Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [74]
Ah-Fat made coil after coil of the damp hair which clung to Six Fingers’ forehead with his finger but said nothing. When she asked again, he gave a slight smile. “Good … and not so good,” he said. “If it was all good, why would we all come home? If it was all bad, then there wouldn’t be so many Gold Mountain men, would there? Anyway, you’ll be coming. Then you can see for yourself whether it’s good or bad.”
Six Fingers sat up abruptly and propped herself against the head of the bed. It was bright moonlight outside, and the moon’s rays streamed through a crack in the curtains, pooling in her luminous eyes.
“Do you really want to take me to Gold Mountain, Ah-Fat? You won’t be like Auntie Cheung Tai’s husband … go over there and forget your family?”
Ah-Fat sat up too and crushed her in such a tight embrace that Six Fingers heard her bones crack.
“Six Fingers, I promise solemnly before Buddha that we will make a life together in Gold Mountain.”
Six Fingers freed one arm and put her hand against Ah-Fat’s cheek. Her hand had not yet completely healed and was still bandaged, which made her movements somewhat clumsy. With one purple swollen finger she gently traced the scar on Ah-Fat’s face, feeling a jolting in her heart as she followed its ridges and furrows.
“Ah-Fat, is it true what they say … that you got your scar in a fight in Gold Mountain?”
Ah-Fat retrieved her fingers and pressed them against his chest. After a pause, he shook his head.
“I fell. I was on a mountain track,” he said.
When Auntie Cheung Tai awoke the next morning, it was already light. She had feasted at the wedding banquet until midnight and had fallen asleep sprawled on her bed. When she sat up, she discovered she had not even undressed—she still wore the sapphire blue jacket embroidered with dark blue flowers. Her hair was a mess. She sprinkled water on it, used her ox-bone comb to smooth it down and coiled it into a bun. Then she sat in the front room to await her visitors.
She waited and waited but no one came. The paper which covered the window slowly changed from grey to white. She heard a chorus of barking dogs and crowing cocks. One after another, the neighbours banged open their shutters and she heard the splash of potties full of urine being emptied into the street. The children crying, their parents berating them, the footsteps of people going to market—every sound jabbed her until her heart seemed to hum with anxiety. Finally she could stay still no longer.
She got up and opened the door to the street, and found to her astonishment that her visitors had been and gone while she was still in bed.
In front of the door sat a large iron pot tied with red string. She took off the lid, to find a whole roasted suckling pig inside, shining brown and succulent. She examined it carefully. It was all there: head, tail, tongue, limbs. The piglet lay belly-side down on a white cloth. She pulled out the cloth and looked at the red streaks on it, evidence of the bride’s virginity.
“Merciful Buddha!” she cried, giving her chest a thump with her fist.
Then she murmured: “Six Fingers, you’ve really landed on your feet. Buddha’s brought you this far. What happens from now on depends on whether you’re destined to be lucky.”
In the spring of year twenty-one of the reign of Guangxu, candidates came from all eighteen provinces to take the Imperial examinations. When the examinations were finished, they waited in the capital for the list of successful candidates to be announced. It was an eventful springtime, the Imperial examinations being only one of the causes of excitement. The candidates swarmed into restaurants and tea houses and the frantic buzz of their debates filtered out through the cracks in the doors, walls and windows, down the streets and into the smallest back alleys, to be chewed over, in turn, by ordinary folk sitting in their courtyards after dinner or over their wine.
The candidates’ topic of conversation had nothing to do with the outcome of the exams and everything to do with a war and a treaty. The