Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  When he awoke, it was completely dark. Kam Shan was still not home and the only sound in the house was the ticking of the old wall clock. Ah-Fat turned over and felt something digging into his neck. He sat up and patted the pillow. It felt as if a piece of cardboard had been hidden somewhere inside it. He pushed his hand in and brought out a letter. The envelope was stamped with the British Union Jack at the top left and a shield on the right, set in a square. Ah-Fat recognized the Canadian flag. It was addressed to Frank Fong, and the postmark was dated a month ago. Ah-Fat was annoyed—how could Kam Shan have forgotten to give it to him?

  The letter was neatly typed, in English. Ah-Fat’s English was rudimentary at best and he had to read it a few times before he could understand anything. Even after reading it several more times, there were still bits which made no sense to him.

  Dear Mr. Frank Fong, We deeply regret … your son Mr. Jimmy Fong … fallen in battle in the Republic of France. We will always … heroism … glory … defence of liberty …

  As he read it for the fifth time, the words swam before his eyes and the page blurred.

  “The light … turn on the light,” Ah-Fat mumbled to himself. An immense darkness came down and engulfed him.

  Year thirty-four of the Republic (1945)

  Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China

  Six Fingers saw the spider on the wall when she awoke.

  It progressed in stops and starts, dragging its large iridescent abdomen until it finally reached the large photograph of Ah-Fat in a white suit with a pipe in his mouth.

  A lucky spider, Six Fingers thought to herself.

  Ah-Fat had had the picture taken on his last visit home, in the Chu Hoi Studio in Canton. It was the year that Kam Sau was born. She was thirtytwo now, which made Ah-Fat.…

  The morning sun seemed to cling heavily to her eyelids, forcing them shut again. Six Fingers went back to sleep before she had finished the thought.

  When she woke up again, the spider was still there, perched on Ah-Fat’s nose, making it look from where she lay as if there was a big hole in it.

  Her heart gave an anxious leap and she felt around on the bed for Wai Heung.

  Wai Heung had reached school age but Six Fingers absolutely refused to let her attend classes. She even refused to get a tutor in and insisted on teaching her to read and write herself. “At least until she’s completed lower primary,” Six Fingers said. “Then she can go to school.” Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen argued but Six Fingers refused to budge.

  Her other grandchildren, Yiu Kei and Wai Kwok, had both died young, and Yin Ling was in Gold Mountain. Kam Shan was too old to have any more children, and who knew when Kam Ho would come back home to his wife, Ah-Hsien. After she had been raped and beaten by the Japanese soldiers, Kam Sau could no longer bear children. So Wai Heung was the only grandchild at home and Six Fingers cherished and protected her in every way she knew. Wherever Wai Heung was, Six Fingers worried about her. She even shared her bed with the little girl.

  Wai Heung was awake and sitting up braiding her hair. She had such a thick rope of hair that even when it was divided into two braids, they were as thick as sugar canes. She had no mirror and the results were distinctly lopsided. Smiling, Six Fingers grabbed the ox-horn comb from Wai Heung’s hand: “If you can’t even braid your hair, who’ll marry you when you’re a big girl?” Wai Heung giggled. She was a good-natured child whom it was impossible to spoil.

  When the braids were finished, Six Fingers put a basket over one arm and took Wai Heung by the hand. “Come along. Granny’s going to pick cucumbers, and you can pick a bunch of flowers for me,” she said. These days, the Fongs’ fields were all rented to tenant farmers; they had kept only a small plot for growing their own vegetables and fruit. As they went out, Six Fingers thought she heard a crow cawing harshly in the tree. She looked up, but it was actually a magpie peeking down cheekily from a branch. She felt a leap of happiness and her face relaxed into a smile.

  First, the lucky spider, now the magpie. She felt sure they were signs which boded well for the day ahead.

  It had rained overnight and the air was rinsed fresh and clean. The hibiscus by the roadside had exploded into bloom. Frogs in the ditches croaked loudly. Six Fingers picked a hibiscus flower, shook the dew off it and tucked it behind her granddaughter’s ear. “And when’s my little Wai Heung going to get married?” she asked.

  Wai Heung giggled again and began to hum: “The moon shines bright on the ocean bay, my mum’s marrying me to Gold Mountain far away!” Six Fingers was startled. “Who’s been teaching you that nonsense?” she snapped. Wai Heung quailed at the sudden change in her Granny’s mood. “Second Auntie,” she mumbled, meaning Kam Ho’s wife, Ah-Hsien. “That imbecile! Fancy filling your head with stuff like that! You’re not going anywhere, Wai Heung. You just stick with your granny.” The girl nodded obediently and the smile gradually returned to Six Fingers’ face.

  They arrived at the edge of the fields. The second crop of rice had been harvested and the bare earth stretched away into the distance, dotted with a few bent figures. The tenant farmers’ wives and children were busy cleaning up the field. Six Fingers and her late mother-in-law, Mrs. Mak, may have differed on many points, but they shared a passion for owning land. In Six Fingers’ view, having money was all well and good but it could all vanish. The only thing that could be relied on was land: no rat could nibble it, no eagle could snatch it away, no thief could steal it. Six Fingers had a mental map of every one of their fields. Those fields had a few gaps in them at the moment because she had had to sell some during the Japanese occupation. The thought of those gaps caused Six Fingers a stab of pain.

  She vowed to herself that one day she would buy that land back and fill in every one of those gaps.

  The cucumbers were nearly over, and only a canopy of large leaves remained. Six Fingers and Wai Heung felt between the leaves of each plant but without success. But soon they discovered that the rainfall had knocked the remaining cucumbers off their stems. Six Fingers felt in the mud and found a few decent ones, which she put in her basket. Then they heard a distant shout: “Kam Sau’s mum, where are you?”

  “It’s my granddad,” said Wai Heung.

  Six Fingers straightened up, and saw Mak Dau stumbling, puffing and panting, across the fields holding something aloft in one hand.

  “Letters … from Gold Mountain!” he shouted.

  “Two of them. One from Kam Sau’s dad, the other from Kam Shan.” Six Fingers was startled. It was rare for Ah-Fat to write to her in recent years. If he had something to tell her, he usually got Kam Shan to write the letter.

  “You open them and read them to me,” she said. “My hands are covered in mud.”

  “Which one shall I open first?” asked Mak Dau with a wicked smile on his face.

  “Don’t give me that nonsense! Whichever you like.”

  “I know what ‘whichever you like’ means,” said Mak Dau, still looking mischievous. He opened Ah-Fat’s letter and began to read. It cost him considerable effort and the sweat stood out on his forehead. As a boy, he had attended Mr. Auyung’s classes along with Kam Shan and Kam Ho, but only for a short time. He could not make much sense of the first lines of Ah-Fat’s letter.

  Word comes from the North of something, something…

  When I first hear the news, tears wet something…

  I turn to my wife and children, sorrowful no more,

  Something … scrolls, we are wild with happiness

  Six Fingers clasped her basket over her belly and laughed so hard she was almost bent double. Finally, she composed herself. “Leave the weepy poem,” she said. “Just read me the rest of the letter.”

  The remainder was much more straightforward and Mak Dau’s reading speeded up:

  Now that I have heard that the Japanese have surrendered, I will get the boat times by tomorrow at the latest, and buy my passage home. Then we can be together. After so many years apart, my heart speeds like an a
rrow to yours. There is just one thing I need to tell you: I have come to know a woman here called Gold Mountain Cloud and we have enjoyed a deep friendship over the years. Cloud has no family and I cannot bear to leave her behind alone. For this reason (Mak Dau stumbled slightly) I am bringing her with me. I hope you will understand and will treat her as a sister, so that we can all live in … harmony.

  When Mak Dau had finished reading, Six Fingers said nothing. Her face looked as taut as cotton stretched on an embroidery frame. Mak Dau tried, and failed, to think of something to say. Finally, he turned to Kam Shan’s letter and began to read.

  His hand started to tremble with the words, and the letter fluttered to the ground like a pigeon with a broken wing.

  “Well? What does it say?” asked Six Fingers. Mak Dau’s lips trembled but no sound came out. “Oh, spit it out, will you?” she demanded impatiently. “And do stop looking so miserable.”

  “Kam Sau’s dad is dead,” said Mak Dau. “It was a stroke. There was nothing they could do.”

  Six Fingers screwed up her face. Mak Dau thought she was going to cry, but she did not. Then the muscles gradually relaxed into an expression of calm as complete as water unruffled by any breeze.

  Mak Dau was panic-stricken. He tugged her sleeve. “Cry,” he urged her. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  She turned to him but her eyes looked right through him and focused on somewhere far in the distance.

  “He was an old man. His time had come,” she finally murmured.

  Year thirty-five of the Republic (1946)

  Vancouver, British Columbia

  As thirty-six exhausted but excited troops stepped on shore, they were met by deafening cheers and the welcoming notes of the military band. This was yet another group of soldiers returning home to their families, but with one difference; every single soldier was Chinese. These young men have returned from secret missions against the Japanese in the jungles of India, Burma and Malaya. Observe their uniforms covered in the dust of foreign soil and their faces and hands burned dark by the tropical sun. They accepted their mission with the knowledge that their chances of a safe return were slim. And although America’s atomic bombs put a stop to the war before they could begin their operation, they nevertheless received a hero’s welcome home today, just like any other troops returning from the battlefront in Europe. This is the first-ever occasion on which the citizens of Vancouver have accepted these young people as their own. As well they should. These Chinese soldiers volunteered to fight under the Canadian flag on the battle fronts of Europe and Asia but are still not permitted to take Canadian citizenship. These men, who have fulfilled every duty owed to their country by its citizens, will soon be in Ottawa, demanding those long-withheld rights and a repeal of the 1923 Exclusion Act.

  The Vancouver Sun, 15 December 1945 After lunch, Kam Shan began to rifle through cases and cupboards for something to wear. He owned only one Western-style suit, one he had bought thirty years ago when he was running the photographic studio in Port Hope.

  He found it at the bottom of a camphorwood chest and, when he took it out, the smell of old mothballs nearly made him sneeze. He used a dampened handkerchief to smooth out the creases in the suit but they were stubborn. He rubbed so hard the dye in the fabric came off on the handkerchief and he had to give up. It was something of a battle to get his arms into the jacket sleeves after all these years; he won, but the fabric tore in the process. At least the tear was under the armpit and would not show. But, no matter how hard he tried, he could not get the buttons done up.

  Looking at himself in the cloudy old mirror that hung on the wall, he could not help smiling in satisfaction. Even a suit which did not fit properly was still a suit. He needed to do something about his hair though. He went to the kitchen, poured a few drops of peanut oil into the palm of his hands, rubbed them on his hair and ran a comb through it. When he next looked in the mirror, his hair was slicked back in neatly separated strands, and now it was the suit that looked shabby.

  Well, it could not be helped. He would just have to go as he was.

  He looked at the old wall clock. It was only half past five. He wasn’t due at the Chinese Benevolent Association until seven o’clock, and the film started at eight, but, even so, he could not wait that long. His feet itched to get going. He picked up the bag he had prepared the night before and hastily left the house.

  It was early spring. As he walked through the streets of Vancouver lined with cherry trees covered in blossom, he attracted more than a few curious looks. The reason was not the ill-fitting suit, or the limping gait, or even the strange-looking bag he carried in his arms, but the fact that he was muttering to himself as he went along.

  He addressed a few words to the bag at every street corner.

  “At the next corner, we turn east.”

  “A few yards from this junction is where Yin Ling used to go to school.

  “This street runs at a diagonal. When we get to the post office, we have to turn left.

  “We come back the same way. If we do that, then we won’t get lost.”

  When he approached the Association office it was still not six o’clock, but before he even crossed the street, he could see the group of young Chinese men gathered outside.

  One. Two. Three … Ten. Eleven. Counting himself, that made twelve.

  They had all arrived early.

  These eleven men were demobbed soldiers in uniforms and peaked caps. He could not help noticing what a uniform did to a man—it made him looking dashing, taller, and straighter, it even put a glow in his face. An irrepressible pride brimmed in the eyes of every one of them.

  He had never seen Kam Ho in uniform. He did not even have one photograph, he thought with regret. When Kam Ho joined up, he was already forty years old, old enough to be the father of all these men. Had the uniform imbued his brother with the same spirit? he wondered.

  The soldiers who had come back safe and sound were big news in Vancouver. Every day the newspapers carried their pictures and the radio broadcast their voices. They went from talk to talk and interview to interview. From the moment they disembarked, they were borne along on clouds, and nothing had brought them down to earth yet.

  All they’d fucking done was survive, Kam Shan thought bitterly.

  By comparison with these fine young men, Kam Shan felt like a bedraggled, miserable specimen.

  Today they were off to a film show at the Orpheum Theatre in Granville Street. Tickets cost thirty cents if you sat in the back or to the side. If he was going to the Canton Street theatre, he would not have parted with even twenty cents, but today was different. He would have happily spent three dollars on today’s show if he had to. Besides, it was Kam Ho’s money.

  He’d divided the lump sum payout he received after Kam Ho’s death into two. He sent the larger portion to Hoi Ping. He had not told them of Kam Ho’s death so his mother still did not know that what she was spending was her son’s blood money. With Kam Ho and Cat Eyes both dead, there were no wage earners in the family and it would be a long time before Six Fingers received any more cheques from Gold Mountain.

  The smaller portion he kept for himself. He had let the room after his father died and the rent, together with the cash he earned from selling bean sprouts, was enough to keep him. So he put his share of the money aside for a rainy day. And for something else as well, though he did not dare admit it.

  It was for when Yin Ling came back. She would be twenty-three this year. If she was still alive, she would be back when she had had enough of the wandering life. At her age, no matter how wild at heart she was, she would be thinking about getting married. The money would be just about enough to pay for a simple wedding.

  The soldiers formed up and set off down the street, with Kam Shan bringing up the rear. They marched smartly in unison, the rhythm of their feet as regular as someone scything grass for pig fodder.

  The street was the water and they were the ship. The water parted at the ship’s appro
ach. Right around the ship, it was especially turbulent. People wound down their car windows and tooted their horns, and passersby applauded as they marched.

  Kam Shan was aware that the car horns and the applause were intended for the eleven men who marched in front of him. He was but a shadow following behind; his footsteps were out of kilter with their steady strides.

  It was getting dark, and one by one the lights of Granville Street flickered on. There was no mistaking the neon illuminations of the Orpheum Theatre. It was a moon to the streetlights’ stars and outshone them all. Tonight’s film was spelled out in hundreds of bulbs: Lady Luck. Kam Shan had no idea what it was about, or who the lead actors were. He didn’t even care. All he wanted to do this evening was go in and sit down.

  The queue for the box office stretched down the street. The war had shattered the old, familiar world, but even when the planes were flying low over Hollywood producers’ heads, you could not keep them quiet. They made films full of froth and fantasy to persuade people that nothing in the world had changed. Just so long as Hollywood was not bombed, the Orpheum Theatre could count on doing good business.

  Kam Shan had heard all about the Orpheum Theatre from his brother, Kam Ho.

  Many years ago, when Kam Ho was still a houseboy at the Hendersons’, they had taken him there. It was a proper theatre in those days, putting on top-class orchestral concerts and musicals. Kam Ho could not remember what the orchestra was playing that day, what he did remember was being in a rage the whole evening.

  When the three of them arrived at the entrance, they were stopped by a doorman in a maroon uniform.

  “Chinese are only allowed in side seats,” the man said in low tones to the Hendersons.

  He did not even glance at Kam Ho.