Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [134]
The money Ah-Fat made, he carefully divided into two parts, sending one to Six Fingers and keeping the other for himself. He could not stint by a single cent on the portion he sent home because he knew that a dozen or more people waited, mouths agape, for the food he dropped into them. Their lives depended on those dollar letters. And he tried as hard as he could to limit the amount he kept for himself. This money had to stretch far, and in many directions.
He had borrowed from several people to build the diulau fortress home and the debt had to be paid back. His mother was over sixty and in poor health. When she passed on, then Six Fingers could come and join him in Gold Mountain. So he had starting saving to pay the head tax for Six Fingers.
He had something else in mind too: Kam Shan’s marriage. The boy was nearly sixteen. Back in Spur-On Village, all boys of that age would be betrothed. It’d be too late to wait until the matchmaker knocked on your door to save up for wedding presents.
He had not told anyone of these plans, not even his wife or his son. He just kept a tighter and tighter grip on the money he kept back. Every time he paid the hired hands their wages, he would turn away and try not to look at Kam Shan. His son’s eyes had a naked yearning in them. Ah-Fat could only pretend not to notice.
Ah-Fat knew that the small change his son filched from the accounts was insignificant compared with the wages he had denied him. Besides, they lived in a remote place, with no neighbours apart from a few yeung fan. Kam Shan, like any kid of that age, was filled with lively curiosity, yet he had not a single companion to amuse himself with. It was normal that he should go looking for a bit of fun in Vancouver. When Ah-Fat was Kam Shan’s age, Red Hair had taken him to explore all of Chinatown’s darkest corners.
As he whipped his son, he waited and prayed for Kam Sham to say something: a denial, an excuse, a protest, even an accusation. More than anything, he wanted Kam Shan to speak so that the beating could cease, so that he could accept his son’s plea or apology and save face. Then he would fetch the sausage-and-chicken rice he had kept warm all evening, and eat a late dinner with his son. He had had nothing to eat while he waited for Kam Shan’s return.
But Kam Shan said nothing. He did not make a single sound. The boy gave in to the gathering tide of rage which rose in his father. Kam Shan did not try to put even the smallest barrier in its way, and now that rage threatened to sweep away all before it.
“Is it daylight already? Why haven’t the cocks crowed?”
Ah-Lam emerged sleepy-eyed from inside the house carrying a small oil lamp. He was wearing a tattered old jacket which exposed his bare legs in the dim lamplight. His flaccid penis drooped between them, looking like a brown pipe begrimed by years of use.
Ah-Fat threw down the whip and frantically pushed him back into the house. Grabbing the lamp from him, he pulled a pair of trousers from the bed and threw them at him. “What’s all this nonsense? It’s still evening. You should be ashamed of yourself, parading around like that in front of Kam Shan.” Ah-Lam looked at him in a daze: “If your son’s here, why hasn’t Ah-Tak got here?”
Ah-Tak was Ah-Lam’s son. He was still in a village in Hoi Ping County. Ah-Lam had planned to scratch together the money for the head tax on Ah-Tak after his wife arrived, only he never expected his wife to die before she left the detention centre. Ah-Fat was alarmed at the dazed look in Ah-Lam’s eyes and attempted to calm him: “Put these trousers on and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll write to Ah-Tak for you and tell him to buy passage on the next boat.”
Ah-Lam bent over the trousers, trying unsuccessfully