Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [237]
When it got dark Yin Ling escaped from the basement room and made her way to Johnny’s tavern. She walked in through the empty room, where she and Johnny greeted each other, and she went straight to the kitchen. Johnny had got into the manager’s good books, and a job was found for Yin Ling making sandwiches and washing up.
“D’you think she’s pretty?” Johnny would say when he introduced her. “Her father’s French and her mother’s Vietnamese.”
Yin Ling had had her hair cut and waved. She learned to pluck her eyebrows into a fine line, and put on dark blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick. When she looked in the mirror she began to imagine that she really did have a few drops of French blood in her veins. She had copied this style of makeup from pinups in magazines she found lying around at the tavern. “You don’t look like a schoolgirl any more,” said Johnny. She supposed this must be a compliment.
As time passed in Red Deer, she began to relax and was less careful about concealing her presence in the basement.
One day, she and Johnny came home in the early hours as usual, but Johnny’s key would not open the door. After a moment or two of fumbling with the lock, Johnny was surprised when the door opened and the Dutch couple came out.
“How long has she been living here?” asked the landlady, pointing at Yin Ling.
Johnny started to say something in reply, but the woman interrupted:
“My son is fighting in Europe for freedom and you bring this Chinese trash into my house and do filthy things with her under my very nose!” she raged.
“Out!” shouted the man, his finger in Johnny’s face. There was a thud as something flew past them. It was the bag full of Johnny’s possessions.
Before Johnny could finish saying “Her father is French.…” the door banged shut.
As soon as it got light, Johnny and Yin Ling started looking for somewhere to stay. They knocked on every door with a To Let sign on it. Johnny’s opening gambit started as “Have you got a room to let for myself and my wife?” then changed to “Have you got a room each to let to the two of us?” and ended up as “Have you got a room to let to this young lady?” With the first approach, the householder would look meaningfully at their unadorned ring fingers. With the second and the third, the landlord’s eyes would freeze on Yin Ling’s face. There would be no questions to either of them, just the simple answer: No.
And no again.
Before it was time for lunch, they realized that there was nowhere in the world that would take in an unmarried couple, especially when one of them was Chinese.
Johnny looked as deflated as a punctured football as he walked along with Yin Ling following behind. His belly rumbled along with his footsteps and he finally threw his bag down on the curb, sat down on it and lit cigarette. Yin Ling watched as he smoked it moodily, then cautiously asked: “How about I go over the road and ask?”
She pointed at a shop opposite called the Wen Ah Tsun Store. Upstairs in a tiny attic window, there was a notice scrawled in Chinese: Nice Room To Let.
Johnny did not say yes or no. He just got another cigarette out of his pocket and lit it from the butt of the first.
Yin Ling entered the store. Behind the counter stood a middle-aged Chinese woman drinking a bowl of rice porridge. Yin Ling asked abruptly: “How much is the room?” The woman looked her up and down. “Where are you from? Are you a student? I know every one of the Chinese in this town but I’ve never seen you before.”
Yin Ling said nothing. She had learned as they went from door to door today that there was no answer good enough to get her and Johnny a door key. So she chose silence instead.
“Thirty dollars a month, not including meals.”
The woman was bluffing. She did not imagine for a moment that Yin Ling would accept this inflated figure and