Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [276]
Paul’s fifty-seventh birthday, with Ian, 22 March 1970
Kam Shan began counting on his fingers. If Paul was fifty-seven last year, he must have been born in 1913. He had left Sundance’s tribe in the autumn of the previous year, and Paul had been born the following spring.
In a flash, Kam Shan understood. He ran to the door. “Sundance!” he shouted. Her car had pulled away from the curb but she must have seen him frantically pursuing her in the rearview mirror. She braked and wound down the window. “So you’re finally going to make a date with me, are you?”
He held the photo up in front of her.
“Whose child is Paul?” he asked.
Sundance was taken aback. Her smile froze on her face.
The answer was a long time in coming.
“Mine.”
Kam Shan had a fall that evening in the bathroom. Just like in a Hollywood film, everything happened in slow motion. He got out of the bathtub, very slowly got dressed, sat down to put on his slippers, and then slipped slowly from the chair to the floor.
He had not had an acute attack of any kind.
It was possible that, after working so hard all his life, he had just died of old age and exhaustion.
At least, that was the diagnosis the doctor gave to Yin Ling after cursory examination of Kam Shan’s body.
Yin Ling did not dare look the doctor in the eye.
If hard work could be measured in pounds and ounces, she hated to think how much extra weight she had added during her father’s lifetime.
She had been working that night at the restaurant. She was now the manager. When the hospital called first, she was eating her dinner and refused to take the call. The old man would do anything to get her to the house, she thought. It was only when they called for the third time that she realized something was seriously wrong. She drove like the wind but when she arrived at his bedside, her father’s heartbeat was very feeble.
“Amy’s on her way, Dad. Wait, please wait,” Yin Ling begged him.
His lips trembled, and there was a spike in the heart monitor. She pressed her ear close to his mouth, but his voice was very faint.
She heard just a couple of words: “…kapok flowers…”
He was thinking of the red kapok blossom of his home village.
The doctor filled in the death certificate.
Time of death: 11:27 p.m., 1 February 1971.
Yin Ling watched as the nurse pulled the sheet over her father’s face. She tried very, very hard to call up the tears, but they seemed to have abandoned her. A desert, that was what she was, a waterless desert.
She balled up her hand in a fist. Crumpled inside was a news cutting which she had brought to show her father.
It read as follows:
Today was a red-letter day for the Canadian Pacific Railway company, as a nine-person delegation from Red China rode first class in one of its carriages from Montreal to Ottawa. Sub-zero temperatures outside could not dampen the spirits of the delegates as they broke the ice of a twenty-year-long Cold War. The delegation was setting out in search of a site on which to build the new Chinese Embassy. This breakthrough is due to the persistence of Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet in the face of criticism of his policy to establish diplomatic relations with China. The Communist Chinese have always harboured friendly feelings towards Canada thanks to the heroic work of Dr. Norman Bethune in wartime China. This time around, as Ottawans will soon realize, the Chinese are here to stay and will soon establish themselves as part of the scenery.
Afterword
2004
Hoi Ping, Guangdong Province
A sheet of plastic. A basket of fruit. A trowel. A bunch of incense sticks.
“Shall we dig the hole?” Mr. Auyung asked Amy.
“Wait a moment. I can’t talk to the spirit of my great-grandmother through this.”
Amy removed the plastic sheet and knelt on the ground. It was still dewy, and the dampness seeped through her trousers to her knees.
Amy bowed low.
The tombstone had only been erected yesterday. It was of plain white stone with the following names carved