Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [122]
Kam Ho had outgrown it years ago: his thirteen-year-old legs were bent double over the tiny wheels and looked quite comical. He wanted his mother to write and ask his father to send a bicycle, a big one like the missionary teachers at the school in Yuen Kai rode, but she refused. He was saving his money for a boat passage home, she told him, and she would not ask him to spend it on anything else. Kam Ho’s father had left when he was barely a month old and he had no memories of him. He was eager to see his dad, but he also badly wanted a bicycle. He’d just have to wait until his dad saved up the money and came home. Then he could ask him.
It was midday and all the men were taking their noon meal in the fields, eating the sweet potato and rice, and radish soup that their women had brought them in pottery containers. As the women waited for them to finish, they brought out their needlework and sat on the field embankments, their fingers flying deftly back and forth. There were no children to be seen in the village at this time of day—they were down at the No-Name River, splashing naked in the water. This year the spring rains had gone on and on. But then quite suddenly they had ceased and it was summertime. The children had waited a long time for this moment, and as soon as the first rays of sunshine broke through, they were impatient to get into the river. So the village was quite quiet. Even the dogs could not be bothered to bark.
Two men walked on the road beside the river, one in front and one in back. The first wore a grey silk gown, clearly brand new from its sharp folds. He had a felt hat on his head and a yellow oiled-paper umbrella in his hand. Every aspect of his appearance seemed out of place: after all, it was too warm for felt hats, and there was no need for an umbrella. Behind him came the porter; he wore a bamboo hat, a short patched jacket and rolled-up trousers which revealed legs covered in mud. He was weighed down by his carrying pole and the loads at each end almost brushed the ground.
The pair made slow progress, the porter because of his load but the other because he seemed distracted. He looked all around him as he walked along, and Kam Ho at first thought he was unsure of the way. Then he saw that his feet nimbly avoided every rut and stone without the need for eyes—they knew every inch of the road.
Kam-Ho wanted to approach them but could not—his granny told him never to wander beyond the stand of wild banana trees. Farther than this, he needed a servant with him. His granny had kept a close eye on all the members of the household since the time when he and his mother had been kidnapped by Chu Sei. So he sat on the tricycle seat, watching closely as they came nearer.
The men craned their necks to get a good look at the diulau. It was square building, with the roof resting on circular pillars all the way round. The pillars were thick at each end and slender in the middle. They appeared to be made of stone, or perhaps jade—they were a brighter white than stone but duller than jade. In fact, they were made of marble, in the style of a Roman colonnade. The building had numerous windows, though these were so narrow that they were not especially eye-catching. Alongside some of them there were round dark gun-holes, for use in case of attack. Deep eaves projected over