Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [243]
It was about a month ago, but no one knew exactly which day it had happened. Rick had not been taking the dog out for its usual walk, the neighbour told Ah-Fat, and one day they heard the dog barking and barking. Finally the neighbour banged on the door and, when there was no answer, broke in and found Rick lying dead on the kitchen floor. He had been dead for some days and the rats had gnawed out his eyes. The dog lay dead next to him.
The next day, Ah-Fat bought a bunch of flowers and took them up the mountain to pay his respects to Rick.
It was not the first time he had been up the mountain.
There was the occasion when Jenny, Rick’s daughter, had died, then another occasion when Rick’s wife, Phyllis, died. This visit was his third. He put down the bunch of white chrysanthemums, a little withered from the frost, and took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He put one cigarette on the gravestone, lit the other and squatted on the ground to smoke it.
You had rotten luck, Rick. You bought this plot for your wife and daughter to bury you here. But you ended up burying them first and there was no one to bury you.
“You’ve gone, you bastard, and I’m the only one left,” Ah-Fat muttered to himself.
Out of all those who built the railroad, was what he meant.
There were thirty-one of them in the team, including their foreman, Rick. Many of them died as they blasted their way through the Rockies, Red Hair among them. And many more were lost trying to get home when the work was finished and they were sacked. Some starved to death later, in Victoria, and of those who did not, some went back to Guangdong. Only four remained in Vancouver. Ah-Lam had died thirty years ago, and another died the year before last. Now Rick was dead and only Ah-Fat remained.
There were so many stories from the railroad-building days. Why had he never thought of recording them? Now, even though he could still remember, he could not write them down any more, and he would take them to his grave. Those untold tales would be trapped in his casket, waiting for weeds and moss to obscure them permanently.
As he went down the mountain, he suddenly felt as if a muscle was missing from his leg and he could not stand straight. Just like that, his whole body had suddenly shrunk.
Maybe I really am old, he thought. I suppose I must be—I’m getting close to eighty.
He hobbled down the road on his way home. From a distance, he could see the lights of Chinatown coming on, faint spots of good cheer dotted here and there in the gathering darkness. However grim life was, you had to celebrate New Year, he thought. When he got home, he would bring the festive lanterns down from the attic, dust them off and hang them up.
He thought about the family in China, in the village in Hoi Ping. There had been no letters from home for a long time, since Hong Kong fell to the Japanese. How was Six Fingers getting on? He had not seen her in more than twenty years, and if it were not for the photographs, her face would have faded from his memory.
He was trying to find his key when he stubbed his foot on a bundle lying by his front door. Why was his family so lazy they could not be bothered to take the rubbish out, he mumbled angrily. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the bundle moved and got to its feet. “Granddad!” Ah-Fat nearly buckled at the knees in fright. He took a closer look. This was clearly no ghost; he could see the breath coming from its nostrils in the cold air. Without bothering with his key, he rapped thunderously on the door. “Yin Ling’s back!” he shouted.
A moment later, Cat Eyes opened the door, Kam Shan behind her. They turned on the lights to see a figure covered in dirt and enveloped in an overcoat so impregnated with dust it was impossible to tell the original colour. In the half-light, the grey lips cracked open to reveal flesh-pink gums. “Mum, Dad!