Illywhacker by Peter Carey Read Free Book Online Page B

rest of my story, which is not as harsh as it might sound today. In the Great Depression of the 1890s there were plenty of street urchins and plenty who did it harder than I did, plenty more who worked in factories where the air was so foul it would make your stomach turn just to stand in the doorway.
    I do not believe in luck. It was not luck that I was adopted by a Chinaman. I was adopted by a Chinaman because I chose to be. I did it, you might say, to spite my father. I did it because I liked his gravelly voice, because I saw him pat a little Chinese boy on the head, and pet him, and give him something to eat. (This was Goon Tse Ying and there is a whole story concerning him that I will come to later.)
    Now if Jack McGrath had been a shrewd man he would have seen the pattern of my life already, i.e., there I was at ten years old telling lies, saying my father was dead, getting myself put up, and giving value to the Chinese by working in the market. But Jack didnot see it. He was full of pity for the little boy who had to be adopted by filthy old John Chinaman and this common prejudice kept him from thinking about anything else. He stood up and stamped his stockinged feet on the ballroom floor. He dug his big hand deep in his pocket.
    “Here’s a pound,” he said.

13
    I went to bed at four o’clock in the morning, but I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, not in misery, but with the sort of uncontrolled excitement of a man who knows he is, at last, where he should be.
    I was up at six and strolling in the garden. I wasn’t tired at all. I breathed deep and smelled the salt and seaweed from Corio Bay. I had that loose-muscled feeling of a man on holiday. I strolled across to the beach with my hands deep in my pockets. The peculiar shell-grit sand of Western Beach crunched beneath my brand-new patent leather shoes. The
Casino
, a steamer carrying wool from the Western District, rode at anchor in the bay. The
Blackheath
with ninety thousand bags of wheat was berthed at the Yarra Street pier. The big wool stores rose high above the bandstands, bathing boxes and steep manicured lawns.
    Geelong, that clear fresh morning, struck me as a town of wealth and sophistication, a lush green oasis, a natural compensation for the endless plain of wool and wheat behind it. It would be a city of parks, gardens, grand public buildings and elegant private ones.
    I did not intend to laze around, bludging on my new friends. I had work to do, making certain unstable parts of my story become strong and clear.
    There was, for instance, the snake, about which I had made certain claims. I did not intend to shirk my obligation to care for the snake, although if I could have seen what this would lead to (all this industry on behalf of a casual lie) I would have shipped it off to Mr Chin on the first train.
    I strolled along the beach in the direction of that wide-verandaed weatherboard building which in those days housed the Corio Bay Sailing Club. In front of the Sailing Club there was an old man shovelling shell-grit into a hessian bag. I did not need to be told why he was doing it: the shell-grit from Corio Baywas, and still is, particularly beneficial to hens-it gives an eggshell substance.
    I wasn’t normally one for idle chat, but I liked all the world on that morning, and I stopped for a yarn.
    “Grit for the chooks?” I said.
    “That’s right.”
    “Laying well, are they?”
    “Not bad.”
    The old man did not seem inclined to talk, but I wasn’t offended. It was peaceful standing there with my hands in my pockets watching him work.
    “Would you happen to know,” I asked after a while, “a good spot for frogs?” The frogs, of course, were for the snake.
    He was a little man, dried up like a walnut. His freckled skin hung on his arms, like the skin on a roast chicken wing.
    “Yes,” he said, “I know a good place for frogs.”
    “Where’s that?”
    He was an old man used to being granted his due of respect and patience.