Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [180]
Jenny squatted under the tree, watching the ants. The dog sprawled next to her, watching her watch the ants. There was not a sound to be heard, not even that of a leaf tumbling from the tree. The schoolchildren had gone to school; the office workers had gone to work. The street seemed as still and lifeless as a pricked bubble. Kam Ho looked up at the sky, then down at the ground. It was nearly midday and the shadows were thin.
Why haven’t they come? he wondered to himself.
It was not warm enough for the crickets to start chirping but he was beginning to sweat. He could actually have chosen a cool, shady corner in which to pluck the chicken clean but he preferred to sit where he was, with no shelter from the sun, because he got a better view of the street from one end to the other.
A faint sound reached his ears and he leapt up from his stool. It was a bell, a cart-horse bell. There were plenty of hawkers who sold their vegetables house to house but only one hung a bell around the horse’s neck. Kam Ho shaded his eyes with his hand and, as he peered into the distance, black dot came into view around the corner at the end of the street.
Kam Ho’s heart began to thump so loudly anyone in the garden could have heard it. He threw down the chicken, pulled off his apron and buttoned his shirt up to the neck. He had long ago grown out of the Chinese-style tunics and trousers he had on when he arrived. Instead, Mrs. Henderson bought his clothes for him: a Western-style outfit of waistcoat, shirt, trousers and leather shoes. And at last there was solid muscle and flesh inside them too. If it had not been for the ridiculous apron, no one would have imagined that this well-dressed, good-looking, strapping young man was actually the servant in the fine house behind him.
Kam Ho flew to the gate and then felt he had been too impulsive. He was just about to go back and wait in the garden when the dog shot past him into the street and set up a furious barking. The dog was old and jowly by now but his bark was as formidable as ever and the sound bounced off the walls of the houses. Kam Ho knew that the vegetable hawker’s daughter was afraid of dogs and would not get down if it was loose. He yelled at the animal but, bossy as ever, it gave an answering bark. It sounded as if man and dog were having an argument. The man finally got the upper hand and the dog skulked back into the garden with its tail between its legs.
As the cartwheels rolled nearer, Kam Ho heard a man’s hoarse voice shouting in a strong Cantonese accent: “Vegs, fresh, come!” The broken English reminded him of himself when he first arrived at the Hendersons’. He suppressed a smile. This was the girl’s father. Her English was a bit better than her dad’s, but he knew she was too shy to shout.
A handful of women emerged from the neighbours’ houses with baskets in their hands to cluster around the cart. Then Kam Ho heard her voice, thin and timid but floating clear above all the other voices. He listened as she and her father bargained, took the money and counted it, and gave back the change.
His heart hammered wildly in his chest. His money was damp from being clutched in his sweaty palm. Anxiously, he rehearsed his order as he waited his turn. Mrs. Henderson had turned all the housekeeping money over to him now and he was in sole charge of the food shopping. Kam Ho did not want to talk to the hawker’s daughter in front of this scrum of women and waited his chance to catch her on her own.
The chance finally came. The women dispersed and there was quiet around the cart. The girl sat down on an empty basket, pulled out a handkerchief tucked into her front and wiped her forehead. She was wearing a blue cotton tunic, buttoned slantwise, and wide-legged trousers. Her hair was tied with a red ribbon. Her garb was typical of a country girl from Canton, and he would have found it a little unrefined on anyone else. His tastes had become more discriminating in the years