Five Bells (27 page)

 

Ellie is thinking of rainfall over the Opera House, thinking of the Harbour swept shining and mystical by rain light, thinking of the time-lapse of all that she has known and read, and of James, and with James, ever and ever and abiding. The night has gained an enormity with the coming of the storm and in the drench she imagines it out there, Circular Quay, the vast dark water, the rain-glazed tide, the Harbour buoys with their red flares tossing messages across the water, seabirds rising up and rain coming down and the falling, falling, upon the living and the dead, ever and ever and abiding. There is the musical sound of rain on her roof and Ellie is thinking, so she will remember,
must ring James, must ring James, must ring, ring …

The first debt of this project is to Kenneth Slessor's elegiac poem,
Five Bells
(1939), which returned to me, like a remembered song, one midnight on a ferry in the centre of Circular Quay.

 

I wish to thank my colleagues at The University of Western Sydney, especially members of the Writing and Society Research Group led by Professor Ivor Indyk. The solidarity of members of this group is deeply appreciated. Thanks to the Shanghai Writers' Association (SWA) for sponsoring my residency in Shanghai in 2008; Madeleine Thien and Yukiko Chino had coterminous residencies and were both congenial and supportive companions. Particular thanks to Claire Roberts and Nicholas Jose, for their patient kindness and circumspect advice on Chinese cultural matters. Hu Peihua, Rowan Callick, Wang Anyi, Ye Xin, Antonia Finnane, Guo Wu, Julia Lovell and Jiang Liping have all offered Chinese advice of one sort or another. Thanks to Jia Zongpei (my Chinese publisher), Zhao Lihong and the SWA for arranging my visit to Chongming Island. Jang Luping (Lucy) was a wonderful translator; Hu Peihua (SWA) was tirelessly wise and helpful; Francine Martin offered hospitality in Shanghai; thanks too to Michelle Garnaut, for her friendship and advice. Thanks to Paddy and Clare Callanan for hospitality and good-humour in Dublin, Fiona Wright for the clepsydra image, Fiona Stanley for medical knowledge, Kathleen Olive and Melinda Jewell and Suzanne Gapps for collegiate generosity and support.

 

Special thanks to Geoff Mulligan for editorial advice and to Meredith Curnow and Catherine Hill, two extraordinarily gifted and sensitive readers. Rebecca Carter and Laurence Laluyaux have been especially kind. I have the good fortune to work with Zoë Waldie, my wonderful agent. Victoria Burrows, Susan Midalia, Prue Kerr and Michelle de Kretser have each offered utterly essential moral support, as have Robyn Davidson and Drusilla Modjeska. My daughter Kyra has made this book possible.

 

Among textual resources, the works of Gelin Yan, Qui Xiaolong, Yu Hua, Ha Jin, Xinran and Yiyun Li have been helpful. Nien Cheng's
Life and Death in Shanghai
(Penguin Books 1988) and Anhua Gao's
To the Edge of the Sky: A Story of Love, Betrayal, Suffering and the Strength of Human Courage
(The Overlook Press 2000) are two fine memoirs of women's cultural revolution experience. Wang Zhousheng's story ‘The Beautiful Mushrooms' is the source of some of my knowledge of labour conditions at Chongming Island. It is in
Selected Short Stories by Contemporary Writers from Shanghai (II)
(Better Link Press NY 2008).. I also consulted Feng Jicai's
Ten Years of Madness: Oral Histories of China's Cultural Revolution
(China Books and Periodicals Inc. San Francisco 1996), the website Morning Sun
http://www.morningsun.org/
and Li Zhensheng's
Red-Colour News Soldier: A Chinese Photographer's Odyssey Though the Cultural Revolution
(London: Phaidon, 2003). Simon Leys' work, most recently a return to articles in
The Angel and the Octopus
(Duffy and Snellgrove 1999), was also inspiring.

 

The opening stanza of ‘On Raglan Road' by Patrick Kavanagh is reprinted from
Collected Poems
, edited by Antoinette Quinn (Alan Lane, 2004), by kind permission of the Trustees of the Estate of the late Katherine B. Kavanagh, through the Jonathan Williams Literary Agency. The stanza of ‘Five Bells' by Kenneth Slessor is reprinted from
Five Bells: XX Poems
(F.C. Johnson 1939), by kind permission of Paul Slessor. I thank Paul for his warm-hearted and affirming response to this project. The quotes from
Doctor Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak (Harvill Collins Edition 1988) are reprinted by kind permission of the Random House Group Ltd.

Join thousands of other readers online at

AUSTRALIAN READERS:

randomhouse.com.au/talk

NEW ZEALAND READERS:

randomhouse.co.nz/talk