Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  “Do all the places you go in your travels have theatres, troupe leader?” asked Ah-Fat. There was another laugh. “Don’t keep calling me troupe leader. Cloud will do fine. SouthEast Asia is not bad, there are big stages. But in some places in Gold Mountain there aren’t even any stages, let alone theatres. We heard the Monarchist Reform Party is going to build a theatre in San Francisco, which will at least be a base for travelling players.” Ah-Fat checked there was no one within hearing. He lowered his voice and asked: “Are you in with the Monarchists, Cloud?” “We sing opera, we don’t belong to any party or faction. But having a proper theatre would be better than nothing. What about you?”

  Ah-Fat was tempted to say: “No, I’m not. But I sold everything I had to help the Emperor, and look what a miserable state I’m in now.” But remembering Ah-Lam’s warning he swallowed his words and merely replied: “Lots of Chinese in Vancouver have joined the Monarchist Reform Party. How long are you staying in Vancouver, Cloud?” he went on. “Ten more performances.” Ah-Fat hesitated. “Then I’ll come every day.”

  In the flickering light of the last gas lamp they talked on. Suddenly Ah-Fat said: “Wait just a minute, I’ll be right back.” He hurried away, then returned holding lotus-leaf dumplings in his hand. “You’ve been singing all evening, you must be hungry. It’s late and all the shops are shut now. I just got a few sausage and rice dumplings. Have some. I’m afraid they’ll have gone cold.” Cloud took them from him. A scrap of warmth came from them, probably from the man’s hand, she thought. Almost all the men in the audience were there to stare at the girls. This was the only one who had seemed to appreciate the opera, too.

  The acrobat took down the last lamp. All at once, the illumination was reduced to a single small circle, spotlighting Gold Mountain Cloud and giving her a ghastly pallor. The boy got down off the stage and came their way. “Big sister, Mr. Wen’s been waiting ages for you at the door.” “I see,” said Gold Mountain Cloud and gave the dumplings to him. “Share these between everyone, one each.” Then she pointed her finger at Ah-Fat. “You make sure you come tomorrow, I won’t sing until I see you.” The finger which had performed the graceful orchid gesture was now right in Ah-Fat’s face. It gave off a slight smell of jasmine powder which wafted up his nostrils, almost making him sneeze.

  She left, casting a slender shadow which stretched long and thin in the remaining light, seeming to waver like bamboo leaves. He found himself following. From a distance, he saw a carriage waiting at the entrance to the alley. Through the glass windows, he could see the shadowy figure of a man in a suit. He opened the door and helped Gold Mountain Cloud in. The driver shouted to the horse and they drew away, the horse’s hooves clip-clopping away into the darkness of the night. Ah-Fat stood there, suddenly feeling disconsolate.

  When he got back to his lodgings, Ah-Lam and the others were not home yet. Everyone stayed out late on payday. If they were not gambling or smoking opium they would be in a girl’s arms. Ah-Fat lit a cigarette and smoked for a while but still could not sleep. He turned up the oil lamp, got out paper and brush and prepared some ink. His hand trembled slightly and he had trouble grinding the lumps out of the ink. He smoothed some paper flat and began to write to Six Fingers. The characters seemed as distracted as he was, and lacked their usual dignified firmness.

  Dear Ah-Yin,

  An opera troupe has come to Vancouver and New Westminster. When I was a kid, I used to go with my dad, but I haven’t been for years. There was a woman playing the lead male role. She was not as heroic as the male usually is, nor as delicate and gentle as the female role, yet she was more appealing than both. Is there anything which comes halfway between a man and woman? If there is, then that third gender must surely embody the essence and the energy of both man and woman because they are not constrained by either. There is something wonderful and fantastic about that. You’re probably thinking I’ve gone crazy. Ah-Yin

  Ah-Fat went to all ten remaining performances, but did not have a chance to talk to Gold Mountain Cloud again. Every night after the play was finished, she changed into her everyday clothes and was picked up straightaway by the carriage waiting at the stage door. Every evening as she came onstage, her gaze swept over the audience. Ah-Fat felt her eyes boring into him and the scar on his face burned. He could almost hear her heartbeat returning to normal, just before the performance began. He remembered her words on the other night, “I won’t sing till I see you.” Perhaps they had not been entirely empty words.

  The last opera they put on was Giving a Warm Coat at Night. It was a very long and rather subtle piece and Ah-Fat found his attention wandering. He felt torn that evening, between longing for the play to be over, and wanting it to go on forever. When it ended, he could speak with Gold Mountain Cloud again. He could be, for another moment, in her presence. But with the last performance completed, she would move on to a new town and disappear from his life forever. He needed to catch hold of this spirit that was half-man and half-woman. But he did not know how, nor what he should do with her once he had her in his grasp. He was full of vague longings.

  Finally the performance ended. Gold Mountain Cloud bowed deeply at each curtain call. Her looks and smiles included everyone, and Ah-Fat got his fair share too. Yet somehow that made him feel that he had been left with nothing at all. Gold Mountain Cloud finally disappeared behind the curtain and was gone. Ah-Fat derided himself for imagining that a rising opera star would remember a fish cannery worker like himself who understood so little about Cantonese opera. He meant nothing to her. To believe otherwise was wishful thinking; the feeling was all on his side. As he stood there lost in thought, the acrobat came over to him carrying something wrapped in cloth. “For you, from Gold Mountain Cloud,” he said. Inside the cloth was a large disk, black in colour, covered with fine circular grooves, like waves, around a small central hole. Around the hole was pasted a label illustrated with a big horn and a brown dog with the words “Victor Talking Machine Co., 1905.” Ah-Fat inspected it on both sides but was none the wiser.

  The next day Ah-Fat took the disk to Rick, who told him it was record. The brown dog listening to a big horn was a well-known company logo. “What’s a record?” asked Ah-Fat. “The music and singing of the opera is sealed on the disk,” explained Rick. “When you want to listen to it, you just get it out and listen. Like covering a cup of water with a lid, and opening it every time you want to drink. Except that in the end you drink the water up, but you can go on listening to the record forever.” “Is the sound still on the record when the singer dies?” “It’s still there ten years, or a hundred years afterwards.” Ah-Fat held his record in both hands and contemplated it in silence.

  Much later, when Ah-Fat went back to his diulau home in Spur-On Village, he took the record with him. Then, Gold Mountain Cloud’s singing would fill Tak Yin House to the rafters, striking every stone and every board with its piercing, rending tones.

  The singer left Vancouver, and Ah-Fat heard no more of her, until one day about two years after Kam Shan arrived in Gold Mountain. They had a visitor from back home, a restaurant owner in San Francisco. He mentioned that a new theatre, the Grand Stage Theatre, had just been built in the city. An opera singer called Gold Mountain Cloud leading a troupe of twenty members had made the theatre her home base. She had quite a reputation as a singer. Ah-Fat smiled to himself when he heard this. That piercing, rending voice would echo in his ears for years to come, but the longing which the singer had created in his heart had long since died away.

  More time passed, and Ah-Fat saw a small item in the Overseas Chinese newspaper, The Daily News. The famous Cantonese opera singer Gold Mountain Cloud was engaged to be married to a Mr. William Huang and a very grand wedding would soon be held in Honolulu. Ah-Fat had never heard of this Huang fellow, though he later found out he was the younger son of a Honolulu property magnate.

  That was not the last that Ah-Fat would see of Gold Mountain Cloud, although he did not know it. Much later, the dormant bu
ds of their friendship were to put forth unexpected new shoots.

  Year thirty-three of the reign of Guangxu (1907)

  Vancouver, British Columbia

  My dear Ah-Yin,

  Thank you for the letter and school photographs of Kam Shan and Kam Ho which you sent at New Year. When I last saw them, Shan was just a naughty kid and Ho was still in swaddling clothes. Time flies by—who would have thought I would be gone seven years? My sons are so grown up now. Ah-Yin, do you still remember your Gold Mountain man after all these years? You, of course, are often in my dreams. How could I forget my wife’s face? I have made plans to come home several times during these years, but every time something unexpected has happened. I have not managed to raise enough for the boat passage. My dreams of us living together as husband and wife are constantly shattered. Business has been slack at the fish cannery since last autumn, and on top of that, the boss bought an American machine that can de-scale, wash and split the fish automatically, around thirty times faster than a man. The yeung fan make a mockery of us Chinese and call it the “Iron Chink.” Since the machine arrived, many of the cannery men, including me and Ah-Lam, have lost their jobs. Life has been hard, but not long ago I borrowed a bit of money from a countryman, rented a couple of rooms facing the street and opened a laundry. I hired a boy from San Wui to help out. He is a good tailor and can make Chinese-and Western-style clothes, so we can do tailoring and mending as well as laundry. I have kept the old name, Whispering Bamboos Laundry. This is my third and I hope this time round it will do better and last longer than the other two. I will probably be able to buy a passage home at the end of this year. Mum will be sixty years old next year, and it is my fervent wish to be there to host the longevity party for her. I hope that you are looking after yourself, and are doing your utmost to attend to Mum and take good care of Kam Shan and Kam Ho, so that I do not need to worry about you.

  Your husband, Tak Fat, sixteenth of the fourth month, 1907, Vancouver

  It was dark by the time Ah-Fat left his shop. As he secured the shutters, he glanced casually at the calendar hanging on the wall. It was September the seventh by the Western calendar, or the first day of the eighth month according to the Chinese lunar calendar. He took a bit of tailoring chalk and drew a circle round the date—a date which, unbeknownst to him, would find itself constantly popping up in the history books in the years to come. Ah-Fat simply marked the calendar because this day had seen him finally clear the loan he had taken out on the shop. Business was brisker now that he had hired the tailor. It had not been an easy ride but Whispering Bamboos Laundry, third time round, was now finally on a sound footing. He could almost feel the dimes in his pocket gradually coming together in the form of a boat ticket to China.

  He was in a good mood and in no hurry to go home. Once he had fastened the shutters and locked the door, he said to Ah-Lam and the tailor boy: “Let’s go to the Loong Kee for some snacks. It’s on me.” What he really had his mind on was drink. He had been thinking about that drink since early morning, before even a grain of rice or a drop of water had passed his lips. The signed and witnessed document stating that the debt had been paid off lay neatly folded in his pocket, banging against him with every step he took and urging him to get a move on and get that drink down.

  It was pitch dark when they started off down the street, and lanterns lit up the shops that opened late. Their hazy glow pierced the darkness with eyes of varying sizes, the biggest of them concealing the gambling and opium dens. “Fuck,” said Ah-Lam, “I’m so damn fed up with the same old faces in the tea-shacks.” “Who has time to look at a girl’s face?” said the tailor. “There’s always a long queue waiting to get in.” “If they got here last year, they’re fat old hags by now,” said Ah-Lam. “They’ve had so many men queuing up to handle them, of course they’re fat,” said the tailor. Ah-Fat aimed a kick at him. “And how come you’ve learned so fast? You’re no more than a snot-nosed kid.” Ah-Lam screwed up his eyes and looked at Ah-Fat. “And what are we supposed to think of, kicking our heels here without our women, year after year?” “Come on, let’s have a drink first. When we’ve had a skinful, then we’ll see.”

  That “We’ll see” concealed within it ideas which startled even Ah-Fat himself. He did not just want to drink tonight, he wanted to do something more. The document in his pocket had set him free, but he did not know what to do with his new-found freedom. His head raced ahead of his body and, like a snake without a lair, pushed its way into all the darkest nooks and crannies of Chinatown, sliding through the cracks between windows, doors and walls and prying into whatever was hidden there. That evening, head and body ran a mad race.

  The three of them went into the Loong Kee and the waiter came over. “What would you like to eat?” he asked. Ah-Fat jerked his thumb at the other two. “Ask them,” he said. He lit a cigarette and began a leisurely smoke. When they had ordered food, he said: “Bring two bottles of wine, one red, one white.” The wine came and the waiter filled three small cups to the brim. Ah-Fat promptly emptied his, and then had another and another. The wine went straight to his head and the colour gradually drained from his face. Only his scar stood out crimson against the bloodless skin, looking like a worm wriggling up his cheek.

  The young boy was alarmed at the sight. He picked up a piece of the crispy-roasted pig chitterlings with his chopsticks and put it in Ah-Fat’s bowl. “Eat something, before you drink any more, mister.” Ah-Fat laughed. “You’re good with your hands, you little sod,” he said thickly, his breath coming in heavy snorts. “When I open another branch next year, you can be in charge of it.” “Let him be,” Ah-Lam told the boy. “He’s happy today. After all, he’s finally said goodbye to all those debts.”

  They drank and drank, went out the back to piss streams of yellow urine, and came back to drink some more. Ah-Lam and the boy were scarlet in the face by this time. “You two have been in Gold Mountain all these years,” the boy said. “Not like us who’ve just got here and don’t have anyone to help us out. Why’s it taken till today to pay off the debts?” “Ask him,” Ah-Lam said recklessly, jerking a thumb at Ah-Fat. “Your boss here donated everything he had, lock, stock and barrel, to the Monarchist Reform Party. That left both of us with fuck-all. We’ve been through hell. And after he gave them that huge bank draft, do you think we’ve heard shit from them?”

  Ah-Fat flushed red and hurled his cup to the ground. He jabbed his finger in Ah-Lam’s face and shouted: “No wonder the Qing Empire is practically on its last legs with sonofabitch citizens like you who don’t give a shit about our country being humiliated.” Ah-Lam lost his temper and seized Ah-Fat by the front of his jacket: “You puffed-up little jerk! So I’m a sonofabitch? And you’re a high mandarin, are you? You may think you’re a Monarchist but the Emperor doesn’t even know who you are!”

  The boy tried to pull Ah-Lam off. “Don’t go saying things like that, mister! If word gets back, they’ll murder your whole family.” Ah-Lam was too drunk to care and flung off the boy’s hand. “The world’s a big place and the Emperor’s a long way off. By the time they get to hear of it, there’ll have been a change of dynasty.” The boy went pale in terror at this. Grabbing Ah-Fat’s sleeve he pulled him towards the door, whispering in a trembling voice: “Mister Ah-Fat, let’s go home. It’s late.” But Ah-Fat was in no mood for caution. “Home? What d’you want to go home for?” They scuffled and the sleeve of Ah-Fat’s jacket ripped at the shoulder. Ah-Fat looked at the tear and slapped the boy’s face, furious: “How dare you, little snot-nosed kid!” The boy put his hand to his cheek and said nothing. Ah-Lam threw down his cup and joined the fray: “Ah-Fat, you’re a big man, why are you taking it out on the kid?”

  They were interrupted by the sound of shouting in the street and a loud crack like a gunshot. Before they had time to recover from the shock, there was another, even louder, crack. The restaurant owner ran in bleeding heavily from the head and covered in shards of glass. “Ah-Fat, you know a bit of English, go a
nd see what’s happening outside, will you? The street’s full of yeung fan.” Ah-Fat, who had sobered up at the noise, ran outside. There were two holes as big as a wash basin in the glass windows of the Loong Kee Café and the wind was whistling through. A dark mass of people streamed along the road, fists in the air, carrying banners, flags and sticks. There were too many of them to hear what it was they were shouting, but Ah-Fat finally made out words like “Chinaman … out.…” The yeung fan were here to make trouble.

  They had come before, but never so many. The restaurant owner suddenly remembered his two children playing in the street and rushed out, to find them knocked to the ground by the marchers. He put one under each arm and ran back inside. Ah-Fat shouted to the waiter to bolt the door and put out the lights, then herded everyone towards the kitchen. Behind it was a small storeroom piled with sacks of rice. Ah-Fat made them take shelter there.

  The young son of the restaurant owner had a lump the size of an egg on his forehead where he had been hit by a stone. He wailed loudly for his mum to come and rub it. Ah-Fat put his hand over the boy’s mouth. “If you keep crying, the foreign devils will get in here and kill you all,” he said in a low voice. The terrified child choked back his sobs and gave a little whimper.

  Ah-Fat squatted behind the rice sacks, listening to what sounded like muffled peals of thunder—the sound of thousands of marching feet. The ground trembled, making the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Someone thumped a few times on the restaurant door, but it held firm. The restaurant owner’s wife squatted next to Ah-Fat, her teeth chattering audibly. The room filled with the rank smell of urine. Glass shattered pane by pane from one end of the street to the other, starting as gigantic, muffled explosions which turned into sharp tinkling and then died away as a sibilant echo. In the intervals they heard a couple of sharp barks. But before other dogs could take up the refrain, the barks were drowned out by the shouting. The roar of thousands of voices was like silk threads woven into a great fat plait, but suddenly, Ah-Fat was able to separate the strands.