Gold Mountain Blues (29 page)

Rick bowed to the judge. “Your Honour, I hope that my witness statement can be kept permanently on file. It's hard enough for these poor Chinese to run their small businesses without these people who constantly make trouble for them. If the Whispering Bamboos Laundry is ever taken to court again in a case like this, the judge can refer to my testimony, or call me as a witness.”

Once outside, Ah-Fat could not resist asking Rick: “What the hell was written in that letter?”

Rick looked around to check no one was listening and then muttered: “An invitation as an honoured guest to the Royal Afternoon Tea on Victoria Day. The seats closest to the orchestra.”

If Ah-Fat's English was rudimentary, Ah-Lam's was even more so, and he was unable to say anything much to Rick. However, he tugged at Ah-Fat's sleeve and said: “You did the right thing, kid, when you saved that
kuai lo
's life on the railroad.” “That's all very well for you to say. The scar's not on your face, is it?” Ah-Fat retorted.

Rick snapped his fingers at a carriage on the other side of the street and the driver brought it slowly over. Rick jumped in, and then turned back to Ah-Fat: “Next time customers come to pick up their clothes, get them to sign for them. It'll save you a lot of bother.” “Right,” said Ah-Fat, with nod. The carriage creaked away but after a few paces stopped again at Rick's command. Rick came back to say to Ah-Fat:

“That eminent Chinese scholar of yours, Mr. Liang, is staying at the hotel. From what I hear, he's been promoting his reform movement and
planning to overthrow the Empress Dowager. He's giving a lecture this evening. Are you coming?”

Even though Rick broke his sentences into short sections and spoke very slowly, Ah-Lam still did not understand. “What bullshit's he talking now?” he asked Ah-Fat. “We'll put up the shutters early today and we're going to the hotel.” “But Ah-Yee's already delivered the washed and ironed linen we got yesterday. What's the point in going back there again?” “Mr. Liang's here and he's staying at the hotel.” “What Mr. Liang?” “Liang Qichao, the one who plotted constitutional reform with the Emperor, and the Empress Dowager put a price on his head of a hundred thousand ounces of silver. He's lecturing tonight.” “If you get involved with the Monarchists, and they get wind of it back home, your whole family will be killed.” “A lot of Chinese here in Vancouver have joined the Monarchists. If we don't go shooting our mouths off, they won't get wind of it.” “You go if you want. Me and Ah-Yee, we're off to the Fan Tan gambling dens. Whatever party's in power, the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor. So what if Mr. Liang's here? I still have to wash clothes to earn a living.”

“Bullshit,” said Ah-Fat. “If China was just a little bit stronger, would you and me have to leave our parents, wives and kids and come and work over here, and have the
yeung fan
make trouble for us all the time? We've got a young, promising emperor. He's had a Western education, and if he can take power, he can use that knowledge to contain the Westerners and revitalize our country. Then you and I can get back home and live with our families.” Ah-Lam had married a few years before, but had not managed to raise the money for the head tax or the boat passage home, and had not seen his son since his birth. Ah-Fat had touched a raw nerve, and Ah-Lam fell silent.

When they had put the shutters up, Ah-Fat and Ah-Lam spruced themselves up and changed into the long gowns and mandarin jackets that normally only came out for New Year. They walked to the Vancouver Hotel through the darkening streets, their blue cloth shoes kicking up fine dust which bore the faint smell of new grass, feeling an excitement which gradually rose to fever pitch.

They arrived in good time at the hotel. At the door, Ah-Fat saw a familiar face—familiar yet strange, as if the man had changed out of his
usual clothes and did not look like himself any more. Ah-Fat stared for a moment. Then the man smiled at him and a black mole at the corner of his lips migrated up his face. Suddenly he knew who it was.

Ah-Fat lifted the folds of his gown and knelt down in a respectful bow: “Mr. Auyung! When did you come to Gold Mountain? No wonder Ah-Yin wrote and told me she couldn't get in touch with you. We wanted our son Kam Shan to become your pupil last year.”

Mr. Auyung pulled him to his feet. “Two years ago, I wrote some articles on constitutional reform and the government put a price on my head. I had to leave my home. I first went to Japan, but then I heard that Mr. Kang Youwei and Mr. Liang Qichao were in North America so I came here too.”

Auyung pulled the two men to one side and they talked for a long time. When they finally went into the hotel lecture hall, there were no seats left and the aisles were full of people standing, both Whites and Chinese. By the time Ah-Fat and Ah-Lam had squeezed themselves into a small corner, they realized they had missed the beginning of the speech. In any case, the tenor of Mr. Liang's speech was high-flown in the extreme; these grand, distant phrases seemed to fall like boulders in a disorderly heap. Even for a man who had some education like Ah-Fat, negotiating this boulder-strewn road cost him a good deal of effort. Fortunately, Auyung had smoothed the way for them beforehand and, having heard his simplified version, it was easier to make sense of what Liang Qichao had to say.

It was midnight before they got home from Liang Qichao's lecture. Neither of them could sleep, so they sat on the bed smoking one cigarette after another. The laundry boys were already asleep, and rhythmic sounds of snoring filled the room like a chorus of cicadas. In the darkness, all that could be seen was the glinting light from two pipe bowls. Ah-Lam kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed picking out the grime from between his toes. “A woman's made herself the boss of the Emperor and the boss of our whole country. Mr. What's-it Liang—what the hell was he going on about? I say we should simply hire someone to stick a knife into her. I've never heard such a boring lot of shit.” Ah-Fat did not answer. There was more swearing from Ah-Lam but then he got tired of it, and grabbing his pillow, he lay down. Immediately, his breathing became heavy.

Sometime in the early hours, Ah-Lam was woken by the need to piss. Opening his eyes, he was astonished to see a will-o'-the-wisp glinting by the bed. “Ah-Fat! You still not asleep, you little sod? It's almost dawn!” The light shifted position and he heard a low, muffled voice:

“I'm sorry, Ah-Lam. I'm going to have to do you out of your rice bowl. I've decided to sell the laundries, both of them. The Qing Empire can't be saved without educated men like Kang and Liang,” Ah-Fat went on. “We can only help by giving money; we don't have enough education to help any other way.”

A gasp caught in Ah-Lam's throat. But, astonished though he was, he knew that once Ah-Fat had made up his mind, nothing would make him budge.

“Once I've sold them, you and I will go and get work in the fish cannery. You won't starve while I've still got a mouthful to eat.”

“I won't starve but what about your wife and kids? Their eyes are going to pop out of their heads, waiting for your dollar letters.”

Ah-Fat was silent. Then he said: “I won't be able to go home for a while. Ah-Yin'll just have to wait.”

Two months later, Ah-Fat sold his laundry business to a greengrocer who hailed from Toi Shan for eight hundred and ninety-five dollars. He divided the money into three. The largest part he sent to the North American headquarters of the Monarchist Reform Party. The middling portion he sent to Six Fingers with one of his friends who was going home to Hoi Ping. The bit of cash that remained he kept for himself.

After that, Ah-Fat completely lost touch with Mr. Auyung. In the years that followed, every now and then, a rumour of his whereabouts might come his way: Auyung had joined a plot to assassinate the Empress and had been betrayed to the police and beheaded at the entrance to the vegetable market in Beijing; he had secretly gone back to Guangdong and organized a militia to go to the rescue of the Emperor in Beijing but had died of a chill he caught en route; or he had gone to Japan, taken a Japanese woman as a second wife and abandoned politics, immersing himself in the study of the sages.

Whatever the truth of it, Mr. Auyung glittered briefly in Ah-Fat's life like a star and then vanished forever.

Year thirty-one of the reign of Guangxu (1905) Vancouver, British Columbia

It was only when he came within sight of the two lanterns hanging outside the gambling den that Ah-Fat felt tired. It usually took him an hour and ten minutes to get from the factory to Chinatown but today he had quickened his pace, almost breaking into a jog, and did it in three-quarters of an hour. Ah-Lam had given up trying to keep up with him after a while and let him go ahead.

Hawkers swarmed around him like flies, carrying baskets on their arms or slung over their shoulders and offering their wares: sesame crisp,
char siu
dumplings, green bean cakes, sticky rice balls, chickens' feet in briny gravy, and strips of cold, cooked pigs' ears. He had a ten-dollar note tucked away in an inner pocket—the wages he'd just been paid. He reached inside and fingered the note, its former crispness sodden from his sweat. Tonight he could afford anything from the baskets, and not only from the baskets. He could take a very small corner of his note upstairs to a room above the gambling den screened off by a roughly nailed curtain, where a woman was desperately eager to take it off him. In the last few years, the head tax for Chinese immigrants had soared to five hundred dollars—a sum so huge that it was almost impossible to save up even if you scrimped and saved for years. Very few Chinese women came to Gold Mountain, so their prices had naturally gone up. A whole night of tenderness was beyond his means, but every now and then he could afford fifteen minutes.

Ah-Lam was a regular customer here. There was no way Ah-Lam could raise five hundred dollars, so Ah-Lam's wife was still stuck in her home village. But Ah-Lam did not neglect his own needs. He regularly told stories about what went on in that dark room. Ah-Lam's descriptions set Ah-Fat on fire, and when he could not stand this fevered state any more, he went too. He did not think of Six Fingers when he entered, only when he left. Every time he pulled aside the old curtain and went in, his whole body was ablaze; then, when he let the curtain fall behind him and left, he felt a desolate chill.
There was no getting away from the pain this fire and chill caused him. They both had to be borne; one could not take the place of the other.

Ah-Fat's eyes only gave a cursory glance at each of the baskets but his belly rebelled, crying out in shrill tones its urgent need for food. He had only had half a bowl of rice and drunk some boiled water at lunchtime. He had walked a long way since then, and now his hunger seemed to be gnawing painfully at his innards. But before he could satisfy it, he needed to find a place where he could have a piss.

There were plenty of unlit walls around the gambling den, and passersby who needed to relieve themselves would normally pull up their jackets, undo their trousers and piss there. In the past, Ah-Fat had done that too, but today he did not want to. Holding it in, he walked a few steps through the alleyway, bright with painted signs and warmed by shop lanterns, until he finally came to a large maple tree where he stopped. Its shade enveloped him like a black cloak. Underfoot lay a pile of ancient refuse the stench from which almost knocked him backwards. Ah-Fat pulled up the front of his jacket, undid his trousers and pissed. The stream of urine hissed as it fell on the trash, raising a cloud of flies in the darkness, the buzz of their unseen wings breaking the quiet around him.

Having relieved the pressure on his bladder, his mind was free to think of other things and he became aware of the rank smell coming from his jacket. He and Ah-Lam had started work at six o'clock in the morning and had spent the whole day washing and gutting fish. Of course they wore aprons but his knee-length jacket still got spattered in fish scales and blood. Since selling his laundry business two years previously, he had worked at the fish cannery. The workers were all Chinese and Redskins, the former all men, the latter all women. The men washed the fish and cut them up, while the women packed the cooked fish into cans of various sizes. The men's work was very dirty, the women's a little less so. When Ah-Fat and Ah-Lam started there, they used to wash the fishy smell off their clothes every night when they got back home. You felt like a different person once you had poured a basin of water and washed your hands and face with carbolic. But the smell of fish gradually impregnated their clothing, the pores of their skin, even seeped into their veins. Nothing could wash it off. Ah-Fat thought that even his phlegm smelt like fish.

Still under the tree, he took off his jacket and shook it out vigorously. There was a rustling as the fish scales fell to the ground. It was midsummer and the evening breeze still held some of the warmth of the day. Ah-Fat wore a thin white cotton undergarment next to his skin. It was buttoned down the front and Six Fingers had tied a piece of red string to the button over his solar plexus. She had done the same for all his undergarments, to ward off evil. He turned the jacket inside out and folded it into a square, then tucked it under his arm and walked back to the gambling den. The light from the lanterns grew closer and the darkness of the night was left behind. Now that he had his jacket off, his arms bulged visibly, the muscles as prominent as ridges in a freshly ploughed field. He pinched his biceps between thumb and forefinger but there was no superfluous flesh. He may have been forty-two years old, he thought, but he was still in his prime.