Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  Six Fingers enjoyed the work and would go wherever she was wanted. But she did not get paid for it in cash. Instead, they would give her a few eggs, a pound or two of rice, a piece of fabric, some fuel for her stove, or whatever the master of the house decided. She did not get rich from her work, but it was enough to feed one person three meals a day.

  However, she only had a shed to live in, by the pigpen. It had been used by Red Hair’s family for storage and then fell into disrepair. It was leaky and draughty and smelt mouldy. The second summer after her sister died and she was left alone, a typhoon destroyed it completely, leaving her without any shelter from the elements.

  One of the village women took pity on her and took her in. Auntie Cheung Tai’s husband had gone to Gold Mountain and she had not heard from him for many years. She had no sons or daughters so when she died the family line would run out. Six Fingers moved in with her and paid for her bed and board by splitting her earnings two ways. At least it gave her a roof over her head.

  As Ah-Fat listened to Six Fingers’ story, he felt pangs of grief, as if a cord was being drawn tight around his heart. He thought back to when he and Red Hair set off for Gold Mountain. Red Hair had left behind a flourishing family of young and old, but nothing remained now but a pile of rubble. Six Fingers, however, was as tenacious as a weed that had crept out from under the rubble in search of light and managed to put forth a leaf. She was a survivor, that girl.

  He told his mother that he had made several trips over the years to the camp where Red Hair was buried, but the virgin forest was now a city and he had searched in vain for the pile of stones. “But you must have a few of Red Hair’s belongings, haven’t you?” said his mother. “I brought back an old fiddle which he used to carry around with him in Gold Mountain.” “Then wrap it up and take it to Red Hair’s family grave in a day or two, and bury it next to Mrs. Kwan. The grave is still open, you should get someone to come and seal it. Then the family won’t need to wait for his bones any longer.” “I’ll take Six Fingers with me,” said Ah-Fat. “After all, it was her sister and brother-in-law.”

  “After dinner, I’ll get the maid Ah-Choi to heat the water nice and hot, and you can wash and shave. Tomorrow, the brothers are coming. They heard you’re back and they want to meet you.”

  “Whose brothers?”

  “Don’t be such a dope! The brothers of your betrothed!”

  After breakfast the next morning, Ah-Fat went out. He walked west through the village. He heard some knocking noises before he got near the old wooden shack and, through the open door, saw Auntie Cheung Tai at her loom.

  She was a scrawny little woman, only just able to work the loom by perching atop pieces of wood to raise the level of her stool. Her two hands gripped the shuttle like a bow pulled taut but still could not push it to the end of the frame. She was weaving a rough country cloth, greyish-yellow in colour so when the end of the yarn fell on the floor and got mixed up with the dirt, it took her some time to find it. This kind of cloth was for clothes the men wore when they were ploughing or harvesting. It was unattractive but would withstand a couple of seasons out in the wind and rain. Unfortunately Auntie Cheung Tai had let the tension go slack because her arms were too puny and short to hold the yarn. Her workmanship fell far short of Mrs. Mak’s.

  Busy at her weaving, she suddenly saw a big black smudge on the cloth. She rubbed away at it unsuccessfully—until she realized it was someone’s shadow. Looking up, she saw a man had come into the room. He was well-built and wore a skullcap and a lined grey satin gown, which must have been brand new since it still had sharp creases from being folded in the trunk. The man gave her a smile, and a worm seemed to crawl slowly up one side of his face. Auntie Cheung Tai’s small bound feet slipped off the stool and she pitched forward so her nose nearly banged against the loom.

  The man helped her back up and greeted her politely with hands pressed together. “Your husband was my father’s cousin, Auntie,” he said. “He was like an uncle to me.” From the front opening of his gown, he extracted two small paper packets and gave them to her. “Something foreign for you, Auntie, from Gold Mountain.”

  Auntie Cheung Tai wiped the corners of her gummy eyes with her sleeve, making it wet. “Ah-Fat, are you really back? Oh, look at your face.… Well, at least you’re alive. Do you have any news of your uncle Cheung Tai?” Ah-Fat shook his head. “No. I went to the Chinese Benevolent Association, but they didn’t have anyone of that name on their lists. He went to Gold Mountain so long ago, maybe they didn’t have lists back then.” “The year before last, two men from Sai Village came home,” she said. “They said they’d seen someone the spitting image of uncle Cheung Tai in Fan Tan Alley, with a Redskin woman.” “They must have been mistaken,” said Ah-Fat. “If he was still alive in Gold Mountain, surely he would have been in touch with you, Auntie.” She clamped her mouth shut and was silent. Finally, she said icily: “It makes no difference who he was with. The marriage documents were exchanged with me.”

  Her lower jaw trembled so hard that her teeth chattered. Ah-Fat could think of nothing to say to comfort her. Uncle Cheung Tai must have gone a long time ago. If he was still alive, he would at least have come back to pay his respects to his ancestors. But Ah-Fat could not think which was worse—the old man dying or marrying another woman. So he bit back the platitudes that had been about to trip off his tongue.

  Auntie Cheung Tai held the two packets to her nose and sniffed, then sneezed. “Whatever’s that strange smell?” she asked. “How do I get my teeth into that?” Ah-Fat burst out laughing. “It’s not to eat. It’s soap to wash your face with. Once you’ve washed, you’ll smell nice all day.” She laughed too: “Who’s going to smell this old woman’s fragrance? This is for a young woman.” Ah-Fat hesitated then said: “Auntie, if you really think it has an odd smell, why not give it to Six Fingers? If you can smell it on her, that’s as good as if you were using it yourself.” Auntie Cheung Tai shouted for Six Fingers to bring some tea for the guest. Ah-Fat heard an indistinct murmur of response but there was no movement. He glanced towards the back door and saw Six Fingers standing under the overhanging eaves, feeding the pigs. There were three of them, two white and one spotted. They were still young, and pressed around Six Fingers’ trouser legs eagerly, squealing for food. Six Fingers splashed some pig swill into the trough with a ladle, but it was too thin for the piglets’ liking. They nuzzled the liquid and then left it. Six Fingers got a bunch of dried grass and mixed it into the feed with a piece of wood, then whacked the piglets on their rumps by way of encouragement. The squeals quietened and turned into chomping sounds. Six Fingers had on a cotton tunic today, loose-fitting with wide sleeves, buttoned slantwise across the front, and decorated with piping round the edges. It had faded almost white probably through repeated washing. It also concealed all her curves, until she bent over—then the hem at the back rode up, revealing sturdy round buttocks under her trousers.

  When Six Fingers finished feeding the piglets, she went into the kitchen. They could hear her applying the bellows to the stove. The tea was ready almost before the smell of burning grass and twigs reached their nostrils, and Six Fingers brought in a tray with a bowl for Auntie Cheung Tai and one for Ah-Fat. Ah-Fat took the bowl in both hands and saw that it was not tea but an infusion of popped rice grains. The layer of grains looked like maggots swimming in water and a few osmanthus flowers floated on the surface. Auntie Cheung Tai took a sip and smacked her lips: “How much sugar did you put in, you little wretch?”

  A grain of rice stuck between her teeth and she extracted it with her thumbnail, exclaiming as she did so: “Six Fingers! Why’s your face all spotty?” The girl rubbed her face and her finger came away covered in black ink. She looked down and smiled: “I was doing some couplets for Ah-Yuen’s family.” “What sort of couplets?” asked Ah-Fat. “For the birthday of his old dad. He’s sixty.” “Let me see what you did,” said Ah-Fat.

  Six Fingers led him into the room at the back whic
h served as a kitchen. There was a stove with two holes for the pots—one large, one small, a table for eating at and a large earthenware crock. The rest of the floor space was taken up with piles of grass and twigs for the stove, dried grass for the pigs and skeins for the loom. Six Fingers used the table for her calligraphy, and the paper was spread out on it waiting for the ink to dry. The room only had one small window and was darker than the front room. Six Fingers had trimmed the lamp to its lowest, to save on oil, and the flame was no bigger than a pea. Ah-Fat had to screw up his eyes to make out the characters.

  The right-hand couplet read: “Long-lived as the southern mountains, your every move spreads love.” The left-hand one read: “Good fortune as great as the eastern seas, you bring good luck to all.” The strip that went across the top read: “Fortunate old age without end.”

  She had used gold-flecked red paper and although it was not many characters, the verticals and horizontals were neatly aligned and the brushwork was firm. Ah-Fat looked the work over from every angle and then turned to Six Fingers. Under his steady gaze, her head shrunk turkey-like into her neck, which was flushed as red as her face. She works like a man, thought Ah-Fat to himself, and her calligraphy is masculine too. But to look at, she’s just a lovely girl. “Where did you get the couplets from?” he asked her. “The Compendium of New Year Couplets Old and New” ? She shook her head. “Couplets and Characters for Farmers” ? he asked again. Again she shook her head. “Mr. Ding only ever used those two,” he persisted. “Surely you haven’t got other books as well?” Six Fingers shook her head once more and twisted her hands in the folds of her jacket. Finally, she said: “I don’t have any books at all.”

  Ah-Fat was astonished. “You mean you made them up yourself?” The blood surged again into Six Fingers’ cheeks. “They don’t make a neat pair, do they?” she whispered. “I think they make a fine pair,” said Ah-Fat. “Perhaps if you changed ‘your every move spreads love’ to ‘you spread love all around,’ it would contrast better with ‘you bring good luck to all’.” “That’s true! That sounds much better!” She was about to tear it up and rewrite the couplet when Ah-Fat, suddenly interested, offered: “I’ll do it.” Six Fingers ground and prepared more ink, laid out the paper, wetted and smoothed the brush and gave it to Ah-Fat.

  Ah-Fat loaded the brush with ink and, after a long moment of contemplation, began to write. He wrote the whole thing without pausing, except to load more ink onto the brush halfway through. Then he threw the brush into the water and paid no further attention to it. Six Fingers tidied away the brush and ink. “Master Ah-Fat, your calligraphy has become more vigorous as the years go by. Did you get a chance to practise in Gold Mountain?”

  “How do you know my calligraphy?” Ah-Fat was startled. Six Fingers gave a little laugh. “Every time you wrote home, your mum called me over to read it to her.” “So every letter I’ve had back from her was written by you?” Six Fingers nodded. Ah-Fat had to laugh. “No wonder!” “No wonder what?” “I couldn’t understand how that old turtle Ding had got so good at writing!” said Ah-Fat.

  Six Fingers wrung out a towel in hot water and gave it to Ah-Fat to wipe his hands. Ah-Fat protested it was a shame to dirty such a clean white towel and instead grabbed a dirty rag from the table and gave his inky fingers a quick rub. Six Fingers saw him to the door. In the glaring sunlight, the tree branches seemed to have grown fatter—if you looked closely you could see that many of the leaf buds had burst open. Ah-Fat’s blue cotton shoes left faint marks on the bare earth but did not raise any dust. Instead, the earth had begun to give out a gentle dampness.

  As Ah-Fat walked into his house, he smelled grass burning fragrantly in the stove. A servant was busy preparing the midday meal. Mrs. Mak sat in the front room, podding peas. She may have been blind but she had “eyes” in her fingers which unerringly saw the two ridges running down the length of the pod. With her thumb she pressed at one end, and the pod split down its length, dropping plump peas in a steady stream into her bamboo basket.

  Mrs. Mak had extra eyes not only in her fingers but in her ears too. These “eyes” gave a light blink and saw the hem of Ah-Fat’s new gown brush the door sill, a moist hen dropping sticking to it, and float across to where she sat.

  “Mum, take a break and sit in the sun for a bit. Ah-Choi can do that.”

  Mrs. Mak continued to bend her head to her work. However, a crease at each corner of her mouth trembled slightly.

  Ah-Fat knew that meant she was struggling with two conflicting feelings—indignation working its way up from her heart and resignation, which crept down from her head. The two conflicting feelings came to blows at the corners of her mouth; Ah-Fat had been familiar with this expression of his mother’s ever since he was a child. He saw it every time his father got into a fight or smoked opium or he or Ah-Sin failed to collect enough grass for the pigs.

  “All morning they waited for you,” she said.

  Ah-Fat suddenly remembered that today was the day he was supposed to meet the family of his betrothed.

  “What a dope I am. When I got up this morning, it went clean out of my head!” He clapped his forehead in exasperation.

  “It’s nearly twenty li so they had to set off while it was still dark. Then they just turned around and went straight home, and refused even a bite to eat.”

  Ah-Fat fetched a stool and sat down beside his mother to help her with the peas. They were small and he had big hands. Without the advantage of Mrs. Mak’s deft fingertips, he groped blindly at the pod and felt the peas squeeze through the cracks between his fingers and shoot off in all directions.

  The creases at the corners of his mother’s mouth gradually began to soften.

  Ah-Fat’s hands suddenly slowed and she heard a sigh—or rather, to put it more accurately, she saw the sigh. The “eyes” in her ears strained to see where, in her son’s heart, this sigh had emanated from. Then it gradually rose to his eyebrows where a tiny knot formed at the spot where the eyebrows met. Finally, it fell heavily into the basket, scattering the peas.

  “Such a pity,” sighed Ah-Fat.

  Mrs. Mak suppressed a smile—her son might have been away in Gold Mountain living with those devils of White people for all those years, but he was still as good-hearted as ever.

  “It’s not the end of the world. Get Ha Kau to take you over tomorrow. You can go and see them and say sorry, and that’ll be the end of it. They’re reasonable people.”

  She had misunderstood but Ah-Fat did nothing to enlighten her. He carried on podding the peas in a desultory fashion. After a moment, he said: “That sister-in-law of Uncle Red Hair, she’s such a talented girl. Too bad she’s had such a hard life.”

  Mrs. Mak shook her head. “Six Fingers certainly is talented,” she agreed. “But respectable families don’t care two hoots whether their daughters are talented or not, since they’re going to marry out, come what may. The only girls who get taught properly how to read and write are the pipa players in Guk Fau.” (She was referring to the child prostitutes in a high-class brothel.)

  “But Mum, in Gold Mountain, boys and girls all go to school,” Ah-Fat protested. “If girls are literate, they can’t be tricked so easily, and when they get married, they can teach their own children.”

  “Huh!” said his mother. “I can’t read a word but I’ve never been tricked. Didn’t you and your brother go to tutor school? What did you need your mother to teach you for?”

  Ah-Fat laughed. “If you could read and write, then you wouldn’t have to get someone to write your letters to me, and you’d save all those eggs, and all that tea, and cash. You don’t even know what your letter-writer actually wrote. When I sent you a cheque, you didn’t know how much it was for, so you could have been cheated, and you’d never know.”

  Mrs. Mak laughed too, showing all her chipped teeth. “Yes, you’re right. So long as she doesn’t cost too much in school fees or slack off around the house. Then when you have a daughter, it’s up to you whether you ed
ucate her.”

  They fell silent. Mrs. Mak looked up. She could see a fuzzy brightness, so she knew the sun had risen to its zenith and the shadows cast by the trees in the paved courtyard would be at their shortest. There was a vibration in the “eyes” within her ears, and she “saw” hosts of worms rustling through the soil under the roots of the banyan tree in the courtyard. It was nearly the end of the first month of the new year. As soon as the earth changed, would be time for ploughing and sowing. Ah-Fat’s wedding had to take place before that started. Tomorrow, a day would have to be fixed.

  “Ah-Fat, you little fool!” Mrs. Mak exclaimed, feeling in the basket. “Why are you throwing in all the pods?”

  Ah-Fat roused himself hurriedly, to find he had thrown all the peas away and put the pods in the basket. He scrabbled around picking up the peas, and rinsed the dirt off them in a bowl of water.

  “Is Six Fingers betrothed to anyone, Mum?” he asked.

  “At the end of last year some people from Sai Village came here visiting relatives and saw the scrolls hung in their house. When they found out Six Finger had done them, they got the matchmaker to propose the son of the family to her. But Six Fingers refused. Her mum and dad are still alive but they didn’t want to take her back. That makes her really an orphan with no one to decide things for her. So she’s her own mistress now. But it’s not proper, putting a girl’s calligraphy and paintings on show to strangers.”

  “Why did she say no?”

  “She said the boy was illiterate.”

  Ah-Fat pushed the basket aside and fell on his knees, on top of all the pea pods.

  “Mum,” he begged. “Let me be my own master! I want to marry Six Fingers.…”