly: comedy sketches, serials, and shows for kids like the Argonauts. The comics and the books we read were in English as were the records played on the gramophone. When my cousins came over at the weekends we played cricket and soccer in the backyard.

The grocery store that my uncles and my father operated near the beach end of Clovelly Road was a corner shop like those clustered in the busier streets of the eastern suburbs in Sydney before the rise of large shopping malls and supermarkets. It wasn't a Chinese store in any way: there were tinned goods like corned beef, sardines, peas, peaches and pears, dairy products, hitand vegetables.

In summer, we participated in that great Australian pastime, beachgoing, except we did so with a Chinese twist. The family, armed with suitable implements like screwdrivers and knives, would head down to Maroubra Beach to look for the abalone that attached themselves to the underside of rocks. Going to the beach didn't mean everyone diving into the surf. Many of my aunts didn't or didn't know how to swim. My mother, wearing a simple cotton cheongsam and sensible, flat-heeled shoes, would be clutching a Chinese book or magazine while seated under an umbrella to avoid the sun.

We were the only Chinese family in the neighbourhood. Maroubra, the suburb we lived in after Kingsford, was a grid of streets commingling three-bedroom cottages built soon after World War I1 with semi-detached houses that were pre-war. When we had the large Sunday gatherings, the neighbourhood kids would comment afterwards on the size of the crowd and the reverberations of mahjong tiles clacking to be heard above the gabble of voices. Mahjong is a boisterous game.

When I played with the neighbourhood kids they'd want to know what their English names were in Chinese: Patrick, Ross, Mick, Andrew. What were they in Chinese? I didn't have a clue. So I made it up, invented Chinese names for them, which they quickly forgot, since the Cantonese words defied easy reproduction to ears not attuned to the sounds and tones. It was a form of ritual anyway, the asking about their Chinese names, as if all names had a Chinese equivalent.

Our family, a Chinese village in miniature, did not fit into the relatively small Maroubra cottage. Sometimes it seemed like a futile exercise of squeezing toothpaste back into the tube. And, as crowded families do, there was bickering, people snapping at one another over trifles. Someone had left a pile of laundry soaking in the basin so that no one else could do the washing. The honour system of putting money in the box after each phone call had been breached repeatedly because, at the end of the month, there wasn't sufficient cash to pay the account. Those taking evening showers raged as the hot water system, severely taxed during the day, spewed out an increasingly tepid spray.

My mother, who had grown up in Shanghai among parents and siblings who didn't growl at one another habitually, decided that the healthy option was to move us out of the Maroubra house. She must have pressed my father to see what could be done, whether there was a house somewhere that we could move into away from the constant internecine rumbling. He tried, although it must have been with some reluctance, for he quite enjoyed being surrounded by family. He must have made enquiries about new housing developments in suburbs that were not financially a stretch for him because, one day, we drove for a long time and arrived at an estate where streets were laid out in winding combinations. No foundation for a single house had yet been dug. Some streets had hastily tacked, improvised signposts. Others were unmarked. All around us, everything had been flattened. The few trees that were still intact looked like a careless oversight of the levellers. My father had some details written on paper and drove around trylng to locate the site that might be ours. It never materialised. After circling and re-circling the streets, he gave up. We never made a return visit and stayed where we were.

The only reason we left the Maroubra house was because its Darwin owner, a family friend of my grandmother, decided to sell. My parents moved to an attached house and shop in Clovelly Road where they remained for the next forty years. My grandmother returned to the Surry Hills terrace where she had lived in the 1930s and in which my grandfather still lived. So what goes round comes round.

By the time that we shifted out of Maroubra, the tensions in the house had built to the point that they were palpable. At the time, I thought that it was a singular episode that had triggered the schism, but, playing the family relationships over in my mind, I realise now that it was the accretion of many incidents, a combination of disappointments, frustrations, financial lack, and the struggle to survive.

One evening after dinner, something got under my grandmother's skin, and she started to rail at all the things that had been irritating her: her lack of money; the poor return from the sale of the family grocery business that my father and his brothers had slaved in for years; the way we kids messed up the house; and sundry other sins of commission that others had foisted on her. On and on it went. A diatribe that she somehow couldn't switch off once she had started.

My father, perturbed at what she was saying, became more and more tense as the monologue, interwoven with the rowdy bantering between my cousin and me, went on until he shouted, "shut up." He was directing the command at us but my grandmother took it as a personal rebuff. She retreated to her bedroom, brooded silently for a while, then reappeared in the kitchen. She rehearsed all her complaints again except that this time it was done as a riposte to my father's insult.

There is, you may think, nothing inherently Chinese in this episode, but I think it showed the disappointment my grandmother felt that her sons had somehow let her down. She had bought the grocery store, they should have made a better go of it. Filial devotion had been breached. In a larger sense, the complaints were a metaphor of my grandmother's store of discontent and disgruntlement. A complex mix of battling to survive in an Australia where she had no real grasp of the language; where she was dependent on her children to interpret for her; where she was cut off from both her Chinese and her Darwin past; and where there was never enough savings accumulated to make her feel that she no longer needed to scrimp.

These experiences constituted my sense of Chineseness as I was growing up. As Maxine Hong Kingston says:

Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? (Besemeres 2002: 154)

Where was the connection to China in all of this? It has been my firm conclusion that my grandparents came to see themselves as permanent settlers in Australia, even if the lives they shaped in Darwin and Sydney were a peculiar blend of things Chinese, things Western, and things in between.

For our nuclear family there was a similar sense that Australia was it. We had lived in Shanghai and then we had migrated. My father had returned to his birth country and, even though I had to wait more than a decade before I became naturalised, I never had a feeling that we would ever go back to China to live.

In fact, China as a place barely figured in my consciousness. It seemed distant and rather amorphous. If you'd asked me, as a child, what did over "there" or what China stood for I would have been stymied for an answer. Being Chinese, at that time, meant a certain self-awareness of my difference from other Australian children; my sense of family life with its Cantonese and Toishan language, Chinese food, a vast network of relatives and visiting my grandfather in his Surry Hills terrace nestled among many other Chinese families who lived on his street or streets adjacent. In other words, "being Chinese" was marked by the things I did. Family ties were crucial to this. What I have endeavoured to do in the fiction is to write these slices of memory into story. Could I have reconstructed that life in its diversity in a non-fictional account? Possibly, except that I never felt I knew enough about the family and what it had gone through to adopt the role of biographer; of crafting something that explored the lives of family members in some depth and detail.

It was not because narrative threads were missing or could not be identified. I believe that Chinese migrant stories, with their links to Chlna and to the new places of settlement, contain a rich lode that rewards the digging. There is much diversity in the lives of all those Chinese who left their homeland for unknown destinations. Some never went back home, some returned home for a brief period, and others did go back permanently. The record of some of those lives, captured in recent books like Astronauts, Lost Souls & Dragons (Giese 1997) and Plantings in a New Land (Ling 2001), gives us an insight into the disparate voices that have contributed to the Chinese experience in Australia.

Reading these accounts, however, I am struck by the fact that they are mainly fragments and anecdotal shards. The full, richer story remains to be told. A part of the problem is how the writer can get at the accuracy of the full narrative. The larger the story that he or she wants to tell, the harder it is to render the truth of what happened, especially if the events being treated took place more than half a century ago. Stories need survivors, witnesses, records. In the case of the Chinese the written records may not exist. What is passed on is essentially oral.

In my family, the remembered history is largely an oral one, and a number of the key figures in the story - my grandparents, my father, my eldest uncle, several aunts - have died. The use of in-depth interviews is no longer an option and, given that lack, it would be hard to locate accurately not only the detail but also the defining moment of particular family episodes.

The other consideration is that writing the family stories as fiction gives me freedom and scope to blend invention with memory, to shape events and characters out of the fragments of memory. With the onset of time, those early recollections have been sifted, sorted and reordered in my mind. It is likely that they no longer bear much resemblance to the original. Ln some psychic sense, they have been changed.

Is this another way of saying that we remember what we choose to remember; that we discard fragments that don't meet with our desired store of memories; that we embellish or take away according to some mental map or blueprint that we hold in our head? Or is it that the writing of fiction takes narrative in a different direction altogether? Is it a process distinct from a historian who seeks to piece together the past, to reconstruct it precisely?

In his examination of the writing of history, de Certeau argues that the practice of writing has an active role in the construction of history. The process involved is not simply setting down what happened, "the words themselves manufacture history" (Buchanan 1992). What de Certeau questions is the notion of truth which history purports to present. Ln fact, history is not an accurate rendering but a form of writing, a way of ordering the world. While history is written in the present to give an account of the past, it actually fabricates that past so that "the past is the fiction of the present" (Buchanan 1992).

Writing, according to de Certeau, has become a "modern" mythical practice:

Scriptural practice has acquired a mythical value over the past four centuries by gradually reorganising all the domains into which the Occidental ambition to compose its history, and thus to compose history itself, has been extended.. ."Progress" is scriptural in type. In very

diverse ways, orality is defined by (or as) that fiom which a "legitimate" practice - whether in science, politics, or the classroom, etc. - must differentiate itself. The "oral" is that which does not contribute to progress; reciprocally, the "scriptural" is that which separates itself fiom the magical world of voices and tradition. (1984: 133-4)

The "truth" of narratives is only legitimated when there is a text that has been composed. For many Chinese (I would includes my family), this becomes problematic because of the absence of those written records which history draws on for constructing the text. de Certeau's critique of history, however, enables us to rethink the truth of written records. As Ian Buchanan states: Considering all history as always already a fiction justifies a literary analysis of historical records; it allows the historical document to be read as a novel, thereby making its machinations more visible and its contents less verifiable (or unverifiable). His design is to raise doubts about the very validity of writing itself.. .de Certeau removes the grounds upon which an absolute notion of the literal, and hence truth, might stand. For de Certeau, all writing is fiction. (1992)

If this is the case, then we can argue that the analysis that de Certeau has set out gives fiction a space in which to contest, challenge, or offer an alternative to the historical text, the one that is documented. Voices that have been marginalised need no longer be excluded.

What de Certeau opens up are the possibilities of contesting established, written narratives; the one that have been taken as the historical truth of past events. As I have discussed in a preceding section of this exegesis, the Western framing of Chineseness represents one example of the way written narratives make claims to be the truth about the Chinese.

3. ANAL YSING THE FICTIONS

[a] Aspects of Narrative

The writing of fiction raises questions about narrative and its meanings. While the theory of narrative is a complex subject whose more extensive discussion is outside the scope of this exegesis, there are some aspects of narrative that I want to consider because of their relevance to the way my stories are constructed. These are set out in the following paragraphs.

i) The Role of the Narrator in the Transmission of the Narrative

Seymour Chatman, who has contributed substantially to the discussion of narratology, states that a central consideration in the theory of narrative is the source of transmission. He is referring to the types of narrative presentation and the presence or absence of an explicit narrator. When an audience or a readership feels as if it has been spoken to, whatever the medium, we can assume that a teller is present (2004: 98). A simple example would be the use of the personal pronoun "I" or statements interpreting a character's behaviour which assume an interpreter, hence a narrator, is present in the narrative (Chatman 2004: 99).

Chatman points out that the narrator is one feature, among others, of narrative and that we can examine a literary work according to whether the presence of the narrator is one of pure diegesis or pure mimesis. Pure diegesis occurs when the narrator "speaks in his proper voice, using the pronoun 'I' or the like and expresses views which are not so much the story as his view of the story (interpretations, general or moral observations and the like)" (2004: 110).

In "Brotherly Love," there are a number of examples of interpretation and observation as diegesis since it is recounted through a first person narrator, Leo, reflecting on his relationship with his brother, Harry, who is now dying from cancer. In the beginning Leo notes that he has not kept in contact much with Harry and explains why:

He is too capricious for me; changeable, like the clay in a sculptor's hand, lacking resolve. I believe our character is formed at the moment of our birth and that it remains within us, a central core, shaping the way we navigate our way in life. For Hany it was as if he were on a boat that was forever buffeted, every which way, depending on the wind. (133)

Whether this is an accurate portrayal of Harry is less the point than the fact that it firmly expresses Leo's opinion of his brother and, by inference, shows how Leo sees himself - someone who possesses different and opposite qualities.

The narrator's "view of the story" is also evident in "(Dis)TemperMin which the young child, Sam, describes meeting his father after a long absence:

He is a complete stranger to me. I haven't seen him for nearly two years. I don't recall a single feature of his face that might trigger recognition. Had he passed me in the street without a greeting I would not have known who he was. (15)

Pure mimesis, in contrast, occurs in an unrnediated story, pure transcript, or record where nothing is given except the speech or verbalised thoughts of the characters; where even the tags like "he said" or "he thought" are omitted. Adding such tags does not produce much of a shift from pure mimesis because tags, by convention, have the function of merely indicating a change of speaker in passages of dialogue. Mediation appears when the tags employed include "interpretative" verbs, for example, "he confessed" or "he accused". Chatman argues (2004: 1 10) that the purest form of unmediated story would be the text of a diary entry or a letter reflecting the opinions of a character. The "implied author'' in such cases would be regarded as simply a compiler.

In the story "Chinese History Books" the following exchange, which is unmediated, takes place between Leo and Becky when they first meet:

"I'm Farnie's cousin, Leo."

"You must be related to Clem as well."

"In a manner of speaking."

"You planning to stay with them a while?'

"Reckon I'll give it a few days, maybe a week."(95)

What we have is an assumption that the author has eavesdropped on a conversation or has the transcript of a sound recording of the dialogue. Such compilation is a pure act of mimesis.

We shift from pure mimesis when the narrative depicts internal thoughts and feelings as if the narrator can "read" what a character is thinking and transcribe it into words. Stories written in the third person will often have this sense of transcribing interior thoughts. Let me quote again from "Chinese History Books":

A few weeks of wisecracks and repartee and they are nattering like old friends. Leo feels relaxed with her. He invites her to dinner which means either a meal in Dimitri's or in one of several Chinese-Australian or Australian-Chinese (it depends which menu you order from) cafes along the main drag, Mitchell Street. He borrows the ute, telling his cousins cryptically that he needs to go for a drive. (95) There is a degree of interpretation in this passage as the narrator conveys the feelings of the two characters, Leo and Becky. They "natter" like "old friends"; he "feels relaxed" with Becky; and he tells his cousins "cryptically" that he needs to go for a drive.

The argument that Chatman lays out recognises that narrative rests on a number of suppositions. The audience has a sense of witnessing what is unfolding but, as he notes, such witnessing - he calls this pure mimesis - only occurs in theatre, ballet, or the movies. In fiction the idea of witnessing the scene is an illusion. The author's task is to create or preserve the illusion that "events are literally happening before the reader's eyes" (2004: 98).

ii) The Narrative Unity of Fiction

The unity I want to focus on is the closure and resolution which is contained in a work of fiction. If we look at Tzvetan Todorov's model of narrative we see that it is based on an initial state of equilibrium or social harmony which becomes disturbed and produces a disequilibrium. Narrative traces the course of the disequilibrium through to its resolution in a new equilibrium that is similar to the first but never the same (Fiske 1987: 138-9). There is a sense of resolution as something that is inherent in the concept of narrative.

But, as a number of critics have suggested, the sense of an ending is connected to the beginning. In Jean-Paul Sartre's novel, La Nauske, his main character, Roquentin comments that in a narrative you start with a beginning but it presupposes the end: the concept of an ending is necessary to a beginning. Peter Brooks, citing Sartre's protagonist, says:

The very possibility of meaning plotted through sequence and through time depends on the anticipated structuring force of the ending: the interminable would be meaningless, and the lack of ending would jeopardize the beginning.

...We might say that we are able to read present moments - in literature and, by extension, in life - as endowed with narrative meaning only because we read them in anticipation of the structuring power of those endings that will retrospectively give them the order and significance of plot. (1984: 94)

Edward Said argues, in Beginnings, that the mind's formal quest for a beginning either in time or in space is based on an imaginative and emotional need for unity, a need "to apprehend an otherwise dispersed number of circumstances and to put them in some sort of telling order, sequential, moral, or logical. Very frequently, especially when the search for a beginning is pursued within a moral and imaginative framework, the beginning implies the end - or, rather, implicates it" (1985: 41).

There is an assumption of completeness in fictional narratives that is lacking in life. The question of the connection between life and fiction is one that the philosopher Paul Ricoeur examines in his discussion of the self and narrative form. Ricoeur asks what the relationship is between author, narrator, and character, whose role and voices are quite distinct in fiction. When you offer an interpretation of yourself in a life story, as in an autobiography, would you be all three at once? His answer is that you would be narrator and character, perhaps, but he excludes author when applying it to your own life because you are, "at most, to use Aristotle's expression, the coauthor, the sunaition." (Ricoeur 1992: 160) We do not author our own lives entirely because, in real life, closure is lacking. Ricoeur explains:

Life must be gathered together if it is to be placed within the intention of genuine life. If my life cannot be grasped as a single totality, I could never hope to be successful, complete. Now there is nothing in real life that serves as a narrative beginning; memory is lost in the early hazes of childhood.. .As for my death, it will be fmally recounted only in the stories of those who survive me. I am always moving toward my death, and this prevents me from ever grasping it as a narrative end. (1 992: 160)

Fictions have a beginning, middle, and an end, whereas life has an elusive quality. For that reason, argues Ricoeur, "we need the help of fiction to organize life retrospectively." What literary narrative does is give us, however incomplete, the experience of "what is meant by ending a course of action, a slice of life" (1992: 162). He asserts that "literary narratives and life histories, far from being mutually exclusive, are complementary.. .This dialectic reminds us that the narrative is part of life before being exiled from life in writing" (1992: 163). bbBrotherlyLove" is a reflective memoir, not only about Harry but also about others in Leo's family, including his sisters and his mother, and his army friend, Eddie. It is written from the perspective of a Leo, in late middle age, casting his mind back to earlier incidents in his life. The central relationship is that between Leo and Harry, and the story is a tracing of that relationship from the time when the brothers were schoolboys in Canton up to the "present" in the narrative when Harry is dying. In one of his reflections, Leo's observations that can be read as an attempt to make sense of Harry's life:

Whatever I have to criticise Harry about, I had to admit that he was, by nature a generous person. When wewere at school in China he'd lend new sweaters and shirts to classmates. Or when food parcels arrived from Australia he'd have no hesitation in sharing what he had, fruit cakes and jams and biscuits that our mother had made. His declaration about wanting our sisters to have a share of the house in East Sydney was born, I felt sure, of this same generosity. But it was also alloyed with his desire to please everyone and his guilt that he had borrowed money fiom his sisters that had never been repaid. ("Brotherly Love": 160)

The opposite of narrative as resolution is Italo Calvino's exploration, in Ifon a winter's night, of contemporary society's inability to sustain genuine stories. It can be read as a dramatisation of narrative impotence: "stories begun but not concluded, stories so banal, so formulaic as to be no narratives at all" (Kroeber 1992: 185).

iii) Narrative and Time

As Gerard Genette, the French structuralist, has explained, narrative is a spatial form but its realisation demands that it be gone through in sequence and succession. Metonymically narrative, as in a book, "borrows" a temporality fiom the time of its reading. Genette calls this the "pseudo-time" of the text (Brooks 1984: 20).

Brooks comments that the connection of structure and temporality has a firther dimension to it beyond the time it takes to read a narrative. The time it takes to go fiom start to finish "is very much part of our sense of the narrative, what it has accomplished, what it means" (1984.: 20). Genette adds that we can tell a story without reference to the place of its telling but we cannot tell a story without indications of the time of telling in relation to the told. Verb tenses and their relation one to another "gives us a certain temporal place in relation to the story" (Brooks 1984: 21).

In "Compulsive", a story about a gambling session that goes on over the whole of an Easter break, a part of the narrative is written in the present tense to suggest both the immediacy of the game of mahjong as it is being played and mounting weariness as the game goes on:

The rounds start to pass in a blur, one merging into the other, the present hand merging into the next and the next and the next. Reuben knows that it's the lack of sleep that has done it; that he's in an empty zone where he has no more reserves of concentration. He hears and watches the play as though he's in cloudland. Hears Charles bark at Harry and Billy, hears the insistent clack of the tiles, like a monotonous riff that won't go away, repeats and repeats in his ear.

Reuben blinks quickly, tries to focus, stares at the hand in fiont of him and involuntarily seizes the hoongjoong, the red dragon tile, and tosses it onto the table. He plucks a tile from the wall and doesn't even look at it, knows he's done something odd but can't quite get his mind around it. Then realises. He's got the sequence back to front: pick a tile off the wall before you discard. He rehearses the sequence in his head, like a drill that he must obey: pick, discard, pick, discard, pick.. . (65)

A more significant link is that between time and resolution or closure in narrative. Brooks presents the argument in the following way: all narrative may, in essence, be obituary because the retrospective knowledge that it seeks stands on "the far side of the end, in human terms on the far side of death.. .As Frank Kermode has put it, man is always 'in the middest,' without direct knowledge of origin or endpoint, seeking the imaginative equivalent of closure that will confer significance on experience" (1 984: 95). If this is the case, then all narratives may be bound by time, and the meaning that is sought is only disclosed at the end. To support this point, Brooks cites Walter Benjamin's aphorism: "Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell" (1984: 95). Brooks adds that the death does not have to be literal. It may be "some simulacrum, some end to a period, an arrest." Thus deathbed scenes in the nineteenth century novel are often "a key moment of summing-up and transmission" (1984: 95).

iv) Repetition in Narrative

Narrative, in its traditional sense of stories that are grounded in fables, myths, and legends, is dependent on repetition, on their retelling. In societies that are dependent on oral traditions retelling is embedded in narratives. One well-known example of this is Vladimir Propp's structural analysis of Russian fairy tales in which he identifies commonalities of narrative function, character roles, and action. He refers to this as the morphology of functions and characters and what his study underlines is the patterns of recurrence in folktales (Propp 2004: 72-5; Fiske 1987: 135-7; Ricoeur 1992: 144).

Such patterns of recurrence are also evident in contemporary narratives. Genres in writing, movies, art, and theatre depend, for their impact, on the audience knowing something about the conventions within which a particular genre has been cast. We watch a horror movie with expectations based on other horror movies that we have already seen. Repetition is also evident in the way intertexuality functions: the reading of one text in relation to others presupposes that there is a commonality in texts that we have encountered before. Fiske gives the example of the representation of a car chase on television, which only makes sense in relation to all the others we have seen since we are unlikely to have experienced one in real life (1987: 115).

A key feature of narrative as a text is its "implicit claim to be in a state of repetition, as a going over again of ground already covered." A simple example, belonging to the private eye story, is the detective retracing the tracks of the criminal (Brooks 1984: 97). Repetition, Brooks declares, is "so basic to our experience of literary texts that one is simultaneously tempted to say all and to say nothing on the subject" (1984: 99). By this he means the tropes and mnemonic elements of literature that

take us back in the text, that allow the ear, the eye, the mind to make connections, conscious or unconscious, between different textual moments, to see past and present as related and as establishing a future that will be noticeable as some variation in the pattern. (1984: 99) An illustration of this is the reference to a Leica camera in the story "Leica." The mention of the brand anchors the narrative which, on one level, is about the mysterious disappearance of a Leica that Charles, one of the characters, had bought many years ago in Hong Kong. The reference to the Leica recurs at different stages in the narrative. On another level, the narrative can be read as a comment on the elusiveness of the "truth" of a story and the way memory shapes past incidents. As the narrator observes:

When I speak with my mother about the past I notice that the story she tells me on day one is different from the story she tells me on day two or three, even though the incidents she recounts are very similar. Ma, I say, are you telling me the same story you told me yesterday? Of course, she says, it's exactly the same. But the story today is different from the one you told me the day before. That, she says triumphantly, is because each day brings new and different things. No two days are the same. Haven't you noticed? (6-7)

Repetition in this usage is a form of recounting and is inherent in the construction of narrative itself. Narrating is a rehearsal of events that have already taken place, which is partly a function of memory and remembering. Within the text, this will be a process of ordering memories in a particular way to obtain certain effects. Narratives, as they unfold, also evince a return to something that has already been mentioned but will be examined from a different angle.

"Compulsive" begins with a brief account of a game of mahjong that is played one Easter in the Tang family's apartment, but then shifts back in time to a different mahjong game in the same apartment. The shift is used to establish the point that mahjong is a regular occurrence in the Tang family and to give a glimpse of the fiery temper of Charles. When we return to the Easter game of mahjong on the Monday, the presence of Charles among the players is a reminder that we can expect more angry outbursts as the game progresses, especially as the players have now been gambling since the preceding Friday and nerves are rather fiayed. (44,47-9,54-5) [b] Tone and Structure in the Fictions

Since tone is linked to voice, different narrators will have a bearing on how the narratives unfold, what is disclosed, and the tone of the stories. A story like "Brotherly Love," which has Leo as narrator, is meant to convey a sense of reflection and contemplation, triggered by the news of Harry's cancer. As Leo thinks about his relationship with his brother he reveals what he believes are the flaws in Harry's character. We get a mix of dissection and disclosure which is reflected in the use of complex language to describe Harry:

He had a quick mind, too, but such quickness often passes over things too easily, missing the depth of a problem, ignoring the need to do more intense and searching analysis. It is the kind of mind that, bowerbird like, picks up accents and foreign languages quickly and, in his case, that was absolutely true.. .He was the one who could look at a page of for the first time on a Monday and reproduce it faithfully by the end of the week. And it would stick in his memory. A mind like that is ideal for quiz shows and games of trivial pursuit. It is the mind of a sprinter but not one always suited to long distance running. (133)

The story is more than about looking back. It is also an account of Leo's response to the present: his attempt to deal with his brother's cancer; to assist Harry's partner Bonnie; and to prevent, if possible, the fracture among his sisters as they squabble over the inheritance of the property that Harry has "bequeathed" to them. We are meant to get a sense of the type of person Leo, in his maturity, is: thoughtful, even pensive (although this is obviously heavily tinged by his brother's impending death), and caring. We see this in his attitude and behaviour toward Bonnie. He tells us that "he admired her for her forbearance" in coping with Harry's illness. Later, worrying about how she is coping with the "double strain of losing Harry and the problems Phyllis was making", he suggests she come to Darwin for a break.

Structurally, "Brotherly Love" uses a beginning, middle, and end although it does not proceed in a conventional chronology. There are a number of shifts in time between the present (the revelation of Harry's illness and the events at the hospital in Sydney), the remote past (Harry's character and the camaraderie of the brothers when they were in China as schoolboys), and the recent past (recollections of Harry's betting, Leo's relationship with his sisters, and his dinner with Eddie in the late 60s). Leo's preoccupation with Harry and Harry's death forms the leitmotiv that holds the narrative together.

In contrast, "Disloyalty" has a simpler style more suited to the language and judgements of a younger, less experienced individual. It is a story which relies on a linear structure and a conventional arc of development. The tone of the young narrator is more akin to someone telling a story to an audience. Sentences are relatively short and the language is direct, laying things out in a straightforward way. It has the quality of a confessional tale. That tone is maintained throughout the story.

He said it in a neutral voice, no trace of regret although I swear I saw a fleeting pain in his eyes. It made me want to say to him, "Stir into action. She's right for you, not Eddie." But I held myself in check. I didn't, at my age, know enough about such matters to offer anyone advice, let alone someone like Leo.. .

The marriage seemed to hum along fine. Leo saw his friends regularly and I was invited several times to lunch and dinner with them. I'd look at Bessie and th~nkthat marriage agreed with her. She hadn't suppressed her lively, spontaneous side but she was somehow quieter, more contemplative, as if she had absorbed a sliver of Eddie's personality. (73,76)

Several other stories in this cycle also follow a conventional narrative structure: "Chinese History Books," "Compulsive," and "Other People's Letters." But "Leica," "(Dis)Temper," "All the Tea in China," and "The Name is Chan, Charles Chan," are structured differently. All four might be described as episodic, especially "Leica" where a series of stories, each of them a variation on the preceding one, are, in fact, "the story." There is no plot, in the conventional sense, in "Leica" which progresses by unfolding a number of short narratives connected to the search for where a missing camera, a Leica, might be. Nonetheless there is a first person narrator who is shaping the narrative, presenting his version of the family stories that centre on the Leica.

"(Dis)Temper" and "All the Tea in China7' are composed of fragments, held together by a series of revelations and reflections that the narrator recounts. The two narratives are grounded in the past but shifr between the recent past, which is where the narrative commences, to a more distant past when the narrator is a small child. Within the framework of the childhood experiences there are continuing time shifts, and the narrative zig-zags, cutting from one slice of memory to another without any precise linear ordering of the memories. Thus, the episode in which the narrator arrives in Sydney is intercut with accounts of later events before returning to the arrival. A linear ordering is not essential to this story, which is driven by the narrator's attempts to set down his initial impressions of his father, his uncle Leo, and other family members.

"The Name is Chan, Charles Chan" lacks a conventional story arc but relies on a tight structure built on the contrast in the temperaments of Charlie the detective and Charles the "real" person. When that comparison is completed the real Charles makes his appearance by interrupting the narrator while he is composing:

My flow of words is interrupted. There I am in midsentence when he comes close, leans over my shoulder to read what I have just written.

"Who are you writing about at this hour? Who's Charles?" The questions are framed as mild curiosity, a measure of puzzlement. After all, it is his name and he must have guessed that I'm writing about him. (175)

From that point, Charles takes over the story (which becomes a story within the story), giving it several twists and twns when he discloses his meeting with the writer, Earl Derr Biggers. This meeting intrigues the narrator although Charles' account seems to be pure invention:

I feel an urge to rush upstairs, wake up my father and ask him why he has been putting me on with his confection but then I look back over the twists in the story he has given me and I decide that I should just let it be, leave him alone to sleep hls dreams in readiness for another invention on another day. (181)

[c] Between Life and Fiction: Why the stories are not a personal or family memoir

As I have already mentioned, writing these stories has entailed some personalising of my family experiences but they have been reshaped radically into a fictional mode. It has been an attempt to say something about a fictional cast of characters and their lives. The family is invented and the characters who inhabit the stories are a composite, based on some quirks of temperament and behaviour of real people, blended with what I made up.

In many cases, I have invented incidents and expanded greatly on things that were only partly and hazily remembered, but I found that rather liberating. Sometimes, too much memory or too full a memory of past events can get in the way of opening up the story and taking it in unexpected directions, of making discoveries that seem to work satisfactorily from a creative perspective.

Let me cite some examples of what I mean. In the story, "Leica", the narrator starts by declaring that in 1963, his father made a trip to Hong Kong where he bought a Leica camera. This sentence, brief, factual, accords with my memory of what happened. But it came to me second hand: I never went on that trip and was not in a position to verify that my father had, indeed, bought a Leica camera. I only knew this after he returned to Australia and showed us the camera he had bought. Did he actually buy it in Hong Kong? Was it really a Leica? The simple answer to both questions is "yes". Except that I never examined the camera, and, having no interest in photography, would not have been able to tell a Leica from a Kodak. Perhaps the camera was not a Leica at all. If it wasn't, what brand of camera was it? Could my father have been swindled? Might the Leica have been a fake?

Speculating about the Leica led me to construct a story in which each member of the narrator's family has hislher version of what happened, a version that helshe holds to and considers to be authentic. There may be no consistency when we try to piece the versions together: they may contradict each other. But, taken together, they constitute a set of family narratives that are fabrications.

The story "Other People's Letters", draws on the following fragments of my grandfather's life: he lived in a Surry Hills terrace for more than 30 years; he could read and write both Chinese and English although he had only a modest facility in the latter; he worked in a gambling den at the back of a grocery store in Dixon Street; and he had a close Chinese friend who called on him regularly, perhaps even daily. Everything else in the story is invented. Does Tang Kwei-ping, one of the main characters in the story, behave in ways that I imagine my grandfather might have behaved had he been placed in the situations elaborated in the story? It is the exploration of this question that lies beneath the story.

"Other People's Letters" is an attempt to write about Chinese lives from the perspective of the insider, from within the enclave, looking out. Even though it is set in Sydney there is not much interaction with the wider society. Tang and his fnend, Leung-bing, occupy a world that is circumscribed: they move mainly within the Suny Hills, Haymarket zones of the city where many other Chinese go about their daily business. Their lives revolve around work, home, and the limited socialising that is initiated when Leung-bing tries to find a partner and settle down. The immigration officer, Shore, is viewed through Tang's eyes. He is seen as an outsider, intruding into the world of the two fiends.

"Disloyalty" has its inspiration in a photo of one of my uncles, taken at a wedding of one of his sisters. His expression is a combination of insouciance and delight in the moment which is described, in the story, as him wearing "a Cheshire Cat grin as if Alice has just told.. .an off-colour joke." My recollections of my uncle are sketchy and fragmented and I was too young to understand the life he led in Sydney before he went to Darwin. But he seemed to have the life of a bon vivant. The spirited way he went about things is reflected in the character of Leo. The falling-out with Eddie, the broken marriage, and the relationship with Bessie are all invented. As far as I know, none of these things ever happened.

I am conscious of certain absences in the stories. While incidents and episodes are set in Sydney, Darwin, and Shanghai, these cities do not impinge greatly on the narratives. While there are some Australian characters, such as Shore in "Other People's Letters", and Veronica in "Compulsive", they are in the minority and are fringe players. These stories, then, are interior, lodged within the heart of Chinese family life and family connections. Whether the characters are living in Sydney or somewhere else can be taken as a given in the stories; it happens to be the place where the family has located itself. The stories are about Chinese but it isn't only their Chinese qualities that I seek to address but also their qualities as individuals, living their day-to-day lives. My concern has been mainly to explore the lives of the men not only because those lives have intrigued me, but also because much of the fiction that has dealt with the Chinese experience has been focussed on women. In the US there has been the writing in the 1950s of Diana Chang and Eileen Chang and, more recently, the writing of Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and Gish Jen. In Australia there has been Arlene Chai, Lau Siew Mei, Lillian Ng, Teo Hsu-ming, and Beth Yahp.

There is a restless, unsettled quality in those who people my stories, especially the men. In "(Dis)Temper7' the main character, Charles, has a nostalgia for the Shanghai that he has left behind. He does not voice it in so many words but it comes out in the elaborate tales he weaves about life in Shanghai. His desire, which is not fully articulated, is to recapture the glamour of that past, except that the glamour is invented, a part of Charles' imaginary.

In "Chinese History Books", Leo escapes from Sydney and tries to find a new start in Darwin. Sydney holds memories too uncomfortable for him to want to go on living there. He is not sure if Darwin will provide the answer but he knows that Sydney cannot do so. Reuben in "Compulsive" gambles all the time. His behaviour can be read as someone who is erratically searching for the big strike.

The men in our family were difficult to read. It was hard to discern what was going on inside their heads. They would show anger, displeasure, or contentment but that their external face. Rarely would they reveal what they were truly thinking. My grandfather, father and uncles were not reflective, contemplative individuals, not in a confessional sense. Learning about them was an indirect process, through observation. When they recounted a story about some phase of their life one would have to probe the sentences to see what the deeper meaning might be.

In writing the men into the stories I've endeavoured to make them more fully realised as characters, to provide motivations for their actions, and to depict their interior thoughts. Through the process of inventing, of converting fragments into fiction, I believe it has been possible to open up the stories of family, to give them depth and a wider context, and to explore facets of character. Nonetheless, I am aware that the short story as a form has limitations. It does not offer the scope of a novel or a novella, in which it would be possible to expand aspects of the narrative, give more back stories, develop character, to intersect many lives, and make detours.

In composing a linked cycle of stories, however, I have been able to extend the short story form. By expanding the lives of the characters beyond a single story I have tried to give those lives a greater complexity. Characters confront challenges at different stages of their lives from different perspectives. Having the stories stretching from the 1940s to the 1990s is one way that I have used time, memory, and reflection to create my imaginary family history. These points will become clearer in the next section where I examine some recurring motifs in the stories, including the way memory reconstructs past events and makes links between the past and the present.

[dl Making narratives: predominant motifs

What grounds these stories, provides the metaphorical earthwire, shifts according to which story you look at. But, reading them critically, I can see that there are a number of recurring motifs that are disclosed through the behaviour of the characters and which I want to discuss in this section. What I will focus on are: the role of memory in recollecting and reconstructing the past; identity and temperament; compulsive and obsessive behaviours; the pain of loss; and the meaning home has in family relationships.

i) Reconstructing Memory

The stories deal with memory in several senses. What I want to discuss in particular is the elusiveness of reconstructing what actually happened; the recollection of the past and its connection to the present; and the reconstruction of past events as a part of story-making and invention or reinvention. The elusiveness of memory

The shifts of memory, the difficulty of pinning memory down, and the elusiveness of reconstructing what happened are woven through "Leica". There the narrative comprises a series of variations around a camera that may or may not exist.

As I have already mentioned, my father did own a Leica which he bought when he was in Hong Kong in 1963. For him it was an expensive purchase. There isn't much to the story of this purchase. My father was enormously taken with his new camera, he mastered its technical complexities, and he took many photographs with it. After some years, newer cameras came onto the market that were less difficult to use than the Leica. My father switched to the simpler cameras and the Leica went into storage. It was not a proper storage. He put it in an airline carry-on bag and shoved it under his bed.

Fast forward to 1996 when my father was in the Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, struggling with pulmonary oedema. He received several visits from a friend who was a photojournalist. In their conversations the Leica was mentioned and was promised to the friend. That, at least, is what the friend said. After my father died, the friend phoned my sister in Sydney and said that he would like to come by and pick up the camera he had been promised.

When I heard about this I was troubled and upset. What right did this friend have to the camera? Had it really been promised? So I asked for it back. The friend returned it. When he left he simply said: "Thirty years. We were friends for thirty years." I think he felt that some bond had been broken or something withdrawn through that act of asking for the camera back. Perhaps he thought we were Indian givers. Anyway, that episode lodged in my memory. As a piece of non-fiction it might explore the friendship, my father's acts of generosity (he treated his friends bounteously), and the abruptness by which links between people can be broken.

I have chosen to use the story of the Leica in a different way: to look at family stories and their elusive, quicksand quality. In the story my narrator is talking, at one point, to his mother: Who's the guy sitting next to Dad? I ask. He appears in several of the photos. Oh, don't you remember him from when you were little? That's Gus. Gus, I say incredulously. But I thought his name was Tonto. Maybe some people call him that, said my mother, but I always knew him as Gus. Wasn't he the one who went to a home when he was a young man? Who told you that? Gus never went to any such place. He moved to Hong Kong with your uncle and aunt and settled down there.

These are family stories and I have assigned myself the task of recording things as they have been recounted to me but the task is elusive and nothing has a solid core, a central hard patina that I can grasp and feel and say, with a degree of satisfaction, that is how it was or must have been. (6)

The intention, in the Leica story, is to convey some of the slippery quality of family narratives. The way a particular incident will have shifts of detail and recollection according not just to different family members but perhaps, as I suggest, to the same family member depending on the day the incident is recounted. False or lapsed memory may be part of this. Someone in the family tries to recall some past event and forgets some detail and, in the process of that forgetting, has reshaped the narrative. Sometimes the narration of a family story may be repeated so much to the same audience over time that, after a while, the audience has a sense of having participated in the original story even if he or she was not actually there.

Recollecting the past, connecting to the present

Here, the connection of the past to present that I want to refer to is less the linear progression of a story from some starting point in the past and more the causal link of some past events or incidents to a defined present. In the three linked stories about

Leo - "Disloyalty," "Chinese History Books," and "Brotherly Love" - there are specific episodes in the past that have a strong influence on the present. (By present, in each of these stories, I mean the "now" Leo is in throughout the narrative.)

In "Disloyalty" the friendship Leo has for Eddie, who had served with him in the same army unit during the Second World War, is underscored by an incident in Borneo: Ifyou 're up in a tree you 're a sitting target ifthe enemy spots you and the Japs werepretty sharp shooters. I slide up the tree as quietly as I can and, when I'm about 30 feet up, I see our unit returning. They're about 500 yards away so I give them a wave. Well, bugger me one of them startsfiring at me. I'm gripping a branch and packing it. in a few seconds, i know i'll be a goner. But Eddie is in the unit. He has a good look and tells the others: "That's one of our blokes you galahs. It's BT. " Eddie saved my life. They all saw this Asian face in a tree and thought I was one of the enemy. (69-70)

The narrator comments that following that episode "my uncle felt that he owed Eddie. ...they went to the Anzac marches together; drank together regularly; and often went duck and pigeon shooting." (70)

"Disloyalty" is principally about the severance of the close friendship between Leo and Eddie. The narrative traces three sets of dyadic relationships that shift and change because of what Eddie does. The Leo-Eddie friendship is cemented by Eddie's action in saving Leo's life and fractured when Leo learns about the way his friend abuses Bessie. The Leo-Bessie romantic relationship, which mainly pre-dates the time of the story, is displaced by the marriage of Bessie and Eddie. But Leo and Bessie pick up again after her marriage falls apart because of Eddie's abuse. The Bessie-Eddie relationship leads to marriage and then separation. For Leo the falling out with Eddie is that much harder because of the previous close bond - one forged in the past - between them.

In "Chinese History Books" the break-up of his romance with Bessie and her departure from Sydney marks a low for Leo:

The day he takes her to the station to catch the train he knows that they will be separating permanently. He sees it in the purposeful way she strides along the platform and leaps on board the train. There is too much eagerness in that clamber, too much desire to be away. She looks back, safe now inside the protective enclosure of the carriage. Tries to summon up her warmest smile but fails and leaves him with the memory of the thinnest of grins, a pauper's parsimony.

"I'llphone you when I get in. " She waves as the train pulls away takingfrom him the only reason he has to remain in Sydney. (86) Even as he's drawn into a new relationship with Becky in Darwin, Leo finds that he cannot quite let go of the past. He wrestles with the thought of perhaps contacting Bessie and seeing if their relationship might be salvaged.

"Bessie's a fine person but we couldn't quite make a go of it after her divorce. I keep saying I should go to Rockhampton and see her but I always get cold feet at the last moment. Perhaps it's better to let things settle for a bit before I go there."

"You sounds as if you're not sure which way to move.''

"That's true. I'm not. How about you?" (97)

"Chinese History Books" is about the next phase in Leo's life after his separation from Bessie. The break-up of Leo's relationship is interwoven through his efforts to establish a new and different life for himself in Darwin. Leo's life in Darwin is marked by one question to which he does not fully know the answer: can the past be recovered? Consequently, even as he tries to make sense of his present situation, he finds himself racked by doubt, the pain of the past, and a wish, albeit expressed vacillatingly, to pick up the pieces of his relationship with Bessie.

In "Brotherly Love", Leo flies from Darwin to Sydney to tend to his ailing brother, Harry. It is Harry who triggers the flight when, unexpectedly, he phones and tells Leo about his illness. The call also invokes Leo's memories of Harry:

He was never one to take a firm stand, to say that his mind had been made up definitely on any issue where choice was involved. For him there was always the next choice. Or the one after that. I'd get so steamed up following a conversation with him that I'd be tense and on edge. In the end, it was better not to talk to him. Not to have to deal with that mercurial temperament. (133)

It is Harry's mercurial temperament which hovers over the narrative. Even though there is a reconciliation of sorts between the brothers, Harry's decision to offer all his sisters a share in the terrace house to which he no longer holds the title (one of the sisters, Phyllis, actually has the title) triggers a new episode of tension. Harry's fickleness, which Leo firmly believes is an unchangeable "flaw" in his brother's make-up, drives the story towards its unfortunate denouement: there is an enormous fallout in the family as the sisters bicker over the property. Leo, watching this happen, and frustrated at his inability to prevent it, comments:

I look back on these events and the rational part of me wants to blame Harry. If he had kept his silence that afternoon in the hospital, the subsequent troubles might never have occurred. But the caprice in his make-up wouldn't let him. (168) Reconstructing the past as invention

The stories that families choose to tell and retell, and the way that those stories are told, belong to the wider pattern of family narratives that all of us possess in some form. There are key elements in this including the roles of the narrator, the narrative, and the listeners. The function of the narrative cannot be divorced from its social context. It is an oral performance and highly selective in regard to what the narrator decides to leave in or leave out. Nor will all such narratives be about truth-telling and factual accuracy.

Karl Kroeber, in his book on contemporary storytelling, says that a story,

as every child knows, may improve with repetitions that encourage the active, one may legitimately say "creative," processes of recomprehension and revaluation of contingent details.

Each telling - even of a sacred story - is a unique event. Therefore every story establishes its own history, the history of being preserved by being made anew with every retelling. Oral tales are usually presented as retellings, with tellers, even inventive ones, often falsely disclaiming originality. (1 992: 60- 1)

"@is)Temper" tries to capture some of the quality of retelling, of the story "made anew", when Charles, describing the home of a millionaire he knew in Shanghai, declares, in one account, that there were two tennis courts made from the same grass used at Wimbledon and, in another account, that there were three courts, including one of clay from Paris, the same as used in the French championships. The narrator of this story, recalling these stories and the storyteller, comments that:

Some days I think it is the continuation of the same conversation. The one where he accelerates into hyperbole, his words weaving and crosshatching a mythic tapestry. How much of it is true? Even he has forgotten. (1 3)

There was, in my father's family, a strong oral storytelling tradition. It may have come from my grandmother who, being unable to write, retained the family history and folklore in her head. I believe, however, that it was not wholly connected to being literate or non-literate. It was more the facility of those who, whether or not they could write, preferred to rely on speaking, on oral skills.

My father, who liked to tell stories, was not particularly adept at it, not a raconteur. He didn't build his stories around some dramatic or humorous incident; he didn't shape the narrative; and he tended to pile detail on detail, creating a flatness that made the stories fall away. The stories of the millionaire in Shanghai, which come at the start of "(Dis)Temper", try to mimic that flatness, that mania for detail over denouement.

My uncles and my grandmother, on the other hand, were reasonably skilled at storytelling. My grandmother, in particular, was fond of lingering over the breakfast table, garbed in her dressing gown, and regaling my mother with tale after tale of life in China or Darwin. There was a profusion of Darwin stories after my grandmother returned from living there for a period in the early fifties. They were tellings and retellings that did not form a linear family history but they were stories that had a definite resonance for my grandmother. They were the stories she had assembled over a lifetime.

Elizabeth Tonkin, a social anthropologist, citing the observations of Samuel Schrager, a researcher into community storytelling in Idaho, states that what is told can seldom be verified in a "strict sense" because its validity rests, in the end, "less in its content than in social relationships. We agree to regard each other - at least some others - as bearers of truth. We accept what we are hearing even though it is not and never can be a literal transcription of events" (1992: 39).

What I would fix on here is the idea that this kind of storytelling is not about verification in the Popperian sense of some claim that can be proven to be false but rather the way in which reminiscence is shaped with details omitted, whether forgotten or selected out, events compressed, and even errors made (Tonkin 1992: 114). The purpose of this type of storytelling can be purely anecdotal, humorous, a form of family inclusion and linkage, or even a kind of social mapping of the family. It is, however, a highly selective and social process that has little bearing on the linear narrative of a family's history. ii) Identity and Temperament

Ln "The Name is Chan, Charles Chan", I begin with a play on the name of the movie detective, Charlie Chan and my father's name. All his life people made jokes about my father's "connection" to the character on the screen, even people he had only met for the first time. One of my uncles had a story of my father ringing up to order some tickets for a movie at the Capitol Theatre in the Hayrnarket and giving the woman his name: "Chan, Charles Chan." To which she replied: "Well I'm Mae West, why don't you come up and see me sometime."

My story is more than about a play on names. It deals with the Western tendency to conceptualise the Chinese within certain kinds of frameworks; to make them part of a typology of otherness. The character of the Chinese detective, Charlie Chan, as portrayed on the screen, has become an archetype of a certain kind of Asian, one who is seemingly agreeable, submissive, servilely compliant, docile, and never a threat to established Western order.

The Charlie of the movie was a phlegmatic character. His feathers were never, ever ruffled. He was presented as equanimous, cool, collected, in possession of self, controlling all faculties, temperate; all in all, a person of balance and poise. A Chinese Sherlock Holmes type, you might say, with one or other of the sons always playing the dolt's role, the role reserved for Dr Watson. His mock-educated version of English was a form of patter and pitter that only a scriptwriter who'd never met an educated Chinese could have written. Pure mumbo jumbo. ("The Name is Chan, Charles Chan": 170)

Later, I write:

Beneath the obsequious, falsely meek faqade was an implied superiority, a sense that he, Charlie the sleuth, was actually smarter than anyone else. Why else was he presented as wily, the clever Oriental, able to solve mysteries by his wits alone? His words might say and pretend otherwise, parade his modesty, but how he really saw himself was quite different. In truth, the poseur's mask concealed a secret show-off but it was a double mask anyway because the Chinese face was a faqade covering a white face. The truly clever person was, by sleight of hand, an American in disguise and a sneering snob. (175)

In contrasting Charlie the detective with the fictional character, Charles, I attempt to present the latter as a spirited person, prone to shifts of mood: The character of the real Charles was another story. He was not temperate. Charles could be all temper, irate, quick to anger, breathing the fire of Jove, ready for a dust-up, knuckles bared. He was at the centre of many incidents that involved losing his temper, doing his block. He could swear ferociously and easily in three languages, including English which he spoke all his life with a strong Australian accent.. .(l70)

The personality of the Charles character in this and other stories in the collection is loosely based on my father whose hot temper was a sharp contrast to that of Charlie the detective. I use that contrast to underline the submissive, supine, overly deferential qualities of the fictional detective. Charles' fiery, combustible character is a counterbalance to the mild-mannered detective.

My father had a terrible temper all his life. There were many incidents of explosion and what I have done, in several of the stories, is to weave the temper into the fictional portrait. I use it partly as a metaphor for defiance and non-submissiveness in a story like "The Name is Charles.. ." or as an illustration of the destructiveness that ill temper can cause to relationships in "(Dis)Temper." In this latter story, Charles, not without provocation, whacks his brother with a tennis racquet during a game:

Periodically, Leo directs words at my father. Or rather, he needles him. Tries to stir him up, bait him My father, his face scowling with ill-temper, tells him to shut up. Tells him to shove it you know where if he won't shut up. When my father misses a shot, Leo is all over him. Send that sh-oke back to China, it's no good here. Who was the girl who taught you to play?

And then Stanley hits a soft serve and Leo whacks it, straight at my father, hits him on the side of the head. Soriy, Chas, I was aiming for the sideline. But my father doesn't believe hun, believes, instead, that everythng has been deliberately conspired to deliver this final afiont. He vaults the net and clouts Leo on the shoulder with his racquet. There is a loud, cracking sound, painful to hear, and Leo crumbles to the ground, his face contorted with rage and pain. My father is on top of him about to deliver a backhand to Leo's head when Stanley grabs the offensive weapon and wrestles it out of his hand. (19)

There are a number of incidents like this in the stories. In "Compulsive", Reuben recalls his father telling him that Charles could "burst into thunder at the merest provocation" (55) and, in the story, there are instances of Charles' temper being directed at one or other of the gamblers at the table with him. Generally, the outbursts occur when he has been denied the chance to win what he believes is a very good hand.

iii) The Sense of Loss

A vein of melancholy runs through many of these stories. There is the feeling of loss when relationships and romances break up. In "Disloyalty", Leo struggles with both the hurt he sees Eddie inflicting on Bessie, for whom he retains an affection, and the dissolution of his friendship with Eddie, who has been one of his closest friends. The narrator of this story discloses the pain:

Bessie took Leo up on his offer. Perhaps it was the only choice she had. I saw how they moved around one another. The levity of the past, before she was married, was gone. They were like two wounded veterans.

I didn't ask what had happened about Eddie or whether there had been a confrontation between him and Leo. I thought about Eddie, the quiet, silent Eddie who only laughed when he danced and I thought how bad it must have been to have his marriage crumble so soon. Yet I was glad that it had happened, that Leo had intervened and that Bessie had walked away from the trap that she was in.

I guess that there was another cost for Leo. He had broken with his closest friend. That must have been hard. He valued his friends and this had been a friendship without price. (79)

The circumstances of the severed friendship is picked up in "Chinese History Books" when Leo suffers some remorse at his break with Eddie:

... The end of a marriage. The end of a friendship. And he doesn't want to do it. He hears Eddie's voice on that day, pleading, begging, hears the distillation of hisji-iend's pain in the one sentence as they are about to enter the police station: "Cover for me Leo, cover for me."

... It passes less painfully than he has anticipated. The papers signed and witnessed, Eddie stands up straight, shakes Leo S hand, nods at Bessie, and marches out the door, but the strong whisky trail that follows him is an unvoiced disclosure. Johnny Walker embalms his wound. (84-5) The same story tries to depict the sense of pain as Leo tries to resume his relationship with Bessie after the break-up of her marriage:

... Once or twice they go dancing but dancing is where it began for her and Eddie and they feel awkward together as they try to punch out rhythms on thefloor. They are good to each other, sometimes even passionate, but the severed friendship with Eddie shrouds their relationship and, in the end, suffocates it.

She sees it in his response to things. He doesn't laugh at jokes the way he used to when Bessie and Eddie and he went dancing at the Trocadero. He still says funny things but she never catches the dance in his eyes any more. When he thinks he isn 't being watched he walks a melancholy line. She sees the footprints trailing off in every direction. (85)

In "Brotherly Love", Leo reveals, at the start, his lack of closeness to his brother Hany:

I felt twinges of bad conscience about not writing back but I didn't even write to close friends so why would I have written to Hany whose life, if his letters were accurate, was a tumble- turn of mishaps from one month to the next; who courted misadventure as if it were some hothouse orchard he had been tending from its initial gestation. Anyway, eventually the letters stopped coming. (134)

There is a reconciliation of sorts as Leo tries to help look after his dying brother. The death itself is played out against a quarrel over a family property which the dying Hany unexpectedly proclaims should be shared amongst his sisters.

Their collective reaction indicated that he had surprise them, that it was a gift from an unexpected quarter. But you could see that they were pleased and excited by the pronouncement. Bonnie was not in the room. In fact, she'd been gone for a long time.

I was standing weli away from everyone, angry at Harry for what he'd just done. I didn't think it was right. The house should have gone to Bonnie. Distracted, I didn't feel the tug on my sleeve at first. Not until it was repeated more insistently. I looked at Phyllis and saw the anger burning in her eyes and in the determined set of her mouth. (149)

The family quarrel over property leads to a legal tussle. Eventually, Phyllis makes a financial settlement with her sisters but so bitter has the wrangling been that Phyllis and her other sisters have a huge falling out. Leo, who has tried to counsel Phyllis to be reasonable and to moderate her stance, deeply regrets the schism in the family.

Marlon Horn, in his study of the songs of Chinese immigrants to the United States, comments that family is "always the most important part of the Chinese societal structure." He makes an analogy between the Chinese family and a tree with many outreaching branches, all of which are a part of that tree, so that: "Once a branch is cut off from the tree trunk, it cannot survive on its own." (1992: 149) It is this separation, the cutting off, that Leo feels keenly in the divisions between Phyllis and her sisters.

iv) Compulsiveness/Obsession

"Compulsive" is a very Chinese family story. It brings together three elements that I always associate with my childhood: large family gatherings every Sunday, big meals with a variety of Chinese dishes, and games of mahjong and cards.

My grandmother and her friends played a game called Russian poker. Only four could play this at any one time because each player was dealt 13 cards and had to arrange hisher cards in the best combination of three, five, and five according to the rules that applied in other forms of poker: pairs, flush, straight and so on. My grandmother, who could neither read nor write, had little problem with numbers. She was adept at Russian poker and played it assiduously after Sunday dinner.

Some of these card games lasted for four or five hours but, one Easter, I recall that a game of cards began on a Friday and was still going when I went back to school on Tuesday. When I came home, the game had still not ended. Stumps were finally drawn on Wednesday. I have shaped my fiction around that episode of the extended gambling session. My focus is on the cast of gamblers and their relentless pursuit of the games of cards and mahjong to the exclusion of everything else. The story is written mainly from the perspective of one of the gamblers, Reuben, whose family is distantly related to Mrs Tang, the woman who is hosting the family gathering. Reuben epitomises the compulsion to gamble, although, given how long the gambling went on, all the players had, within them, an obsessive streak. He is aware of this feature in his own character but plunges in anyway. Here is his recollection of some past games and past losses:

Reuben cannot believe the succession of winning hands that he gets. They come just like that, seven, eight, nine hands, all to him. Staring down at the hill of chips, at the multiply coloured plastic discs, he reflects on the many losing games that he has been in, the many times when he should have quit when he was up but stayed until he had been cleaned out. If he kept a scorecard of his wins and losses, which he never has done, he would never again sit down at a game of poker.

His most memorable wipeout, which still makes him shudder when he reruns the scene in his head, happened one evening two years ago when he received an unexpected phone call from an acquaintance to join in a game that would be starting that night in a grocery store. He knew the owner, Stevie Ma, fairly well.. .

Reuben sensed, as soon as he walked into the small back room behind the shop, which served as a living and dining room and a spare bedroom if Stevie was putting someone up, that it wasn't a night for gambling, not for him, anyway. If you'd asked him to explain, he would have been sorely pressed to articulate the tightness he felt, the temptation he had to turn around and walk away. The others at the table, apart from Stevie, were unknown to him. He couldn't even remember seeing them around the streets of Newcastle and that, in such a small town, convinced him that they were not locals. He looked at their faces as they were being introduced and thought that their eyes were piercing him like lasers, penetrating to the hollowness of him, detecting how underprepared he was a high-stakes game of poker. ("Compulsive": 59)

Reuben, naturally, is one of those who stays at Mrs Tang's for the four-day marathon of gambling. By the fourth day he is exhausted. Playing mahjong, he finds it hard to stay alert: Charles has leapt to his feet and, in one vigorous motion, has turned the table on its side. Billy, trying to stop the table landing on him, is upended on the floor. Freddie and Reuben are left in their seats, minus a table, like some afterthought of a magician's trick. And Charles is yelling abuse at them all. (66)

There is a snippet of truth in the last section that I've quoted: my father, in anger, did upend a mahjong table once while playing with relatives and fhends at the home of his youngest sister. Her husband was so upset at this that he told my father not to come again to their place. Later, much later, things were patched up between them although the relationship was never quite the same as before.

Although "Compulsive" deals principally with Reuben's gambling mania, all the other players are complicit. Without them the game could not have endured for that whole Easter break. And Charles, the real Charles, did have a time in his life when he shunted between long bouts of mahjong at the restaurant of a close friend (later they had a falling out also) and dashing home for a quick shave and shower before he went off to work. There were many sleepless days and nights. I would call such a fixation an obsession.

There does not seems to be anything inherently Chinese in gambling. We only have to think about casinos in America or horseracing, poker machines and games of chance in isolated communities (like mining towns) in Australia, to realise that gambling is common to many different cultures.

Nonetheless gambling is a recurrent theme in Chinese fiction set in the West. Ln novels like Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men, Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet, Louis Chu's Eat A Bowl of Tea, and the short fiction of writers like Kiana Davenport and Sigrid Nunez in the anthology Charlie Chan Is Dead, it is described as an element of Chinese life.

Marlon Hom argues that Chinese immigrants in America knew that gambling was a vice but, for many who were saving their wages to return to China, it may have represented a quick way to improve their economic fortunes; a game of chance might have meant the "materializing of the Gold Mountain Dream" (1992: 25,66). Additionally, the habits of gambling provided a form of social interaction for the predominantly male Chinese living in America (Siu 1987: chap. XV) and Australia, especially in the late lgthand early 2othcentury. Jane Lydon, in her study of the patterns of Chinese life in the Rocks area of Sydney, notes that William Pow Chee, who was an interpreter for the Australian Government and the Chinese community in the 1890s, went to gambling houses "for the company" (Lydon 1999: 105, 158).

In Western discourse, as I have already noted, the negative depiction of the Chinese essentialised gambling as one of their vices along with their poor hygiene, disease, and opium smoking. This produced a stereotype of the Chinese that had little to do with what the Chinese were actually like but was a constructed representation. It has a parallel in the way Orientalist discourses have been, as Edward Said has argued, "a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (2001: 69; Young 2001: 388-9).

In the case of the Sunday gambling in my grandmother's home the stakes were never high. The games were among family and friends and were intense, generated excitement, but were mainly part of the social occasion. In fictionalising the gambling experience, however, I have tried to explore its darker edge through the character of Reuben, a man who can't let go when it comes to having a bet. His behaviour is closer to that of the immigrants Hom is describing.

v) Home as a Focal Point of Family Life

In the stories, home is both a physical thing, the structure that people enter and exit, but it is also a symbol of hospitality, family tension, and sanctuary. Because we were an impoverished family when we arrived in Sydney, after the War, my parents, my sister and I lived in the large apartment that my grandmother rented in Kingsford. Later, when the landlord reclaimed his apartment, we moved to a suburban cottage in Maroubra. One of my earliest recollections was how physically imposing the space was in that Kingsford apartment. I had never been inside a home that was so large. When we lived in Shanghai, we were only ever in a single room of a larger house, in which kitchen and bathroom were shared amongst all the tenants. All those of my aunts and uncles who had not then married, lived in the apartment. When we anived, the household expanded from seven to eleven. It was spacious enough to accommodate all of us although I was always conscious of adults around me when I was small.

After we moved to the Maroubra cottage I saw how cramped and congested it was by comparison. All the bedrooms were smaller, and the lounge and dining areas seemed minimal. The bathroom was perpetually occupied and, with so many people washing and showering, the hot water supply quickly ran out every day, much to the chagrin of anyone who had not yet taken a shower.

My grandmother, as I have already said, had a regular Sunday get-together of family and friends. In Kingsford, people could spread out, since there was so much space. In Maroubra, everyone was elbow to elbow. Thus the family gatherings in Maroubra tested fully the modest dimensions of the house. Often, there was an overflow into the back and front yards.

In "All the Tea in China", which narrates a young boy's account of meeting his Australian uncles, I try to convey a sense of the physicality of home as well as the idea of home as a place of welcome and hospitality.

We stopped in front of a dark brown brick apartment block. With some effort I clambered up the stairs to the top floor. Enormous it was. Palatial. To my eyes, anyway, after the cramped weeks in the bunks of the ship, after living for more than twelve months in a miniscule room in Hong Kong with a grubby, smelly, brokendown outside toilet, no running water, and a communal kitchen whose stove defied ignition. This apartment occupied all of the fifth floor.

...At once I feel like a small animal released from its cage. I find my feet, no longer suffer any weakness in my body. I hare around the endless bounty of that apartment, tearing from room to room. (30)

In "Brotherly Love" home is a focus of tension and disturbance as well as a place where memories are stored. The narrator, Leo, reminisces about the terrace that was once his mother's place, as he wanders through the rooms: I walked back into the lounge room and through to the dining room, sat down on one of the musty chairs. There had been many family dinners here after the war. My mother had liked to have everyone over, all my sisters and their families and the three boys. And the invitations extended to our cousins and sometimes their fiiends.. .But I'd never lived in the house except for an infrequent overnight stay and it had never had any permanent, enduring associations for me. (158)

The same house is the source of a quarrel among the Tang family siblings. The dispute is less about the house, however, than about money. Leo comments about his sisters that:

We didn't have fights or anything and I didn't consciously snub them but I kept our relationship at a workable distance. I was more comfortable that way. Being in Darwin helped. With my sisters everything came down to money. If you bought something they always wanted to know its price. If you went to a restaurant with them the bill was always divided exactly, down to the last penny. And if you owed them money they'd find a 101 ways to remind you of the debt. ("Brotherly Love": 148)

Home is also a sanctuary, a retreat into what is reassuring. Tang Kwei-ping, one of the main characters in "Other People's Letters", looks around the dining room of his home and sees:

the familiar, mismatched furniture, the thickly padded, blue floral sofas that a neighbour, Mrs Sung, had passed on to him, the bureau that he bought at Paddy's Markets one Saturday many years ago, and the assorted dining chairs, several of which he inherited when one of the restaurants he was working at in Dixon Street closed down. The wall had calendars going back five years. He liked to keep them there in case he had to consult some past date although he could not ever recall the need to do so. (107)

The furnishings are haphazardly thrown together but they represent, in their waywardness, the comfort of the known. They are the marks of Tang's day-to-day existence. 4. SITUATING THE FICTION

These stories are part of my Chinese connection and heritage. They are linked to my own experiences of growing up and living in Australia, Hong Kong, America, and Italy often as an outsider, as part of the other. All foreigners, it might be said, will have such experiences whenever they go abroad. With that I would not disagree. But for me, and doubtless for many other Chinese-Australians, there is the sense that even if we have lived and worked here all our lives, even if our families have roots going back several generations, we will be perceived as separate, distinct from the so-called dominant culture. Even when we are at home, we will be mistakenly perceived as not at home.

The assumption that many Australians make, on meeting me for the first time, is that I am newly arrived, fresh off the boat (or, in contemporary parlance, fresh off the plane). When I open my mouth and speak they are taken aback (he speaks like us!). Sometimes this will be followed by a comment like: "Where did you learn your English, it's so good" or "you must have been here a long time." What lies behind these comments is a stereotype about ethnicity. My kind of face, my kind of features, go with certain ways of spealung English. Speaking the way I do, I have somehow transgressed a boundary that has been drawn around Chinese and other Asians.

Transposing this to what I have written I should expect that a reader might make assumptions about what to expect; that regardless of what the stories deal with, there will be a tendency to mark the fiction as being about the otherness of the Chinese experience. To write about a Chinese family, setting out its relationships, conflicts, and idiosyncrasies, will therefore invite comparison with other fictions of the Chinese experience in a Western setting. Categorised together, these writings will be located under the rubric of the minoritylethnic experience in Australia, Canada, the US or wherever Chinese have migrated to.

If such categorisation insists on seeing the minoritylethnic experience as monolithic, unchanging, anchored in the past, I would argue, to the contrary, that the experience of the Chinese and other Asians is diverse, shifting, always in the process of becoming. It's that process of becoming that I have tried to capture in my stories. They are an exploration of memory, fact, and fiction. Of course, through the writing, I am offering some insights into the lives of Chinese in all their complexity, confusion and disorder. There are doubtless points of commonality with other Chinese families and their experiences. What I am resisting is any temptation to move too quickly from the particularities of my fictional family to some generalities about the Chinese.

The comments of Elaine Kim about the diversity in American-Asian literature could also be applied to the Australian scene, though on a smaller scale. Kim observes that:

Instead of "model minorities," we find human beings with rich and complex pasts and brave, often flamboyant dreams of the hture. There are dysfunctional families that bear no resemblance to the Charlie Chan version of "Chinese family values," tragic stories of suicide, incest, and child abuse, as well as bittersweet songs about aging, love, and death. (Kim 1993: xiii)

What she welcomes is the appearance of a substantial body of fiction that has added to those Asian voices which have written against a history of being "excluded and rendered invisible" by exposing "the unruly, the transgressive, and the disruptive" (Kim 1993: xiii).

I would see my work as fitting into the list of writers who are trying to evoke, in English, what it is like to be Chinese living in Australia. Those who are in this category include Ouyang Yu, Brian Castro, Beth Yahp, Lilian Ng, Hsu-Ming Teo, Lau Siew Mei and performance artists like Anna Yen and William Yang. Innovations such as Theatre 4A in Sydney present a forum for allowing artists from Asia to write and perform stories that reflect aspects of Asian-Australian cultures. Ln 2002, there were productions involving artists from Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Australia.

Alison Broinowski has pointed out that since the 1990s the flood of fiction dealing with Asia by Australian writers has dwindled to a trickle. It has been displaced by "a deluge of Asian Australian novelists who can access two or more languages, generations of family narratives, mythology and magic, and the experience of hegira" (Broinowski 2000: 19). What she is suggesting is that these writers, from their diverse background and experiences, can and do provide insights that are substantially different from those in the "mainstream." Although her comments are about Asian- Australian writers and include those who are Chinese, the number of Chinese- Australian writers, while growing, is still relatively small.

The lives of Chinese in Australia, for so long silenced and buried, have only recently been given voice in creative writing. Brian Castro's Birds of Passage is about an Australian born Chinese, Searnus O'Young and his Chinese ancestor, Lo Yu Shan, who was drawn to Australia by the gold rush. It is an exploration of life experiences, roots and identity through his two main characters. In one of the opening sections of the novel, Seamus declares:

...My heart and my head are in the wrong places. There was no country from which I came, and there is none to which I can return. I do not speak Chinese, but I am learning it. At the institute where I attend classes they think I am a little strange.

I believe my real name is Sham Oh Young, but I am unable to find any records of my past. I am a truly stateless person. When I go to Chinatown I feel at one with the people, but then the strange tones of their language only serve to isolate me. (Castro 1983: 8-9)

Some of his later fiction explores these themes in different settings and styles. Castro himself has written with considerable insight about his own approach to the creative process. He has said, in an interview, that: "Doubleness and doubling back are also a kind of mode d 'emploi in the writing of my novels and also in the key to their reading. This, I suppose, is the postmodernism coming out, where what is written has already been vetted to its rereading" (Ouyang 2001 : 75).

In his collection of essays, Lookingfor Estrellita, Castro explores what we might call the multiple marginal voices of the writer. He is someone who writes "precisely because I want to write myself out of an artificially imposed comer;" who draws on the "I" of autobiography because it "deliberately invokes multiplicity. Declares itself against authority" (1999: 114-1 15). What is this multiplicity and why is it marginal? Castro is someone transposed from another country, Hong Kong, whose cultural markings are Portuguese, English, Chinese and French. In his work he is writing himself "out of crippling essentialist categorisations, out of the control exerted over multiplicities" (1 15). What he has inside him are languages and cultures which resist easy categories and monolingual and monocultural frames.

The heteroclite, says Castro, refers to things "laid, placed or arranged in sites so very dqferentfrom one another that it is impossible toJind a common place beneath them all. A painting of a pipe is not the same as the word pipe, nor is it the object 'pipe', but it remains a painting" (157). Castro uses the Foucauldian concept of the heteroclite to explain his motivation for writing his first novel, Birds of Passage:

That Chinese disaspora of course, was unprecedented, and their hybridity, their exile are only beginning to be recorded. I was interested in these heterofopias, the placing of different entities in different places, which are disturbing, which, as Foucault has said, dissolve our myths and sterilise the lyricism of our sentences. (157)

The analysis that appeals to Castro comes from the passage in The Order of irhings where Foucault states that Don Quixote's adventures "mark the end of the old interplay between resemblance and signs and contain the beginnings of new relations" (1970: 46). What interests Foucault, however, is that Don Quixote's whole being is language and text; that he is "made up of interwoven words; he is writing itself' (46). His adventures will be a deciphering of the world, a search for the forms that will prove what the book says is true. In fact, since his truth lies in himself as text, his truth "is not in the relation of the words to the world but in that slender and constant relation woven between themselves by verbal signs" (48).

Beth Yahp, in a sensitive narrative called "The Photo, 1955", has tried to re-create things that happened in her family, a blending of fact and fiction. Since she was born in 1964, what she has set down is a recovery of the memories of what she has been told, a creative re-shaping, rather than a construction of things she experienced directly. She states: "I can't remember exactly what happened that day, it was long ago" (Yahp 1994: 167). Near the beginning of this story, she describes, with poetic cadences, a scene of family preparations:

You can imagine this kind of afternoon. There, in that other place. Not here. There's the clinking of bowls from the back of the house, the low sizzle of oil. The wok ladle scraping against its hot centre, onions curling to the right texture. The plates piled high with cut vegetables and meat. There, that place, where the muted shuffle of kitchen slippers leaks down the passageway to the front of the house, and children are intercepted on their swift run through. (143)

As a performer, William Yang, through a blend of photographic slides and narrative, has explored issues of self and identity, including his sense of Chineseness and of being gay. In his personal memoir, "Snapshots", Yang eloquently describes how he journeyed away from his family. As he grew older, he says, the world of his parents seemed more remote and he was drawn to a different lifestyle in Sydney.

I seldom had any communication or even conversation with my father. I became increasingly dissatisfied with carrying out his orders. My father became senile in his old age and I was not sympathetic to his condition. When he died about six years after moving to , it was as if a stranger had died.

Another thing that took me away from my family was the fact that I was gay. I'd always known it and denied it, yet in Sydney 1 had the chance to come out.. .

I told my mother I was gay; this was after my father died. I don't think I was even close to telling my father. My mother cried for three days but she still loved me. No, that's not quite true, a Japanese boy told me that, but the story's the same (Yang 1994: 71).

Through the influence of Yensoon Tsai, the sister he adopted, Yang says he learnt that he had denied the Chinese side of himself, and he began to work at rediscovering his Chinese heritage. He quotes the American writer, Amy Tan, who has said: "The first time I set foot on Chinese soil, I became Chinese." Yang writes that his own experience was not quite the same but "I recognise the experience she is describing. It has to do with earth, standing in the land of the ancestors. It has to do with blood, feeling the blood of China run through your veins" (72).

Ouyang Yu is widely known as a poet and translator who has written in Chinese and English. Nicholas Jose has commented that Ouyang's poetry "charts his own sensations as an outsider, an exile, a wanderer" who draws on two literary and physical landscapes "in complex and shifting ways" (Jose 2002: ii). In his poem "Second Drifting" Ouyang writes of his double death, once when he left China and again when he left Australia. Of China he says:

i paid my last respects to a land that no longer belonged to me since then the home in my heart has been sent into eternal exile

And of Australia he observes:

in the famous land of exiles a wanderer has nowhere to go i, a bird of passage that faces a new disaster to survive i, a lone wolf with his soul tied to the far comers of the earth i used to have two tongues one chinese and the other English i used to have two hearts one east and the other west but i have nothing left now only this instinct to wander again (Ouyang 2002: 54)

Here, Ouyang seems to speak of the double displacement of no longer belonging in China or Australia, the dilemma of the migrant who can no longer call either place home. Wenche Ornmundsen states (1998: 599) that he uses his writing "to negotiate the various stages of the migrant's transition fiom the rejected and angry outsider to someone sufficiently in control of both worlds to forge a contract with them on his own terms".

Apart fiom these writers we can also point to the appearance of Chinese-Australian writers in literary journals such as Meanjin, Island, Heat, and Southern Review. Meanjin, for example, came out with a special "Asia Issue" in 1998 and again in 2004. The 1998 issue contained writing by Ouyang, Mabel Lee, Leslie Zhao, Sang Ye, and Natasha Cho. The 2004 issue included pieces by Andy Quan, a Chinese- Canadian now based in Sydney, Annette Shun Wah, and Chong Wen-Ho, and a round table discussion by Tseen Khoo, Jen Tsen Kwok, and Chek Ling. These writings suggest that we are starting to push beyond what has previously been a relatively small number of writers who were exploring the Chinese experience in Australia. This is a positive development for, as Tseen Khoo notes (2001: 104), "in countries where the number of Asian authors is relatively low, each depiction of a Chinese- Australian perspective risks being read as representative of the community perspective".

5. SITUA TING MYSELF

Coming back to my own story, what I attempt to do is draw on my background and experiences to provide insights into how some Chinese have tried to come to terms with surviving and living in a Western country. My perspective is that of someone who was born in Shanghai but who grew up in Australia from childhood. While my education has been entirely in English-speaking institutions, I only ever spoke Cantonese to my grandparents and still only speak Cantonese to my mother. For much of my adult life I was a career diplomat in the Australian foreign service. A Chinese Australian diplomat, you might say, is an oxymoron, especially given the troubled history of the Chinese presence in this country. Ironically, the first diplomatic assignment I was given was a two year posting in Hong Kong.

Like a number of the writers whom I have discussed above, what I have found is that to be Chinese in a foreign setting means that one is always at risk of being misperceived, misrecognised, mistaken for another person, another race. In Rome, when I was a diplomat at the Australian Embassy, I went to hear a talk by Timothy Mo, the English writer. When I arrived at the University of Rome, where Mo was scheduled to speak, a group of Italian academics were on the footpath, waiting for his arrival. When they saw the Embassy Mercedes pull up, one of them rushed to open the passenger door, assuming that I was the writer, and even greeted me as Mr Mo. I quickly disabused him of his misconception, but in the instant that I did so, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps I should not have, should, instead, have maintained the fiction of being Timothy Mo. How was it that no one checked to see if I even resembled Mo? Or did they see a Chinese alight from the car and assume that it must be Mo? AAer all, how many other Chinese would turn up for Mo's talk, other than himself? Several times I have been mistaken for another race. In Rome, soon after arriving, I attended a cocktail party. I was introduced to another diplomat who asked me where I was from. Australia, I responded, I'm with the Australian Embassy. And how, he said, are things in Tokyo? Had he blocked my words out, seeing only the face of someone who was clearly Asian? Or did he have a mental profile of a "typical Japanese" and conclude that Japan was where I was fiom?

Before Rome, we lived in Siena while we were learning Italian at the local university. Our apartment on the second level was in Via della Galluza, one block away from the magnificent cathedral that graces the town. One day we were coming out of our apartment when a tour group, led by an Italian guide, passed our doorway. The guide, in the middle of a voluble explanation about one of the sights, looked at us for no more than 15 seconds and uttered a single word, "Giapponese" with utmost confidence. If we had challenged him on the spot, said we were Chinese not Japanese, I'm sure that he would have dismissed our claim. We were foreigners in his country; what would we know?

Well, perhaps I am Japanese. Afler all, if I am Asian why can't I pick and chose? Am I bound to my Chineseness? Who determines who I am? Who interpellates? In Japanese department stores in Tokyo the sales people, mostly middle-aged women, always bowed and spoke to me in Japanese. When I failed to respond because I did not know how they probably assumed I was a foreign Japanese, one who lived abroad. But in their eyes I looked Japanese.

Once, while looking at prints in a Chinese art gallery in Hong Kong, the young woman in the store watched me carefully sifting through the works of art. Are you Japanese she asked? No, I replied, I'm not. It was curious. Perhaps the only time that anyone in Hong Kong, during a two year stay, suggested I was other than Chinese. Did I appear, to her eyes, different fiom the hundreds of Chinese she saw around her? Perhaps it was my dress or the way I walked. Maybe it was the way I spoke. But now, when I think back on that brief exchange, I realise that what might have led her to her assumption was the fact that I was in the shop looking at Japanese woodblock prints. Who else would do that except a foreigner, a non-Chinese? A Chinese would surely admire and collect Chinese art only. And I am American Indian. That is the way an American Lndian saw me when we visited a reservation during a car trip through the American West in 1982 on our way to the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and other natural landmarks. The reservation was open to tourists and we were walking around peering at stalls that had different crafts on display and for sale. While I was looking at the crafts I noticed an old man, perhaps in his seventies, standing back, behind a display, gazing at me. My eyes traced his features and I encountered a shock of recognition: he was Chinese, of that I was sure. He looked tanned, leathery from the sun, but no more so than many southern Chinese who have toiled at labouring jobs in the open.

"Are you Chinese?" I asked.

"Are you Indian?" he responded.

I detected no irony in his tone. Each of us had simply misread the other.

My intention, in recounting the above personal experiences, is to draw attention to the fact that "recognising" a person's race is very difficult and prone to erroneous judgements. Ian L6pez states that there are no genetic characteristics possessed by all Blacks but not by non-Blacks. The classification of people along Black, White, and Yellow lines "reveals the social rather than the scientific origin of race" (2004: 967). Robert Young has argued convincingly that the close connection between the development of the concepts of culture and race in the lgthcentury "means that an implicit racism lies powerfully hidden but repeatedly propagated within Western notions of culture" (1995: 91).

As Ouyang writes in his poem "Low Voices":

If I can see them They must be able to see me

If I can see them Can they really see me? (Ouyang 2002: 78)

To be Chinese in a foreign setting is to be both visible and invisible. Others will see you as belonging to a different group, a different tribe. Who you are might remain out of sight, unseen. My stories, from one perspective, can be read as an endeavour to make the invisible, visible; to write my Chinese family experiences onto the page. A story like "Compulsive" seeks to explore some dimensions of the large social occasion. Mahjong and cards were a defining part of those occasions, as was the preparation of a large number of dishes, a feast for all to share. Was this a universal experience, a marker of Chinese family behaviour everywhere? I cannot say for sure. It was what I observed not only in my grandmother's home but in the homes of her relations and fhends; it continued in my father's generation with him and his siblings. It is something my generation no longer does.

Tony Hom, an American commenting on his family, could have been the observer at any of my grandmother's functions:

The main social activity for my family was mah-jongg, cigarettes and Chinese food every weekend. That was the social focus of my family. And whle the adults played, we kids just ran off having a good time. Every weekend, they would have friends over by noon, set up the tables, and play until late evening. (1992: 152)

As I suggest in "Compulsive" the family milieu that we gain a view of is a mix of clashing voices, temperaments, and personalities. There is nothing modest, restrained, or reserved about the way the games are played. The adults at the tables bicker and needle one another. Occasionally, tempers explode. We are far from any portrait of the "model minority" family. I was not writing consciously against stereotype, although I am well aware that one Western version of the Chinese (and other Asian minorities) is that they are solid, well-behaved citizens who do not rock the boat. Jessica Hagendorn remarks:

...we are humourless, non-assertive, impotent - yet we are eroticised as exotic playthings in both Western film and literature.. .we are completely non-threatening. We don't complain. We endure humiliation. We are almost inhuman in our patience. We never get angty. (Hagedorn 1993: xxii-xxiii) As I wrote, the characters began to intersect in complex and unpredictable ways, much as people do in real life. We might think of a dinner party we have been to that was meant to be a joyful gathering amongst family and friends, both new and old, but splinters. The bonds disconnect, never to be reassembled, at least not in the same way as before. Or there is rupture within a family where one act, gesture, or disagreement fractures the relations between parents and child or between siblings.

6. LANGUAGE, SILENCE, AND VOICE

I grew up surrounded by Cantonese and Toishan dialect. Sometimes, my parents would converse in Shanghainese when they didn't want anyone else to know what they were saying. Chinese still use language in this way, a form of code that is not available to outsiders, a cipher to which only they, so they believe, have the key. In Western etiquette, it is considered bad form to talk in front of others in a language that they do not understand. Keeping others out is a form of silencing. Giving someone a text in a language that they cannot read is a form of exclusion.

Language both disconnects and connects and I have explored this in several of the stories. In "Compulsive", the opening paragraph uses a variety of Cantonese words that apply to the game of mahjong. Watch a game being played and you hear these words being used repeatedly: poong, seung, giupaaile. Poong is expressed when one player picks up another's discard to complete a set of three tiles that are the same. It could be any one of the four winds, the red dragon (known as hoong jung), the circle tile (known as toong jee) or some other tile. Declaimingpoong is important because it may break the sequence of rotation in the play. Any player can call apoong at any stage in the play if a discarded tile will let him make his set of three and it always takes precedence over a call of seung. Seung is expressed when a player makes a three set sequence, a run of circles, bamboo, or characters, each of which is numbered from one to nine. A player can only make the seung sequence if the preceding player discarded the tile that he needs. Giupaaile literally means calling for the card, it signals the player is ready to complete his hand and is one tile short of so doing. Using Cantonese at the beginning is meant to give a sense of Chinese intonations, a form of chant that places us in the middle of a dialogue, a conversation. All the Cantonese words and phrases, brief, punchy, make complete sense to anyone familiar with the game of mahjong; they are a part of the theatre of the game. The word poong may be declaimed in various pitches of the voice to denote excitement, indifference, frustration, or calmness. Sometimes, in men only games, poong or seung will be annotated with a Cantonese swear word or two, uttered by the player who has made the play in pleasure, as a putdown to the others, or uttered by someone else in frustration.

And Cantonese is used as a form of inclusion/exclusion. Gum Soe, hearing Margaret say a Cantonese phrase awkwardly, comments that she speaks Chinese like a kwailo, a devil person, a negative term for a foreigner. It's a putdown, perhaps not with the intention of malice as much as a form of separating out: Margaret is not really regarded as Chinese. Margaret, attending the social gatherings, is made to feel an outsider, not comfortable. When we hear Cantonese used in her presence, we have a similar sense, as she does, of not being privy to what is being said. We are left out of parts of the conversation.

To be quiet, silent, not speak, can also be a tactic of resistance. Kwei-ping, confronted by the immigration officer, Shore, in "Other People's Letters", makes a retreat into silence. Asked if he knows Ernie Feng, whom Shore is seeking, Kwei- ping spends a long time studying the photo of his friend "as if it might divine some message for him" (106). Eventually, he responds in English, "No seen" (106). (This is actually a literal rendering of the Cantonese phrase, moh ginh.) Even though Kwei- ping is aware of what is going on, his silence and his fractured English is a deliberate ploy, a way of erecting a barrier to deter any further probing by the immigration officer. In a second encounter, Kwei-ping "sits silently and, from time to time, looks at Shore who realizes, after a few minutes, that he is not going to get any response to his question" (1 17).

In her one woman show, Chinese Take Away, Anna Yen tells us that creating the performance piece with her team raised a question of how much Cantonese to use on stage and how much of it to translate for those who did not know the language. In the end, a variety of devices were used, including verbal translations by other characters. But not all the Cantonese was translated because the physical dynamics "were self- explanatory" (Yen 2000: 37).

What resonated with my own situation was the comment that Yen makes about her own Cantonese. She was a Cantonese speaker at home until she was about four when she began to learn English and doesn't know how to write Chinese. The implication is that her ability in Cantonese is at a fairly basic level and my reading of the Cantonese she uses in Chinese Take Away would support such a conclusion (Yen 2000). Her romanisation of Cantonese is a hybrid that she has devised herself using a mix of Cantonese books for language learning, travellers' phrasebooks, and some spellings of her own invention (Yen 2000: 33). Unlike Mandarin, the national language, which has an agreed romanisation, Cantonese is not standardised in that way. Moreover, because it has as many as nine different tones, it's a dialect that is far easier to take on when very young, preferably to be born into; learning it as a language later in life is far more difficult than learning Mandarin.

Castro makes an observation similar to Yen's when he confesses: "I cannot read Chinese, though I spent the first ten years of my life speaking mainly Cantonese. I still speak it, but at a 10-year-old's level" (Ouyang 2001: 76). What both Castro and Yen are saying is that because they have not had an education steeped in Chinese there are many things, such as abstract concepts, that are beyond their reach in Cantonese.

My own experience, and that of many Chinese who have grown up in the West, is very similar. This generates a different kind of silence: the problem of communicating fully with my grandparents' or my parents' generations when Cantonese or some other Chinese dialect is the only means of connecting orally. To explain to my mother all the arguments that I have laid out in this exegesis would be well beyond my abilities in Cantonese. CONCLUSION

Drawing together what I have tied to do in this exegesis I realise that I have been grappling with an enormously complex subject and trying to put it to the service of the fiction that I have written, as a way of casting light on what the stories are about. The subject is the one that I noted on the opening page: what does it mean to be Chinese if you are no longer living in China? Its relevance to my fiction lies in the fact that my narratives of Chinese family life, set principally in Australia, represent my mapping out of certain Chinese behaviours and qualities intermixed with Western influences.

But stories, I realise, now that the writing has been completed, have a life of their own and they do not follow the path that one has intended for them. Instead, as the writing unfolds, the unexpected happens: characters intervene at unanticipated moments; incidents turn and twist in surprising ways. Since I have already spoken, at length, about the stories, I do not propose to go into detail about this except to mention a brief example. In "The Name is Chan, Charles Chan," the narrator is describing his father's qualities and is in the middle of a sentence when his father appears, peering over his shoulder to ask what he is doing. The father's intervention takes the narrative in a completely new direction. In the story there is mention of a book about Earl Derr Biggers called Biggers is Better by Hester E. Lyon. Doing a final edit on the text I came to E. Lyon and saw that it is an unconscious play on "he lying." Both book and author are invented.

The conclusion I would take from the stories, regarded as a whole, is that they defy easy categorisation, which is what I have argued in the exegesis against the attempts to slot Chineseness into certain essentialist frames. Each family has its own diversity and idiosyncrasies, including mine. This does not mean that theorising and generalising about the Chinese and Chineseness are not relevant, only that they need to pay more attention to the texture of the diverse lives that have been lived in Australia. Fiction is one way to explore aspects of that diversity. It is what I have tried to do in my short story cycle. But interconnected with the short stories is my experience of life in the extended family. In the exegesis I believed it was important to give a sense of what I thought the family was like and how its members lived their lives. This makes no claims to being a fully-realised portrayal of the family; they are merely my impressions, my set of reference notes retrieved from my memory bank. Nonetheless, it is from the fragments of that past, however imperfectly and erratically recalled, that I have been able to locate the mainsprings of the stories that I have completed. REFERENCES

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Young, R. J. C. (1996) Torn Halves: Political conflict in literary and cultural theory, Manchester: Manchester University Press, chapter 5. I am about to divulge a truth. No bullshit. No gloss. No embellishment. In 1963, my father, returning to Hong Kong after an absence of 17 years, bought himself a Leica camera. It was expensive, perhaps the single most expensive thing he had ever bought, apart from several cars he had owned. Why am I telling you this? Because, after he died, the camera, which I assumed had been in his possession all those years, disappeared. Mysteriously. Or, to be more exact, it was not found among his possessions.

No one, at first, had noticed. We were busy sorting through his things: the 3 1 suits he owned, 167 neckties, 65 shirts, 24 pairs of shoes, 37 pullovers, 25 years of subscriptions to Readers' Digest Condensed Book. You get my drift. He owned everything in multiples and that included 15 different cameras. There were several Minoltas, Canons, a Hasselblad, a pre-war Kodak, a Rolleiflex, and the Leica. Except that we no longer had the Leica.

What we did have, in stacks of unsorted envelopes, were all the black-and-white photos he had taken with the Leica. There were high school and university graduations, weddings, dinners in restaurants, family gatherings in different homes - ours included - picnics, and even shots of all the cars he'd ever owned or driven, including the Chevy ute that he and his brothers used in 1947-8 to deliver groceries and pick up supplies fi-om the Haymarket, the same ute in which his cousin Gus accidentally hit a young boy one evening, disabling the child for life.

1 didn't know much about that accident when I was growing up. No one ever mentioned it when we kids were around or maybe they did and we were too young to pay any attention. But the cousin who caused the accident was sent to a home for delinquent boys. He wasn't at all a delinquent. Far from it: just a nice, good-humoured kid who loved to play games and goof off but he never did anything terrible, never stole, got involved in any gang or wiped himself out with booze. The accident was merely that, an accident. There were extenuating circumstances, as the lawyers might say. The mishap occurred on a grey, rainy Sydney night. Gus had just completed a pick-up of fruit for his father and was returning to the store to unload the boxes. The young boy may have slipped while crossing the street. But somehow the legal defense for Gus was far from sharp and failed to pick holes in the prosecution's case. It's because he's Chinese, my grandmother said, we get a hard time in this country because of who we are. Well, they sent him away for three years, I believe, and when he came out he had changed beyond recognition.

His real name was Robert but everybody called him Gus. Why, I don't know but we always knew him as Gus. Before the accident he was a carefree teenager. We thought of him as much older than us although, at the time, he was just a young man in his late teens, perhaps 19. After he came out of the reformatory he had a few moments when he was his old self. At such times, he'd joke and laugh just like he used to do.

Most of the time, however, a dark gloom had settled over him. If he came to our place for dinner he'd eat quietly at the table but barely say a word. When someone asked him what was the matter he'd give a nonchalant reply but you could hear despondency in the tone of his voice. We speculated that something awful must have happened to him in the reformatory but we were never certain if that was the reason for his gloom. He didn't open up to anyone and say what was eating away at him. But we all liked the old Gus and the change was disheartening, especially for his parents. They took it hard.

The year he turned 23 he told us he was going away. Where to? we asked. I'm going to South America, he said. Which part? asked my father, it's a pretty big place. I'm not sure, said Gus, maybe Argentina or Chile. We didn't question him about why he was going or whether he felt he must go or how he had settled on South America. We never had any connection with that continent. None of our relatives lived there. We didn't even know if there were any Chinese living in such a remote place.

Anyway, Gus went. He sent an occasional postcard and always Christmas cards. That went on for about three years. Then we didn't hear from him again. Not ever. Just like that, the cards stopped coming. My great-uncle, Gus's father, sent several letters to the address that had been written on the most recent card. I think it was one Gus had sent at Christmas. But he never replied and, one day, after an interval of two or three months, all the letters to Gus were returned, unopened.

We assumed that some accident had befallen him. My great-uncle was all for flying over to Buenos Aires (that was the city where Gus had last written from) but my father dissuaded him from such a course. What would that achieve? In such a big and hostile city what could you find out? I don't know why my father assumed that Buenos Aires was a hostile place, perhaps he'd read a report about it somewhere. Maybe he made it up to discourage my great-uncle from going.

I've thought about Gus, over the years. Not constantly but every now and then I'll see someone or hear a voice laughing and it will remind me of my cousin. When those thoughts seep into my brain I'll wonder what he must look like now and what kind of a life he's led. Is he still melancholy or has his mood lifted? Did he ever settle down and have a family of his own? What was it like for him, being so far away from his family and friends? So lonely. But then, perhaps he needed to be on his own after his time in the reformatory.

NON-LEICA 1

I bent the truth. Just a little. Well, more than a little. So let me make a clean start. Tell it as it really was. No more lies. In 1963, my father returned to Hong Kong after an absence of 17 years. He had left there in the early part of 1946, perhaps in February or March, and sailed home to Australia. In Hong Kong, he looked at many different cameras. So deep-seated was his passion for photography that he wanted to get a camera better than the one he owned. He had a pre-war Kodak he had bought in Shanghai around 1943 from an American pilot who flew B-29s out of Guam. The American was in Shanghai on leave. Although I'm no expert about photographic equipment I guess the Kodak was not a bad camera. When I looked at the photos that my father had taken with his Kodak I thought that they were pretty good. Evidently my father didn't think so or else he would not have been searching so ardently for a new camera. He looked at Leicas, many of them. He liked their heft in his hands, the solid, weighty assurance of quality that they gave him when he balanced them in his palm. And he loved their precision, the way everything closed snugly and turned so accurately. There was, however, one hitch. Leicas, even in those days, were very expensive. My father had the desire but not the money. A Leica, even the most basic model, was beyond his means. Much as he resisted the thought, he had to accept that if he wanted to buy a camera he'd have to settle for something much cheaper. And what he bought was a Seagull, a camera made in Shanghai that was way below the class of a Leica. It was a decent, competently made piece of equipment, and it got the job done. The photos he took with it came out all right and some were even remarkable but, in my father's mind, there was no comparison with the Leica he had wanted to own.

Now, you're probably wondering whether I made up the other parts of the story. The bits about my cousin Robert and his imprisonment. Well, I fiddled around with it, rendered it more dramatic than it was. First of all, his name wasn't even Robert. It was Thomas. And he wasn't known as Gus. That bit I invented also. In fact, his nickname was Tonto. How did he come to be called Tonto? When he was younger he loved to read the Lone Ranger comics and was so enamoured of the masked adventurer's exploits that he aspired to be a follower of the Lone

Ranger when he grew up (and acquired a horse - I guess that owning a horse was part of the ambition). When someone pointed out to Thomas that the only one who ever followed the Lone Ranger anywhere was Tonto, he responded that he'd like to be Tonto.

And, second of all, Tonto never went to a home for delinquents for running someone over. No it wasn't like that. He was sent to reform school because he shot another kid in the foot - with a rifle. They were arguing and Tonto got really mad and raced home, grabbed the gun, and confronted the kid. Whether he knew the gun was loaded or intended to fire it is uncertain. But it discharged with a frightening explosion and the kid fell to the ground, blood pouring from his badly damaged foot. The incident caused a real stink and, because the kid who was shot came from a well-connected family (his father was some legal bigwig and a member of the main conservative party), Tonto received the full blast of the law. Tonto was only 12 or so at the time. He was sent away for three years and when he was released he'd changed beyond recognition. The carefree, spirited and funloving boy had become a brooding, withdrawn teenager. NON-LEICA 2

I showed what I had written to my brother because he was the one who went with my parents to Hong Kong in 1963. He agreed with me that my father never bought a Leica but the camera he bought was not a Seagull. What happened, he said, was that my father was gypped. Someone (an acquaintance of a friend) he met in one of the camera stores in Nathan Road in Kowloon said that he could get my father a Leica at a substantial discount. What my father ended up buying was a fake. It was an imitation Leica made in Taiwan. At the time, my father had no inkling that he'd been cheated. In fact, he was really pleased that he'd managed to get a Leica so cheaply.

But when he returned to Australia he showed his new possession to a friend who knew a lot about cameras. This friend pointed out that on the underside of the lens a Leica had distinctive codes, written in German, together with the logo of the company. Manufacturers of the fakes didn't notice this detail and omitted it from the copy they made. When he inverted the camera my father discovered there were no markings.

Enraged, he sent a telegram to his fbend in Hong Kong telling him what had happened. The friend pleaded innocence: he said that the person who sold my father the camera was not someone he knew well. He promised to try to track the chap down but didn't hold out much hope that anything could be done. In the end, it was never resolved, and my father was stuck with a worthless camera.

NON-LEICA 3

I happened to be speaking with my mother one day and mentioned the saga of the fake Leica. Immediately, she remarked that there was never such an incident. Now I was completely confused. What do you mean? I asked. The camera your father bought that first time we went back to Hong Kong was a Golden Phoenix, made in China. I know, she added, because I went with him to the China Emporium Store in Happy Valley to buy it. Let me show you. She went into the bedroom and rummaged around in her wardrobe, pulling out piles of sweaters, towels, shirts, and folds of cloth. When that failed to produce the camera she went through all the drawers, searching carefully. Still nothing. She removed every drawer and spilt its contents onto the bed. It's very strange, she said, I only saw it last week. One of the things that was spreadeagled on the bed was a packet of photos in a yellow and black Kodak sleeve. The sleeve, torn and ragged at the edges, was tied with a tan and white shoelace. She picked it up, undid the lace, and pulled out the photos. They were all in black-and-white, a series of pictures of people at a dinner in a restaurant. You could tell by the elaborate table setting, the elegant dishes of lobster, crab, and scallops, and the generous chrysanthemum flower display in the centre, that it was an expensive establishment.

My mother flicked through the pictures quickly then glanced up at me with the look of a successful discoverer. You see, she said, here is the proof. These photos were shot using the new camera, the Golden Phoenix that your father had just purchased. How, I asked, can you be sure that he used that camera? Because, she said convincingly, I was there when he took them. I may even have shot several of them myself, the ones where your father is in the photo.

Who's the guy sitting next to dad, I asked? He appears in several of the photos. Oh, don't you remember him from when you were little? That's Gus. Gus, I said incredulously. But I thought his name was Tonto. Maybe some people call him that, said my mother, but I always knew him as Gus. Wasn't he the one who went to a reformatory when he was a young man? Who told you that? Gus never went to any such place. He moved to Hong Kong with your father's uncle and aunt and settled down there.

These are family stories and I have assigned myself the task of recording things as they have been recounted to me but the task is elusive and nothing has a solid core, a central, hard patina that I can grasp and feel and say, with a degree of satisfaction, that is how it was or must have been.

When I speak with my mother about the past I notice that the story she tells me on day one is different from the story she tells me on day two or three, even though the incidents she recounts are very similar. Ma, I say, are you telling me the same story you told me yesterday? Of course, she says, it's exactly the same. But the story today is different from the one you told me the day before. That, she says triumphantly, is because each day brings new and different things. No two days are the same. Haven't you noticed?

WHERE THE LEICA IS

My father had a friend called Tomas who was a professional photographer. He was born in Budapest and came to Australia in 1956 at the height of the Hungarian uprising, following the Russian invasion of his country. Tomas arrived in Melbourne destitute. But he didn't mind. Things could have been far worse. He might have been trapped in Hungary, locked up in a cell, along with other students who had protested against the Russian attack. Or even worse. Instead, he had come to a country where he could work for a living and survive. And where there were no Soviet invaders. He was able of mind and body and prepared to do anything to get by. He had turned 19 just before he anived.

He found work in the Kodak factory where camera components were made and assembled. It was a boring, menial job but that did not upset him. He was responsible for cleaning up the fragments of metal and plastic at the end of each production cycle.

After eight months he was offered a position on the assembly line. He accepted without hesitation. He liked the idea of constructing, putting something into a whole from the fragments of metal and plastic. And, besides, the pay was a bit better.

Working at this new job aroused his curiosity about the way the tiny machine could capture images. He began to think about the principles that lay behind the production of a photograph. At the same time, he bought himself a Kodak camera and began to take photographs. The camera was inexpensive and, as an employee, he was entitled to a 12.5 % discount. He went to the local library and borrowed several books on photography. At home, in the laundry of the weatherboard cottage he was renting in Brunswick, he set up a rudimentary darkroom and began to develop black-and-white photographs from his negatives. One day, while looking at the photos of people and scenery he had developed and which he had assembled on one wall in his combined diningtliving room, he decided to take a photo of his photos. After he did this once he developed the photo and shot it again. He repeated this process until he had arrived at the tenth photo of the original photo. He looked closely at this and found that the images in the original photos no longer looked like the people or scenes he had initially captured. They were not blurred but had become abstract shapes not identifiable as anything in particular. Over several weeks, he experimented with enlargements of the photo of photos. He discovered that in the enlargements the images were still sharp but remained abstract. What, he thought, had happened to the original images of people and scenery?

Puzzled, Tomas consulted several professional photographers but they were unable to cast light on his problem. He searched in books but none ever described a photographic process akin to what he had been doing. One day he rang the University of Melbourne and was put through to a lecturer in astronomy who explained to him that what Tomas had been doing was an experiment in the principle of inversion. Tomas was far from enlightened until the lecturer told him that it was the same principle that operated when you inverted a pair of binoculars. If you imagined the shape of images through the inverted lenses of extremely powerful binoculars you would have something similar to the photo of photos that he had taken.

Intrigued by these images that came from rephotographing the original photo Tomas began to develop a series which included different stages of the rephotography of the same images. He took well-known landmarks like St Kilda Beach, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Gap at Watson's Bay and, through rephotographing successively, captured images that moved from a realistic representation to a complete abstraction. He showed these to a friend who suggested that there was an experimental art gallery in South Yarra that might be interested in exhibiting his work.

Tomas approached the gallery and found, surprisingly, that it was prepared to grant him an exhibition. But, in order to have a full-fledged exhibition, the gallery owner suggested that he might want to have a larger number of works displayed. Tomas was forced to work hard and quickly to meet the schedule set by the gallery. He was in a camera shop buying supplies, including film and paper, when he met my father who had been transferred to Melbourne for a few months and was having several rolls of film developed. Tomas was complaining aloud about the pressure he was under to meet the deadline for the exhibition. They got into conversation and my father, intrigued by the process Tomas was engaged in, volunteered to help him.

The friendship began at that point. I'm uncertain whether there were other exhibitions which my father assisted in but he and Tomas became close friends. After Tomas relocated to Sydney they went on shoots together and, when my older brother got married, Tomas was the official photographer at the wedding. When my father went to Hong Kong in 1963 it was Tomas who advised him which make of camera to consider and even suggested that he think about buying a Leica if he could afford to do so.

The year my father went to hospital for his heart operation he spent a long time recovering. He was bedridden for many weeks. Tomas was a frequent visitor. They chatted, as always, about everything, including recent assignments Tomas was working on. By now he was a freelance photographer in heavy demand. He had been asked to do a major assignment on scenes of Sydney for the Australian Bicentennial Celebrations.

As my father got better, Tomas took him to different locations around Sydney. What Tomas wanted to do was to capture images of the city that made it radically different from the images that most people held of the city. It was a tricky problem, not in aesthetics, but philosophy. After all, what were people's images of Sydney? Was it the iconic forms? Sydney Harbour, the Opera House, Bondi Beach, the Cross, Paddington Terraces? Was it some element of the icons? The shape of one wall of a pylon, the sweeping arc of one sail, the shadows on the door of the beach pavilion? He chewed these and related questions over and over in his mind. One day he thought he had the answer, the next it had eluded him.

On a drive in his smart sports car out to the Gap, he spoke to my father about his assignment. You worry too much, Tomas, said my father, you wrestle with conundrums that are not there. Actually, I don't think my father knew the word conundrum, even though he did crossword puzzles with the zeal of a devout Protestant. He probably said, you worry way too much, Tomas. But conundrum is a word I like and I prefer it where it is in that sentence.

You worry way too much, Tomas, he said, ask yourself, what pictures do you want to take? What would please you, as the guy pointing the camera? Tomas looked across at him as if a new discovery had been made. Chas, he said, that's it. I never thought of it that way but that's it. He was elated. Now he knew what he must do.

Chas, may I ask a big favour of you? Can I borrow your old Leica for this assignment? Of course, hang onto it for as long as you need. They turned around, never reached the Gap, drove, instead to my father's place in Randwick and there he handed the camera over to Tomas.

Two years went by, then three, and finally four. My father wondered about the loan of his camera. Hang onto it for as long as you need, that was what he had said. But now, four years afterwards, my father was wrestling with his own philosophical conundrum. How long is a loan for when you pass something over to a friend with the sentence my father had expressed in the car, the sports car belonging to Tomas? Is it six months, is it a year? Or is it left open-ended by the very nature of the sentiments in the sentence. What if Tomas's response to the sentence was that he would need the Leica for a lifetime, for all the time that he continued to do professional photography?

In the fifth year of the loan, my father's memory of that long ago transaction began to disassemble, like fiagrnents of an ageing bridge that start to fall away. Had he really said hang onto it for as long as you need? Maybe what he had said was hang onto it until you complete your Bicentennial project. Or maybe he had not said anything but Tomas had assumed it was an open-ended loan. And had he really given him the Leica? He thought he had and he had been sure that when he burrowed through his camera collection it was the Leica that he had pulled out. But he had, perhaps, wrapped it in a cloth when he took it out and Tomas had not unravelled it to check that it was the Leica. Maybe he had given him a different camera but Tomas had been too polite, subsequently, to point out the error. If so, where was the Leica now? Let me tell you that the preceding accounts of my family and the missing Leica are merely guesses at the truth of what may have happened. My father always talked about the camera he owned, always displayed the photos he had taken with it. He'd show one family portrait after another, pointing out how sharp the images were, how well the blacks and whites contrasted, how professional the final effect was. That, he would say effusively, is German technology. Perhaps it was, or perhaps my father had convinced himself that he was shooting with a superior German camera when he was merely holding a Seagull or Golden Phoenix in his hand. All that I can truthfully say is that he always told us he owned a Leica. The one that he may have given to his friend Tomas. (DIS)TEMPER

My father Charles was a wordspinner of a kind that has mostly disappeared, a species that has nearly become extinct. He didn't just exaggerate the story of his own life, he exaggerated everyone's stories, appropriating other people's encounters like a tornado sucking everything into its fierce orbit, spinning everything at speeds and intensities that distorted and forged new shapes.

We were in New York at the top of the World Trade Center, years before it disappeared, and we could see for miles to the horizon. Below boats, cars, buses and trains were moving at the pace of earthworms; people and vehicles, compressed into tight, small stick shapes, advanced by fractions of an inch, that's how high up we were. Looking down at a panorama in slow motion.

Pretty impressive, isn 't it, Dad?

Nah, it S nothing. We had tall buildings like this in Shanghai in the twenties.

Really? Did they have skyscraper building techniques then?

They had everything in Shanghai in those days. It was the most advanced city in the world.

But later, when I saw a book of old photos of Shanghai and I showed him the buildings on the Bund, the heavy, squat megalith structures, I asked about the truly tall skyscrapers.

Mere were they?

He flipped through the book, glancing quickly at the streetscapes, the scenes of crowded sidewalks, Chinese going about their business, on their way to work or the markets or department stores, and the flurry of boats on the river. Here's the Customs House where I worked. See the clock on the tower. That's a famous landmark. That was an impressive place.

Where were the tall buildings?

They're not in this book. Maybe it's too old. Maybe it's out of date. Or the people who put it together did a sloppy job. But I remember the tall towers in the downtown area, close to the river. They were very big buildings, bigger than the ones in America.

It's useless to argue. I know this from previous conversations we've had. Some days I think it is the continuation of the same conversation. The one where he accelerates into hyperbole, his words weaving and crosshatching a mythic tapestry. How much of it is true? Even he has forgotten.

There was one high-rise on Nathan Road, next to the Sincere Department store, that was huge. I knew the chap responsible for the project. Met him coming through Customs. He used to travel overseas to Europe and America once or twice a year. A very rich chap. A multimillionaire. One of the richest Chinese in Shanghai. He lived in a mansion in the French quarter of the city and had a house full of servants. There was not one tennis court in the gardens but two and the grass he had on the courts, that came from the same company that laid the courts at Wimbledon. He became a close friend of mine. Eveiy Chinese New Year he held a banquet at the Park Hotel, took over the ballroom on the top and had a big band and dancing. I had to wear a dinner suit with one of those fancy shirts and black bow ties.

When we were smaller, less than ten years old, we didn't doubt the truth of his words. At least I didn't. He never told us the stories directly, never addressed them to us. We were merely part of the larger gathering, kids on the fringe, listening in to the adults if we wanted to. And sometimes we did. As I grew older I noticed that I would switch off when he began a story that I knew I had heard before. Take the one about the Chinese multimillionaire from Shanghai. If I reach into the vault of my memory I swear I could come up with a dozen or so of his variations of that story. He is seated around the table after dinner. His sisters and brothers and their spouses are there. Kids are there. A family get-together. He is speaking. Listen.

He was reputed to have three wives and two mistresses, all living together in the same mansion. I only ever met two of the wives. One had been a famous nightclub singer in the 1920s. The other was an actress in the movies. Very glamorous. His house was in the most exclusive British quarter of the city. He had a garage full of cars: American Cadillac, Packard, an Armstrong Sidderley, a Bentley and some Italian sporty job like a Bugati or something. The parties he used to have in that place. Everyone was there. The bigwig politicians, actors and singers, big jnanciers, shipping magnates, scholars, generals. There was a swimming pool in punt ofthe tennis courts. He had horses in stables at the rear of the gardens. Thoroughbreds from the south island of New Zealand.

He had three tennis courts on the grounds. One was clay. Imported clay from Paris. Same stufl they used to lay the courts at the French championships. The grass courts were from an Australian seed same as they used in Kooyong.

There was a regular family group that met for tennis every Sunday afternoon at Moore Park, directly opposite the school my sisters went to: Sydney Girls' High. The courts were a soft, mossy green, comfortable to walk on, slightly springy, and cooling on bare feet. They aren't there any longer. They were ploughed under to make way for some council development. I'm not sure exactly what. It's years since I've been past the site. But the group, which had been getting together since about 1945, was still active when we arrived in Sydney in the summer of '47.

My mother, my sister and I. There's even a photo of my sister and me, taken by a journalist for the Sun newspaper, dated 27 November. We are standing on the deck of the Nellore, the cargo ship that carried us across the Indian Ocean from Hong Kong. The ship has only docked in that morning. The day is bright, the sky a radiant, steel blue. It is our first day in Australia. I am gripping the deck rail with my left hand while the other is raised in imitation of a wave. If you look closely you can see that my raised palm is pitch black. Just before coming onto the deck an official inked both hands and captured their imprint on a sheet of paper. Immigration probably still has those prints somewhere in its archived files. My sister is standing next to me. She has an impish grin; amused by something she has seen or pleased to have finally landed.

And he is there. My father. He has come to meet us. I don't recognise him but, coached and prompted by my mother, I call to him in my childfilled, eager Cantonese: Baba, nei ho mar?

He picks me up and gives me a bear hug. He is formally dressed. A woollen, dark brown doublebreasted suit with a mid-blue pinstripe, white shirt, and a red tie that has a black crisscross motif. He has a white handkerchief in his breast pocket. It isn't neatly folded but bunched like a partially deflated balloon. I remember fixing on that detail, wondering why he is using a scrunched-up hanky and not a newly pressed one. I can smell the afterwaft of tobacco, pungent, slightly stale, mixed with the aqua fumes of whatever he has applied to his clean shaven cheeks, and the heavily floral scented hair cream that he uses.

He is a complete stranger to me. I haven't seen him for nearly two years. I don't recall a single feature of his face that might trigger recognition. Had he passed me in the street without a greeting I would not have known who he was. Now he puts me down and, grounded, my stomach still queasy from the long voyage, my legs weak from having lain too many days in my bunk, having succumbed to seasickness almost from the moment of departure, I step haltingly down the gangplank onto the Circular Quay wharf.

He has come with a Chinese woman we have never seen before. She is shorter than him, wears a plain, green frock with a pattern of white roses, her head barely above his shoulder yet he is not a particularly tall person. She is his mother, our grandmother. Eventually I shall learn that she is only in her mid-50s. She doesn't, in fact, look very much older than my mother. Now, gripping my sister's hand, she talks in rapidfire Cantonese to my mother as we all make our way to a black Chevrolet coupe parked in front of the wharf. Inside the car are two of my cousins, children of my father's eldest sister. His eldest sister and my mother share the same English name, Shirley. My Aunt Shirley is married to Stanley Kwong, a talented soccer player who competed in the first grade competition in Sydney for many years. I think he played for Gladesville. Of course, in those days, soccer was not the important sport it has since become in this country. was the big winter game in Sydney. But Stanley arrived from China with a reputation large enough to capture the attention of the press. The sporting pages of the Sun and Daily Mirror devoted several column inches to his career in China where he had represented nationally and had played in the Chinese team that competed in the Berlin Olympics. That would have been in 1936. My father knew two or three things about Stanley's sporting life.

They are playing the favourites, Germany, and the score is tied, 2-2, with Jive minutes to go. The Chinese side are pressing, attacking the German goal. Stanley, who is on the leflflank, breaks through, ten metres from the goal. He has three orfour Germans defending, right in front of the goal. He manages to dribble the ball between them andfire a shot that curves to the goalie's left. The goalie has guessed wrong and dives to his right.

But, you wouldn't believe this, the ball strikes the goalie's boot and bounces behind the line. The Chinese are awarded a corner. It's a tense moment. There's only a minute left. The captain hands the ball to Stanley. He was famous in China for being able to kick a corner that curved in a semi-circle and went into the goal. He'd done it dozens of times in big matches but this was the Olympics. An expectant hush has fallen over the stadium. Stanley, this slightly built Chinese guy. walks to the corner post and places the ball carefully in the designated spot. He steps back and looks at the position of the goalie, the German defenders, all massed in front of the goal. He waits for the referee to blow the whistle and signal him to kick. And then, over the loudspeakers, comes a raspy voice saying in accented English: "Attention! Attention! Everyone will please rise. The Chancellor has arrived. "

It was, I thought, one of his better stories, suitably embellished. The first time he told it, it was different. No, let me be exact. The first time I heard the story, it was different, shorter. China played Italy not Germany. Stanley Kwong, my uncle, scored the equaliser that tied the score at 2-2. There was no mention of the arrival of Hitler. There was no critical corner kick. But that was before my father added spit and polish. Now the sporting biography of Stanley was like a well-buffed cedar cabinet.

The concentration of the players is broken. The tension of the moment is lost. Everyone on the field looks towards a centralpodium that had been specially designated for the Chancellor and his guests. Hitler marches up the steps to his seat in the stands escorted by the hated SS. He stands and faces the crowd, perhaps 60,000 spectators, and gives the well-known salute. A band plays Deutschland ~berAlles, cheers go up and the game resumes. Stanley has been waiting anxiously at the comer post, shuffling the ball from one boot to the other. He is trying his best to refocus, stay calm, set himsevfor the kick that will, if it succeeds, carry China into the quarter- finals. But now, with Hitler in the stands watching, he isn't sure ifhe and his team will survive if he scores the vital goal. ghe kicks the ball in will the SS force march them to some hidden wall and shoot them? The referee surveys the field, looks at the spread of the two sides. The Chinese have everyone up near the goalmouth exceptfor their own goalie. Stanley lines up the kick. He strikes it well, a firm punt with his left foot. The ball spins high in the air, arcing like a boomerang in flight, curves inwards towards the goal. The crowd starts to roar. The Chinese players are smiling, the game is surely theirs.

And then the referee blows his whistle and motions Stanley to take the shot again. There is complete bewilderment. No one knows at that instant why thefirst kick was invalid. The captain of the Chinese side runs over to the referee and waves his arms in protest. He doesn't speak any German or English but the Chinese players can hear him cursing in Cantonese. The referee points to a linesman about 20 metres away racing to pick up several sheets of newspaper that have blown onto the field. Stanley is more upset than anyone. He knows that he has just kicked the perfect goal and he doesn't believe he can do it again.

At this point in the story he would pause. One or other of his listeners would eagerly ask him what happened next. What happened next tended to vary in the telling. Some versions had Stanley repeating his kick and scoring a goal while others had Stanley missing by the narrowest of margins. As you might gather, the true story, the one recorded in the match results, was not the story my father told. He didn't, of course, tell the Stanley story when Stanley was present. He may have appropriated Stanley's story but he knew, deep down, that he didn't really own it.

I never saw Stanley play soccer. Whether he was as skillful as my father has suggested I can't say. I could make an educated guess. Or I could invent his sporting prowess, give you one shining moment after another. Whether you'd believe me would depend on whether you thought I had set down a convincing portrait of Stanley playing soccer. Or I could distract you, tell you something about the life of Stanley. How he was a stern father to the two cousins who are in the back seat of the coupe, the Chevrolet, clambering to the side window, waiting to meet me and my sister.

I approach the door of the black car and halt. Suddenly shy, not keen to press ahead. Nei tai ar keui, gaam par chao. Faaidi seung che lar. My grandmother remarking that I am being bashful, telling me to get into the car. And I do. There are four kids in the back together with my mother. My father and grandmother are in the front. He is the driver. He turns the motor over, engages the gears and drives off. We leave the wharf and drive out of the city, along Oxford Street, Flinders Street and then Anzac Parade. We pass the Moore Park tennis courts on Cleveland Street where the family group gathers every Sunday afternoon to play.

One Sunday, some months after our arrival, my father takes me to the courts. I see how he stands out in his sporting gear. Compared, that is, to everyone else. All his siblings, their spouses, and their friends are wearing crisp white attire. Their socks and sandshoes are matching white. My father is wearing baggy khaki shorts and a blue T-shirt. He has on light grey socks and black basketball shoes. He couldn't be more different fiom the rest of them. No one comments on his gear. Perhaps they had their say a long time ago, well before I arrived. One of the other players is Stanley. Stanley with the stubby, muscular legs of a weightlifter and a curiously slim upper body, the kind of body so slight that he seems to tilt backwards when he walks as if the wind has snared him permanently and is holding him back. I look at Stanley and wonder how he ever managed to survive on a soccer field. I stand on the sidelines and try to absorb what is going on. Stanley and my father are playing doubles against his brothers, Leo and Harry. There is an intensity about the game that belies the calm, leisurely drift of the afternoon. Periodically, Leo directs words at my father. Or rather, he needles him. Tries to stir him up, bait him. My father, his face scowling with ill-temper, tells him to shut up. Tells him to shove it you know where if he won't shut up. When my father misses a shot, Leo is all over him. Send that stroke back to China, it's no good here. Who was the girl who taught you toplay?

And then Stanley hits a soft serve and Leo whacks it, straight at my father, hits him on the side of the head. Sorry, Chas, I was aiming for the sideline. But my father doesn't believe him, believes, instead, that everything has been deliberately conspired to deliver this final affront. He vaults the net and clouts Leo on the shoulder with his racquet. There is a loud, cracking sound, painful to hear, and Leo crumbles to the ground, his face contorted with rage and pain. My father is on top of him about to deliver a backhand to the back of Leo's head when Stanley grabs the offensive weapon and wrestles it out of my father's hand. Everyone on the other courts has stopped playing to gawk at the morbid spectacle.

My father, meanwhile, has turned on Stanley, berating him for serving such a patsy that even a blind baby could have creamed it. Several family members are helping Leo off the court before driving him to a doctor. The injured shoulder, a massive welt, droops lopsidedly. Family tennis is finished for this afternoon.

You might say that Leo and Charles, my father, were a darker, more macabre version of a comedy duo, Charles playing the put-upon straight man to Leo's probing wit. My father's problem was not that he was without humour. But he lacked the capacity to respond instantly to a joke directed at him, lacked the quick riposte that Leo could always summon up like the snap of his finger.

During those years of Sunday social tennis the three brothers worked together in a grocery store in Coogee. It was a mismatch of the worst kind. They bickered about everything, fought each other verbally and even physically. I don't think my father liked the job but it was a family business, owned by my grandmother, and he felt a certain obligation to keep it running. He was always more relaxed when he was away from the shop.

One afternoon my father took me into Surry Hills to visit a fiend who ran a Chinese restaurant in Campbell Street. We caught the tram from Coogee, a slow, rambling ride that took so long I thought we'd never arrive. When we alighted at the junction of Oxford and Wentworth Street we still had some distance to walk before we arrived at the restaurant. About a third of the way along Wentworth Street a small crowd had gathered on the footpath. We couldn't get around them easily so my father stopped, seeking a way through. I was too small to be able to see what was holding everyone's attention until someone pushed against me, an older boy, and I was propelled to the front of the gathering.

There was a chunky Chinese man with an untamed crop of hair juggling teacups, half a dozen of them. Once in a while he'd flick a cup behind his back and pivot round to catch it while the other cups spun through the air, seemingly in danger of falling until the juggler propped, snatched a cup inches from the ground, then resumed his routine. When he finished there was a burst of applause and several spectators tossed coins in his direction. He looked up and saw my father smiling at him, hand extended.

Did the boss give you the sack, Lester? They shook hands warmly.

Chas, where are you going?

Roy asked me to drop by.

He's going through a rough patch at the moment. Not getting on with the missus. And how are you, young man? You must be Chas 's brother. He winked as he said this.

I'm Sam and my dad's brothers are back at the shop. By then I'd been in Australia almost a year and had picked up on my English. Lester and my father strolled toward the restaurant, chatting amicably. I had no idea that Lester worked there until he put on a white cotton jacket and began to set tables. My father sought out Roy and the two of them retreated to the rear of the restaurant where they drank tea and smoked while conversing ardently.

I wandered around the restaurant watching Lester and other waiters setting plates and bowls and chopsticks on the tables. Mostly I was intrigued by the juggling. How marvellous, I thought, to be able to spin cups and other objects in the air like Lester did. We must have stayed for several hours because it was almost dark when we came outside. My father decided to take a cab back to the shop but then discovered that he didn't have enough money on him and borrowed some from Roy.

It was Leo who saw us getting out of the cab. He was sweeping the front pavement of the shop with a wide, flat broom and rushed over, opening the door for us with an extravagant flourish like an attendant at a ritzy hotel.

Spending the company 's profits, eh? Tram not good enough for you? His tone was mocking.

My father got out of the cab not saying a word. I could see, however, that Leo's comment had stirred him up. Inside the shop Harry was tidying boxes of fruit. My father seized one of the boxes and dumped its contents onto the floor. Apples rolled in every direction. He was about to do the same to a box of lemons when Leo rushed over and gripped his arms to restrain him. I thought that a fight would break out at that moment. Instead, my father turned on Leo and began to abuse him savagely. And Leo dished it right back at him. Harry, prudently, stayed mute.

They went at each other all through the drive from the shop to Pagewood. A lot of the argument had to do with purchases and deliveries. Things I didn't fully understand at all. What I couldn't miss was the vehement, strident tone in the voices. As soon as Harry stopped the car my father raced into the house and slammed the door of his bedroom. We could hear him raging, spitting out his anger at all the things that were upsetting him. Eventually, he emerged from the bedroom. Calm had settled on him again, as if he'd had to expunge toxins from his system and his mood was even buoyant.

Sam, he said in a cheerful voice, would you like to go back to China?

The question threw me into a spin. Was he proposing that I go back to China on my own? Or that all the family go back? And why would we do that so soon after travelling all that distance to Australia?

When? I ventured tentatively, when would we go?

Oh, someday. I miss the place, I miss all thefamily and friends back there. Let's go back one day, all of us. We'll return to Shanghai. What a terrific city it is. Great to live there again.

I listened attentively to his words and thought I detected desire more than intention. When was someday? It was a loose kind of date, right? Maybe he wouldn't go through with it. I was still learning about life in Sydney and I wasn't ready to go back. Not yet.

Don't you like it here?

Sydney isn't bad, Sam, but what kind of lfe is it working in that lousy shop? I tell you, thejob I had in Customs in China - that was a real job.

Much of my father's resentment was connected to the fact that the business was always struggling; that despite the hours the three brothers put into it, it never turned a profit. In fact, it didn't generate enough income to pay each of them a moderately decent wage.

I was too young to understand any of the intricacies of profit and loss but I was aware that my mother sometimes discreetly asked where the earnings went and my father would invariably shrug, curse, and turn away in disgust. It wasn't as if the store had nothing on the shelves. It was always, to my small child's eyes, packed with hitand vegetables, piled high with cans of soup, beans, and preserved meats. There were fresh deliveries of bread every morning, the loaves fi-uity with smells of yeast, butter, and flour. Customers were plentiful, especially towards the end of the week when there seemed a particular urgency to stock shelves at home. That was when the boxes of orders would be packed and delivered to the homes of customers. Harry was the one who did most of the driving around. And Harry, it appeared, was a major cause of the desiccated revenues of the shop.

Leo and I return one morning from collecting payments from some customers. He has nosed the pick-up into its usual spot in front of the shop when we hear, then see glass splinter and fragment onto the sidewalk. A broken bottle of tomato sauce forms a crimson mosaic on the grey asphalt. It is immediately joined by another. And then a third. We race from the car. I see Harry cowering in one corner, his blue shirt decorated with red splashes. It is not the first nor last time that Charles attacks Harry. I recall another fight in the shop where Harry had his fists raised ready to box while Charles, in a blind rage, was literally putting the boot into his brother. Right now, Charles is screaming at him.

You thieving prick. Useless bastard. Piss ofl you hear. Get thefuck out of here and don't come back.

Two customers, a middle-aged man and a young woman, stand stiffly with their backs pressed to the counter, aghast at what they have just witnessed. Tension lines their faces. Perhaps they think they will be the next targets of a bottle of Rosella.

Harry. Likeable, easygoing, irresponsible Harry. Punter Harry. Ever the hopeful one. He bought lottery tickets by the score. Every week there was a new cluster of them, pinned erratically to the large pine board that was erected to record customer's orders and was on the wall adjacent to the doorway that led into the back rooms of the shop. You never heard of a major win, I never did, and I'm sure I would have. Yes, sometimes he'd fluke a return of 15 or 20 pounds, but his winnings were always sparse, his strike rate worse than a batter in a low season. Lotteries were only the exposed tip, the cap of ice you could see. He fancied himself as a punter, thought he could pick a decent greyhound or horse by going to the track. Which he did, almost every Saturday afternoon and evening when the shop had closed. He lost heavily, too, collecting debts, month after month.

After a while, even he became concerned at how much he owed assorted acquaintances, friends, and relatives. Bookmakers had long since refused him even a penny of credit. That was when he began to skim off the money, the wad of notes my father gave him at the start of the week to buy supplies from the Hayrnarket. He did it in moderation, at the beginning, until the press of his losing streak compelled him to take more and then even more. What he'd do was buy short, underspend on the tomatoes and potatoes and cabbages and all the fruits. It had to catch up with him eventually. And it did.

Charles must have had his suspicions, must have noticed that the supplies were getting smaller. Maybe he had decided to let it go in the hope that Harry would stop, would come to his senses. How did he catch his brother out? Easy. Harry had returned that morning from the Hayrnarket with such a meagre load of fiuit and vegetables that Charles was immediately curious.

Where's the rest, Harry?

Nothing was up to scratch so I left it.

So how much have you got left?

What?

The money, you drongo.

I've ... It 's still all there. The hesitation, the slight rise (perhaps it is a quaver) in his voice gives him away.

Show me. Why? I'll just hang onto it until the next trip.

Pig's arse you will. Show me.

And, like that, he is sprung. Later, one of the customers, the man who was pressed against the counter, told Leo that Charles had seized Harry by the throat and squeezed the wind out of him, demanding to know what Harry had been doing with the shop money. He had squeezed until the truth came out.

It can't have been long after that that the brothers disbanded and the shop was put on the market. Or perhaps my memory has compressed these events into a tighter sequence than may have been the case. My father ceased talking to Harry, a silence that he would maintain for close on 15 years. It seemed an inordinate time to harbour a resentment.

Leo sought other work. For a while he was in business with a friend whom he'd known from the war. My father's relationship with Leo oscillated going through bumpy phases that would even out until the next hiccup. The incident on the tennis court, however, was severe and created a real awkwardness between them. I don't think things were fully patched up when Leo went away to Darwin. Perhaps they never could be after what had happened that day.

Before he fractured Leo's shoulder with his racquet Charles used to tell how the three brothers, when they were in Darwin, would team up with a few local kids, Aboriginals who lived on the edge of town. They'd go foraging in the bush for wild pigs. Charles claimed that Leo had a special skill. He could sneak up on the pigs, getting so close that he was able to slip a rope around their necks. No one else, said Charles, had this skill. Whenever another member of their gang tried to creep close, the pigs would sense their approach and dash away. Only Leo was adept. How did he do this? It was, said Charles, his particular magic, in the same way that some kids could swim underwater for five minutes at a time.

Five minutes? It seemed such a long time not to have to come up for air. How can anyone do that? How can they hold their breath forfive minutes? It's a gift, said Charles. Not everyone can do it but I saw a kid do it oflthejetty in Darwin once. Five minutes. We had the stopwatch on him. We really thought he'd drowned he was under for so long but, just as the seconds hand slipped round to the five minute mark, he came up, gasping, but well and truly alive.

Five minutes isn't possible. If you've ever fooled around in a basin at home or in the bathtub when it's filled you will know that no one can hold his breath for five minutes. No one. But we were kids and open to the stories Charles told.

What about the pigs that Leo caught? We 'd go back with the black kids and get a massiveflre going and we'd roast the pig. It had the taste of the gum bark and trees that we used for the fire but the meat was delicious. Wonderful it was. Much better than the best Chinese roastedpork you ever ate.

There was an authentic nostalgia for his boyhood in the story. That and an admiration for Leo's bush talents. But, after the tennis incident at Moore Park, I never heard him tell the story with Leo at its centre again. He reshaped it.

When we were kids in Darwin we used to go hunting wildpig with the black kids. One of them taught me how to sneak up on the pigs without them noticing. It was a special talent he had and he passed the secret on to me. I caught quite a few pigs that way. Used to cook them over an open fire.

My mother had a term for stories that embellished the truth. She said that the storyteller garyau gar soey, added oil and water. That was Charles. That was him all over. Did he, I later wondered, realise what he was doing? And, if he realised, did he care? Maybe not. Maybe the satisfaction was in the telling. How tall was the World Trade Center? Not as tall as people think. Not as tall, anyway, as a medium-sized skyscraper in Shanghai. The anger, though, was something else. As if he lived in a place that permanently harboured his fury and, every once in a while, was compelled to release it for everyone to see. There was frustration and tension in that anger as if he was never quite centred, had never found a point of gravity that gave him balance, ease, and poise. I thought, when I grew older and reflected on these things, that it had a lot to do with what he had lost and left behind in the China that he idealised in his many stories: his job in Customs of which he was inordinately proud; the colleagues and friends he'd grown up with in Canton and Shanghai; and my mother's family that had adopted him and taken him in when his own family was separated from him by thousands of miles in Australia.

He didn't say much about it, about being wrenched from his parents and siblings and being forced to come to terms with living in that strange land of which he knew little and about which almost nothing was familiar. Casting back to that time, he'd occasionally drop a scattered remark or two that indicated how severe the jolt had been. I missed the family. It was so lonely, thosefirst few years and having my brothers with me wasn 't a help. Ifanything, it only accentuated the separation. Ifound the language and customs were so strange, even though I thought I knew enough Cantonese.

That was about all. You'd have to fossick to try to dig out the meaning behind those few sentences. Even then, you'd probably find your path blocked. He wasn't much one for personal disclosures.

Gradually, of course, he began to absorb the place he was in; to take on the language; to adapt to its ways. China, or rather Shanghai, became his space, his terrain. Whether he admired it as much as he later claimed I can't truly say but, from the distance of Australia, he polished it into a gem of the first order.

Going back, however, was not really an issue. His finances were not in such good shape and there was the change of regime in 1949. Many things about the Maoist takeover were not to his liking. I didn't know it on that evening when he said: Sam, would you like to go back to China? I didn't know that he had already formulated the answer to his own question; that for him China was not that far away country; it was closer to hand, in all his tales of Shanghai. ALL THE TEA IN CHINA

The very first English rhyme I ever learned, Leo taught me. I was riding with him in the pick-up, cruising down Clovelly Road in the direction of the beach.

Yankee do do went to town

No, no. Not "do do. " Doodle.

But I liked my version better and insisted on it.

Yankee do do went to town Riding on a pony Stuck a feather in his cap And called it macaroni

Leo laughed. It felt good to hear him, to hear that full-throated, animated laugh.

Okay Sam the Spam tell me how many 'ps" there are in an apple?

Two.

How many "cs " in an ocean?

One.

How many "ts " in China?

There's no "t " in China.

Why? Because the Chinese drank it all.

We'd chorus that. He'd told me the joke half a dozen times so that it soon became a miniature routine we did together. He was fun to be around, something that I discovered the first time that I ran into him. Literally, ran into him, that is.

The day we arrived in Circular Quay from Hong Kong my father, Charles, had driven to the wharf to pick us up. We left the city along streets that would only become familiar to me after I had been in Sydney for several years - Macquarie, Elizabeth, Oxford, Flinders - and headed towards the eastern suburbs along Anzac Parade past the cluster of uninspiring brick cottages of Kensington, Kingsford and Pagewood until we were on the cusp Maroubra. We stopped in front of a dark brown apartment block with curved edges. With some effort I clambered up the stairs to the top floor and entered. Enormous it was. Palatial. To me, anyway, after the weeks at sea cramped in the lower bunk of the ship; after living for more than seven months in a miniscule room in Hong Kong with a grubby, smelly, broken down outside toilet, no running water, and a communal kitchen whose stove defied ignition.

The apartment occupied the entire fifth floor. It had four bedrooms, a lounge room and dining room, a kitchen and a bathroom. There was proper furniture, solid, cushioned sofas, three of them; a dining table that could comfortably accommodate eight people; a nestle of coffee tables; a Chinese carved camphor chest. Scrolls with elaborate Chinese writing hung on the walls. A large piano, polished mahogany, gleamed in one corner of the lounge room. Thick blue, gold, and red carpets in intricate patterns, dragons and lions and mythic sea creatures, stretched across the living and dining rooms.

At once I feel like a small animal released from its cage. I find my feet, I no longer suffer any weakness in my body as I had that morning stepping out of our cramped cabin onto the deck of the ship after we had moored. I hare around the endless bounty of that apartment, tearing fi-om room to room. We all do. My two cousins, my sister and I. We hide behind the heavy, brocaded curtains, we clamber around the legs of the dining table. I have not felt so energised in months. Running into a bedroom, not knowing where I am heading, I collide into a pajama'd figure who picks me up by the waist and proceeds to swirl me around the room. He is grinning like two Cheshire cats. He plants my feet back on the ground before I get properly dizzy from the swirling. Who is this stranger who looks so much like the father who has come to meet us on the wharf? They must be related.

Nei jeedau ngoh hai bingor ar? [Do you know who I am?]

Nei hai ...Nei hai. Ngoh ng jeedau. [You are.. .you are. I don't know.]

Faaide num har nei. Nei war ngoh hai bingor ar? [Think quickly. Who do you say I am?]

Nei hai ar ye ye. Nei hai ngohge ye ye. [You are grandpa. You are my grandpa.]

Nei taihar ne. Ngoh mod0 baak taufaad. Ngoh dim nunggau jo ar ye ar? [You look. I don't have any white hair. How can I be a grandfather?]

We continue this pantomime for several refrains until he discloses who he is. Leo. Yih Baak. Second brother, second uncle. Then he escorts me into the kitchen and takes a large glass jar from one of the cabinets. There are round balls of various colours, green, red, black, pink, purple, orange. He invites me to take a few. The choice is overwhelming. I hesitate, undecided. He instructs me to close my eyes and hold out my hand.

War, neige sau gaam laaisai gar. [Your hands are so dirty.]

In the bathroom Leo hands me a cake of grey soap and I scrub away the ink the immigration official had imprinted on my palms that morning. He takes a facecloth from a rack above my head and wets it before giving my features a solid wipe. Then we repair to the kitchen where he completes the ritual. I close my eyes. Nei goohar mut ye ngaansick ar? [Guess what colour?]

Haak sick, luk sick, laam sick, hoong sick. [Black, green, blue, red.]

Nei goochor mo duk bei nei sick ar. [If you guess wrong you won't have any to eat.]

A different guessing game. A different occasion. My birthday. My first in Australia. In fact, the first birthday that I can ever recall celebrating. We have been in Sydney for almost half a year. My mother is reluctant to have a party but my grandmother insists. The large apartment fills with adults and kids, fills with an expanding volume of voices, laughing and, shouting. In one corner of the lounge room my cousins and I play pin the tail on the donkey with great exuberance. The game switches, becomes blind man's buff. I grope around the room, blindfolded. Grope and stumble against a body, clutch at a waist, a skirted shape, hips, bottom. Whack! Whack! Two stinging clips lodge on the left side of my face. I yank the blindfold away, eyes glistening from the hurt. She glares at me. One of my aunts, Aunt Louise.

That's a nasty thing to do. Don 't you ever do that again. She speaks in English and I don't comprehend her words but I know, from her tone, that something stern has been said. The blows had already been delivered as a signal.

Eyes are trained on me. My father has suddenly materialised from I don't know where, demanding to know what has happened.

He grabbed me on the backside. She continues to give me a baleful glare. I'm still puzzled, not sure what has gone wrong, why I'm in the searing spotlight. My father has my arm in a vice, he's really mad at me, hurls abuse.

Leo intervenes. Calm down. You 're all getting excited over nothing. I was watching. He had his eyes covered,just playing around. Whatever he did was accidental. And later, after things have calmed down, Leo draws me aside and speaks to me quietly, tells me that sometimes adults become overly sensitive about things; that I have to try to watch for that even though I can't always control what I do, especially when I'm fooling around.

Yeehau ng hau moh neige googe huen. [In future don't touch your aunt's bottom]. The last piece of advice is offered with a chuckle, his assurance to me that it was really a trifling incident but that I had committed a breach of some sort.

I don't have many other sharp memories of the rest of that birthday celebration. The kids, all of us, continued to dart around the big apartment; there were innumerable games of hide and seek; and there were mounds of sweets that we attacked through the night. At around 10:30 pm or thereabouts some inner clock must have sounded in my cousins because they suddenly stopped racing about and sought rest on the floor, behind a large sofa. In seconds they had collapsed into a heavy slumber.

As for Louise, she seemed to give me a bit of extra space whenever she saw me hurtling in her direction as if I were the child with a perennial blindfold who might errantly attach his hand to her posterior. Well after the incident at the birthday party she continued to do this, to give me a wide berth, almost as if it had become a reflex response to my presence.

At that age, before I was five, I had no concrete sense of the beauty or ugliness of people or things. If you had asked me then to say whether or not Louise was striking, plain or just normal I don't think I would have known how to reply. One day, we had arrived in Sydney and all my father's relatives were there, living in the large apartment. I saw them on a daily basis, in the morning and evening and at the weekend. They were my father's sisters and brothers and we were all together under the same roof. How they looked was not something I questioned.

Several years later I heard my grandmother saying that Louise (she always referred to her children by their Western names even though she only ever conversed with them in Cantonese)

"haijee leng, jee choongming " [she was the most pretty, the most clever one]. She was, now that I think about it, arresting, graceful, with a life-is-for-living laugh, but I doubt that I would have referred to her as pretty. What you noticed about her was her eyes. Their quickstep movement and sparkle when something aroused her interest; the way they focussed intently when you had her attention. Or became stabpoints of danger when she was angry.

We moved house because of her. Because of Louise. The owner of the apartment my grandmother had been renting was a family friend, Wing Hok Lum. He was from Darwin originally, the same as my grandparents, and had bought the Kingsford apartment with the intention of living in it himself should he ever move to Sydney. In the meantime, he was actively engaged in running two restaurants and a Chinese grocery shop in Melbourne. He had a tribe of boys. They were all born in Australia and all similarly named: Jack, Jerry, Terry, Gerard, Jared. And I always got them confused. It wasn't their familial resemblance to one another, more the merger of their personalities, almost interchangeable, the way that married couples become who have been together for a long time.

Easy-going they were, good-natured. A laugh was never far from the surface of their features. But they were not clever, not brain smart. As Leo once cracked: ifyou put all their heads together you 'd get less than the sum of one. Another time he said: thickness now comes in four sizes. That was after a quartet of the brothers went to the Bank of in Market Street to cash a cheque. They asked the teller to give them "Aussiepounds, the same as in ~tlelbourne." He thought that they were ribbing him until he looked up at the earnest faces waiting for him to parcel out the notes.

Gerard became attached to Louise. Much as she resisted and wanted to shake him off, she didn't quite know how. There was the family friendship that went back for decades. There were acts of benevolence: Mr Wing had given jobs to my grandfather and to one of my aunts during the Depression. And there was the apartment my grandmother had rented from him at a rate well below what the market would have charged. With all that baggage Louise felt weighed down, unable to escape. Under some obligation. Leo urged resistance. He was always good for a fight. By then, Louise had gone to dinner twice with Gerard, had sat through four war movies (all starring John Wayne and/or Audie Murphy) and eaten at six different fish-and-chip shops in Bondi, Coogee, Bronte and Manly. She was starting to look haunted, spooked by the experience.

His idea of a conversation is to tell me all these racy jokes or recite og-colour limericks. Or else he goes on and on about the horses he fancies at Randwick or Rosehill. When he goes to the newsagent it's to buy The Lone Ranger, Popeye or Mandrake the Magician.

Gerard was never the brightest kid around, said Leo.

He's dimmer than a five watt bulb.

Gerard always turned up in neat attire. Usually pressed grey slacks, a dark jacket and a shirt and tie. He was courteous and, without fail, attended on Louise with flowers and candy, but they were a couple not wired to be on the same wavelength. Once, at her insistence, they went to a dance at Randwick but she returned earlier than expected with a hangdog Gerard straggling a few steps behind.

Why didn 't you say anything before we set ofp We wasted the evening going and coming back.

I'm sorry, Louise, but dancing's never been my cup of tea. She didn't say anything but turned on him, her eyes brimming venom, and I swear he retreated two steps.

And yet he was ever persistent, continued his version of wooing and, after a suitable interval, he proposed. Louise didn't know how to handle it. She had other ambitions. She had enrolled in an art course at Darlinghurst. Having taken piano lessons from the time she started to go to school she was now quite proficient and harboured hopes of improving her skills. Marriage was not on the horizon of her agenda, not, at least with the well-meaning but doltish Gerard.

Still, she must have felt the burdens of family and obligation. She tied to dissuade Gerard as firmly as possible without being altogether rude. Gerard's suggestion of an engagement was deflected and deflected. Even he, through his opaque lenses, could see that he was not going to get a satisfactory response. Whereupon he summoned some muscle. He cajoled his eldest brother, Jack, to speak with Leo.

She'll be taken good care of; Leo. You speak to her, tell her that. Ourfamily has a fav bob to its name. And young Gerard, he's green around the edges, but he'll grow up. Yes, into a giant spouting weed. We don't need your grabby old man's money, we're not that desperate. I could imagine Leo reciting these diatribes to himself.

Listen Jack, said Leo, striving to be calm and patient, Gerard and Louise aren 't kids. They 're old enough to work out what they want. With marriage, both parties have to agree. It's not a one-way street. This is not Canton and the family village any more.

Leo, your folks work hard all their lives. What they got to show for it? Tell me. What they got to show? Gerard gets hitched, he and Louise will move into a new house. Dad'll make sure of that. Why don't you pull out all the notes now and show us what you're willing to pay you useless lug.

I'm sure he will. Sure he will, said Leo, trying to conceal the sarcasm in his tone, not that Jack would have picked up on the undercurrent.

Their conversation didn't go anywhere and Jack, limited in verbal skills, did not know how to make a more subtle and convincing pitch. Enter Mr Wing. He commanded one of his other sons (was it Jared or Terry?) to drive him from Melbourne to Sydney. In his sleek, imported American limousine, dark, polished duco, plush leather upholstery, whitewall tyres. He called on my grandfather.

The limo was parked in front of the Dixon Street restaurant where my grandfather worked, with diligent monotony, as a kitchen hand, wrapping springrolls and wontons, slicing beef, chicken, pork, and paperthin rounds of carrots, and stripping peas. Mr Wing, wearing a black suit whose expensive cloth and finespun tailoring was completely wasted on his rotund, squat build, marched into the restaurant. He assessed the deep blue and cream painted walls, stained yellow- brown from the fumes of a thousand deep-fi-ied orders, the spare timber tables and chairs, and the well-worn floral mauve carpet that had routinely and regularly endured soft drink, soup and stir- fry spills. With a superior, haughty sneer he turned to the head waiter and summonsed my grandfather to come out from the kitchen.

Nei gausoe Tang Saang kei yiu jickkak cheutlai. [Tell Mr Tang he has to come out immediately.]

Wearing an apron that had long since surrendered its whiteness, my grandfather edged cautiously out from the kitchen. He feared that he was being bugged by an immigration official. When he recognised his old friend from Darwin days his face relaxed and he smiled warmly.

Ah! Hok Lum. Ho loe mo gin. Nei ho mar? Chor daai yum bui char lar. [Hok Lum. We haven't met for a long time. How are you? Sit down, have a cup of tea.]

Mr Wing was not in the mood for Chinese politesse. He nodded his head as my grandfather approached, shook hands with a perfunctory clasp, sat down without any further trace of ceremony. He checked the time on his gold Rolex and stared hard at my grandfather who was now seated opposite him. For twenty minutes or so, he harangued my grandfather. Reminded him of past favours, past generosity. For those twenty minutes he catalogued all the things my grandfather's family owed to him and his family.

The debt was impressively large. My son, Gerard, explained Mr Wing, wants to marry your daughter, Louise. She seems undecided, why don't you speak with her. Tell her to say yes. She will be well taken care of.

Was it something in the cold calculation, the way his friend had treated their relationship like an accountant's balance sheet? Or the abrupt manner, with no trace of preliminary, of his demand that my grandfather accede to his request? So brisk, so unlike a Chinese conversation between friends. Perhaps it was all these things and more. The realisation, in that restaurant encounter, that Mr Wing was not someone he cared to have any more to do with again. My grandfather restrained his anger, his impulse to lash out, and merely stood up, reached out to shake Mr Wing's hand. He smiled and spoke quietly. Then withdrew and strode back into the kitchen, leaving Mr Wing with his parting words.

Hok Lum nei gongduk doey. Ngohgar garting haai ho koong, seng saigaai do mo wundo yatge sin daanhaai neige jai beingseung ngogge neui. [Hok Lum, what you say is correct. My family is very poor; we haven't made a penny in a lifetime but your son can never match up to my daughter.]

We were cast out. Outcasts. Mr Wing's estate agent sent my grandmother a letter to say that the apartment was going to be sold. A Grace Brothers removal truck spent the better part of a day ferrying our things from the large apartment to a three bedroom cottage in Pagewood. It was a third the size of the apartment and lacked sufficient space to accommodate everyone and their belongings. There we all were, an extended family of my grandmother and four of my aunts, my uncle,Harry, my parents, my sister and me. Where, I wondered, was everyone going to sleep?

And where, said my grandmother, am I going to cook? The apartment we had moved from had a massive kitchen, long counters, many cupboards for storage, and even a pantry that was located in one corner, close to the sink. It was a room big enough to permit a kitchen table that could seat eight adults without making anyone feel hemmed in. The new house had a slip of a space for food preparation, a tiny sink and an absence of cupboards. Two adults standing in the kitchen already filled it up. The kitchen table had to go into the dining room. It barely managed to wedge itself into that crevice of a room. When the chairs were added there was nowhere for anyone to move so that sitting down at mealtime became a game of calculated rotation. Someone in the farthest corner had to be seated first before the next person could sit down and the next until all the spaces were filled. It created an excessive formality at mealtimes, everyone waiting in turn to be seated.

There was no sense of privacy or of private space. All the terrain of the house was fully occupied. And it created a deepening tension among the adults which spilt over into intense irritation and sniping over the merest trifles. An atmosphere teeming with suppressed thunder. My mother, alert to these portents, began to urge my father to find us alternative accommodation. He didn't know how this could be accomplished. He was between jobs, between the escape from the Coogee grocery store, which had been put up for sale, and the work that he hoped would soon be found.

The weeks dragged into months but nothing turned up for him. He went onto social security, unemployment benefit. It was a pinch of money, a paltry serving that was enough to buy some basic food items and that was about all. He hated being in such a hole, hated being the victim. And it meant that he couldn't break out of the Pagewood house.

Although he tried. One day he went into town to see if the bank would lend him some money. He'd been with the Bank of New South Wales for several years and carried a letter from a teller at the Bank's Coogee Branch testifying to his good character. He took me along. Why, I'm not sure, except that he was a man who always believed there was safety in numbers, even if there were only two. Or maybe he wanted to offer proof that he was a solid family man. We went to the main office in George Street, at the financial end of the city, very near to Martin Place. An enormous clump of a building that married marble and sandstone in a heavy, dour greylbrown. Inside was a chamber that was rendered on the scale of giants. Tall marble columns, the thickness of aged oaks, brass rails that adorned the huge counters of solid, polished mahogany, and doorways that were twice the height of a normal adult. Everything had been designed to dwarf the people who entered, put them ill at ease. To me it felt suffocating, oppressive. We were told to wait. I sank into a plush, velvet sofa chair so big that my shoes didn't extend to the edge of the seat. My father sat in an identical sofa opposite me. He too looked stunted. It was the type of place that defied you to break the silence. We sat there a long, long time. Almost an hour.

My father, who was a compulsive smoker at that time, went through three cigarettes. He'd light one before the previous one was quite finished. Several times he brought out the comb he carried in his inside jacket pocket and ran it through his hair. He wore his hair full at the front and swept it all the way back. Just as he'd lit up his fourth cigarette a young woman in a navy top and a matching skirt came over to us and ushered us through one of the oversize doorways into a large room that had a desk, several upholstered armchairs and an ensemble of dark paintings that underscored the heavy dCcor. A man in a black suit was seated at the desk. He motioned us into the armchairs. I waited expectantly for something to happen. Actually I didn't know what it meant to get a loan and my father hadn't attempted to explain the situation to me. He handed the man the letter he had brought from the local teller in Coogee.

He seemed polite enough, the man behind the desk. He addressed my father in civil tones, as "Mr Tang" throughout their conversation. He cast his eye over the letter a few times and referred to "interest rates" and "fortnightly repayments" and "collateral." All of this went over my head. But not the tone of rejection in his voice and the firm shake of his head near the end of the meeting.

Come back when you have some assets built up. I'm sure we can look again at your application. My father didn't say anything in response. But he had the look of someone who'd just been handed unhappy news. Perhaps he had known all along that he was on a futile quest. We left the sombre, heavy building and came out onto George Street. He took my hand and we walked silently over to the tram stop and caught the Kingsford-Pagewood tram home. We waited a decade before my father could afford to put a deposit on a small, rundown terrace in Clovelly. It was the only house he ever owned.

Seven months after the visit to the city bank, we all went to a gala wedding held at the Trocadero in George Street, very close to the Town Hall. Louise, who had spent so much energy fending off Gerard's proposal, agreed to marry him. What happened to the piano playing? What about the "five watt bulb" brain? I can't say. I could, with the advantage of time and distance, speculate as to what may have occurred, but I'd be less than confident of getting near the truth of the matter. I suspect that family obligation, honour, and face had something to do with it.

I had never been to a wedding before and it was exciting, a glossy spectacle. All the women were in elegant long dresses or cheongsams, high heeled shoes, and glittering jewellery. The men wore dark suits or dinner jackets with dazzling white shirts that glistened in the light. A band was on the central podium playing selections from popular musicals like Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, and Forty Second Street. Two of Gerard's brothers were groomsmen, I think it may have been Jack and Jerry, and two of Louise's sisters, Phyllis and Hannah, were bridesmaids. They looked splendid; at least I thought so.

Mr Wing wore a tuxedo. It was expensive although it didn't fit him; but then he had the kind of dense, portly shape that was not built for tailored clothing. A long robe, like the kind that Chinese scholars traditionally wore, would have suited him better. He had a self-satisfied grin on his face that wavered between benign and smug and he kept relighting a massive cigar he held in one hand. His wife, who was taller than him by six inches, more if you allowed for the high heels she was wearing, was in a silk brocaded cheongsam. Around her neck was a triple strand of pearls. She had diamond, emerald and ruby rings on both hands. Her make-up had been intensively applied and gave her a strange, wax-like appearance.

Leo had come back for his sister's wedding. He had slipped away fiom Sydney, almost unnoticed, certainly unheralded, no fanfare, no farewell party. He may have been ready for a move anyway. There was a restless edge to him in those years after the war and the bruised shoulder Charles had inflicted on him and the fractious episodes in the shop may have hurtled him into a decisive break from his brothers.

When I read his first postcard from Darwin I realised how much I missed his presence in my life. It was he who had escorted me to school on my first day, telling me that I should expect some jibes from the other kids. Why, I'd asked, why would they say things about me? We 're difSerent Sam, he said, how we look and everything. You mean I'm not the same as the other kids? That's right, he said. I wanted to ask him more as we walked along because now I had something to figure out: there were all these other kids who were obviously strange-looking. I tried to imagine what their faces were like, whether their bodies were an odd shape, even whether they walked and ran in an unusual way. As we entered the grounds of the school I peered in every direction, searching for the mysterious kids but I couldn't see anyone who looked different. He gripped my hand firmly before he walked away. I watched as he retreated. At the school gate he turned and gave me a vigorous salute like I imagined he'd learnt when he was in the army, smiling as he did so. Now here he was, wearing a black tuxedo and black bow-tie, and shoes that had a sheen like polished chrome on a car. He looked robust, his features tanned from long hours in the Northern Territory sun. And he was throwing himself into the wedding festivities. There were many young Chinese men and women at the wedding but only a few couples, less restrained than the others, took advantage of the spacious dance floor to step around the room. Except Leo. He was never away from the dancing arena. He did waltzes, quick steps, rumbas, foxtrots, and tangos, all with an unbridled vim that enthused his dancing partners. You could see his life and bounce energising the women he danced with, the shine in their eyes, the quicksilver smiles they gave him as he whirled around that open field against the backdrop of the band whose playing became infected with Leo's enthusiasm and drive. He was the beau of the ball. That evening. And I never saw him like that again.

Just as quickly as he's arrived Leo leaves, heading back to Darwin. Harry drives him to the airport to catch the plane and I go along for the ride.

How are things with you and Bessie? Harry asks as we are waiting for Leo's departure to be announced.

Only so so. She's in Rockhampton still.

Did you go see her?

No, maybe I should have. We spoke a few times on the phone.

Don 't let things Izrrifl, Leo. Don't muck about, ifyou're serious.

It's not that easy, Harry, not that easy at all. He turns to me then and salutes. So long, Sam the Spam, tell your dad to bring you up and visit sometime, eh? He leans over quickly, swoops me up and swirls me around twice, three times before setting me down. Moments later he has disappeared through the gateway that takes him onto the tarmac where his aircraft is waiting. I give him a wave but it's more an afterthought because he's not in sight anymore. COMPULSIVE

A form of madness? Yes. Inescapable? Absolutely. Why else would they be doing it? Assembling tiles, building the walls, clacking the discards on the square, teak table. Poongle. Doongfong. Barkbaan. Seung. Putting themselves through the torture of sleepless days and nights. Day after day. Night after night. Seung. Poong. Their bodies are weary, their eyes reddened by lack of sleep and the toxic vapours of hundreds of cigarettes. Poongle. Giupaaile. Gaam faaige. Nei junhai hochoile. It is a form of madness and if he, Reuben Wong, had not been such a willing participant, had not stayed for all those days and nights, then the customers in his restaurant might not have raised their complaint. And other things that happened to Reuben might have been deflected if not totally avoided. Yehngle. Waa! Moonwoo ah! Gaam sailei gaa.

It begins Easter Friday, the start of the Easter break. Mrs Tang, whose name is Alexandra, though known more commonly to her Chinese friends as Fa-lum or Lum Por, has 35 people to dinner, including her five daughters and three sons, their spouses, all their children, and an assortment of fi-iends and distant relatives. Reuben Wong is one of her distant nephews; his maternal grandfather, who lives in Boston's Chinatown, is a second cousin to Mrs Tang. He was named Reuben for the New York taxidriver who befriended Reuben's father after his wallet was stolen while he was on vacation. That was in 1932 at which time Reuben was already seven years old but, up to then, he had always used only his Chinese name, Kwang-lung. His father said that it meant "bright dragon." When he returned to Sydney from his American trip he decided that his son should have an English name as well.

Reuben's father, Wong Shui-wing, and his wife, Margaret, had worked ceaselessly in their small delicatessen for many years, skimping and saving so that they could visit Margaret's parents in Boston. She was part-Chinese, her father, the distant cousin to Mrs Tang, was from Canton and her mother was said to be either German or Austrian. That part of her bloodline tended to confuse the members of Mrs Tang's family although no one ever bothered to ask Margaret because she was considered to be not really Chinese and therefore no special value was placed on her maternal ancestry. Margaret only knew a smattering of Cantonese phrases like jo sun, jo tau and doh je. Good morning, good evening and thank you. These were all essential and valuable phrases but they constituted a meagre vocabulary. When she came to Sunday gatherings at Mrs Tang's, which she did with decreasing frequency, everyone prattled away in Cantonese or Toisan dialect, and nobody bothered to pause and offer Margaret a translation, even an abbreviated one. She could understand more than she could speak but she only ever picked up fragments of the conversation.

Afterwards, as they drove home, she would chide Shui-wing about the behaviour of the family. "How would you feel if we were with my family in America and we only conversed in German?" It was only a hypothetical example because Margaret had been raised in an English- speaking household and only knew some basic German phrases, several more than her Cantonese repertoire, but not by much. Her husband usually accepted her protestations with aggravated silence. It was far from new, her complaint, and had become entirely predictable. At first he'd tried to reason with her.

"No, it's not like that. They're just a loud, excitable bunch who get canied away with their anecdotes and exchanges. They've been that way ever since I've known them as a kid."

"It's more than that. They see me as an outsider. I can sense it in the way they speak to me or fail to speak to me."

He knew she was hypersensitive about the Sunday gatherings and that was one reason why she had become a reluctant invitee. It may also have had something to do with the fact that on the second or third time they made the visit to the apartment that Mrs Tang lived in, Margaret had been hesitantly drafted as a fourth in a game of mahjong. Mrs Tang's second son, Charles, was one of the other players, along with her eldest son Harry and her close friend, Gum Soe.

* * * * On weekends, as a child in Boston, a fascinated Margaret had watched her father playing mahjong with other men when the restaurant he worked in closed for the break between lunch and dinner. It was the clack and click of the ivory tiles that drew her in, the swift shuffle of the discoloured tiles; that and the rapidfire hand movements as the men built the four square wall, smoking furiously as they did so; their cigarettes dangling from bone-dry lips. Poongle. Sang. Jo daaipaaile. Woole. She was always astonished that they could assemble the two tier row of eighteen tiles in an instant, seemingly without having to count, in the same way that veteran greengrocers in the Chinese markets could gauge the weight of apples, bananas, winter melons or turnips to within a fraction of an ounce. If you asked for a pound you would get a pound, perhaps with a minute extra but, always, very close to the mark.

When the game took a pause for tea and cakes, she would tackle the tiles on the dark brown teak table, trying to stack a wall that measured eighteen exactly. She found it quite hard. Initially, that is. But, after she had been watching the games for several weeks and rehearsing the stacking of a wall, she discovered that she could measure the length of eighteen tiles at a glance. Her eye had learnt to judge precisely where the point of separation was. And her speed at stacking escalated although she was not quite as fast as the men who played regularly. But almost.

One afternoon, possibly in mid-winter, because she had a recollection of a coalfire burning in the cast iron stove that was against one side wall of the back room where the mahjong was played, Margaret made an astonishing discovery. She had learnt to read the different markings of the tiles fairly quickly, recognising the characters engraved for the four winds, east, south, west, north; the red, green and white dragons; and other tiles like bamboo and circles. And she found she could differentiate the tiles by touch alone. She didn't believe it at first, thinking it was some kind of fluke, but she tested herself again and again late one afternoon when the game for the day was finished. She laid twelve tiles face down and felt each with the tip of her thumb, felt for the indentations and curves that identified each tile. She did not make a single mistake. It was not a skill that she could do much with; that she understood fully. Unless, of course, she intended to devote herself to playing mahjong but she was not all that interested in the arcane skills of the game, more its structure and form, the laying down of the walls and the individual, carved shapes on the face of the tiles. She did play the odd game at home with her parents and relatives and later, when she was going to college, there was a vogue for mahjong among her friends but that only lasted for a short while.

She slipped into the vacant seat opposite Charles and smiled shyly at the others. She didn't know any of them all that well. The clack of other tiles being stacked at an adjoining table could be heard above the dissonance of adult conversations, children's shouts and wails, and the blare of a radio that didn't sound properly tuned.

Charles shuffled the tiles in front of him with great vigour which, from her past observation, was a sign of an excitable personality. He smoked as he did so, puffing on a Chesterfield that angled down from his lips. It reminded her at once of her father and his fiiends in the back room of the restaurant. Harry chewed on an unlit cigar, making no move to light it.

"Hope you have deep pockets, Margaret," said Harry, trying to be friendly.

Margaret threw him a vacuous grin as she stacked her wall. Without thinking, the skill materialised from her past. She had a two-tier row of eighteen assembled in front of her well before anyone else.

"That's real fast," said Charles, clearly impressed. "Do you play a lot?"

"No. Almost never. It's years since I've had a game."

"Nei sick ng sick gong waa, Ah Sum? " Asked Gum Soe.

"Excuse me?" said Margaret. "My aunt wants to know if you speak Chinese," said Charles who had drawn east wind and was throwing the dice to determine which wall they should take tiles fi-om first.

"Sick siu siu, " said Margaret slowly, wondering if she had got the words in the right sequence and conscious of the fact that she had fractured the tones.

" Waa kei die yum gaam chaa gar. Kei gong cheegar kwailo. " Gum Soe chuckled, pleased at her own comment. Margaret, who didn't understand the whole sentence, did pick up the expression kwailo, which she knew referred, in a derogatory way, to Westerners. She bristled trying not to glare at the older woman, and concentrated, instead, on compiling her hand.

The play was rapid and she found she had to focus to keep up with the sequence ofpoongs and seungs, the words expelled vigorously as a player discarded one tile and replaced it with a desired one. She began to build her hand, taking tiles from the wall, discarding tiles she didn't want, making running sequences of three or matching tiles of three. She wasn't aware she was doing it: without looking at the tiles she had picked from the wall, she had decoded it with her thumb and discarded or accepted it immediately.

Waa kei gaam leihoi ge ng sai taipai. Yat moh jau jeedau hai mut. Even though she had no idea what Gum Soe was saying she could detect, fi-om her tone and facial expression, that she was impressed by something that Margaret was doing.

Charles turned to Gum Soe, irritation in his voice. Nei ng sai gong gaam dor, dar paaijau dar paai nar. He had started to assemble a winning hand, a major hand, but at each sequence someone picked up a tile that he wanted. And then Harry discarded the west wind and Margaret swooped on it, pushed her tiles over, face up, to show that she had won. Angrily, Charles picked up a handful of his own tiles and bounced them onto the table. A single tile caught Gum Soe's upper arm and deflected onto the floor. "You drongo. Couldn't you see she was waiting on that tile? Don't you follow the play?" Charles was leaning close to Harry, shouting at him. He calculated the chips he owed Margaret and hurled them in her direction.

"Nei ng see yiu gaam ok ah. Ngohdie waangaan paai jar mar.'' Charles responded to Gum Soe's remark, something about his anger, by picking up a single tile, gripping it tightly as if he were about to unleash a missile in her direction. Margaret, appalled at this outburst, was almost certain that she saw the older woman flinch. Now she was distinctly uncomfortable and began to search for an appropriate moment when she might withdraw from the game.

A temporary calm settled back at the table. Maybe it was because Charles won several of the next hands that were played. But then Harry won a sizeable hand and Margaret had a trio of successes, including the biggest hand of the evening. Gum Soe, who had discarded the tile that Margaret needed to win, proffered an apologetic smile at the table. Charles cut it down with glowering eyes. He heaped abuse at Gum Soe who served it right back at him.

Nei jaanhai choenlar. Darde ng sick dar. Gunhaai maang ngaan. Kei giu paai nei joong dar bei kei. Margaret picked up the word choenlar, meaning stupid. That seemed to be the cue for the older woman to stand up and rebuke Charles.

Nei war binggor choen ah? Nei saaigor gorjaan see bing gor toong nei maat hoen ah, bing gor waai nei ar? Nei munhar neigar mar nar. Gau daam war ngor choen. Nei seung see ar.

Margaret was relieved that she didn't know what was being said and that no one was translating for her. The mood at the table had turned sour, if not ugly. Charles and Gum Soh continued to fire verbal bolts at one another. Quietly, unobstrusively, Margaret slipped away to seek her husband, vowing to herself that she wouldn't come to another function at the Tang household, not as long as Charles was at the gathering. Except she relented. She began to give way when her husband said that it was to honour Mrs Tang's birth year, the year of the ox, and a big celebration was being planned. The party would fall in the Easter break, on a Friday. What finally swayed her was the phone call fiom her eldest son, Reuben, who said that he was coming from Newcastle for the party and would be staying on for a few days extra. He always stayed with his parents when he came to Sydney even though the rear of the delicatessen was cramped and hard to negotiate when four adults were living there. Reuben was coming with his fiancke, which is how he preferred to describe his girlfriend, Veronica Hill.

He had caught Veronica on the rebound after her engagement to an Australian named Martin Wisdom had been terminated, though not by her. She had been an occasional customer at Reuben's restaurant, usually coming in on her own on a Friday evening after work. She was an accounts clerk in a legal office that had two partners and minimal business. Sometimes, she and Wisdom would eat in the restaurant but he didn't enjoy the Chinese cuisine which tended to be skimpy on meat and overladen with carrots, celery and peas. It wasn't his idea of a hearty dinner.

Reuben, with the assistance of a loan from his father and one of his uncles, had bought into the restaurant with his cousin, Robert Sung. It was not very salubrious but he had managed a steady income from it until quite recently. Around Christmas and New Year the restaurant generally did a brisk trade. Unfortunately, Reuben had almost nothing to show for his three years of toil in the small town. His gambling kept him permanently at the edge of the poverty line. He liked to bet heavily on horses and greyhounds at the local SP shop and he participated in a Saturday night poker game which was usually held at his cousin's house. He bought sheaves of lottery tickets. What he didn't squander on betting and cards went into the repairs for a pre-war Plymouth that he had bought from a Sydney dealer who had said he was letting it go cheaply. Reuben soon realised why the dealer had been such a ready seller. The car needed more fixing than a crooked horse race. It looked all right, the dark blue duco was not too faded and the body was almost free of dents except for the door on the driver's side. Reuben had misjudged the position of a mailbox when he was parking in the center of town one morning. The engine, however, was another story. It wept oil copiously and had to be topped up every hundred miles or so. When it was parked overnight it left large dark bubbles on the street. He'd put it in for repairs one week and then have to take it back for more work the following week.

They decided to drive the car to Sydney for the Easter break, despite the fact that the engine wasn't firing properly. Veronica was nursing it along the Pacific Highway about thirty miles out of Newcastle. She was keeping it at a steady but moderate pace oblivious of the growing file of cars behind her until one motorist, sufficiently agitated, began to toot his horn. That triggered a chorus of horns and made Veronica jump. She was a hesitant driver but, of the two, she was the more capable. Reuben tended to get too agitated whenever some critical situation confronted him. She started to pull over to let some of the traffic clear but that was the point at which the brakes refused to grip. She steered as best she could but collided into a fence anyway. Both were shaken by the incident. Reuben, however, with his gambler's superstition, read it as a bad omen for the vacation. He began to think that maybe he shouldn't have invited Veronica along.

They arrived late at the celebration. It had taken several hours before a tow truck dragged them back into Newcastle to a garage on the outskirts of the town. By the time makeshift repairs had been made to the car they had lost almost four hours. Reuben was immensely irritated and irate though he had stopped himself several times from directing an outright accusation at Veronica. He knew, if he did, that she would have turned it back on him.

Who toldyou to buy such a heap without any inspection? You should have your head read.

The two of them walk into the apartment surprised by the number of people crowded into the living room: Reuben recognises faces that he cannot match a name to; he is sure that he has seen them here before in this same living room. Others such as cousins and distant uncles and aunts he greets with a cheery wave and a bright "Hello!" He makes a point of escorting Veronica over to his parents and to Mrs Tang. He notices that even Mr Tang is among the guests present. Dinner is practically over. The main courses, anyway. Everyone appears to be onto dessert which seems to be a bread and butter custard, something that Veronica likes but Reuben can happily pass on. He'd had far too many plates of it at the Catholic boys' school he'd gone to in Sydney. Mrs Tang has saved food for him and Veronica although she comments to Gum Soh that she isn't sure whether the Chinese food haap gar kwainei gar waaihau. Reuben, whose Chinese has become rusty with disuse, knows enough not to translate literally what has been said.

There is steamed chicken garnished with garlic, ginger and soy; fkied whole bass with green onion and light soy and a touch of Chinese vinegar; stirfried beef with baakchoi; prawns cooked in salt and pepper and rice wine with the shells intact; longlife noodles; and bitter melon stuffed with pork and water chestnuts and onion. Reuben, who is famished, attacks the table with enthusiasm. He loves homestyle cooking. Veronica, however, only picks at the food. Not because she finds any of it unappetising but because the tension of the journey down and the sea of strangers she has been placed in the midst of has robbed her of any hunger pangs. Once or twice she grins nervously at Mrs Tang who seems to have an avid curiousity about whether Veronica will actually finish anything on her plate. In the end, Veronica pushes her plate to one side. Mrs Tang looks knowingly at Gum Soe as if to say: See, I was right all along.

While the couple are eating, several games have started. In the living room, there are two tables of mahjong in progress and, as soon as Reuben and Daphne have completed their dinner, their places are cleared and a large blanket spread over the glass-top dining table. A fresh pack of cards, still inside its cellophane wrapper, is set down. And a game of poker begins. Mrs Tang, who has been impatiently waiting to play, shuffles the cards with a practiced skill and deals. Reuben, who is nursing a plate of fresh sliced mango, honeydew and pineapple, is seated behind and to the left of Mrs Tang. He watches her pick up her cards, one card at a time, turning the upper left hand comer to catch a glimpse of what she has dealt herself before arranging the cards according to pairs or suites or runs. He notices that she looks at the faces of the other players to gauge their reactions to the hands they have received, watches, then shrewdly makes her bet. Reuben sees that there is a pattern to the older woman's play. If she is dealt a first hand that has absolutely nothing she generally folds immediately, not asking for replacements. She only builds for a flush or a straight when she holds an initial run of four cards from the first deal. If she draws a pair she discards the other three cards and seeks three more from the dealer. It is, he reflects, a carefully calculated, prudent strategy. She is minimising her losing hands. And her winning ones? She bets modestly when she only has a pair or a low-numbered three of a kind, say three twos or threes. But when she holds a potentially strong hand, two pairs, a straight or a flush, she makes a large bet, challenging the others to match her or fold. There is one other intriguing tactic: once in a while she will make a largish bet even though she has a nothing hand. He realizes, after she's done this a few times, that it's a deliberate ploy to prevent the others from reading any set routine in her game.

He is concentrating on her play such that he has not noticed his mother, Margaret, sliding into an opposite seat. When the game began she was not at the table. Now, many rounds into the game, he looks across and becomes aware of her for the first time, picking up the last of five cards that have been dealt. And he is aware, in the same moment, that she and Mrs Tang have more poker chips than the others at the table.

When did his mother become adept at poker? When was the last time he saw her play a game? He couldn't recall. Now he watches two women in a contest, keenly picking up their cards, betting. Mrs Tang, with a glint in her dark eyes, has pushed a generous pile of chips into the centre. Is she bluffing? No, Reuben glances at her hand. She's holding three kings and can improve her hand if she discards. The others hesitate. Then, one by one, they fold except Margaret who counts out a matching pile of chips, holds them steady in front of her, pauses fractionally, then starts to push them towards the middle slowly as if she is contemplating an instant retreat. Mrs Tang watches her intently, trying to decode the signal, read something into the hesitation. At the same time her hands reach out to take the two new cards from the dealer. Reuben peers over her shoulder. She has drawn a pair of eights and holds a full house. She stacks another cylinder of chips and pushes them into the mound in the middle. Margaret seems lost in concentration. The others wait on her, wondering if she will withdraw at this point. Nei seung dim ar, Margaret? Mrs Tang, who hasn't spoken much during the game, has posed a question. It is not laced with hidden malice or not, at least, any that Reuben can detect. Margaret, without catching the full sentence, knows that she's being challenged.

He sees his mother frown, brow knitted, seemingly unsure of what to do. Then, swifter than a magician's deft flourish, she has pushed a matching block of chips forward. Mrs Tang reveals her hand. Not without a firm confidence. But her sense of triumph is momentary. Margaret turns over a straight flush: the seven, eight, nine, ten, and jack of diamonds. Her haul from this one hand, this single win, is huge. She assembles the chips piling them up according to colour: white, green, red, and blue.

Mrs Tang looks perplexed, disappointed and angry. A colony of emotions running through her at the same time. Has she let the younger woman, this guest who isn't even properly Chinese, get the better of her? But whatever she has been feeling is gone in a flash as she sits upright, regains her poise, and prepares for the next hand. Dar paai lar. There is an added concentration to her manner. She is focussed entirely on her cards, willing them to take the shape that she wants.

Reuben watches the play for another half hour. How many hands have been played in that time? Four, perhaps five? Astonishingly, his mother has won all of them. Is this some kind of beginner's luck or has she coddled some hitherto hidden talent all these years? He is tempted to go over to sit behind her for a while to see how she plays but instead remains where he is.

Veronica's unmistakable throaty laugh pitches across the room. He looks for the source of her mirth and makes another astonishing discovery. She is engrossed in a game of mahjong. Where did she acquire that from? He's certain that she has never mentioned she knew how to play mahjong.

All these women gambling. It makes Reuben eager to get into a game himself. He glances around at the poker table to see who he might displace or how he might enter the game. In addition to Mrs Tang and his mother, there is Charles, who is a near contemporary of his father He remembers his father saying that Charles has a fearful temper and that he can burst into thunder at the merest provocation. "When we were kids," he can hear his father recalling, "I was playing Chinese chequers with him. He lost three games in a row. The fourth game, he thought he had me but I managed to outplay him. He leapt up, seized the chequer board, and tore it up. Really mad he was. Then he smashed some toy soldiers he had on a bedside table. He looked totally out of control. Like a demon."

Jacky Hing, who sits to Charles's left, is an old family friend. He is bald-headed, not a whisk of hair on him. This exposes a dome that is oddly elliptical, as if it has been pushed slightly out of symmetry by an errant sculptor. Reuben tries to imagine Jacky with a thatch of black hair and grins at the picture that conjures up. Jacky works at the Haymarket for a banana merchant. Perhaps he has some share in the business. Reuben can't recall the details but he makes a mental note to ask his father at some point. He studies Jacky's muscled forearms which seem enlarged out of proportion to his head and the rest of his torso as if he has lifted and stacked cases for more than half his life. There were stories about Jacky, about his fondness for the company of young men but they were always told with a laugh by someone who'd heard a rumour from somebody else. Reuben didn't mind him because Jacky had no pretense about him and was a genuinely decent guy.

And there is Billy Chin. One of the nine Chin siblings who had come to Sydney from Darwin during the Depression when the family had sold up its failing mixed goods business for a pittance. Billy has a reputation. For deals, scams, sleight of hand, skimming, you name it and Billy has tried it more than once. "If Billy tells you the time check his watch to see if it's still going." That's the kind of remark people make about Billy. He is in his late thirties, wears a tailored jacket and brocaded tie wherever he goes and has the most carefully buffed shoes that Reuben has ever seen. Reuben doesn't know if he is related directly to the Tangs or not but he is often seen in the company of Harry. Billy is a gambler, something that goes with his other pursuits. He bets at the races and away from them; he is seen frequently in the illegal gambling house in Dixon Street behind the Sheung Hong trading company which sells Chinese vegetables, meats and noodles as well as assorted Chinese sauces and spices. When you stand at the counter to pay for your groceries you can hear the babble of voices, the shouts, the spill of coins thrown onto a hardwood surface, the clash of mahjong tiles and dominoes. The proprietor doesn't care. Everyone knows what is happening in the back room.

All the men smoke. Continuously. Years later a price will be exacted for all the avaricious gulps of nicotine when we see Harry, body wasted, slumped in a hospital chair, trying to capture enough oxygen into his lungs to hang on to his frail lifeline; and Charles, under the knife, surgeons peeling his chest open to remove a defective wedge of his left lung; and sadeyed Jacky in his wheelchair, hooked up to an oxygen tank, gasping for more air than his body can absorb. But that bleak future is far from now. Now they inhale and exhale tobacco as they concentrate their minds on the cards dealt out.

The game has switched to another variant of poker. One where the players are only dealt two cards, concealed, and have to match them to five cards that the bank deals and shows to all around the table. Reuben, who likes this version, moves to a seat between Billy and Mrs Tang, indicating, as he does so, that he is playing and exchanges a bundle of ten pound notes for a stack of chips.

Dealer is by rotation. Harry's turn. Reuben glances across to his mother who throws him a sly grin. She seems to be hugely enjoying herself. Harry has dealt him the ace of spades and the queen of hearts. He looks at the other players, hesitates momentarily, and folds. From experience he knows that his hand will not turn out to be much good. He likes to begin with a pair, preferably of a court card, or two cards of the same suit, preferably in sequence. Otherwise, he throws the cards away as he has just done, and watches the play, a bystander assessing his opponents.

Mrs Tang has pushed a handful of chips forward. So, too, have Charles, Billy, and Harry. His mother and Jacky have joined Reuben on the sidelines. Harry tuns over two cards in quick succession: the ace of clubs, the queen of spades. Billy folds. Now it's mother and son. Harry reveals the three of diamonds, the five of diamonds, and the ten of clubs. Charles carefully counts six chips, all blue, their value equal to 30 pounds, and pushes them towards the centre of the table. Unless he is bluffing, trying it on, he is holding one or two pairs but possibly low ones, threes and fives. Hany peers at his cards, puffs twice on the cigarette dangling from his parched lips, and decides against continuing. Mrs Tang pushes eight blue chips into the middle. Charles casually meets her challenge, tossing out two chips. Mrs Tang turns over her hand: the ace of diamonds and the ten of hearts. Her hands reach out over eagerly, confidently but abruptly pull back as Charles reveals the five of hearts and spades he has been holding. Reuben swears he sees her blanch but only for a few seconds and then the determined set of her jaw tells everyone that she is ready for the next hand.

The game goes for an hour or so until a break is called while freshly brewed jasmine tea and sweets, mainly Chinese candies and dried fruits, are served. Reuben steps over to the mahjong table to see how Veronica is doing. She has more than held her own and has a sizeable swag of chips beside her. He is still amazed that she knows how to play but refrains from asking ha, at this moment, where she picked up the skill. He goes outside onto the front balcony, lighting a cigarillo he's taken from an ebony case that he keeps in his inside jacket pocket, sits down on one of the cane chairs that face out onto the street. Soon he is joined by Billy who already holds a cigarette in his slim fingers.

"How's the restaurant going up there?"

"Terrific, Billy, couldn't be better."

"You getting lots of customers coming through, eh?"

"Some nights we have to turn them away." Reuben wishes that he was speaking the truth but he doesn't want to confide any of his business problems to Billy whom he's never really warmed to, in fact doesn't like very much.

"Where you working now, Billy?" He asks as if Billy is shiftless and can never hold down a single job for more than a moment. "Doing a bit of this and bit of that, have to scramble to make ends meet." He throws Reuben a lopsided grin.

"What's that mean?" Trying to pin him down.

"You know, I scramble."

"I haven't a clue what you're saying." Reuben takes in the well-pressed blue shirt with its monogram, BC, the brocaded silk tie, garish in its clash of purple, green and yellow, the ornate gold and jade ring on the middle finger of his right hand. He turns abruptly, stubs his half- finished cigarette on the brick wall, and strides back to the gambling table.

Mrs Tang is finishing her tea and the others are chatting noisily. Jacky is engrossed in demonstrating a card trick to a cluster of kids, one where they pick a card and he shuffles it in the pack and identifies it. But his variant of the trick is to produce the card from inside his shirt pocket or from the sleeve of one of the kids. They are giggling with pleasure at the spell he has cast. Reuben watches with a twist of envy, wishing he had some skill that he was really good at, but he runs through a repertoire of things he knows he can do and none matches the mental standard he has set. He notices that his mother is missing from the cardplayers' group and he peers around to see where she has gone. She is beside Veronica at the mahjong game, helping her to play. They are settled into a cosy entente, two conspirators who have been plotting for an eternity. That is what he reads into the intimacy they share. And it surprises him because he knows that his mother and Veronica have only met on a handful of occasions and that there had, at times, been an awkwardness in their attempts to connect with one another. Not any hostility but a forced cheerfulness that suggested that they were not all that comfortable with each other.

Yet look at them now. Like best fiends or first cousins who have already shared a cache of secrets. They are chattering away at a furious rate as if they have to spill everything out before the night has passed. The moment, freeze-framed in his mind, is one that he relishes. He is pleased that the two women are connecting. He is tempted to edge closer, to eavesdrop, but decides that it would be more prudent to keep his distance. "Reuben, Reuben, you in or not?" Harry is barking across the expanse of the living room. The poker is about to resume. He nods in the direction of the summons and strolls back to his seat at the table. A new pack of cards, still in its cellophane wrap, has been laid on the table. Billy, his shirtsleeves rolled back, removes the wrap and begins to shuffle. He does it very quickly, efficiently, as if he has had ample practice, which may well be the case. He squares up the pack and places it in front of Reuben to cut. Then he begins to deal.

Reuben cannot believe the succession of winning hands that he gets. They come just like that, seven, eight, nine hands, all to him. Staring down at the hill of chips, at the multiply coloured plastic discs, he reflects on the many losing games that he has been in, the many times when he should have quit when he was up but stayed until he had been cleaned out. If he kept a scorecard of his wins and losses, which he has never done, he would never again sit down at a game of poker.

His most memorable wipe-out, which still makes him shudder when he reruns the scene in his head, happened one evening two years ago when he received an unexpected phone call from an acquaintance to join in a game that would be starting that night in a grocery store. He hew the owner, Stevie Ma. Fairly well. They saw each other at the markets when both were buying provisions for their businesses. Sometimes, after the shopping, which was usually at an unhealthy early hour like six, they shared a breakfast at one of the Greek-run cafes in town. Stevie was like him, Australian born, educated in Sydney, and scrambling to make a modest living.

Reuben sensed, soon after he walked into the small back room behind the shop, which served as living and dining room and a spare bedroom if Stevie was putting someone up, that it wasn't a night for gambling, not for him, anyway. If you'd asked him to explain, he would have been sorely pressed to articulate the tightness he felt, the temptation he had to turn around and walk away. The others at the table, apart from Stevie, were unknown to him. He couldn't even remember seeing them around the streets of Newcastle and that, in such a small town, convinced him that they were not locals. He looked at their faces as they were being introduced and thought that their eyes were piercing him like lasers, penetrating to the hollowness of him, detecting how underprepared he was for a high-stakes game of poker. Maybe it was connected to the week of poor takings at his restaurant, the pressure of having to put together enough pounds to pay what he owed to the bank that month.

They cleaned him out. It was a night of clumsy plays, one after the other. He bet too high when he held weak suits and closed too early when the pot in the middle could have been his for the taking. He didn't press his advantage when he held a strong suit, putting in modest raises that left him winning a paltry pool. It was a bizarre night in which all his instincts as a gambler seemed to have closed down, deserted him. At the end of the night he was wrung out, metaphorically and literally. Yet, even though his body and mind seemed out of synch, he had not thrown in the towel, had refused to admit that he had been in the wrong game on the wrong night. At four am, the darkness outside matching his despair, he stumbled to his car which he realized he'd have to sell to clear his debts. He was down 2400 pounds. Madness. Sheer madness. He didn't have the money to lose. In a good week, it represented the gross fiom his restaurant but that was in a good week and there hadn't been many of those in the past six months.

That had been Act 1 of his drama. A few weeks later he rang Stevie determined to have a second tilt at the windmill. Some of the players were the same, and the result almost as disastrous. That night he was down 1700 pounds. There had been the consequent pleading and bargaining to stave off threatened bank closure on his business; the fiantic efforts to raise cash from relatives and friends. He should have learnt from those two nights of bad poker. He should have accepted that he was not really a gambler's bootlace; that he was too impulsive, lacked the cool calculation that astute gamblers possessed. So it had gone on: card games, mahjong, horses, dogs.

"Your call, Reuben."

"What?" They are back to a more conventional poker, five cards per player, draw and discard. Reuben casts an eye at his hand, a pair of sevens, five of spades, two of spades, and Jack of clubs. He throws out the five and two, draws two cards and holds them face down on the table. Doesn't look at them. He's on a run right now. Winning and winning. If he bet on the sevens alone he's sure he'd win. Sure he'd win. So should he? Take a chance and gamble on the sevens? Why not? Why be so foolish? Well, just once he'll chance it. He sweeps a pile of chips, brushes them into the centre of the table. There is a gasp from several of the other players. Too late he sees what he's done. His bet is around 250 pounds. More than half his winnings for the night.

Billy, alert, calculating, looks at Reuben, detects his chagrin.

"Aren't you going to look at the other cards, Reub?"

He flashes vitriol at Billy. "Reuben," he says, "My name is Reuben." Emphasising it as if to reassure himself that that's his name. And, as if he is puppet to Billy's strings, he looks at the two hidden cards. Three of diamonds. Two of spades.

Billy doesn't wait. He pushes a matching pile of chips forward. Everyone else is out.

Reuben turns over his meagre hand, expecting the drubbing that he has heaped upon himself. Billy has a pair of tens. He leers at Reuben triumphantly. "Good game, eh Reub?"

It is noon on Easter Monday but no one around the card table has been to church. Would any one of them even know what Easter signified? Never mind. The question does not touch the thoughts of the current gathering. All the party-goers who were there when Reuben and Veronica arrived on Friday evening have long since disappeared. Mrs Tang's do, her entertainment for family and friends is over, except for the hardcore group huddled over cards, smoke billowing around them like low-lying clouds as first Reuben lights up an Ardath or Harry a du Maurier or.. . It's a relay. Whenever someone finishes a cigarette another lights one up. That's how it seems. Only Mrs Tang refi-ains. On the couch in the living room, Veronica, half- sprawled, is in a fitful sleep. She has tried, three times, to persuade Reuben to leave but he is into retrieving his losses. Not successfully. In fact, since Billy beat him with the pair of tens, he has won only won two or three hands. But he plays on. Relentlessly. Hopelessly. His deficit piles up. Poker isn't going to do it; isn't going to produce the recovery he needs. He's stopped counting his losses, afraid to know just how far backwards he's gone.

A phone call breaks into the game. "For you, Reuben," says Charles.

"Yes. Hi, Edith. Yair, we're in a family game of cards. A bit drawn out. So what happened? No. Then what?" There is a long monologue from Edith through which Reuben nods his head, grimaces, frowns, and injects swear words.

"Bugger. Where are they now? Left, huh? You think you should ring the cops?"

"Ok. Well, call me back if there's any more trouble."

"Everything all right, Reuben?" asks Veroncia. The phone has woken her.

"A bit of an argument at the restaurant. Between Mike and a group at one table. They claimed they'd been charged for a dish that they didn't have. Mike disagreed. It almost came to blows. You know how stroppy Mike can get. Anyway, Edith says that it was sorted out in the end though the group went away far from happy. She says they'd had a ton to drink. Really tanked up, they were."

"Are they regulars?"

"Don't know. Probably not, otherwise Edith would have said." Reuben gives a resigned shrug. There's not much he can do about it from this distance. Almost with relief he turns back to the game. Except that cards have been abandoned and mahjong tiles clatter across the wooden table adjacent to where the poker was being played. "Change of scene," says Harry, "we're going to try a Chinese game." Reuben looks around the now empty living room, the remnants of the party on display in the ashtrays piled high with butts, the smudged drinking glasses, cloth napkins, and dishes caked with partly eaten food. The sofas, covered in dark brown and grey velvet, seem to have retreated into the corners, silently watching the leftover crew who, greatly fatigued, eyes bleary from smoke and too little sleep, have played too many hands of poker. He can smell the cling of the tobacco fumes insinuated into the carpet and curtains and the body and clothes of everyone. And the staleness of it all regurgitates other rooms on other nights when he has gone on for far too long gambling on a big win or two.

Reuben wearily slips into a seat. Billy, Harry, and Charles complete the foursome. Reuben is not a devotee of mahjong. He thinks of it as an older person's game, associates it with his parents' generation and Chinese traditions that he has long forgotten. But at this moment he welcomes the switch because his luck in cards has run out. Perhaps mahjong will change his fortune.

He forgets, however, that he's with a volatile crew. Charles, whose fearsome temper his father has told him about, and Billy who has already bested him over these days and nights of poker and has the knack of getting under his skin. The first few rounds begin reasonably, spoils distributed evenly, no one far ahead or far behind. Charles is relaxed, even throws in an occasional joke. And Billy, as if in deep concentration, manages to avoid provoking Reuben.

The shift, when it comes, is abrupt. Charles has been ready to call, waiting on one tile to complete a winning hand. He peers around the table, waiting. The play rotates, Billy, Reuben, Harry, Charles. Rotates again. And again. Neidei ng sieduk daam paai ar? Charles is addressing the others collectively, mounting irritation in his tone.

"I'm ready to call," says Billy.

"This one good enough for you?" asks Harry, as he throws out the west wind. "That'll do it," says Billy and he displays his winning hand, now completed by the tile Harry has cast out. It's a small hand and hardly seems worth the effort except that it has frustrated the grand sweep that Charles has been hoping for.

"What're you serious or just fooling around?" he says to Harry. "Why'd you play him the tile he wanted?"

"You mean I should've played the tile you wanted," says Harry, needling him.

Charles doesn't comment. Every gesture defines anger as he rapidly counts the chips he owes Billy and hurls them, scattering, across the table.

"Hey, take it easy," says Reuben, trying to calm Charles.

"Why don't you go to buggery," says Charles. Harry winks at no one in particular, pleased that he's got a rise out of his brother.

They resume the game, shuffling the tiles, the clack, clack sounds reverberating as tile and teak collide. The walls are built, Charles banging his with an extra thump that threatens to crack a tile or two. Billy throws the two dice to see which wall they will start the round from, Harry leans back in his chair, draws on his cigarette, exhales.

"And stop blowing that bloody fag in my face."

"I'm not," says Hany continuing to exhale without turning his head.

Charles still bristles but concentrates on arranging the 13 tiles that he has drawn. The play when it begins is fast, moves through quick interjections of 'Seung"or 'poong"as one tile is discarded and replaced or taken from the wall and retained. Each player builds his hand and presently Charles is where he was five minutes earlier, ready to call, to go out on a decent hand. Reuben glances across at him and can see that the anger has subsided, replaced with a concentrated alertness, the waiting on the one card that will give him the win he wants. Reuben, who, despite Charles' reputation as a hothead, gets along with him pretty well, hopes that Charles will take this hand. Maybe then the game can get onto an even keel again, like a ship whose ballast has been properly adjusted.

Reuben follows the play through several turns, can see that Harry, too, is ready to call. Reuben looks at his own hand. It's a mishmash that is nowhere near completion. He picks up a green dragon tile from the wall, useless to him, and discards it immediately. Harry loops his left arm across, plucks it, and displays his winning hand.

"Shit," says Charles, hurling his hand across the table, several tiles bouncing erratically before falling onto the carpet.

"Sorry," says Reuben, genuinely apologetic but Charles is mad because Harry has won.

The rounds start to pass in a blur, one merging into the other, the present hand merging into the next and the next and the next. Reuben knows that it's the lack of sleep that has done it; that he's in an empty zone where he has no more reserves of concentration. He hears and watches the play through a blur. Hears Charles bark at Harry and Billy, hears the insistent clack of the tiles, like a monotonous riff that won't go away, repeats and repeats in his ear.

"Reuben, your play.. .Reuben, play one." Harry nudges him as he speaks.

Reuben blinks quickly, tries to focus, stares at the hand in front of him and involuntarily plucks hoong joong, the red dragon tile, and tosses it onto the table. He picks a tile from the wall and doesn't even look at it, knows that he's done something odd but can't quite get his mind around it. Then realises. He's got the sequence back to front: pick a tile off the wall before you discard. He rehearses the sequence in his head, like a drill that he must obey: pick, discard, pick, discard, pick.. . Charles has leapt to his feet and, in one vigorous motion, has turned the table on its side. Billy, trying to stop the table landing on him, is upended on the floor. Harry and Reuben are left in their seats, minus a table, like some afterthought of a magician's trick. And Charles is yelling abuse at all of them.

"That's the last time I play with you hopeless pricks. Fucking dills, the lot of you."

Reuben runs the scenario back through his head, feeding the film in reverse, and realises that his discarded tile, the red dragon, has given the hand to Billy and thwarted Charles for the umpteenth time.

"Who's for a bite?" says Harry, cheerily, his mood elevating as Charles steams.

They are in the kitchen eating the leftovers. The food that was fresh on Friday and is now three days old. Reuben, Veronica, Billy, and Freddie. Charles has disappeared and Reuben doesn't know where everyone else in the household is. Sleeping, perhaps. He checks his watch but sees that it stopped at two o'clock. On which day, he has no idea. He removes the watch from his right wrist, and winds it, looking around for a clock.

"In the dining room,'' says Harry, who seems to have been perked up by the food. Reuben follows his advice and steps into the room, sees, for the first time, that there is a mantelpiece clock, a semi-moon, made of dark mahogany. It is 11:30. He does a quick calculation and realises that they have played cards and mahjong for three days. At least he has. The others have been at it even longer. Madness. That's what it is. None of it makes any sense now that they have finished or now that Charles has finished it for them.

Reuben thinks he should have given his parents a call before he headed back. It's too late now. He can't recall saying goodbye to them, assumes that they went home on Friday night like almost everyone else at the party. He looks across the room again and realises that Veronica is missing. Where did she go to and when? He's about to go searching for her when the phone rings. He picks it up. "Can I speak with Reuben, please?" It's Edith.

"Speaking. What's up? Place been closed down?"

"Not quite. But someone tried to torch the restaurant this evening. They put a brick through the window, lit a fire inside. Fortunately, a passerby saw the fire before it had got too out of hand. Called the fire brigade."

"How bad is it?"

"One section of the front is badly charred, the walls and ceilings are covered in black."

"It was those guys, wasn't it? The ones who argued with Mike."

"Don't know Reuben. Don't know. I've called the police and they said they'll look into it."

Reuben sits down. Shaken by the bad news. He'll be weeks, perhaps months out of business while things are repaired, while he organises carpenters and painters, while he waits for the insurance company to.. .to do what? He realises then, that he has not renewed his insurance, that he stopped it last year as part of his effort to cut down on costs. Christ, now he was up the creek.

"You all right Reuben?" asks Charles. He's past his mahjong rage, the game forgotten, genuine in his concern.

"I'm not.. .it's kind of.. .I think that.. .I'm sunk." Reuben bites back tears, trying hard not to show how gutted he feels at this moment. He races across the expanse of the large living room, opens the door to the balcony, steps out, and slumps onto the concrete floor, his back against the wall of the apartment. He kicks one of the cane chairs, an empty gesture, kicks it again, then sees that someone is sitting there. Veronica. Trying to get some rest. "I'm finished, Ronnie, really finished."

"You mean you guys finally came to your senses. Did you come out ahead?"

"No, it's the restaurant. It's been torched."

"Torched? How?" But she can see that he's not in any shape for explanations. She sits down beside him, lets his body slump against hers. And, side by side, they remain there, he unsure what he should do next, she concerned at this dejected mood that has engulfed him. Eventually she rises, crouches in front of him.

"Reuben, look, no matter how bad things are we can't do anything unless we get back."

He nods assent and struggles to stand up. They edge back into the apartment, she gripping his arm as if to assure him of her presence. He stops momentarily, eyes sweeping around the living room, takes in, as if for the first time, the dark timber cabinets and side tables, the heavy sofas with their ornate, white antimacassars, and the two teaks tables where he and the others have sat for three days. For what? How futile it has all been. Playing an absurd game while his restaurant business was disintegrating. Why did he do it? Why did any of them do it? Madness. Absolute madness. DISLOYALTY

We still have the family photo in its obsolete metal and timber frame. The one taken at his youngest sister's engagement party in Sydney, February 1946. He had just been demobbed. Everyone is relaxed and smiling. But he is mugging for the camera. He wears a Cheshire Cat grin as if Alice has just told him an off-colour joke. What you can also see is how flashy he looked in his youth. The way he wore his tuxedo. There was a cut about him. Savoir-vivre. My Uncle Leo. Leo Tang. Or, as his mates called him, Bow Tie Tang.

At a pre-Christmas party that year I watched wide-eyed as he kissed any woman who stepped beneath the mistletoe hanging in the hallway. "Caught you!" he'd yell. "Caught you again!" He even caught me a few times and gave me a hug. It was a gathering of friends and a carefree spirit gilded the room.

I guess, in those days, he, like everyone else, was relieved and glad that the war was over. Whether he'd had a difficult war or not he never said. He was with the Australian Army during its campaigns in Wewak and New Britain and in its push to recapture Borneo. The few times he spoke about his experiences he mostly told anecdotes. He never said much about the fighting. He did, however, have one story that was deeply important to him. That one he told many times.

We're on patrol in northern Borneo. One afternoon there's gunfire in the distance and we send a small unit out to investigate. Most of us stay in camp. I'm on duty. The unit seems to have been gone for a long time, getting on to dusk, and our commander is starting to worry. Just then more gunfire breaks out. The commander comes over. "Hey BT, " he says to me, they all used the nickname that Eddie had given me, "I don't like the sound of that gunfire. Shimmy up one of those coconut trees and see ifthere's something going on. " He orders me to be careful but, even without his warning, I would have been. qyou 're up in a tree you 're a sitting target if the enemy spots you and the Japs were pretty sharp shooters. Z slide up the tree as quietly as I can and, when I'm about 30 feet up, I see our unit returning. They're about 500 yards away so I give them a wave. Well, bugger me, one of them startsfiring at me. I'm gripping a branch and packing it. In a few seconds, I know I'll be a goner. But Eddie is in the unit. He has a good look and tells the others: "That's one of our blokes you galahs. It's BT. " Eddie saved my life. They all saw this Asian face in a tree and thought I was one of the enemy.

Leo and Eddie were pretty close friends anyway but, after that episode, my uncle felt that he owed Eddie. After they left the army they kept in close contact: they went to the Anzac marches together; drank together regularly; and often went duck and pigeon shooting. Then they went into business as partners running a hardware store on Coogee Bay Road, the wide street that runs down to the beach. They made an odd, unlikely couple: the slim, still youthful, effervescent Chinese and the thickset, serious, sandy-haired Australian. Both of them had been fortunate: they came through the New Guinea and Borneo campaigns unwounded. As Leo used to say, the closest he came to getting shot was when he was 30 feet up a tree.

Eddie embodied quietness. When he was invited to Leo's house for dinner, as he was from time to time, he was generally polite and reserved. He wasn't much of a talker, more the one who listened earnestly to what others were saying. It's not as though he was without humour. But he was never the life of the party the way Leo was. In those years after the war, Leo was always in a buoyant mood. He wanted to stay up until the last bottle had been emptied, the last song sung, the final cigarette extinguished. He had little use for sleep. On such occasions, Eddie would sit in a corner, talking only intermittently and drinking steadily, withdrawing more and more into himself the longer he drank. Almost but not quite self-effacing. Except when he danced.

That was what brought Eddie out, made him shine. He could dance like a dream. You would never have guessed it from his solid build, but when he moved onto the dance floor, lightness directed his feet. He glided, swivelled, and turned elegantly. And it meant there was never a shortage of partners. Women relished dancing with Eddie. Foxtrot, tango, quickstep, rumba. He knew them all. Performed them effortlessly and inventively.

And it was how he got to know Bessie. She needed a dancing partner for her debut at the Trocadero, a venue in George Street that was popular for debutante parties in those days. Young Chinese women in their early 20s would be dressed in long flowing gowns accompanied by young men in starched white shirts, dinner suits and shiny black pumps. The women were coming out into society.

It was Leo who pressed Eddie into service.

"Sure you can do it, Eddie. You'll make her evening if you escort her."

"I don't know. She's such an attractive girl. Why would she go with me?"

"I'm not asking you to propose to her. Just make like Astaire and Rogers on the planks at the Troc."

"Are you sure she won't mind?"

"Eddie, Eddie, throw away those self-doubts the Jesuits drilled into you."

If you had asked me, I'd have said that Bessie was more Leo's type and that they would end up together. And, had that occurred, then the events that were soon to unfold would never have happened. Leo knew Bessie's family and had met her well before she ever executed any quickstep with Eddie. She was vibrant, outgoing, even flamboyant. I liked her immediately, the first time we met.

"Leo's nephew, eh? You're the one with the brains. At uni. Doing French and English. You stay at his place, right?"

"Yes. I'm there during the week. It saves travelling time. My parents are a fair way out of the city."

"He's talks about you. Brags actually. I can see where the family resemblance is. You two make quite a dashing duo." She said it with a lilting, warm, vibrato laugh. It was the kind of laugh that drew a circle around you as well. "I have some French novels I used to study. If you're interested, I'll drop them off to Leo for you sometime."

She enjoyed male company and flirted mischievously and lightly. Although she knew where to draw the line, to check an unwanted advance. That meant, of course, that there were possibly advances not checked. I suspected that Leo could have fallen into the second category.

Bessie had served with the WACS during the war. She was stationed in Darwin when the Japanese bombed the town and had been highly commended for her courage as a relief ambulance driver helping to get the wounded to the temporary hospital that had to be set up. When Australian prisoners of war were released in Singapore in 1945 she was on one of the hospital ships that brought the men back to Australia. She was part-Chinese. Her father, according to Leo, had a wife in Canton who had been unable to come to Australia and he had married an Australian woman, Ruby Bennett, Bessie's mother. The parents were often given a hard time. Mixed marriages, a rarity in the inter-war years, were exposed to the small- mindedness of an insular society.

Her experiences in the war and the treatment of haparents accentuated a combativeness which was already in Bessie's character. She never shirked a fight, especially if it meant protecting the underdog. I'm sure that was what Leo most admired in her. He liked people with spirit and gumption and these qualities she had in full measure.

"Old Bessie,'' he'd say, "I wouldn't tangle with her. She'd knock you over before you'd even raised your dukes. If we'd had her in our unit we'd have cleaned up in Borneo in a fortnight."

They were going out together for a while but then it had seemed to tail off. Leo didn't say why and I never asked.

Eddie rehearsed dance routines with her and they looked more than well-matched on the night of her debut. No one really knew when the relationship shifted to something serious but, one evening, when I was having dinner at Leo's place, he announced that "Eddie's going steady." He said it in a neutral voice, no trace of regret although I swear I saw a fleeting pain in his eyes. It made me want to say to him, "Stir into action. She's right for you, not Eddie." But I held myself in check. I didn't, at my age, know enough about such matters to offer anyone advice, let alone someone like Leo. Yet it seemed as if he had read my thoughts.

"Half his luck," said Leo, "half his luck. I almost asked her once."

"Why didn't you?"

"Not enough Dutch courage." It was such a cryptic remark that I felt he didn't want to be probed any further. But I thought it a strange comment for someone to make who had been in the war.

It was my mother, Shirley, who provided some critical insights into the relationship between her brother and Bessie. In the months leading up to the wedding my mother got to know Bessie fairly well. She had done a course in dressmaking and Bessie asked her to help select material and attend fittings for the wedding gown and the gowns of the bridesmaids. They usually ended by having lunch or dinner together. According to my mother, Bessie, at this time, was in a light- hearted, insouciant mood as if getting married were the thing she had been most looking forward to in her life. Yet their conversations, wandering over many subjects would somehow drift back to Bessie and Leo. So my mother had asked Bessie one day why the relationship hadn't advanced a step or two further. Why they hadn't become engaged.

"Leo and I together would not be a good combination, Shirley. We're the Jokers in the game of poker, chameleons. We aren't firmly grounded."

When my mother recounted this to me, I thought straightaway of the gallivanting Leo I'd seen at parties and on the dance floor and I was inclined to accept what Bessie had said at face value. It turned out, however, that there was a bit more to the story than that. What Bessie said was that it was Leo who had ended things when they had become serious about one another. "He broke it off. The week we were going to be engaged. We'd met soon after he was demobbed. He came with his mother to visit my parents. Our parents knew each other from the old days in Darwin, well before the war. I didn't know much about him then, except that he came from a large family and had served in the army. He was good with my parents. My mum especially, they got along like a house on fire. That made me like him right away. She didn't find it easy mixing with my dad's Chinese side of the family, it was the language and her being Australian. They treated her differently but with Leo it wasn't that way at all.

"He came by himself about a week later and stayed for dinner. And he was lively, in sparkling form. I didn't say much but I watched him and, every once in a while, when he thought I wasn't looking, he'd glance over at me and his features would soften. And I realised, without him saying a word, that the reason he'd dropped in again was because of me. I was quite taken by that. So, casually, trying not to be obvious, I said I was planning to go to the movies the next evening and did he want to come along. He jumped to his feet and did a mock salute: "yes sir!" And broke out into a broad grin like he'd just won the jackpot."

Once she got into the story, my mother said, Bessie became fired up. It was as if she'd been waiting for the right moment to tell someone what had happened. Soon, Bessie and Leo were seeing each other frequently, going on drives and picnics at the weekends, and dancing or the movies in the evenings. He even tried to coax her to come duck-shooting with him and Eddie but she turned him down. Once in a while, she stayed over at Leo's apartment. He was living in Bronte at that time. She never told her parents what she'd done, she thought they'd be shocked and upset, so she'd make something up. She was staying with a female friend.

"We'd been together for nearly six months when he drove by one Saturday morning and took me into the city. He wouldn't say what he was up to, just to wait and see. After he parked we walked to the Strand Arcade, in Castlereagh Street. I was still mystified until we stopped outside a jewellery store. 'Oh,' I said, 'you planning to buy a pen or a watch?' 'No,' he shot back, 'just a few carats.' "Funny, you know, he never actually proposed to me. Not, at least, that I can remember. I guess he felt the ring said it all. One evening Leo and I sat down and discussed a date for announcing our engagement and maybe throwing a party.

"Early that week, the week we were planning to announce our engagement, he phoned and said he needed to see me right away. 'Having second thoughts, eh?' I said. When I saw him, however, he looked completely shattered, like I'd never seen him before. I grabbed him and pulled him close and he was shaking so I kept holding him. 'What is it, Leo? What is it?' I said, but I couldn't get a word out of him. Finally, he said, 'I'm sorry but I can't go through with the engagement. Not right now. Give me some time.' "

"He didn't say anything more. Not at first. He sat there very quiet and not a word. It was so unlike him. So out of character. Then he told me he'd been involved with another woman before we started going out. It had finished, or so he thought, until she rang to tell him that she was pregnant. And that she wanted him to marry her. He assured me that it was finished, in the past, but he needed time to sort things out.

"I waited for him to say what was happening with him and with us. I was on hold, just waiting. Then, one evening, while we're having dinner at his place, he told me that his life was in a mess and that he didn't want me to hang on, waiting for him to put things right. I told him I didn't mind but he insisted. Don't wait he said. In the end, I didn't. Enter Eddie."

My mother asked her what it was with Eddie.

"Eddie you can count on. Solid as a block of marble."

"Maybe solid is the wrong word. More dependency and trust."

I thought she'd made Eddie sound like one of the old sandstone and marble colonial banks in Martin Place. I never mentioned any of this to Leo. To have done so would have seemed as if I'd been nosing behind his back like a private eye. The truth was that he and Bessie held a certain fascination for me mainly because I liked them both.

The wedding was pretty grand. Leo was best man. Bessie's two younger sisters were the bridesmaids. A relatively lavish function was held, ironically, at the Trocadero. There was a gathering prominent enough to attract mention in the newspaper society columns. That was where I read that Eddie's family and relations were wealthy landowners in the Hunter Valley.

Did I say that Eddie had started to train for the priesthood before the war? He told me about it once when I asked him what he had been doing before his call-up.

"Stuck it out for three years then I gave up. I couldn't see it as my future, I'm not that comfortable with people, especially people I don't know, and I didn't want to give others advice about their lives. I barely know what to tell myself." For Eddie, this amounted to a speech. It underscored his inward nature.

The marriage seemed to hum along fine. Leo saw his friends regularly and once or twice I also was invited to their house for dinner. I'd look at Bessie and think that marriage agreed with her. She hadn't suppressed her lively, spontaneous side but she was somehow quieter, more contemplative, as if she had absorbed a sliver of Eddie's personality.

Then I noticed that Leo's visits became less frequent. They would have been married about eight months or so at that point.

"Is everything fine with Ginger and Fred?"

"Sure kid, why not?" But he said it without conviction.

"Are they having some problems?" "Nothing that Eddie has told me."

"What does Bessie say?"

"She says Eddie's really hitting the bottle."

Leo headed out of the room as he spoke. It was his exit line and he wasn't, for the moment, about to tell me any more. But it made me anxious. I didn't want things to be going bad for Bessie, not any time, but especially not so soon after the wedding.

It might have been about three weeks later. I had finished lectures and was my way back to Leo's place for dinner. It was a cool, gusty evening and I regretted not having brought a jacket with me as I hurried along Oxford Street past the familiar rows of food and clothing shops. There were not many people about but everyone seemed to have quickened their pace as if eager to be off the street and inside the warmth of their own rooms.

I decided to pop into Dinny's Cafk for a hot drink before catching a bus to Leo's place in Randwick. Dinny's was a rather plain, homely restaurant below street level. I'd never been there. It struck me as uncommonly dimlit as if postwar power rationing had not yet been removed. Not many tables were occupied. I gazed around the room and my eyes fastened on a woman in an overcoat sitting by herself in one corner. She wasn't facing me but when she turned in the direction of the light I saw that it was Bessie. I stepped across to her table. When she saw me she immediately made a move to get up as though she had some other urgent business to attend to. I was momentarily puzzled, especially when she tried to swivel her body away from me. Then I knew why. Even in that indifferent, obtuse light I saw that she had bruising on her left cheek and that her left eye was swollen.

"Did you have an accident, Bessie? What happened?" I said. "Nothing. I slipped at home, bumped myself against a chair that refused to get out of the way.'' It was said without a shred of conviction. A cover-up to avoid telling the real story. But I didn't press the point. If she wanted to tell me she would.

"How's Eddie?"

She looked hard at me for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. She didn't say anything at all. Her face, however, held the pain that she couldn't express.

I didn't know how to broach it with Leo. That I had a suspicion that the marriage was rocky? That Eddie had been hitting her? Where was my proof? I had none. Only my hunch about what had happened. So I sought an opening with a simple, factual assertion.

"I saw Bessie yesterday. She's looking drawn and tired, I think she going through a rough patch."

Leo didn't say anything at first and I thought that he was going to give me one of his short, cryptic remarks or else hold to his silence. Not give anything away. Then I saw the anger well up in him. He straightened in his chair and slammed his fist on the table.

"That bastard Eddie. I'll do him in. I swear. Picking on her all the time, pushing her to the brink. What did she tell you? What did she say?" He assumed that I knew what had been happening; that Bessie had told me things.

"Only that -"

"Did she tell you he hits her? Did you see the bruises?"

"Yes, I saw -" "She's frightened out of her wits. I told her to go stay with her folks but she didn't want that, said that she couldn't face it. I - I've asked her to move in here if she wants."

I'd never seen Leo like this before. Filled with rage and despair and hurt. He threw me a grimace. "I had my chance, kid, and I let it slip away."

Bessie took Leo up on his offer. Perhaps it was the only choice she had. I saw how they moved around one another. The levity of the past, before she was married, was gone. They were like two wounded veterans. I felt uncomfortable in that atmosphere and took to spending longer hours at the library so that I wouldn't have to see the agony they were putting each other through.

I didn't ask what had happened about Eddie or whether there had been a confrontation between him and Leo. I thought about Eddie, the quiet, silent Eddie who only came alive when he danced and I thought how bad it must be for him to have his marriage crumble so soon. Yet I was glad that it had happened, that Leo had intervened and that Bessie had walked away from the trap that she was in.

I guess there was another cost for Leo. He had broken with his closest friend. That must have been hard. He valued his friends and this had been a friendship seemingly without price. After all, they had looked out for one another during the war and had come through relatively unscarred but maybe there were deeper things with Eddie, hurts that none of us knew about, which led to the outbursts that had wrecked his marriage.

Leo surely missed him. But he'd probably seen enough brutality in the war without having to endure it among his friends. Eddie's actions must have stung him like a betrayal. They, had, after all, been like brothers. Now it was over. "I saw Eddie over at the Coogee shops the other day," said Leo. We were in the kitchen of his apartment, drinking coffee. He seemed distant, distracted.

"How was he?" I asked.

"Seemed slower, like he was sleepwalking."

"Did you talk long?"

"Talk? I didn't talk. What was there to say? I just kept going but maybe I -," and his voice trailed off and he didn't say any more.

I watched him. The eyes lonely and lost. He was in a different place, somewhere that he didn't want to talk about. And of that sparkling, beaming Leo who looked out from our family photo, there was not a glimmer. CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS

Leo had come back, had returned to this far northern city where he had been born. He nursed the solidly cold beer while he sat in the living room, on the rattan sofa, pressing down the loosened bindings on the arms and easing his body back into the misshapen, sagging foam cushions. He stared at the relentless whirl of the overhead fan pushing cool air into the otherwise suffocating humidity.

When he and his brothers and sisters were small there had been no such conveniences as fans. Summers were blankets of compressed heat that engulfed you wherever you went. The only relief was to go swimming at the creek on the edge of town or to trek out to the beach.

Leo looked around the room. At the mismatched furniture and the fading yellow paint on the walls and the small, solitary bookcase sitting in the far corner. His cousins were not readers. There was one book in the bookcase: A Guide to the Peoples of the Worldfor Primary Students. It was cushioned on top of a pile of magazines. He knew, without getting up to check, that they were either about hunting and fishing or carried assorted pictures of barely clad or bare women.

Had he made the right move? Migrating back? He gulped his beer and relished the icy flow into his body. All the cold beers he'd knocked back in 20 odd years. And all the stuff-ups, the stops and starts. Jobs abandoned, business ventures gone awry, romances, abortions. Well, not really. There'd only been one abortion. Or only one that he knew about definitely. Or that he'd paid for. It had been a hateful episode. She had wanted to keep the baby but that would have meant getting hitched and he wasn't ready to tackle that great adventure. Not yet. And, in truth, not with her. But he didn't know how to be cruel or blunt about the truth. That she wasn't the one. So he had rambled on about his lack of commitment, his immaturity, his doubts about the future. In the end, he supposed, she'd realised that he was trying to say no. Decent about it, she was. Too decent for him. Although he thought of their future together and saw it filled with disagreement and bad humour. More than either of them would ever need. At least they had been spared all that. He fished his tobacco pouch out of the top pocket of his shirt and removed the neat packet of papers, extracted one and held it on his lower lip. He rolled a ball of tobacco and flattened it into a thin rope that he cradled in his right palm then adeptly transferred to the paper in his left hand. When Leo was at school, a mate, Concho, had once brought a tin that made perfect roll-your- owns. He couldn't recall how it had worked, only that it had saved all the ritual of what he was now doing, tucking the tobacco into the paper and then rolling it into a cigarette. He ran his tongue on the edge of the paper then pressed the paper down, took a used match from the ashtray on the coffee table beside the sofa and tamped the end that he would smoke from.

Cigarette in mouth, unlit, beer in his right hand, Leo stood up and began to walk around the room, shuffling his feet from time to time to an imaginary tune that had been darting in and out of his head all day.

When they begin the Beguine It brings back the sound of music so tender It brings back a night of tropical splendour It brings back a memory evergreen

I'm with you once more Under the stars And down by the shore The orchestra 's playing And even the palms seem to be swaying

He tried and tried but he couldn't extract the next line from his memory. Once, he'd known the lines to the whole song and to many others. But that was years ago when he went dancing regularly at the Trocadero and the ballroom on the top of Grace Brothers in Broadway.

He stopped in front of the bookcase and picked up the single book. The magazine it had been resting on was Cheeky Blondes, No. 71. He wondered if his cousins owned the previous 70 volumes. Not that he would ever ask. Book in hand he went back to the sofa and sat down. He rested his beer on the right arm of the sofa and began to leaf through the book. When he read through the section on Australia he noticed that there were several paragraphs about and European settlers accompanied by photos of corroborees and didgeridoo players and English migrants arriving at Port Melbourne but no reference to the Chinese. He scanned the sections on the United States and Canada and discovered the same thing. The mass migration of the Cantonese to the New World had never entered the consciousness of the author of A Guide to the Peoples of the Worldfor Primary Students. Was it ignorance or deliberate oversight? His only conclusion was that the book was a feeble guide.

He flicked back to the title page. The year of publication was 1925. On the preceding page, at the top, his brother had written in a careful childish cursive, This book is theproperty of Harry Siew Hing Tang, 36 Mitchell St, Darwin, NT, Australia, , the Earth, the Universe. Leo smiled at the inscription, sure that his older brother would have penned the exaggerated address in complete seriousness. Just in case someone from Mars or Venus should have come across Harry's book, should it ever have gone missing in space.

He picked up the box of redheads next to the ashtray and pulled out a match. In a single-handed motion he lit the cigarette. It was a good party trick these days but one which had taken him weeks and hundreds of matches to master, while he was in the army waiting for his assignment overseas. He drew the tobacco deep into his lungs then blew a series of rings in the direction of the fan, watching the downward press of air swiftly distort the ovals into twisted elongations.

Leo looked at the time, just on five thirty, and wondered whether his cousins had finished work for the day. Generally, they were back home by six, which made it a solid day for them. Most mornings, when he awoke at eight, they were already gone. He hadn't minded the fortnight of nothing to do. Newly arrived in the town, he was grateful for the chance to take things casually, walk and ride around to get his bearings, and see whether Darwin agreed with him.

He thought of Bessie, already more than three months in Rockhampton. Funny how their separation had drawn them both to more tropical places, as if Sydney had lacked enough warmth. He is standing near the newspaper kiosk where Martin Place runs into George Street, watching the lunchtime traffic, the earnest determination of the men and women striding back to their offices. The men in dark doublebreasted suits and gaberdine overcoats, subdued greys and browns, and the women strangely devoid of shape in their inert grey and navy dresses and severe blackpumps. There is barely a trickle of laughter in this moving mass. He wonders what has set the city on such a grim course. Hasn't the war been over more than three years now? Yet evetyone charges around as if life is too serious to countenance humour. Or is it the Sydney winter, its bleak skies deJLing anyone to smile?

He rolls a cigarette and lights it quickly, savouring the first rush of nicotine as he inhales. A tram clangs as it scuttles along George Street on its way to the Quay. He checks his watch. It is 1:45 and she is going to be late for the appointment. He has an image of her fastidiously brushing her jacket, checking the line of her stockings, deliberating which handbag to bring and missing her tram by several minutes. But he isn't annoyed. He doesn't really care fthey are too late for the appointment. In some ways he'd be relieved ifhe didn't have to go with her at this moment.

The office of the Court is in Pitt Street. Bessie has told him that she is signing the papers at 2:00 pm. She has asked him to be a witness. He doesn't know what happens ifyou miss your appointment. Wants to not be there. Wants not to have to look into Eddie's eyes when they see each other afler all these months. They have not spoken since the day at the police station. They had been the best of mates. Now they were separated by an immense barricade. Eddie on one side. Leo and Bessie the other.

She races towards him, out of breath, grabs his arm and they run to the corner of Pitt Street, turn lefl in the direction ofthe Quay, and hare into the marble foyer ofthe Court Building. And there they stop. In unison. In complete understanding that this is a moment ofjinality. The end of a marriage. The end of a friendship. And he doesn't want to do it. He hears Eddie's voice on that day, pleading, begging, hears the distillation of hisfriend's pain in the one sentence as they are about to enter the police station: "Coverfor me, Leo. Cover for me." "I know", says Bessie, reading his thoughts. "I know, but there S no going back and Eddie knows that as well as I."

It passes less painfully than he had anticipated. The papers signed and witnessed, Eddie stands up straight, shakes Leo's hand, nods at Bessie, and marches out the door, but the strong whisky trail that follows him is an unvoiced disclosure. Johnny Walker embalms his wound.

They live together in Waverley, in a small brick cottage looking out onto Queen's Park. In summer they can see countless games of cricket on the wide open expanse; in winter goalposts are erected for rugby. He counts the seasons. Exactlyfive. Summer to summer. And it doesn't come together. They do Sydney things. Ferry rides to Mosman and Watson's Bay and Manly; surfing at Coogee and Bronte and Maroubra; eating in cafes at Potts Point; movies at the State Theatre in Market Street. They go to the big Department stores, Anthony Horderns and Mark Foys, to shop for gijls for birthdays and weddings and Christmas. Once or twice they go dancing but dancing is where it began for her and Eddie and they feel awkward together as they try to punch out rhythms on the floor. They are good to each other, sometimes even passionate, but the severed friendship with Eddie shrouds their relationship and, in the end, suflocates it.

She sees it in his response to things. He doesn't laugh at jokes the way he used to when Bessie and Eddie and he went dancing at the Trocadero. He still says funny things but she never catches the dance in his eyes any more. When he thinks he isn't being watched he walks a melancholy line. She sees the footprints trailing in every direction.

And she decides it has to end. Before the small turns and slight bruises become a teeming, deep- seated malady.

"My sister's invited me to stay with her in Rockhampton. Do you want to go with me?"

"How long for? " "I haven 't seen her in ages. Maybe a few months. "

"I'd have to throw in my job. " He has just started as a salesman for GMH in Pagewood, on commission, and the money is decent. He gives every appearance of weighing it in his mind. He doesn't say right away whether he will go or not. But when he decides, he tells her he will stay. For the job. But he knows that isn 't the reason. And so does she.

The day he takes her to the station to catch the train he senses that they will be separating permanently. He sees it in the purposeful way she strides along the platform and leaps on board the train. There is too much eagerness in that clamber, too much desire to be away. She looh back, safe now inside the protective enclosure of the carriage. Tries to summon up her warmest smile but fails and leaves him with the memory of the thinnest of grins, a pauper's parsimony.

"I'll phone you when I get in. " She waves as the train pulls away, taking from him the only reason he had to remain in Sydney.

Darwin is where he's come to escape the past and begin again. At least that is what part of him recognises. It has the look still of a frontier town, a casual, surface-friendly town where people accept you without asking too many questions. Yet it's also a homecoming of sorts, a re- connecting with location and beginnings. He hasn't been here for more than twenty years, can only sketchily remember what it looked like in his boyhood, but it feels like the right place for him to be in at this stage of his unsettled life.

He is grateful to his two cousins who, with casual aplomb, invited him to stay with them when he wrote to say he was travelling north for a break. Farnie and Clem. The English names that Chinese parents give their kids is a mystery to him. One he would like to unravel. Farnsworth and Clement. They sound like names out of a Church of England register in some remote corner of Essex or Surrey. Where did his uncle and aunt unearth such names? Or had they been provided with a list ? And the girls: Charlotte, Gwendolyn, Hester, Phoebe. You heard or read those names and expected to meet a quartet of English ladies, fair-skinned, lightly flushed cheeks, what was that expression, yes, "peaches and cream," but the girls, young women actually, are burnished to the hue of seasoned teak. The sun, so vigorous here in the north, has stolen the blackness from their hair so that it hangs, fine and shiny, but cedar brown. They are, when seen together, a handsome family. And tightly bonded. It's a quality that he wished he and his siblings had. But no, his family seems to bicker over the smallest slight, to walk the line constantly between uneasy truce and skirmish.

Every weekend at his uncle and aunt's large weatherboard house in Cavenagh Street, close to the centre of town, there is a family gathering. He relishes these occasions, the banter and laughter and the friendly games of poker and mahjong that go on into late evening.

And he especially likes his aunt, his father's youngest sister, Aunt Holly. Her Chinese name is Ling Hong-lik. He guesses that the Holly is somehow an English rendering of her given name, Hong-lik. She is in her early sixties and is sprightly, energetic, determined, no-nonsense. His uncle, Herbert, good-humoured, seems withdrawn, reticent beside her as though he has conceded to her boundless stamina. Leo doesn't know his Chinese name; everyone either calls him Say Buck (youngest uncle) or Bertie. Even the Chinese who have little or no English give his name a Chinese inflection when they greet him: "Ber-tee", they say, with all the stress on the first syllable.

Leo sees them waiting on the platform for him when he steps offthe train. It has been several years since they saw each other at his mother's house in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. They greet him excitedly when they catch sight of him. Holly gives him a generous hug.

"You so pale Leo, you afraid of the sun or something?" says Holly. She is petite, nestling up to his shoulder even though he is not much above average height.

"I was working long hours right up to the time I left Sydney. Not much chance to get out." Not much desire either. After Bessie left he felt completely deflated, inert. The Waverley cottage was a hollow space, a vacuum he was eager to escape.

"We drive you over to the boys 'place then you settled, wash and coming for dinner tonight.

Clem has a car. She bring you to our house. " Holly went to primary school and had several years of high school in Tennant Creek, learnt English, and reads it well enough, but you would never guess from the way she mixes and matches her pronouns and verbs.

He meets most of the family for the first time at dinner that day. There are three boys and four girls. Rennie, the eldest of the brothers, is living in Brisbane but everyone else is there. And they draw him into their circle as ifhe has been there all along.

"How you been doing down in Sydney, Leo? " asks Hester in her nasally Australian drawl. "You been going out with that Bessie Hing, she S a real nice girl."

"Bessie's staying in Rockhampton for a while, " says Leo, wishing that Hester hadn't brought up the subject.

"She has family there? "

"Her sister and some cousins. "

"You reckon you might join her up there soon? "

"Maybe, Hester, " says Leo noncommittally, "maybe. "

That first weekend, Clem and Farnie invite him to go duck shooting, a regular Sunday rite that they, through practice, execute with precision. At 5 am the alarm goes off, Clem puts on coffee, packs sandwiches and Farnie makes heaps of toast and cooks bacon and eggs. They eat, shave, don their khakis, collect their rifles and hunting gear and are out the door by 6:15. Reluctantly, Leo follows them to the car, wishing he were still in bed.

The drive in the old Dodge ute, a pre-war model, takes about an hour heading north on dry dusty roads into bushland that is spasmodically dense. They park at the end of an unsealed track and start to walk in the rising heat through a forest of tall, spindly gums that look absolutely starved of water, their foliage sparse. Leo, who has not handled a rifle for four or five years, not since he and Eddie used to go pigeon shooting around Sydney and , watches his two cousins as they stride confidently and energetically through undergrowth, rifles slung across their shoulders, hunting equipment in a large burlap bag. The walk is peppered with humour, mainly jokes that Clem or Farnie have picked up in the pub they drink at regularly.

"An Irish sailor goes to the French Riviera because he's heard that the girls there are gorgeous and forward. He tries and tries but he can't attract anyone. No luck. So he asks a local sitting on the beach walk what he should do. 'Get into a swimming costume and wear it on the beach.' The sailor does so but still has no success. He asks the local for more advice. 'Put a large potato in your costume, that'll bring them running.' The Irishman buys a potato and does as he's been told. No luck. He is now exasperated and, wearing his briefs, confronts the local. 'I did what you said and it still doesn't work.' 'You're supposed to put the potato down the front of your costume. ' "

Farnie breaks out into thunderous laughter as he delivers the punch-line. Then he turns sideways to look at Leo. "You know any good ones?"

But before Leo has time to call up a joke from his dormant humour bank, Clem is motioning them to be silent. Through the scrub they can see part of a creek and, in the distance, perhaps 40 feet away, a flock of mallards is swimming toward clumps of rushes on the farther shore. The water is picture still at the moment as if posing for a wildlife photographer. Clem and Farnie crouch low to get a better sight of the ducks. They cock their rifles and get ready to fire except that before they can do so several shots ring out from a location to their right, some thirty feet from them. The water burbles as the birds take flight leaving two ducks that lie inert on the surface of the creek. Voices can be heard coaxing a dog into the water. An Irish setter comes into view, gliding smoothly through the water. Leo wonders how it will manage to gather both birds in its jaws or whether it will have to make two excursions. Then the problem is answered for him. A second setter is in the water, swimming after its companion.

"Goodness me," says Clem adopting an exaggerated twee inflection, "I wonder if the butler is waiting on the shore to debone the birds."

The other birds having been scared away, Farnie and Clem, without even a shrug of disappointment, trudge on, following the line of the shore, looking for any signs of more ducks. Leo runs his fingers along the well-handled butt of his rifle, thinking about the pigeon shoots that he and Eddie used to go on, wondering where Eddie is now and what he is doing. Not that there was any point in them keeping in touch, not after the trouble and hurt Eddie caused Bessie. And Bessie.. .if he and she gave it enough time would it be possible to make it work again, to repair the breach that lay between them? He makes a mental note either to drop Bessie a line or call her soon. It's been three months and two weeks since she left Sydney on the train.

Nothing seems to faze the two cousins. They are good-natured and easy-going, work hard and enjoy their social life, including their Sunday spar with the ducks. Leo doesn't ask about their personal life, why they are still both single, whether they plan to settle down. He is curious but has no desire to pry. There is no evidence of steady girl-friends, no one who regularly partners either brother.

He has been in the town about two weeks when Farnie asks if he would like to help them in their food supply business. Leo has no valid reason to refuse. He has not yet decided whether he will stay on in Darwin or eventually return to Sydney. His one conversation with Bessie, admittedly on a bad connection, is frustratingly desultory. She gives every appearance of having settled into a comfortable pattern staying with her sister but when he ties to steer the discussion to her and him, to their relationship, she darts off in a zig-zag direction like a minnow in search of food. So he gives up the attempt and simply tells her that he'll stay in touch. When he thinks about it afterwards, he can't help concluding that she is content for now to keep a physical distance between them.

The two cousins supply fresh produce to Katharine, Tennant Creek, Daly Waters, Alice Springs, vegetables, fruit, seafood and meat. They hire drivers on sub-contract to make the run. It is a steady business but not, as Clem muses from time to time, "the Big Strike." Leo helps them initially in their supply centre, packing the food into cardboard cartons and placing the cartons into wooden crates which are then filled with bags of ice, sealed and ready for loading onto the trucks. He finds the work pleasantly distracting, its repetition removing the need to think too much about the steps involved. But he knows that what he is doing is akin to running on the spot, a substitute for not making real choices.

Holly alludes to this on the morning she comes by to take him to visit his grandfather's grave at the cemetery not far from the centre of town. He gets into her tiny black Morris and is greeted with the scent of freshly cut flowers which are crowded into a wooden bucket wedged behind Holly's seat. The drive is short, taking little more than 20 minutes. Holly parks the car with deliberate care, making sure that it is parallel to the curb. She picks up an aging leather bag from the back seat and slips it over her shoulder. Leo carries the bucket cradled in his arms and they amble into the grounds of the cemetery. He notices that many of the sites are unkempt and in need of proper weeding and tending, overgrown with woollybutt, wallaby grass, mulga and gidgee.

"Not much visitor come here anymore. Most of these graves real old now. There's a newer cemetery on the far side of town people prefer," says Holly, waving her hand in a circular sweep that could mean any one of half a dozen directions. "Your grand-dad, great uncle and great aunt, all bury here. My mum and aunts too."

They pause when they arrive at a section of the grounds that has a large wooden plaque bearing Chinese writing in bold, black calligraphy. "Herbie wrote that. Pretty good, eh?"

The inscription, in translation, says "Families of the third village area in Toishan." At least that is how Leo, with his unpractised Chinese, renders the characters. Holly quickens her pace as they near the graves of her family and his. He marvels at her agility and stamina as he helps her clear the overgrown grass around the family headstones. She has brought shears and pruners and they have the surrounds looking passably neat within half an hour. They remove the flowers from the bucket and insert them into a dark red ceramic vase in front of his grandfather's headstone. He is sweating freely from his exertions but Holly looks crisply relaxed as if she has not lifted a finger. Leo recognises the Chinese characters for his grandfather's name, Tang Wei- hok, notes the years of his life, 1868-1943.

He didn't get the letter about his grandfather until February 1944. He was in northern Borneo at the time of the death. They were on a tiny headland and the Japanese had pinned down his unit. When they were eventually relieved his unit was moved south to join a major assault on the Japanese. They were efectively isolated for several months and he had no news from home throughout that time. He remembered reading the letter and forcing himselfto hold in his grief but it must have shown on his face.

"Everything okay, BT? "

"Christ I hate this frigging war. My grand-dad died last September and I only hear about it today. I can 't ...I mean ...I didn't even get a chance to go to the funeral. "

"Sure. 'Corporal Tang seeking permission to return home, sir. Your location corporal? Northern Borneo. Under heavy enemyjire. Permission denied. ' I mean what would you have done ifthey had given you leave?"

"Easy, Eddie, I'd have caught the magic carpet. Home in ajlash. " Trying to be flippant, trying to mask his sadness. "Yeah,you and Captain Marvel."

But that night Leo wanders into the stillborn darkness, awayfiom his tent, and grapples with the loss, silently uttering a heathen's prayer for his grandfather's safe deliverance without quite knowing what that means, wishing that he had the power to summon him back to light and laughter and the embrace of his family. It isn't the ending that Leo expected. He had thought that there would always be time, ajler the war, for conversation and companionship with the old man. He wishes that he were talking with his parents and his sisters at this moment. The knowledge that this can't happen leaves him feeling hollow inside.

"She had a hard life, your grand-dad. But he always honest good worker. Would have been pleased, you coming back to Darwin to visit everyone, including him. Reckon he'd be worried though, you not hitching yet and all, eh."

Leo makes no comment on what she says. "That girl, what's her name, Bessie, you not going to go visit him or you biding time maybe?"

"She was married for a while," says Leo, as if that explains everything.

"I know, Leo. You mum, she told me all about that fellah, Aussie chap. Sounds real nasty."

"Eddie. His name was Eddie. Not a bad bloke. He was my best mate. Saved my life during the war."

"These mixing marriages, always hard. We knew several Chinese boys married Aussie girls, had a dickens of a time, trouble with in-laws on every side. I worrying about my younger girls, too. The older two, they all right, settled down, met nice Chinese boys. Hester and Phoebe, they like dating Aussie boys. That worry me. You find the right one, you not dillying dally, Leo. Maybe you meet someone here. Depending how long you stay." "I'm not sure how long I'll be here for. Perhaps I'll give it a couple of months. See how things work out."

"Yeah, you got to give everything time."

Holly turns away, stands in front of his grandfather's headstone and bows solemnly three times. She gestures to Leo and he also bows. They walk across to the sites where other members of Holly's family are buried and give three bows.

"We done our duty for today. You want to come back, have lunch with me? Herbie not home, gone out to the club for a couple of bets. Don't know why she bother. Never pick a winner. The girls be there, but."

Leo nods in acquiescence, pleased that he has made the visit to the cemetery.

After a month and a half in Darwin, Leo has established some routine. He works during the week with Farnie and Clem, joins them on Friday nights at the pub for a few drinks, and has dinner at Holly's house on Sundays. He generally declines the invitations to go shooting with his cousins, finding that he gets little pleasure now from using a rifle. Why, he can't quite fathom. Instead, he develops a fondness for fishing. Or rather he develops a fondness for the company of the woman with whom he goes fishing.

Her name is Rebecca, Rebecca Wing. But almost everyone calls her Becky. She works on her family's farm, supplying vegetables to Farnie and Clem. Leo sees her several times a week when he makes the rounds to pick up provisions. It used to be Clem's job but he is happy to let Leo take it over so that he can concentrate more on managing the business. What grabs him about her is her directness, bordering on the brazen. "Don't try and lift too many cartons at once unless you wanna permanently strain your nuts." He looks across to the female voice that says this with a casual, good humour. She is dressed in work clothes, coveralls and boots, a canvas cap jauntily perched on her head. He is taken with her manner, immediately, and breaks out into a grin.

"I'm Farnie's cousin, Leo."

"You must be related to Clem as well."

"In a manner of speaking."

"You planning to stay with them a while?"

"Reckon 1'11 give it a few days, maybe a week."

She ignores the flippant remark. "I'm Becky. If you have any complaints about the quality of the goods, see me."

A few weeks of wisecracks and repartee and they are nattering like old friends. Leo feels relaxed with her. He invites her to dinner which means either a meal in Dimitri's or in one of several Chinese-Australian or Australian-Chinese (it depends which menu you order from) cafes along the main drag, Mitchell Street. He borrows the Ute, telling his cousins cryptically that he needs to go for a drive.

"Watch out for your wallet if you're in Madam Rosie's," says Clem, leering slightly.

"Madam Rosie's ?"

"The local knock shop," says Farnie. "Well you boys'll have to do all the explaining. Your Ute will be outside." Leo has gone out the door before either of them has time for a comeback.

Inside Dimitri's the smell of fried fat and overly sour vinegar permeates the restaurant. There is only a handful of patrons eating, it being midweek.

"I'll settle for grilled barramundi and chips."

"Reckon it's fresh?"

"Guaranteed. Dimiti plants the potatoes himself."

She looks intently at him when she is saying this and, for a few seconds, Leo doesn't know if she is being serious until a grin brushes across her tanned features. He notices, then, that free of her work gear and perennial cap, she is quite fetching.

"So why'd you choose Darwin?"

"Threw a dart at the map and it was the closest town."

"What would you have done if you'd struck Banka Banka?"

"Probably stayed put. The truth is, Sydney wasn't where I wanted to be after Bessie headed north. Besides, I'd always meant to see Darwin again. My grand-dad's buried here, I have relatives who have been here all their lives. It just seemed the right time to shift."

"Not too quiet after the big smoke?''

"No, quiet's good for me. For a while. And you?" "I always told mum that I planned to strike out for a city down south, but I started in the family business, got involved in it more and more and here I still am, after six years."

"You could still go."

"Nah, reckon they're too dependent on me now."

"Filial loyalty."

"Or something. What's she like, this Bessie you mentioned, or would you rather not say?' Giving him an out if he wants it.

Leo, unusually for him, tells her about the heady days in Sydney, after he was demobbed; how Eddie was his close friend; the parties he and Bessie and Eddie went to; the marriage that failed and why; and the time he and Bessie spent together in Sydney before she set off for Rockhampton. He feels some pressure has been lifted off him when he finishes, as if he has been at confession.

"Bessie's a fine person but we couldn't quite make a go of it after her divorce. I keep saying I should go to Rockhampton and see her but I always get cold feet at the last moment. Perhaps it's better to let things settle for a bit before I go there."

"You sound as if you're not sure which way to move."

"That's true. I'm not. How about you?"

"I try to steer clear of most of the men in this town. Too blokey, all that beer and swearing and bravado. Not to mention the fixation with guns and shooting. I like the outdoors, the bush and the beaches, but more so that I can get away and be on my own. I go fishing most Saturdays. You want to tag along sometime?" That is how it began. A casual midweek invitation which he accepts readily. A casual invitation which becomes a regular event that he looks forward to at the end of his working week.

Becky is a fish diviner. Of that he is very nearly convinced the first time that they go out together in her small wooden dinghy, anchoring in a protected southern curve of Fannie Bay. Becky has prepared the rods, tied the bait and casts confidently, flicking the line and sinker some 60 feet from the boat. Leo's cast is a shallow imitation of hers. They let their lines drift in the water, waiting patiently. After half an hour of casting without even the slightest of nibbles, Becky declares that they should move further in towards the cove.

She takes the oars and rows with measured, confident strokes until they have covered a distance of about 150 metres. She looks around appraisingly, peering at the ripples, assessing the flow of the tide, before she directs him to drop anchor and then casts her line close to the boat, no more than twelve feet away. He does the same. There is immediate success. She reels in a red-orange speckled cod, its colours shimmering in the sunlight, does this half a dozen more times in the next 20 minutes. Less adept, Leo manages two fish in the same time. But it is an impressive haul. The fish are tossed into a canvas bag which Becky leaves dangling in the water. She continues to fish but now, each time she catches something, she hauls in her line, unhooks the fish and drops it back into the water.

"I always believe in leaving something for the next fella when I've got enough."

They share a quiet afternoon during which she explains to him the finer points of fishing. He listens, intrigued that she has such an attachment to the sport.

"Do you like other things, like dancing, Becky?"

"You mean all that swirling around in taffeta and high heels? What kind of a girl do you think I am? No, the outdoors, on the water, alone with my own quirky thoughts, that's me. You missing the foxtrot and all that?" "No, just wondering whether you find enough to do in a tiny place like this."

"There's enough, long as you aren't bursting at the seams to get away."

They head back to shore in the late afternoon, the spring sun still radiating a pleasant warmth. He volunteers to row them but makes a hash of it, finding the coordination of twin oars hard to achieve, marvelling at her dexterity, an ease that he is sure comes naturally to her when she takes over, and speeds them smoothly through the water.

On the edge of the shore, after tying up the boat, they spill out the contents of the bag and clean the fish. Leo works away efficiently, remembering the days when he was a kitchen hand in a Chinese restaurant in Sydney.

"You've done this before?"

"Yep, used to work in the Happy Seas restaurant. Number two kitchen hand.

"Who was number one?"

"Happy. Happy Leung. Could do more with one and half hands than most people with two."

"One and a half?"

"Happy was living in a dosshouse at the Cross in Sydney after the war, with a whole bunch of other Chinese guys. There was a cop raid and they all ran for cover, thought it was immigration. He fell over and his hand got trampled by scores of Chinese feet. He lost a few fingers. Funny thing is, the cops were in the wrong house. They thought they were raiding a brothel."

"Is that a true story, Leo?" She thinks he's having her on.

"It's the story Happy told me." "You want to take some extra for your aunt or your cousins?"

"No, the three I caught will be plenty."

"You sure? No need to be black air about it."

"Black air?"

"What do you say in Chinese when someone is being too polite?"

"Haak hei."

"And how do you say black air?"

"Haak hei." She smiles, pleased with the mini-lesson she has given him.

After that his nickname for her was Babs, for Black Air Becky.

The Saturday fishing becomes the thing they do together but it soon extends to a meal afterwards and, after several weeks, the occasional sleepover. At his place, where he is the guest of his two cousins.

"You sure you don't mind."

"Nah, it's fine with us, eh Clem?"

"Fine with me Leo. Long as she doesn't feel embarrassed. She doesn't really know us that well. I mean I've been saying hello to her and all that for ages but that's just when I was doing the food pick-ups." Leo had had no expectations of finding someone so engaging when he made the decision to head north. Darwin had been meant to be a breathing space for him, where he could put his jumbled feelings about Bessie and him to one side, expose himself to different people and different experiences in a new place. It had been a means of escape, even if only temporarily, until he had a chance to put the tattered relationship with Bessie back together or abandon it as futile, in which case he would know he would have to move on.

Yet now, with none of the past resolved, here he is plunged into a new what? Romance is not the word he would apply to what has happened with Becky and him. No, it has been a swift and sudden binding. And he isn't sure how it will turn out, whether he can expect it to go on and, if it does, where that leaves him and Bessie. He decides that he should make one more attempt with Bessie. Have things completely out with her. Otherwise, he has not closed the circle and, for some reason he cannot quite verbalise, there needs to be a sense of completion, of finality.

He tries to explain all of this to Becky. One morning, after an energetic and satisfying sexual frolic. They are lying there, she half-entwined on his body, engaging in silly exchanges, little jokes, risque quips, when he breaks the chain of humour, when he expounds. And realises, belatedly, that his timing is lousy, that he has, unintentionally, cast a shadow over his new relationship, the one that has been giving him a terrific charge.

"Do whatever you have to do, Leo, I don't give a damper." And she storms out of the bedroom, buck-naked, into the hallway, jostling an astonished Clem in her haste. She retreats, totally embarrassed, slamming the bedroom door behind her, diving on top of the still-contemplative Leo.

"Shit, now look what you've made me do."

"What?"

"Clem's seen me, monkey and all." "Well I didn't tell you to play Lady Godiva."

She puts a headlock on him and they wrestle on the bed, the act of aggression quickly turning to a lighter form of play, of stroking and teasing, and finally a hurried coupling that builds and builds to a pleasurable climax.

"You go, Leo, it's ok. I mean I'm not going to be happy about it but you need to satisfy yourself that it's either finished or not."

"Maybe I'll just let things be. I mean if she really wanted to see me she would have rung me or written."

"Whatever. You decide. But I won't stand in your way."

She does not raise the issue again. Perhaps it is deliberate on her part, her way of giving him some breathing space. If so, he appreciates the gesture. When he thinks about it some more he reaches the conclusion that going to see Bessie would actually be a retrograde step; that their time together had been soon after he came back from the war, before Eddie entered the picture. He had been uncertain about too many things then and he had let his moment, their moment, slip away. He would have to live with his regrets, his past indecision. But he shouldn't let it jeopardise the present with Becky.

One day, not long after the Godiva episode, which becomes a standing joke in the household, Leo goes for a drive with Becky, out along the shoreline of Fannie Bay. He tells her what he has been thinking about and what he has decided. Above all, he tells her that he no longer wants to try to recapture what he'd once had.

He waits for a reaction from her. Some response that will assure him that he has made the right decision, an acknowledgment that he has chosen her and the present over Bessie and the past. But, he's only met with reticence. She doesn't tell him what he wants to hear, turns the conversation, instead, to lighter matters. "Hey, I hear that the fish are biting on the upper Adelaide River. Want to take a run up there this week-end?"

"Only if you and I go foxtrotting afterwards."

Relaxed, he looks out to the sweep of the bay as they are speaking, watches a speck of a yacht, adrift in the breeze, spirited about like a cork. The day is sultry, the intense heat burning into his pores. He is tempted to run into the water, dragging Becky with him but he checks himself, holds back. But then the effervescence of the moment bursts through and he acts, grabs her arm and races for the cooling wet, her half-hearted protests spurring him on. He can imagine, then, Holly talking to him, telling him: "You go, dive in, don't be dillying-dally." OTHER PEOPLE'S LETTERS

Chen Leung-bing had decided it was time. He wanted a wife, preferably one from China, and thought his parents could find him a suitable woman of marriageable age. Leung-bing wasn't too fussy, he didn't care if the woman was simple in her tastes and habits or was of limited education. All that he sought was someone who would be company for him and with whom he would feel compatible. Leung-bing's parents were still living in the village in Toishan, Canton. He knew he would have to rely on their judgement, their choice. He knew there was little room for error once the woman arrived. What would he do if she turned out to be a shrew? Or if she found him too simple and oafish for her liking? Still, he didn't want to explore probabilities in his mind. What he sought was a pragmatic solution to his problem: he was ready to settle down, to raise a family. Therefore he needed to find a suitable woman.

First, he had to write home. That was why he turned to his close friend Kwei-ping, a man his senior by some 16 years. Tang Kwei-ping knew how to write Chinese. It was not an elegant, educated person's Chinese. Kwei-ping was basically self-taught. When one of his sons, like Charles or Harry, saw him writing characters, he'd comment that Kwei-ping was doing so in the wrong . Kwei-ping was aware of this defect, he knew that there was a strict, unvarying order for forming the strokes in each character but he had never had enough formal training to absorb such routines. In his youth he'd had several years trying to learn Chinese in a makeshift school that a group of Chinese merchants in Darwin had set up. Classes were irregular and, in any case, he was often too busy helping in the family store to attend. But he'd absorbed enough to be able, with a Chinese dictionary at his side, to devise simple forms of expression based on the patois that he and Leung-bing and others from the small village in Toishan spoke. It was rudimentary but served its purpose.

"Dai Gor," said Leung-bing, "can you write to my parents for me? Tell them that I'm well, that I have a steady job now, and that I'd like to settle down with someone." "Leung-bing that's all of one sentence. How can we write a letter to your parents that is so short? Surely there are many things you wish to tell them. After all you've been in this country fifteen years now. There must be so much you want to say to them."

Leung-bing looked at the crimpled face of his friend, watched him blow smoke rings from the slightly misshapen cigarette that Kwei-ping had rolled himself and silently nodded in agreement. In all the time that he had lived in Australia he had barely kept in touch with his parents and the rest of his family in China. Once, several years ago, he had been working with a woman who was returning to Canton for a visit. Leung-bing had bought some gifts for his family after she offered to take them back and had asked her to tell his parents that he was doing just fine. He thought of including some money but wasn't certain that he could trust the woman not to take it. He didn't know her all that well, she was merely an acquaintance and he felt she had a quickness about her that he didn't particularly like.

In the last few years he had begun to send some money directly to his family. Usually he would meet Kwei-ping at the latter's Riley Street terrace and then they'd walk down to George Street until they came to the Haymarket Branch of Leung Bing's bank. He wished, on such occasions, that he could write a few words to go with the gift of money.

Leung-bing always felt comfortable ambling with his fiiend along the Surry Hill streets. Kwei- ping and he would often stop and chat with one or other of their neighbours, if they were not in a rush, so that the stroll could take on the feeling of a social occasion. It was a neighbourhood of many Chinese families, all living in the compact terraces that lined both sides of the streets, none of which had names that Leung-bing could easily pronounce or which had much significance for him: Campbell, Riley, Albion, Commonwealth, Crown. Even though he'd lived in Sydney for many years now he only had a skerrick of English and, unlike Kwei-ping, he couldn't read or write a word of it. At the Haymarket they'd go into the Bank of New South Wales to fill in the required forms that had to be completed before money could be remitted to the village in Toishan. Or rather Kwei- ping would laboriously work through the forms, printed in English, and fill in the relevant details. When he had finished this Herculean task, because it did tax his limited repertoire of the language, Kwei-ping would pass the form over to Leung-bing and tell him to sign it.

And Leung-bing would protest: "Dai Gor, can't you sign for me? I can't do it." But Kwei-ping would again explain, as if for the first time, that he was not permitted to sign. The laws of the country, Australian law, demanded that Leung-bing, as the remitter, sign. And he would. With diligent concentration, Leung-bing would mark the line that said "signature" with two sets of parallel lines, one set vertical, one set horizontal, making sure that they crossed. He was always proud of his accomplishment, believing that he had authenticated the documents by his action.

After they completed the bank transaction they'd stroll around the corner into Dixon Street and go into one of the small cafes that served congee, rice, and wonton noodles and have a simple lunch. It was on one of the recent occasions when they had both ordered, Leung-bing treating himself to roast duck and plain rice, and Kwei-ping to congee with pig's intestine, that the stranger came and sat down at their table. Leung-bing was startled, thinking, for several moments, that they had sat in the wrong seats, that where they were sitting had been reserved for the stranger. But it wasn't anything like that at all. He barely nodded to them before he reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a photograph. He didn't acknowledge Kwei-ping but simply asked a question.

"Do you know this man?" Leung-bing had no idea what was said, only that the tone of the voice was officious, the face of the stranger hard and unfriendly. He glanced at his friend. Kwei-ping was studying the photo with intense interest as if it might divine some message for him. Eventually he looked up, stared blankly at the stranger, and shrugged his shoulders.

"You don't know him? You haven't seen him around Chinatown?"

"No seen," said Kwei-ping. "No seen." Giving another shrug as he spoke. The stranger glared at Kwei-ping as if he had caught him out in a lie. As he stood up he threw a business card onto the table.

"Call me if you see him. And here, have the photo." With that he was gone.

"What was that about, Dai GO^?"

"Ernie. Ernie Feng. They must be after him.''

"Immigration or the police." Kwei-ping examined the card and carefully spelt out the letters: f.f. H-a-r-o-I-d S-h-o-r-e, m-i-g-r-a-t-i-o-n o-f-f-i-c-e-r, i-n-v-e-s-t-i-g-a-t-i-o-n-s. D-e-p-a-r-t-m- e-n-t o-f I-m-m-i-g-r-a-t-i-o-n, He'd need his English dictionary to work out what the card said.

"You know me, Dai Gor, I'm a simple guy. Words are not my strong point. What would you suggest go in the letter?"

The two men were seated at Kwei-ping's dining table in his small, rented terrace. The table was not only for meals. It also served as the repository for his weekly store of Chinese and Australian newspapers, the ones he'd already read, the bills he must pay, and the mail he received. Kwei-ping looked around the room at the familiar, mismatched furniture, the thickly padded, blue floral sofas that a neighbour, Mrs Sung, had passed on to him, the bureau that he had bought at Paddy's Markets one Saturday many years ago, and the assorted dining chairs, several of which he inherited when one of the restaurants he was working at in Dixon Street closed down. The wall had calendars going back five years. He liked to keep them there in case he had to consult some past date although he could not ever recall having had the need to do so. They had been friends now for more than a decade. Ever since Leung-bing, tired of his tedious chore washing dishes in a dingy restaurant in Campbell Street, had wandered into the grocery store where Kwei-ping worked, asking if there were any jobs going. Kwei-ping, who was having a smoke while resting from dealing cards at the rear of the store where gambling was conducted, had asked Leung-bing if he knew how to cook. Yes, had been the prompt answer, even though Leung-bing would have struggled to make even the most rudimentary of Chinese dishes. For most of the time he had lived in the city he ate out, often going to the small places that served simple meals of noodles, congee and rice, usually accompanied by a meat or vegetable dish. Kwei-ping had set up a meeting with the store's owner who asked Leung-bing some questions and then agreed to hire him on a trial basis.

Kwei-ping quickly discovered that Leung-bing, who had been assigned to make roast duck and dark soy chicken, didn't have a clue how to proceed. He invited the younger man to his home and, in the course of several evenings, instructed Leung-bing how to prepare his assigned foods. The store did not serve any meals but did have a brisk trade catering for customers who might want to buy some pork, chicken or duck to take home for dinner. Leung-bing, grateful for the unexpected help, had brought Kwei-ping substantial boxes of jasmine and green tea and had insisted on inviting him to dinner. After that the two men regularly had lunch together and shared dinner two or three times a week. They settled quickly into a close and comfortable friendship so much so that Leung-bing, in deference to his older companion, took to calling him older brother, Dai Gor.

"Bring me a photo of yourself. One taken recently. We'll enclose it with the letter I write. Then you and I will put down a chronology of all the things that you've done since you came here; where you've lived; what jobs you've done; where you eat; what you think of the country." It sounded to Kwei-ping like a school assignment a teacher might devise but he knew it would give texture to the letters he would write. That is how it begins. He helps Leung-bing commence a correspondence with his parents which goes on for seven or eight months. When a letter arrives from China he reads it aloud to his friend, explaining any difficult phrases, resorting to a dictionary when he himself is stuck. Leung-bing's parents are surprised to get so much news from their son. They had always assumed that he had little command of written characters. Now, with a regularity that they can mark off the calendar, his letters arrive, month after month.

It is in one of the later letters, after two months, that Leung-bing, or rather his amanuensis and collaborator, suggests to his parents that he would like to marry and start a family. He tells them that he would prefer, if it is possible, to find someone from the village. He asks them to tell him if there is someone suitable whom they know of.

There is a long wait before a response to this letter arrives. His mother tells him that she has been busy asking and looking around. Unfortunately, many of the young people, including many of the women, have migrated to the city of Canton to study and to look for work. There are few eligible women around, and even fewer whom she would choose as a suitable bride for her son. But, she says, be patient. She will keep searching.

Leung-bing listens to his mother's news with mounting gloom. "There's no one, it's hopeless."

"Be patient. You can't expect that something like this is easy to do. Your mother is taking her time to look properly for you."

But it seems that Leung-bing's despair might be justified. Two more letters arrive from his mother. No prospective bride can be found.

"Perhaps," says Leung-bing, "I need to return to China and look for myself."

"Yes, that might be a solution. Nothing like seeing and meeting someone yourself. Much better than any photos your parents might send you." Kwei-ping thinks of his own marriage, arranged by his father and grandfather, that produced a half-score of children but resulted, in the end, in estrangement from his wife. There hadn't been any single issue that had caused the separation. Not, at least, that he could recall. Their temperaments, however, were quite different.

"Would you come with me, Dai Gor? Two brains are better than one when it comes to choosing a partner." Kwei-ping does not reply to the question. At least not with any alacrity. Inside himself, he feels a mounting excitement. It has been more than 45 years since he left China to go to Darwin. He left with no conception of what to expect. Only the promise that a distant uncle, on his mother's side, would be his guarantor and could put him up for several months until he secured a job.

Now, he is not prosperous but he does have some hard-earned savings and the chance of spending some of that to see the village home again seems somehow right. But he has family in Sydney and they may have views about his returning to what they call "Red China," even if it is only for a short visit.

Three years ago, there was a Chinese tour group being organized through the Chinese Socialist League of Sydney and Kwei-ping was asked if he'd be interested in going. There were several of his friends in the League who'd already signed on and he was keen to join them since it was a tip mainly through southern China, including Canton and Kweilin. Two of his sons, Harry and Charles, had argued against him going. They'd said it was too risky to visit China at this point when the country was going though so much political upheaval and disruption. He'd thought about it and didn't believe there was a problem but their objections had been voiced so vigorously that he'd given in and, for the sake of peace, he'd abandoned the idea. Yes, the Chinese press had been filled with news of the Mao-driven "Great Leap Forward" but he didn't see how a small tour group from Sydney could be harmed.

And so, now, he hesitates. Not wanting to revive the arguments in the family. It is not that he is a political radical. Far from it. He does believe, with the tenacity of the late converted, that communism has been the right shift for China. He even says so in family gatherings. His family, especially his sons, refer to him as the Maoist. He, however, simply thinks that what the Chinese have always needed is political discipline and strong leadership in order to prosper. "Let me think about it, Leung-bing." Sitting on the fence and seeing, with his words, the crease of disappointment on the face of his friend.

"No hurry, Dai Gor. You tell me when you decide." Letting him down gently, letting him ease his way out if he doesn't really want to go.

There is a hiatus. No letters appear from China for months. Then one is dropped into Kwei- ping's door chute that is written in an unfamiliar hand but is postmarked Canton. He opens the letter and begins to read.

Dear Chen Leung-bing, We do not know each other, even though you and I are from the same village, Lukchoon and our families are acquainted. I understand that you are seeking a marriage partner. My sister, who is studying to become a teacher at the moment, may be a suitable prospect for you, ifyou are interested. She is currently away at the Fourth Normal Training School for Teachers but she has given her permission for me to write to you.

We are from a farming family, as are many of those who have remained in Lukchoon. We work a small plot and raise some animals, mainly pigs and chickens. It is enough to give us a basic livelihood. My sister is a hardworking young woman, she is 28 years old and she will have a career in teaching a$er she graduates this year. Life here, however, is not without dificulty, and she believes she could better herselfifshe were living in your country.

I await your response to this letter. Courteously, Wu Xiao-feng Kwei-ping clutches the letter as he walks around his cluttered dining room. A new element has intruded into the equation. Who is this woman who has taken up the pen on behalf of her sister? Is it a genuine letter intending what it says? And how much does the writer know about a man who is thousands of miles away that she will script a letter to him? Is it a desperate gamble to find a suitor for her sister? And who is this sister, so shy or reticent that she does not write herself but has a go-between? But then, thinking about it, a go-between was the traditional way. It saved face on both sides if either wanted to make a tactful withdrawal.

When Leung-bing hears about the letter he is stirred, energized by what he perceives to be a change in his fortunes. "Write back to her. Write back. The fates are smiling on me. I can sense it in my bones."

"Leung-bing, we know nothing about these women. What if they are schemers, simply after a ticket to Australia? My suggestion is that we write to your parents and try to find out more about who this proposed partner is."

He sits down and begins to compose a letter to Leung-bing's mother. Even though the correspondence sent to Canton has always been addressed to both parents, he has become accustomed to thinking of the mother as the principal correspondent. The letters that have come from China have mostly been written by her, with the father occasionally adding a few lines. But never more than that.

When he reads her letters Kwei-ping tries to imagine what sort of person Mrs Chen is. Not just physically but her personal disposition. Is she an anxious type or someone who is easy-going, like her son? Is she acquisitive, wanting to be comfortable and well-off? And how well- educated is she? Her letters are more fluent in their expression than his own clumsy attempts at Chinese. And, most mysterious of all, how is it that Leung Bing cannot read or write when both his parents can? Leung Bing, in his opinion, is quite intelligent. How did he miss out on a formal education? "No, Dai Gor," says Leung-bing, when the question is posed, "I did attend the village primary school in Lukchoon but school bored me. I didn't have the patience to sit there and absorb all that nonsense that they tried to drum into us. The first week that we started to practise calligraphy, you know with the ink and brush, my mind wandered off somewhere. I drew some pictures on the paper and the teacher came across, clipped me over the ear, and threw me out of the classroom. I never went back."

All the uncertainties that Kwei-ping has about the letter that has appeared from nowhere he includes in his letter to Leung-bing's mother. He tries to craft it carefully so that the questions he asks about the young woman who might be a marriage prospect avoid saying directly that he wonders if she might be a schemer, trying to make her way to Australia. Instead, he asks if the mother can provide some background on the young woman. Is she someone who is personally known to Leung-bing's family? What kind of person is she? What is the family like?

On the morning that they send the letter, Leung Bing decides to remit some money to his parents as well. The two men then stroll into Lean Sun Low on Dixon Street to have an early lunch. There is a printed menu with an indifferent attempt at translation into English but Kwei-ping prefers to order from the list written in a hasty Chinese script and posted on the walls of the restaurant. These, he always says, are the specialities that suit the Chinese palate. While they wait for their meal to come Kwei-ping rolls a cigarette, tamps one end with a match, and places that end in his mouth. He strikes the match and is about to take his initial puff when a voice beckons.

"Ping Baak, Ping Baak."

"Ernie. How are you? Haven't seen you for ages." Dapper, in a navy suit that is smartly tailored, an expensive-looking brocaded silk tie and a monogrammed shirt, his hair neatly parted in the middle, Ernie hustles over to the two men and sits down without any hesitation. He shakes hands with them both, looks across to the blackboard specials for the day and orders rice with pig's knuckles in a vinegar and soy sauce. "I had to go away. Up north. Brisbane. Business deal, you know." Kwei-ping doesn't have to ask. Over the course of the meal, Ernie would probably reveal all, or at least all that he wanted you to know. Although Kwei-ping had professed ignorance to the immigration man, he'd known Ernie Feng's parents for many years. They had been fi-iends since the Darwin days, back in the 1920s, and had even shared accommodation at one stage when the Feng family were looking for a new house to move into. Ernie's father, Lok-key, was a builder by trade but a bookmaker by preference. He did so well at the latter that he was able to give away building. Kwei-ping saw Ernie in Chinatown from time to time and, once in a while, they shared a coffee or yum cha.

Ernie had a reputation in the Chinese community for fast deals - not all of them strictly legal - but he was also known as a person who kept his word. If he promised you something, he did his best to honour his word. Kwei-ping liked him for his directness and his sense of humour.

"So Ping Baak, what have you been up to? Still looking after things behind the grocery store?"

Kwei-ping grins as he nods. "You should come in some time, liven the place up."

"Maybe when I have a chance. Right now I have too much business to look after."

The food that they have ordered arrives and they eat several mouthfuls before resuming the conversation.

"There's a guy looking for you, Ernie. Australian, maybe late forties, early fifties. Here, he left me his card."

Ernie glances at the name and his face pales. "That guy Shore has been chasing me and chasing me. Real trouble, he is."

"Why? You in some kind of fix?''

"No, not really. Shore works for immigration. He's accused me of arranging false marriages." "Arranging marriages?"

"Say you've come fiom China but want to stay here permanently. One way is for you to marry someone who's already an Australian citizen."

"Do you know any women who want to do that?" asks Leung Bing, hopefully.

Ernie throws him a curious glance. "Why?"

Leung Bing explains his situation although he doesn't tell Eddie that he has been corresponding with his parents in Canton.

"Well, the truth is that I know a lot of people in the community and I try to help them when I can but I'm not doing anything crooked, like Shore seems to think."

"You know of someone?" asks Leung-bing, persisting.

"Perhaps I can ask around, see if there is someone who'd like to get hitched," says Ernie.

Ernie insists on paying for the lunch when the bill comes. He shakes hands with the two men, throws them a cheery wave and floats off.

"Same Ernie as always, so full of energy. But you have to be careful about any business he's involved in," says Kwei-ping.

"You don't think that he can be trusted, Dai Gor?"

"You just have to be very alert around Ernie." There is, after a few weeks, a phone call from Ernie. He tells Kwei-ping that there is someone Leung-bing should meet. A woman who has recently left China. From Canton, in fact. She is working in a restaurant in Rozelle. Leung-bing, hearing this news, is keen to proceed.

"When can we meet her?"

"Ernie said he could arrange it for next week, if you want to."

"Next week will be fine."

For the occasion, Leung-bing brings out a crisp white shirt and a plain, solid blue tie. He gets his one suit pressed at the dry-cleaners and buffs his shoes to a respectable sheen. Even so, the clothes sit awkwardly on him, as if he doesn't feel entirely comfortable in a suit. The fact is that he hardly ever wears it.

"Leung-bing, it's just a first meeting. You're not taking her out on a date."

"I just want to make a good impression."

Seeing his friend looking so neat, Kwei-ping feels compelled to do the same. He drags out his dark navy suit, which he hasn't worn since he went to a relative's wedding more than a year ago. To his chagrin, the suit has small moth holes on the lapels and on the back of the collar. He looks at the damage, shrugs his shoulders, and decides to wear it anyway.

Ernie has arranged to meet them at 12:30 pm in the Golden Palace, one of the better Chinese restaurants in the Hayrnarket. He is already seated at a table when the two men arrive, wearing dark glasses, one hand tapping nervously on the tablecloth, the other gripping a lit cigarette with an ivory holder.

"She isn't here yet, Ping Baak. I told her not to be late but perhaps she's been held up in traffic." Leung-bing looks around the room with anticipation. Each time the door to the restaurant swings open his eyes look up hopefully. The restaurant is almost full and talk and laughter bounces around the room, hardly muted by the carpet. Ten minutes pass; then fifteen; then twenty five. No one.

Impatient and embarrassed, Ernie steps outside, plants himself on the footpath and lights another cigarette. Eventually he returns to the table.

"I'm really sorry, Leung-bing. I don't know what could've happened. Why don't we order lunch, anyway?"

They have started to eat when a waiter comes over to tell Ernie that there is a phone call for him. He heads towards the rear of the restaurant and has been gone for several minutes when a rather bulky Australian sits in his empty seat.

Kwei-ping tries to remember who the stranger is and whether they have met before. He stares hard at the face and then, in an awful rush, it comes back. Shore. He must have seen the three of them at the table together. Maybe he'd been following Ernie all along. But if that was the case why hadn't Shore broken into their meeting as soon as they'd entered the restaurant?

"I'm still trying to track him down. Have you run into him recently?" Kwei-ping, who has his back to where Ernie has gone, is hoping that he doesn't reappear suddenly while Shore is still sitting there. He responds to Shore's question with an expression of puzzlement on his face, trying his best to conceal his inner anxiety about Ernie. It's at this point that Leung-bing, who has been sitting quietly, calls very loudly for a waiter, then gets up abruptly, and rushes toward the rear of the restaurant.

Kwei-ping sits silently and, from time to time, looks at Shore who realizes, after a few minutes, that he is not going to get any response to his question. Kwei-ping wonders why the migration officer has singled him out twice now. Does he know about the connection between him and Ernie's family? Has he been asking questions around Chinatown, talking with Kwei-ping's acquaintances? Kwei-ping glances down at the table, sees the setting for four, and looks away quickly, hoping that Shore won't notice and wait out the appearance of the other guests but the migration officer eventually checks the time on his watch, adjusts his shirt sleeves and tie, and leaves. Kwei-ping, eyeing his departure, watches with relief as the dark-suited figure goes out of the restaurant.

Like actors waiting for their cue, Ernie and Leung-bing reappear just after the door closes on Shore. They sit down calmly as if nothing unexpected has happened. The three men resume eating while Kwei-ping starts to explain what has been going on, then realizes that there is no need: Leung-bing has doubtless spoken to Ernie.

They are drinking black tea and eating almond pudding desserts when the woman hurries into the restaurant. She strides confidently to their table, grips Ernie on the shoulder in a rather familiar gesture, and sits in the empty chair.

"I'm so sorry, Ernie. I was rushing over here and a policeman pulled me up, gave me a warning for driving too fast. Next time, he said I'd get a ticket." Having offered her excuse for being late she turns to the others and extends her hand to shake theirs.

"Hello, I'm Lee Siu-kum, but feel free to call me by my English name, Annie."

Leung-bing is half-standing as he shakes her hand. He stares at her, a smile on his face, pleased that she has turned up. He continues to stare while he sits back down.

"How do you do, Miss Lee?" says Kwei-ping. He takes in the smartly designed blue silk dress of the young woman, the bouffant hairstyle, and the perfume that intersects the food smells of the restaurant and wonders where Ernie met her. Even before any conversation has begun, he concludes that she and Leung-bing are probably not compatible.

"Ernie tells me that you work here in Chinatown, Mr Tang." "Yes, in a grocery store in Dixon Street."

"Which one?"

"Fook Sing," says Kwei-ping. Annie gives no indication that she knows which shop this is.

"And how about you, Mr Chen?"

"I'm a cook in that same grocery store."

"The grocery store has cooks?"

"Yes, I make the roast duck and soya sauce chicken."

She looks puzzled and waits for an explanation but Leung-bing doesn't elaborate.

"Annie," says Ernie, "is working and studying."

"Actually," says Annie, "I've got two jobs, one in the day and one at night."

"When do you have time to study3" asks Kwei-ping.

"I'm doing a correspondence course. Learning English. Without better English I won't be able to get far."

"Ernie was telling us that you haven't been here long," says Kwei-ping.

"Not this time, no."

"You mean you've been here before?" "Yes, I came over from Hong Kong about two years ago and stayed a few months but then there were problems with my visa and I had to go back."

"I thought you were from Canton."

"What I meant, Ping Baak, was that Annie's family are originally from Canton but she's lived in Hong Kong for some years."

Kwei-ping suspects that Ernie has invented some of the details about Miss Lee but he decides not to pursue the matter.

"What are the jobs you're doing? Leung-bing asks.

"My day job is in a clothing store. We sell women's clothes. In the evening I work in a restaurant at Crow's Nest."

Kwei-ping and Leung-bing exchange glances. Ernie had said over the phone that she worked in Rozelle. He doesn't given any indication that something is amiss.

Kwei-ping who has been observing Miss Lee during the conversation tries to imagine her with Leung-bing, and concludes that the combination is not going to work.

"What do you think, Dai Gor?" says Leung-bing. They are walking up Riley Street towards Kwei-ping's place.

"She's not the right one," says Kwei-ping. "Why not?"

"She doesn't strike me as the type of woman who's ready to settle down." Kwei Ping refrains from adding that there is something altogether too flashy and sophisticated about Ernie's friend. He thinks of her as belonging in nightclubs and expensive hotels.

"I kind of liked her, she seemed a friendly type."

"Liking someone is important but you've been talking about marriage and finding a partner you can raise a family with."

Kwei-ping opens the door to his house and the two men step inside.

"Maybe I should ask her out to dinner once or twice."

"I wouldn't."

"Where would be the harm, Dai Gor?"

Kwei Ping says no more. Merely shrugs his shoulders, picks up his copy of the Daily Mirror and begins to read.

Ernie is trying to hustle things along. He encourages Leung-bing to go out with Annie, tells him that she came away from their first meeting with a fine impression of him. He even suggests places that Leung-bing can take her. Go to Taronga Park, women enjoy the zoo and the ferry ride fiom the city is pleasant. Or go to the movies. There's some great shows on at the moment, West Side Stories, The Parent Traps. Leung-bing has no idea what Ernie is talking about. The last time he remembers going to the movies was just after he'd arrived in Melbourne from China. He had wandered around the streets for hours and happened to come upon a queue of people lined up in front of a glass window. He watched as they paid money, were given a ticket in exchange, and went through a large, heavy door into an ornate building. He did the same. He had no recollection of the movie, only that there was much shouting, some fight scenes, and seemingly endless chatter between a man and a woman, none of which he could understand. When he thought about it, his understanding of English had not progressed very much since his arrival in this country.

In the end, Leung-bing invites Annie to dinner. He chooses a restaurant in George Street, at the Hayrnarket. His invitation to Kwei-ping to join them is politely but firmly refused. Leung-bing interprets this as a deliberate gesture, his friend's opposition to what he is doing. There is a second dinner, also in the George Street restaurant. But it's what occurs afterwards that he is keen to talk about with Kwei-ping.

"She asked me back to her place. There was something she wanted to talk to me about."

"What was wrong with the restaurant?"

"Too noisy, she said. Then it happened. One thing afier another. So quickly."

"What happened?"

"YOUknow. Between a man and a woman." Kwei-ping is surprised at the disclosure. He was waiting for some revelation of trickery on the part of the woman and, as he thinks about it, perhaps some trickery is involved.

"And you know what, Dai Gor? We did it twice."

"Ah, Leung-bing, what a sharpshooter you are."

Yet the revelation of his friend may, Kwei-ping feels, be salutary. Surely Leung-bing will see now that the woman is not a suitable partner for him. Not that Kwei-ping wants to set himself up as a moral guardian but Leung-bing would be blind if he didn't accept that the woman was being too forward.

Leung-bing, however, does not give any hint that he will abandon the relationship. If he thinks morality is involved he give no indication of this to his friend. Instead, he carries on like someone who has discovered romance for the first time. Kwei-ping, who believes that things have progressed too far, ties to get Leung-bing to come to his senses.

"What about that young woman who wrote to you from Canton?"

"Perhaps I can have wife no 1 in China and wife no 2 here. Others have done that."

Kwei-ping, realising the futility of any further conversation on the matter, retreats discreetly, refusing any invitations to join Leung Bing, Annie and Ernie at lunch or dinner. He notes the changes in his friend. A new suit, fashionable shoes, even a bow-tie. And he hopes, for Leung- bing's sake, that there won't be a sour conclusion to the relationship with Annie.

A shaken and enraged Leung-bing is seated at the dining table of Kwei-ping's house recounting what has just happened to him. Shore and his men had taken Ernie and Miss Lee away just when they were about to start lunch at the Golden Palace. Three Australians, Shore and two men in uniform, had rushed into the restaurant and made straight for their table, as if they had known exactly where they were. Without hesitation they had hoisted Ernie and Miss Lee to their feet and strongarmed them out to a black sedan. It was an incident of less than two minutes and then they were gone.

"Like criminals, that's how they were treated. Shore stared hard at me before he left and, for a moment, I thought that he would grab me as well. What do we do now?" Kwei-ping sits and contemplates. He tries to work through the steps of what has happened. Ernie and Miss Lee are probably being questioned now at the immigration office. It may be that they will be released after the questioning is completed. Will they be charged with some offences? He has no idea. All that he knows about Ernie's activities are rumours about "deals" that he is caught up in. Who could tell him more? Harry. His son sometimes does interpreting for government departments and the courts. Surely Harry will have some contacts who can tell him what is going on.

Harry's initial reaction, when Kwei-ping calls him, is alarm.

"Are you mixed up in one of Ernie Feng's scams?"

"No, but Leung-bing was seeing a woman that Ernie introduced him to.''

"Miss Lee. Lee Siu-kum. She's called Annie."

"Don't know the name. Ernie, however, has been up to his neck in arranged marriages. Mostly students and businessmen from China and Hong Kong who want to stay here. He fixes them up with Australian women. After a few months, there's usually a divorce."

"This woman is Chinese."

"Same thing, Dad. If she's actually an Australian Chinese she's probably part of his stable."

"He said that she'd come from Canton not long ago." Kwei-ping doesn't add that this may not be strictly true.

"With Ernie there's usually more than one version of a story." When Harry calls back it's to say that Ernie has been formally charged with illegal immigration activities and Miss Lee is accused of overstaying her visa.

"What do you mean overstaying?"

"She's arrived here on a visa that gives her permission to stay for a certain time. If she stays beyond that time she's illegally in this country."

"Is that serious?"

"Immigration thinks so. There's been a big crackdown on illegal migrants."

"How about Ernie?"

"He's in for it. I reckon they'll try to put him away."

Kwei-ping persuades Harry to go with him to Long Bay Prison where Ernie has been locked up. They drive out from the city in a car that Harry has borrowed from an acquaintance, following Anzac Parade past Kensington, Kingsford, Maroubra, and Malabar.

"It's crazy, Dad. What's the point of calling on him?''

"He's a decent guy, despite the suspicions you have about him. I've known Ernie's family a long time, going back to the old days in Darwin."

"What can you do for him?"

"Bring him some fruit and other foods. See if there's anything else he needs.'' In his prison garb, a drab grey shirt and grey pants, his hair closely cropped, Ernie looks thinner, even slightly shrunken, although Kwei-ping thinks that the gloom of concrete and steel bars may contribute to the overall sense of flatness, of Ernie somehow bleeding into the prison landscape.

"Thanks so much for coming Ping Baak. You too Harry. I never see you around Chinatown much anymore. Seems odd meeting you like this."

"What's going to happen to you Ernie?" say Kwei-ping.

"Hard to say. The trial is coming up in a month or so. I'm trying to see if I can arrange bail. It's no fun being locked up here."

"How about Miss Lee?"

"She's in some institution for women north of Sydney somewhere. My lawyer is looking into her case."

There is eventually a letter fiom Toishan, from Leung-bing's mother. It says that she doesn't personally know the woman who is training to be a teacher, but she has heard of the woman's family and they appear to be decent and hard-working. She thinks that it would be a good idea if Leung-bing were to begin a correspondence with her.

Kwei-ping passes on this latest news to his friend.

"It's no good. I'm not keen to respond or to pursue any correspondence."

"Why not?" "I keep thinking about Annie and what might happen to her. I liked her and we got on quite well."

"Come to your senses, Leung-bing. Miss Lee could be locked up for some time."

"Maybe I can visit her from time to time. It must be a lonely being confined like that.''

"Give it up. You'll only make yourself miserable."

The trial for Ernie takes place at the Darlinghurst Courthouse in the city. There is, Kwei-ping learns, a regular coverage of the case in the daily press. Not much detail is given but there appears to be a strong case against Ernie for having set up a succession of marriages between Chinese and partners who are Australian citizens. It was mostly Chinese men who were seeking an Australian partner.

"You know, Leung-bing, I don't think that Ernie has done anything wrong."

"Well, why did they lock him up and put him on trial?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe the law in this country doesn't permit arranged marriages. Or maybe they're picking on Ernie because he's Chinese. What he's done is no different from the way we have traditionally done things in China. It's no different from my own marriage or what we've been trylng to do by writing to your parents."

"But Dai Gor, the marriages are only an excuse to remain here."

"Who can say? These days, you meet someone, you marry but then you realize, after a while, that things are not going too well so you separate. Is that so terrible?" Leung-bing looks quizzically at Kwei-ping. He feels that his friend's argument has a faulty logic to it but he can't quite see what the flaw is.

"Anyway, all Ernie is trying to do, when you examine it, is give a helping hand to the Chinese who want to remain here. That seems fair to me."

Several days later, an excited Leung Bing bursts into Kwei-ping's place.

"Dai Gor, I thought about what you were saying and I've got a solution. We must go and visit her right away."

"Who? What are you talking about?"

'The other day, Dai Gor. You were saying that Ernie was only trying to help the Chinese stay."

"And?"

"I can marry Annie. Then she's no longer illegal."

"That's crazy, Leung-bing. Absolutely crazy."

"Don't you see that Shore and his officials will see it as just another arranged marriage? That it'll be the same as what Ernie's been accused of doing?"

"Yes, it means she can stay but my reasons are genuine, Dai Gor. I like her. We get along fine." Seated at the dining table, eating sandwiches that Leung-bing had bought at a corner store in Elizabeth Street, the two fiends argue the pros and cons of what Leung-bing says he wants to do. Or rather, Kwei-ping does his best to dissuade his friend from proceeding. But Leung-bing has indeed been mulling the matter over in his head and he has a counter for every objection that Kwei-ping raises. It is, at times, an animated and vigorous conversation. Finally, when Kwei- ping realizes that he cannot deter Leung-bing from his plan, he throws his hands up in a gesture of resignation and propels himself into one of the floral sofas. Slumped against the cushions, he casts Leung Bing a bemused grin.

"I'll contact Harry and we'll try to visit your Miss Lee, your Annie."

"Dad, it's total madness. They'll end up arresting Leung-bing as well."

"It's risky, Harry, I know that. I've been over it with him several times but he wants to do it. Do you think you can arrange for us to visit?"

"I'll try."

They pause at the entrance to the grounds where a large, two-storey, weatherboard building, yellow paint peeling and fading, is surrounded by a tall brick fence. It looks institutional but it could be an old school or the living quarters of a large student group. This where Annie is. Not in a prison cell, not locked up, nothing quite that bad. It is, however, a detention centre for those who have been "caught" as illegal migrants. Guards keep an eye on things.

Harry leads the way to the front office, a small, narrow cubicle, where he explains to a clerk who they want to visit. There is a lengthy wait during which Kwei-ping meticulously rolls one of his cigarettes, lights up, and Leung-bing, his body scrunched into a corner of the office, watches vigilantly for Annie to appear.

Eventually, they are ushered into a room that is behind the office. Annie is seated there in a plain cotton dress, pale blue, her face stripped of make-up. She looks far from the sophisticated woman who came late to the restaurant that day. Kwei-ping, examining her face, sees a vulnerability that was not evident to him before. Leung-bing walks stiffly towards her and lightly touches her hands. They exchange nervous smiles.

"Mr Tang, Leung-bing, how are you? Have you eaten yet?"

Harry, standing to one side, listens with a wry grin to the refrain, so standard for Chinese friends on meeting. Annie speaks as if she were the host, offering them her hospitality; as if this is her home that they have come to; which, in a contorted way, it is, but he wonders what her response would be if they said they hadn't yet eaten.

"Annie," Leung-bing begins, "I have something I need to say." Then he lapses into silence, unable to muster the sentences that will declare the purpose of his visit. He tries again, starts and stops. Defeated, he turns to Kwei-ping.

"You should say it, Dai Gor, you know how I am with words."

Kwei-ping doesn't speak, not immediately. He feels that this is not a moment for him to take on the role of translator for his friend, to be his voice.

"Leung-bing, we have time. Harry and I will step outside. You speak with Miss Lee." And with that father and son saunter out to the grounds of the centre.

"I'll bet she says no, Dad." "Don't get me wrong but Leung Bing he's - ."

"What? What're you trying to say?"

"He's just a guy from the village and she seems - well - quite different."

"How can you be so sure? You don't even know her."

"Well who is she? How much do you how about her?" As Harry speaks they both watch as Leung-bing hunies toward them, a bounce in his stride.

"Enough to know that she'll be a good match for Leung Bing." The thought only comes to Kwei-ping as he says it but, in the instant of saying, it seems to him that to have a ring of accuracy to it, that it will work because it is something that Leung-bing is committed to completely.

Immigration, or rather Shore, with dogged persistence, put up as many barriers as possible. There was a series of interviews with Leung-bing at which his family background, his time in Australia, his work history in Sydney, and his personal and financial records were thoroughly examined. He was questioned about his relationship with Annie Lee, how long they had known one another, how much he knew about her. Leung-bing tried to have Kwei-ping accompany him to these sessions but permission was refused.

Harry, who had some familiarity with immigration officials and their quirks, advised Leung-bing to stay calm, answer everything in a neutral tone, and never to get upset or show annoyance. He didn't tell Leung-bing that he was also trying to muster what assistance he could from his contacts within immigration and other arms of the bureaucracy. It was when Harry was speaking with a solicitor friend that he saw how immigration was playing games of obfuscation.

"The laws of this country don't prevent any man and woman from marrying, Harry, unless they are committing bigamy. Which I don't think applies in this case."

"What are you saying, Ross?"

"You line up a celebrant and witnesses, and head up to the detention centre. Get your friends hitched. If immigration want to challenge the legality of the marriage afterwards let them try. But let me know if they do, so I can prepare the relevant counter-arguments."

Kwei-ping said, afterwards, that it was the smallest wedding he'd ever been to; only about 20 guests, including eight from his own family, six from the grocery store, and several friends of Annie. They fitted comfortably around the two tables that Leung Bing had booked at the Golden Palace. As they began the meal, Leung Bing turned to his friend.

"Can you do me one more favour, Dai Gor? Write to my parents, tell them I'm now married."

"Is that all, Leung Bing?"

"You know me, Dai Gor, words are not my strongest point." BROTHERLY LOVE

Until very recently, Harry and I hadn't talked often to each other by phone, maybe once or twice in any year but not every year at that. And, even though he is my brother and I should have made more of an effort, I know why I have held back. He is too capricious for me; changeable, like the clay in a sculptor's hand, lacking resolve. I believe our character is formed at the moment of our birth and that it remains within us, a central core, shaping the way we navigate our way in life. For Harry it was as if he were on a boat that was forever buffeted, every which way, depending on the wind.

He was never one to take a firm stand, to say that his mind had been made up definitely on any issue where choice was involved. For him there was always the next choice. Or the one after that. I'd get so steamed up following a conversation with him that I'd be tense and on edge. In the end, it was better not to talk to him. Not to have to deal with that mercurial temperament.

To look at him you wouldn't think he was like that. Of we three boys he was the best-looking, the strongest physically, the one with a coltish charm. As a kid in the playground he seemed to draw others to him naturally, regardless of sex or colour. So he had a generous supply of friends, or what passes for friendship among the very young. Admiration for his physical prowess, attraction to his bravado.

He had a quick mind, too, but such quickness often passes over things too easily, missing the depth of a problem, ignoring the need to do a more intense and searching analysis. It is the kind of mind that, bowerbird-like, picks up accents and foreign languages quickly and, in his case, that was absolutely true. When we were in our early teens, sent by our parents from backwater Darwin to school in Canton, he was the one who mastered Mandarin and Shanghainese more swiftly than me or our brother, Charles. He was the one who could look at a page of Chinese characters for the first time on a Monday and reproduce it faithfully by the end of the week. And it would stick in his memory. A mind like that is ideal for quiz shows and games of trivial pursuit. It is the mind of a sprinter but not one always suited to long distance running. As I was saying, we hadn't communicated by phone much. Nor had we written to each other. That, too, is entirely my fault. I am a poor correspondent. I barely write a handful of letters in a year but Harry was a more diligent scribe, at least for a while.

After I went to Darwin he'd send me letters telling me about his latest change of job (a year or two seemed to be his limit before he got restless), his gambling at the illegal Chinese casino he frequented several times a week, his horse betting, and his visits to our family in Sydney. I felt twinges of bad conscience about not writing back but I didn't even write to close friends so why would Ihave written to Harry whose life, if his letters were accurate, was a tumble-turn of mishaps from one month to the next; who courted misadventure as if it were some hothouse orchid he had been tending from its initial gestation. Eventually, when he received no responses from me, the letters stopped coming.

I don't dislike him. Far from it. But I do dislike his indecisiveness which is borne of his desire to please everyone. When we were in Canton, at the Pui Ying School, Harry discovered his talent for sprinting. He ran the 100 and 220 yards in fast times, held the school record in both (it would stand for almost a decade). But he also loved tennis and played on the school's representative team. Nice to watch, too. He had a classic style that he'd picked up fi-om somewhere. He claimed he acquired it fiom looking at illustrations in a magazine or a book. The tennis team, which was in an inter-college competition, made it into the finals which were scheduled to be held in Shanghai. Harry, who was 14 or 15 at the time, was excited at the prospect. He had never travelled there but all the other kids were saying that it was a lively place, had the best food in China, the prettiest girls.

Harry's dilemma was that the trip away clashed with the date of the all-schools athletic championships. And he was expected to do well in the two sprints and the relay. He didn't know what to do. He wanted both, was being persuaded and cajoled from both sides and it was clearly impossible. He vacillated, like a moth flitting between two candles. First he moved in one direction; yes, he would go on the trip with the tennis team and withdraw from the athletics. But then the athletics' coach and some team-mates worked on him. He decided he would take part in the athletics meeting. Back and forth he went. He asked me, several times, what he should do.

"Harry," I told him, "which of the two things do you most desire?"

"I'm not sure, Ming." (He always called me by my Chinese name.) "I'd like to do both."

That was Harry, wanting it all, wanting to please all sides. In the end, he worked himself into such emotional turmoil that he became quite ill. Too ill, in fact, to pick up a tennis racquet or don his running spikes. He missed out on both sporting events.

I saw him do the same thing time and again, through his adolescence and even as an adult. If things were decided for him, that was fine, but if it was a question of his choice Hany would fold, crumble into vacillation or inertia.

In those days, in Canton, we had a camaraderie among us, Harry, Charles and me. We were outsiders, the ignorant kids from overseas, from Australia, and the local Chinese kids would gang up on us, mocking our imperfect Cantonese, our unfamiliarity with local customs, our style of dress. And we'd retaliate with our fists, exuberantly brawling, Harry usually in the centre of it, since he had strength enough for two. We had some great fights. I think we won most of them, too.

We aren't close any more. You can guess that from what I've been saying. After our schooling in China we didn't have that much to do with one another. I went home to Australia in August 1938, and Harry and Charles stayed on at college in Canton. Later, Harry enrolled at Sun Yat Sen University to study history and languages. We corresponded spasmodically but, when the war came, we lost touch for quite a while. He remained in China where he worked as a government interpreter for the Ministry of Overseas Affairs through the war and for several years after that. Around 1949 he left China, rather abruptly, and headed back to Australia. He never said exactly why his departure was so sudden although I suspected, reading between the lines of two or three letters he wrote to me just before he left, that it had something to do with money. Mainly money he seemed to owe various people.

I was living in a small apartment in Bronte after I returned from the war, and I saw Hany occasionally at family dinners and usually at Christmas when our mother would have a huge gathering of family and friends. Hany and I would chat in a casual, friendly enough way but, by then, I felt we'd lost the bond we used to have when we were growing up, that we'd each gone our separate ways and the distance between us could not easily be closed. We never spoke about anything too serious. When I headed north to Darwin in the early 50s, Harry would write periodically but, as I say, that exchange ended when I never replied to his letters.

So it was unexpected and odd when he phoned me last October. I hadn't heard from him in more than a year. We began in neutral territory.

"How's the family, Ming? Is Becky ok? I heard she came down with something not long ago. A bad cold."

"No, she recovered pretty quickly. Everyone's well. We're just waiting on the summer wet to descend on us. It's been very dry up here. How have you been?"

"Not bad, not bad."

"What're you doing these days?"

"Deliveries. Driving for one of those courier firms, Instant Express."

"You still chasing the ponies?"

"Sure. Won $450 on a treble last week." Harry never told you about all the amounts he'd frittered away to win a treble. "How's everyone in Sydney?"

"I.. .I haven't seen our sisters for a while. Bonnie doesn't like going to the family dinners." That was also typical of Harry. He'd slip in names of people as if you'd know immediately who he was talking about.

"Who's Bonnie?"

"She's my.. .we're sharing a flat together. In Waverley."

."Do I know her?"

"I'm sure you met her the last time you came down here."

That was more than seven years ago. 1979 had been the last time I'd travelled to Sydney.

Eddie's funeral. His sister, Beverley, rang me and pleaded with me.

"Please Leo, come, it would mean something special to him and to us."

I was reluctant. There had been a reconciliation of sorts with Eddie: with the passing of the years I had found it hard to stay angry with him for what he had done. One year, perhaps in the late 60s, when I was in Sydney on a business trip, I rang him on an impulse and his response was eflusive. Let's have dinner together, he said. And we did.

When I saw him, after all the years of lost contact, I felt bad about the years of neglect and ignorance, even though it had been dzficult for me to put away the hard time he had given Bessie. I noted that he didn't seem to have changed all that much. A bit greyer around the temples, but he still lookedpretty good, as if all that dancing when he was younger had given him a lien on fitness.

Very drunk, around midnight, we staggered out of the restaurant, a Cantonese one in Dixon Street, Lean Sun Low. Don't wait so long before you call me again, he said, and he gripped my hand as ifhe didn't want me to go. I watched him trundle ofinto a summer night heavy with the characteristic Sydney humidity, and I saw the bounce in his step. The dinner had done us both good. We didn't seem to have had any problems in slipping into our old camaderie.

After we 'dfought the Borneo War again we 'd jumped to our exploits in Sydney trying to make a quid for ourselves. Remember that duck shoot, he said. You were going to make your own roast duck and supply the restaurants. Gee, I said, we must have bagged 20 ducks that day, when we went up to the Hawkesbury. It was nearer 30, Eddie said. And the cop pulled you up for having a defective headlight. Yeah, he came real close, got the whiSfof all those ducks, didn't know what it was, pulled open the back door, and the bloody thingsfell out onto his boots. He nearly pissed himselJ1I swear. Then we had to find some way to roast them. Frankie Sung offered us the use of his restaurant kitchen. We had to pluck the birds then hang them to dry. You got the bright idea to use a fan to speed up the drying. It worked. Yeah but what about thefeathers? Flew into all the food Frankie had been preparing. The customers complained for days. Feathers with everything. Didn't Frankie sell out after that? No, I think the posse came and ran him out of Chinatown. That was the tone of the night. Two blokes falling about themselves laughing. The stories got better and better the more scotch we consumed. It had been an overdue reunion and I vowed, at the end, that I would ring him from time to time. But, ajler I came back to Darwin, my resolve dissipated quickly, and we only kept up a tepid contact through a ritual exchange of Christmas cards.

So after the phone call from his sister, I weighed up the arguments. Finally, I decided to go. I was apprehensive but I felt I owed Eddie enough that I should be there. We saw him off in style. The whisky and beerjlowed. They held the wake at the family home in Manly and there was much singing, mainly Irish and Australian folk songs, and even a few dances to honour his memory.

In Sydney, on that visit, I did see Harry at my niece's house. In Darlinghurst. She was having a family get together and invited me as soon as she learnt I was in town. Harry was there. But Bonnie? I couldn't place her. I couldn't even remember if Harry had come with anyone.

Until he reminded me that I had retrieved the car keys for her.

"Now you remember, right? I tried for more than half an hour to get a wire under the window to hook the doorhandle. Finally I got you to come down and you did it in five minutes. An old trick you picked up in the army, you said."

Bonnie, I now recalled, had an old Jaguar. It was a 1964 model, solid as a foundry plate, with well-creased, burgundy leather upholstery, and faded walnut trim on the doors and the dashboard. After I had opened the door I sat inside for several minutes, feeling snug in the generously cushioned seats.

"Okay, Sir Galahad, gyou come round tomorrow for lunch, I'll let you take it for a spin." I didn't accept the offer though I can't remember why.

Bonnie, however, remained a shadowy figure in my recollections. Was she tall? Short? Have dark hair? Was her face round or thin? I didn't have a clue. The meeting had been too fleeting. Hany, as if he were following my train of thought, broke in.

"She's a bit taller than me. She's part Chinese, maybe one quarter or so, on her mother's side. And pretty, Ming, a real looker in her youth, she was."

"Where did you meet her?" It seemed strange to me catching up now on a relationship that Harry must have been in for more than ten years. "I never told you? At a Chinese dinner-dance for the young. She came with her sister, Esther. I was taken from the first moment. Ended up dancing and chatting and laughing with Bonnie all evening. After that, we saw a lot of each other. But when I wanted to get engaged, this was after we'd been going out for six months or so, Mum put her foot down. Never saw her get so mad, Ming. 'She's fan gwei and I don't want any of my kids marrying fan gwei.' 'Mum,' I said, 'she's practically one of us, her mother's Chinese.' I didn't tell her that it was really Bonnie's grandmother who was fully Chinese. Well, it didn't make any difference. She was opposed."

"Did Mum ever meet her?"

"No, after that I wasn't going to introduce them. Bonnie was keen to but I knew it was not going to work. They wouldn't have been able to communicate. Bonnie only knew a few Chinese phrases. It would've been a disaster." Harry was right. Our mother, entwined in her Chinese world with its myriad connections of relatives both close and distant, would never have accepted a non-Chinese into the family as a daughter-in-law. In all the years that she had lived in Darwin and Sydney I had never known her to have any Australian fi-iends. To her Chinese and Australians lived in separate worlds and she didn't see why they should ever meet.

"We had a few fights about me not letting her meet Mum and things kind of started to slide with us. I tried to keep it going, hoping that we'd work something out eventually. But she was more direct. Said it was either her or my family.

"I can't believe I let her go. All those years we could've had together. She met someone else, got hitched and I thought that was that. But some years later I bumped into her downtown, at Farmer's. She was buying a gift in the food section. I snuck up, put my hands over her eyes and said 'Guess who?' She stood there, perfectly still, I thought she'd gone into a trance. Stood like that for almost a minute as though she was trying to divine who it was. Then she says, 'Harry, Harry, Harry.' Swings round and kisses me, right there in that crowded store. 'Hey! Steady on,' I said, 'you're a married woman.' 'Not any more, Harry Tang.' I couldn't believe my ears. We picked up from where we'd left off, all those years past. It was just like it had been in the old days. And here we are, still together.'' "What's the problem with the family dinners?"

"Bonnie always feels uncomfortable. Says she's always being treated like an outsider. Everyone pretends to be polite to her but she senses it's put on. So we stopped going."

And then came the stinger. He'd saved it for last.

"I've been to see the doctor recently. Had some tests done. It's my weight. I've been losing pounds and pounds in the past few weeks."

"Any results yet?"

"No. Maybe next week."

We signed off at that point. I told him, trying to be encouraging, that he shouldn't worry too much; that I was sure he'd be all right. But I spent the following week turning it over and over in my mind. I discussed it with Becky, putting forward one conjecture after another. Perhaps it was some form of leukaemia or lung cancer. Harry had, at one stage, been a heavy smoker. And not mild filtered cigarettes but unfiltered Chesterfields and Camels. Heavy nicotine and tar. A pack and a half a day, sometimes two. He had given it up in recent years, or so he claimed, but maybe he hadn't been telling me the full story. I became so edgy wondering how he was that Becky commented that I was showing an unusual degree of sibling concern.

"There's nothing you can do. One way or another, it'll be resolved. For better or for worse. If you're really anxious you should ring him next week.''

I did. I gave him eight days and I called. He sounded surprised to hear from me. And it was out of character for me to contact him like that, especially since we had only spoken the previous week. "It's not certain," said Harry, "but the doctor thinks I have some form of cancer."

I didn't know what to say to him. There was little point in offering him words of sympathy. I didn't see how that could help his situation. So I went for the outside chance. The possibility that he could still pull through.

"You know, Harry, these doctors don't always get it right. It could be something else that you'll recover from pretty quickly. Anyway, there are many examples of people surviving cancer, bouncing back to good health.''

"Maybe, but right now it's looking gloomy." We said goodbye on that downbeat.

When I told Becky I was fighting back tears. I realised, then, that I had an abiding affection for Harry. It had been buried for a long time but it was there. And I wanted him to come through the darkness into the sun.

He didn't phone me for several weeks but, when he did, that call punctured my optimism. "It's bad, Ming. Throat and stomach cancer. I'm going to have chemotherapy but the doctor says not to build up my hopes."

"Hell, Harry. I'm sorry. Really sorry. How's Bonnie managing?"

"It's been tough. She struggles gamely but I can see it's getting her down. Ming.. .can you do us a favour? Could you come down, stay with us for a bit? I don't want to force you if you're busy but it would be good if Bonnie had some other company for a while. Other than me."

I filled Becky in on the latest prognosis and told her that I was thinking of going down to Sydney.

"What's the point, Leo? You've hardly seen him in the last 20 years and he's got all his sisters and Charles in Sydney. How can you help?'' I was taken aback at her response. She was usually pretty big on family. Then I thought about my sisters and how they bickered, sniped, and snapped at one another. Maybe she wanted to spare me from the deluge.

"He's dying. He wanted me to go stay for a bit with him and Bonnie. It's the least I can do."

"What about the business here? You're flat out right now."

"I'll ask Ray to give a hand." Ray was my cousin, on my father's side.

"Huh! Having Ray there's like having two people away sick." I didn't think that Ray was that hopeless. A trifle slow, maybe, but he was a decent enough bloke who tied to do his best.

"Remember that time you were sick and he took care of the orders? You took months to sort out the mess."

"It wasn't that bad. I think -"

"Not that bad? You were spitting chips over it."

"You don't think I should go, do you?"

"You decide Leo, but with all his family in Sydney I don't think you can do too much for him." She turned away, left the room abruptly, and I knew that she was against me heading off.

But I didn't feel that I could turn down Harry's request. I made my arrangements for Sydney and called in Ray to help. Becky maintained a silent burn. She didn't say any more about me going but she showed it in a dozen small ways.

On the flight down thoughts of Harry and Becky played in my head. I didn't like the unresolved note on which I had left home and I wasn't really sure what I could do to help Harry and Bonnie. But if Harry had been so keen for me to come (I sensed the urgency in his tone) it must have been because he was near the end. Perhaps his condition was worse than he had made out to me.

I arrived around midmorning, caught a cab fi-om the airport out to Bonnie's flat in Waverley. On Carrington Road. It's the long hilly street that connects Bronte to Coogee. It used to be lined with freestanding houses and semis but I saw that serried rows of flats, uninspiring redbrick and orangebrick, were starting to take over the suburb. Where Harry and Bonnie lived was one such version in orange. A rectangle that extended a long way to the back.

I walked past the covered car spaces at the front of the apartments, saw the Jaguar that Bonnie owned. The duco was a dull navy blue, well beyond burnishing. I climbed the concrete stairs and knocked on her door. Apartment 16, on the third floor. Bonnie opened the door. She had worry pressed into her face. It showed in the slightly vacant stare of her eyes and the gaunt lines around her cheeks. I gazed at her trying to recall the person I had met all those years ago but nothing sparked. She was a stranger to me and I wondered if I was the same to her.

"Leo," she said, "Harry's grateful that you came." She leant into me, giving me a hug but it felt more as if I were propping her up. When she backed away her eyes were wet. I was glad I had come. It must have been tough for them both and I admired her for her forbearance.

"How's he doing?"

"He's still losing weight. The treatments don't seem to be countering it."

"Where is he?"

"I left him at the hospital. They were going to do some tests on him that will take some time. Maybe a week. I came back to wait for you to turn up. We'll go there shortly."

She brewed some coffee and we sat in the lounge. The flat was nicely furnished, nothing extravagant but it had a definite warmth to it. A tasteful blend of sofa fabrics, curtains and carpets. There were well-chosen pictures on the walls. Facsimiles of old Australian maps, several lithographs and etchings, some original watercolours and oil paintings .

"You've set this up well. Live here long?"

"Umpteen years, Leo. I bought it in the late fifties. Been here ever since."

"When did Harry move in?"

"Five years ago. He used to drop by and stay overnight. Then he'd stay for the occasional weekend. Finally 1said to him that he should just move in, that he should think of it as our place."

"I'm sorry that we haven't been in closer contact."

"I know how it is, Leo. You being so far away in the north. We understand." I liked her for saying it but I knew that they didn't suspect. That Harry never guessed how exasperated I had gotten with him over the years.

"It's about time to visit Hany. Do you want to come now or save it for tomorrow?"

"I'll come now."

Finally I had a ride in the Jaguar.

"You've had this for a long time, eh?"

"Yeah, almost 22 years. It belonged to a friend of my parents. He took a job abroad and had to sell it in a hurry. It's showing its age now but the motor's still going strong." She patted the leather seats affectionately. She drove with an intense concentration as if the act of piloting the car might take her mind off Harry and his illness. The trip wasn't long. The Prince of Wales Hospital in High Street, Randwick. We went through Frenchman's Road and crossed Clovelly Road near where there had been a cluster of clay tennis courts on which a group of us used to play in the early fifties. Was it there that Charles had done his block and whacked me with his racket? I looked at the site as if it might spring loose the memory of that long ago incident but the dun-brown high-rise apartments that had since been erected there seemed to defy all my efforts to capture the past. She made a right turn at the end of Randwick Junction and drove down the street where the Hospital was, parking nearby. I stepped out of the car and we walked to the entrance of the Prince of Wales.

We paused as soon as we had gone through the heavy glass doors. She turned, gripping my arm, and stared at me. "Leo, brace yourself. He's quite different from when you saw him last.''

Even so, I was alarmed at the change. Harry was not just weak from his treatments but he was frail, thin and frail, as if he were the house of cards we made when we were kids, keeling over at the first puff of wind. He had none of the robust sheen that I recalled from 1979. All his life Harry had been in good health. Until now. And the struggle with the cancer had aged him well beyond his 70 years. His face was drawn, the resilience had gone out of his skin which hung limply on his once handsome features. When he shook my hand I was conscious of how gnarled and bony it was. His legs were pale stilts.

"Ming. Great of you to come. All the family well in Darwin?" His voice was like sound pushed through several layers of cloth, falling flat and distant.

"They're fine. Becky and the kids send their love. They wish you a quick recovery."

"Words, Ming. Only words. Everyone means well but the truth is that I'm not going to pull through. Not unless they find a miracle cure in the next month or so." We sat across from each other in the spartan visitors' room. I looked at the innocuous cream- coloured walls and the black-and-white photographs, mostly of famous scenes around Sydney, thinking how bland and lifeless it all appeared. And there was my brother in his dark green dressing gown and his faded blue cotton pajama pants and a light blue T-shirt. Bonnie had left the room for the moment.

"Is there anything I can do for you Harry?"

"No, nothing. I'm waiting on the results of the latest tests."

"Bonnie told me that."

"Did I ever mention to you that mum left the house to me?" He meant the family home in Crown Street, near the Cross. My parents had bought it just before the war. When my mother died she passed it on to Hany. I think he'd written at one point to tell me what had occurred but I'd been in Darwin for so many years that the details were sketchy. There were many gaps in my knowledge of what had been going on with the family.

"I want our sisters to have a share in it. It sort of belongs in the family, anyway."

"What about Bonnie?"

"Well that's my problem. How can I give all the girls a share without offending Bonnie? She probably thinks she should have it all."

"I think she should. She's the one been caring for you all this time."

"The girls too."

"How?" "I.. .I borrowed money off them from time to time, when I was between jobs. It wasn't a lot, not the individual amounts. But.. ." He threw me a resigned look.

"How much, Harry?" He had always been an intrepid gambler and my guess was that that was where the borrowings went. The hero of Dostoyevsky's story, The Gambler, had nothing on Harry when it came to betting recklessly. He would go to the races and bet in the most outrageous fashion, as if the gods of chance were smiling on him perennially. If he lost on one race he'd double his bet on the next, keep going like that, expecting that he'd eventually recoup his money and more. It never came out that way and he generally ended up well behind. I'd hear stories from time to time from friends and relatives who went to Sydney for a visit. How Harry was building up debts over town, hanging paper in one betting shop after another.

"Around $1 8,000." I could see now where he was headed.

"Dividing up the house means you square your debt."

He nodded. "But I don't know how to tell Bonnie."

"Listen, you don't tell her. Leave her the house. It's the least you can do. I'll cover your debt to the girls." It was a spontaneous gesture from me but one that felt right as soon as I had made it.

We had five sisters: Phyllis, Shirley, Louise, Hannah, and Mavis. I didn't have much to do with any of them, except for Hannah. We didn't have fights or anything and I didn't consciously snub them but I kept our relationship at a workable distance. I was more comfortable that way. Being in Darwin helped. With my sisters everything came down to money. If you bought something they always wanted to know its price. If you went to a restaurant with them the bill was always divided exactly, down to the last penny. And if you owed them money they'd find a 101 ways to remind you of the debt. Their lives weren't about keeping up with the Joneses as much as trylng to find out what the Joneses were worth and seeing if they could be in on the wealth. Hannah, however, stood outside all that, always eschewed such fixations. She knew the cost of things, of that I was sure, because she was constantly struggling financially, but she had a generous spirit that wouldn't allow her to measure life in such a pedestrian and mercenary fashion.

"No, Ming, I can't let you do that."

"Don't worry. I can put the cash together. Let me take care of it."

I thought, then, that he had accepted my proposal. He leaned back into his chair and seemed to relax his body. And he didn't put up any more protest. But when our sisters came to visit him in the hospital he motioned them to silence.

"I want you girls to share the proceeds of the house in East Sydney after I'm gone."

Their collective reaction indicated that he had surprised them, that it was a gift fi-om an unexpected quarter. But you could see that they were pleased and excited by the pronouncement. Bonnie was not in the room. In fact she'd been gone for a long time.

I was standing well away from everyone, angry at Harry for what he'd just done. I didn't think it was right. The house should have gone to Bonnie. Distracted, I didn't feel the tug on my sleeve at first. Not until it was repeated more insistently. I looked at Phyllis and saw the anger burning in her eyes and in the determined set of her mouth.

"Can we talk, Leo?" She spat the words out as she strode from the visitors' room into the corridor. It took me a while to catch up to her. We paused in an alcove near the lifts. I waited for her to calm down but the anger had, if anything, built to a more intense level.

"If your crazy brother wasn't so sick I'd go back in there and kick him in the Khyber."

"What's he done now?" "It isn't his house to give away. It's mine. I hold the title deed. He agreed to give it to me two years ago."

"Why'd he do that?"

"He let the place fall into a terrible state. I'll never know why mum left it to him. All his life he's thrown away money, never saved a penny yet he's the one who gets the house, and neglects it, of course. The guttering was collapsing fi-om rot, the tiles were sagging because of a structural weakness in the trusses. The council made an inspection. They wanted to pull it down. That's how bad it was. Harry didn't know what to do. He came to me and asked if I'd lend him the money for the repairs."

"And did you?''

"At first I said no. I didn't want to lend him so much. The estimate was in the thousands. But he kept after me about it. He said it was the family home and that it'd be a shame to have it condemned."

"You agreed?"

"He was so persistent. I said I would cover him. The trouble was that it turned out to be far more than I thought it'd be. I could see that I'd never see the money again unless I was given title to the house."

"You could have gotten Harry to repay what he owed you after he sold the house."

"You know him better than that. Since when did Hany pay back his debts in full?"

I didn't disagree with her. "What now?" I asked.

"I'll have to get Harry to take back what he said."

We strolled back to the visitors' room. Only Hannah, among my sisters, was still there. She and Harry were talking quietly. Phyllis marched up to Harry and started to upbraid him.

"How could you have told the girls that when you no longer hold the title?"

Harry threw her a strange, pained look. "What do you mean I no longer hold the title?"

"It's mine, remember."

"Since when? Since when?" He was angry now.

"You want me to come back with it tomorrow? I can show you."

"Show me nothing. I never gave you the title. Never."

They carried on like that for some time, neither prepared to give ground, to concede that the other might have a case. I was inwardly amused. Harry, in contrast to his usual way of behaving, was standing firm,not shifting, being as stubborn as Phyllis. We didn't notice that Bonnie had returned.

"What are you two going on about?"

Harry looked up, alarmed, and stopped the sentence he was about to complete.

"It's nothing. Harry and I were having a friendly argument about when our parents bought the house in East Sydney." "Oh, I see," said Bonnie. But her whole manner suggested that she didn't believe Phyllis.

"I'll go see where the others have gone," said Phyllis.

Bonnie turned an inquisitorial eye to Harry. She didn't say anything, let the silence hang there, demanding an answer fill the void. I thought desperately of something to say that would deflect attention from my brother. I could see him, shifting his skeletal body uneasily, eager to avoid a response. Then he did his typical Harry shift. Pleasing or appeasing everyone.

"I told Phyllis that I wanted to give you a substantial share in the house. To include that in my will. She disagreed."

"It's not for her to say. You hold the title, it's yours to decide. Or have I misunderstood the situation?" The question indicated that Bonnie was aware that Harry's affairs could be tangled, defying order and rationality.

"No, I hold the title."

Hannah, who had silently witnessed the whole shebang, looked bemused. She was probably wondering how Harry would squirm out of the mess he had now created.

"Let's talk about it when you're less tired," said Bonnie. "We'll see you tomorrow." And she leant across and kissed his cheek. Hannah did the same.

We walked along the corridor of the hospital, not speaking, each caught up in his own thoughts. I took myself out of the midnight present back to the easy, frivolous times in Darwin when we were kids, when Harry taught us how to body surf at one of the inlet beaches around Fannie Bay, when we used to pinch fruit from the carts of the sellers as they urged their dray-horses along the dusty streets and the time when Harry had managed to remove a large water-melon, reaching to the top of a pile at the side of the cart and somehow lifting the weight of it without dislodging the rest, and our delight at discovering a way to sneak into the picture show through a rear window and, mesmerised, watch the antic clowns of the flickering silent screen, Chaplin and Sennett and Keaton. Keaton was my favourite, he always seemed to hold something deep within him that only came out in special moments.

"Do you feel like a drink at the Clovelly Brass Arms? I'm not in the mood to head back to the flat right now." I nodded assent.

"I'll pass," said Hannah. "I'll see you later in the week, Leo, maybe for dinner?"

We went down High Street, past the entrance to the university, and stopped beside the blue sedan.

"Do you want to drive?" She handed me the keys as she spoke, knowing what my response would be. She had remembered the locked car, all those years ago.

I walked around to open the driver's door and pressed myself into the leather seat, adjusted the mirrors, and slid the key into the notch on the dashboard. The engine gave a deep, rich, reassuring burble as it came to life. I swung the car around and headed in the direction of Clovelly Road. It had a solid feel as we picked up speed.

"Do you know much about cars?"

"Mechanically, not much. Only what they taught us in the army, then later tinkering with utes and trucks in Darwin. But I know what I'd like."

"And that is?"

"I'd love to own a Lincoln convertible, vintage 48 or 49."

"Have you ever seen one in Australia?" "Only twice. Once in Brisbane and once in Melbourne. Lovely old cars, real style and substance to them. Built to last."

"It's a funny expression. Are people built to last, too? And how long is it if we do 'last.' Has Harry had a 'lasting' life. Was he built to 'last?' "

"Harry? I thought he'd go on forever and ever. Outlive us all. He was so strong when he was a kid."

She gave me directions on how to get to the pub. It was at the beach end of Clovelly, on Clovelly Road itself; an oblong pre-war building that had never undergone any major facelift and still had a faqade of rectangular dark green and red tiles and coffee-coloured brick. There was a crowd inside. The workers behind the bar greeted Bonnie as she entered.

"How's Harry doing, Bon?"

"Only fair, Doug, only fair."

"Sorry to hear that. We miss Harry's company. Good man with a joke. The usual Reschs, Bon?"

"Thanks, Stevie. What about you Leo?"

"I'll have a VB, from the tap, thanks."

"Stevie, Doug, this is Leo, Harry's younger brother."

"Thought I saw the family resemblance. You're from up north, aren't you?"

"Yep, in Darwin." "Warm there, eh?"

"Pretty warn."

It was hard conversing against the backdrop of multiple voices and the full blast of the TV blaring out the latest returns on a race that must have just finished. I thought of the pubs in Darwin where Saturdays were observed in much the same way. We picked up our two beers and headed out to a rear courtyard. The salt-filled sea air gave a tacky coating to the metal table and chairs. We both took generous gulps of our beers.

"I'm glad you came, Leo. It'll cheer him up, knowing that you're here. And, truth is, I'm glad too. The last two months have been hard, waiting on medical tests and then watching Harry wasting away." She reached over and squeezed my hand.

"Tell me, Bonnie, does he hold the title to the house?" The question had been nagging at me since we left the hospital.

"I'm not sure. I'll check among his papers when we get back to the flat. He's never shown me anything. Why?"

"If Harry does mean to divide the proceeds from the sale of the house then we should establish where the title is."

"The title, that's what Harry and Phyllis were arguing about wasn't it?"

I nodded.

"That meddling sister of his. I always knew she was up to no good. About two years ago, Phyllis started to bug Harry about the money he supposedly still owed her for the repairs to the house. Harry said he'd been paying her back over the years, whenever he had some spare cash. He never kept any accounts so I have no idea how much he really owed her. Or whether she had inflated the figures. You how how keen she is on money and how careless Harry is about it." She took another decent gulp of beer.

"You think Phyllis has diddled Harry?"

"What I can tell you is that about two years ago Harry said he met Phyllis at her solicitors' office to witness some documents for her. I thought it unusual because she wouldn't normally call on Harry for anything like that. But I never pressed him about it. Now I'm thinking she may have connived to get him to sign the property over to ha."

"What's the house like now?" It had been twenty-odd years since I'd been inside it.

"Not bad. Would you like to take a gander? I think Hany keeps the key in his bedside chest."

We finished our beers and picked up the key before driving into the city, to the Kings Cross section of Crown Street, turning off into a side street to park the Jag. Harry had kept the key on a Pui Ying School 30Ih Anniversary keyring. I had no idea that he had kept in touch with his schoolmates. I wondered whether he went to reunion dinners and the like. I'd never thought of him as someone who was especially nostalgic for the past.

The house was a freestanding terrace on Crown Street, at the William Street end. The traffic was intense, rumbling engines, irritated horns, curses floating into the polluted air. I looked at the house from the opposite side before we braved the crossing. It was of a design typical of hundreds that existed in the inner suburbs of Sydney. Three levels, dark blue iron lacework on the second floor balcony, two tiny lacework balconies on the top level. The rendered brick walls were painted a light grey, almost grey white. The front door matched the colour of the lacework. It didn't look rundown as much as worn and weary in places. We opened the iron gate, pushing against a yellowing heap of advertisements and local newspapers. Bonnie took the key out of her pocket and inserted it into the lock. She swung the door inwards and a musty dampness seeped into my nostrils. "It's been empty for a while?"

"Harry used to pop in about once a week to check on it but he hasn't done so for ages now."

"He didn't think of renting it out?"

"He did but he said there was so much junk in the place that he'd have to do a massive clean-up before he could let it. He'd come in, start to sort things out, and quickly give it away. He's not great on tidying up, especially where it's other people's messes."

My eyes swung around the living room, taking in the worn lounge suite, thickly padded in the style fashionable before the war, the faux-oriental motif of the carpet, the heavy, embroidered purple velvet curtains. The mustiness was more pronounced now that I was inside. A double door separated the living room from the dining room which contained a dusty long oak table with matching chairs and a sideboard. Above the sideboard was a silk scroll with flourishing ink calligraphy. I couldn't decipher more than a handful of characters, "sun" and "winter moon", and its meaning escaped me totally.

We climbed the stairs and went into the bedrooms, three in all on the second level. All the beds were stripped and the bare ticking on the mattresses showed highly visible stains, rust marks around the metal buttons. The walls were streaked and what were once white or cream walls had become a grubby dirt colour.

On the top level were two attic rooms, filled with unused furniture, cardboard boxes, and several metal and wooden sea trunks. Clothes were piled on a drying rack and a bedframe that had been pushed into one corner. Everything had gathered thick coats of dust. No wonder Harry had abandoned the clean-up. Next to one of the trunks was a pile of magazines, copies of the Australian Women 's Weekly, 1946-7 vintage, and yellowingfbrowning daily newspapers, some in Chinese, others in English. A crudely made bookcase, constructed from a packing crate, held books on history, geography, English and Latin. I dusted off one of the Latin books, opened the cover and saw that Harry had written his name in a childish scrawl, Harry Siew Hing Tang, the "y" and "gs" bloated with exaggerated loops. It was dated 1927. I showed it to Bonnie who had seated herself on one of the trunks, indifferent to the dust.

"You had Latin in those days?"

"Sure. It was considered an essential part of our schooling. Harry was good at it, too."

"Leo, do you think I should have a share in this house, like Harry has suggested?"

I told her what I had said to Harry, about leaving it all to her. But she didn't think that was right.

"Harry should leave a share to his sisters."

"Why? You're the one who's been with him and looked after him."

"I think that it'd be good if he left his family with a positive memory of him."

But if you knew my sisters, Hannah excepted, you'd know that it would never be enough. They'd find something to criticise in whatever he did. That was their nature. I didn't pass on my thoughts to Bonnie. And who was to say? Perhaps I would be proved wrong and they would be grateful to Harry for his belated show of largesse.

I walked back into the lounge room and through to the dining room, sat down on one of the musty chairs. There had been many family dinners here after the war. My mother had liked to have everyone over, all my sisters and their families and the three boys. And the invitations extended to our cousins and sometimes their friends. She would prepare elaborate meals of roasted Chinese pork, lemon chicken, bitter melon and pork, braised mushrooms with bak choy, fried fish with black beans, ginger and scallions. And noodles, always egg noodles of thin ribbons, what is called yi mian, for long life. But I'd never lived in the house except for an infrequent overnight stay and it had no permanent, enduring associations for me. It was starting to get dark when we arrived back at Bonnie's flat. She heated up some leftovers, made a simple salad, and we sat in the lounge room watching the news while we ate. There was only doom and gloom. Disaster stories, from continued fighting in the Middle East to health problems in Ethiopia and floods in China. Farmers in rural Queensland were worried about the length of the drought which was approaching a record.

"It's a bad night for the world," said Bonnie.

I must have dozed off because the shrill call of the phone insinuated itself into the dream I was having, something involving Hany and me and sharks in the surf. Then I awoke and looked to locate the ringing. But Bonnie was already striding over to pick up the receiver. She spoke concisely, shook her head a few times, then uttered a hasty "goodbye."

"That's Hannah, she went back to see Harry this evening. He's developed some complications, breathing with difficulty. I'd better go right away. You rest, Leo, I can call you when I get there and tell you what's happening."

"No, I'll come."

Hannah was standing in the corridor just outside Harry's room. A doctor was talking to her. He was white-haired, possibly in his sixties. He explained that Harry had picked up some infection of the lungs. It had come on in the late afternoon.

"It can happen quickly like that when the patient is weak and losing weight. We're trying to identify what he's got but he's struggling with his breathing."

We stepped into the room. Harry was hooked up to a respirator but even so he was labouring with each gasp of air, like a man who has almost exceeded his time underwater and desperately needs to surface. His eyes acknowledged us. Bonnie clasped his bony fist with one hand, brushed his brow with the other. She bit her lips, trying to compose herself. I thought that he'd be lucky to make it through the night. That's how weak he looked.

"Did you ring Phyllis and the others?" I asked Hannah.

"Right after I called you. Left messages for Shirley and Mavis. Louise said she'd try to come over but she had her in-laws over. Phyllis should be here in half an hour."

Hannah and I paced up and down the corridor. We thought that Bonnie would want to spend some time alone with Harry.

"It's going to be hard to contact Charles. He's travelling around Canada at the moment."

"On vacation?"

"Yes. He won't be back for another fortnight."

"You don't know where he might be now?''

"No, but one of their kids might be able to tell us. I'll call Anna."

Hannah hurried off to phone while I went into the visitors' room and sat down. Everything was moving too quickly for me. I had arrived in Sydney expecting to have a chance to talk at length with Harry. But now that prospect seemed remote.

Whatever I might have to criticise Harry about, I had to admit that he was, by nature, a generous person. When we were at school in China he'd lend new sweaters and shirts to classmates. Or when food parcels arrived from Australia he'd have no hesitation in sharing what he had, fruit cakes and jams and biscuits that our mother had made. His declaration about wanting our sisters to have a share of the house in East Sydney was born, I felt sure, of this same generosity. But it was also alloyed with his desire to please everyone and his guilt that he had borrowed money fi-om his sisters that had never been repaid. What would happen if it turned out that Phyllis did hold the title to the house? She was not likely to give the others a share, not if she felt that the property was now hers. Tight with every penny, was Phyllis.

It became a long night of waiting. At various stages of the night one or other of my sisters and their husbands dropped in, stayed a while with Harry, then went home. Only Bonnie and Hannah and I maintained a continuing vigil. It was funny about Hannah. She was, in many ways, the closest to Harry. They shared a similar kind of humour, relishing puns and other plays on words or blatantly anti-Chinese and Polish and Irish jokes. Mainly, however, I think they shared the same positive perspective on life and people. They generally believed in the better side of someone's nature. Gave you the benefit of the doubt. I was always more guarded.

We sustained ourselves with instant coffee from the machine near the lifts. The rest of the time at least one of us sat next to Hany, watching the ebb and flow of his breathing, more ebb than flow. Around 7 am I volunteered to hunt up some breakfast. Bonnie said that there should be a cafk that was open early around the corner on Belmore Road in Randwick Junction. I went out into the morning sunshine, feeling disconnected physically, my mind numb from the sleep I had missed. I made a note to remember to call Becky at 1 1. Sunday morning she usually went over to her mother's to have breakfast, coming back at mid-morning. She had only ever met Harry about six or seven times but they had always seemed to get along well together.

We sat in the visitors' room munching on croissants and fruit rolls and sipping brewed coffee from styrofoam cups. I'd picked up a Sunday paper, The Sun-Herald, and Bonnie had it turned to the back page, reading the gossip columns.

"Hey, here's a photo of Vera Hing with her new hubby, must be husband no.4, at least."

"Didn't Vera and Daniel work in the same office for a while?" asked Hannah.

"Yes, that's how she caught him. On the rebound when we separated. He was her no.3. You never met Daniel, Leo. Smooth as silk he was. Talk you into anything, bed, marriage. Talked me, anyway. By the time I realised that he was all puff and no substance ten years of my life had gone zipping past. Young gullible Bonnie, that was me. The flightiness of the innocent. I was so surprised when Harry bumped into me, after my divorce. I was moping about, feeling in the dumps. And there he was, sneaking up on me in a department store. He called me the very next day, cheered me up, took me to dinner and we clicked as if the years between had never happened."

We left the hospital at lunch-time, Hannah and I. She wanted to visit her younger daughter, Davida, in Surry Hills and I said I'd come along. Bonnie remained with Harry. I looked in on him just before I departed. His breathing seemed less laboured at that point but maybe I had just grown accustomed to how he now was. He gave me a twisted grin and half-raised his left hand in a feeble wave. I promised Bonnie I'd be back in a few hours.

"I've been feeling uneasy about Harry's offer to us. I've decided that I don't want a share in the house."

"Why not?"

"It's Phyllis. She'll stir things up, make life hard for all of us, even if she's wrong about the title. I just know how she is. She was furious when mum left the house to Harry. I can do without the aggravation."

Hannah was separated from her husband. She lived with her son, Leonard, in Petersham. Her daughter, Davida, was a talented musician who played the cello and composed music, mainly pieces for small ensembles. I'd never heard her play in person but, not long ago, Hannah had rung me excitedly to say that Davida had cut her first record and that she was posting me a copy. I was pleased for her, thrilled at her daughter's success but, I must say, the recording was completely lost on me. It was a series of disharmonic compositions, atonal, hard for me to absorb. Becky was smarter than me, she left well before the second track was over but I struggled to the end. I hadn't seen Davida since she was a toddler, one year when I was in Sydney. It may have been the year when I had rung Eddie on an impulse and we had had our reconciliation. Now, she would be in her mid-twenties. From her photo on the record sleeve, she was a striking-looking woman, olive complexion, dark brown hair. Like Becky said, Eurasian woman were by far the best-looking, after the Chinese, of course.

"Hi mum."

"Hey Vida, how are you? You wouldn't remember him but this is your Uncle Leo."

"Uncle Leo. After all these years. Great to see you." She leaned forward and gave me a welcoming hug. When she stepped back I saw that the photo was deceptive. She was radiantly attractive, one of those people whose vitality and glow could never be entirely captured on camera.

"How's Uncle Harry doing?"

"There's no improvement from yesterday, I think he'll be lucky to pull through," said Hannah.

"That bad, huh?"

"Afraid so."

Davida had prepared a lunch of pasta, a hot spicy tomato sauce into which she had mixed slivers of fried bell peppers and eggplant. There was a salad of asparagus, walnut pieces, and prosciutto. A sauvignon blanc accompanied the meal.

"Talent to burn. You play and compose music, cook like a professional chef. What else?"

"I do great laundry. How long are you down here for?"

"I was planning to stay for about a fortnight but now, with Harry so ill, I may stay a bit longer."

"How's your dad, Vida?" "He was Mr Grumps for most of yesterday, even when we went for a bike ride around Centennial Park. But then he got this phone call in the evening and his whole mood changed. I guess it was his black lace fiend."

Hannah made a face at Vida as she finished speaking, a mock grimace. Her husband was Hispanic and they had met in Italy when Hannah was studying archaeology at the University of Bologna. He followed her back to Australia but our mother was opposed to an engagement. According to Hannah she had raged against her marrying a bak gwei (a term meaning "white devil", which is how our mother referred to Caucasians), arguing that her children would be cursed for their looks; that all her friends would look down on her; that Hannah was not being a dutiful daughter; and that no self-respecting Chinese would do such a thing.

Hannah brushed aside all these warnings. She married Francesco anyway and kept a discreet distance from our mother. I suspect that it was hard on Hannah because she and mum had been reasonably close. Things were patched up, in a fashion, after Davida was born. Hannah always claimed that Davida could charm the wings off an angel, even when she was small.

I was upset for Hannah when she rang me last year to say that she and Francesco were separating. I didn't know him well, had only met him a few times, but he had seemed to be a decent enough kind of guy. I didn't how the reasons for the separation but if they had not yet moved to divorce proceedings I held out some hope that they might get back together again.

It was a cheerful, sunny afternoon, light opera and classical music filled the spacious family room we were in and we worked our way through two bottles of the wine that had been served at lunch. Around 3:30 I mentioned to Hannah that I should be returning to the hospital but it was so peaceful just sitting there that my body didn't want to stir.

"You stay, Hannah, I'll get a cab back."

"Are you sure?" "Absolutely. We'll do this again before I head back. Think of a restaurant you'd like to try. Thanks so much Davida, terrific lunch."

A melange of gloomy faces greet me when I turn the corridor that leads to Harry's room in the hospital. Bonnie is in the centre of the group, her body tense, face showing obvious strain.

"He's lapsed into unconsciousness," Louise tells me, "the doctor doesn't think Harry can hang on."

I scurry into the room. Harry's breathing is forced, he is struggling to pump oxygen into his fragile body. His face contorts with the effort. His eyes are closed.

"Harry," I call, "don't give up. Fight, keep fighting." But I know that it's useless, futile. Bonnie has come into the room. She leans forward, her arms cradling his head as if she were holding a newborn child; then she plants a soft kiss on his temple. It is her final benediction. I grip his bony hand, grip it rampantly tight, as if to force him back from wherever it is he has fallen to and then I let go, turn and walk to the far side of the room, face the window looking out onto the brightness of the afternoon sun, dry-eyed, feeling a curious peace now that it is over. Glad that Harry's illness had not dragged on and on, as cancers sometimes do.

I remained in Sydney for another ten days. I helped Bonnie as best I could to organise the funeral, to ring friends and distant relatives, and to tidy up his possessions. The question of what would become of the house hung there, unresolved, waiting, I was sure, to explode into a pitched battle. But I couldn't do anything about that. I did say to Bonnie that she should call me if I could be of any assistance to her. I even proposed that she come north and stay with us for a while. She didn't commit herself. When I got back to Darwin I went for a drive along the waterfront, following the shoreline of Fannie Bay as it sweeps away from the centre of town. I was trying to locate one or two of the beaches where Harry had taught us younger kids to body surf. The sprawl of the town, however, had encroached too much on the natural landforms, and I found it hard to identify where the beaches were. Or perhaps it was merely the erosion of my memory. The picture theater had long since gone. In its stead was a large supermarket that sold Western and Asian groceries.

I must have been back home for more than a month when Hannah phoned. She told me that an almighty quarrel had erupted. Phyllis had produced a document signed by Harry that gave her title to the house when he died. Shirley, Mavis and Louise were disputing her claim and were threatening a legal challenge. Their argument was that Harry had made a clear declaration that they should be given a share in the house. They had tried to entice Hannah to join them but she had resolutely declined.

"What about Bonnie's share?"

"Phyllis is ignoring her completely, as if she doesn't exist."

"Have you spoken to Bonnie?"

"Yes, a few times. She wants to avoid a legal wrangle although she feels that it may be the only way for her to have a share in the house. She says that once something hits the courtroom the only ones who win are the lawyers. But Phyllis refuses to see her and never returns her calls. It's become a nasty brew."

I rang Phyllis and attempted to talk her into taking a reasonable position. She was completely inflexible. She said Harry had left her with debts not only from the repairs to the house but that there were earlier loans he had never repaid. When I asked her how much she gave a vague response. "You don't want to get everyone offside over this. It won't be worth it."

"Why should the others have any share? Harry made a stupid remark at the hospital when he was doped with medication. You saw how he was in those final days."

"He was quite rational. He wanted everyone to have a something from the house, including Bonnie."

"I don't think she deserves a penny. Whenever we saw her she would pretend to be friendly but underneath I knew she didn't like us. Always trying to turn Harry against his own family."

I could see that there was no way of persuading Phyllis. The more she stood her ground, however, the more she risked a fight with her own sisters. I had tried to make her see reason and I'd failed. Phyllis had an obstinate streak in her and, once she was committed to a course that she thought was correct, she was impossible to deter.

I worried how Bonnie was coping with the double strain of losing Harry and the problems Phyllis was making. I spoke with her several times on the phone and she tied to sound cheerful but I could tell she was emotionally down. I suggested again that she come to Darwin for a break. She promised she would in due course. Now was not a good time, she said, there were too many loose ends to tidy up.

You hear so many stories about how fights over money split families. A chap I was in partnership with in the grocery business, Nicholas Angelides, told me that his in-laws no longer had anything to do with him and his wife because the mother claimed that her daughter had cheated them out of money from a joint investment. And Timmy Lok, who played Friday poker with us for years, had a fallout with his cousins over the profits from a business venture importing manchester and clothing from Singapore and Indonesia. You hear those stories and you hope that your family will be spared such divisions. But the fates were frowning on us. Mavis and the others took Phyllis on, pushed their dispute into court. Bonnie made a separate claim on the estate. The longer it went on, the more it cost all of them. Bonnie's warning was coming true. In the end, according to Hannah, they all realised that if the proceedings continued they would be left with only a pittance from the house after the lawyers and court costs were paid. Phyllis reluctantly settled with her sisters and with Bonnie. I don't know how much exactly. Whatever was the compensation, a rift had been created between Phyllis and her sisters. Mavis, Shirley, and Louise refused to have anything more to do with her. Hannah, whose charitable nature refused to let such enmity persist, tried several times to patch things up. Eventually, she gave up because the wedge was too deep.

I look back on these events and the rational part of me wants to blame Harry. If he had kept his silence that afternoon in the hospital, the subsequent troubles might never have occurred. But the caprice in his make-up wouldn't let him. The family part of me, however, says that he was trying to make a generous gesture to his sisters; that, at base, it was an act of brotherly love. And to me that compensated for any of his sins of commission and omission. THE NAME IS CHAN, CHARLES CHAN

His name is not Charlie, it is Charles. His full name is not Charlie Chan it is Charles Chan. It is his real name, a combination of family name and a given name that was chosen presumably by his parents, my grandparents. I say presumably because neither parent spoke much English and it is not certain who helped them locate the name Charles. But he owned it well before Hollywood appropriated it for a fictitious Chinese detective called Charlie Chan who was played not by a real Chinese but a fake one, an ersatz Chinese man. The first actors to play the role were Japanese. Where were the Chinese? Still out in the Californian sun toiling in their market gardens. Next was a succession of white actors like S J Toler and J Carroll Naish. I suppose the Japanese guys would have looked vaguely like Chinese men, like Asian types, anyway. But the white guys, no way. Where were the Chinese then? Opening more laundries and chop suey joints.

The white guys were made up to look as if they were, well, white guys pretending to be Chinese. Their accents were pure pastiche, full of fake Confucian homilies, and they were always making jibes about their number one son, who was genuinely Chinese and who was presented as a dolt, the patsy, the fall guy. Leave it to the white guys, they're the ones who can solve the mystery, even if they have to wear a Chinese face to do so. No real Chinese was ever chosen to play a lead role in a Hollywood movie. Perhaps the movie moguls searched and couldn't find so exotic and rare a creature.

His name is Charles, not Charlie. If you knew him well, were a close friend, you might have called him Chas. That has an elegant ring to it. Chas. If you knew Cantonese you might have called him Sui-bong or Ah Bong, like his mother and father did. That was his Chinese name. But not Charlie. Charlie was the character in the movies. Charles was his name, his given name. Sui-bong was his name. They were the names of the real, living and breathing person, 1916- 1996. The real Charles Chan, not Charlie, lived in Shanghai in the 1930s and 40s. Born in Darwin, he travelled to China in 1928 and continued to live there until 1946. In 1936 he graduated from Customs College in China and began to work in Canton and Shanghai as a customs officer. Here is a weird sliver of movie-making prescience. In 1935, Hollywood, which by then had released a raft of Charlie Chan detective movies, produced Charlie Chan in Shanghai. And what was the movie about? Yes, drugs and smuggling in the city known as the Paris of the East, the oriental den of a thousand Dietrich delights.

The next questions must have crossed your mind: was the movie shot on location? Did the white guy playing the role of a Chinese detective, Charlie, meet the real Charles? Did they have an animated conversation? Did they discuss ideas central to the movie, like how goods were smuggled into Shanghai and from where? Did the director, in a moment of inspired casting, ask the real Charles to play a part in the movie? Perhaps the role of second or third son. Imagine. Charlie Chan, detective (played, of course, by the white guy) in a movie with Charles Chan as one of his sons. The truth is, the real Charles, Chas to his close friends, was the third son in his family. What a promoter's dream that might have been. Pure speculation. The movie was probably shot on a Hollywood back lot, dressed up to resemble passingly the real Shanghai. The Chinese crowd scenes were most likely filled with Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos made up to resemble an oriental mass. Sprinkled amongst them, perhaps, a few real Chinese.

The Charlie of the movie was a phlegmatic character. His feathers were never, ever ruffled. He was presented as equanimous, cool, collected, in possession of self, controlling all faculties, temperate, all in all a person of balance and poise. A Chinese Sherlock Holmes type, you might say, with one or other of the sons always playing the dolt's role, the role reserved for Dr Watson. His mock-educated version of English was a form of patter and pitter that only a scriptwriter who'd never met an educated Chinese could have invented. Pure mumbo jumbo.

The character of the real Charles was another story. He was not temperate. Charles could be all temper, irate, quick to anger, breathing the fire of Jove, ready for a dust-up, knuckles bared. He was at the centre of many incidents that involved losing his temper, doing his block. He could swear ferociously and easily in three languages, including English which he spoke all his life with a strong Australian accent. And he carried on like this without regard to where he was. China or Australia, it didn't matter. Let's take China first.

The Rickshaw Ride in Nanking Road, Shanghai, Circa 1937-38

When Charles finished work at Customs House, usually around 6:00 pm, he would, as a matter of habit, hire a rickshaw to run him home. It wasn't that he couldn't afford a taxi, only that taxis were in short supply in Shanghai. It was much faster to jump into a rickshaw, after you had negotiated the price, and get the driver to deliver you to your apartment. Even though Shanghai was a flat city and the roads were relatively easy to manage, it was still hard work for one man on foot to drag a two-wheeled buggy, especially when there was a passenger in the seat. Nanking Road, which was the first street on your left off the Bund when you picked up a rickshaw outside of the Customs House, was a ceaseless cacophony of cars, buses, trams, bicycles and pedestrians, not to mention competing rickshaw drivers. Weaving and darting through the traffic required an artful dodger's skill. And it was far worse if you struck a rainy day.

Charles was not a patient person. If the driver seemed to slacken off for part of the journey, to catch his second wind, as it were, Charles would berate him, urging him to pick up his speed again. If Charles suddenly remembered that he had to pick up something from a shop, a packet of cigarettes, perhaps, he'd make the driver stop and wait for him. Or, if he decided, on a whim, to visit a friend rather than proceed directly home, he'd demand the driver change his route.

You can already see that such situations were primed for dispute. A driver would demand a different price, usually one that was higher, if he had been inconvenienced and forced to go on a route other than the one originally negotiated. But when it came to paying and the driver demanded more, Charles would haggle. It wasn't the money. The extra was usually a niggardly sum. Maybe it was the chance to engage in a donnybrook, to let off steam after an arduous and taxing day at the office or on the wharves. Or maybe he believed it was a matter of principle, that some unspoken code had been transgressed. Charles would raise the intensity of the disagreement by shouting and abusing the driver who would then lose his cool and scream back. The drivers were workers, poor men, but they were proud and spirited. They had to take enough crap every day from police and petty city officials and irate motorists. Charles's show of venom and volume was nothing to them. One more flea in their ear in a generally hostile day.

Most of the time, since Charles wasn't one for backing down, it came to blows and kicks. Charles fought instinctively, to survive and to win. He and his brothers, Leo and Harry, had been in dozens of scraps when they were younger, still at school. What he'd learnt was that the quickest way to assert an advantage is to have your man down. From that perspective it is far easier to use your boots (or, in his case, his polished shoes). If a policeman did not intervene to stop the brawl, the driver would usually run off fearful of being seriously injured. When he went into strike mode, Charles presented a terrifying countenance.

Charlie Chan, played by any of the actors previously mentioned, would never raise his voice. He might deliver a withering retort, in his pseudo-English-Chinese accent. The driver might respond in coolie English (see any number of Hollywood movies that have Chinese as waiters, cooks and laundry workers) and the matter would be resolved when the driver would back down, realising that he was in the presence of a white man dressed to resemble a Chinese. You may or may not have seen such an incident in Charlie Chan in Shanghai. It depends on whether you saw the director's cut which restored 17 minutes to the movie that was released in 1936.

The Marquess of Queensberry Rules, Coogee, 1948.

A marquess is a nobleman ranking just below a duke and boxing is the noble art involving the use of your dukes. There is a connection, then, between things noble and the usefulness of dukes. In 1948, in the limited corridor behind the serving counter of a grocery store in Coogee, two brothers, both Chinese, are fighting. We can call one of them Harry and the other Charles. Those were their real names, anyway. Only one of them, however, abides by the rules of the nobleman ranked just below a duke. You'd have to say it wasn't Charles.

"Fight fair, fight fair", says Harry, his body crouched, left leading, right cocked in imitation of some screen lightweight like Kirk Douglas in Champion. Charles, the Shanghai warrior, who has mastered a half-dozen forms of lethal kicks in China, measures the distance between them, props and punts his right boot venomously. Hany, ducking and weaving, manages to avoid the assault on his body, more through luck than skill.

The boot is projected onto a shelf of tomato sauce bottles. There is a fractured silence like the unvoiced thud of a collision seen just before it is heard, a fearful pause while they wait for the inevitable deliverance of the laws of physics. The bottles momentarily climb upwards then hurtle against the cement floor. Glass splinters while thick red dollops spill into generous abstract art.

Harry backs off, unsure how the science of the Marquess can abet him. With mounting anxiety, Eddie, who has been waiting for Leo, ties to urge restraint.

"C'mon fellas, stop it. Stop fighting." But Eddie is not a referee and Charles has never heard of the Marquess.

A second flying kick unhinges the large glass dome that houses hundreds of rainbow balls, the ones that cost a ha'penny each, sends random colours cascading.

Eddie, impulsively, foolishly, leaps onto Charles's back, trying to restrain him, muzzle him, but Charles, with a vigorous tilt of his right shoulder, sends him tumbling forward, rendering him supine, startled. The sight of the prostrate Eddie propels Charles back into a state of near normality. A rash intervention has halted the contretemps. Hany looks relieved. He doesn't know where the fight was heading, only that he wasn't ahead on points.

In 1948, Hollywood released four Charlie Chan movies. None of them featured a fight in a grocery store in Coogee. None of the movies, in fact, ever involved the wily detective in any form of fistcuffs in Coogee, Shanghai, Cairo or anywhere else. It was part of the effete nature of the movie detective, the one called Charlie, never to raise a fist in combat. His weapons were words, sentences, admonishments. He was a peaceloving Chinese, which is to say he was a peaceloving white guy.

ANAIAnsett, circa 195 1-8 1

The Charles who had many fights with the drivers in Nanking Road and many other streets that ran through the centre of Shanghai worked in Sydney for 30 years with Ansett and its predecessor, Australian National Airlines. His position was that of senior traffic officer, an officious term for someone who basically looked after passenger manifests and the loading of planes before takeoff. Charles had an expansive, friendly side to his personality. He got on well with passengers, was invariably helpful, had kind words for the elderly. But not always. In any year he might look after 2500 passengers and have quarrels or fights with 25 of them. Not fistcuffs. Not blows. He was not in Shanghai any longer. But harsh and intemperate words would pass from Charles' lips to the outraged ears of those 25 passengers. It was a reasonably sober average. It meant that 99 per cent of the time Charles behaved rationally and calmly.

But when he was moved to anger, when he lost it, was fired up, raging, the words would come pouring out. Obscenities. Charles knew the choice terms, the ones that footballers hurl at each other in the thick of a ruck.

Avoiding any hint of overt conflict, Charlie the detective would have soothed, pacified, placated; a practiced pleaser and appeaser. His record of non-confrontation would have scanned perfectly, every entry a testament to his obsecration. But sometimes, when a passenger is burning up, has a fire that must spew forth, the Charlie approach, the overly deferential tactic, can be counter- effective. A person eager to unburden and unleash may want some opposing force, may want the satisfaction of a verbal stoush. And grow more angry when denied a free for all, resent the benign face, the platter of humble pie. My Father's Turn

Beneath the obsequious, falsely meek faqade was an implied superiority, a sense that he, Charlie the sleuth, was actually smarter than everyone else. Why else was he presented as wily, the clever Oriental, able to solve mysteries by his wits alone? His words might say and pretend otherwise, parade his modesty, but how he really saw himself was quite different. In truth, the poseur's mask concealed a secret show-off but it was a double mask, anyway, because the Chinese face was a faqade covering a white face. The truly clever person was, by sleight of hand, an American in disguise and a sneering snob.

But not Charles. He knew he was very good at some things. He had been a decent athlete in his youth and he picked up new sports easily and acquired a skill at them that went beyond any fumbling amateur. Like tennis which he came to uncoached yet played with the aplomb of a veteran club competitor. Or swimming where his strength and natural aptitude were converted into a muscular glide through the water, creating an easy, relaxed buoyancy for his body. And languages, which he mastered in his lengthy stay in China - Shanghainese and Mandarin and Cantonese. These were talents he wore comfortably, proud of his ability, confident in his performance. But he never waved them in another's face as a putdown; nor did he ever set himself up as superior to others.

Indeed, in a curious reverse loop, Charles often built up the talents and skills of his family and friends, often made them out to be outstanding at what they did or more authoritative than they actually were. He was someone who -

My flow of words is interrupted. There I am in midsentence when he comes close, leans over my shoulder to read what I have just written.

"Who are you writing about at this hour? Who's Charles?" The questions are framed as mild curiosity, a measure of puzzlement. After all, it is his name and he must have guessed that I'm writing about him. "It's both you and not you." I see a touch of amusement and bewilderment crease his features. At 76 years, he's remarkably young-looking still, his hair thick, grey-white and swept back in that full style which he's favoured ever since he was a young man in China. He walks with a hint of stiffness, the result of a knee operation last year, but refuses to countenance a cane. His face is hardly lined, a legacy of inherited genetics: his parents always looked younger than their years. He's wearing a blue shirt of very soft, polished cotton and jeans that are faded, stone- washed. His shoes are highly buffed dark brown moccasins although, since the operation, he mostly prefers sneakers. Perhaps his physiotherapist told him that sneakers would cause less jarring when he walked. He's waiting for me to go on, to explain. But I'm hesitating, hedging even, because I don't mind telling him generally what I've written but I don't want his annotations on the line by line story I've laid out. After all, he may be my father but I'm the one who owns this narrative about him. So the silence hangs there and, for what seems a long interval, I say nothing.

"I'm trying to write a story that is based around your name."

"Why do you want to do that? There are tons of people who have the same name as me. It's actually quite common."

"That's my point. Your name leads people to conjure up all kinds of images of the Chinese."

"It's all the fault of that Yank guy. What's his name Beggars, Buggers? No, it wouldn't be Buggers."

"Let me check." I do a search on the web, typing in "Charlie Chan detective." A name comes up, an author.

"Earl Biggers. Earl Derr Biggers." "Yes, Biggers. I remember now. A guy in his late forties. Met him in Shanghai in '36 or '37." I stare at him, half-disbelieving. This is a new story, one I've never heard. How could he have met Biggers? But if he senses my doubt he doesn't let on.

"Biggers invented Charlie Chan as a detective. He wrote a whole bunch of novels based on the character. Anyway, he travelled a lot gathering background for his books. That's how he ended up in Shanghai." He isn't normally so voluble when we're together but the memory of the encounter has begun to grip him and I find myself intrigued, drawn in, eager for him to unfurl a personal memory.

"I was on duty when he came through Customs. Medium height, he was, perhaps five-eight. He was dressed in a dark blazer, white shirt and grey trousers, shoes two-toned, brown and white. Everything was pressed sharp, crisp and exact. He wore a green and red cravat. I suppose it was the fashion of the day but on him it didn't look right, made him a bit too spiffy. He was with a woman who was much younger, perhaps in her late twenties, certainly no more than that."

I'm listening and diffidently scrolling through the information about Biggers that is on screen. And the titles and publication dates of the books come up. I'm listening as I start to read: House Without A Key, published in 1925, was the first Charlie Chan adventure; Keeper Of The Keys, published in 1932, was the last.

"She was half-Chinese, I think, and very good-looking. Wearing a long well-tailored flowing dress, a light, apricot-coloured silk. Around her neck was a blue quartz necklace of carved birds, very unusual and attractive. There were three big luggage trunks. Everybody used them in those days. Huge cumbersome things made of wood and metal with steel corners and leather handles. The worker had them on a trolley and he could barely push it along. I was suddenly curious to see why his luggage was so heavy. Guess what it was?"

"Bags of food?" "He did have some packages of food but that was not the reason he was weighed down. No, it was the two typewriters and about 200 copies of his books. And all kinds of cooking equipment, bowls, eggbeater, fi-ypans, pots."

"Why two typewriters?"

"The way Biggers explained it - this was much, much later, after he'd been in Shanghai for three or four weeks and I had gotten to know him a bit - he liked to write two chapters at the same time. But he didn't like to remove a page from one chapter while he was in the midst of writing it and replace it with a sheet for the other chapter. It was a little ritual he always followed. He had to have two typewriters going. Old Remingtons they were, with a black carriage and black tabs. "

"Did he know who you were? "

"Yes. When I went through the trunks and saw the titles of the books I said: 'Hey, that's me, you're writing about me.' He looked up, surprised and puzzled. It had not occurred to him that there was someone who might really be called Charles Chan.

"That's when the woman spoke up. 'Uncle Earl, you'll have to write him into your next novel,' and she beamed at me when she said it."

"She was his niece?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"There's something that doesn't quite fit. According to the information I have here, Biggers wrote his last book in 1932. Maybe you met him earlier than you think?"

"Impossible. I didn't start at Customs until '36. He could have been taking a break from his writing when he came to Shanghai." "So did he take the advice of the woman?"

"You mean Iris?"

"That was her name?"

"I think so. Or maybe it was Oris or Eris. So long ago I can't remember now. Well, yes and no. He called in at Customs House and I walked him around showing him the place and he asked me about our procedures and whether there were any interesting smuggling incidents I could tell him about. He had his wallet stolen when he was in the Customs House. We were in the dining room and he went to the bar to order some drinks and that's when it happened. Or so he thought. He didn't remember being bumped or pushed but when he went to pay the wallet was missing."

"Did he lose a lot?"

"Mainly cash and some business cards of contacts in Shanghai. He was pretty angry about it. Insisted that I take him to see the Director of Customs immediately. I said that was out of the question because I was too junior to just call on the Director. I mean he wouldn't even know who I was, probably. Old Earl got very nasty. Insinuated that I was spineless and that Orientals couldn't be trusted so I let him have it."

"You yelled back at him?"

"Yell nothing. I whacked him, good and hard, gave him a bunch of fives. That shut him up." My father grins, chuckles at the memory of that moment when he punched the inventor of the Charlie Chan stories.

"Did you see him again after that?" "No, not after that. I saw him around town in several restaurants, always immaculately turned out. But after the episode in the Customs Building he never tried to contact me again. Sometimes I've thought about the story he might have written had he gotten to know me better."

"And the woman?"

"Iris? I never saw her in Shanghai again. Biggers would be dining alone or with other people but never with her. But, one year, maybe around 1939, I think I bumped into her in Hong Kong. I'm not positive because I didn't remember her all that well and, by then, it had been several years since she'd come to Shanghai. We were passing each other in the street, on Kowloon Road, and she looked hard at me as if she knew me. For a moment I thought I should say something to her and I saw her pause as if she, too, wanted to speak, but then we both kept going. That was all."

He turns, then, and with a quiet "good night", he walks out of the room and leaves me buzzing with a sequence of questions I want to ask him about his encounter with Earl Derr Biggers.

But first I need to complete the narrative that he halted when he started to read over my shoulder.

I go back over the sentence I was in the middle of writing: "He was someone who - ". I read it again. And again. Silently and aloud, but nothing will prod my memory, the thought I had then but which is now beyond recapture. I form combinations mentally of what I might write to complete the sentence and go on with my story but nothing sounds right even though I can't recall what it was I was going to say.

Distracted and frustrated, I search the web, instead, for more information on Biggers. One site that specialises in selling crime fiction includes biographical references on the authors. There is a book written about Earl Derr: Biggers is Better by Hester E Lyon. Published in 1939 by Arcade Books in Boston it is listed as scarce and has a price of 85 US dollars. I do a calculation and decide that I don't want Biggers is Better unless the exchange rate makes a rapid shift in our favour. And then, a few nights later, I come across another fact about the American writer. One that I should have picked up much earlier but somehow missed. Biggers died in 1934. That was why the Charlie Chan stories ceased; not because of any writer's block, at least not in the usual sense of that term. And he never could have been in Shanghai. Not in 1936. I feel an urge to rush upstairs, wake up my father, and ask him why he has been putting me on with his confection; but then I look back over the twists in the story he has given me and I like it and I decide that I should just let it be, leave him alone to sleep his dreams in readiness for another invention on another day.

Let me move forward. It is November 1996. I am living and working in Sydney. My house is in Dangar Street, Randwick, only a ten minute walk from my parent's place in Clovelly Road where they have lived since 1957. The house has just been sold and my mother is moving out. I go over there on the weekend of 9 November. My mother and my two younger sisters are trying to clean, salvage and discard. There is the accumulation of almost 30 year's worth of possessions: clothes, old 78s (yes records that were carefully packed and brought from Shanghai, their sounds, over time, randomly reshaped by scrapes and scratches), two-tone, tan- white shoes, books on China, magazines, furniture, photographs, albums, even used car tyres (keep them, he'd say, always good for a retread), crockery, frypans (the stickers, yellowed, cannot erase the shop price, one pound, seventeen shillings and sixpence; but why are there four exactly the same?), footpumps, enough tools to renovate half a house, letters and cards (including Christmas cards extending back for more than forty years).

When I join them to help with the sorting and cleaning out they are increasingly exasperated as they confront the detritus of my father's month by month, year by year accumulations. They have tried to be systematic and to distribute the piles sensibly, but the lack of space in the house defeats them at every turn. Not that the house is small, only that it would need to be twice as large to give them room to sort properly.

After my father died that August, we had thought that it would be a big job to go through everything, but none of us thought that it would be as slow as it has been. For three or four hours I sift through a pile of letters, mostly notes of greeting or a thank you for some courtesy that Charles has extended to someone. Most I throw away. But one letter in the huge bundle stands out. It has been wrapped in what was once white bond paper now foxed and tinted by age. I unfold the sheet and remove a yellowed envelope which has "Charles Chan" written in a boldly executed script, the dark ink faded. There is no stamp and no address but the top left hand corner has "Park Hotel, The Bund, Shanghai" in block print. The letter inside is handwritten on the hotel's thimble thin paper, the hotel name at the top. I have the letter still so I can quote it verbatim.

Dear Charles,

Thank you for your cordiality in forwarding me the list of contacts that you promised. I have contacted one ofyour colleagues in Customs, Mr Ping Hui-hong and he and his wife have agreed to meet me in the main restaurant of the Park Hotel next Wednesday at 8:OOpmfor dinner.

I'd be most delighted ifyou couldfind the time to join us. I have started to develop the outline for my Shanghai novel which shall, of course, have your namesake as the hero. There are one or two ideas that, with your permission, I'd like to try out on you when we meet.

Yours truly,

Earl Biggers

18 February 1932.

I have since pondered over this letter many times. The date makes no sense. Absolutely none. Not if Charles was born in 1916 as his passport claims. Unless. Unless what? I'm not sure. Perhaps he was born earlier than that, perhaps he was the first-born son. But the family chronology that then creates defies logic. Is the letter a hoax? And, if it is, who is its perpetrator? These and a stack of other questions spin around in my brain and, the more I try to bend them into a rational shape, the more perplexed I become. Until, finally, defeated, I say to myself, enough, enough. Let it be, leave him with his moment, his narrative. Charles and Charlie. Abbastanza.