Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [110]
Six Fingers took the boy by the hand. “We have to be off, Mum, otherwise we’ll be late for the play. Ah-Chu and Ah-Lin are waiting at the entrance to the village.” Mrs. Mak’s eyebrows drew together again. “Are you going too? To where those hairy foreigners are? I wonder you young women aren’t scared of them!” Six Fingers knew her mother-in-law was referring to the Protestant missionaries. She smiled: “They all dress like us and wear their hair in a pigtail, Mum. You’d never know they were yeung fan to look at them. They speak our language too, and they’re friendlier than the Chinese teachers from the North.” “Huh! If the yeung fan look like us, then a wolf looks like a sheep,” Mrs. Mak retorted. And she turned towards the kitchen and shouted for Mak Dau.
Mak Dau was sharpening knives for Ah-Choi. Machetes, meat cleavers, vegetable knives, potato peelers, knives for scraping the bristle from the pigs’ hides, all were laid out on the floor. Mak Dau was finishing with the potato peeler. He had been at it for a while and the blade was covered with a layer of swarf. Mak Dau wiped the knife clean with an oily cloth and held it up to his eyes. He blew gently on the blade and it made a humming noise. Hearing Mrs. Mak’s call, he stuck the knife in his belt and ran to the courtyard.
“Go with Kam Ho and the young Missus to the school. It’ll be mayhem there so you take good care of them and when the play’s finished, come straight home.”
“Yes, Missus.” Mak Dau nodded. He was the sort of young man who did not waste words. The corners of his eyes and the spot between his brows expressed what he was thinking. It took a good hour to get from the house to the school on foot, without stopping on the way. If you took break to have a drink or eat snacks, then it was two hours. He took the boys to school every day, but he had never made the trip with the young Missus before.
Mak Dau could hold his own with any of the dozen or so residents of the household, except the young Missus. With her, he could hardly get word out. She was perfectly friendly to him, not severe like the old Missus. But Mak Dau was more afraid of the young Missus’s friendliness than the old lady’s severity. Severity was straightforward, and straightforward silence was an adequate response. The friendliness of the young Missus was much more nuanced, so his answering silences had to be nuanced too. All the same, Mak Dau was happy to be accompanying her today.
He looked up now and saw that Six Fingers had exchanged her cottonpadded jacket for a new lined one. It reached to the knees and the mauve fabric was embroidered all over with a design of dark green asparagus ferns. The jacket buttoned slantwise with traditional knot buttons and a light green handkerchief hung from the opening. Now that she was no longer wearing the thick winter jacket, you could see her full figure. The ferns trembled lightly as her jacket rose and fell. She wore a jade hairpin in the bun at the nape of her neck, and an agate pendant hung from one end of it. The pendant tinkled next to her ear every time the young Missus moved. Every tinkle made Mak Dau’s heart skip a beat, and his breathing became a little ragged.
“Shall I carry it for you, Missus?” he asked, indicating Six Fingers’ basket. “There’s no need for that. You look after Kam Ho. He’s not