Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [245]
“Go to the Fat Kei Herbalists with a bag of walnut and red bean cookies,” he ordered, “and talk to the herbalist’s mother. Get her to give you some medicine to get rid of it. Tell her you’ve fallen pregnant but you’re too old to bring up a baby. The herbalist’s a good son. He’ll do what his mother tells him.”
When Cat Eyes understood what Ah-Fat was saying, a look of embarrassment crossed her face. “What are you waiting for, woman?” Ah-Fat shouted. “There’s no time to lose. If it’s too late to get rid of it, who’s going to marry her?”
Cat Eyes turned the house upside down before she finally found some paper to wrap the cookies.
The mixture the herbalist gave her was effective. Yin Ling began to bleed, and for weeks on end, the blood continued to trickle out.
When the bleeding finally stopped, Kam Shan tried to persuade Yin Ling to go back to school and finish her studies. But Yin Ling was adamant. “I’d rather kill myself” was her response. Kam Shan was afraid she might be as good as her word if he pushed her too hard, so instead Yin Ling started work at the Lychee Garden Restaurant as a waitress like her mother.
She did not stay long. In fact, she had scarcely had time to learn the names of the drinks on the wine list and the dishes on the menu when she was gone again. This time she went off with a yeung fan called John, regular customer who had taken a fancy to her the moment he set eyes on her. It happened right under Cat Eyes’ nose, but she never noticed. And so, four months after she came home, Yin Ling left again.
This time, she was gone for more than ten years. When she came back again, her grandfather and mother had both died, and only her father remained.
This time, she brought with her a daughter, whose name was Amy.
One day in early summer, 2004, a Canadian woman named Amy Smith, accompanied by a government official, Mr. Auyung, went to pay her respects at the Fong ancestral hall. In the records of the Fong Tak Fat family, she found the following text:
Fong Tak Fat’s younger son, Fong Kam Ho, married a woman of the Au family, of Wai Yeung Village, in year eighteen of the Republic; they had one son, Yiu Kei, who died aged nine years. In year twenty-nine of the Republic, Fong Kam Ho donated four thousand Canadian dollars to the Nationalist government in Guangdong to buy planes to fight the Japanese, in recognition of which he was awarded a commemorative medal for his patriotism. In the same year, Fong Kam Ho enlisted in the Canadian army and worked as a special agent in a small town in the southwest of France, gathering intelligence and training members of the Resistance. He was betrayed in year thirty-four of the Republic on the eve of the Allied victory and was killed. A bridge in the town was renamed Jimmy Fong Bridge in his honour. (Jimmy Fong was Fong Kam Ho’s English name.)
8
Gold Mountain Blues
Year thirty of the Republic (1941)
Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China
Six Fingers and Mak Dau noticed the plane overhead as they made their way home with Wai Kwok.
Wai Kwok had just started attending his parents’ school, where he was a boarder. Yesterday, Kam Sau sent a message from the school that her son was ill. He had been treated by a Western-trained doctor but, although his temperature had gone down, he was still very tired. Could someone pick him up and take him back to the village for a few days’ rest at the diulau?
Six Fingers carried a bag full of hot spring rolls stuffed with bean sprouts, which she had made fresh that morning. She left half with Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen to share; the other half was for them to eat on the way home.
The whole world was at war these days, and the postal system was in chaos along with everything else. Since Six Fingers could not depend on dollar letters, she had to sell off some of their land. It was a good thing she had bought some land cheaply when things were more settled a few years back. It meant she could sell it off now at a profit, one mu at a time, to put food on their table.
Six Fingers was keeping an ever