by Ling Zhang
Mrs. Mak suddenly came to a halt, scowling. She thumped her walking stick so hard it dented the earth.
“Hurry up and save some money when you get back to Gold Mountain, Ah-Fat,” she said.
“Yes, Mum, to buy more fields,” said Ah-Fat, who had heard this injunction from his mother time and again. Fields, fields, more fields. When Six Fingers and Kam Ho were kidnapped by Chu Sei, their land had to be sold in haste to raise the ransom. Mrs. Mak had never forgotten the painful process of buying back their fields afterwards. She did not believe in money, even when she held the silver coins tight in her hand. She could only be reassured by standing atop the dykes which enclosed her family’s own fields.
“No, not fields,” said Mrs. Mak, waving her stick in the direction of Six Fingers. “Hurry and save enough money to take her away with you.”
Ah-Fat and Six Fingers were mute with astonishment. They had waited and waited for Mrs. Mak to speak these words, and after twenty years, they seemed more improbable than a flowering sago tree.
When Six Fingers found her voice, she said: “Mum, I’ll always be here to attend to you.” “Huh!” came the reply. “As if I don’t know where your heart lies!” The old woman had a sharp tongue and her words could pepper her listener painfully in the face. But Six Fingers had long since grown a thick skin and was inured to such wounding comments.
She merely gave a slight smile and said: “Mum, what will you do if I go?” “Huh!” Mrs. Mak said again. “I’ll live with his uncle and aunt. Ah-Fat’s money has made them as fat as Bodhisattvas. Ah-Fat’s uncle would be a nobody without that money, so he can hardly refuse.”
Ah-Fat hitched up his gown, knelt in the road and kowtowed three times before his mother. She could not see him but she could smell the dust raised by the knocking of her son’s head. “I won’t forget your kindness, Mother,” he said. “When I get back to Gold Mountain, I’ll earn masses of money so you can buy masses of land. And if I can’t come home every year, then I’ll get Kam Shan to come home and pay his respects to you like good grandson.”
At the mention of Kam Shan, Mrs. Mak’s grim expression relaxed and a flicker of a smile appeared on her face.
“You go back and tell Kam Shan that the sugared almonds that he sent were very nice, but they were much too hard for me. Remind him Granny hasn’t got too many teeth left and next time he should send something softer.”
Ah-Fat grunted assent and glanced sidelong at Six Fingers. They both smiled but said nothing. They had kept Kam Shan’s disappearance from Mrs. Mak but she nagged Six Fingers for news of him. In the end, Six Fingers was cornered. She penned a couple of letters “from Kam Shan” herself and read bits of them out to the old woman. Ah-Fat had brought a few curios with him and passed them off as presents from Kam Shan, and Mrs. Mak had suspected nothing. It was only now that Kam Shan had returned that Ah-Fat and Six Fingers could relax their vigilance.
So Six Fingers’ journey to Gold Mountain was a hurried decision made that morning—but one that took Mrs. Mak twenty years to resign herself to.
When Ah-Fat arrived back in Gold Mountain, he burned incense and prayed every day. He was determined to save up the head tax for Six Fingers as soon as possible even if it meant postponing repayment of the debts from the diulau. Harvests improved and his savings grew. Within two years, he had enough for the head tax.
When Ah-Fat had finished his prayers to Tam Kung, he went to make up the bed. The cotton wadding in the quilt was not brand new but he had fluffed it up and it was nice and soft. The old quilt cover was threadbare from much washing, so Ah-Fat had bought a new one of fine linen, English-made, from the department store in Vancouver. He planned to change the quilt cover. After that, he would set off with the horse and cart to buy a few household necessities in town, and then to the barber for shave. By then it should be just about time to go and meet the boat. It was due to dock at three o’clock.
Ah-Fat was just sewing up the quilt when the hired hand, Loong Am, put his head through the door and said: “Now that Auntie is coming, we can have soup for dinner. We won’t have to eat the mouldy rice you cook up every day that even a pig would turn up its nose at.” Ah-Fat spat out the end of the thread. “You’ve got a lot of nerve moaning that you’re hard up, you young punk,” he retorted, “as if you haven’t done well out of me for years. And even if I give you a few extra cents it won’t get you sons and grandchildren. You’re better off going home to get yourself a wife, then she can cook you tasty soup whenever you want.”
Loong Am gave a cackle of laughter. “You’re so stingy, Uncle, you don’t let a cent slip through your fingers. I’ll never make any money from you. I’m lucky to get enough to eat, let alone a wife.”
Ah-Fat gave Loong Am the needle and thread. He was getting longsighted, and finding it more and more difficult to thread needles, write letters and cut his fingernails. “Uncle, my kid brother saw Kam Shan a few days ago in Kamloops,” Loong Am said as he poked the thread through the needle’s eye.
Ah-Fat did not answer, but the hand holding the scissors paused in mid-air.
After Kam Shan left two years ago, he wandered from place to place. He did not dare show his face in Vancouver because he had snatched the girl from the brothel. He had been heard of in Port Hope, and then Yale. At New Year, he had mailed his father a cheque for fifty dollars. There was no address on the envelope, but the postmark was Lytton. Ah-Fat had been there when he was building the railroad, though nothing now remained of it. It was hard to imagine what Kam Shan had been up to, to save such a lot of money in this ghost town. Ah-Fat’s eyes flickered in agitation for days afterwards, but there had been no further news.
He regretted throwing his son out. The boy was trouble whether he was at home or not. But at least if he was home, Ah-Fat could keep an eye on him. If he was away, Ah-Fat had no idea what he was doing and never stopped worrying about him. He used to believe that what the eye did not see, the heart did not grieve over. He did not believe that any more. His son’s misdeeds were a thorn in his side when he could see them. But now that Kam Shan was gone, he found himself entangled in a bramble bush from which he could not extricate himself. No sooner had he pulled one thorn out than he discovered another. It would have been better to have him close by.
The thorns hurt when they stabbed him and they hurt when he pulled them out. But Ah-Fat shared his pain with no one and, in consequence, no one mentioned Kam Shan in his presence. It was as if he had never had a son—though if he did hear Kam Shan’s name on someone’s lips, his eyes flickered for days afterwards.
“Kam Shan rents a corner of a shop and does a roaring trade taking people’s photographs. Most of his customers are Redskins,” Loong Am was saying. “They pose with boots on, with guns at their waists, like cowboys.”
“Just him … alone?” Ah-Fat asked after a moment’s silence. This was the first time since Kam Shan’s departure that he had asked after him.
Loong Am knew what his boss was getting at. He gave an apologetic cough, then said reluctantly: “That woman, she’s there too.” He looked up to see if Ah-Fat was angry, then went on: “My brother says her English is better than Kam Shan’s. The White women and the Redskin women all want to talk to her.”
Ah-Fat’s face darkened like a storm cloud.
Loong Am pulled a knotted handkerchief out of his pocket and put it in Ah-Fat’s hand. “My brother told Kam Shan that his mum was coming out to Vancouver, and Kam Shan asked when. He wanted to go and meet the boat. My brother told him not to, in case it made you angry. Kam Shan just stood there like an idiot, then he went upstairs and brought down this handkerchief and asked my brother to give it to Auntie so she could buy herself some clothes in town. Kam Shan said not to let you see.”
Ah-Fat threw the bundle onto the bed without looking at it. Loong Am coughed again. “You’ve got a fierce temper, Uncle!” he said. “Kam Shan did nothing wrong, after all. What would you do if a girl hung onto your coattails like that? Wouldn’t you take her in? K
am Shan must have got his good nature from you. Besides, why look a gift horse in the mouth? He’s got a girl without you having to buy wedding gifts or pay the head tax. If you don’t like her, get him another woman as his first wife and be done with it. Why get in such a temper about it?”
Ah-Fat still said nothing but his expression softened.
When Loong Am had gone, Ah-Fat shut the door and opened the handkerchief. It contained a pile of small change and a bundle of crumpled low-value notes, damp from grease or sweat. Ah-Fat counted the money: twelve dollars and eighty-six cents.
That boy! He was still his flesh-and-blood son. Ah-Fat’s eyes welled up. At least now he knew that Kam Shan had settled down. Ah-Fat had sent him away and he could not call him back. But once Six Fingers arrived, perhaps she could bring them back together.
Ah-Fat drove his horse and cart to the docks, his head filled with longing for Six Fingers—and Kam Shan too. He could not bring himself to think of Kam Shan directly, only by way of Six Fingers. She was the bridge between father and son. Neither could reach the other except through her. Without her mediation, they would only ever look at each other from opposite banks.
But it was not Six Fingers who disembarked that day. It was Kam Ho.
He was the last off the boat. He staggered under the weight of a carrying pole with two enormous suitcases, inching his way along like an ant burdened with a lump of mud. Ah-Fat nearly buckled at the knees with astonishment.
“What’s happened to your mother?”
“Mum said I had to come because Kam Shan’s left and you need help.”
“Was that your granny’s idea?” asked Ah-Fat, seizing his son by the front of his jacket.
“No, it wasn’t. Granny told Mum to come too but Mum said that if she came it would add to your expenses, and she wouldn’t be able to pull her weight. I didn’t want to come. It was Mum who insisted on buying the ticket for me.”
As Kam Ho stammered out his explanation, he saw Ah-Fat’s face fall. He knew then that his dad did not want him here. He had stumbled in his very first steps in Gold Mountain. How many steps did he have to take before he could stand tall and proud in his father’s eyes? Kam Ho walked slower and slower, bent ever lower under his burden, as if to hide in his own shadow.
“What are you crying for? I haven’t done anything to hurt you.”
Ah-Fat frowned in distaste at the sight of his son’s tangled, filthy hair and the dried-up puke on the front of his jacket from the long sea journey.
He wondered how on earth his two sons had turned out so different from one another.
“This is it.”
Ah-Fat jumped down from the cart, handed the blue bundle to Kam Ho and walked towards to the house. It was big, two storeys, with a garden in front. Kam Ho stood outside the iron gate looking into the garden. He could not see the front door, only three porches. The midday sun beat down, bleaching everything white. The three porches stood out like black holes against the white glare. When Kam Ho thought about who lived in these black holes, a cold shiver ran down his spine in spite of the heat of the sun.
“I don’t want to go, Dad! I want to stay at home and work on the farm with you” was what he wanted to say.
He had held the words back from the moment they left home. Now they had turned to stone in his mouth and he was not able to utter them.
When Ah-Fat first raised the idea, he did so gently.
“The Hendersons’ maid has gone back to England to get married, and they can’t find anyone to help out. Mrs. Henderson is not a well woman, and she needs a servant,” he had told Kam Shan.
“Mr. Henderson is a friend I met when I was building the railroad. He’s helped me and your uncle Ah-Lam a lot. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have had the money to buy all this land.”
It was only after Ah-Fat had talked his way around the subject of the Hendersons for some time that Kam Ho finally caught on. His father wanted him to go and be their houseboy, the way that Ah-Choi and Ah-Yuet were servants. Mr. Henderson had saved his father’s skin and he could not turn him down now.
The shock of this realization stuck like grains of uncooked rice in Kam Ho’s throat, making it difficult to breathe. When he could speak again, he protested: “But I’ve never cooked. I don’t even know how to light the stove.”
“Mrs. Henderson will teach you.”
“But I don’t understand the yeung fans’ language!”
“You’ll pick it up.”
“But.…”
Gradually his father’s patience wore thin. His eyebrows drew together in a frown and his scar thickened. “I can’t imagine why your mother sent you out here!”
Kam Ho shut his mouth then. Ah-Fat had touched a nerve, one that remained raw for years. The boat that brought him should have been carrying his mother, who could make life comfortable for his father as he got older. That comfort had been snatched away by his arrival, even though he had not wanted to come. He, Kam Ho, would never be able to redeem himself as long as he lived.
During that morning’s journey, Kam Ho slumped listlessly over his bag of belongings. He was silent. He could not speak—his eyes brimmed with tears and he knew that if he opened his mouth to speak, the tears would flow. He had been in Gold Mountain for four days and had seen nothing and no one except for his father and their farm. Gold Mountain was a bottomless pit and his father was the lifeline that hung down over the edge. Without him, Kam Ho would be lost in this pitch-black hole and never see the light of day again. But today, his father demanded that he leave that one familiar face and walk through a stranger’s door, to wait on a yeung fan woman. He had no idea if he would be able to stomach the food she ate, or sleep in the bed she provided. Worst of all, he did not know a word of her language.
“When you were at home, you had servants to wait on you. Now you’re going to a yeung fan house to wait on them. Don’t put on any ‘young master’ airs. Any kind of noises—farting, burping, coughing—you do them out of earshot. At mealtimes, if she doesn’t ask you to eat with them, then you eat in the kitchen. Wash your feet every night before going to bed. There’s a piece of salt fish in the bag, so if you don’t like their cooking, you can eat this with it.
“You’ll work six days a week and have one day’s rest. When you’ve cooked the Saturday dinner, you can go. I’ll come and pick you up and bring you back first thing Monday morning.
“You’ll get one dollar twenty-five a day, including your day off, that’s thirty-seven dollars fifty a month. All your board is covered, so you should be able to earn quite a bit in a year.”
As he pushed open the iron gate and walked in through the middle porch, Ah-Fat suddenly put his arm round his son’s shoulder. Kam Ho was so skinny that his bones dug into Ah-Fat’s hand. Kam Ho heard his father’s voice crack a little as he said: “There’s a lot of money in Gold Mountain, and one dollar is equal to several dollars when you send it home. If you and I can keep this up for a few years, we can clear the debts from the diulau.”
His father knocked on the door and a dog barked on the other side so furiously the sound made the windows and door frames rattle. The door opened a crack and a woman’s face appeared. She shut the door and shouted at the dog. The dog gave an answering bark. Dog and woman continued this exchange of shout and bark until finally the dog admitted defeat and quieted down. At that, the woman opened the door.
She was tall and lanky with a pallid complexion and pale eyes. She was so colourless, in fact, she looked as though she had been steeped in water for days until all the flavour had drained out of her. She was wearing tight-fitting top and a floor-length skirt. When she turned around, Kam Ho quickly shut his eyes in case her waist snapped.
The woman and his dad exchanged a few words but Kam Ho understood nothing. He shrank, trembling, against his father. He gripped his bag as if it were the only thing that held him together.
“Mrs. Henderson asked how old you are. I said fifteen, but she doesn’t believe me. She thinks you only look abou
t ten,” Ah-Fat explained.
“Only bloody ten!” Kam Ho swore, but silently. It was the rudest utterance he was capable of.
“Mrs. Henderson asks if you have any questions.”
“I’m not going to make her bed for her, no way,” said Kam Ho after a long moment’s thought.
His father hooted with laughter. Then turned back to the woman and said, with a straight face: “My son says he doesn’t know how to make beds.”
Mrs. Henderson frowned. “From what Rick says, your boy doesn’t know how to do anything. Making beds is the simplest task, but of course I’ll teach him.”
His dad ruffled Kam Ho’s hair and was gone, taking that protective shadow with him and leaving Kam Ho exposed to the woman’s gaze. When Kam Ho turned to look, his father had already jumped onto the cart. “Saturday, Dad, as early as.…” he said, but the words were snatched away by the wind. The horse was already clip-clopping down the street.
Kam Ho threw down his bag and leaned against the door frame, sobbing.
The tears, so long suppressed that they felt like grit in his eyes, fell heavily to the floor. His father was gone and he had no sky to shelter him or earth to hold him up. How was he going to face the world?
The woman stood in the doorway, watching him silently. The dog came out and, extending a blood-red tongue, began to lick the salty tears from his jacket.
“Just a year, Dad, that’s what you said,” Kam Ho said to himself.
It was something he was to repeat to himself countless times in the days to come.
Until finally, he stopped believing it.
“E … gg.”
Mrs. Henderson took an egg from the basket on the table, held it up for Kam Ho and pronounced the word for him.
She put the egg back and made a circular motion with her two hands in the air, enunciating:
“Ca … ke.”
Once she had done this, she pointed to a photograph of Mr. Henderson on the side table, then to her mouth to indicate eating.
Kam Ho had been at the Hendersons’ for two weeks, and this was the method Mrs. Henderson had adopted for speaking to him. He did not understand in the beginning, and he did not understand now. When he first arrived, his inability to understand was like a great black cowl; now, though the cowl was still in place, glimmers of light seeped through here and there.