Gold Mountain Blues (6 page)

“It's Red Hair, Ah-Sing's relative. He's come back to get married,” said the farmhand.

Red Hair was a widower, and this would be his second marriage.

The first was ten years ago. When his wife was three months' pregnant, he left for Gold Mountain, but she died in childbirth, and the baby too.

His new bride came from the Kwan family. She was only fourteen, and a good-looking young woman. Red Hair had been away in Gold Mountain for a long time and his views about women were different from those of the other villagers. He did not like women with bound feet, and he wanted someone tall and buxom. He hoped she could read and write a bit too. He put all his requirements down in a letter to his mother and she listed them to the matchmaker, who did not look encouraging. There were certainly girls without bound feet, but southern girls were generally short. Tall, well-built girls were hard to find, especially ones who could read and write. Luckily the matchmaker had found the Kwans.

Mr. Kwan was a scholar who had failed the county-level Imperial examinations, and made his living as tutor to a wealthy family. The Kwans were poor but his children were literate in the classics. Not only did the pair's horoscopes match, but the girl fulfilled Red Hair's requirements in every other way too. Red Hair was delighted and decided to invite all the villagers to the wedding banquet.

The day of the wedding feast, Ah-Fat was in the fields thinning the rice seedlings. By the time he had finished, it was getting dark. He went to wash his muddy feet. From where he sat on the riverbank, he could see a hazy red glow, looking a bit like a forest fire, over the village far in the distance. These were the lights from the banquet, he knew. He rolled his trouser legs down, brushed the mud off himself and headed straight to the village without bothering to go home.

The wedding feast was in the open air. Ah-Fat counted the tables carefully—thirty altogether. There were dishes of chicken, duck and fish, and half a gleaming suckling pig on every table. Ah-Fat sat with the other youngsters, all of them ravenously hungry. Grabbing at the suckling pig, they wolfed it all down, but Ah-Fat was quick and sneaked a piece for his little brother. Ah-Sin gripped the meat and nibbled at it, savouring every mouthful. The fat ran down his wrist and he stuck out his tongue and licked it clean. Ah-Fat thought he looked like a beggar on a street corner but did not admonish him. Since their dad died, none of the family had tasted even a morsel of meat.

They drank rice wine brewed a few months before by Red Hair's mother in preparation for his arrival. As soon as the jars were opened, the fumes from the wine threatened to knock them out. Red Hair staggered drunkenly from table to table, clutching a big bowl of wine and encouraging his guests to drink toasts. He wore a long, sapphire blue brocade gown embroidered all over with gold
ruyi
designs and, tied across his shoulders, a length of red silk with a big bow. His skullcap was adorned with a glittering piece of translucent jade carved with a dragon and a phoenix. That evening Red Hair's cheeks were flushed red too, and the sweat formed shallow pools in his deep-set eye sockets. His tongue thickened till it seemed about to drop out of his mouth and the muscles of his face jerked spasmodically as he beamed lopsided grins in every direction.

Red Hair reached the table where the youngsters were sitting. It fell to Ah-Fat, as their senior, to offer formal congratulations, but his elders at nearby tables put a stop to that. “He's the bridegroom, so even a stray dog can tease him today. No need to go bowing and scraping to him.” Someone pointed to Ah-Fat and Ah-Sin: “These are Yuen Cheong's kids.” Red Hair ruffled Ah-Sin's hair: “Your poor dad,” he said. “Such a good head on his
shoulders. Who would have thought it, eh?” And he got two small boxes out of his pocket and put one into each boy's hand.

Ah-Fat opened the box and peered at its contents. It held things that looked like black beans, but bigger and rounder. He put one in his mouth and chewed. It crunched between his teeth, and for a moment he was scared a tooth had come out. When he looked closer, he realized there was an almond hidden inside the bean. The dark coating was sweet, with peculiar kind of fatty sweetness he could not put into words.

It was only much later, when he was in Gold Mountain, that Ah-Fat learned that these black beans were called chocolate.

Ah-Fat quickly grew drunk at the wedding feast and it was his own doing— no one forced him to drink toasts. It was his first taste of alcohol, and it slid smoothly over his tongue, burning its way down his throat and into his belly. It did not stay there long, but soon crept up to his head. Now it was several times more powerful, and exploded in a great fireball in his brain. Ah-Fat felt his body shrinking away like a jellyfish. Crawling out of the crater left by the fireball, he floated gently in some distant place in mid-air. From his vantage point far above the earth, he peered mistily down at the banqueting tables and the village scattered beneath him.

Suddenly he felt the black beans grappling with the rice wine in his belly. His guts knotted up, and he hurriedly shoved his way through the diners and made for some waste ground by the road. He pulled his shirt up and his trousers down just in time to release a stream of liquid shit so foul-smelling it almost knocked him down. He grabbed a banana leaf, cleaned himself up and kicked some dirt over the mess. This, at least, had sobered him up; he was down from mid-air and had both feet planted solidly on the ground.

The noise of the revellers had faded far into the distance. Around him the only sound was the night wind rustling the leaves in the treetops. The frogs in the pond croaked loudly and got on his nerves. He threw a stone into the water and the splash shut the frogs up but disturbed the birds roosting at the water's edge so that they flapped up and away, their wings etched against the night sky. The clouds cleared, revealing a mass of stars right down to the horizon.

Was that where Gold Mountain was? he wondered. What kind of a place was it that could turn Red Hair into such a fine figure of a man? Were the six huge, heavy trunks he had brought back laden with Gold Mountain gold?

Ah-Fat sat down at the roadside and fell into an uneasy doze.

Some time later, he felt movement around him and awoke. A half-starved dog come to lick up the shit, he thought, but then he turned his head and saw a little girl about two years old looking at him with a foolish smile on her face. She was wearing a long red brocade gown and a red hat embroidered with clusters of peonies on each side. It was certainly an eye-catching outfit. Ah-Fat remembered the ghost stories told by the villagers. He broke out in a chill sweat and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. Then he got to his feet and saw behind the girl the vague outline of a shadow. Reassured, because he knew that ghosts did not have shadows, he asked: “And who are you?”

The girl did not answer. Instead she stuffed her fists in her mouth and a dribble of saliva ran down her chin on each side. Ah-Fat felt in his pocket for Red Hair's black beans and put one in her mouth. She did not have enough teeth to chew it, but she sucked it noisily and the dribbles gradually turned brown. When she had swallowed it, she held out her hand for more. There was something odd about her hand and, looking carefully, Ah-Fat saw something growing out at an angle next to her thumb—a sixth finger.

Just then there was a shout and a woman with a lantern hurried over to them. It was Auntie Huang, one of the servants from Red Hair's household. She grabbed the child, crying frantically: “Oh my God, Six Fingers! Where have you been? You're so quick on your feet, you were gone in the blink of an eye. Whatever would I say to the bridegroom if I lost you even before the wedding feast was over?” “Is she a relative of Red Hair's?” asked Ah-Fat. “How come I've never seen her before?” “She wasn't, but she is now,” Auntie Huang smiled. “This child is the bride's little sister. She was born with six fingers. Her mum and dad were afraid they couldn't marry her off and couldn't afford to keep her so they sent her off with the bride to Red Hair's family.” Ah-Fat smiled. “Red Hair is a rich man,” he said. “It's nothing for him to take in Six Fingers.”

As Auntie Huang led the child away, Six Fingers dragged behind. She kept turning to look back at Ah-Fat, fixing her luminous dark eyes on him.

She's going to be quite a girl when she grows up, thought Ah-Fat to himself.

This time Red Hair stayed home more than a year, long enough to see his bride safely delivered of a son. Only then did he make preparations to go back to Gold Mountain.

And this time he took with him a companion—Fong Yuen Cheong's son, Fong Tak Fat.

The idea of going to Gold Mountain first occurred to Ah-Fat the day he saw Red Hair's porters arriving in the village with those weighty Gold Mountain trunks slung from their shoulder poles. In the beginning, the idea was only a vague one but he kept it tucked away in his breast and would not give it up. It had no shape but it grew on him till he felt like he was going to explode. Eventually, he sought out his old teacher, Mr. Auyung.

“Do you have any idea what life is like in Gold Mountain?” asked the teacher. Ah-Fat shook his head. “Uncle Red Hair doesn't want to talk about it.” After a moment's hesitation, he went on: “I don't know what it's like there but I do know what it's like here—a tunnel with no light at the end.” Mr. Auyung struck the table with his fist. “That was what I was hoping you'd say. There's nothing for you here. Over in Gold Mountain you can at least fight for your life.” Suddenly Ah-Fat's vague idea took form and substance. He had got the advice he wanted.

He still needed the money for the journey so he mortgaged the family's remaining quarters in the compound for a hundred silver dollars. When he ran over to Red Hair's home with the dollars bundled in a handkerchief, Red Hair sighed. “If I say I don't want you coming along, your mum will say I'm refusing to take care of Yuen Cheong's son.” After a pause he said: “OK, OK, if you're not afraid of hardship, then you can come.”

Ah-Fat was up early on the day of their departure. He had a cloth bundle packed and ready: it held just one new suit of clothes, three pairs of cloth shoes, five pairs of thick cotton socks and a few ordinary items of clothing. He also took a few tins of salt fish to eat on the ship. His mother had spent night after night painstakingly sewing the shoes for him. By now she was almost blind and the stitching was all over the place. “Don't waste
your time,” Red Hair told her. “Cloth shoes won't see Ah-Fat through a Gold Mountain winter, it's far too cold. He'll need to buy leather shoes.” But Mrs. Mak made the shoes very loose-fitting so Ah-Fat could wear three pairs of socks inside them. She could not imagine there was anywhere on earth where three pairs of thick cotton socks would not be warm enough.

Awake before dawn, Ah-Fat kicked out at his little brother who was curled up fast asleep at his feet. Since the epilepsy, Ah-Sin slept almost round the clock. Ah-Fat kicked out again, this time with more force. Ah-Sin grunted, then turned over and went back to sleep again. His brother gave up and got quietly out of bed, pulling the thin blue-patterned quilt over the child. Ah-Fat could not know that this would be the last time he would see Ah-Sin. Even before his ship arrived in Gold Mountain, Ah-Sin was dead. As he cut grass for the pig, he was taken with a fit and fell down the grassy slope to his death. For years after, Ah-Fat regretted not having woken Ah-Sin up that morning. He would like to have said a few kind words to him.

Ah-Fat felt at the top of the bed for the cloth bundle, then groped his way to the door. There he tripped over something soft. It stirred and he heard a snuffling sound. By the faint light of the stove, he saw it was his mother, wiping tears from her eyes. She had already heated up the green bean porridge for him to eat before he left.

She blew her nose and, in a muffled voice, told him to light the oil lamp.

Ah-Fat did not move. “It's getting light, I can see without it.”

He did not want to see his mother's face. It was hard to believe that her eyes, reduced now to two tiny holes, had so many tears left. Sometimes he felt as though her tears were tentacles dragging him down, and that he would be devoured by her grief. But he also knew that today he had only to lift his foot over the threshold and he would be out of reach of her tears in a place where her grief could not touch him any more.

“Ah-Fat, light the lamp.” Her voice was suddenly harsh.

He did as he was told. His mother gripped the door jamb and pulled herself to her feet. She pointed her finger in his face and ordered him: “Kneel down. Kneel before your dad.”

Ah-Fat knelt before his father's portrait. The flagstones felt hard and cold through the thin cotton of his trousers. His father's face wore a weary, even sleepy expression in the faint glow of the lamp. His father could not look after him now.

Ah-Fat felt the tears well up. He twisted the end of his sleeve into lump and stuffed it into his mouth. By swallowing hard a few times, he got himself under control.

“Dad, my uncle's going to till our fields, with your blessing and protection,” he said.

Then he went on: “Dad, I'm going to Gold Mountain. But I'll be back, rich or poor, dead or alive. I'll never let the incense go out at your tomb.”

His mother knelt by his side. Her nose was stuffed up from crying and he could feel her laboured breaths fanning his cheeks. Her bound feet in their pointed slippers looked like upturned conical bamboo shoots as they trembled gently under her long loose cotton jacket.

“Ah-Fat's dad, please let him die rather than touch opium. If he ever gets addicted to opium, ever, he'll be stripped of your family name, and then he'd better not think of ever crossing this threshold again.”

By the time Ah-Fat walked out of the courtyard, the sky was turning pale. The neighbours' chickens had been cooped up all night and now scurried impatiently along the field verges hunting for scarcely wakened worms. Two belligerent young cockerels fought over a large black worm, flapping their wings fiercely. Ah-Fat threw a clod of earth at them to break up the fight, and they flew off with loud squawks, scattering feathers in the air. In the distance he could hear the squealing of the water wheel as it began to turn. Many villagers started their work before the sun was up.