Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [123]
As the pair came close, they saw that the diulau’s great iron gate was surmounted with a stone tablet at least twenty feet long. This was elaborately carved in relief with layer upon layer of exuberant foliage. The flowers were unusual—they did not look Chinese. The entire carved area was painted: gold background, green leaves, ochre-coloured entwined stems and magenta flowers. But in the centre, where the name should have been, there was a blank space. The house as yet had no name.
When they were a few paces from Kam Ho, the men halted. The man in front told the porter to put down his burden and take a break. He took off his felt hat and fanned his face with it as he looked the boy over. His eyes roved over him so intently that Kam Ho began to shrink under his scrutiny. Then the man’s gaze came to rest on the tricycle. He burst into laughter which made crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“That trike’s too small for you, Kam Ho! Why are you still riding it?”
The man squatted down and gripped the handlebars.
Kam Ho was startled. How did the man know his name? he wondered. Suddenly he saw the livid centipede wavering slightly on the man’s cheek as he laughed. Kam Ho flung the tricycle down and fled. He ran like the wind, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him, and arrived back at the steps of his home with one shoe missing.
“Mum … Mum!” Kam Ho stumbled into the house and flung himself at his mother, his heart thudding as if it was going to leap out onto the front of her jacket.
The man could easily have caught up with Kam Ho but he did not. He put the abandoned tricycle over one shoulder and followed slowly behind him. After a few paces he came across the lost shoe. He picked it up, brushed the chicken droppings and dust off the sole, hung it from the handlebar and walked on.
Six Fingers was in the kitchen, stitching the sole of a shoe as she watched the cook make steamed osmanthus rice cakes. The shoe was for Mak Dau. She was making his wedding gift on behalf of the bride, Ah-Yuet. The day of the marriage had been fixed for the tenth day of the tenth month. Mak Dau’s family had already presented wedding gifts to Ah-Yuet. Ah-Yuet’s birth family had given her up when they sold her to the Fongs as a maidservant, so the Fongs gave presents to Mak Dau on her behalf. The only thing not yet completed was the traditional pair of cloth shoes for the bridegroom. And since Ah-Yuet was all thumbs, Six Fingers was making them for her.
Kam Ho huddled into his mother’s chest like a piglet rooting for milk, his face hot and sweaty, his breath coming in gasps. Six Fingers wondered how it was possible that two such different boys could have been born from the same belly. She loved them both but in different ways. The elder came from her guts, the younger from her heart. Those guts had given birth to a masculine courage, and the heart, to a feminine gentleness. The one with the guts was far away, though she could depend on him. The son of her heart still had a hold on every fibre of her being.
Six Fingers wiped Kam Ho’s face with the front of her jacket. “What’s up? Someone set fire to your tail?”
“It’s Dad. He’s … he’s back,” said Kam Ho, pointing to the door.
“Rubbish. He said in his letter he’d be here the middle of the eighth month at the earliest.”
“It’s true. Dad’s back.”
Six Fingers burst out laughing: “You don’t know what your dad looks like! How do you know it’s him?”
“The scar.” Kam Ho traced a line down his cheek with his finger.
Six Fingers pulled up the backs of her embroidered slippers and ran for the front door. She peered through the peephole, and the shoe sole she had been sewing dropped to the ground.
“Bolt the door. No one is to open it until I say so,” she ordered.
She flew up the stairs. As she turned the corner, she saw her mother-in-law on her knees, burning incense before the portrait of her late husband. “Mum!” she shouted. “Ah-Fat’s back.” Without waiting for a response, she ran into