Gold Mountain Blues (57 page)

The Parliament of Canada today passed a bill denying entry to people of the Chinese race or of part-Chinese descent, with the exception of consular staff, properly accredited merchants (not including owners of restaurants or laundry businesses), or university students. The family dependants of those already resident in Canada are prohibited from joining them. Current residents are required to register with the government within one year of the passing of this bill; the penalty for non-registration is deportation from Canada. Any Chinese wishing to make visits to China must return to Canada within two years. After that period, they will be denied entry. The sole permitted port of entry is Vancouver. Any boat entering Canadian waters is only allowed to carry one Chinese per two hundred and fifty tons deadweight.

When construction began in the west of Canada, the land was completely desolate. But, fearing no hardships, Chinese immigrants threw themselves valiantly into the back-breaking and dangerous work of building roads and railroads. But the government has behaved most treacherously towards the Chinese now that work has been completed, and placed numerous obstacles in our way to employment. A head tax, the first in the world, was imposed, and now this is followed by a new immigration law which, in preventing family reunions in Canada, is an insult to our country and our people. As a result, hundreds of thousands of families will be separated forever by an ocean. Our Republican government has reacted by making immediate diplomatic representations, but given its weakness internationally, these are unlikely to be effective. In the meantime, we have no option but to put up with this humiliating and bullying piece of legislation!

Kam Ho threw down the newspaper. He too, seemed to become smaller. He and his father squatted silently on the floor holding their heads despairingly in their hands, oblivious to the heart-rending wails of the baby lying on the bed. What a terribly cruel twist of fate. They had often seen such situations acted out on opera stages but they never expected to become part
of the tale themselves. Kam Ho had built up his hopes, along with his savings, over eight long years and then, just as he was about to reunite his mother and father after decades of sacrifice and separation, disaster found him after all.

From deep in his lower gut, Kam Ho felt an impulse climb up to his chest and then to his throat, presaging, perhaps, a long sigh. It changed before it passed his lips—it became a little chuckle that surged and fell and surged again until Kam Ho found himself shaking with mad gusts of laughter.

He must have been driven over the edge, thought Ah-Fat in alarm, and thumped his son on the back. Kam Ho coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and finally stopped shaking. He stood up, wiped his nose and asked: “Where's the Benevolent Association in all this? They're always here when it comes time to pay our dues, but you can't see them for dust when we get clobbered.”

“They're meeting to decide on a policy. Your brother goes every day,” said Ah-Fat. “All the branch Associations are sending representatives to Parliament to protest. It's not just ours. Victoria, Montreal and all the rest are, too. But it's no use. Ordinary people can never defeat the government, not their own government, and certainly not a foreign one.”

Kam Ho saw for the first time that the livid worm of a scar that crawled halfway up his father's face had shrunk to a hair, like a crack in a porcelain bowl. Even its colour had faded. His dad was really getting old. He would never have resigned himself to this in the old days. To the young Ah-Fat, all government officials, at home or abroad, were bastards and he would not hesitate to take a machete to them.

“If Mum can't come, Dad,” said Kam Ho, “you should go back and live with her there. In two years, you can return if you want.”

His father said nothing.

After a few moments, he reached out and took hold of the bag of money on the table and gripped it as tightly as if his life depended on it.

“Let me have this money, son,” he said.

He spoke in his usual peremptory tones, but Kam Ho saw a hint of an entreaty in his father's eyes. His father had never begged for anything in his
life. A wave of bitterness flooded over Kam Ho, that his father had been so reduced.

“Dad, you do whatever you want with the money.”

His father's dull gaze suddenly came to life. “I'm going to divide it in two—the bigger portion I'll give Kam Shan so he can take you and Yin Ling back to see your mother and get his leg treated by a decent doctor at the same time. And while he's there, he can get your mother to find you a bride. The rest of the money is to keep me. You and Kam Shan stay in China for two years and I'll stay here and work for two years. I can't believe my luck's completely run out yet.”

Ah-Fat's eyes reddened like a gambler's at the fan-tan table as he spoke. “Dad, you shouldn't need to work at your age. Kam Shan and I'll look after you.”

Ah-Fat stiffened. “Just give me two years.… When you and Kam Shan get back, I'll give every cent back to you. I can't go home looking like disgraceful old tramp.”

The baby, Yin Ling, had cried herself to exhaustion and only choked whimpers came from the bed. Kam Ho went to pick her up and saw blister the size of a pebble on her forehead.

He sighed. “I can't go. Kam Shan will have to take his family without me. I promised to stay with Mrs. Henderson—it's vital for me to stay.”

Year seventeen of the Republic (1928)

Vancouver, British Columbia

Opium juice was getting harder and harder to find. The police raided the Kwong Cheong General Store so often that the terror-stricken owner squirrelled his stocks away in the darkest corner he could find. Kam Ho could always be relied upon to sniff out a supply, but the price had gone sky-high. By the time Mr. Henderson discovered that astronomical sums of housekeeping were being spent on “Chinese herbals,” his wife was in the throes of opium addiction. Mr. Henderson did not say anything. He just tightened
his grip on his purse. Mrs. Henderson's efforts to extract money from him were fruitless.

She was forced to find other ways to subdue her pain.

This morning, she had just seen Jenny off to school when excruciating pains began to attack her knees. It felt as if they hid a nest of hungry, restless rats that gnawed at her every movement. She was defenceless against pain this acute. Kam Ho's acupressure techniques had no effect any more.

She had hardly had time to cry out before the rats were on her again, taking her breath away. She lay upon the sofa, staring at her husband as he turned away, put his brown-and-white King Charles spaniel on the leash, and went out for a walk. Although he was a senior adviser at the chamber of commerce, he went to the office only a couple of times a week—for meetings or to put his signature on a few documents. He found himself with a great deal of leisure time on his hands these days; one way of divesting himself of it was to take the dog for a walk. He took it out after every meal. His invariable habit gave him the greatest pleasure, and was postponed or interrupted only if some major event intervened. His wife's arthritis did not count as a major event.

This was the Hendersons' third dog. The first two were golden retrievers. The first died of old age, and the second was lost off leash while they were out walking. The dog had chased after a pretty feral bitch and never returned. Mr. Henderson had been inconsolable.

He had grown vague about people in the years since he retired, but he remembered everything about his dogs. They were his reference points. If he could not remember the year in which something happened, he would describe it as “the spring when Spotty arrived,” or “the time when Leggy chewed up my Italian shoes,” or “the time when Ruben got mange.”

When Mr. Henderson left the house with Ruben, Kam Ho was in the kitchen washing up. Breakfast was simple and Kam Ho had only a few coffee cups and side plates to wash, but he was in no hurry to finish. In his pocket there was a letter from his mother, sent to him via his father. There was a photo in the envelope, a very small one, showing the round face of a young girl. She looked no different from the average village girl—high cheekbones, thick lips and an expression so wooden that it was hard to tell whether she was happy or sad.

Her name was Au Hsien Wan and she lived in Wai Yeong Village; she was distantly related to the Au family in their village. So his mother's letter had said.

His mother wrote that the girl was eighteen years old, that she had had a few years of primary school, that she could read and write and do math. Their horoscopes had been done and matched perfectly.

It was not the first time Kam Ho had looked at such a photograph. When Kam Shan came back from his visit home three years ago, his mother had sent him with half a dozen pictures for Kam Ho. The matchmaker had given her many more to choose from but she had rejected any who had not been to school; she liked women to be literate. Six Fingers had not got on with Cat Eyes for the whole two years that she spent in Hoi Ping with Kam Shan and Yin Ling because Cat Eyes could not even write her own name. Kam Ho kept the photographs his mother sent him over the years and looked at them every now and then. He would spread them out on the bed as if he had suddenly become the Yellow Emperor of old in the Forbidden City, selecting his empress and concubines from a bevy of beauties.

Kam Ho's head may have been in the clouds, but his feet were firmly on the ground. He knew he could not marry any of the girls in the photographs because anyone he chose to marry would be condemned to live life apart from him while he toiled in Gold Mountain. He did not want marriage like that of his mother and father. He would rather be a lonely bachelor than pine for a wife he could never see.

Some Gold Mountain men felt the same as Kam Ho but were not as stoical, and shacked up with Redskin women. These unions produced children, but no marriage documents were exchanged and they did not ask for the ancestors' blessings. When well-meaning friends suggested that Ah-Fat should get his son a Redskin woman, he grimaced. “He might as well marry a sow.” When he heard this, Kam Shan laughed. “Lots of Redskin women are good-looking and hard-working, and lots of Chinese women are ugly and lazy. Don't tar them all with the same brush!” “And what about when they have children, whose ancestors do they pay their respects to?” retorted Ah-Fat. “Any grandson of mine may not be royalty but he'll be every bit a Chinese and not a barbarian.” Since Kam Shan's
woman had been unable to give the Fongs a grandson, he had nothing to say to this.

Kam Ho had plans of his own. He was secretly saving money to take his father back to China for good. With the money he had borrowed from his son a few years back, Ah-Fat had opened a small café. Since he knew nothing about preparing restaurant food, he was dependent on a cook. The cook had slovenly habits but there was nothing Ah-Fat could do about it. The café brought in so little money that after he had paid the man's wages there was almost nothing left. The business limped along for a few years and even though his sons urged him to give it up, he insisted on keeping it going. He had borrowed money from his son and was duty bound to pay it all back. But Kam Ho knew that his father was secretly hoping that he could make enough money to put on a show of respectability when he went back home to his wife. With increasing age, Ah-Fat did not swagger as he once had, but he still had some pride. He would not let Six Fingers down.

The truth was, however, that Kam Ho was not as desperate for a woman as Chinatown's other bachelors. Kam Ho had a secret that he guarded so closely that no one could have dragged it out of him.

Working for the Hendersons had changed him. Under Mrs. Henderson's watchful eye, Kam Ho had grown from a sapling to a great tree that thrived in the dew and the sunlight. He'd matured from a skinny whippet of a kid into a strapping young man. Without her, those well-developed biceps would have hung on him like useless flesh. But Mrs. Henderson offered him forbidden fruit, fed herself to him until every fibre of his being hungered for her. Kam Ho was choosy and was loath to accept a less tasty dish.

Till now, Kam Ho had been content to disregard the letters and photographs his mother sent him, but today was different. Something his mother said needled him, not painfully, but perceptibly. It disturbed his peace of mind.

“If you don't come home and get married, your father will never live to see a Fong grandson.”

It was a reminder to Kam Ho that his father would be sixty-five this year. That was the
yeung fan
way of reckoning it; they lopped off the beginning and the end of life. Back in Spur-On Village, people included both ends in their tabulation; by their reckoning, Ah-Fat was sixty-seven, only three years
off an age almost unheard of in the countryside. Kam Ho shivered involuntarily. He dried his hands on his apron and took the photograph from the envelope, put it in his pocket and went to the living room.