Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  The bed was covered with a fine-woven mat which was riddled with moth holes. The cord which bound it together had come unravelled, so that it flopped over the bed base like a boned fish. Amy carefully lifted one corner, and found underneath a slender length of bamboo. She took out—it was a silk fan. The silk was yellowed with age. On top of this background colour, there were areas of yellow which shaded darker at the edges, perhaps from water stains. On the fan was painted a landscape and a pavilion, but it was hard to make out the details. Some characters were still just about visible but Amy found them almost impossible to read. Auyung took off his reading glasses and held them over the fan. With the characters enlarged, they could just about make out two lines:

  … this brush to write … words of love

  And send them to … in Gold Mountain

  “Your great-grandmother’s handwriting!” Auyung exclaimed with a cry of delight.

  “Was she a painter?” asked Amy.

  “She wasn’t just a painter. There was no one like her around here. You’d call her a ‘liberated woman’ if you were writing a thesis. Of course, that’s if there were liberated women a hundred or so years ago.…”

  “Hmmm,” said Amy, and lapsed into silence. Then she went on: “Finally you’re really getting me interested, Auyung.”

  She got up and went to open the wardrobe.

  The wardrobe was made of the same red rosewood as the bed. A mirror was mounted on the door, and the mirror frame was carved in the same dragon-and-phoenix designs as the bedposts. But the mirror glass was covered with a sort of mottling, so that things were reflected dimly as if from a distance. Amy opened the door. It was empty except for a woman’s jacket decorated with a wide border around the edges, and flowers embroidered at the neck under the collar. The flowers were big and showy, probably peonies, but their colour was a dull yellow. Amy could not help sighing. Nothing could withstand the ravages of time. No matter how vivid the original colours, it reduced everything to this muddy hue.

  Amy opened out the garment and discovered a pair of sheer silk stockings folded inside. She took them out and saw a tiny hole in the calf of one. It started out as small as a sesame seed, but had burst into a hole as big as her hand farther up the leg. Amy imagined her great-grandmother walking down the narrow village lanes in a pair of sheer stockings like this, and smiled in spite of herself. She put the jacket around her shoulders. It amply hid all her curves, and she guessed that her great-grandmother must have been a woman of generous proportions. How did she carry herself then, in this village of short people tanned dark by the tropical sunshine? Was she demure and self-effacing or did she walk tall and proud?

  Amy stuffed the stockings back inside the jacket and began to button it up. These were traditional Chinese knot buttons, intricately made of fine strips of satin coiled into tight circles and sewn securely—although the stitching had long since come loose. Frowning intently, her thumb and forefinger joined at the tips, Amy carefully pressed the buttons against the front of the jacket,

  Suddenly she stopped; her fingers froze, forming a circle in mid-air. She looked up to see a pair of eyes reflected in the mottled mirror.

  Just eyes, two faceless eyes. Deep black in colour. Melancholy. Flickering. Staring out at her.

  Amy felt a cold draught of air starting at her fingertips that crawled up her spine until the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

  She shoved the jacket back into the wardrobe and hurried Auyung down the stairs. “Take me to the hotel to check in. We can come back tomorrow.”

  Outside, Amy got quickly into the car, and curled up with her chin resting on her knees. Her hands would not stop shaking. “I expect the jet lag is catching up with you,” said Auyung. “You look like you need a rest.” Amy shook her head. “I don’t need a rest, I need a stiff drink.” “Well, as it happens, the O.O.C.A. is hosting a dinner for you tonight, and it’ll be awash with drink.”

  They had booked Amy into the best hotel in town. She took a shower, then followed Auyung. The banquet was taking place in the hotel dining room and was, naturally, an ostentatious affair. She was given a glass of wine and her hosts started in on lengthy words of welcome. Amy interrupted almost immediately: “I don’t want this wine. I want something with a real kick—a whisky on the rocks.” There was general puzzlement at her request, until Auyung explained to the wine waitress: “She wants a glass of whisky with ice cubes in it.” She was given her drink and, without waiting to clink glasses with anyone, tossed it back.

  It was a splendid meal. Abalone, sea snails, grouper fish, suckling pig, pigeon breast and other seasonal delicacies. But Amy ate little. She gulped at her whisky and, after two glasses, relaxed and found herself becoming quite garrulous.

  She tugged at Auyung’s sleeve. “My mother told me that all of Great-Grandmother’s family died in Tak Yin House. Is that right?” Auyung nodded. “How did they die?” Auyung made an effort to distract her by raising his glass to hers. But Amy was not to be put off: “You think it’s inappropriate to talk about it here, is that it? Don’t try and fob me off just because we’re in company!” Auyung looked at their hosts, visibly embarrassed. Just then, the restaurant hostess came over and said: “There’s someone in the lobby asking for Ms Fong Yin Ling from Canada.” Amy scraped her chair back and stood up: “Who’s asking for my mother? I’ll go and see.” And without waiting for her hosts’ reaction, she stomped out of the room, Auyung trotting along behind her.

  An elderly man seated in a wheelchair was waiting for them in the lobby. He was completely bald, and his face was seamed with wrinkles. His eyes were clouded milky-white and the rheum had dried into shiny yellow crusts at the corners. He turned when he heard their voices and tried unsuccessfully to struggle to his feet. Then he banged on his armrest and shouted in a cracked voice: “Fifty years! I can’t believe it’s really taken fifty years for just one of you Fongs to come back!” His assistant, a dark-skinned man, looked on indifferently, making no attempt to calm him down.

  “Grandpa Ah-Yuen, this isn’t Fong Yin Ling. Fong family business has nothing to do with her,” said Auyung. But the old man was deaf to his words. Instead, he reached out and gripped Amy’s sleeve: “You Fongs didn’t keep your word, did you? You abandoned Kam Sau and her mum. Give me back Kam Sau and Wai Heung,” and he began to weep loudly, his tears wetting Amy’s sleeve. Auyung hastily called the security men, who dragged the old man off. He was forcibly pushed back into his wheelchair and wheeled away.

  Amy was rattled. The whisky she had drunk all of a sudden got to her. She sat down on the ground and was violently sick. Finally, when there was nothing more to come up, she wiped her runny nose and streaming eyes and got trembling to her feet. “Who is Kam Sau?” she asked. “Your great-aunt. Your grandfather’s little sister.” “Who was that old man?” “That was Kam Sau’s husband.”

  Amy gave a sigh. “Auyung, how many people are we going to upset doing this?”

  Auyung sighed too. “If your great-grandfather had married someone else, then perhaps the Fongs would not have left so many stories. Actually, Fong Tak Fat was supposed to marry a different woman, not your great-grandmother at all.”

  Years twenty to year twenty-one of the reign of Guangxu (1894–1895)

  Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China

  At Ah-Fat’s command, the sedan chair halted at the entrance to the village. Ah-Fat wanted to do the last part on foot.

  Ah-Fat could have done that walk blindfolded. To the right of the spot where the sedan had set him down, there was an ancient banyan tree. At the foot of the tree, there were the steps which led down to the river—three steps altogether. The river had no name. When the water was high, only half a step was visible. When all three steps were visible, it meant there was a drought. When he was a boy coming home from herding the cows or cutting grass, Ah-Fat would go down those steps to the river to wash off the mud and grass before going back home.

  To get home, Ah-Fat did no
t go down to the water’s edge but walked straight along the riverbank. The path to the house was flanked by fields on one side and water on the other. The scenery on the river side was unchanging, while the fields looked different every day. The main crop planted in the two growing seasons was paddy rice, interplanted with a few green vegetables and squashes. If it rained, the paddy rice would be noticeably taller when he went home in the evening than it had been in the morning. Chickens and dogs often scratched around for things to eat among the great clumps of banana palms by the side of the road. Ah-Fat and his brother, Ah-Sin, knew every chicken along the road. The village dogs were a scatterbrained bunch and barked at every strange person or animal they saw. If the dogs at the roadside all barked in unison, then you knew that a stranger was approaching or new cattle were being herded into the village.

  Ah-Fat went straight along the road, past the grey stone well that dated from the reign of the emperor Kangxi, and turned right again. The threecourtyard residence that his father had built and squandered, had been restored by his mother. It had taken her seven and a half years to reassemble all the different parts into a single residence where she and his uncle and the family now lived. It was exactly sixteen paces from the road to the front gate. That is, it was sixteen paces fifteen years ago—though probably not so many now. Ah-Fat knew every bump and every pebble on this path—in fact, he had often felt them under the soles of his feet in his dreams.

  And now Fong Tak Fat was thirty-one years old. As he trod the path to his front door in the warm spring sunshine, he had the odd sensation that he had gone back in time.

  His luggage would come later.

  Twenty Gold Mountain suitcases, their corners reinforced with metal strips, all made of the same wood, painted dark red, and fastened with a two-leaf lock in the shape of the lips of a lion. When the lips were closed, the secrets of each case were locked inside. The cases contained all manner of things—from food to clothing and household items. There was Canadian honey, chocolate, olive oil and corn candy; there were clothes, hats and shoes for adults and children, all of course in the Western style, as well as all kinds of Canadian-produced fabrics; for the home, there was foreign soap, matches for lighting the stove, clocks which chimed the hour, and foreign-style knives for cutting cakes and vegetables, china tea sets and dinner sets. And so on and so forth. All these goods were packed into the first nineteen cases and would be given to his mother, uncle and aunt, nephews and nieces, as well their neighbours in the village and even the servants and hired hands.

  The last case, however, held things which were purely decorative: ladies’ lipsticks and nail varnish, perfume, embroidered brassieres and other underwear, linen tablecloths from Victoria in all shapes and sizes, English and French silver, gold rings and earrings. He was not going to share round the contents of this case; in fact, he would not even open the lion’s-head lock. He would give the entire case, just as it was, with all its secrets, to a woman upon whom he had never set eyes. He had only a fuzzy, thumbnailsize photograph of her, although her image often haunted his dreams.

  This was the woman to whom his mother had betrothed him six months previously, and he had made this long sea trip back home in order to marry her. He did not know much about her, only that she was the eldest daughter of a family called Sito from the town of Cek Ham. She was fifteen years old. The family ran a tailoring business. The horoscopes of Ah-Fat and the girl had been cast and matched perfectly. The fortune teller said that the girl was destined to make her husband rich, and any family she married into prosper. The fortune teller also said that the girl was destined to have nine and a half sons (the half, of course, being a son-in-law). It was not only these reasons that had persuaded Ah-Fat’s mother though—she had her own as well. She knew that the parents had taught the girl to sew and she had become an excellent seamstress. Even though Mrs. Mak could no longer sew, she still stubbornly believed that a woman who could not sew and embroider was not a proper woman.

  In the eyes of the villagers, these reasons for choosing a bride were perfectly acceptable. But Ah-Fat wanted to know a bit more than that. Was this girl literate? He had asked his mother this when he wrote to her. She had had the village letter-writer write back but she had not answered his question. Instead, she had simply asked, what was the point of having wife who could read and write? The proper duties of a wife were to serve her in-laws and her husband, produce children, and feed and clothe them. From this letter, Ah-Fat inferred that the girl probably could neither read nor write.

  He knew there was not one in a hundred among these country girls who could read and write. Or, if they could, they could only write their own names and read a few numbers. It was the same with all the country folks. They all walked a road which others had made for them; they had only to follow in those ancient footsteps. Because it was such an old, well-trodden road, it saved them a lot of trouble. The new road that Ah-Fat had taken, however, had to be hacked out by Ah-Fat alone, and it had been a gruelling process. He had left his youthful vigour behind on the railroad in Canada. At thirty-one years old, he bore the scars of his ordeal all over his body, and he was halfway to being an old man. At his age, the village men were grandfathers, while he was not yet even a father. He had lived a tough life and what he needed now was a woman who would nestle close to him and lick his wounds. Any woman could do that, no matter whether she could read or write—and that was the reason why he had finally agreed to his mother’s choice of wife for him.

  He just wanted an honest wife who could endure hardship and who would serve his mother as a dutiful daughter-in-law should.

  Or so he repeatedly tried to persuade himself. But he still had lingering regrets. They niggled like a tiny muscle in his back which every now and then gave him a twinge, but which did not stop him working or walking.

  Ah-Fat had seen not a soul in the village. The only sound was the scuffing of his footsteps on the stony surface of the lane. The sun gradually rose higher and the wind got up, making his long gown flap around his legs. The earth felt as hard under his feet as it always did at the end of winter yet he also had the feeling that under that solid surface, there was a world of creatures marshalling themselves for spring. As he passed the old well, he spotted a child squatting on the ground having a crap. “Where’s everyone got to?” said Ah-Fat. The child looked scared. After a long pause, he said: “Market … it’s market day, isn’t it?” Of course, it suddenly dawned on him that today was the eighteenth of the first lunar month—a big market day. Everyone would have gone there.

  Half a dozen hungry strays snarled around him and snapped at his trouser cuffs. From the front opening of his jacket, he got out a lotus-leaf dumpling stuffed with sausage and rice, left over from his journey, and threw it down. The dogs forgot him straightaway and scrambled for the dumpling. Ah-Fat laughed: “Sonofabitch, Ginger!” He suddenly realized that he had shouted the name of another dog—one he had never forgotten in all these years, the one who had saved all of them in the tent, who had actually licked his hand with his last breath. After Ginger, he had never beaten a dog that came begging for food.

  It took him only thirteen paces today to get from the road to their house. He must have grown in the years since he left. The old stone lions still stood by the door. His father had bought them from a Fujian stonemason at the time he had the house built. Carved on the back of the lions’ ears were the mason’s name and the year the work was finished. When he and Ah-Sin were children, they often used to ride these lions as if they were horses, eventually making a shiny patch on the back of each beast. When their father smoked his opium, and was in a good mood, he would call for a boy to bring out a reclining chair so he could lie in the entrance, sunning himself as he watched his sons riding the lions and shooting sparrows in the trees with their toy bows and arrows.

  Ah-Fat gave the lions a rub. They seemed smaller and somehow less fierce. There was a fine crack along the back of one.

  The stones have got old too, thought Ah-Fat.r />
  The main entrance was shut tight. The brass rings of the door knockers seemed like two eyes peering shyly at him. The door was still painted in vermilion red, although it was not the same vermilion he remembered. The old red had known his father, his brother, Ah-Sin, and his sister, Ah-Tou, and had seen many things happen to the family. But this fresh red had wilfully covered everything up. It knew nothing of tears and death and was utterly superficial. Heartlessly ignoring the family’s past, it prepared to celebrate the long-awaited homecoming of the master of the house.

  There were couplets pasted to the pillars on either side of the door. The one on the right said, “Pairs of swallows on the wing greet the newcomer,” and the one on the left: “With a rat-a-tat-tat, firecrackers chase out the old year.” The horizontal one across the top read: “Good fortune comes with spring.” It was only the first month of the new year, and although the corners had curled up a little with the wind, they were still bright and new. The four dots at the bottom of the character for “swallow” had been done as thick blobs and looked as if the ink might drip at any minute. Ah-Fat touched them with his finger, but they were quite dry. He looked at the calligraphy of the couplets, which was elegant and spare, rather like the Slender Gold style of the Song dynasty. Old Mr. Ding, who used to write couplets for the villagers in the old days, must surely be long dead. Who was the author of this fine calligraphy? he wondered to himself.

  Ah-Fat banged the door knocker but no one answered. The door was not locked and opened with a gentle push. He went in. The courtyard was completely empty. The sun had risen to the forks in the tree branches and their shadows bobbed about on the ground. Although it was a windy day, the courtyard was warm. In the corner, beside the bamboo drying poles, stood a crudely made pottery vase. Someone had picked a great bunch of all-spice blossoms and stuck them into the vase, and their gorgeous colour seemed to set the whole wall on fire. Ah-Fat took the flowers in his hand and sniffed—they gave out a lingering perfume. He sat down heavily in the bamboo chair by the drying poles and it gave a loud creak. He settled into it cautiously, and then pulled a newspaper out from the folds of his jacket and opened it.