Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [59]
One day, the tutor took his refreshments and went for a siesta. Six Fingers picked up the brush and, with the leftover ink and paper, did a quick sketch of some pine trees and bamboos, as she had seen her teacher do. When he awoke, came out of his room and saw the painting, he stood twiddling his beard thoughtfully in his fingers. Finally he sighed: “Such a pity you weren’t born in the body of a boy.” After that, if he was in the right mood, he would teach Six Fingers a thing or two about composition, about making a painting appealing and even about mounting techniques. Neither of them realized that the day would come when Six Fingers would be in dire straits, and that what she learned from this idle chit-chat would be the saving of her.
In the spring of the year in which Six Fingers turned twelve years old dysentery plagued the village. It was only many years later that the survi-vors learned that its proper name was cholera, and that the cause was contamination of the waters farther upstream. The first afflicted with it in Red Hair’s family was his son, Loon. He succumbed after three days without so much as uttering a word. He gave it to Red Hair’s mother who, after getting better and then relapsing, sank into unconsciousness and died after a couple of weeks.
Mrs. Kwan was already ill by the time her mother-in-law died. She had it mildly and could have recovered but she did not want to live any more. Six Fingers prepared rice gruel for her elder sister, but when she tried to feed it to her, Mrs. Kwan shut her mouth firmly and twisted away. “What do I have to live for? My husband and son are both dead.” (The news of Red Hair’s death had reached her by then.) “If you care for me, let me die. It’s a lot less bother than living.” Six Fingers burst into tears: “What about me? Don’t I mean anything to you?” Mrs. Kwan’s eyes were as dried up as well holes. She looked dully at her younger sister and did not shed a tear.
“Dad gave you to me to rear, and at least I let you learn to read and write a bit. You might be able to use that to get along in life—depends what fate has in store for you.”
These were her parting words to Six Fingers.
Within one month, three of Red Hair’s family had died, and there was not a cent to bury them. Finally, the village elders took the business in hand. They mortgaged the family’s three-room house and used the money to get the rites performed, to set aside the burial plot, buy coffins and bury the bodies.
After Mrs. Kwan died, the villagers sent word to her family that they should come and fetch Six Fingers. But there was no word from her parents and they never came to claim her. It was Mrs. Kwan’s parting words to her sister which threw the girl a lifeline.
Old Mr. Ding, who used to write letters and do couplets on scrolls for the villagers, was too old by now to hold a brush. The villagers knew that Six Fingers could write and they felt sorry for her, so they asked her to do the work instead. They discovered that she was better at it than the old man— her calligraphy was steady and full of vigour. She also had a skill Mr. Ding did not have—she could paint. They would call her in for all sorts of jobs, from ordinary letters and New Year couplets, to calligraphy and paintings to celebrate births, deaths, weddings and old folks’ birthdays. The motifs she painted of course varied according to the occasion: for a wedding, it would be