Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  He understood that Mrs. Henderson wanted to make her husband a fried egg. Actually, what she really wanted was to make him a cake, a birthday cake.

  Mrs. Henderson took an egg, tapped it lightly on the edge of the bowl until the yolk and the white slipped glistening out of the shell. She did the same with the second. The yolk of the third egg was broken and she threw it into the rubbish bin. She picked up the fourth egg, then suddenly changed her mind. Putting it back in the basket, she took Kam Ho’s hand and pronounced slowly: “You do it.”

  Kam Ho guessed that she wanted him to do as she had done. He took hold of an egg and cracked it on the edge of the bowl. The contents shot into the bowl, taking with them some of the eggshell. With the second, he knew to tap it lightly. The yolk and the white slid into the bowl. When it came to the third, he tapped it lightly and threw it into the rubbish bin.

  Mrs. Henderson started, then burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that her forehead came up in a bump.

  Mrs. Henderson was severely arthritic, and the pain was so bad that it seemed to crawl through every artery and vein of her body. At night when she went to sleep, it was in her fingers, but when she got up in the morning, the pain had travelled to her shoulders. When she drank her coffee, the pain was down in her back and when she stood up, it was in her knees. Her face usually bore a frown of pain and she rarely smiled. But since Kam Ho had come to live with them, she had laughed several times—laughed until she cried.

  The first time was the day of Kam Ho’s arrival. In the afternoon, she decided to take him through the sweeping of the sitting room and the kitchen. She took a feather duster and showed him how to pass it over the tables and walls. When they got as far as the dining table, Kam Ho suddenly saw something sticking out of the wall next to it, and gave it a poke. There was a click and the room flooded with light. Kam Ho gave a shocked cry and sat down on the floor, covering his ears with his hands. She realized that the boy had never seen a high-wattage electric light before. He thought he had been struck by lightning. In Hoi Ping, they still used oil lamps and even in his New Westminster house, his father only had two ten-watt light bulbs, a bit brighter than oil lamps but still nowhere near as bright as these.

  The next morning, when Mr. Henderson was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and Kam Ho was boiling water in the kitchen, there was a sudden shrieking from the living room. After much searching, Kam Ho discovered the noise was coming from a black box on the side table. Mr. Henderson came running out of the bathroom with the toothbrush sticking out of his froth-covered mouth, and gestured to the black box. Kam Ho bundled up a tablecloth and muffled the box as best he could. It rang more quietly but he could still hear it. So he fetched cushions from the sofa and pressed them on top of the box. Still it rang. Mr. Henderson related the incident to his wife at breakfast and she laughed until she shook. Poor child, she said, he’s never seen a telephone. How come his father never told him about telephones?

  When she finally stopped laughing, and wiped the tears from her eyes, she picked the cracked egg out of the rubbish and brought it back to the table. As she broke it into the bowl, she could not suppress a sigh. Oh Lord, how often must I explain to this Mongol boy that you don’t throw every third egg away? she wondered.

  Mrs. Henderson took a wooden spoon and lightly beat the eggs in the bowl, then gave the spoon to Kam Ho and made him do the same. He cut a comical figure, his shoulders hunched and his hands beating ferociously as if using a brickbat to smash a fly. It was the same every time he learned some new household skill—he learned to go through the motions but never seemed to understand why.

  Mrs. Henderson watched as a tuft of hair on the back of his head bounced up and down in time with his movements. She suppressed a smile. It occurred to her that if she did not tell him to stop, this hare-brained Chinese boy would just carry on beating until he shattered the bowl. She looked for a semblance of expression on his bent face. It was as if a cloth were drawn taut over his features, masking them completely. In fact, his whole body seemed to be enveloped from top to bottom in an impenetrable suit of armour. She sometimes felt as if she wanted to pierce a hole in it, just to see what kind of blood would flow out.

  But there was no need for that. On the first Saturday after his arrival, as he washed the vegetables in the kitchen, he began to look as if he was losing his wits. His ears quivered like those of a guard dog, straining to hear movement outside the front door. He was desperate for his father to turn up and take him home. Finally, she had found the chink in his armour— and it told her that he hated being at her house.

  Her knees began to hurt and she had to sit down on a chair. Kam Ho’s eyes were fixed on the eggs he was beating. They looked strange, these Mongols, she thought: flat, open faces, eyes that looked like two fine slits slashed in a sheet of pastry. Their clothes were peculiar too. On top, they wore what looked like long coats fastened not up the front but at the side up to the armpits. Only a short length of trouser leg was visible, the cuffs tied with string around each ankle. Their shoes and socks were made of cloth. What a performance it must be to go to the toilet wearing an outfit like that!

  What they ate was as peculiar as what they wore. A few days before, she had smelled something strange, and had walked all around the house to trace its source. It was coming from Kam Ho’s room. There she found Kam Ho chewing on a piece of dried fish, which he hastily stuffed into a drawer as soon as he saw her. It looked and smelled like a piece of rotting garbage. She had noticed that he ate very little at the table, and reasoned that he must have been getting hungry. His stomach was not used to the Hendersons’ food. She threw away his bag of salted fish, though to touch it nearly made her vomit. She expected that he would protest. But he did not. His face remained as tightly masked as always, with not a shadow of expression showing through.

  The next day at dinner, she served him a piece of fish steamed in the French way, pouring melted butter all over it. He took it to the kitchen to eat—he never sat down with them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him eat it all, though with difficulty and frequent pauses.

  Many years ago, her husband, Rick, had worked with some Chinese railroad navvies and could still tell stories that sounded as fantastic as the tales from the Thousand and One Nights. Of course, that was before their marriage. She was the daughter of a Manchester cloth merchant and had come to Vancouver when she married Rick. She had had no close contact with any Chinese apart from the man who ran the Chinese grocery. When Rick suggested that they take on Kam Ho as a houseboy, she had been without her English maid for a week. This was the third maid to depart in the last few years. A properly trained maid was the greatest gift that the Lord could bestow on a British housewife. But all great gifts were hard to find and harder to keep hold of. A young maid who had crossed the Atlantic to Canada would be sure to meet in her mistress’s drawing room some decent young man desperate for a wife. Love and marriage quickly followed. It was rare to find a European maid anywhere in Vancouver nowadays. The result was that young Chinese boys were finding their way into White housewives’ kitchens.

  Two years ago, Rick left the Vancouver Hotel and started work at the Hudson’s Bay Department Store as purchasing manager, which meant making frequent business trips to London, Paris, Munich and the Canadian East Coast. His job was tiring, and whenever she talked to him about getting a new servant, she felt his impatience. So when he suggested they employ Frank’s son, although she did not agree straightaway, she did not veto the idea either. Rick’s nerves were like a rope stretched thin and her ailments were the heaviest drag on it. Since she did not want the rope to snap, she had to deal with things on her own, but that was only a stopgap measure. In due course, she would find another rope to bear the weight of her problems.

  This new rope was a simpleton of a Mongol boy she called “Jimmy.” (She could not get her tongue around his Chinese name so she made up one of her own for him.)

  “Stop, Jimmy, stop!” Mrs. Henderson said to Kam Ho.

/>   But Kam Ho was deaf to all sounds except those of the banging of the wooden spoon against the bowl. Mrs. Henderson had to stamp her foot hard before Kam Ho heard. The spoon stopped, while his hand remained haplessly quivering—like a horse jerked to a halt by its master that carries on galloping on the spot.

  Mrs. Henderson massaged her knee joints and stood up. She began the complicated process of making the cake. Flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, water, oil—she measured the proportions carefully according to the recipe. Not forgetting, of course, the vanilla custard which Rick adored. She had no idea how long it would take this Chinese boy to learn the art of baking. She hoped not too long.

  Today was Rick’s fifty-seventh birthday. She pretended it had slipped her mind and had not given him the slightest hint that she remembered. In fact, she had been making meticulous preparations for this evening for a few days. She had bought the wine, a fifteen-year-old red Bordeaux. They would start with a clam chowder. The appetizer was pâté de fois gras on lettuce. The main courses would be smoked salmon and shoulder of lamb. And the dessert would of course be the cake. These dishes, normally only to be found in European-style restaurants, all would be made by her. She knew that Rick was tired of the dinner parties he had to go to, preferring to slump into his own armchair to relax and then eat a simple home-cooked meal. The cake needed forty-five minutes in the oven, so it was too early to bake. Rick got home at six o’clock, so she would put it in at half past five. After Rick had come in through the door, taken off his coat and loosened his tie, the cake would appear on the cake plate, warm and spongy soft. Then she would exclaim in pretended astonishment: “Good heavens! What a nice cake. It must be somebody’s birthday!”

  In fact, all this preparation, although intended for his enjoyment, paled in comparison with the preparations she made for herself. She had had the best dressmaker in Vancouver make her an evening gown in the latest Paris fashion. It was of crimson satin, trimmed with lace. The first time she had met Rick in Manchester, she was wearing a long crimson dress. They had both been guests at the house of a friend. He was a balding forty-eight-year old man and she, at twenty-six, was already an old maid. They were both past the best time for marriage, but a successful man, no matter how old, could always find a mate. She held herself back that day, not making any special effort to talk to him or distinguish herself from the bevy of other young women. But he stared so intently at her outfit that she seemed to feel his gaze on her all the way home that evening. The next day she accepted his invitation to lunch. She never forgot that he liked the colour crimson. She was the daughter of a textile merchant and had grown up surrounded by bales of cloth. She knew just what fabric and colours flattered her figure and made the sparks fly. This evening, she was eager to see those sparks in the eyes of her husband.

  She looked up at the wall clock. It was a quarter to three. She had plenty of time to take a short nap on a chair before going upstairs to dress for dinner. She put down the cake tin she had prepared, and suddenly felt searing pain biting into her knees. The pain was so savage that she slumped to the ground before she even had time to cry out. Kam Ho ran over to her. Drops of moisture squeezed out from between tight frown lines on Mrs.

  Henderson’s face, whether tears or sweat he could not tell. Blood welled up—she had jabbed her fingernails into her temples.

  Kam Ho stood frozen to the spot, then suddenly dropped to his knees, pulled her hands away from her face, and pinched the fleshy Tiger’s Mouth acupressure point between her thumb and index finger. Mrs. Henderson’s eyes widened in surprise as the pains in her knees gradually eased. Kam Ho pressed his lips together until they went white and his wrist trembled as if from cold. His whole circulation seemed concentrated in his pincer-like fingers, turning them into two livid sausages. Mrs. Henderson remained completely still; she was afraid that the slightest sound or movement on her part might call the pain back again.

  After a while Kam Ho finally gave a sigh and released her hand. She stood up shakily, aware that the burn was still in her knees but was no longer so raw and painful. She looked up with an expression of relief to see Kam Ho’s face slowly cracking into a smile—his first since coming to her house.

  “My mum … I …,” he stammered, gesturing into the far distance, then to his hand.

  He was speaking in English.

  She was so overcome by the pain, and then the relief, that at first she did not understand. It was only as she was limping up the stairs that she realized the boy must have been trying to tell her that his mother in faraway China had taught him how to soothe pain.

  Mr. Henderson did not get home at six o’clock that day. In fact, it was a quarter to eight by the time he walked in. The dining room was in darkness, lit only by two red candles on the table. They had burned low and tears of melted wax poured down the silver candle holders. The candles formed hazy rings of light in which Mr. Henderson could make out two long-stemmed wineglasses.

  “Phyllis, why are all the lights off?” he called out, flipping the switches on. In the electric light, the two candles were reduced to dim fireflies. Mr. Henderson saw that the table was laid for two: silver cutlery, gold-rimmed English bone china, monogrammed linen napkins and a lace tablecloth. His wife normally kept them in the display cabinet and rarely took them out for use; his mother-in-law had sent them from Yorkshire as wedding presents. In the corner between the kitchen and the dining room, a dark shape rustled. It was Kam Ho. He had been dozing on a footstool when the lights came on, dreaming some dream about his village and the river.

  Kam Ho rubbed his eyes and stood up to take Mr. Henderson’s coat and hat. A smell hung around the garments. Mr. Henderson was snorting a bit like a water buffalo and his breath was heavy with alcohol. “What’s my wife got all this stuff out for?” he asked. Kam Ho did not know what to say and stood looking at his master mutely. Mr. Henderson took out his handkerchief and wiped a drop of spittle from the corner of Kam Ho’s mouth. “Where’s my wife?” he asked thickly. Kam Ho understood these words and he pointed upstairs.

  They heard a rustling on the stairs, like the sound of locusts jumping from leaf to leaf. Mr. Henderson knew without looking round that this was the sound of his wife’s skirts brushing the floorboards.

  “Why are you so late, Rick?”

  Mr. Henderson glanced at his wife but was overtaken by a loud belch before he had had time to say anything. It was quite clear that this was not just a single solitary belch, but the standard-bearer for a multitude of others just waiting behind. There was no time to waste. He rushed to the toilet and shut the door firmly behind him.

  Mrs. Henderson stood outside the toilet door, listening to the taps running. Eventually the noise subsided. In the interval between one burp and the next, her husband spoke: “I’m sorry. I went for a drink with Mark. His wife has gone to France, and he didn’t want to go home so early.” Mark was Mr. Henderson’s boss.

  Finally Mr. Henderson opened the bathroom door and emerged. He came face to face with his magnificently dressed wife. She looked down at her toes, and her cheeks glowed a faint pink, like a girl waiting to be asked to dance by a boy at a promenade.

  “Uh, very nice. The colour suits you,” Mr. Henderson muttered indistinctly, patting his wife on the shoulder as he walked past her.

  She stiffened momentarily, and the soft satin folds of her gown stiffened with her. She said nothing, but continued to stare down at her toes. The pink glow on her cheeks gradually receded, exposing an expanse of gaunt pallor underneath.

  Kam Ho trembled. There was a soft pattering in his ears—Mrs. Henderson’s tears hitting the floor.

  “Have you invited guests tonight, dear?” Mr. Henderson asked his wife, leaning over the banister and wafting a scent of Lux soap down the stairs.

  My dear mother,

  Your letter arrived a few days ago. I was very happy to hear that Granny is in good health and my little sister can walk now. There has been fighting all over Europe in the last few years
and a lot of men from Gold Mountain have joined up. With no one to work the land, Dad has been able to buy a lot of it cheaply. Mr. Henderson says the war will be over soon and then prices of land and farm products will go up. Dad says that there is a lot we can do with such good land in the future. I have been at the Hendersons’ a year now and still want to go home and help Dad with the farm, but Mrs. Henderson’s health has not got any better. Dad says he owes Mr. Henderson a debt of gratitude for all his help in the past and has told me to stay another year. I have learned to cook and wash and clean around the house and when I am free, Mrs. Henderson teaches me a little English. Please do not worry about me. I am making progress in everything. My brother, Kam Shan, has been here a few times. He lives in Kamloops now, quite a way from Vancouver, and has opened a photographic studio. There are a lot of Redskins living out there and they love having their pictures taken so it is easy to make money. Dad and Kam Shan are still not speaking, but now that all three of us are earning, we will be able to pay back the debts on the diulau sooner. Then we can put money by so you and my sister can come to Gold Mountain and we can all be together.

  Most humbly, your son, Kam Ho

  Year five of the Republic, the eighth day of the ninth month, Vancouver, British Columbia

  According to Mrs. Henderson, this was the coldest of all the ten years she had spent in Canada.

  Kam Ho had never worn a hat but this winter he did. It was an old one of Mr. Henderson’s, checked, with a broad brim. Mr. Henderson had a big head, and on Kam Ho, the hat was constantly slipping right down over his eyes and nose so he had to stop and push it back.

  One crisp morning, Kam Ho looked out the front door and saw long transparent sticks hanging from the eaves. The morning sunshine glinted feebly off the strange spiral shapes hidden inside them that resembled water weeds. Kam Ho had no idea what icicles were, and he knocked one down with the old broom kept in the front hall, and poked one end into his mouth. The coldness made his jaw drop open, but the ice soon melted on his tongue and the water began to trickle down his throat, stabbing his gullet as it went. He licked his numb lips and found grains of dirt stuck there. He spat the dirt out with a “pah!” and then remembered he had an urgent errand to run.