Gold Mountain Blues (28 page)

The Whispering Bamboos Laundry announces the opening of a new branch, situated opposite the Vancouver Hotel in Georgia Street. The Whispering Bamboos Laundry has over a decade of experience in washing, starching, ironing and mending, and has more than twenty employees. We are at the service of hotels and individual customers. Prices are reasonable and your satisfaction is guaranteed.

The interpreter was a short man dressed in a neatly pressed three-piece suit. Holding his hat in his hand, he stood ramrod straight, reminding Ah-Fat of the clothes prop in the back room of his laundry.

“Yes, Your Honour. Chu Ah-Lam says that is the case.”

Bald-headed traitor, Ah-Lam swore silently to himself, disrespecting your ancestors, cutting off your pigtail and eating out of the White man's hand.

“The case of Hunter v. Chu is hereby convened. Mr. Hunter, will you swear in God's name that today you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

Mr. Hunter was the plaintiff in the case against Ah-Lam. He took thick, black, leather-bound book from the judge, raised his right hand and rattled something off. When he had finished, the interpreter took the book and passed it to Ah-Lam.

“I'm not swearing on any black book. I don't believe in that Long Beard god of yours.”

“What does he say?” the judge asked the interpreter.

“Mr. Chu doesn't believe in God so he can't take the oath on the Bible.”

“Well, what does he believe in, apart from money?”

“You motherfucker” was Ah-Lam's response when the interpreter translated the judge's question. The interpreter was aghast. After a pause, he said to the judge with some embarrassment: “Mr. Chu hopes your mother well.”

This time, a snort of laughter escaped Ah-Fat.

“Thank you. But you still have not told me in the name of which god you would like to take the oath. Do you want to do what you did before?”

This was not the first time Ah-Lam had been in court. He had been accused of pilfering clothes three months previously. His accusers were different but the offence was the same. Each man had given Ah-Lam clothes to wash and had collected them from him after washing. But each man claimed afterwards that Ah-Lam had not returned their clothes. Ah-Lam could talk the hind legs off a donkey but had not been able to argue his way out of it and the judge had fined him thirty dollars. On the last occasion, Ah-Lam had taken the oath before the portrait of Lord Kwan, but Lord Kwan had not looked after him, and Ah-Lam was damned if he was going to pay his respects to Lord Kwan once again.

Ah-Lam scratched his head, and finally said: “Chicken's blood.”

The judge raised his eyebrows. His glasses dropped off the bridge of his nose and onto the table in front of him.

“Your Honour,” said the interpreter, “solemnizing an oath with the blood of a chicken is an ancient custom among the people of the Qing Empire, and it is both commonly used and accepted. The defendant is not making fun of the court.”

The judge ordered the court adjourned, and when it re-assembled a short while later, a burly police officer, at least six foot three inches in height, strode in carrying a pure white leghorn hen. The hen's wings were tightly bound to its body with a cord but it was surprisingly vigorous. When set down in the aisle, it scrabbled madly with its feet, squawking loudly and filling the courtroom with a cloud of snowy-white feathers.

Ah-Lam stuck three sticks of incense into the table in front of the judge and lit them with a taper. He slumped to his knees and bowed three times. Then from behind his ear he extracted a piece of paper rolled up tightly till it resembled a cigarette, unrolled it and began to read it aloud to the judge. Ah-Fat had written his statement out for him but Ah-Lam could not read, so with Ah-Fat's help he had learned it off by heart, word for word.

I, Chu Ah-Lam, born in Dung Ning Lai Village, Ng Wing Town, Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China, have worked as a washerman at the Whispering Bamboos Laundry at 732 Georgia Street (originally of 963 Main Street) for eight years. At the beginning of this month, Mr. Hunter brought in three garments for washing—a sweater and two pairs of trousers. The sweater was to be washed and the trousers were to be washed and mended. The lighter-coloured pair had frayed trouser cuffs and the darker pair had a cigarette burn in the pocket. The washing and mending was done by the next day. Mr. Hunter's maid came to collect them at about ten o'clock. I wrapped them in tissue paper and gave them to her. That motherfucking baldie Hunter has stitched me up. If he's really lost his clothes he should ask his maid. She's the one who should be taken to court. She probably nicked the clothes and gave them to her fancy man. It's fucking bad luck on me. I, Chu Ah-Lam, swear this on this chicken's blood before God in heaven and my venerable ancestors and if I've spoken one word of a lie, may I be eaten by rats in my house and run over by a horse and cart outside it. May I choke to death on my phlegm when I lie down, may I die of purulent boils on my arse when I sit down, and when I stand, may I be struck dead by five bolts of lightning.

Ah-Lam had begun his recitation according to Ah-Fat's script, but he soon felt that the language was too high-flown. It sounded to him as pulpy as a frosted eggplant, so he dropped the paper and proceeded to improvise the rest. As the interpreter got near the end, he broke out in a sweat and could not go on. He mopped his face with a handkerchief, and said to the judge: “In summary, Mr. Chu Ah-Lam has enumerated many different ways in which he is prepared to die if he has told a lie.”

The hen, which had squawked itself into a state of exhaustion, was laid on a tile. The court officer cut its head off with a heavy axe. The hen's blood spurted onto the floor where it formed a sticky puddle. The head flopped onto the tile but the body of the hen shot upright and rushed away with great strides, leaving a trail of crimson claw prints on the floor. By the time the court officer had pulled himself together, the hen was out the door.

Passersby were treated to a rare spectacle that day: a headless hen, its wings bound tightly to its body, racing across the lawn in front of the courthouse, its neck sticking up like a wine bottle from which gurgled bloody bubbles. A man in police uniform gave chase. He reached down clumsily to grasp it, but the hen, though headless, easily evaded his outstretched hands. The fact was, the court officer was too well-built for
the job and it cost him a good deal of effort to keep bending down and straightening up. After a few attempts, he was clearly out of breath. He planted his hands on his knees, and watched as the bloody hen collided with the iron grille surrounding the fountain in the middle of the lawn, left one last grass-green dropping on the white granite steps, finally fell to the ground and died.

The court officer returned the headless runaway to the courtroom where Ah-Lam still knelt. By now, he was growing impatient, and as soon as the hen came within reach, he stretched out his finger, scooped up a blob of congealing blood from its neck and smeared it on the paper on which his statement was written. Then he set the paper alight with the incense stick and sat back down in his seat.

“You say Mr. Hunter sent his servant to collect the clothes. What was the servant's name?” the judge asked Ah-Lam.

“You'll have to ask him that,” said Ah-Lam, pointing to the man who sat at the plaintiff's table. “How do I know what his servants are called?”

“Can you tell us if the servant had any special characteristics? Even if you don't know her name, you can tell us what she looked like, can't you?”

Ah-Lam chewed his fingertip and thought for a while. Eventually he said to the interpreter: “These
yeung fan
all look the same. How the fuck should I remember?”

The interpreter was translating for the judge when Ah-Lam suddenly piped up in a loud voice: “She had big tits. That woman had tits which hung down to her belly.”

Ah-Fat wanted to laugh but did not dare. But when he had heard the translation, the plaintiff, Mr. Hunter, guffawed. The judge banged twice with his gavel, and pointed with a face like thunder to Ah-Lam. “This is contempt of a court of the British Empire. You're fined ten dollars.” Ah-Lam pointed to Mr. Hunter: “He's the one who laughed. What kind of a law is it that says you should fine me and not him?” The judge banged his gavel once more. “I'm adding five dollars to the fine.” Ah-Lam was about to protest but was quelled by a warning cough from Ah-Fat.

The judge turned to Hunter. “What evidence do you have that Mr. Chu stole your clothes?” “Your Honour,” replied Hunter, “I only know that I sent five garments to the laundry and did not get one garment back.
Isn't that enough proof? Do you think I have nothing better to do than take this bunch of ‘celestials' to court?”

Ah-Lam clenched his two fists together until they cracked. In the blink of an eye, three garments had become five. He was about to start cursing, when he heard the interpreter ask him: “You say you did not steal Mr. Hunter's clothes. What proof have you got? A signature, perhaps?”

“You don't sign a contract for three items of clothing! It's not like selling your wife or your fields!”

The judge closed his eyes for a long moment. Then he opened them and said: “The plaintiff accuses the defendant of stealing his clothes; the defendant swears that he did not. The plaintiff has insufficient evidence and so does the defendant. I do not entirely believe either of you. Therefore you will bear the costs equally. Five garments, somewhat worn, divide the value in half, that's five dollars. Add the courts costs, that makes a total of twelve dollars. Mr. Chu pays Mr. Hunter twelve dollars. The loss of the other half of this sum must be borne by you, Mr. Hunter. Let that be lesson to you not to bring a case with insufficient evidence.”

Ah-Lam stamped up and down in rage. “What kind of a dumb judge is he? Any blind magistrate from way out in the sticks would give a more sensible judgment than that!” The judge did not wait for a translation of what he knew was a rude comment, but tugged his black robe around him and made to leave the court. Suddenly the
yeung fan
in the public seats stood up. “Your Honour, would you wait a moment? I have important evidence.” The man had been seated for the whole case without opening his mouth. Seeing that he was dressed like a respectable member of the community, the judge put on a slight show of civility and asked: “Who are you?”

The man bowed. “I am Rick Henderson, deputy general manager of the Vancouver Hotel, owned by the Canadian Pacific Railroad.” The judge grunted. “The Duke of Wales and Cornwall stayed in your hotel with his wife when they came to visit and I got an invitation to the cocktail party they gave.” “Not only the Duke of Wales and Cornwall,” said Rick, “every member of royalty stays with us when they visit the West Coast. If you want to enjoy afternoon tea, British style, in the very dining room where royalty have dined, you have to book two weeks in advance. At afternoon
tea on Victoria Day in May, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will be coming from London to play chamber music. They include two violinists who played for Queen Victoria at her Golden Jubilee. Of course, all the seats have long since sold out.” Rick took a gold-monogrammed envelope out of the pocket of his lightweight wool suit and handed it to the judge. “Perhaps Your Honour would like to verify that I am who I say I am.”

The judge opened the envelope and took out a sheet of paper with the same gold monogram on it. He turned it over and looked at the back and gradually a faint smile appeared on his lips. He carefully put the letter away in an inner pocket of his black gown and asked: “Mr. Henderson, you have come as a witness for Mr. Hunter?” Rick shook his head. “Quite the contrary,” he said, “I have come as a witness for Mr. Chu—although he didn't invite me.

“Mr. Chu Ah-Lam is an employee of the Whispering Bamboos Laundry, whose proprietor, Mr. Fong Tak Fat, is also present today. In the last eight years, the Whispering Bamboos Laundry has provided laundry services for the Vancouver Hotel. For the first five years, they washed and ironed the bed and table linen, just for the ordinary guests, of course. We have specialist launderers for the rooms of our most exclusive guests. For the last three years, the Whispering Bamboos Laundry has also undertaken personal laundry and mending for our ordinary guests.

“The Whispering Bamboos Laundry has now, I know, opened another branch in Vancouver with around twenty employees. This branch provides services for hotels and guest houses, and has very few private customers. In the last eight years, the Vancouver Hotel has not lost a single bedsheet or tablecloth. Nor have our guests made a single complaint of this nature. Of course, they have made other complaints, for example, that it's hard to make the laundry workers understand English and so on. As I understand it, there are several hundred dialects of Chinese within the Empire of the Great Qing alone, so it's a bit like the Tower of Babel, with everyone speaking their own language. We surely cannot expect them to completely understand the language of the British Empire, just like that, can we? But Your Honour only has to give it one serious thought, and it will become immediately apparent that a laundry business which has serviced the Vancouver Hotel for eight years is hardly likely to bother pilfering some
trifling item of clothing from an individual customer. I hope that you will give due weight to my testimony, Your Honour.”

The judge shook his head and grumbled: “Are you having a joke at my expense? Why didn't you bring all this up when the court was in session? It would have saved everyone a great deal of trouble. That poor hen might have been spared to lay a few more eggs.” And he banged the gavel hard on the table: “The case of Hunter v. Chu is hereby concluded. The evidence of the plaintiff does not stand up in court. Mr. Chu does not need to pay any compensation to Mr. Hunter. Mr. Hunter will bear all the legal costs. The court is dismissed.”