Pokrewne

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Chelsea Handler Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (epub
Brit Brinson [Dia of the Dead Dia of the Dead (epub)
Cody Goodfellow [Radiant Dawn Radiant Dawn (epub)
Cate Tiernan [Immortal Belove Immortal Beloved (epub)
C J Busby [Deep Amber 01] Deep Amber (retail) (epub)
Carl Ashmore [Time Hunters 01 The Time Hunters (epub)
Drew Hayes [Super Powereds 02 Super Powereds Year 2 (epub) i
Beth Harbison [Shoe Addict 02 Secrets of a Shoe Addict (epub)
Cara Lynn Shultz [Dark World The Dark World (retail) (epub)
Betrayal in the Ashes William W. Johnstone

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.He’d bring it all back to the garden and they would spread it on the ground before covering it with loose soil, and they had to do this before dawn because there were some who questioned this method of fertilising the ground.It was a job Chen Mu despised.Though it had never bothered him in his own village, now the stench of human excrement lingered in his nostrils long after he’d finished for the day, and sometimes he felt that the thin veneer of Western civilization he had cultivated in Connecticut was being washed away in the slops of night soil.But Yu Ping paid him well for this job, and trusted only him with the horse, so he didn’t complain.The muffled belch of an explosion reached Chen Mu from the direction of the mines, indicating another lode loosened from the rock face.Soon, he knew, pickeyboys as young as eight would make their way down the shaft to sort the ore from the rocks; it would be dark in less than an hour, but 190 feet below the surface daylight had no meaning.As Chen Mu lifted the yoke back onto his shoulders the wail of a siren bemoaned an accident at the mines.He looked towards Yu Ping sitting at the edge of the field, who signalled for him to go but for the others to keep watering.Chen Mu ran for the horse and buggy.The air around the mines smelt of rotten egg.Dust particles floated in the late afternoon light, and human figures rushed to and fro, hardly distinguishable from the ground they worked, their clothes coated with earth, their faces and beards spattered with clay.Chen Mu arrived just as they were hauling someone to the pithead – a haggard looking man covered in mud.They sat him on a nearby log and handed him a pannikin of whisky.He took a long swallow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shook his head.‘The slabs gave out,’ he said.‘So did the uprights.The whole roof’s come down.Ted didn’t ‘ave a hope.’ He held out his cup and his whole arm shook.Someone refilled it and he downed it in one go.At the pithead Ted’s body was pulled out then carried unceremoniously to the jail where he’d be put in the undertaker’s bathtub until morning.Poor Ted – God rest his soul, and the crowd melted towards the grog-shop.They would drink to Ted’s memory, silently thankful it wasn’t them that ended with their faces pressed in the sticky mud below.Tomorrow they would bury him, and pass around a hat for his wife, if he had one.Accidents were too common here to spend more time than that on anyone.Chen Mu didn’t go with the others to the grog-shop.He sat in the buggy watching the man on the log stare at nothing with eyes as glassy as marbles.He was secretly relieved the fall-in had only resulted in one death.He knew that if there had been more men below, they’d have worked all night if need be, and all day too, until they’d reached every one of them.He’d helped before and he hated the musty, slippery slopes, the constant smell of sulphur, the narrow passages through which he’d had to wriggle like a snake, which would suddenly open up to massive chambers so intensely dark that he would have lost his sense of balance if not for the dim glow of candles attached to the men’s hats.He was about to pick up the reins when the man spoke.‘It’s ‘ell – that’s what it is.’Chen Mu nodded, not knowing what to answer.‘ ‘ell’s own backyard, that’s what this place is …’ The man roughly wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked into his cup.Finding it empty he let it fall to the ground.He looked up and noticed Chen Mu.‘I was a lamplighter, you know, back ‘ome.Ted too.We was mates since we was little tackers, me and Ted.Then we heard about this country.They said you only had to stoop down to pick up nuggets of gold with your bare hands, and me and Ted decided.We left our missus and came here.We’ll come back rich, we told them, then you old women can take it easy.’ The man shook his head and shrugged.‘Well, we didn’t find any gold.Then we heard about the silver …’ He picked up the cup from the ground and looked into it, as if he expected it to have refilled itself.Finding it still empty he dropped it back to the ground, stood up, and headed towards the grog-shop.Chen Mu held the reins loosely, allowing the horse to make its way back home at its own pace.He normally couldn’t get out of there quickly enough – the cesspit odour and the stink of garbage thrown in the streets sickened him, as did the decomposing carcasses of animals thrown in the now dry creeks, but tonight he wanted time to think about his future.The last time he’d brought vegetables to the boarding houses, he’d been told a Mr Matthew Dawson wanted to speak to him.The man was a rich pastoralist who also had interests in the mines.‘They tell me you’re not afraid of hard work, and that you know your plants,’ Dawson had said.‘They also say you don’t touch the grog.’ And he’d offered Chen Mu a job as an undergardener on Walpinya Station, his property further east at the foot of the Snowy Mountains, just a few miles from the small township of Macoomba.‘Think about it.I’ll be back this time next month.Be here if you want the job.’And ‘this time next month’ was tomorrow.If he was honest with himself, Chen Mu did want that job.Silverton was a harsh and uncompromising place, and he wanted more than a life of night soil, desert heat and ground so rocky it could break a man’s back.He wanted more than dust storms and saltbush.He missed the life he’d known in Connecticut – the nice clothes, the books, the deep frequent baths and plentiful water.He wanted a home somewhere green, where plants had a chance to thrive.He wanted to thrive.To make friends.To know a woman.Maybe even to marry, have children.Instead, he was nearly twenty and still a virgin.In Connecticut, under the sharp supervision of the tutors, the young women he’d met were ‘proper’ young ladies who were not above flirtations, but who’d pretend to be shocked if anyone ever made further advances.Xi Tang had told him it was only a game – that if he persisted they would eventually allow him further liberties – but he’d been too unsure of himself to persist.Here in Silverton there were only two kinds of women: the few wives who had followed their men to the mines, worn weary women old before their time, and the prostitutes.The Irish, French, and English prostitutes were out of bounds to him, and disinclined to damage their fragile relationship with the police by associating with Chinese men.Unlike most of the other Chinese here, Chen Mu was able to read the few newspapers that found their way into Silverton, and he’d seethed at the articles describing the ‘moral pollution’ that their writers expected would be the result, should any white woman come in contact with ‘Chinese immorality’.To the Australian population, the Chinese were pests, sons of rapists and murderers.There was one Aboriginal woman, who everyone knew to be diseased, and three Karayuki-san, Japanese girls brought to this country specifically to cater for the ‘sexual passions of the coloured aliens’.Chen Mu had seen their camp on the outskirts of town – a huddle of gin cases, each providing a fragile illusion of privacy in which to ply their trade.They charged 7s 6d, and very early one morning Chen Mu had been tempted to go there before starting his round collecting night soil, but as he reached their camp he saw the police wagon already there.He’d turned the cart around and had not gone back since [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]