Gold Mountain Blues (47 page)

Kam Shan said nothing. Mr. Fung was a raging torrent, and he, Kam Shan, was a mere grain of sand dragged along in its wake. In the process, Mr. Fung had let down the brethren of the Hung Mun, and he had let down his mum and dad.

He would not let his parents down ever again by going near that raging torrent. From now on, the revolution was not his business.

From now on, his parents would be his only concern.

These last two years, Dad, I haven't earned a cent to send to Mum and Granny. As he walked, Kam Shan rehearsed what he would say when he saw his father. You've had to save every cent to pay back the debt from building the
diulau
. But starting today, you just watch me. Starting today, it won't be you and Uncle Ah-Lam who do the muck-spreading, it'll be me and Loong Am who do all the heavy, dirty, stinking jobs. Except for killing pigs, that is. I can't kill pigs. You can be my helper from now on, and I'll be the roof beam that holds up the family home. I'm going to make good use of my camera from now on. The Redskins give me a couple of days' food for every photograph, and I've heard you can charge two dollars for picture in the city.

Oh, Dad, I promise you I'm going to earn enough money to keep Mum and Granny and my brother, and us over here as well. Do you believe me, Dad?

Kam Shan got to the outskirts of New Westminster at dusk. As he went up the cracked stone steps to the front door, he felt an ocean of pent-up tears threaten to overwhelm him. He was not in Redskin territory any more and did not try to hold them back. Yet, somehow, the anguished sobs remained locked inside him, and only a few tears blurred his vision.

The red lanterns from the year of his arrival were still there, although they had grown increasingly yellowed and tatty at the edges. But the New Year couplets were different. The old ones had been worded and written by his father:

May those back home enjoy a favourable end to the old year;

May we in Gold Mountain reap bumper crops in the new year.

And across the top,
Peace to the whole family
.

The lines he saw today looked as if they had been bought ready-made from Chinatown. The paper was gold-flecked and the writing was neat, but the message was trite:

Building the family with hard work; Blessing the children with longevity.

And, across the top,
May the new year be auspicious.

Why had his father not written the couplets? He had never bought New Year couplets written by anyone else before—he thought no one else wrote in a decent hand. Had something happened to him?

Kam Shan went weak at the knees at the thought. He managed to prop himself against the door jamb and knock.

Please God, let it be Dad who opens the door. Please let him be all right. If he's all right, I won't just walk in, I'll kneel down in the doorway and knock my head on the ground a hundred times to show how remorseful I am.

He had to wait a long time before someone finally came to the door.

It was the hired hand, Loong Am.

When Loong Am saw Kam Shan, he leapt back and slammed the door shut. Kam Shan was nonplussed. Then he realized that Loong Am must think he was a ghost. He thundered on the door, shouting: “I'm Kam Shan! I'm alive! Come and touch my hand. It's warm. Dead people are cold!”

There was no sound from the other side of the door.

Kam Shan tried again. “Loong Am, if I was a ghost, why would I need you to open the door for me? Come and look through the window. Can't you see my shadow? Ghosts don't have shadows.”

After a long pause the door finally opened, and Loong Am cautiously emerged, his hair almost standing on end with fright. He looked Kam Shan very carefully up and down before asking: “Where have you been, Kam Shan? Your dad was frantic. He searched high and low; he practically went to the gates of hell for you. And why have you still got a pigtail? The Republic was set up a while ago.”

Kam Shan did not answer. “Where's my dad?” he asked.

Loong Am sighed. “Your granny was very ill. Your dad went back to Hoi Ping. He's not been gone a month.”

Kam Shan's bag dropped to the floor with a thud. He stared blankly in front of him. Loong Am, alarmed at the look on his face, hastily asked: “Have you eaten? There's some porridge in the pot. Shall I heat some for you?” Kam Shan stood rooted to the spot, still wordless. Finally, he pulled himself together and said: “Ink stone.” Loong Am did not understand until Kam Shan gestured wearily: “Get me dad's ink stone.” Loong Am hurriedly
fetched the ink stone, paper and brushes from the other room. “Good thing you've come back,” he said. “I haven't had anyone to write for me since your dad left. When you've finished writing to your dad, you can write a letter home for me.”

“Where's Ah-Lam?” Kam Shan asked as he ground the ink and prepared to write.

“Dead. The month after you left. He got very confused. He used to wander off into the fields without any trousers on. The
yeung fan
were so scared they called the police. In the end, he started to piss and shit any time, any place he felt like it.”

The brush poised in mid-air as Kam Shan fumbled for words which failed him.

Kam Shan pulled the curtain to one side.

The curtain was black. It was padded with cotton wadding, and was very thick, though lumpy and uneven. It was covered in marks and shiny grease stains. It had been used to wipe hands after shitting, mouths after eating, and noses after blowing. Every mark told a story and the curtain wore them all like a badge of shame.

Today he was seeing Chinatown in all its nakedness. Kam Shan's heart thudded in his chest.

He had been to Vancouver's Chinatown often since his dad fetched him from the detention centre three years before. He had got to know Mr. Fung in the newspaper office, he had been to the cake shops and the general stores, he had been to see plays at the theatre, and had eaten and drunk in all its cafés. He knew which shops had the most generous scales, which of the cafés' cooks were the most generous with the oil, and even where the snacks were likely to be stale. But although he knew all Chinatown's tricks of the trade, until the moment when he pulled aside the curtain, his knowledge of Chinatown was only skin deep.

The room upstairs from the gambling den was not marked by any hanging lanterns or signs. The men of Chinatown had no need of signs or lanterns. They could grope their way unerringly up its twisty, narrow staircase until they reached the curtain. On paydays and holidays the queue of men waiting in front of the curtain might be so long it trailed right back
down to the front entrance. Impatient youngsters banged on the door frame until men emerged with their trousers still unfastened.

“What's it like?” the waiting men would ask.

“Go and see for yourself” was the invariable answer.

With such a long queue, it was not unusual to bump into someone you Knew. Sometimes brothers met up, or fathers and sons. Whoever it was, you avoided their eye and kept out of the way. If you could not, you greeted them with a “You here too?”

But today was not New Year or any other holiday. It was not even payday. The weather was miserable too; the clouds were so low that if you lifted your head, you could almost touch them. Apart from the pawnbrokers who always did a brisk trade, the whole of Chinatown was almost deserted.

But Kam Shan was there.

When he got to the gambling den, he bought some Pirate brand cigarettes from a hawker. His hand shook as he tore open the packet, and it fell apart so the cigarettes dropped to the ground. He squatted down to pick them up, feeling his face grow hot. To hide his embarrassment from the hawker, he spent an inordinate amount of time retrieving the cigarettes before he stood up again and gruffly asked for a light. He pursed his lips, put a cigarette into his mouth and took a fierce drag on it. He felt as if a knife had plunged itself into his throat and he went into a fit of coughing.

Red-faced, he wiped his runny nose with the sleeve of his jacket, sidled into the doorway and began to stomp up the stairs. The hawker smirked as he watched his retreating figure. He had seen too many men going up those stairs not to know that this was a first-timer.

When Kam Shan pulled open the curtain he discovered the room was divided into two cubicles, each with its own door. He was just wondering which one to go in when the left-hand door crashed open and a swarthy figure tumbled out, clad only in underpants. The man's jacket and trousers flew out after him and landed at the bottom of the stairs. The man stumbled to his feet and tried to put on his trousers, frantically searching with his foot for the leg hole. Onlookers swarmed around him, sticking as stubbornly as soot on sticky-rice cakes.

A heavily made-up woman came out of the room. Knotting her robe around her, she bawled down the stairs to the man:

“Don't think I don't recognize you because you've cut your pigtail off. You bring me the money this time tomorrow, not a cent short, or I'll plaster your name all over the door of the gambling den for everyone to see!”

The man finally got his trousers on and, slinging his jacket over his shoulders, plunged out into the street. The crowd burst out laughing but the woman did not join them. She hawked and spat, and went back into the room, banging the door behind her. Kam Shan knew this was not the door he was supposed to go in. The madam had promised him a young girl who had not been here very long.

Kam Shan pushed open the door on the right. The cubicle's tiny, wok-sized window had a piece of cloth carelessly tacked over it, and it was as gloomy inside as the landing was on the outside. A lamp in the corner provided a small circle of hazy light. It took Kam Shan a few moments to make out the only furniture: a bed and a stool. Clearly, the bed was for after you took your clothes off, the stool was for when you put them back on again.

A quilt lay coiled across the bed. From where he stood, it looked dull green, woven with a flower design. These were the only signs of colour in the room. At the end of the bed was a bundle of dull grey clothing. The bundle moved—and he realized it was the woman he had just paid to enjoy.

Kam Shan threw down the cigarette and ground it into the floor. He sat down on the edge of the rickety bed, which squealed loudly under his weight, and pulled aside the quilt. It still held a trace of warmth in it and, right in front of his eyes, there was a large stain like the juice from smashed watermelon. It looked so foul that he nearly retched. The quilt was too revolting so he shoved it onto the floor.

“What are you called?” he asked, tight-faced. But his voice betrayed him and even he could hear how green he sounded.

The greyish bundle pulled itself upright but remained silent.

He stood up and lit a match, holding it close. The light gave him courage and he spoke again, more roughly this time.

“Turn round. I asked you a question.”

The body turned towards the light and Kam Shan was surprised to see a pair of eyes so huge they almost ran off the edge of her face. The irises were like glass beads under water, their colour changing gradually in the flickering light from dark brown to dark blue. As Kam Shan raised the match, he saw in her eyes hints of greyish-green.

“Cat Eyes?” exclaimed Kam Shan in astonishment.

The girl's irises flickered and fogged over, and the green went dark again.

“Just one, OK?”

She had stretched out her hand to beg a cigarette from him. Her fingers were wizened like sun-dried vines and there was a fuzz of fine hair on her wrists. She was so bony that her gown seemed to have nothing inside it, as if it simply hung on a bamboo frame.

She's still a child, thought Kam Shan.

He got out his packet of cigarettes, pulled one out, lit it and gave it to her. Then he did the same for himself. He turned to look at the girl, who was dragging greedily on the cigarette as if she was half-starved. She took three pulls before puffing out any smoke, holding her breath so long her neck stretched like an egret, and ropes of livid veins stood out in her neck.

“Take it easy. No one's going to grab it off you,” said Kam Shan.

“I've got bad teeth. If I smoke it makes the pain better.” The girl snickered and the sound, like the rustling of a snake in the grass, gave Kam Shan goose pimples.

“You know me, mister?” the girl asked.

She had finished her cigarette in a few puffs and obviously wanted another. Too timid to ask, she just smiled slyly at him.

“I heard them calling you Cat Eyes that day when—” The words stuck in Kam Shan's throat and he could not finish the sentence.

The first time he had seen her was a couple of months ago. Kam Shan and Loong Am had finished selling all of their eggs in the farmers' market, and went to Chinatown for tea. They sat down, but almost immediately Loong Am went back downstairs for a piss in the backyard toilet. When he did not come back, Kam Shan went down to look for him. There was a crowd of a dozen or more men hanging around, and a burly fellow in black guarded the entrance to the yard. Kam Shan knew the man—he was a
brother of the boy whom his father had hired to do tailoring when he had the laundry—and was admitted when he said he had come to look for Loong Am.

The yard was crowded. In the middle, someone had erected a platform made of two stones and a plank of wood. A girl stood upon the plank. She was a scrawny kid and so undersized that even on her platform she was shorter than the men standing around her. She was dressed in a blue tunic and trousers, edged with a black border. The fabric was rough cotton but clean. The girl stood with her hands tucked into her sleeves, her head hanging so low that her eyes were invisible and all that could be seen was the top of her head. There was a ribbon tied to the top of her braids, which must have been bright red once, but had now gone dark and scruffy looking.

A scrawny man stood next to the girl. He was poking her with his finger and saying: “My elder brother's child. She's had a tough time—her dad died as soon as they got here. I can't afford to keep her. Just give me a bit of cash and you can take her away with you.