Gold Mountain Blues (32 page)

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 and 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.

“Give me back a White Canada!”

The words started feebly, seeming tentative, lacking in conviction, but as they travelled through the throats of the marchers, they gathered strength and momentum. In no time, the words had become a roar so terrifying that both shouters and listeners were stunned into temporary silence.

Ah-Fat's legs, folded under him, went numb. He shifted his position and pins and needles shot up from the soles of his feet to his middle.

The uniforms. Oh God, the uniforms.

He suddenly remembered that Rick had given him three hundred uniforms to wash and iron. They were of the best quality, red fabric meticulously edged with gold braid, and were worn by top-level employees who staffed the staterooms and dining rooms. All three hundred had been laundered and left folded and stacked against the wall. Six tall piles, fifty to each pile. They were right by the window, and even a glimmer of light would reveal the thick gold braiding. If the window was broken, you would only have to reach in to take them. Rick had told him that only the Vancouver Hotel could afford such luxury uniforms and that they cost fifty dollars each. How much were three hundred worth?

Ah-Fat's head felt as if it was going to burst.

Whispering Bamboos. Maybe it was the name. Maybe he should never have picked a name like that. It had nothing to do with laundries. Time and again that name had raised his hopes to the skies, and time and again, those hopes had been dashed. Three times, actually. He decided then and there that he would never, ever, fall into that trap again.

Suddenly he heard the clatter of horses' hooves. Then, the shrill sound of a whistle. “In the name of King Edward the Seventh,” cried a loud voice, “I order you to disperse immediately!” Cautiously, Ah-Fat crawled out from behind the rice sacks and went to the door. Outside, a group of Mounties on huge horses charged. The crowd scattered in all directions under the horses' hooves, like a receding mud flow. Then it re-formed and ran back to the centre. This was repeated again and again. Gradually, however, the flow lost momentum, broke up into ever-smaller patches of mud and then vanished.

After the sound of shouting and hooves receded into the distance, there was absolute silence in the street. Ah-Fat unbolted the restaurant door and went out into a world he no longer recognized. Every lantern outside every shop had been torn down and lay broken on the ground, flattened by marching feet. The street had had all its eyes plucked out. Every shopfront had lost both windowpanes and frames, and the dark openings gaped wide. Not a single person, or dog, was to be seen on the dark street. They were
there somewhere, he knew, hiding in those pockets of darkness. There was no moon, only a handful of pearly stars to brighten the night sky. The ground was covered in heaps of glass shards, which twinkled like a thick layer of autumnal frost. Ah-Fat walked down the street and tripped over something soft. A cat. It mewed pitifully; Ah-Fat felt the animal and his hands came away sticky with blood.

He groped his way through the streets until he got to his shop. It had no door. The plank of wood had been ripped off and lay on its side across the doorway. A shop without a door was like a person without a face, so changed it was unrecognizable. He trod on the door plank and walked in. It was very dark inside and his eyes took some time to adjust. When he could make out shapes, the room looked oddly crowded. He realized that every piece of furniture had been smashed into several pieces.

The clothes. The three hundred uniforms from the Vancouver Hotel. He felt along the windowsill. Backwards, forwards, left, right. There was nothing. Those six piles, so tall they had almost reached the ceiling, had vanished from his shop as if they had never existed.

Ah-Fat rushed out into the street. “You motherfucking scum!” he howled, his face upturned to the skies in a frenzy. “You scum of the earth!” He wanted to go on but the words would not come. He felt as if the tendons at his temples and neck had burst and molten liquid was pouring from them down his body. His cries, echoing in the air above him, somehow reminded him of the beasts slaughtered by his father's hand.

Suddenly a large hand clamped over his mouth.

“Don't shout. They've gone to Japan Town, but they may be back any moment.”

Ah-Fat froze. The man was speaking English. He realized it was Rick.

“I've been waiting ages for you,” said Rick.

At Ah-Fat's cries, the people hiding in the dark recesses of their shops began to emerge in ones and twos. They stood gazing blankly at the ruins of the street. They looked at one another, seeing desolate expressions in each other's eyes. They no longer knew their street, or each other. They did not even know themselves.

The owner of the Loong Kee was the first to pull himself together. Without a sound, he walked up behind Rick and threw a savage punch at
the back of his head. Rick was taken by surprise. His body sagged, then straightened again.

“Kill the
yeung fan
, kill him!”

The onlookers shook themselves awake and surrounded Rick, hemming him in.

“Don't … don't hit him, he's … he's not.…” Ah-Fat tried to explain but found himself suddenly incapable of speech. All he could do was put his arms tightly round Rick. The blows rained down on his body although it was his mouth which took the full force of them. Ah-Fat tasted blood. By the time the crowd realized that they were beating up one of their own, Ah-Fat had lost one of his front teeth.

Ah-Fat helped Rick to his shop and stood in front of him like the god of gateways, blocking the way. The men glared at the pair of them, their eyes shining green and wolf-like in the dark.

“You idiots, he's with us,” Ah-Fat said, spitting out bloody saliva.

Then they heard two dull thuds in the distance.

“It's guns. The
yeung fan
are firing,” someone said. A tremor ran through the crowd, and shadowy figures surged back towards the dark door openings.

“They're Japanese guns,” Rick said to Ah-Fat. “The Japanese sector has its own armed militia but Chinatown has no protection at all. The mob won't hang around there. They'll be back here any minute.

“How many women and children are there here?” he asked. Ah-Fat made a quick calculation. “There can't be more than twenty or so, we're almost all single men around here,” he said.

“Get them together. The secretary of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce is my friend. They can take shelter there, I'll take them. You men go back indoors and hide. Don't light the lanterns and don't go out before daybreak. More Mounties should be here soon. They may seal the district off to keep all non-Chinese out. You'll be safe then.”

Rick took something wrapped in cloth out of his pocket and gave it to Ah-Fat. “Be careful. This is the real thing.” Ah-Fat fingered it lightly—a pistol.

At that moment, thunder rumbled in the distance and the ground began to tremble again.

Ah-Fat knew what that meant. The
yeung fan
rabble had come back.

Dear Ah-Yin,

At the end of last year, I received a little over nine hundred dollars from the Canadian government. Mr. Henderson engaged a lawyer who got me compensation for the destruction of my laundry business the year before last, by a
yeung fan
mob who came to Chinatown. I was hoping to use this money to get a boat passage home, but then I heard that some of our fellow countrymen have been buying land in New Westminster, about twenty kilometres from Vancouver. They cleared it and planted fruit trees and vegetables and now they do good business selling their produce all over the place. Ah-Lam and I followed their example and moved to New Westminster this New Year. I have used the compensation to buy land to farm. Who knows whether Heaven will favour me with a good harvest. I have opened three laundry businesses here and none of them made good, for all sorts of reasons which could not have been foreseen. So I decided not to do that again. I still have around five hundred dollars left over, which is enough to bring one person to Canada. If Mum insists that she does not want you to come, could Kam Shan join me? Clearing and farming this land is back-breaking work. Ah-Lam is in his fifties, and I'm catching up to him. We really need someone younger to help. I am sure that Mum will be unhappy about Kam Shan leaving, but I hope you will make her see reason. When you receive this letter, will you ask my uncle and Ha Kau to go to Canton and find out the time of the boats, so he can come as soon as possible?

Your husband, Tak Fat, twenty-ninth day of the third month, 1909, New Westminster

Springtime, year two of the reign of Xuan Tong (1910) Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China

Mak Dau crossed No-Name River with Kam Ho on his back. The sun was up and warm enough to bead his forehead with sweat. The women following behind giggled at the dark sweat marks which appeared on the back of his jacket. “Your Mak Dau's like a leaky sieve, Six Fingers,” one said. “Hot, cold, whatever the weather, he always pours with sweat.” Six Fingers took a small towel from the basket on her arm, caught up with Mak Dau and gave it to him. Mak Dau hoisted the boy higher up his back, but refused the towel. He gave a little smile and Six Fingers understood he did not want to dirty it. When Mak Dau smiled, Six Fingers suddenly felt the day brighten. He had the whitest teeth in the whole of Spur-On Village. The other men's teeth were a dirty yellow from the tobacco they smoked. Only Mak Dau's teeth were like a row of pearls, a dazzling, almost bluishwhite.

Mak Dau was a younger cousin of Ha Kau on his mother's side. Since he and Ah-Choi had married, Ha Kau had been promoted to steward in charge of the entire property. The Fongs owned scores of
mu
and a large residence with three courtyards, housing two families and a dozen or so labourers and servants. It was too much for Ha Kau to manage alone and he brought Mak Dau to help out. Mak Dau became the odd-job man and anyone in the house could call upon him at any time.

“Mak Dau, Ah-Wong's twisted his ankle. Go and finish planting out the rice seedlings in the riverbank field.”

“Mak Dau, the pigs have made a hole in the door of the piggery, go and fix it, quick.”

“Mak Dau, I'm out of fuel, go up the hillside and get an armful, and hurry, I've got cooking to do.”

“Mak Dau, the water barrel's got a crack in it. Get Wet-Eyes Loong to come and mend it.”

Mak Dau's name came naturally to everyone's lips. It was handy to have him around, and calling upon him became a household habit. Mak Dau
could plug any gap, round or square, small or large. If the household was a cart, Mak Dau was neither the axle nor the rim, still less was he the spokes. But he was the layer of oil on the wheels. He was invisible, yet he was everywhere. Without Mak Dau, the wheels would still turn, but not smoothly.