Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [57]
“Would you show me to a room where I can rest and wait for the mistress to come home?”
The girl did as he asked.
The room she led him to was actually Ah-Fat and Ah-Sin’s old room. The bed was the very same bed they used to share. The bedding looked as if it had been freshly sewn. The cotton wadding inside the quilt was thick and soft and the quilt cover was stiffly starched. Ah-Fat pulled back the quilt and saw that the old pillow was still there. It had been filled with dried chrysanthemum flowers because his mother maintained that they regulated the body’s temperature and could cure Ah-Sin’s epilepsy. Ah-Fat felt the pillow—there was a slight indentation in it. Could this still be the mark made by Ah-Sin’s head? He lay with his head in this hollow and his nostrils were invaded by the smell of chrysanthemums freshly dried in the sunshine. He fell into the sleep of his childhood.
Suddenly the heavens darkened and it clouded over. It began to rain very hard, and there was no shelter. He was getting soaking wet. He remembered his mother had given him brand new bedding and shouted for a servant to come and close the window. He shouted so hard he finally woke himself up. He knew it had just been a dream, but when he touched his face, it was wet. He opened his eyes to see a little old woman sitting at his bedside. She wore her hair in a sleek bun, with a white felt flower tucked into one side. She had a handkerchief tucked in the front of her grey cotton gown, and was just pulling it out to wipe her eyes.
“Mum!” Ah-Fat gave a cry and, leaping out of bed, he straightened his gown, threw himself to his knees in front of her and kowtowed.
“I haven’t been a dutiful son. I’ve been away in Gold Mountain all these years and you’ve suffered so much hardship.”
The woman said nothing, but bent to take Ah-Fat’s hand. Her own hand inscribed circles for some moments in the air before finally gripping his. Ah-Fat realized that his mother was now completely blind.
He felt a surge of emotion. There was a lump in his throat which he could neither swallow nor spit out. It stuck there until it forced tears from his eyes. He kowtowed twice more, knocking his head hard on the grey flagstones. His mother could not see, but at least she could hear what he was doing, which was what he most wanted.
He was going to kowtow again but was firmly prevented from doing so. The room was full of people kneeling—younger cousins, nephews and nieces on his uncle’s side. Someone passed him a small towel. Ah-Fat wiped his face, and saw red stains on the towel. He had made his head bleed knocking it on the floor.
The only person not present from the household was the girl who had been hanging the pictures in the reception room.
The market-goers did not return to the village until nightfall, and they had not eaten all day. They hurried home the dozen or so li to the village with rumbling bellies, and the women were in such a hurry to light the cooking fires and cook the soup and rice that they did not even take a moment to go and piss. They had just got the fires lit when they heard the dogs bark.
Most of the time, the village dogs barked in a desultory, sporadic sort of way for no particular reason. But today they seemed to have come to an agreement. One after another, they took up the cry, echoing each other’s barks and seemingly prepared to go on all evening. It was the way dogs barked when they were presented with something wholly unfamiliar, something which had come in from the big, wide world; they were hysterical with excitement and fear.
The women threw down the dried grass and twigs with which they had been feeding the cooking fires and ran outside. They were met by the sight of dozens