Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [121]
She did not have the courage to try again.
“Mother!” she cried, throwing away the knife. But then remembered she had no mother. She found herself overcome by a fit of weeping. The tears came now not in drops but in torrents, surging down her face. Six Fingers wept uncontrollably.
Picking up the knife, she jabbed it fiercely into the quilt next to where Mrs. Mak lay. Again and again she stabbed, in a rising frenzy, until cotton wadding filled the air like snowflakes. Mrs. Mak’s frail body pitched and tossed as Six Fingers pounded the bed.
The old woman groaned again, and this time it was a long-drawn-out sound. She was calling for Ah-Fat.
Six Fingers raised the knife again and, with her eyes shut, sliced down into her thigh. At first she felt no pain, just a creeping numbness. She tried to move her leg but it seemed not to belong to her body any more and her muscles would not obey her. She opened her eyes and saw on the tip of her knife a red lump the size of a pigeon’s egg, one end of which was attached by a flap of skin to her thigh. Her flesh. It was her own flesh.
The pain was like thousands of fine wires pulling so tight around her heart that they shredded it into tiny pieces. She tugged hard at the red lump and it came away in her hand. It was warm and sticky, and seemed to be pulsating. “Oh Buddha!” she tried to shout, but the sound died in her throat.
Mak Dau was the first into the room. Six Fingers was sitting in a pool of blood. She thrust the thing in her hand at him. “Tell Ah-Choi, boil it up and give the soup to the Missus, quick.” Then she fell backwards onto the floor.4
A short while later, Ah-Choi came in with the soup for Mrs. Mak. The bedding had been changed and the floor swept clean of cotton wadding, but a faint, rank smell of blood still lingered in the air. Ah-Choi felt a soft lump in her gut pulsing upward as if at any moment it might burst from her mouth. Mrs. Mak clenched her teeth and Ah-Choi had to force them open with the spoon. Finally, the bowl of soup went down.
The old lady slept deeply for the entire afternoon. Towards evening, she awoke suddenly, opened her eyes wide and called for her servant. These were the first words she had spoken for two days. Ah-Choi hurried in. Mrs. Mak had thrown back the covers and was sitting upright, her withered hands scrabbling wildly in the air.
“Soup … soup!” she was saying.
Ah-Choi shouted to the cook to bring a bowl of lotus-seed soup. Mrs. Mak drank a spoonful—and spat it out. “Soup … that soup!” she repeated emphatically, the black holes of her sightless eyes directed intently at Ah-Choi.
Ah-Choi suddenly understood that she meant the soup she had had at midday.
“No, no, you can’t have any more of that,” Ah-Choi said into her ear. “The young Missus cut off her own flesh so we could make that soup for you. So you’d better hurry up and get better.”
Mrs. Mak said nothing. She sat motionless, leaning against the bedhead. A long time passed. Ah-Choi was alarmed and tried to help the old woman lie down, but Mrs. Mak gripped her arm.
“Tung-tree water. Comb.”
“You’re not going out. What do you want to dress your hair for?”
“Carry me … to see … the diulau,” commanded Mrs. Mak.
Year two of the Republic (1913)
Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China
Kam Ho saw them coming as he rode his tricycle towards the stand of wild banana trees.
His dad had sent the tricycle from Gold Mountain when he was six years old. No one had ever seen such a thing back then, and hordes of village