Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [36]
He gave it a kick and the thing moaned—it was a man.
The cook lit a lantern and by its light saw a lump of blackened flesh. The flesh moved, revealing two rows of pink gums.
“The bank … the bank draft,” Ah-Fat mumbled.
When the railroad reached the town of Emory the cook’s worst fears came true.
It was almost unheard of for the Fraser River to freeze over, but that winter it was covered with a thick layer of ice. The boats of the supply teams could not get through, the camp was cut off and the rice rapidly ran out. Work on the railroad halted and several hundred navvies were trapped in their camps.
Preparing the rice each day became a time-consuming business. First a few spoonfuls of rice grain were boiled to a thin porridge. The wok with the porridge in it was put outside the tent to freeze solid, then three or four times the quantity of water was added. The porridge was boiled up and then put out to freeze again. This was repeated three times until the few spoons of rice grain had turned into a wok-ful of porridge, enough for a big bowl each. The trouble was this food would not stay put in their bellies. At first they felt full enough to burst, but as soon as they had walked a couple of paces, they farted and then felt ravenously hungry again.
The potatoes had long since been eaten up. The first two days after supplies dried up, there were a couple of slivers of salt fish to add to the rice, then there was just half a spoonful of salt. By the fourth day, that was finished too, and all that was left was one meal a day of watery rice gruel. Eventually, the cook washed out the wok, giving each man a little of the rice water. Then he threw down the ladle and said: “You’ll have to look after yourselves from now on.”
They all knew this was the last mouthful of food but no one said anything. For the starving, even a sigh is a waste of effort. They did not measure their energy in pounds and ounces any more, but in tenths of an ounce. They scrimped and saved every tiny scrap of energy they possessed for the time when the overland supply team would arrive. On the overland route, it would take the pack horses at least three days to arrive from the nearest small town. And that was their speed in summertime. When there was snow and ice on the trail, it might take four days, or five, or forever.
Ah-Fat still kept the one-hundred-dollar bank draft in the pocket of his under-jacket. He had not had a chance to send it to his mother. When he first got it, he was afraid that if he slept too soundly, someone might pull his jacket off him while he slept. So he took the jacket off, folded it very small and used it as a pillow under his head. With the constant folding and re-folding, the bank draft gradually lost its crispness, and the edges became tattered with moisture. As Ah-Fat pillowed his head on the bank draft, he dreamed over and over again that this small piece of paper turned itself into mu after mu of land, expanses of glossy black earth that would grow anything planted.
But gradually Ah-Fat’s dreams changed. He stopped dreaming about land. Now his dreams were full of banquets, with tables laid out from one end of the village to the other. When he woke up, every detail of every dish was still clear in his memory, its colour, its form, its taste, even what dish it was served in and the patterns on it. Then he stopped dreaming. He could not be bothered to keep his eye on the bank draft and just left it by his pillow. He knew perfectly well that the piece of paper which had nearly cost him his life was worthless if he starved to death. It was not even big enough to wipe his arse with.
After drinking the last of the rice water, Ah-Fat fell into a doze, but soon after he was woken by