Gold Mountain Blues (73 page)

Year thirty of the Republic (1941)

Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China

Six Fingers and Mak Dau noticed the plane overhead as they made their way home with Wai Kwok.

Wai Kwok had just started attending his parents' school, where he was a boarder. Yesterday, Kam Sau sent a message from the school that her son was ill. He had been treated by a Western-trained doctor but, although his temperature had gone down, he was still very tired. Could someone pick him up and take him back to the village for a few days' rest at the
diulau
?

Six Fingers carried a bag full of hot spring rolls stuffed with bean sprouts, which she had made fresh that morning. She left half with Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen to share; the other half was for them to eat on the way home.

The whole world was at war these days, and the postal system was in chaos along with everything else. Since Six Fingers could not depend on dollar letters, she had to sell off some of their land. It was a good thing she
had bought some land cheaply when things were more settled a few years back. It meant she could sell it off now at a profit, one
mu
at a time, to put food on their table.

Six Fingers was keeping an ever tighter grip on the purse strings. She had dismissed all the
diulau
servants except for Mak Dau and his wife, Ah-Yuet. Even Ah-Choi, who had been with them for decades, was packed off to her home village. Ah-Fat's uncle and aunt were long dead, and their son and daughter had married and left the
diulau
. That only left Kam Sau, Ah-Yuen and their children, Mak Dau and Ah-Yuet, and Kam Ho's wife, Ah-Hsien. Six Fingers regarded Ah-Hsien as a complete fool, and left only the simplest jobs for her to do. Six Fingers did most of the cooking now.

Mak Dau walked along empty-handed. Tucked into his trouser waistband was a revolver. He took a gun wherever he went these days, even to bed. Guns protected life in these turbulent times—the lives of everyone in the
diulau
, not just his own.

The original plan was for Mak Dau to go alone to fetch Wai Kwok, but Six Fingers was so concerned about him that she insisted on going too. Mak Dau dug out an old tunic which Ah-Yuet wore for messy work, and asked Six Fingers to put it on. Then he made her take out her jade hairpin, muss her hair up and pull it back into an untidy bun. He brought a bowlful of ash from the kitchen stove and made her rub it on her face and neck. “I'm not some pretty young girl of eighteen,” Six Fingers protested. “Who's going to be looking at me?” Mak Dau laughed out loud. “If you live to be a hundred, Missus, you'll never lose your looks,” he said. “And if you live to be a hundred, you'll never lose that glib tongue of yours,” she countered. But she was secretly pleased.

Just as they were leaving the house, Six Fingers stopped in her tracks. “I want you to promise me something, Mak Dau,” she said. “What?” “Promise first, then I'll tell you.” “How can I promise when I don't know what it is?” “If you don't promise, I'm not telling you.” Back and forth they argued, until Six Fingers finally said: “I want you to promise that if anything happens on the trip, save me if you can. But if you can't save me, put a bullet through my head.”

There was a long silence. Finally Mak Dau said: “Believe me, if I can't save you, the first shot will be for you and the second for me. I promise that
I'll always stick by you.” Six Fingers was touched by Mak Dau's loyalty, and then felt a sudden pang. There was someone else who should have been looking out for her all these years: her lawful wedded husband.

When they arrived at the school to collect Wai Kwok, Six Fingers exclaimed anxiously at how thin and pale he had grown. And in fact they had only gone a short way on the road home before the boy needed a rest and they sat down to eat their spring rolls. They set off again, and Mak Dau gave Wai Kwok a piggyback. He nodded off and slumped heavily against Mak Dau, forcing him to walk along bent almost double under the weight.

“You're getting old, Mak Dau,” said Six Fingers. “Well, with a grandson this big, it would be surprising if I wasn't.” Mak Dau had lost two front teeth and his breath whistled through the gaps as he spoke. Six Fingers thought back to the time, all those years ago, when he had first arrived at the Fongs'. He had such strong, white teeth back then. They lit up the whole courtyard when he smiled. But everyone had to get old sometime, she supposed, even Mak Dau.

“Well, at least you've got a grandson.… I lost mine, all because of that fool,” Six Fingers said bitterly.

She was referring to Yiu Kei. Every time Six Fingers thought of her grandson, she cursed her daughter-in-law, Ah-Hsien. “Haven't you gone on about this enough?” he said. “It's been nearly three years now. It's a good thing she's such a blockhead; your cursing and swearing is like water off a duck's back. It just doesn't get you anywhere. The way I look at it, Yiu Kei was never meant to be part of your family. He just visited with you for short while on his way to another life in another place. Let him go, and he'll reward you when he returns in another life. Anyway, haven't you still got Wai Kwok? My grandson is your grandson. When the time comes, he'll be the one to look after us and bury us. If he dares to misbehave, he won't get away with it!”

Six Fingers' mood lightened at Mak Dau's blunt words.

As they walked along, a brisk wind whipped up. It was a regular market day and the road was thronged with people laden with baskets of produce hung from shoulder poles. Mak Dau and Six Fingers watched in amusement as a peddler's broad-brimmed hat blew off. He sprinted after it, but
it bowled along faster just out of reach. Finally the peddler gave up the chase and sat down covered in sweat by the roadside, swearing rudely.

They were still laughing at the sight when another sound caught their ears. It was a loud humming like a giant metal fan overhead. Mak Dau looked up and saw a group of black dots on the horizon. The dots got bigger and grew wings like birds. “Planes! It's the Japs!” someone shouted. The market-goers dropped their baskets and ran frantically for cover.

It was not the first time Japanese planes had flown overhead. Years ago, they had bombed Wai Yeung Village and several members of Ah-Hsien's family were killed. That was on a market day, too. Six Fingers had never been caught in a bombing raid herself. She stood frozen in shock.

It was still early in spring and in the fields on either side of the road the crops had only just begun to put up tender shoots. There was no cover anywhere. When they looked up again, the birds were so near they could make out the red blob of the Jap flag painted on their tails. Mak Dau hastily put Wai Kwok down under a tall tree by the roadside. “Don't move!” he shouted. Then he ran to Six Fingers, flung her face down on the ground and lay beside her.

Six Fingers lay in a pile of fresh dog shit. The stink was so bad she could hardly draw breath but she was past caring. She shut her eyes very tightly and repeated over and over: “Buddha have mercy, Buddha have mercy.” She counted four dull booms which seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, and the ground beneath them trembled violently. Separate sounds merged into a terrifying, continuous roar. Objects fell from the sky and hit her on the back with metallic pings—clods of earth perhaps. Her body felt increasingly heavy, as if she was being crushed under layer after layer of cotton-stuffed quilts. Everything went black. I have been buried alive, she thought.

Later, after all the noises died away, the earth stopped trembling and silence fell. Six Fingers was suffocating; her lungs felt as though they were about to burst and her eyes were popping from their sockets. She tried to call “Mak Dau!” but no sound came out. She heard a scratching. The thought came to her that a snake was trying to bore its way through the mud. But it was all too late. She knew she was going to die here.

Suddenly, light appeared and she saw a mud-covered lump with two shiny white eyes, and a pair of hands soaked red.

“Mak Dau, are you hurt…?” she croaked.

The mud-covered mouth cracked open, showing pink gums: “It's nothing. I scratched my hands digging you out.”

The same thought occurred to both of them at that moment: Wai Kwok!

But where was the tree?

It still stood, but was only half as tall as before. Its top and all the branches had gone, leaving a stump a few feet high. The stump still looked like a tree on one side, but on the other, it was charred coal-black. Flames leapt from it.

Six Fingers and Mak Dau began to search frantically for Wai Kwok. They circled the tree but he was nowhere to be found. They made another circuit, but still could not find him. At the third attempt, Six Fingers found a shoe poking out from under a pile of debris.

It was of black twill, with a white sole made of layered cotton. The upper was embroidered with a tiger's head. Six Fingers recognized her own handiwork. She had made the shoes when Wai Kwok started school.

Six Fingers gave a slight tug and freed the shoe. Encased in it were a foot and half of the leg, severed at the knee. A bloody crimson froth oozed from the break, and a bone the thickness of a thumb could be seen poking out of the middle.

Six Fingers dropped to the ground in a dead faint.

Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen had built their School for All in a village called Sam Ho Lei, which was situated at the centre of a cluster of half a dozen other villages. A local scholar had lent them a piece of sloping land on which to erect the school buildings. Both were constructed of sun-baked mud bricks; one contained the classrooms, and the other the accommodation for the students and teachers. The classrooms were divided into lower and upper primary grades. Ah-Yuen was head of the school and Kam Sau was director of studies. Kam Sau taught classes in Chinese and handicrafts, and Ah-Yuen taught math and physical education. The two other teachers taught history, geography, art and literature, and natural sciences.

Fees ranged from one to five local dollars, on a sliding scale according to the family's income. Children from destitute families were completely exempted. Boarders brought their own rice rations and did not have to pay anything else for their keep. The school was especially keen to encourage girls to study and generally accepted them without payment. In addition, the girls with the best attendance records were awarded five pounds of extra rice rations every month. They had started out with a dozen or so boys, but in a few years the number had increased to over two hundred boys and thirty or so girls.

Kam Sau had sold all the jewellery and silver her mother had given her as a wedding present to set up the school. But that only went so far. Most of the money came from the old scholar who lent them the land. His son had been at college with Ah-Yuen and Kam Sau. All three of them were Mr. Auyung Yuk Shan's star pupils. The family had substantial business interests in Japan and South-East Asia and, although the son had gone on to join the military after graduating from college, he had persuaded his father to use some of his wealth to fund the school for his two friends. On opening day, Mr. Auyung attended the inauguration and wrote in his own hand the words “School for All for a Bright Future” for the tablet above the entrance.

Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen were well aware that sending sons and daughters to school full-time meant a considerable sacrifice for the villagers. It cost money and it meant the families would be short of farmhands, but they wanted to see their children succeed in life at any cost. Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen threw themselves into their teaching with a fervour which matched the families' determination. Kam Sau frequently saw the girls saving their mealtime rice rations and taking every spare grain home to their families at the end of the month. Her heart bled for them. What difficulties these girls faced! For her part, she saved as much of the food brought by her mother as she could, and divided it among a few of the girls who looked particularly pale and undernourished.

After Wai Kwok was killed in the bombing raid, Kam Sau had to take a break from teaching. Every time she stood in front of the other pupils, she was reminded of her son. The slightest thing made her break down in tears in the middle of the class. Even though she was three months' pregnant, she
could not eat or sleep, and lay awake staring at the ceiling all night long until dawn touched the bedroom curtains with a pale light. When she was no more than skin and bones, Ah-Yuen took her back to her mother in Spur-On Village.

When Mr. Auyung heard, he hurried over to see what was going on. But instead of offering condolences, he said with a grim smile: “You can't have hair without a skin. When the eggs are in danger, you protect the nest. If you cried as hard for China as you have for your personal loss, you could save the whole country.” “What's our school for if not for the country?” protested Kam Sau. “And I've sacrificed my son for that! If we hadn't set up this school, Wai Kwok wouldn't have been studying here. He'd be at the Overseas Chinese Children's School, and this disaster would never have happened.”

Kam Sau's cheeks flamed and her voice shook with fury. Mr. Auyung glanced at Ah-Yuen: “That's better. So long as she hasn't completely lost heart, there's hope.” Then he sighed and went on: “If it hadn't been Wai Kwok, it would have been someone else, and it would have happened sooner or later. The Japanese have cut a bloody swathe through our country from the very north to the far south. China is weak, and so is its army. If we can't keep the gates barred against them the people inside will die.”

“I can't possibly care about everyone in this world,” said Kam Sau. “It's Wai Kwok.…” and her eyes filled with tears before she could finish the sentence. She swallowed hard. “I know what you're saying,” she went on with an effort, “but I'm no soldier or gatekeeper, I'm just an ordinary teacher, and I'm no use to anyone.”

Mr. Auyung rapped on the table with his knuckles. “Who said you're no use?” he demanded. “The students you're teaching are the gatekeepers of tomorrow, Kam Sau. When our generation is finished, China must put its hopes in the next generation. Pull yourself together and make the best job you can of your teaching. The best tribute you can pay to Wai Kwok is to turn your pupils into heroes.”