Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [107]
The clothes. The three hundred uniforms from the Vancouver Hotel. He felt along the windowsill. Backwards, forwards, left, right. There was nothing. Those six piles, so tall they had almost reached the ceiling, had vanished from his shop as if they had never existed.
Ah-Fat rushed out into the street. “You motherfucking scum!” he howled, his face upturned to the skies in a frenzy. “You scum of the earth!” He wanted to go on but the words would not come. He felt as if the tendons at his temples and neck had burst and molten liquid was pouring from them down his body. His cries, echoing in the air above him, somehow reminded him of the beasts slaughtered by his father’s hand.
Suddenly a large hand clamped over his mouth.
“Don’t shout. They’ve gone to Japan Town, but they may be back any moment.”
Ah-Fat froze. The man was speaking English. He realized it was Rick.
“I’ve been waiting ages for you,” said Rick.
At Ah-Fat’s cries, the people hiding in the dark recesses of their shops began to emerge in ones and twos. They stood gazing blankly at the ruins of the street. They looked at one another, seeing desolate expressions in each other’s eyes. They no longer knew their street, or each other. They did not even know themselves.
The owner of the Loong Kee was the first to pull himself together. Without a sound, he walked up behind Rick and threw a savage punch at the back of his head. Rick was taken by surprise. His body sagged, then straightened again.
“Kill the yeung fan, kill him!”
The onlookers shook themselves awake and surrounded Rick, hemming him in.
“Don’t … don’t hit him, he’s … he’s not.…” Ah-Fat tried to explain but found himself suddenly incapable of speech. All he could do was put his arms tightly round Rick. The blows rained down on his body although it was his mouth which took the full force of them. Ah-Fat tasted blood. By the time the crowd realized that they were beating up one of their own, Ah-Fat had lost one of his front teeth.
Ah-Fat helped Rick to his shop and stood in front of him like the god of gateways, blocking the way. The men glared at the pair of them, their eyes shining green and wolf-like in the dark.
“You idiots, he’s with us,” Ah-Fat said, spitting out bloody saliva.
Then they heard two dull thuds in the distance.
“It’s guns. The yeung fan are firing,” someone said. A tremor ran through the crowd, and shadowy figures surged back towards the dark door openings.
“They’re Japanese guns,” Rick said to Ah-Fat. “The Japanese sector has its own armed militia but Chinatown has no protection at all. The mob won’t hang around there. They’ll be back here any minute.
“How many women and children are there here?” he asked. Ah-Fat made a quick calculation. “There can’t be more than twenty or so, we’re almost all single men around here,” he said.
“Get them together. The secretary of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce is my friend. They can take shelter there, I’ll take them. You men go back indoors and hide. Don’t light the lanterns and don’t go out before daybreak. More Mounties should be here soon. They may seal the district off to keep all non-Chinese out. You’ll be safe then.”
Rick took something wrapped in cloth out of his pocket and gave it to Ah-Fat. “Be careful. This is the real thing.” Ah-Fat fingered it lightly—a pistol.
At that moment, thunder rumbled in the distance and the ground began to tremble again.
Ah-Fat knew what that meant. The yeung fan rabble had come back.
Dear Ah-Yin,
At the end of last year, I received a little over nine hundred dollars from the Canadian government. Mr. Henderson engaged a lawyer who got me compensation for the destruction of my laundry business the year before last, by a yeung fan mob who came to Chinatown. I was hoping to use this money to get a boat passage