Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [195]
Till now, Kam Ho had been content to disregard the letters and photographs his mother sent him, but today was different. Something his mother said needled him, not painfully, but perceptibly. It disturbed his peace of mind.
“If you don’t come home and get married, your father will never live to see a Fong grandson.”
It was a reminder to Kam Ho that his father would be sixty-five this year. That was the yeung fan way of reckoning it; they lopped off the beginning and the end of life. Back in Spur-On Village, people included both ends in their tabulation; by their reckoning, Ah-Fat was sixty-seven, only three years off an age almost unheard of in the countryside. Kam Ho shivered involuntarily. He dried his hands on his apron and took the photograph from the envelope, put it in his pocket and went to the living room.
He could not wait any longer. He had to tell her. Today.
He walked in to find Mrs. Henderson curled up on the floor, her forehead beaded with sweat. She was having an arthritic attack. He was about to help her up when she stretched out a hand and pointed to the kitchen. He knew that meant the opium juice. He had bought some last week but only the dregs remained. He could not buy more for another three days when Mr. Henderson gave him the housekeeping money. He got the bottle and rinsed it out with water, adding half a teaspoon of brown sugar to the diluted mixture. Then he poured it into a black cup to disguise its pale colour and handed it to Mrs. Henderson.
She took a mouthful. “Jimmy, you’re as big a cheat as the rest of them!” she wailed, and smashed the cup down. It shattered, and the opium and water mixture trickled across the floor. Kam Ho looked at the claw-like hand that still held the handle; Mrs. Henderson’s bones looked as if they had been bored by locusts. The opium juice acted as an insecticide, but no sooner had it killed one swarm than another took its place. They plagued her bones, and the opium could not kill them all.
Kam Ho squatted down to clean up the broken china. He was doing sums in his head, wondering if he ought to dig into his own savings to buy her some juice. He picked her up and carried her to her bed. He got a towel to wipe the sweat from her forehead. She reached out one hand and gripped him fiercely by the front of his shirt. He struggled to free himself and some of his buttons came off. His mind was on other matters today but Mrs. Henderson was not going to take no for an answer. Her hand followed the familiar route through the opening of his shirt, but today it was as if her hand had scales. Her touch irritated him.
Suddenly Kam Ho had had enough. He shrugged off her hand, pulled up her dress and, forcing open her legs, thrust himself into her. It was the first time he had ever taken the initiative. Now, he took her without ceremony, like a rough-mannered peasant. Mrs. Henderson was so startled that she struggled to sit up—then realized that the pains in her joints had disappeared.
It was not the first time she had felt the pain ebb away when he was with her. The locusts had not the slightest compunction in what they did to her aging body. They had no fear of her but they did fear him. His vigour swept them away like sand carried down by a stream in spate.
Kam Ho was covered in sweat, and worry tugged at him. He turned his head to look at her. Mrs. Henderson lay pink-cheeked, sweat-soaked tendrils of hair clinging to her forehead and a faint smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She was not displeased. He relaxed.
Starting from when they first became intimate, he gradually gained confidence. She hesitated about giving him money but, all the