Free The Yellow Papers by Dominique Wilson

– cold, almost. I didn’t understand, then, that she had to be.’ And Chen Mu told her about his life in China. He told about his village, and about his father and brothers following the great Tso Tsungt’ang to the northwest provinces, never to return. He told her of the famine that followed and his sisters being sold as slaves, and he – only four years old – sent to work in the fields until that fateful day three years later when he had been chosen for the Mission.
    â€˜I can still remember that trip down the river. It took three days from my village to Shanghai, and they were the most miserable three days I ever spent. I’d never been outside of my village before, so I should have been excited, but I wasn’t. I remember soon after we left, a river dolphin started swimming by the junk. The snows had started to melt further west, making the water turbulent, but the dolphin still gambolled beside the junk. It made me angry – I didn’t want anyone, anything, enjoying themselves when I felt so miserable!’
    â€˜Poor boy! Seven isn’t very old …’
    â€˜Oh, it’s not so young for people like you and me …’ Chen Mu said, smiling gently at Sahira and stroking her cheek. ‘But this was the very first time ever I was on my own. And though I’d never have admitted it, I was scared. Then thunder began to rumble, and rain covered the river like a grey curtain, and the dolphin disappeared. The rain continued, so thick you couldn’t see the banks, and still I sat there in my misery, wet and shivering. When the rain finally stopped we were passing a village, and the sight of the market stalls, the pigs and the chickens in bamboo cages and people going about their business – it reminded me of my own village, and made me feel so lost and alone that I crept to the back of the junk where no one would see me, to the rows of fish drying on bamboo poles, and there I finally cried.’
    Then he told her of his anger and frustration in Connecticut, when he’d found out his mother had died. And he told her about old Yu Ping and of the backbreaking work in the heat of the desert, and the stench of night soil that seemed to ooze from his very pores. He even told her of his resentment that no matter what he thought, what he learned, all people would ever see were his Chinese features, so that he felt he had two faces: a private one and a public one. But he never told her of the man he had killed.
    By the time they buried the Mistress next to those small graves on the hill, Chen Mu could not imagine living without Sahira. He would gladly have done anything for her. He decided to leave his fate to the gods – the universal order of things. After the funeral he waylaid the Baptist pastor and asked that he marry them, the next time the pastor came this way.
    When Sahira came to his bed that night, he told her what he had done. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her, and pulled from under his bed a large Chinese tea caddy he’d rescued from Silverton, which he used to protect his most valued possessions from the mice and the rats. He took the lid off and withdrew the little brush-rest made of translucent apple-green jade
    â€˜What’s that?’ Sahira asked, but Chen Mu didn’t answer.
    Cradled in the palm of his hand, shadowed by his fingers from the candlelight, it was difficult to see the intricate carvings, but he didn’t need light – he knew them as well as he knew the contours of Sahira’s body. He closed his eyes and ran his finger over the conical seedpod, feeling each tiny round pointed seedhead, each curve of the leaf, remembering that day so long ago. He knew he would never return to his village, but now, with Sahira at his side, it no longer seemed important.
    Sahira sat up and swung her legs to the side of the bed. ‘Show me …’
    Chen Mu flattened his palm and held the brush-rest close