Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [205]
“Get … out.”
The day after Mrs. Henderson’s funeral, Kam Ho was summoned to her lawyer’s office.
“According to her will, she’s settled her entire estate of four thousand dollars on you.”
Kam Ho was dumbfounded. After a pause, he said doubtfully: “But that’s impossible. She was dependent on her husband. She had no money of her own.”
The lawyer opened the filing cabinet and took out the will. He pointed to the already fading signature. “She made this will ten years ago,” he said. “At the time, the beneficiaries were her daughter, Jenny, and you. Now that Jenny is dead, you are the sole beneficiary. The money was a personal gift from Mrs. Henderson’s mother to her daughter, given to her before she married. She had the right to dispose of it as she wished.”
By the time Kam Ho came out of the lawyer’s, it was dark. A bonechilling wind whistled down the street and a bird sitting on the bare branch of a tree give a loud sibilant call. He looked up—it was a balding old blue jay. Kam Ho threw a stone at it. It squawked, before flying low over his head. Kam Ho remembered Mrs. Henderson’s claim that Jenny had sent her a message in the cherry blossoms after she died. He wondered if Mrs. Henderson was sending him a message now, with the bird.
Why, he thought, did you spend your whole life squeezing money out of your husband a few cents at a time, when you had a pile of money of your own? You could have bought all the opium juice you wanted! Why put yourself through hell? But there was no answer.
At last, the tears began to flow.
When he got back to the Hendersons’, the house was dark, but he knew Mr. Henderson was home by the faint smell of gin lingering in the kitchen and the passageway. He made his way upstairs in the dark. He did not want to turn on the lights and risk running into Mr. Henderson. He had packed his bag the night before; he retrieved it from the bed and went back downstairs.
Suddenly the light came on in the hallway, dazzling him for a few moments.
“Jimmy, why don’t you stay?” The tremulous voice was coming from the shadows.
Kam Ho did not answer. He slung his bag over his shoulder. He would open the door, go down the cracked front steps and be gone. This light, this man, this house, none of it had anything to do with him any more.
But the voice followed him and grovelled at his feet, clutching his trouser bottoms.
“I know you’re angry with me because I didn’t treat her well, but you know why that was?”
The voice paused a moment, then gathered strength and went on: “You. It was you.”
Kam Ho dropped his bag in surprise.
“It’s you I wanted, ever since the first day you arrived. But she got between us. I couldn’t get to you. So I kept out of the way. Those business trips, you know.
“I never wanted her. It wasn’t her fault. I just never liked women. Any women.”
A rotund pink face emerged from the shadows and pressed towards Kam Ho.
Kam Ho flung himself out the door and down the steps. On the last step, he twisted his ankle. He looked round but was relieved to see that Mr. Henderson was not following him. He sat down and rubbed the bump that was coming up. He reached for his bag, but realized that he had left it behind.
He had given up twenty-five years of his life in that house. Why was he bothering about a bag?
He walked and walked in the night air. His head felt viscous like the glue his mother used to paste the soles on his shoes when he was little. Throughout his life, he had walked only one road. It had been a long and hard one but the only effort required was from his feet. There was no need for thought. When he was young, it was his mother who had told him which road to take. When she said, Go to Gold Mountain, he got on the boat and went. After that, it was his father who chose his road. His father said, Go to the Hendersons’, and he went. Later still, it was Mrs. Henderson who showed him the road. She said stay, and he stayed. For twenty-five years.
The cheque in his pocket opened up countless roads before him. And now he would decide which one to take. He