Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [166]
Ah-Fat hitched up his gown, knelt in the road and kowtowed three times before his mother. She could not see him but she could smell the dust raised by the knocking of her son’s head. “I won’t forget your kindness, Mother,” he said. “When I get back to Gold Mountain, I’ll earn masses of money so you can buy masses of land. And if I can’t come home every year, then I’ll get Kam Shan to come home and pay his respects to you like good grandson.”
At the mention of Kam Shan, Mrs. Mak’s grim expression relaxed and a flicker of a smile appeared on her face.
“You go back and tell Kam Shan that the sugared almonds that he sent were very nice, but they were much too hard for me. Remind him Granny hasn’t got too many teeth left and next time he should send something softer.”
Ah-Fat grunted assent and glanced sidelong at Six Fingers. They both smiled but said nothing. They had kept Kam Shan’s disappearance from Mrs. Mak but she nagged Six Fingers for news of him. In the end, Six Fingers was cornered. She penned a couple of letters “from Kam Shan” herself and read bits of them out to the old woman. Ah-Fat had brought a few curios with him and passed them off as presents from Kam Shan, and Mrs. Mak had suspected nothing. It was only now that Kam Shan had returned that Ah-Fat and Six Fingers could relax their vigilance.
So Six Fingers’ journey to Gold Mountain was a hurried decision made that morning—but one that took Mrs. Mak twenty years to resign herself to.
When Ah-Fat arrived back in Gold Mountain, he burned incense and prayed every day. He was determined to save up the head tax for Six Fingers as soon as possible even if it meant postponing repayment of the debts from the diulau. Harvests improved and his savings grew. Within two years, he had enough for the head tax.
When Ah-Fat had finished his prayers to Tam Kung, he went to make up the bed. The cotton wadding in the quilt was not brand new but he had fluffed it up and it was nice and soft. The old quilt cover was threadbare from much washing, so Ah-Fat had bought a new one of fine linen, English-made, from the department store in Vancouver. He planned to change the quilt cover. After that, he would set off with the horse and cart to buy a few household necessities in town, and then to the barber for shave. By then it should be just about time to go and meet the boat. It was due to dock at three o’clock.
Ah-Fat was just sewing up the quilt when the hired hand, Loong Am, put his head through the door and said: “Now that Auntie is coming, we can have soup for dinner. We won’t have to eat the mouldy rice you cook up every day that even a pig would turn up its nose at.” Ah-Fat spat out the end of the thread. “You’ve got a lot of nerve moaning that you’re hard up, you young punk,” he retorted, “as if you haven’t done well out of me for years. And even if I give you a few extra cents it won’t get you sons and grandchildren. You’re better off going home to get yourself a wife, then she can cook you tasty soup whenever you want.”
Loong Am gave a cackle of laughter. “You’re so stingy, Uncle, you don’t let a cent slip through your fingers. I’ll never make any money from you. I’m lucky to get enough to eat, let alone a wife.”
Ah-Fat gave Loong Am the needle and thread. He was getting longsighted, and finding it more and more difficult to thread needles, write letters and cut his fingernails. “Uncle, my kid brother saw Kam Shan a few days ago in Kamloops,” Loong Am said as he poked the thread through the needle’s eye.
Ah-Fat did not answer, but the hand holding the scissors paused in mid-air.
After Kam Shan left two years ago, he wandered from place to place. He did not dare show his face in Vancouver because he had snatched the girl from the brothel. He had been heard of in Port Hope, and then Yale. At New Year, he had mailed his father a cheque for fifty dollars. There was no address on the envelope, but the postmark was Lytton. Ah-Fat had been there when he was building the railroad, though nothing now remained of it. It was hard to imagine what Kam Shan had been up to, to