Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [198]
“Did you see any of Gold Mountain Cloud’s performances?” she asked as they finished.
“When she came to Vancouver, I saw all twelve performances. I sat in the front row, right in the middle. It was twenty cents a ticket, really cheap.”
“How did she sing?”
“She hadn’t made a name for herself back then but she sung the male roles so strongly she made the rafters vibrate. She could beat a dozen male singers any day. As soon as I heard her I knew she was destined for great things.”
The woman opened her eyes and extended a couple of fingers. “May I have a cigarette, please?” she asked. Ah-Fat pulled the packet from his pocket and lit one for her, then one for himself. Her teeth were stained yellow, he noticed. She must have been a heavy smoker for many years. She certainly smoked with style—legs crossed, head tipped back, her extended fingers trembling slightly. Then the smoke rings would waft gently from between her lips, floating upwards, gradually losing definition until they bumped against the walls and dissolved one by one into the air.
“You really think Gold Mountain Cloud was good?” she persisted. Ah-Fat laughed out loud. “I was a huge fan of hers,” he said. “It took me an hour to walk there every day but I was always there before they opened up. After the performance, I used to hang around in the hopes that I could get a word in. But I was just a fish-cannery worker—she had a rich gentleman waiting to take her to dinner every night. After the last performance, though, she sent me a record as a gift and that’s the one I’m playing now.”
The woman turned around and stared Ah-Fat in the face. “That scar on your face. It’s hardly noticeable any more.”
Ah-Fat was astonished. After a long pause, he asked: “Is it really you? Gold Mountain Cloud?”
She answered simply: “It was all so long ago, like another life.”
After she had made a name for herself in San Francisco, she took up with one of her admirers, a rich Hawaiian Chinese called Huang. She left the stage, married him and they settled in Honolulu. For a few years, she lived the life of a wealthy lady. Then one day, Huang fell foul of a gangland dealer and was stabbed to death in an opium den. Gold Mountain Cloud was forced to return to San Francisco, where she went back on the stage, taking any singing parts she could get. In the intervening years new roles had taken the place of the old ones for which she was famous, so she could only get minor accompanying parts. Later still, she lost her voice and even those parts dried up. Once famous far beyond Gold Mountain, now she was forgotten. She was reduced to relying on handouts from her elder brother, who had given up singing long before and ran a small store in Montreal. She did not get on with her sister-in-law and when, last month, her brother died of tuberculosis, Gold Mountain Cloud came to Vancouver.
“Where are you living? What are you doing for a living now?” asked Ah-Fat.
“I look after props and costumes at the theatre. I can sleep in a corner of the wardrobe room, which saves me paying rent.”
“Do they pay you?”
“Enough for a bowl of noodles.”
Ah-Fat gave a long sigh. After such fame and wealth, to be reduced to such poverty. What could he say?
That Saturday evening, after serving the Hendersons their dinner Kam Ho set off for home. As he passed the gate, he saw his father waiting for him at the end of the street. Fear seized his heart and he ran down the street. “What’s happened?” His father said nothing, just pulled out his cigarettes and gave him one, taking another for himself. Ah-Fat stood there without moving, smoking his cigarette, until the ash at the tip trembled and dropped to the ground. Finally he asked Kam Ho: “Have you brought any money with you?”
Kam Ho was silent. His trip back home and his marriage to Ah-Hsien