Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  He had been taking this route once a week for a year by now and knew it well. He knew all the trees on all the corners and the cracks in all the paving stones.

  After going out of the Hendersons’ garden gate, it was a short walk to a middling-sized street, just big enough for pedestrians and carriages. Of course, a street this wide in Hoi Ping would only be found in town. He walked fifteen minutes along this street, turned right and came to a school. To go straight ahead, he had to walk around the school along a narrow alley, but that added an extra fifteen minutes to his journey. So Kam Ho used to take a shortcut across the school’s small playing field, and in another five minutes cut through to the street on the other side. It was a short street. Kam Ho had counted carefully and there were only twenty-one houses from end to end. But he did not go right to the end. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth houses there was a narrow passage, just wide enough for a person and a dog, which brought him out at the back of Canton Alley.

  He did not need to walk through to Canton Alley itself—the stuff he was looking for was not on sale there. Instead, he quietly made his way past the piles of rubbish and waste paper and pushed open the back door of a shop which went by the name of the Kwong Cheong General Store. They stocked exactly the same stuff as any other shop of this type in Chinatown— fruit, vegetables, rice and condiments—and it was all laid out in exactly the same way, with the dry goods at the back and the fresh vegetables in the front. But this was the only place in Chinatown where Kam Ho could get what he needed today. And it would not be found displayed on the shelves.

  He made his way in through the back of the shop, acting just like a regular customer, picking up a handful of yellow beans from a sack, holding them to his nose, sniffing and putting them back again. Then he picked a salted duck egg out of a basket and shook it to see if the yolk was runny. But this was just for the benefit of the shop’s customers. Once they had gone, he went straight up to the counter and gave the empty bottle he was carrying to the owner, together with the money he had been carrying in his pocket. The shop owner did not bother to count it. He could tell from the weight of the coins that it was the right amount. The bottle was an old sesame oil bottle; the label was dark and transparent with grease. The owner bent down, felt around behind the counter until he found what he was looking for, then filled the bottle with the stuff and gave it back to Kam Ho. That was all there was to it. No need to talk, or even to look at each other. The owner knew that the young man would be back within the week.

  Kam Ho went out the way he had come in, and started on his way home. The whole trip took him an hour or so. Usually, if the children were on a break when he came to the school, he waited until a neatly dressed woman teacher, her blouse buttoned up to the neck, rang the handbell for the children to go back into class before crossing the school playing field.

  But today he could not wait. Rather, it was Mrs. Henderson who could not wait. Her shoulders had pained her all night. Kam Ho’s room was at one end of the house, and Mrs. Henderson’s at the other, but Kam Ho could hear her moans as she tossed and turned. No sooner had Mrs. Henderson seen her husband off to work that morning than she sent Kam Ho to get the bottle filled.

  Not with sesame oil, but with opium juice.

  His brother, Kam Shan, had told him that opium soothed pain. Kam Shan happened to be visiting on a day when Mrs. Henderson had an attack of arthritis. He told him to buy opium juice in Chinatown so she could try it. The Gold Mountain government had banned opium years ago, Kam Shan said, and shut down the opium dens. Now, only the Kwong Cheong General Store sold it, but even then, only on the quiet—under the counter to known customers. He just had to mention the name Red-Eye Bat. Kam Ho stared at his brother and said nothing. Kam Shan had lived in Kamloops for years and only came to Vancouver occasionally, but he still knew the secrets of every store in Chinatown.

  It was then that Mrs. Henderson started to drink opium juice. It turned out to be so effective that she would hardly let the bottle out of her sight.

  As Kam Ho approached the school, he saw half a dozen children on the playing field chasing each other with sticks. They’re enjoying their game so much they won’t notice me, he thought to himself, I’ll just cut through. He tucked the bottle inside his jacket and, making himself as inconspicuous as possible, snuck across the field.

  Ching Chong Chinaman sitting on a wall,

  He thinks one cent’s worth twenty-four.

  He heard the sharp cries as the children pinched their noses and assumed ladylike tones. Then there was a pattering of laughter behind him and he knew they were coming after him.

  Chink Chink Chinaman sitting on a fence

  Trying to make a dollar out of ten cents

  The shrill cries were swelling into a confused clamour. They were on his heels. He clutched the bottle to his chest and sped on.

  But his body suddenly flagged. Something hit him on the back. Pain flared up until his back and shoulders were on fire. They were throwing stones. The children were the same size as he was, and so they had no fear of him. He may have been seventeen but he had not grown much and still looked like a child.

  A fierce pain jabbed him in his gut, as if a rope was tightening around his intestines. Tighter and tighter it pulled until his guts felt like they were trussed up. He pressed the bottle against his belly, exhaled sharply and the tension suddenly eased off. But his belly took that as an invitation to let go completely and something hot filled the crotch of his trousers. He smelled the stink.

  Faster, faster, his head told his legs, but by now his head was not in charge. He heard a ping on his forehead, like the sound of a watermelon left to rot and burst open in the field, and something hot and sticky trickled down into his eyes, gluing them together. His eyes were no use any more. He had only his legs, driven on by blind instinct. They knew which way to take him without his eyes telling them.

  Gradually the rabble receded into the distance.

  When Mrs. Henderson came to open the door of the house, Kam Ho was standing there with blood pouring down his face. He pulled up his jacket and extracted the bottle. Pushing it into her hands, he said: “My hat … gone,” and slumped to the ground.

  He was woken up by something icy cold on his chest. He was lying in a bed. Beside him stood Mrs. Henderson and a man in a black hat and glasses. The man looked familiar somehow. It was Dr. Walsh, Mrs. Henderson’s doctor.

  Dr. Walsh moved the cold thing around Kam Ho’s chest a few times and said: “His heart rate is fine but his temperature is one hundred and five degrees. Apart from infection in the external injuries, there’s still some gastric infection. How many times has he opened his bowels today?”

  “I’ve lost count. My poor bed,” said Mrs. Henderson.

  “Did he eat anything unusual yesterday?”

  Mrs. Henderson shook her head. “Those Mongols are like horses. They eat anything. But he eats the same as us now, and Rick and I haven’t had any problems.”

  “Apart from medicine to settle his stomach, you need to get the fever down. Do you have any ice in the house?”

  Kam Ho felt as if he were lying on a thick layer of billowing cloud. The voices of Mrs. Henderson and the doctor floated in and out. He did not understand but he knew they were talking about him.

  “Henry, I’ve just had a thought!” he heard Mrs. Henderson exclaim. “This morning, I saw the stupid boy break off an icicle and eat it.”

  Kam Ho did not hear what the doctor said in reply because just at that moment, he sank into a trough in the cloud.

  He just hoped it was not Mrs. Henderson who had taken off his trousers and cleaned him up.

  That was the last clear thought he had before falling into a deep sleep.

  It was evening when he woke up, the evening of the third day, as he discovered later. He guessed the time of day from the light coming through the curtain. The room was gloomy. The light was off, but one candle burned on the windowsill. The candle threw a flickering shadow over blue expanse
; the blue assumed a shape that was sometimes angular, sometimes round.

  As Kam Ho stared at the form, it gradually turned into a woman’s back, topped by two bony shoulder blades draped in a blue nightgown. The nightgown trembled. The woman was crying.

  “… He eats the leftovers. I don’t even know if he gets enough to eat at each meal. Last Christmas, when Rick’s aunt came from Halifax, we didn’t let him go home for the holiday and we didn’t pay him any extra either.… Once he helped Rick into bed and Rick’s shirt tore at the seams, and called him a Mongol ass.… Oh Lord, you know everything that goes on, you know all the injustices there are in this world. Now you’re punishing me, you’ve made him the burden I have to carry. You’ve made me bear the weight of my own sin. I can’t bear it, Lord. I beg you to take this burden from me.… Every life is created by you, even a Mongol’s life.…”

  Kam Ho turned over in bed. “Ma’am,” he said softly. The woman started in surprise. She had been kneeling for too long and her legs had gone numb. She struggled to her feet, tottered over and fell to her knees again at the bedside. She suddenly reached out her arms and embraced him. Two warm mounds under the thin nightgown pressed against his chest, so hard he could hardly breathe.

  “You’re finally awake, child,” the woman murmured.

  The next morning, after Mr. Henderson had left for work, Mrs. Henderson put on a thick fur coat and stood waiting in the hall. “You’re coming with me,” she said, pointing at Kam Ho. He wanted to ask where they were going but did not dare because her face was ugly with rage.

  He followed her out the door. She walked today like a mother hen ready for battle, her claws splayed, and her feathers ruffled. Kam Ho had to trot to keep up. His legs felt like cotton wool. He was unsteady on his feet and wavered from left to right and back again. He had been in bed for some days, and although the sun was getting in his eyes now, he still felt cold. The wind whistled down the road, cutting through his cotton jacket and whipping him painfully. He was not wearing a hat—he could not get one on because his head was topped with a thick layer of bandages. He kept his ears warm by covering them with his hands.

  Mrs. Henderson crossed the playing field and marched up to the school door. She stood before the janitor, her hands on her hips, and said in a loud, clear voice:

  “Go and get the principal this minute!”

  Kam Ho sat on the doorstep plucking a chicken.

  He had bought the chicken already plucked but it was not up to Mrs. Henderson’s standards. She could not stand the black dots which showed through the skin. They made her think of bluebottle maggots and things like that. So Kam Ho had to go over the chicken once more and remove every last feather root.

  The roses in the garden were in a riot of bloom, covering the garden fence in swaths of scarlet. There was a tree in the street—he did not know its name—from which hairy flowers like caterpillars fluttered down in the breeze. Jenny staggered over to where Kam Ho sat, her outstretched hands full of the flowers. “Jimmy, Jimmy!” she cried. “Look … flowers!” Jenny was three and a half years old. She dribbled as she chattered, so she always had to wear a bib around her neck.

  She was Mr. and Mrs. Henderson’s adopted child and had been with them for a year. Although the couple had been married nearly twenty years, they were unable to have children. The germ of the idea to adopt a baby had been in Mr. Henderson’s mind for a long time, but his wife would not agree. She was determined to prove her womb was fertile and was just waiting for the right combination of seed and weather. But as her thirtyninth birthday came and went, she grew less confident, and finally agreed to adopt.

  But it was all far too late. Mr. Henderson was learning to be a father when he was already old enough to be a grandfather. Once, all three of them were out shopping and he bumped into an old friend he had not been in touch with for years. The friend gripped him by the hand and shook it, exclaiming how well he was looking for his age: “I had no idea your daughter and granddaughter were so grown up,” he said. Mr. Henderson did not enlighten him. From then on, he was reluctant to go out in the company of his wife and daughter.

  Kam Ho gave Jenny’s chin a wipe with the bib. “Go and watch the ants moving house,” he said. He was not paying attention to the toddler, or indeed to the chicken. His mind was elsewhere. Kam Ho’s ears were erect and quivering like rabbits, straining to hear a clanging sound from the street outside. It was not Saturday, and he was not waiting for his father. He was waiting for a different cart.

  A vegetable cart.

  The war in Europe was finally over. And now that it was done, the Gold

  Mountain soil had its farmers back. Almost overnight, the streets and alleyways of Gold Mountain towns teemed with vegetable and fruit sellers. They came knocking, sometimes several times a day, laden with baskets of fresh produce carried on shoulder poles or packed into horse-drawn carts.

  The Hendersons’ house was a stone’s throw from the vegetable market which stocked everything they needed. But Kam Ho preferred to buy from the hawker who came to their own front door. It was fresh, cheap and convenient. At least, that was what he said to Mrs. Henderson, to whom he could not explain the real reason.

  He had been with the Hendersons for seven years. The first two years he longed to go home but his father would not have him back. His father owed the Hendersons a debt of gratitude that could never be repaid. By the third year, Kam Ho had lost interest in moving. The job was a meal ticket after all, one which he was used to, and a lot less bother than looking for a new one. Later on, Ah-Fat’s farm failed and he needed his son’s wages to support the whole family, so even if Kam Ho wanted to leave, he could not.

  The men came home from the battlefields, swapped their army uniforms for civvy clothes and looked around to discover that others had grown rich from their absence. Ah-Fat had used this time to secure the title deeds of neighbouring fields. Before everything went wrong, he owned the biggest farm for hundreds of miles around. He had long given up selling door to door. He had a team of nine horse-drawn carts to distribute his vegetables and fruit, meat and eggs to the markets.

  Ah-Fat had paid back the debts on the diulau and had saved up enough to pay the head tax for his wife and daughter. But he was in no hurry to bring them over to Gold Mountain. He decided he would save up for one more season and then sell the farm and go home to live out a peaceful retirement. They would all go, and he would marry both his sons to decent girls—he still refused to acknowledge the woman Kam Shan lived with.

  But that season was the ruin of Ah-Fat. His cleverness did him in.

  His cleverness was like a candle which lit only the road before him. He had no idea that behind him, the skies had darkened. He had no inkling that his wealth had fanned the flames of jealousy among his competitors. He naively believed that hard work and prudent saving would be enough.

  The year before, an American businessman had come to Vancouver to open a different kind of market: the produce was laid out on shelves and the customers could select for themselves, like in a department store. Ah-Fat was fired with enthusiasm and adamant that, by hook or by crook, he would sell his own produce direct to the supermarket. It would save such a lot of time and bother. And by dint of cutting his profit margins to the bare minimum, he finally succeeded in getting his produce on the supermarket shelves.

  But, unbeknownst to him, someone was watching his every move.

  The meat and vegetables bearing the label of Ah-Fat’s farm had only been in the supermarket two weeks when disaster struck.

  Ah-Fat was taken to court over allegations that his chicken meat was contaminated and had given several customers serious food poisoning.

  The supermarket owner saved his own skin by dumping all Ah-Fat’s produce and suing him in court.

  The government blocked all Ah-Fat’s bank accounts and carried out an investigation.

  In the years since he set up his first laundry, Ah-Fat had been taken to court many times. He used to say he was in and out of Gol
d Mountain courts more frequently than his own house and knew the judges better than his own wife. Each time he had had a lucky escape, even turned it to his own advantage once or twice—but not this time. On previous occasions, he was a small man who could take it. But this time, he was a big businessman, and it broke him. No sooner had the trial begun than his creditors sprang up like mushrooms after spring rain. Banks, fertilizer merchants, the water, electricity and coal suppliers. He might get away from one but he could not avoid them all. The little cash he had left was only enough to pay off Loong Am and the other workers. Eventually, Mr. Henderson advised Ah-Fat to declare bankruptcy. Overnight, his flourishing business crumbled to dust, leaving him without a cent. The burden of supporting the family fell on Kam Ho, whose wages now went straight to his father before his own hands had time to warm the notes.

  After this, Ah-Fat aged rapidly. It showed not in his face or his body but in his eyes. He had been a keen-eyed man with a sharp, crystalline gaze. Now his eyes were clouded, as if grains of sand had been dropped into them. Whenever Kam Ho went home to see his father, he would find him sitting alone in a room shrouded in smoke, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was living on his own, and on the days when he could not be bothered to cook for himself, he got by on a mug of tea and a dry biscuit.

  “Go home,” said Kam Ho. “Go back to Hoi Ping and live with Mum. Mum’ll feed you with good food.” Ah-Fat shook his head vigorously. “I can only go when I’ve made money. Otherwise they’ll say I’ve come home as a beggar.” “Who would dare accuse you of being a beggar?” protested Kam Ho. “Look at all the property our family owns. Besides, I’ll send you dollar letters every month and you can smoke all the tobacco you want.”