Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [62]
A grain of rice stuck between her teeth and she extracted it with her thumbnail, exclaiming as she did so: “Six Fingers! Why’s your face all spotty?” The girl rubbed her face and her finger came away covered in black ink. She looked down and smiled: “I was doing some couplets for Ah-Yuen’s family.” “What sort of couplets?” asked Ah-Fat. “For the birthday of his old dad. He’s sixty.” “Let me see what you did,” said Ah-Fat.
Six Fingers led him into the room at the back which served as a kitchen. There was a stove with two holes for the pots—one large, one small, a table for eating at and a large earthenware crock. The rest of the floor space was taken up with piles of grass and twigs for the stove, dried grass for the pigs and skeins for the loom. Six Fingers used the table for her calligraphy, and the paper was spread out on it waiting for the ink to dry. The room only had one small window and was darker than the front room. Six Fingers had trimmed the lamp to its lowest, to save on oil, and the flame was no bigger than a pea. Ah-Fat had to screw up his eyes to make out the characters.
The right-hand couplet read: “Long-lived as the southern mountains, your every move spreads love.” The left-hand one read: “Good fortune as great as the eastern seas, you bring good luck to all.” The strip that went across the top read: “Fortunate old age without end.”
She had used gold-flecked red paper and although it was not many characters, the verticals and horizontals were neatly aligned and the brushwork was firm. Ah-Fat looked the work over from every angle and then turned to Six Fingers. Under his steady gaze, her head shrunk turkey-like into her neck, which was flushed as red as her face. She works like a man, thought Ah-Fat to himself, and her calligraphy is masculine too. But to look at, she’s just a lovely girl. “Where did you get the couplets from?” he asked her. “The Compendium of New Year Couplets Old and New” ? She shook her head. “Couplets and Characters for Farmers” ? he asked again. Again she shook her head. “Mr. Ding only ever used those two,” he persisted. “Surely you haven’t got other books as well?” Six Fingers shook her head once more and twisted her hands in the folds of her jacket. Finally, she said: “I don’t have any books at all.”
Ah-Fat was astonished. “You mean you made them up yourself?” The blood surged again into Six Fingers’ cheeks. “They don’t make a neat pair, do they?” she whispered. “I think they make a fine pair,” said Ah-Fat. “Perhaps if you changed ‘your every move spreads love’ to ‘you spread love all around,’ it would contrast better with ‘you bring good luck to all’.” “That’s true! That sounds much better!” She was about to tear it up and rewrite the couplet when Ah-Fat, suddenly interested, offered: “I’ll do it.” Six Fingers ground and prepared more ink, laid out the paper, wetted and smoothed the brush and gave it to Ah-Fat.
Ah-Fat loaded the brush with ink and, after a long moment of contemplation, began to write. He wrote the whole thing without pausing, except to load more ink onto the brush halfway through. Then he threw the brush into the water and paid no further attention to it. Six Fingers tidied away the brush and ink. “Master Ah-Fat, your calligraphy has become more vigorous as the years go by. Did you get a chance to practise in Gold Mountain?”
“How do you know my calligraphy?” Ah-Fat was startled. Six Fingers gave a little laugh. “Every time you wrote home, your mum called me over to read it to her.” “So every letter I’ve had back from her was written by you?” Six Fingers nodded. Ah-Fat had to laugh. “No wonder!” “No wonder what?” “I couldn’t understand how that old turtle Ding had got so good at writing!” said Ah-Fat.
Six Fingers wrung out a towel in