Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [252]
Their teacher, Fong Kam Sau, lay on the rostrum.
She was fully dressed and she lay perfectly straight, her face ashen as a corpse prepared for burial. A woman went to give her a shake, then pulled back her hand as if she had seen a ghost. Kam Sau was staring blankly at the ceiling, a glassy look in her eyes. When the woman had recovered from her fright, she held her hand under Kam Sau’s nose and was relieved to feel a slight warmth on her fingers.
The crotch of Kam Sau’s trousers was stiff with blood. Under her lay a bloody, reeking lump of flesh.
“Her baby!” the woman shrieked.
Years thirty-three to thirty-four of the Republic (1944–1945)
Vancouver, British Columbia
Sundance: Thirty years ago, a Chinese man called Fong stayed at your home. He behaved like an ignorant fool, and begs you to forgive him. He has spent years searching for you. If you see this notice, you will find him any Saturday morning at the Burnaby vegetable market.
Classified Ads page of the Vancouver Sun, 5 June 1944
Kam Shan had a dream that night.
The images were crystal clear. They appeared in colour and he could even smell them.
The bristle grass was waist high, the tips of its furry spikes gleaming silver in the sunlight. There was a rustling sound as a mangy dog crept through the brush. He was behind the dog, keeping as close as he could to someone in front. He could not see the person’s face, only a pair of legs under a rawhide skirt running with the agile gait of a deer, and a head of long, tawny hair which streamed in the wind. No matter how fast he ran, he could not catch up. Once he got close enough to grasp a hank of the hair, it slithered through his fingers and was gone.
He woke up with a shout, and sat up, his face covered in sweat.
“Stop it! You’re kicking like a mule!” grunted Cat Eyes. It was dawn and there was a grey light coming through the curtains. Outside, the street was waking up. This was the time when Cat Eyes most craved sleep; she would not stir from her bed till midday.
“Who the hell’s Sundance?” she grumbled. Without waiting for an answer, she turned over and went back to sleep.
Did I really shout “Sundance”? Kam Shan wondered to himself.
He had been dreaming the same dream for months. The same grass, the same expanse of blue sky, the same sun, the same dog, the same woman. He even jerked awake at the same moment each time. Sometimes he woke up for a piss and afterwards would take up his dream at the point where it had been interrupted.
Were Sundance’s gods calling him?
Kam Shan and his father, Ah-Fat, had been growing bean sprouts at home for some years now. Sometimes they supplied supermarkets; sometimes they sold the bean sprouts to hawkers. Many of the hawkers were Indians. The women, especially the younger ones, often attracted Kam Shan’s attention. Could one of them be Sundance? He laughed at his own foolishness. She had only been a year or two younger than he, so she would be middle-aged by now. Still, he always imagined her as a young girl.
Yet in all these years, although he had had dealings with many Redskins, he had never run into Sundance, or even any member of her family. The year before the war started he had written to her, but the letter, after much forwarding, had been returned to him undelivered. He knew that many Redskins had left their reserve to work in the city, so perhaps she was in Vancouver. But even if she brushed against him in the street, she probably would not know him. How could she recognize in this puny little man hobbling along with his lame leg the fiery youth she had once known?
Kam Shan wiped the sweat from his forehead and lay down again. With Cat Eyes’ snores reverberating in his ears, all thoughts of sleep vanished.
As Cat Eyes put on weight over the years, her snores grew louder. Kam Shan, on the other hand, slept more lightly. Sometimes he could not sleep at all and lay watching her. Her slack mouth hung open, and he could see her tongue moving back and forth with each snore. It was all