Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [44]
The man had a scar that stretched from his left eyebrow to the right side of his mouth. Although the scar no longer wept pus, it had not healed over either. The winter wind had dried it to a desiccated gash which looked like the furrow of a newly ploughed field.
“Give me a sup of porridge,” said the man. “I haven’t eaten for a day.” He spoke gently, even with a slight smile. But the scar refused to cooperate with the expression on his face. The smile and the scar kept falling out, and the scar turned his gentle smile into a sombre grimace.
The hand which Ah-Sing was using to collect the fragments of glass began to tremble. “You want porridge?! You can kiss my arse! ” was what he wanted to say. He had seen too many beggars in Chinatown. But this one was different and he did not dare give him the brush-off. Instead he stammered out: “Fi … Fisgard Street, at the Chi … Chinese Benevolent Association, they’ll see to you. Have you, have you paid your dues?” Ah-Sing knew that every Chinese who stepped ashore at Victoria paid two dollars towards the Association fees.
The man burst into a laugh so loud it set the window frame shaking.
“You wouldn’t know your own granddad, would you, Ah-Sing? What kind of a song-and-dance routine is this you’re giving me?”
Ah-Sing was startled. He looked up again and scrutinized the man’s face carefully. It looked vaguely familiar. “Are you that … are you that…?” he began.
The man put down the bags and with his toecap hooked out a stool from under the counter with complete familiarity. Sitting down, he said: “I’m that … that Ah-Fat.”
Ah-Sing’s mouth dropped open and stayed open.
“You were just a snot-nosed kid, Ah-Fat,” he finally managed to say. “You’ve grown so tall. And who did that gash on your face?”
“What gash? If a railroad navvy comes back alive, that’s divine protection enough, isn’t it?” “Red Hair and Ah-Lam went with you, didn’t they? What happened to them?” asked Ah-Sing. “Red Hair’s gone.” “What do you mean ‘gone’?” “How many ways of ‘going’ are there? If you didn’t fall to your death or get killed in an explosion, you got sick or starved to death. Red Hair’s luck ran out, he was killed off by all of those.” “What about Ah-Lam, is he ‘gone’ too?” “I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. We walked together from Savona to Port Moody, then we got separated. We only had a few rice sheets left. But we’d already agreed that whatever happened, we’d meet up again at Ah-Sing’s store.”
“You walked all the way from Savona?” said Ah-Sing in astonishment. “How long did that take you?” “We started out last autumn. There were one hundred and fifty-six of us. By the time we got to Port Moody, only ninety or so were left. We’d worn out three pairs of shoes. Do you rent out places to sleep still?” “Yes I do, but not at the same prices as back then. Board and lodging is four dollars a week now.” “You’re a bastard, Ah-Sing!” “Hey, prices have skyrocketed these last years, you must know that! We’re just clawless crabs—we don’t have any other skills to sell. Keeping the shop and renting out sleeping space is the only way I’ve got of earning a living!”
Ah-Fat offloaded the long bag he carried on one shoulder and handed it to Ah-Sing. “This is Red Hair’s fiddle,” he said. “You keep it here for now and I’ll take it back to China sometime. I’m going to move in here. Give me a few days to get the week’s rent together. Give me a bit of porridge and I’ll go and get work today.”
Ah-Sing scraped some rice from the bottom of the pot and heated it up in some hot water. Then he got a few pieces of pickled vegetables out of a jar. As he handed Ah-Fat the bowl, his expression tightened.
“Ah-Fat, it’s not that I don’t want to look after folks from back home,” he said, “but too many men come to me with the same story every day. Get work? What work? Just walk around and see how