Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [216]
Ah-Yuen had grown tall, sprouting like new grass after a spring shower. Seated next to his father, he clearly took after him, though he was much thinner. He shared his father’s love of guns and knew all the foreign and local makes. Mr. Auyung lent him books to read on armaments too. Mr. Auyung compared China to a lion with a festering boil on its body. If the boil did not heal in time then the lion would never get to its feet again. What was to be done? Mr. Auyung asked his students. Open a school and educate all the people so that they wake up, everyone answered in unison. Everyone, that is, but Ah-Yuen.
Ah-Yuen said running a school was a long-term project, like administering Chinese medicine to someone with an acute disease. If the medicine was too slow-acting then the lion might die first. A quick surgical operation, such as Western doctors performed, was what was needed in order to save the lion, according to Ah-Yuen. Military might was the only way to expel Westerners and Japanese and put China back on its feet. Ah-Yuen excelled in his studies and always came first in every subject. But when he engaged in heated discussions he was full of bravura, a quality which Kam Sau found both attractive and alarming at the same time.
Ah-Yuen’s father had lived with the Fongs for many years, so many that he had carried Kam Shan and Kam Ho around on his back as babies. He used to call the boys the “young masters” until Six Fingers had finally persuaded him to address them by their given names. When the Fongs’ first steward, Ha Kau, died, Mak Dau took over responsibility for the house and farm. He was, however, still a servant; he and his family ate with the other servants, and they washed their laundry in a different pool from the Fongs.
Ah-Yuen, born the son of a servant, should have remained a servant too, according to the old way of doing things. But Six Fingers had, with a slight nudge, set his life on a different course: she had sent him, as well as her daughter, to the best school for miles around. Six Fingers’ decision opened the boy’s eyes to the big, wide world beyond the narrow confines of their home village. Ah-Yuen was actually more mentally agile and shrewder than Kam Sau. Where she scurried along, he raced ahead, showing Kam Sau the way.
Ah-Yuen was always attentive to Kam Sau but never humble in the way that his father was. Kam Sau knew that her mother wanted Ah-Yuen as a live-in son-in-law and was smoothing the way forward for him, enabling him to walk tall, so that by the time he went in through the door of her bridal chamber he would be a respectable young gentleman. To move into the bride’s house may have lowered him in the eyes of society but not in the eyes of his future mother-in-law. Six Fingers was infinitely clever. What she wanted, she made sure she got.
By the time Kam Sau got downstairs, her mother had lit the stove and was gently reheating the pigs’ trotters of the night before. As the jelly softened and melted, the most delicious smell wafted through the house. While Six Fingers waited for the dish to be ready, she felt in her pocket for a bamboo comb to do her daughter’s hair. She undid the braids and Kam Sau’s gleaming thick hair tumbled over her knees. The sharp teeth of the comb cut through the hair as easily as butter, and the steady strokes gave Kam Sau a feeling of languorous pleasure.
She rested against her mother and asked idly: “Are you giving my sister-in-law a bowl of the trotters?” She meant her brother Kam Ho’s wife. “Huh, she can come down on her own two feet, can’t she? A hungry rat will find its own food.