Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  Most of the Fong compound was sold and Ah-Fat lived with his family in the first courtyard. They rented back some of the land they had sold, and Ah-Fat was the main labourer. With her bound feet Mrs. Mak could not do farm work, but she did have one special skill. Her brocaded cloth was the finest in the township. She sewed beads onto the cloth and worked it with flower designs in gold and silver thread. She made aprons, shoe uppers, hats and belts which she could sometimes sell on market day for a few cents. She was in demand in the village too, to embroider garments for weddings, funerals, births and longevity birthday parties. She did not charge a fee, but in exchange for her work the family would send a strong, young farmhand to help Ah-Fat in the fields at sowing and harvest times.

  The winter that Yuen Cheong died, his youngest son, Ah-Sin, had an epileptic fit. While eating his dinner he suddenly fell from the stool and bit off a piece of his tongue. When he came to, he seemed only half there. From that day on, he had fits everywhere—in the fields, on the ground, in bed, at the table, in the toilet—all completely without warning.

  Mrs. Mak wove and embroidered from morning till night. Eventually eyestrain, together with her worries about Ah-Sin’s epilepsy, led to severe conjunctivitis. Her eyelids swelled up and the rims of her eyes were thickly smeared with pus. She could not sew any more and the entire responsibility for the Fong family now fell on Ah-Fat’s shoulders.

  To raise money to treat Ah-Sin’s illness Mrs. Mak was forced to sell off her daughter, Ah-Tou, to a family who lived twenty li away.

  Witnessed by the elders of the clan, she put her thumbprint on an irrevocable title deed. It read as follows:

  Through this deed, Mrs. Fong-Mak gives her daughter, Ah-Tou, to Chan Ah Yim of Sai Village as a maid and has today received fifty silver dollars in recompense for this gift. From the day on which her daughter is given over, she shall have nothing more to do with the Fongs. Each side shall be satisfied with this agreement and there shall be no dissenting voices on either side, the signing and witnessing of this deed being the written guarantee thereof.

  Signed the fifth day of the eleventh month of year four of the reign of Guangxu (1878)

  Ah-Tou was sold to a family that had a small dyers business. The head of the family was fifty-eight years old, and had a wife and two concubines, but none of them had borne him a son and heir. He had a bit of money but the family was not especially well off, and he could not afford more concubines. His solution was to buy in girls from poor families, to use partly as maids, partly as concubines. All the time and effort Mrs. Mak spent teaching her daughter elaborate needlework was wasted. Ah-Tou would only be doing rough work from now on.

  Ah-Tou was only thirteen when she left home. Mrs. Mak arranged to meet the Chans in town to hand her over, but fearing her daughter would refuse to go, lied to her. Ah-Tou thought they were going to market. Just before they left, Mrs. Mak put two hard-boiled eggs into Ah-Tou’s handkerchief. It was a long time since Ah-Tou had had an egg to eat. “Have Ah-Fat and Ah-Sin had any?” she asked. “No, only you,” said her mother. Ah-Tou peeled one and ate it so fast that it stuck in her throat. Eventually she managed to summon enough saliva to swallow it, after choking and spluttering till purple veins stood out on her forehead. When it came to the second egg, she cracked the shell but then gave it back: “Let’s leave it for Ah-Sin,” she said, “he’s just a little kid.” Mrs. Mak quietly took out a silver dollar from inside her jacket: “Keep it safe,” she said, giving it to her daughter. “Don’t let anyone see it.” Ah-Tou gripped the dollar tightly in her sweaty palm and was silent. Finally she asked: “What shall I buy in the market with so much money?” “Whatever you like.” Ah-Tou thought for a moment. “I’ll go to the Christian priest’s pharmacy in town, Mum,” she said finally, “and get a bottle of eyewash for you. With what’s left, I’ll get four walnut cookies, one for Ah-Fat, one for me, and two for Ah-Sin.” Ah-Tou was the in-between child, two years younger than Ah-Fat and six years older than Ah-Sin. She had carried Ah-Sin around on her back ever since he was a baby, so she was as much a mother to him as an elder sister. Mrs. Mak turned away: “Eat it all, child, it’s all for you. Don’t leave any for anyone else,” she said, the tears running down her face.

  When they reached the market, Mrs. Mak saw the Chans and gave her daughter a little push. “Go for a walk with Auntie Chan,” she said. “I’m going to the toilet.” She walked away a few steps, and then hid around the corner of a wall. She watched as Ah-Tou, dragging her feet behind the Chan woman and looking around for her mother, receded into the distance. Mrs. Mak felt as if a piece of her heart had been cut out.

  She made her way home in a daze. It was nearly nightfall. She did not light the fire or get dinner ready, just sat staring blankly at the stove. Ah-Fat came in from the fields. “Where’s Ah-Tou?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her all day.” There was no answer. He persisted and she finally said through gritted teeth: “I’ve cut out my own flesh to feed to the dogs.” When Ah-Fat finally realized he would never see his sister in this life again, he threw down the bowl of water, ran out and squatted by the roadside. It was many years before the Spur-On villagers forgot the sounds of his sobbing. He did not cry loudly, in fact he choked the tears back until they sounded like the broken whimpers of a dying dog. Life had been terribly hard these last years and the Spur-On villagers had seen and heard enough weeping to turn their hearts to stone. But Ah-Fat’s grief still brought tears to their eyes.

  The next day, Ah-Fat went to say goodbye to his teacher. Mr. Auyung was stretched over the table doing calligraphy. When he heard Ah-Fat’s news, he threw down his weasel-hair brush, spattering the table with ink. “There’s no cure,” he said, “it’s terminal.” Ah-Fat knew he was not referring to himself.

  Before Ah-Fat left, Mr. Auyung chose a few books for him to take home. “Even if I can’t teach you,” he said, “you should still read your books.” Ah-Fat shook his head. “If you have any books on farming and keeping livestock, you can give me a couple of those.” His teacher was silent.

  Ah-Fat did not eat his dinner when he got home. In the middle of the night, Mrs. Mak was woken by a rustling, a noise like a rat nibbling at rice straw. She pulled her clothing around her shoulders and got up. By the light of the lamp’s tiny flame, her son was ripping up sheets of paper. She was illiterate but she knew these were the copybooks and textbooks he used at Mr. Auyung’s school. Over the years he had stored a stack of them carefully away. She nearly seized them from him, but what was the use? They had already been reduced to confetti. Mrs. Mak felt comforted too, for she could see that Ah-Fat had accepted his fate.

  From that day on, Ah-Fat threw himself into farming.

  Six months after Yuen Cheong died, Red Hair came home from Gold Mountain.

  Ah-Fat heard about Red Hair when he was transplanting rice seedlings, with a farmhand whose help his mother’s needlework had secured for him. The other villagers had finished theirs, but he had had to wait a few days for the man to arrive. The paddy water was cold in early spring, and his feet, planted in the mud, soon went numb. He was not good at farm work. Years spent at home and at school had distanced him from the land. The land knew he was an outsider and bullied him. He felt like his calves and back were bound together with wire. Every time he bent down, the wire pulled taut and cut into his flesh, giving him sharp jabbing pains. The farmhand walked in front of him, working swiftly and planting neat rows of evenly spaced seedlings, compared to his own, which were messy and crooked. When he thought of his mother’s infected eyes and his epileptic brother, his skin crawled and terror gripped him. Above him the lowering sky pressed down on him like cotton wadding.

  Even though it was overcast today, he knew that sunset was a long way off. When will it all end? he wondered, with a sigh that stirred eddies in the paddy field.

  “The Gold Mountain uncle! He’s arrived!” the children’s cries went up. Ah-Fat spotted them racing excitedly along the dyke.

  Behind the children came a dozen por
ters, each pair carrying a trunk between them. The trunks were of camphor wood, two to three feet high, and reinforced at each corner with gleaming metal bands. They hung low from the carrying poles which rested on the porters’ shoulders and creaked as they went along.

  “It’s Red Hair, Ah-Sing’s relative. He’s come back to get married,” said the farmhand.

  Red Hair was a widower, and this would be his second marriage.

  The first was ten years ago. When his wife was three months’ pregnant, he left for Gold Mountain, but she died in childbirth, and the baby too.

  His new bride came from the Kwan family. She was only fourteen, and a good-looking young woman. Red Hair had been away in Gold Mountain for a long time and his views about women were different from those of the other villagers. He did not like women with bound feet, and he wanted someone tall and buxom. He hoped she could read and write a bit too. He put all his requirements down in a letter to his mother and she listed them to the matchmaker, who did not look encouraging. There were certainly girls without bound feet, but southern girls were generally short. Tall, well-built girls were hard to find, especially ones who could read and write. Luckily the matchmaker had found the Kwans.

  Mr. Kwan was a scholar who had failed the county-level Imperial examinations, and made his living as tutor to a wealthy family. The Kwans were poor but his children were literate in the classics. Not only did the pair’s horoscopes match, but the girl fulfilled Red Hair’s requirements in every other way too. Red Hair was delighted and decided to invite all the villagers to the wedding banquet.

  The day of the wedding feast, Ah-Fat was in the fields thinning the rice seedlings. By the time he had finished, it was getting dark. He went to wash his muddy feet. From where he sat on the riverbank, he could see a hazy red glow, looking a bit like a forest fire, over the village far in the distance. These were the lights from the banquet, he knew. He rolled his trouser legs down, brushed the mud off himself and headed straight to the village without bothering to go home.

  The wedding feast was in the open air. Ah-Fat counted the tables carefully—thirty altogether. There were dishes of chicken, duck and fish, and half a gleaming suckling pig on every table. Ah-Fat sat with the other youngsters, all of them ravenously hungry. Grabbing at the suckling pig, they wolfed it all down, but Ah-Fat was quick and sneaked a piece for his little brother. Ah-Sin gripped the meat and nibbled at it, savouring every mouthful. The fat ran down his wrist and he stuck out his tongue and licked it clean. Ah-Fat thought he looked like a beggar on a street corner but did not admonish him. Since their dad died, none of the family had tasted even a morsel of meat.

  They drank rice wine brewed a few months before by Red Hair’s mother in preparation for his arrival. As soon as the jars were opened, the fumes from the wine threatened to knock them out. Red Hair staggered drunkenly from table to table, clutching a big bowl of wine and encouraging his guests to drink toasts. He wore a long, sapphire blue brocade gown embroidered all over with gold ruyi designs and, tied across his shoulders, a length of red silk with a big bow. His skullcap was adorned with a glittering piece of translucent jade carved with a dragon and a phoenix. That evening Red Hair’s cheeks were flushed red too, and the sweat formed shallow pools in his deep-set eye sockets. His tongue thickened till it seemed about to drop out of his mouth and the muscles of his face jerked spasmodically as he beamed lopsided grins in every direction.

  Red Hair reached the table where the youngsters were sitting. It fell to Ah-Fat, as their senior, to offer formal congratulations, but his elders at nearby tables put a stop to that. “He’s the bridegroom, so even a stray dog can tease him today. No need to go bowing and scraping to him.” Someone pointed to Ah-Fat and Ah-Sin: “These are Yuen Cheong’s kids.” Red Hair ruffled Ah-Sin’s hair: “Your poor dad,” he said. “Such a good head on his shoulders. Who would have thought it, eh?” And he got two small boxes out of his pocket and put one into each boy’s hand.

  Ah-Fat opened the box and peered at its contents. It held things that looked like black beans, but bigger and rounder. He put one in his mouth and chewed. It crunched between his teeth, and for a moment he was scared a tooth had come out. When he looked closer, he realized there was an almond hidden inside the bean. The dark coating was sweet, with peculiar kind of fatty sweetness he could not put into words.

  It was only much later, when he was in Gold Mountain, that Ah-Fat learned that these black beans were called chocolate.

  Ah-Fat quickly grew drunk at the wedding feast and it was his own doing— no one forced him to drink toasts. It was his first taste of alcohol, and it slid smoothly over his tongue, burning its way down his throat and into his belly. It did not stay there long, but soon crept up to his head. Now it was several times more powerful, and exploded in a great fireball in his brain. Ah-Fat felt his body shrinking away like a jellyfish. Crawling out of the crater left by the fireball, he floated gently in some distant place in mid-air. From his vantage point far above the earth, he peered mistily down at the banqueting tables and the village scattered beneath him.

  Suddenly he felt the black beans grappling with the rice wine in his belly. His guts knotted up, and he hurriedly shoved his way through the diners and made for some waste ground by the road. He pulled his shirt up and his trousers down just in time to release a stream of liquid shit so foul-smelling it almost knocked him down. He grabbed a banana leaf, cleaned himself up and kicked some dirt over the mess. This, at least, had sobered him up; he was down from mid-air and had both feet planted solidly on the ground.

  The noise of the revellers had faded far into the distance. Around him the only sound was the night wind rustling the leaves in the treetops. The frogs in the pond croaked loudly and got on his nerves. He threw a stone into the water and the splash shut the frogs up but disturbed the birds roosting at the water’s edge so that they flapped up and away, their wings etched against the night sky. The clouds cleared, revealing a mass of stars right down to the horizon.

  Was that where Gold Mountain was? he wondered. What kind of a place was it that could turn Red Hair into such a fine figure of a man? Were the six huge, heavy trunks he had brought back laden with Gold Mountain gold?

  Ah-Fat sat down at the roadside and fell into an uneasy doze.

  Some time later, he felt movement around him and awoke. A half-starved dog come to lick up the shit, he thought, but then he turned his head and saw a little girl about two years old looking at him with a foolish smile on her face. She was wearing a long red brocade gown and a red hat embroidered with clusters of peonies on each side. It was certainly an eye-catching outfit. Ah-Fat remembered the ghost stories told by the villagers. He broke out in a chill sweat and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. Then he got to his feet and saw behind the girl the vague outline of a shadow. Reassured, because he knew that ghosts did not have shadows, he asked: “And who are you?”

  The girl did not answer. Instead she stuffed her fists in her mouth and a dribble of saliva ran down her chin on each side. Ah-Fat felt in his pocket for Red Hair’s black beans and put one in her mouth. She did not have enough teeth to chew it, but she sucked it noisily and the dribbles gradually turned brown. When she had swallowed it, she held out her hand for more. There was something odd about her hand and, looking carefully, Ah-Fat saw something growing out at an angle next to her thumb—a sixth finger.

  Just then there was a shout and a woman with a lantern hurried over to them. It was Auntie Huang, one of the servants from Red Hair’s household. She grabbed the child, crying frantically: “Oh my God, Six Fingers! Where have you been? You’re so quick on your feet, you were gone in the blink of an eye. Whatever would I say to the bridegroom if I lost you even before the wedding feast was over?” “Is she a relative of Red Hair’s?” asked Ah-Fat. “How come I’ve never seen her before?” “She wasn’t, but she is now,” Auntie Huang smiled. “This child is the bride’s little sister. She was born with six fingers. Her mum and dad were afraid they couldn’t ma
rry her off and couldn’t afford to keep her so they sent her off with the bride to Red Hair’s family.” Ah-Fat smiled. “Red Hair is a rich man,” he said. “It’s nothing for him to take in Six Fingers.”

  As Auntie Huang led the child away, Six Fingers dragged behind. She kept turning to look back at Ah-Fat, fixing her luminous dark eyes on him.

  She’s going to be quite a girl when she grows up, thought Ah-Fat to himself.

  This time Red Hair stayed home more than a year, long enough to see his bride safely delivered of a son. Only then did he make preparations to go back to Gold Mountain.

  And this time he took with him a companion—Fong Yuen Cheong’s son, Fong Tak Fat.

  The idea of going to Gold Mountain first occurred to Ah-Fat the day he saw Red Hair’s porters arriving in the village with those weighty Gold Mountain trunks slung from their shoulder poles. In the beginning, the idea was only a vague one but he kept it tucked away in his breast and would not give it up. It had no shape but it grew on him till he felt like he was going to explode. Eventually, he sought out his old teacher, Mr. Auyung.

  “Do you have any idea what life is like in Gold Mountain?” asked the teacher. Ah-Fat shook his head. “Uncle Red Hair doesn’t want to talk about it.” After a moment’s hesitation, he went on: “I don’t know what it’s like there but I do know what it’s like here—a tunnel with no light at the end.” Mr. Auyung struck the table with his fist. “That was what I was hoping you’d say. There’s nothing for you here. Over in Gold Mountain you can at least fight for your life.” Suddenly Ah-Fat’s vague idea took form and substance. He had got the advice he wanted.

  He still needed the money for the journey so he mortgaged the family’s remaining quarters in the compound for a hundred silver dollars. When he ran over to Red Hair’s home with the dollars bundled in a handkerchief, Red Hair sighed. “If I say I don’t want you coming along, your mum will say I’m refusing to take care of Yuen Cheong’s son.” After a pause he said: “OK, OK, if you’re not afraid of hardship, then you can come.”