Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [48]
The rain poured down now. The whole of his body felt as if it was covered with nothing more than a thin membrane into which the rain drilled little holes. Every time he took a slight breath, each of the holes hissed with pain.
When he could not stand the pain any more he kneeled and faced east. He wanted to kowtow but his pigtail was tightly bound to the post and threatened to pull his scalp off. So he just placed his palms together and raised his face to the heavens.
“Oh, my emperor, my ancestors,” he muttered, “I, Fong Tak Fat, am forced to live in degradation.…”
Then he reached for the scissors.
A long howl echoed down the street.
The sound startled even those men of the neighbourhood who were seasoned hunters; they had only ever heard a starving wolf make such sound. It was so ear-splitting the city streets vibrated. The rain abruptly ceased, and the clouds cleared away to reveal a firmament full of stars.
Ah-Fat threw down the scissors and got to his feet. Far in the distance, he could hear a pitter-pattering noise brought to him by the wind. When there was a strong gust, it was as sharp and clear as corn popping; when the wind dropped, the sound was muffled, like toads blowing bubbles under water.
It was the sound of firecrackers welcoming in the Chinese New Year.
Ah-Fat slunk quietly off to the back door of the Tsun Sing General Store and sat down under the overhanging roof. His jacket ran with so much water it hung on him like a stiff board. He took it off, wrung it out and put it back on again. He trembled like a leaf in the wind. It was a good thing Ah-Sing’s stove was still giving out a few miserable dregs of heat. He huddled close to it. It was at that point he discovered that he had dropped the small bag. He still had the long bag, though the fiddle inside was wet through. The snakeskin had blown up and split open with the soaking, and the sound box was full of water.
Ah-Fat upended the fiddle to empty the water out and heard a clunk, as if something had fallen out of it. He felt around and picked it up. It was a stone.
Ah-Fat’s heart gave a wild leap and began to hammer so hard the whole street could have heard it.
As soon as he felt the veins which streaked the stone, he knew exactly what it was.
It was a nugget of gold.
It was the nugget which Red Hair had hidden when he was panning for gold.
No wonder Red Hair had not let the fiddle out of his sight. That was how he had kept it hidden all those years. In fact, he had told Ah-Fat about it that evening in the camp, but Ah-Fat had not been paying attention.
That morning the sleepers in the Tsun Sing General Store were awoken by a strange noise. Ah-Sing pulled on some clothes, got out of bed, lit the lamp and went to open the back door. There he found a man, his clothes soaked through and his head covered with a cloth bag, sitting on his woodpile, sawing away at a broken fiddle and making blood-curdling screeching sounds.
“It’s New Year’s Day, so you won’t refuse me a bowl of rice porridge, will you? And I’d like it hot.” Ah-Fat gave Ah-Sing a broad grin although his teeth chattered audibly.
In year thirteen of the reign of Guangxu (1887), on Dragon Boat Festival Day, a new laundry opened up in the city of Victoria. It was right on the edge of Chinatown, with one foot on yeung fan turf.
It was a lot different from the city’s other laundries.
It had a different sort of name, for starters. The city’s laundries were usually named after the owner. For instance there was “Ah-Hung’s Wash House” and “Wong Ah-Yuen’s Laundry” and “Loon Yee’s Washing and Ironing.” But this laundry had a strange name. It was called the “Whispering Bamboos