Gold Mountain Blues (17 page)

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.

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.

It was the
China-West Daily
; he had bought it when he disembarked in Canton but this was the first opportunity he had had to read it. When he had left home for Canada, he did not even know what a newspaper was. He had only discovered them when the overseas Chinese from Malaya brought newspapers from back home to Victoria's Chinatown. He opened it wide. The first page had a large half-page advertisement for a Dutch toilet spray made by Tai Luk Wo Pharmaceuticals: “
Long lasting, aromatic and invigorating!
”

The next page had a Watsons Drugstore advertisement for Scott's Emulsion Cod Liver Oil:
“Tastes like milk, very palatable, more than three times as effective as pure cod liver oil. The best cure for consumptive diseases. Works every time.”
On other pages there were advertisements for sugar, wine, kerosene, handkerchiefs and sweatshirts. On and on—there were more than a dozen of them. Ah-Fat was astonished. Nothing was the same as before he left. How was it possible for Western goods to be causing such a stir all the way up the Pearl River? He wondered about the towns and villages of Hoi Ping. Were they still as cut off as before, a different world from Canton?

Among the advertisements, there was a column about the world of sing-song girls. The first item was a news report about a fire on the Guk Fau sing-song girls brothel boat, in which twelve prostitutes and six of their clients were burned alive. The second was about a
pipa
player called Bin Yuk, who excelled at Cantonese opera. The article read: “
When Bin Yuk, ‘the oriole,' begins to sing, she is exquisitely melodious, equal to our finest actresses. Few of her listeners are left unmoved.
” The article then described at some length how she collected her fee from members of the audience:
“She adopts a very severe mien when it comes to money. If someone gives her coins, she throws them to the ground
—
the sound they make tells her what their metal content is. If they give her copper coins or unusable tender, she gives it right back to them and demands silver. She will not take no for an answer. No matter how
many times in an evening they ask her to sing, it is the same every time.”
The article made Ah-Fat smile in spite of himself.

Looking through the paper, he discovered it was all local gossip of this sort. There was very little about national politics. There was one small news item at the bottom of one page saying that Japanese “pirates” were defying the Imperial government in northeast coastal waters. General Li Hongzhang had reviewed the Beiyang fleet, and ordered that they should maintain calm and bide their time. Ah-Fat felt that nowadays the Peking of the Empress Dowager amounted to no more than a bit of windblown fluff. Even lowly Japanese pirates dared to lay their hands on it. And when news of these tumultuous events in the capital city of China finally arrived in South China, they merited no more than a brief exclamatory note following the advertising and tidbits on sing-song girls. He put down the paper, lost in thought, then quoted bitterly to himself two lines from the ancient poet Du Mu: “Singing girls care nothing if national calamity looms/As, on the far bank, they sing the lament
Courtyard Blooms.
”

He suddenly thought of his childhood tutor Mr. Auyung, who would get into passionate arguments about national affairs, thumping the table until his writing brush jumped. He was never afraid to speak his mind. After Ah-Fat went to Gold Mountain, he kept up a correspondence with Mr. Auyung, and learned about his old teacher's wanderings around China and beyond—from Canton to Shanghai, and south to Annam. Quite recently he had come home and reopened his tutor school in the town. In one of Ah-Fat's twenty trunks there was a gift for Mr. Auyung—a map of the world. Mr. Auyung took a lively interest in Western sciences. Once he had recovered from the journey, he would go and pay his respects to Mr. Auyung.

He got up from the chair and went into the reception room.

The room was darker than the courtyard outside and it took a few moments for Ah-Fat's eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

There was a young woman in the room. She was dressed in a long blue cotton gown with piping round the edges, and stood on a stool hanging a picture. Her hair was braided into a long, thick plait fastened with a red felt flower. She was holding a scroll painting depicting bright green bamboos tipped with fresh shoots, and guava trees. The reds, greens and blues were vivid and festive without being vulgar. The calligraphy on the painting read
“What joy that the guava is about to set seed and the bamboo to give birth to grandchildren!”

After she had finished hanging the painting, she stepped down from the stool and took a few steps back to see if she had hung it straight. In her haste, she trod on the hem of Ah-Fat's gown, almost falling over. She turned and then leapt back as if she had seen a ghost. Her eyes grew round as saucers and she clasped her hands over her heart.

It was the scar which had startled her, Ah-Fat knew. Over the years, far from fading, it had grown more prominent and more twisted. Now it looked rather like a centipede. Ah-Fat put his hands over his face and laughed. “Don't be afraid,” he said. “I'm not a ghost. Look at my shadow. Ghosts don't have shadows, do they? I'm Fong Ah-Fat.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. She relaxed her hands and rubbed them against the front of her gown. “So you're young Master Fong! How did you get here so quickly? The steamship company said you wouldn't be arriving until next market day. So your mum and your uncle and the family have all gone to the Tam Kung Temple in town to light incense and pray you have a safe trip.” Ah-Fat guessed the woman must be a servant. “Why didn't you go along with the mistress?” he asked. “The mistress wanted me to stay and get all the calligraphy and painting scrolls properly hung so they'd be ready when you arrived, but you got here before I'd finished.”

“Who wrote the couplets?” asked Ah-Fat. “He got it wrong. I'm obviously not a newcomer, I've just been away a long time.” She gave a slight smile. “The newcomer is not you, it refers to your … your … intended.” And two vivid spots, as bright as the red in the painting, rose up her cheeks. It suddenly dawned on Ah-Fat that the room had been hung with the scrolls for his wedding. He looked at her again. She was not bad-looking and seemed bright too. Perhaps she was the daughter of a good family who had been forced into service when her family fell on hard times. He was reminded of his little sister, Ah-Tou, sold all those years ago, and he made a special effort to speak kindly to her.

“Would you show me to a room where I can rest and wait for the mistress to come home?”

The girl did as he asked.

The room she led him to was actually Ah-Fat and Ah-Sin's old room. The bed was the very same bed they used to share. The bedding looked as if it had been freshly sewn. The cotton wadding inside the quilt was thick and soft and the quilt cover was stiffly starched. Ah-Fat pulled back the quilt and saw that the old pillow was still there. It had been filled with dried chrysanthemum flowers because his mother maintained that they regulated the body's temperature and could cure Ah-Sin's epilepsy. Ah-Fat felt the pillow—there was a slight indentation in it. Could this still be the mark made by Ah-Sin's head? He lay with his head in this hollow and his nostrils were invaded by the smell of chrysanthemums freshly dried in the sunshine. He fell into the sleep of his childhood.

Suddenly the heavens darkened and it clouded over. It began to rain very hard, and there was no shelter. He was getting soaking wet. He remembered his mother had given him brand new bedding and shouted for a servant to come and close the window. He shouted so hard he finally woke himself up. He knew it had just been a dream, but when he touched his face, it was wet. He opened his eyes to see a little old woman sitting at his bedside. She wore her hair in a sleek bun, with a white felt flower tucked into one side. She had a handkerchief tucked in the front of her grey cotton gown, and was just pulling it out to wipe her eyes.

“Mum!” Ah-Fat gave a cry and, leaping out of bed, he straightened his gown, threw himself to his knees in front of her and kowtowed.

“I haven't been a dutiful son. I've been away in Gold Mountain all these years and you've suffered so much hardship.”

The woman said nothing, but bent to take Ah-Fat's hand. Her own hand inscribed circles for some moments in the air before finally gripping his. Ah-Fat realized that his mother was now completely blind.

He felt a surge of emotion. There was a lump in his throat which he could neither swallow nor spit out. It stuck there until it forced tears from his eyes. He kowtowed twice more, knocking his head hard on the grey flagstones. His mother could not see, but at least she could hear what he was doing, which was what he most wanted.

He was going to kowtow again but was firmly prevented from doing so. The room was full of people kneeling—younger cousins, nephews and
nieces on his uncle's side. Someone passed him a small towel. Ah-Fat wiped his face, and saw red stains on the towel. He had made his head bleed knocking it on the floor.

The only person not present from the household was the girl who had been hanging the pictures in the reception room.

The market-goers did not return to the village until nightfall, and they had not eaten all day. They hurried home the dozen or so
li
to the village with rumbling bellies, and the women were in such a hurry to light the cooking fires and cook the soup and rice that they did not even take a moment to go and piss. They had just got the fires lit when they heard the dogs bark.