Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [139]
Though Kam Shan read the newspapers, he did not fully understand Chinese national politics. He did not doubt, however, that Mr. Fung’s campaign was brilliantly clever. He started to filch small change from the proceeds of the produce to put in the collection box at the newspaper office. Mr. Fung always counted Kam Shan’s donations carefully, wrote him out a receipt for the “loan” and told him that he would get double the amount back once the revolution succeeded. Kam Shan smiled but his thoughts were not on repayment. He gave because Mr. Fung inspired him. The revolution was a far-off, hazy prospect for Kam Shan, out of sight and out of mind. Mr. Fung made him feel as if he could reach it, but the vision dimmed as soon as he stepped out of the Times office and into the street. As the sweat-stained receipts filled his jacket pocket, he wondered how he could ever explain to his dad where the money had gone.
Kam Shan knew that Mr. Fung was a Hung Mun secret society member, and that the Times was a Hung Mun newspaper. If the head of the Hung Mun, called the Cudgel, had come to Vancouver that meant something significant was going to happen. “What’s the Cudgel’s name?” he asked excitedly. “Sun Yat-sen,” said the old man. Kam Shan remembered having read the name frequently in Mr. Fung’s articles. “Where are they now?” he asked. “Giving a lecture in the theatre in Canton Street. There are thousands of people there.” All thoughts of meeting his father at the cake shop immediately went out of Kam Shan’s head, and he pushed open the door and raced off down the street.
As he hitched up his gown and ran, he did not notice the dense clouds massing like cotton wool above his head. The wind blew up eddies of dust, tickling his nostrils. But Kam Shan ran on, unaware that fate was drawing him deep into an abyss, trapping him in a predicament for which he was completely unprepared.
When he got to the door of the theatre, the sky opened. All of a sudden, it poured down so intensely that not even the most agile of passersby could avoid the deluge. One of Kam Shan’s feet was over the threshold of the theatre when the rain started, but the rain caught his back foot, and by the time it crossed the threshold to join the first, his gown was drenched. It was of rough blue cotton, stoutly sewn, but the dye was not fast and the rain made the colour run. As the rainwater dripped from it, Kam Shan left river of blue water behind him. Once inside the building, Kam Shan dropped the hem of his gown and wiped the rain from his face with one hand, smearing it a ghastly indigo as he did so.
The theatre was full to bursting with people standing in the aisles, but they all fell back as this blue apparition approached. So Kam Shan squeezed his way through, and found a place to stand near a pillar. He rested against it, and suddenly felt cold. The wet gown seemed to encase him in a layer of ice which needled him all over. Very soon, he felt an urgent need to piss.
The urge impinged on his consciousness, bluntly at first, but then gradually became more and more acute until he could stand it no longer. He was overcome by a fit of shivering—and then something seemed to snap. He felt a warm dampness in the crotch of his trousers. If I go just a tiny bit, he thought to himself, then it’ll let up and I’ll be able to hang on.
But once unlocked, the floodgates opened; all he could do was cross his legs tightly as the warm urine ran down his legs to his ankles, and then dripped from his trouser cuffs onto the floor. The cloudy yellow of the urine mixed with the indigo dye and trickled in a zigzag down the aisle. It reeked to Kam Shan, but when he looked around, he was relieved to see that none of his neighbours, engrossed in the speeches, had noticed.
He could relax now, though he was still cold. If he stood on tiptoe, he could see the whole stage. On it stood half a dozen men, all of whom were in Western dress except for one, who wore a gown