Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [111]
Six Fingers, Kam Ho and Mak Dau joined the others on the riverbank and the party set out. The man and the boy walked in front and the half-dozen women followed, leaving behind footprints of all shapes and sizes in the soft surface of the track.
The talk among the women was of their menfolk. “When’s your Ah-Kyun arriving?” Six Fingers asked Ah-Lin. “Soon. We heard he’s got to Hong Kong. We’re waiting for a letter from the hospital and then someone’ll go and get him.” They were talking about Ah-Kyun’s remains. He had died of consumption in Gold Mountain. That was more than seven years ago so Ah-Lin had been a widow for all that time. The first year she wore a white felt flower of mourning stuck into her bun, but had changed this for a black one in the second year. The black flower of widowhood had remained there ever since and she never went without it.
The truth, however, was that Ah-Lin had been a widow long before she put the white flower in her hair. Ah-Kyun had taken a concubine in Gold Mountain and had only been home once in more than a decade. When he left again, he took his eldest son with him. Ah-Kyun had been ill for quite a few years, and for all those years the concubine had supported his two families through her work in the tea-shack. After he died, she had gone to live with another man, again as his concubine, and after that it was Ah-Kyun’s son who sent dollar letters home. Ah-Lin said that her husband knew he was going to die and that was why he had taken his son to Gold Mountain, to take over responsibility for supporting the family back home. She also said that Ah-Kyun was a kind-hearted man and that was why he would not abandon his family in China. And that he had made it clear to his son that he wanted to be buried at home. And that being a lawfully wedded wife was quite different from being someone’s fancy woman. As Ah-Lin said all these things, the colour rose in her face, so that she looked like a peachy-cheeked bride in a wedding sedan.
“Huh!” said Ah-Chu. “It depends on the man whether he comes back or not. Auntie Cheung Tai exchanged marriage contracts with Uncle Cheung Tai, and even when she died, he never came home for her funeral.” Auntie Cheung Tai had died the year before and it was Six Fingers, as her adopted daughter, who had buried her. Her husband had not shown up. There was a reason for Ah-Chu’s remark: her husband had come home last year and got himself a second wife from Tung Koon. Within four months, he was gone, in a hurry to save enough for the head tax and a boat passage. But he still had not told them which wife he was going to take to Gold Mountain.
“Your Ah-Fat hasn’t been back for years. Has he got a woman over there?” asked someone.
When Ah-Fat last saw Kam Ho, he was only a month old. Now he was going to school and Ah-Fat was still not back. He had been short of money in recent years and though he sent dollar letters every couple of months, they were for much smaller amounts. What had gone wrong? asked Six Fingers in one of her letters. Ah-Fat’s reply had been brief. I’ll tell you more when I come home, he had said. She knew then that there had been some trouble. She imagined all sorts of things, and these imaginings weighed heavily on her. But still she smiled at the women’s questions: “It’s fine if he’s found a woman. At least I don’t have to worry about him.”
Halfway to the school, the women grew tired. They looked for a shady spot to sit down, and took out the cakes. Kam Ho had been asleep on Mak Dau’s back and had dribbled on his shoulders. Mak Dau set him down and gave him to Six Fingers. He found a spot to sit some distance away, took off his jacket and sat down on a stone to let the sweat dry in the sun. Next to him a big yellow butterfly with black markings rested on the leaf of a shrub. The black and the yellow reminded him of the border of a paper window covering, standing out so clearly they could have been cut out with a knife. In the bright sunshine, the butterfly’s wings fanned gently.
Pity I didn’t bring a cricket cage, Mak Dau thought.