Gold Mountain Blues (40 page)

Ah-Fat could not be bothered to argue. He pulled Kam Shan away, thinking to himself, ten or twenty years ago, I wouldn't let you get away with talking crap like that. But Ah-Fat was no longer the hotheaded youngster he had once been.

Ah-Fat showed his son all over Chinatown though he was careful to give a wide berth to the gambling den and the dingy room above it. They were the heart of Chinatown, but only grown men went there. One day his son would find his own way, and his experiences there would make him a man. It was not time yet to introduce Kam Shan to what went on in these shadowy nooks and crannies.

Kam Shan felt completely at home in the farmers' market of Vancouver. When the farm work got busy, he said to his father: “Let me and Loong Am go and sell the produce. You and Uncle Ah-Lam can carry on with the farm work.” Loong Am was the hired hand. Ah-Fat was not keen at first, but it soon became clear that Ah-Lam was deteriorating by the day and could not be left in charge. Kam Shan got his way.

For the first few trips, Kam Shan was up before dawn to load the cart and back by dusk to eat dinner with them. He always came back with an empty cart and a careful record of all their sales. Ah-Fat, reassured, left him to his own devices.

Later, however, things started to change. Kam Shan arrived back later and later, first by half an hour, then by one hour, then by two. One night, he didn't get home till midnight. He said it was because there were more people keeping poultry and it was getting harder to sell the eggs. When he could not sell them in the market, he had to go house to house to get rid of the rest and it took longer. Ah-Fat was only half convinced and took Loong Am to one side. The hired hand was an honest soul. He admitted that when Kam Shan had sold the vegetables, he bought Loong Am a theatre ticket and arranged to meet him at the entrance after the performance. What Kam Shan did in the meantime, he had no idea.

Ah-Fat said nothing to this, but resolved to make a careful check of the accounts each day. The losses mounted up gradually—one day ten cents,
the next, fifty cents—until finally receipts were down one or two dollars per trip compared to the earliest accounts. Those one or two dollars per trip added up to quite a considerable sum over time.

One day Kam Shan got back from Vancouver after the evening meal. He was surprised to see no lights in the shack. Usually his father waited outside for him, holding the lantern to light his arrival. Not tonight. He unloaded the empty baskets, then groped his way to the door, carrying the whip. As he opened the door, he bumped into something hard. He rubbed his sore knee, and saw a small, winking red dot before his eyes. His father stood smoking a cigarette.

He turned to run but it was too late. He felt a kick from a hobnailed boot at the back of his knee and he slumped to the ground. It struck him then that he was in the light and his father was in the shadows. His father could see him perfectly clearly, in fact had been waiting in the shadows for him for some time.

He dropped the whip, and before he could retrieve it Ah-Fat snatched it up and thrashed him ferociously. The lashes fell upon his back and shoulders, again and again, though not on his head. He felt a stinging heat, as if he had rubbed pepper in his eyes. The real pain came later.

When Kam Shan was little, his mother had beaten him for all kinds of misdemeanours. She thrashed him with the bamboo canes they dried clothes on until he rolled around on the ground in pain. Although his mother had inflicted many such punishments on him, he never feared her. His mother's wrath had boundaries which were set by his grandmother. The current of his mother's anger might run strong and swift, but it would always be contained within the riverbed of his blind grandmother's authority.

The punishment inflicted by his father was a different matter. He had never experienced it before and he did not know how far his father's anger would take him.

Kam Shan made no sound. He knew that he was kneeling at the threshold of adulthood. If he cried out, he would be denied entry. If he could endure this whipping, he might become a man.

“How dare you steal from the mouths of your mother and grandmother,” Ah-Fat yelled.

“Did you go to the gambling den?

“Did you? Tell me!”

Ah-Fat had not intended to whip his son so viciously. Kam Shan had worked hard since his arrival in Gold Mountain. Even though he had no particular aptitude for farm work, he ploughed, planted, collected eggs, cut up the meat, loaded up the cart and sold the goods at the market, just like the hired hands. The only difference was that he, unlike the others, received no wages, not a single cent.

The money Ah-Fat made, he carefully divided into two parts, sending one to Six Fingers and keeping the other for himself. He could not stint by a single cent on the portion he sent home because he knew that a dozen or more people waited, mouths agape, for the food he dropped into them. Their lives depended on those dollar letters. And he tried as hard as he could to limit the amount he kept for himself. This money had to stretch far, and in many directions.

He had borrowed from several people to build the
diulau
fortress home and the debt had to be paid back. His mother was over sixty and in poor health. When she passed on, then Six Fingers could come and join him in Gold Mountain. So he had starting saving to pay the head tax for Six Fingers.

He had something else in mind too: Kam Shan's marriage. The boy was nearly sixteen. Back in Spur-On Village, all boys of that age would be betrothed. It'd be too late to wait until the matchmaker knocked on your door to save up for wedding presents.

He had not told anyone of these plans, not even his wife or his son. He just kept a tighter and tighter grip on the money he kept back. Every time he paid the hired hands their wages, he would turn away and try not to look at Kam Shan. His son's eyes had a naked yearning in them. Ah-Fat could only pretend not to notice.

Ah-Fat knew that the small change his son filched from the accounts was insignificant compared with the wages he had denied him. Besides, they lived in a remote place, with no neighbours apart from a few
yeung fan
. Kam Shan, like any kid of that age, was filled with lively curiosity, yet he had not a single companion to amuse himself with. It was normal that he should go looking for a bit of fun in Vancouver. When Ah-Fat was Kam
Shan's age, Red Hair had taken him to explore all of Chinatown's darkest corners.

As he whipped his son, he waited and prayed for Kam Sham to say something: a denial, an excuse, a protest, even an accusation. More than anything, he wanted Kam Shan to speak so that the beating could cease, so that he could accept his son's plea or apology and save face. Then he would fetch the sausage-and-chicken rice he had kept warm all evening, and eat a late dinner with his son. He had had nothing to eat while he waited for Kam Shan's return.

But Kam Shan said nothing. He did not make a single sound. The boy gave in to the gathering tide of rage which rose in his father. Kam Shan did not try to put even the smallest barrier in its way, and now that rage threatened to sweep away all before it.

“Is it daylight already? Why haven't the cocks crowed?”

Ah-Lam emerged sleepy-eyed from inside the house carrying a small oil lamp. He was wearing a tattered old jacket which exposed his bare legs in the dim lamplight. His flaccid penis drooped between them, looking like a brown pipe begrimed by years of use.

Ah-Fat threw down the whip and frantically pushed him back into the house. Grabbing the lamp from him, he pulled a pair of trousers from the bed and threw them at him. “What's all this nonsense? It's still evening. You should be ashamed of yourself, parading around like that in front of Kam Shan.” Ah-Lam looked at him in a daze: “If your son's here, why hasn't Ah-Tak got here?”

Ah-Tak was Ah-Lam's son. He was still in a village in Hoi Ping County. Ah-Lam had planned to scratch together the money for the head tax on Ah-Tak after his wife arrived, only he never expected his wife to die before she left the detention centre. Ah-Fat was alarmed at the dazed look in Ah-Lam's eyes and attempted to calm him: “Put these trousers on and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, I'll write to Ah-Tak for you and tell him to buy passage on the next boat.”

Ah-Lam bent over the trousers, trying unsuccessfully to get one leg in. Finally he sighed: “It's too late for that. And if Ah-Tak doesn't come, who'll take my bones back home?” His lucid words saddened Ah-Fat more than his confusion. He helped the old man back to bed. “Don't worry. If Ah-Tak
doesn't come, Kam Shan'll take your bones and mine back home, just you see if he won't.” It occurred to him that Kam Shan was still kneeling outside. He was dismayed by the thought that if Ah-Lam had not blundered out when he did, his wrath might have caused injury that no amount of remorse could heal. Ah-Lam was, perhaps, sent by Buddha to save his son.

Ah-Fat carried the lamp outside to where his son still knelt on the ground. The back of his jacket was shredded by the whip lashes; he could not see if he had drawn blood. Kam Shan stiffened when he heard Ah-Fat's footsteps and did not look round. In the oppressive silence, Ah-Fat felt himself shrinking. The atmosphere was as prickly as a ball of thistles and thorns capable of stabbing you painfully wherever you touched it. He knew that he and his son were within a hair's breadth of straining each other's forbearance to the breaking point.

Ah-Fat turned and went into the kitchen. He got two bowls and two pairs of chopsticks and laid them on the table, then brought out the iron pot filled with the sausage-flavoured rice. He could not make up his mind whether to fill two bowls or one. His hand quivered in indecision. He served only himself and sat down.

He was ravenous and the smell of the sausage made his belly shriek with hunger. But he could not eat. The grains of rice seemed to turn to sand in his throat. He felt his son's eyes boring into his back, needling him just enough to make it impossible for him to settle in his chair.

He slammed the bowl down on the table.

“Do you want me to spoon-feed you?” he snarled.

There was a rustling behind him as Kam Shan got up. It sounded as if the boy tottered for a moment before finding his feet. Then he came over, filled a bowl for himself and sat down silently to eat. Ah-Fat looked up and suddenly saw a thread of congealing blood in his son's nostrils. The blood was inky-dark in colour. Ah-Fat almost retched, and felt the rice grains which had stuck in his throat wriggle upwards like maggots. He made as if to give his handkerchief to his son; his hand was already in his pocket, his thumb and forefinger had hold of the fabric. But his hand suddenly flagged. The handkerchief felt like a lead weight and he could not move it.

Oh, Ah-Yin, he groaned silently, feeling close to tears. He and Kam Shan were like two ancient, flint-hard rocks pressed together under the
weight of a mountain. Six Fingers could have kept them apart, he thought, prying open a tiny crack. That little space would be life-giving; without it, he and his son would be condemned forever to a stalemate.

He suddenly missed Six Fingers terribly.

From that day on, Ah-Fat sent Loong Am with Kam Shan when he went to market and impressed on him that he was to stick with Kam Shan every step of the way. Kam Shan got up early and came home early, and the money he brought back more or less added up. Ah-Fat secretly felt that he could do with a few thrashings, it made him a man. He gradually relaxed.

He was soon to discover how wrong he was.

The patch of land he had bought two years before, through the crops it grew and the beasts it pastured, had brought him several surprisingly fat bank drafts. And when, in spring, his Italian neighbours decided to sell their property and to live with their son in the Prairie region, he was able to buy them out at the kind of knock-down price he had only dreamed of. His new purchase gave him a property several times bigger than before. He could stand at the field edge and not see the far boundary. Today he stood looking across the land; it had just rained and the leaves of the crops drooped low, covering the ground in an unbroken carpet of green. This was not last year's green, it was the fresh green of the new year. Ah-Fat sighed comfortably. What a vast place Gold Mountain was. A piece of land this big could have fed many people back in Hoi Ping. Even the biggest landlord there did not have this much.

And there was the house too, of course. The Italians had done a good job building it. The upper floor was of wood, but the ground floor was solidly constructed of red brick. It would have been hard to find even one sturdy, well-built house like this in the whole of Chinatown. It would not stay empty for long. He would write to Six Fingers, reminding her to get the matchmaker to find a bride for Kam Shan. In the not-too-distant future, this would be Kam Shan's new home.

But just for once, Ah-Fat did not send the money left over from buying the house and land back to Six Fingers. He put it aside for Ah-Lam, who was now a broken old man. Only the husk of the man remained; he was rotting away on the inside like a worm-infested apple. Who knew how much longer he might last? He did not want Ah-Lam to die in Gold
Mountain so he planned to take him home after the coming harvest, and to get Kam Shan betrothed at the same time. He would use the leftover money for Ah-Lam's passage and pocket money. Without it, Ah-Lam would lose the respect of his son and grandchildren forever. Ah-Lam had not had an easy life, and if he could, he would ensure that Ah-Lam died in peace and dignity.

Then, just as Ah-Fat had carefully constructed his plans, a whirlwind reduced them to a heap of sand. There was absolutely nothing Ah-Fat could do to gather them up—no matter how big his hands.

It happened a week later.

Ah-Fat went to the farmers' market in Vancouver that day, taking a pig and a sheep and some eggs. Selling his goods was not his sole intention. He planned to take Kam Shan on a trip to Vancouver. When he was not at the market, or eating or sleeping, his son sat by the stove in their shack, scooping handfuls of pumpkin seeds into his mouth. He already had little nicks in his front teeth from cracking them. He said little to his father, and sometimes went for days at a time without uttering a single complete sentence. Ah-Fat was beginning to worry that he might be growing ill. Today's trip was intended to give Kam Shan a day out.