Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [24]
That evening, Ah-Fat sold all his charcoal and limped back in through the door later than usual. The cloth shoes he had brought with him had long since worn through. He stuffed them with two layers of oilcloth and bound his feet with the strips. This made the shoes tight so that they rubbed his feet sore. Everyone had already eaten; a bowl of rice gruel, a strip of salted fish and two chicken claws were left in the pan for him. Ah-Fat pulled off his shoes, sat down on the bed plank, got the gruel and drank it down. Then he started to unwind the foot cloths, but the sores had formed scabs which stuck to them. He jerked them free and found his feet covered in blood.
Ah-Sing came over with a basin of warm water and told Ah-Fat to wash his feet. He immersed them in the water, frowning with a sharp intake of breath as he did so. Ah-Sing said the leather shoes made by the Redskins were really good. “They’re lighter than a fart, with a helluva nice fur lining, warm as a charcoal burner, and they won’t wear out in a hundred years. You should barter a bag of charcoal for a pair. Otherwise, your feet won’t last a Gold Mountain winter.” Ah-Fat started to work out in his head how much a bag of charcoal would sell for, but did not say anything.
A dark mass of men were crammed onto the bed planks, some picking their teeth, some rubbing at the skin of their feet, others smoking. Only Red Hair lay in a corner, head pillowed on a broken Chinese fiddle, gazing vacantly at the ceiling. In the summer, after their arrival in port, Red Hair had been to the North to find out about gold panning. He was told that even in the North, the gold was exhausted. The sandy debris had been panned two or three times too. In the end, he turned round and returned to Victoria. On the way, he found the Chinese fiddle, which became a treasured possession. Every now and then he would pick out some Cantonese melodies to relieve the boredom.
The men began to tease him: “You know they say you were gold panning with a man in Cariboo when you found a gold nugget as big as a man’s fist. You hid it in the crotch of your trousers, and made off with it the same night. Is that true?” “Mother-fuckers!” Red Hair swore at them. “Do you think I’d still be living in this damned room of Ah-Sing’s if I had nugget as big as a fist?” “Then how did you pay for such a fancy wedding feast?” they asked him. “You had over a hundred chickens slaughtered, and that was just for starters, so we heard.” “I scrimped and saved for ten years and more,” said Red Hair. “Why shouldn’t I kill a few chickens?” But no one believed him. They crowded around and tried to pull his trousers off, shouting: “Lets see if there’s a gold nugget in your crotch!” Red Hair flailed and shoved until he finally fought his way out. He stood up, holding his trousers up and said: “Ah-Fat, write a letter for me to my old woman. She’ll run off with another man if I don’t write.”
The oil lamp was hurriedly twiddled so it gave more light. Someone ground ink in the ink stone, spread out the paper, chose a quill and handed it to Ah-Fat. Of all the men in the room, only Ah-Fat had done a year or two in a tutor school and could write a few characters, so writing everyone’s letters home fell to him. Ah-Fat took the pen, smoothed the tip to a point on the ink stone and waited for Red Hair to speak. Red Hair clutched his head and scratched his cheeks for a long time, and finally said: “Are Mum and young Loon both well?” There was an uproar in the room, and shouts of “Rubbish! You should ask your old lady if she’s all right! We all know she’s the one you miss.” But Red Hair just told Ah-Fat to get on and write, and ignored them.
“Did you get the bank draft for twenty dollars I sent with Uncle Kwan Kow from Bak Chuen village?” he continued. But before Ah-Fat had put pen to paper, Red Hair started to swear: “Fuck it, you received it and you didn’t write me a word in reply. You’re so lazy, you’ve got maggots growing under your feet.” “Is that what