Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  Ah-Fat was in a hurry to get home but it would be impolite to rush her. He brought her a second cup of soy milk when she had almost finished the first and took up his position behind her. The woman waved the milk away. “I won’t charge you, you’re the last customer,” Ah-Fat reassured her. “I’ll have to pour the rest down the drain otherwise.” She accepted it and unhurriedly continued with her meal.

  “Where is it from?” she asked.

  Ah-Fat thought she meant the soy milk. “Ah-Wong’s shop next door,” he said. The woman laughed. “I meant the opera music.” It occurred to Ah-Fat that she was dawdling over her meal because she wanted to listen to it. He kept a record player on the kitchen cupboard so he could put opera records on when there were no customers in the shop. The machine was old, the records extremely scratchy, and every now and then the needle would jump a groove.

  “It was given to me many years ago by a friend,” Ah-Fat said. “Do you like opera?”

  The woman shut her eyes and began to hum along, keeping pace with the long drawn-out notes of the singer. Her voice was so sweet and true that Ah-Fat’s interest was piqued and he found himself humming along with the notes. Their voices soared and dipped in time with the music from the record.

  “Did you see any of Gold Mountain Cloud’s performances?” she asked as they finished.

  “When she came to Vancouver, I saw all twelve performances. I sat in the front row, right in the middle. It was twenty cents a ticket, really cheap.”

  “How did she sing?”

  “She hadn’t made a name for herself back then but she sung the male roles so strongly she made the rafters vibrate. She could beat a dozen male singers any day. As soon as I heard her I knew she was destined for great things.”

  The woman opened her eyes and extended a couple of fingers. “May I have a cigarette, please?” she asked. Ah-Fat pulled the packet from his pocket and lit one for her, then one for himself. Her teeth were stained yellow, he noticed. She must have been a heavy smoker for many years. She certainly smoked with style—legs crossed, head tipped back, her extended fingers trembling slightly. Then the smoke rings would waft gently from between her lips, floating upwards, gradually losing definition until they bumped against the walls and dissolved one by one into the air.

  “You really think Gold Mountain Cloud was good?” she persisted. Ah-Fat laughed out loud. “I was a huge fan of hers,” he said. “It took me an hour to walk there every day but I was always there before they opened up. After the performance, I used to hang around in the hopes that I could get a word in. But I was just a fish-cannery worker—she had a rich gentleman waiting to take her to dinner every night. After the last performance, though, she sent me a record as a gift and that’s the one I’m playing now.”

  The woman turned around and stared Ah-Fat in the face. “That scar on your face. It’s hardly noticeable any more.”

  Ah-Fat was astonished. After a long pause, he asked: “Is it really you? Gold Mountain Cloud?”

  She answered simply: “It was all so long ago, like another life.”

  After she had made a name for herself in San Francisco, she took up with one of her admirers, a rich Hawaiian Chinese called Huang. She left the stage, married him and they settled in Honolulu. For a few years, she lived the life of a wealthy lady. Then one day, Huang fell foul of a gangland dealer and was stabbed to death in an opium den. Gold Mountain Cloud was forced to return to San Francisco, where she went back on the stage, taking any singing parts she could get. In the intervening years new roles had taken the place of the old ones for which she was famous, so she could only get minor accompanying parts. Later still, she lost her voice and even those parts dried up. Once famous far beyond Gold Mountain, now she was forgotten. She was reduced to relying on handouts from her elder brother, who had given up singing long before and ran a small store in Montreal. She did not get on with her sister-in-law and when, last month, her brother died of tuberculosis, Gold Mountain Cloud came to Vancouver.

  “Where are you living? What are you doing for a living now?” asked Ah-Fat.

  “I look after props and costumes at the theatre. I can sleep in a corner of the wardrobe room, which saves me paying rent.”

  “Do they pay you?”

  “Enough for a bowl of noodles.”

  Ah-Fat gave a long sigh. After such fame and wealth, to be reduced to such poverty. What could he say?

  That Saturday evening, after serving the Hendersons their dinner Kam Ho set off for home. As he passed the gate, he saw his father waiting for him at the end of the street. Fear seized his heart and he ran down the street. “What’s happened?” His father said nothing, just pulled out his cigarettes and gave him one, taking another for himself. Ah-Fat stood there without moving, smoking his cigarette, until the ash at the tip trembled and dropped to the ground. Finally he asked Kam Ho: “Have you brought any money with you?”

  Kam Ho was silent. His trip back home and his marriage to Ah-Hsien had exhausted all his savings. His wife was expecting a baby soon and he was sending every cent back to Hoi Ping.

  “Twenty … or if you haven’t got twenty, ten will do,” his father persisted.

  “What for?”

  Ah-Fat remained silent but his expression said it all. He threw down the cigarette he had just lit and ground it under his feet. He hawked and spat angrily: “If your old dad asks to borrow a bit of cash, do you have to have a signed-and-sealed loan agreement?”

  “I sent a dollar letter back home just yesterday,” said Kam Ho, pulling a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. Ah-Fat took the note, which was moist from Kam Ho’s sweaty palm.

  “Dad, we’ve never been gamblers, the odds are stacked against us. And at your age, you really shouldn’t be wasting money like this.”

  Blood rushed to Ah-Fat’s face. He was tempted to screw up the note and fling it back into his son’s face. But then he remembered Gold Mountain Cloud’s jade bracelet, so flawless it glowed like a candle flame at night. This five-dollar bill, plus the five which he had saved himself, would ensure that she would not need to part with it. At least, not today.

  He gritted his teeth and thrust the note into his pocket.

  From then on, Ah-Fat would occasionally borrow money from Kam Ho. If not twenty, then ten. If not ten, then five. If Kam Ho could not spare him five, then he would take three or even one dollar … or even a few cents. Finally the day came when Kam Ho refused to give him anything. “There’s my son Yiu Kei’s one-month-old celebration and then there’s Mum’s birthday to think of. The family needs more guns. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know. Dad, when was the last time you sent a dollar letter home? Who’s been supporting the family all this time? Why are you taking food out of the mouths of your wife and grandchild for gambling?”

  Ah-Fat stiffened and the veins on his forehead bulged. With an enormous effort, he swallowed back his anger.

  “Next year. Next year, I’ll sell the café and go back home. I’ve been making a note of every cent I borrow from you and you’ll get it back with interest when I sell up,” he muttered.

  Kam Ho shouted with laughter. “Your café? It loses money every month. You keep the food so long the sausage is crawling with maggots. No one’s going to buy the café off you even if you pay them to take it off your hands!”

  Ah-Fat’s face turned livid purple and he swallowed back hard words that felt like grit in his gullet. His youngest son, whom he had always slighted, called the shots now—this was something he had never expected. Kam Shan, whose leg had never properly healed, could not support himself, and the burden of supporting the families in Canada and China lay on the shoulders of just two people—Kam Ho and Cat Eyes.

  It had taken Ah-Fat all these years to learn two unpalatable facts: one, that the one who sent home the dollar letters could afford to talk loud; two, that the one who begged could not stand tall. Often he was on the point of explaining to Kam Ho what he was really borrowing money for, but when it came to it, he just could not ge
t the words out. They went round and round in his head but he could never find the way to say what he wanted to say. It somehow seemed easier to allow Kam Ho to get the wrong end of the stick.

  And so he kept silent.

  Just you wait, he thought. Your old dad’s not got much longer to live. And if I can’t earn back my self-respect and go home with my head held high, then I’ll never go back, he thought fiercely to himself.

  Year twenty-five of the Republic (1936)

  Vancouver, British Columbia

  As Jenny looked at her face in the hand mirror, she grew more and more despondent. Her face was too flat, her eyes too far apart and small at that, so she always looked half-asleep. Her cheeks were covered in freckles, but that was not the worst of it. She had none of the curves that most of her peers were developing. She was still as flat as a board.

  There were three more weeks before the high school prom. Her mother had already booked the hairdresser and ordered her evening dress, and six months ago her father had booked tables for fifty at the Vancouver Hotel for a celebratory coming-out dinner. Or that was the excuse. In England, well-off families would hold dinners to launch their sons and daughters into society. Her father adopted the English custom, but his real aim was to find his daughter a rich husband. A rich husband was the furthest thing from Jenny’s mind. All she hoped for was that some boy, any boy, would take her by the hand and lead her onto the dance floor.

  Almost all the girls in her year had prom partners. Mary had fixed hers up in the first year of high school; Susie had had invitations from three boys and still had not made up her mind. Jennifer had accepted Billy’s invitation then switched to Vincent; Billy and Vincent came to blows in the school grounds. Miss Smith, the headmistress, punished both boys by making them each clean the blackboard and carry the French teacher’s dictionaries and class notes for a week.

  That sort of thing only happened to other people, Jenny thought forlornly. Jenny had not yet received so much as a glance from a boy, let alone an invitation. The only other girl in the same situation was that odd Chinese girl with the slit eyes, Linda Wong. Who wanted to be lumped in with a girl whose hair and clothes stank of cooking oil? Jenny shuddered at the thought.

  Jenny knelt down on the floor and joined her hands together in prayer. She had said many prayers in her life, though most of them were grace before meals or at bedtime. But the prayer she said now was an urgent entreaty:

  “Merciful Father in Heaven, I beg you not to make me go to the prom without a partner, like that Chinese girl, Linda Wong. Lord, I have committed many sins in the past. The year before last, when Mummy refused to let me wear lipstick at Christmas, I made a secret curse that she would die soon. When my classmates teased me for having a Mongol houseboy, I put diarrhea medicine into Jimmy’s food. When I didn’t want to go to science lessons, I said I was sick and got Mummy to write a note for me. And every time I go to church with Mummy and Daddy, I sit there counting my fingers and wishing that Pastor Carter would hurry up and get his sermon over with. Lord, you have thousands of reasons for punishing me, but please, could you hold off until the prom is over? I’d rather jump into burning sulphur than walk into the prom alone, but the Sunday school teacher said that only heathens who don’t believe in God get punished that way. I do believe in you, Lord, please don’t let me down. There’s only three weeks to go. I beg you to make me get an invitation as quickly as possible, hopefully tomorrow. Apart from Jack, who has a snotty nose, any boy will do. If you give me the boy who Susie doesn’t want, even that’s better than nothing. If you’re listening to me, I beg you to give me a sign you’ve heard.”

  The teddy bear on the bed suddenly fell to the floor. Jenny’s heart leapt. She knew that was God’s answer, and that she would not be forced to walk into the prom alone. Very soon, maybe tomorrow, she would get a late invitation. No more would she have to get her school bag ready ten minutes before the end of school and rush out as soon as the bell sounded, just so she could be spared the other girls’ chatter about the prom. She would be able to talk to Mary, Susie and Jennifer easily about what kind of prom dress she was going to have and what colour it would be.

  Jenny felt a great weight lift from her shoulders. She was unaccustomed to that feeling of weightlessness, and clasped her hands tightly over her chest as if afraid she might suddenly take off and float up to the ceiling.

  She began to inspect herself in the mirror, in minute detail. The mirror was not big enough so she had to tilt it slowly and look at herself bit by bit. She was surprised to see a faint red flush on her cheeks which somehow made her freckles less obvious. Her chest was as flat as ever but if she squeezed her chest together hard between both hands, she could see something resembling a cleavage. Her neck was too long, but that was because she wore her hair up. If she spread her hair out, or braided the ends into French-style braids, that would change things a lot. Jenny carried on inspecting herself all over and was encouraged to realize that she could remedy every shortcoming.

  Jenny’s hand turned sideways and the mirror grew legs and took her eyes through the half-open door to the living room. In the corner of the living room by the curtained French windows, she saw two people: her mother and Jimmy.

  Jimmy was holding a jug and pouring the water from it into a cup which he held in the other hand. Jenny knew all about Jimmy giving her mother Chinese herbal medicine (“Chinese bilge,” as her father called it). Her mother had been taking it for nearly twenty years to ease her pain. The price of this “Chinese bilge” climbed higher every year, and this caused increasingly bitter arguments between her parents. The older her father got, the cheaper he became; the older her mother got, the more she needed her medicine.

  Jenny watched in the mirror as her mother drank the “bilge” and Jimmy gave her a towel to wipe her mouth with. But she did not take the towel. Instead, she gripped Jimmy’s sleeve. Jimmy pulled his arm back, but she hung on and finally he allowed her to wipe her mouth on his sleeve. Jenny could hardly believe her eyes.

  Her mother had come to rely more and more on Jimmy as the years went by. He was her walking stick, the pillow she rested on, the handkerchief on which she dried her tears. Many of Jenny’s classmates lived in her street and they all knew that the Hendersons had a Chinese houseboy. Once Susie had said: “Someone saw that Chinaman scrubbing your mother’s back. Is it true?” Mary joined in the fun then. “I’ve heard that when Chinese people get their wages, they don’t put them in the bank, they stuff the money in the bottom of their shoes. Is your Jimmy like that?” Jenny flushed furiously at these stupid questions. Finally she spluttered some rude comment about Jimmy scrubbing Susie’s mother’s back—and did not speak to either of her friends for a week afterwards.

  They did not ask Jenny any more questions about Jimmy after that, but even so, Jenny saw the suspicious looks they gave her. Their eyes were full of scorn, perhaps pity, as if they were saying to themselves: “Such a nice girl. What bad luck that she’s got a Chinese houseboy.” She tried to grow a thick skin and refused to let them needle her. But eventually her pride shrivelled under their relentless gaze.

  In the end, it all got too much for her. One day, she was coming home from school when she met Jimmy walking to meet her along the pavement, as he usually did. She would not let him touch her school bag. She walked straight past him and up to her mother’s room. She stood in front of her mother, and hesitated a moment. It suddenly seemed as difficult to broach the subject as drilling a pinhole in an iron curtain.

  She looked down at her toes, and stammered: “Mummy, do we really … really need Jimmy?”

  Her mother made no attempt to probe at what lay behind the question. She simply took the words at face value. Holding Jenny’s hand she said, after a pause: “Yes, we do. Your father, I, and you too, we all need Jimmy.”

  Jenny was annoyed at her mother’s casualness. She pushed away her hand. “It’s not us, it’s only you,” she said. Her mother was unperturbed. “If you don’t believe me,”
she said placidly, “you go and ask your father. Who, apart from Jimmy, is willing to listen to his endlessly repeated jokes and laugh as if it was the first time he’d heard them?” Jenny felt deflated. She was quite well aware that her father depended on Jimmy as much as her mother did.

  “Actually, you need Jimmy too,” said her mother.

  “Of course, you were too young to remember, but it was Jimmy who bathed you and changed your nappy when you were a baby. When you had diphtheria, who was it that put you to sleep by resting you on his stomach? Do you think your breakfast would fly itself to the table if we didn’t have Jimmy? Would your skirt get washed and folded and put away? The dust on your desk doesn’t clean itself. If Jimmy left today, you’d have to become the cook, cleaner, gardener and nurse to me, tomorrow. I’ll send him away straightaway if you’re ready for that.”

  Jenny left her mother’s room without another word that day. But when she thought that Jimmy’s monkey-like yellow paws had once reached into the most secret places on her body, she felt her skin crawl.

  Jenny could perfectly well have turned away from the mirror or pulled the living-room door shut. Seeing that sleeve pressed against her mother’s mouth had upset her and she did not want to look at herself in the mirror any more. But she kept looking at them. That was a mistake.

  Her mother finished wiping her mouth but still did not let go of Jimmy’s arm. Instead she gripped his hand and pressed it to her cheek. She saw her mother’s hand wrapped around Jimmy’s like a gaping python, slithering down her neck, in through the opening of her gown and coming to rest on her breasts.

  Jenny heard an almighty crack, as if her head had exploded into myriad fragments. She had dropped the mirror, and it shattered. She was treading barefoot on shards of glass, but felt no pain.