Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [67]
He beamed again and she laughed. “Why, Lai Tsin, you are rich after all.”
“Tonight I play pai-gow,” he said confidently, pocketing the money, “and I get richer.”
She stared at him, shocked. “You mean, you are going to gamble all that money?”
His face was suddenly expressionless. “That is what I do,” he said, turning away.
She looked wistfully after him as he wended his way through the crowded street past the sewing machines and wash tubs and strings of hanging laundry, past the chiffoniers and trestle-tables, the painted screens and red banners and the improvised cooking-stoves made from bits of scrap metal and bricks. And she thought of what the hundred and three dollars and twenty cents might have bought: shoes for the boy, bedrolls, candles, soap, food that they could pay for instead of receiving from charity. She shook her head. The money was not hers, it was Lai Tsin’s and he must do what he wished with it. And she must think about getting a job.
She went back into the shack and began to prepare the boy’s supper of bread and milk, looking up, surprised, as Lai Tsin flung the curtain aside. He pushed fifty dollars into her hand and said quickly, “Before, I was alone. Now I am a man of responsibility. I am not free to gamble away all the family money. We must buy Little Son some shoes and other things Little Sister needs.” He bowed quickly and was gone.
She sat stunned on the orange crate, the fifty dollars clutched in her hand. The boy looked up from his abacus and smiled at her. “Little Son,” Lai Tsin had called him. And she was “Little Sister.” A warm feeling crept around Francie’s heart. Lai Tsin and the boy were more of a family to her than her flesh and blood had ever been.
He returned very late that night and by the light of the guttering candle she could see that his face was long. He sighed as he sank onto the crate and put his head in his hands. “Joss forsook me tonight, Little Sister,” he said in a mournful singsong. “Aiee, aiee, how it deserted me.”
Her heart sank as she thought of his savings. “Oh, Lai Tsin, you lost all your money,” she gasped.
He shook his head. “I am a very good gambler. I won, but the man I gambled with had no money to pay me. Instead he gave me this paper. He told me it was worth eighty dollars, maybe more….”
Francie took the paper from him. It was written on thin parchment with Chinese lettering at the top and a red seal. Underneath was written in English:
“Leasehold for a term of nine hundred and ninety-nine years to a Parcel of Land in the Central District of Hong Kong, running between Des Voeux Road and Queens Road, the exact area and dimensions of which are defined in the map hereunder.”
She stared at him, surprised. “But Lai Tsin, this is the deed to a piece of land in Hong Kong. It says the lease was sold by the Mon Wu Land Company to a Mr. Huang Wu.
He nodded. “Huang Wu was Chung Wu’s grandfather. The land became Chung Wu’s and now it is mine. Here is his letter saying it belongs to me.”
He handed her a scrap of paper written in Chinese and she gave it back to him. “You must translate it for me,” she said.
He held the paper at arm’s length, clearing his throat and shifting his feet. Finally he shook his head. He stared at the floor, embarrassed, and said, “Little Sister, it is my eternal sorrow that I have never learned to read or write.”
Francie blushed; she had caused him to lose face and by now she knew how important the facade of politeness and respect was to a Chinese. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged, his thin face expressionless. “My family was poor, there were no scholars amongst us. There was no time and no money for learning. All I know are my numbers. From the age of four I worked in the mulberry fields, harvesting the leaves and packing them into hampers. I worked in the rice fields, helping plant the new shoots, or tended the ducks on the duck farm owned by