House of Kwa Read online

  DEDICATION

  For John and our children,

  Royston, Mason, Harper and Berry

  In memory of Aunty

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Old Kwa

  Opium and Silk

  Rickshaw and Gold

  Tiny Feet and Mudfish

  Babies and Dragon

  Boy and Wrench

  Jigsaw and Jewellery

  Christmas and Hollow Pipes

  Eggs and Comics

  Axes and Steak

  Mahjong and Barrels

  Trapdoor and Trousers

  Poison and Fire

  Silver and Ash

  Pebbles and Cane

  Planes and Paparazzi

  Ship and Shoes

  Spit and Laundry

  New Kwa

  Bush and Swamp

  Mountains and Voices

  Antidepressants and Glass

  Punch and Medals

  Gucci and Gecko

  Nuns and Lego

  Gravel and Sausage

  Picnic and Ponytail

  Wombles and Goosedown

  Soap Opera and Philosophy

  Stickytape and Bells

  Cinderella and Cigarettes

  Southern Comfort and Hairspray

  Swords and Flannelette

  Beggar and Prince

  Galaga and Slashed Tyres

  Brothers and Bikies

  Pot Plant and Skyscraper

  Feng Shui and Cat’s Pyjamas

  Now Kwa

  Monkeys and Zoo

  Stripes and Bombs

  Clouds and Anchor

  Goldfish and Rats

  Alligator and Safari

  Coffin and Wolf

  Caravan and Saint

  Coconuts and Hubcaps

  Texts and Tears

  Sombreros and Bellhop

  Blood and Lock

  Diamonds and Drunks

  Disc and Dumplings

  Bank and Bridge

  Junk and Brace

  Epilogue

  Photos Section

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  YOU KNOW THAT FEELING WHEN YOU’VE BEEN BURNED BY someone you love and you think you can only save yourself from the flames by walking away? When that someone is your family, there are, as I see it, three options: estrangement, obligation, or forgiveness and gratitude. There’s no right answer, and the path will always be complex.

  When you join me in my story, please remind yourself that the lens of a child is not the one I look through now. As an adult I can see other points of view – right or wrong, good or bad – that weren’t available to me then. Delving into my past to bring fractures of time into focus has uncovered my story through a kaleidoscope of experiences. Here on these pages I seek to make the brushstrokes of my family portrait dance to life.

  Today, I reach into my trove of painting implements and pass to my own child an heirloom, handed down for a thousand years. Accepting it tentatively, she examines its soft grey bristles – shaped like a turnip bulb into a point. She weighs and turns the decorated bamboo stem in her small hands. ‘You are holding an ancient Chinese calligraphy brush,’ I say. ‘Imagine how many artworks this brush has painted, how many stories it has told, how many hands have held it, and how much more it has to say.’ She hesitantly hovers the tip of the brush over a petite porcelain well. ‘Now, dip the brush into the ink, and daub it gently from point to base, pulling it downwards lightly before quickly lifting. There, you’ve made your first stroke.’

  As she wields the brush, I see the hands of our ancestors gripping its shaft, wrestling with its handle to bring the most vivid images into view, the black pigment bleeding into flax paper to create shadows and shade. I speak to my child of a dragon and a tiger, and tilting my head towards her mark on the page, I watch her confidence grow as she makes another. ‘You see, my love, this is who you are. This brush will tell you a thousand tales, and in the end you will use it to paint your own. Because this is a story that began millennia ago and has no end. This, my darling, is the brush of Kwa.’

  PROLOGUE

  GREY HAIR, LIKE MARIE ANTOINETTE. IT CAN’T REALLY BE possible, but as I examine the phenomenon in the bathroom mirror, there’s no denying I went to bed without any grey hairs and now a brittle, coarse sprig of them is right there on my scalp.

  The cause is a letter from my father, the latest of several he’d sent recently. After finding it in the mailbox, I had ignored it for days, on the kitchen bench, the piano or the dresser, or shoved under the stairs on a stool next to the schoolbags. Then, finally, last night, when the kids were asleep and my husband was watching TV, I opened it.

  THE SUPREME COURT OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

  Kwa v Kwa

  I had no words. All the strangeness in my life, the past I’d tried to put behind me, it kept coming back, smoke wisps around my feet: the dragon.

  Dad was suing me.

  Now, as I stare into the mirror, I have flashes of my child self, from age ten, proofreading Dad’s legal letters and court documents. They would stream through a dot-matrix printer, perforated paper swallowing every available space in his home office. I would catch the pages as they spewed out and guide them into neat, concertinaed stacks. Dad was always suing someone, and as late as one in the morning he would come into my room and ask me to check his letters.

  ‘Excuse me, Mi. I need to get this off tomorrow.’ He’d hand me a wad of legalese that I’d scour with my pen, returning it to him after I’d applied my system of placing an ‘x’ in the margin at the end of the line to indicate a correction.

  If only I’d spent as much time studying as I had working for Dad. At least he prepared me for fighting him in this latest legal tussle. His combative spirit is perhaps natural for a man who has been through so much, but all the same – why would he do this to his own child? Kwa v Kwa is something I never dreamed could happen.

  Cortisol and adrenalin surge through me, a survival response triggered since childhood, a response passed down from my ancestors. My very existence, the very Kwa of me, is under siege, this time in the unfamiliar territory of the courtroom, which is Dad’s patch, his dragon stomping ground. I’m a tiger running towards a fire, leaping into the flames while I look behind me – as far back as I can, to ancient China, near the Emperor’s palace in Beijing.

  The sky opens, and the shaman’s almanac, which he uses to predict all things, shows clearly beneath my Wood Tiger stars that it was always my destiny to be trapped in a battle with a dragon.

  And then the book closes, and all that remains are tendrils of smoke from Great-Grandfather’s pipe and Grandmother’s cigarettes. There are whispers of ‘you are Kwa, you are Kwa’ – for even in visions, my family members repeat themselves. I am surrounded by their stories, flooding through windows and under doors, House of Kwa tales curling round the leg of my chair, clinging to my curtains like Aunt Theresa’s brushstrokes on silk.

  I watch a tree grow from my table, branches and twigs rapidly filling the room, blossoms blooming in sharp bursts of spring colour, like fireworks, like bombs: our family. From all the tragedy, silken threads weave together into a picture of survival, a banner of hope. Then a dragon flies from the tree and, without warning, engulfs the branches in flames. As the tree burns, the dragon disappears, but for his eyes lingering in the sky among the stars that said I would always be exactly here, that we cannot escape what is already written.

  Of course, a tiger cannot help but stop to look at her reflection as she passes by water under a burning tree, beneath dragon eyes in the sky. This image of her and what she’s endured may
show her how she became so fierce . . .

  OLD KWA

  龍的傳人

  Descendants of the dragon

  OPIUM AND SILK

  ‘I AM A DIRECT DESCENDANT OF THE EMPEROR OF CHINA,’ Great-Grandfather hollers. ‘How dare you hide from me.’

  It’s the Year of the Wood Monkey, 1884. My great-grandfather is looking for his servant Chen She.

  ‘Where is he?’ spits Great-Grandfather in his best nineteenth-century Mandarin, arms outstretched and laden with layers of soft glossy silk. He warms his hands on a heating pipe as ladies of the elite bustle across his courtyard in their own silken finery, the sheets of vibrant thread dancing in the gentle rays of spring sunshine.

  ‘Gossiping, always gossiping,’ Great-Grandfather mutters resentfully before turning to scream across the decadent compound. ‘Chen She!’

  Great-Grandfather’s voice carries through a lace wooden window embedded with tessellations of rectangles and squares, a honeycomb of shapes protecting the privacy of the many stone rooms interconnected with terracotta roofs, garden walkways and broad internal corridors: hard to see in, easy to see out.

  Great-Grandfather steps out of a door into the courtyard and leans on a post encircled with etchings of dragons ascending to heaven. He heaves a frustrated sigh and shouts, ‘Must I find my own opium pipe?’ His fury replenished, his best Mandarin slips, giving way to an enraged common dialect. A timber lantern swings in the gusts of his temper. ‘Must I stoke my own pipe?’

  The two stone lions at the compound gate bristle with alarm. Up on the roof ridges, terracotta dragons turn to one another in panic.

  ‘Must I light my own pipe?’ Great-Grandfather’s rage sweeps the dry earthen paths and blasts the stone pillars of the bridge over the koi pond; the water ripples.

  Most others in the courtyard have fled to their rooms or are trying desperately to blend in with the manicured hedges.

  Two young concubines huddling by a heating pipe in an adjacent room are alert at the yelling and quite possibly alarmed. They turn to Wife Number One, as she glides in from a corridor, calm as ever, her bound feet causing no apparent pain. She is both admired and feared.

  ‘He has never lit his own pipe,’ she says. ‘He wouldn’t even know where to find it.’ She claps her eyes on a Ming vase, which sits atop a cabinet lavishly adorned with mother-of-pearl, and she remembers the time Great-Grandfather smashed its mate. Then she cocks her head to one side. ‘Must I find my own opium pipe? Must I stoke my own pipe? Must I light my own pipe?’ She mimics Great-Grandfather quite well but is sure to keep her voice at a rasp – it is in no one’s interest to enrage him further. She glares around the room, imitating his wrath, sweeping the air with her wide silk sleeves as the two concubines exchange a glance and stifle giggles. First Mother can be funny sometimes; so long as she doesn’t feel threatened by the younger women of the house, she can be quite a lark.

  With a thud and all the drama of an overacted Chinese opera, Chen She falls through the door, landing on his knees, head bowed, hands splayed. ‘Master, Master! I beg your forgiveness.’

  The concubines and First Mother turn to stare in disdain at the familiar dishevelled figure.

  ‘You fool, Chen She,’ First Mother hisses. ‘Grand Master is next door in the ancestors’ room.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Idiot.’

  The girls stifle giggles again, and poor old Chen She pulls himself together, dusts off his robes and prepares to go through his routine a second time. He is, however, beaten to the punch, quite literally, when Great-Grandfather enters the room and wallops him across the head.

  The concubines rise to flee. Where Great-Grandfather’s temper will hit its mark, only the gods can predict. The girls stoop, duck and weave, covering their heads in anticipation of his lack of both coordination and discrimination. Like dragon fury, he tears through the compound while women, children and servants rush to hide.

  By afternoon, Great-Grandfather is worshipping at his Confucian altar. He tells the ancestral tablets and statues what a heavy disappointment everyone else in the compound is, and he confides his deep regret at employing, marrying and spawning such insolence. ‘I am twenty-first generation firstborn Kwa,’ he says indignantly as he places a joss stick in a bowl of sand at the feet of the cast figure of his father, the twentieth generation firstborn Kwa. ‘Do they have no respect?’

  Great-Grandfather now has his pipe in his hand and Chen She to stoke and light it. The servant knows better than to stray far again, at least until next time. Great-Grandfather draws the white smoke up the blackened pipe stem engraved with tiny horses, and the opiate streams into his lungs, filling every blood vessel with sweet poison. He holds his breath until a cough forces its way out. With each exhale he instructs in meticulous detail, according to unquestionable tradition, how Chen She must prepare an opium pipe and silk bag for Number Three Son’s eighth birthday tomorrow; although the boy isn’t a firstborn from any wife, a pipe will be a fitting gift for him.

  A morphine haze envelopes Great-Grandfather; his black lashes flutter, his eyes roll upward and a stupor sets in. The compound is peaceful. Cooks are cooking, rickshaw drivers are resting, children are finishing homework since private tutors have made tracks for the night. A nursemaid breastfeeds a baby – not hers, of course – and two concubines wash before bed in preparation for the possibility of a late visit from Great-Grandfather. Moonlight reveals the swollen expectant belly of one consort, a child herself, recently turned fourteen.

  ‘Father.’ First Son of Third Wife, Ying Kam, stands at the door to the ancestors’ room, trying to bring Great-Grandfather out of his tete-a-tete with his forebears. ‘Father, may I talk with you?’

  Great-Grandfather looks up as if seeing his son for the first time and rearranges himself into a more dignified pose befitting a prominent trader of the elite class of Beijing.

  ‘Father, I am sixteen; I should be married by now.’ This is the law – sixteen for boys, fourteen for girls. ‘Most of my friends have wed. Why will you not marry me off?’

  Great-Grandfather looks to his ancestors for strength. Why don’t children just do as they’re told? ‘It is in the stars and the ancient almanac that you must wait until the fourth moon of the new sun and marry a girl born in the golden pig.’

  ‘Father, I know all that. You’ve been telling me that since I could walk. Second Brother from First Mother is married twice, with Wife Number Two already expecting his first child. Even First Brother from Third Mother is married.’ Ying Kam pauses, exasperated. He cannot keep his voice from rising, but he grits his teeth and holds back his tears. ‘Why not me?’

  ‘I have told you, son, it is not yet in your stars to marry.’

  ‘But the matchmaker has arranged a bride.’

  ‘You must be patient. We wait on the fortune-teller to determine when the time is right.’

  ‘Father, I am born a Yellow Earth Dragon, the most powerful of all the zodiac, can I not decide on my own wedding? I will leave and find my bride myself if you will not set a date.’

  Ying Kam’s shame – of being the only unmarried boy among his rich and privileged friends – bubbles up like the thick black mushroom soup the family cook would force him to eat when he was younger, saying it would ward off Yaoguai, demoted gods who became monsters, relegated to earth for breaking the laws of heaven. Just like his brothers, boys his own age from all six of Great-Grandfather’s wives and concubines combined, he is ready to forge his way in elite Chinese society and, most of all, to be a man.

  But the stone carvings, ancestors, heating pipes and lanterns of the compound know that this argument can only end one way.

  ‘There are contemporary thinkings, Father. We don’t have to follow every word of the fortune-teller. Father, Ping Ma is to be my bride – make it so, now.’

  ‘I will no longer tolerate your insolence, boy. Go. You behave as though you know better than your superior. And in front of your ancestors.’ He looks to the altar apologetically. ‘You bring s
hame to this family.’

  Great-Grandfather slaps his son across the cheek, and a red welt sears the boy’s tender skin. Tears well in his eyes. He turns and runs from the ancestral room, his silks trailing behind him like watercolour brushstrokes, across the courtyard to a room he shares with his unmarried younger brothers. He holds a grief so heavy he cannot let it go lest it may crush him, so instead he packs it up with all his worldly possessions.

  Ying Kam opens chests and flings silk garments into cloth rolls as two younger boys – mouths open and faces pale with disbelief – dare not utter a squeak. Best to feign sleep than to be complicit in this crime taking place. Reaching into a hole in his mattress, Ying Kam removes the savings he’s squirrelled away since he was nine, the year his father gave him an opium pipe – another gripe he has: receiving his pipe at a later age than some of his brothers.

  He cups the face of Eighth Brother in his hands and whispers a tacit warning not to alert the household to his escape, ‘Shan shui you xiang feng. Mountain water will meet again,’ and stops to take in the room one last time.

  Ying Kam stands in the darkened courtyard and looks in through a window to see Great-Grandfather cavorting with a concubine, smoking opium and laughing. Ying Kam tiptoes to a study at the end of a passage, where he opens a desk drawer to reveal an ivory abacus and a stack of black leather-bound notebooks. On top of the desk there is a heavier version: a ledger. But this is not what Ying Kam is looking for. He has spent years sitting by his father’s side and knows to open a compartment hiding under inkwells and fountain pens.

  Mountain water will meet again. Two graves, he thinks, we will meet again in heaven, and places a dense journal, the size of two hands, in a fold of his coat, caressing the smooth leather and patting his pocket.

  A wife younger than Ying Kam comes in giggling with intoxication, smelling like poppy juice.

  ‘Shhhh,’ he says. ‘Get out.’

  ‘Shhhh. Get out.’ She mimics him in a high whisper, sways in an attempt at enticing him, then loses her balance and grips a heating pipe for support. Her dainty lotus flower feet cannot hold her up, although she is accustomed to the great pretence afflicting all girls and women of her status: that bound feet cause no bother.