Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [77]
Of course, the building was not completely empty. On the balcony under the roof, they found a child’s tricycle, although its three wheels had rotted away. Auyung opened the little paring knife which hung from his key ring, and scratched away a patch of rust on the frame until a maker’s mark was dimly visible. They both studied it carefully and were finally able to make out the words in English: “Made in Manchester, England, 1906.”
They also found a silver teapot in the corner of a room on the third floor, its metal tarnished with the passage of many years. The body of the pot was engraved with an exuberant creeper design and words in English were entwined like flowers on the base. This was a Western teapot, probably once part of a set, now separated from its brothers and sisters and living out its days in this long-forgotten corner. Amy took off the lid and found black specks like mouse droppings stuck to the bottom of the pot. She found it odd that a mouse should have been able to get inside a teapot with the lid on but Auyung said thoughtfully: “These are tea leaves left behind after the tea was brewed—they must be decades old.” Amy was struck by the sudden thought that Six Fingers might have been the last person to drink tea from the pot. Did she put it down and leave, never to come back again? Could those crumbs of tea come back to life if you poured hot water on them, unfurling to reveal their veins after all this time?
The teapot was mute, as were the tea leaves.
On the wall of a room on the third floor they discovered strange wallpaper. Saturated by decades of humidity, the paper was covered in mould and a latticework of moth holes. The mould and the holes covered the entire surface so almost nothing of the original pattern and colours was visible. Auyung ran his magnifying glass over the wall, and discovered the number “20” written in the outermost corner. He called to Amy, who took a good look and exclaimed: “They’re American dollars! The wall has been papered with dollar bills! There’s writing up there … the words ‘God … trust.’ It must say ‘In God we trust,’ which appears on the back of every American banknote.”
“During the Republican period, Chinese currency lost value on a daily basis, so Gold Mountain families around here only recognized American and Hong Kong currency. They called dollars ‘top bills.’ Your family actually papered their walls with them!”
“Only someone who really loved, or really hated, U.S. dollars, could have done that with them,” Amy mused aloud.
Auyung was silent for a moment, then said: “There’s a third possibility, Amy. Maybe the person who did this neither loved nor hated dollars, but was simply indifferent to them.”
Amy looked startled for a moment and then burst out laughing. She put her arms round him and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You’re such smartass!”
Auyung froze. His face assumed a wooden expression. Then his wrinkles began to make random jerks, and finally resolved themselves into something resembling a smile. Auyung looked strange, Amy thought— then she realized he was going red! The colour surged upward, and then drained away again. Amy stared so intently she seemed to be pinning him to the wall.
“I never knew that a man of your age could blush.”
“You mean, how could a pathetic old man like me have such a thin skin?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Amy shook her head. Suddenly she nodded. “Yes, you’re right, that is what I meant. You’ve surely been hugged and kissed by a woman before … I mean, what about your wife?”
There was a long silence. Finally Auyung said: “My wife passed away in 1981. Back then, hugging and kissing existed only as words in foreignlanguage dictionaries.”
“I’m sorry,” Amy said hesitantly, suddenly abashed at her uninhibited behaviour.
They sat on the ground in silence, looking around at the empty room.
Why, in a household which had once been abundantly wealthy,