Gold Mountain Blues (33 page)

The two brothers, Kam Shan and Kam Ho, were the first to discover just how useful Mak Dau was.

Mak Dau knew the names of all the birds in the woods. Mak Dau need only hear a cricket chirp once, and he knew exactly which leaf it was hiding under. Mak Dau could jump into No-Name River and stay under water (without a single bubble breaking the surface) until Kam Ho grew so frightened he shouted for help. Mak Dau picked banana leaves, soaked them in salt water till they softened, and stripped the thick green layer off the leaves, leaving behind a network of fine veins. Then, he would roll them up into a tight coil and put them to his mouth like a cigar. When he blew through them, out came extraordinary sounds, like the wind in the trees and raindrops on water. Mak Dau only had to glance at a cockerel by the roadside to know whether it could beat another cockerel in a fight.

But there was one thing that Mak Dau could not do, and that was read.

Poor Mak Dau. His name meant “writing ink” but he could not read his own name. Once he plucked up the courage to ask Kam Shan how his name was written. Kam Shan thought for a while, then went to his mother's room and fetched some paper. He wrote out “Shit Heap Tse,” Tse being Mak Dau's family name, and got Mak Dau to paste it on his back with rice glue and walk around the village. When Six Fingers saw him, she took one of the bamboo poles from the drying frame and thrashed Kam Shan till he howled. She decided that from that day on, Mak Dau should study alongside the boys.

When Mrs. Mak found out, she was tight-lipped. “What's the point in teaching a servant to read and write? It's a waste of time and energy.” But Six Fingers said: “Mum, this servant spends all day with your grandsons. If he doesn't study a bit and learn a few characters, I'm afraid he might have a bad influence on them.” Mrs. Mak said nothing more. If Six Fingers wanted her mother-in-law's consent to do something, she had only to drop in the names of the two boys, and all obstacles would be smoothed out of the way. Though Ah-Fat had written several letters about Kam Shan going
to Gold Mountain, Mrs. Mak could not be persuaded to let him go. The boat trip was postponed again and again, and so Kam Shan remained at home with Six Fingers and Mrs. Mak.

The boys' school was in Yuen Kai, a few
li
from Spur-On Village. Gold Mountain emigrants from the surrounding villages raised money for it, so most of the pupils (all boys) were from Gold Mountain families. The school was run by Protestant missionaries. The teachers were recruited by the Church; some were locals, others had come from North China. The lay teachers taught traditional Chinese classics, while the missionaries taught mathematics and Bible studies. They also taught singing and, at the New Year and other festivals, they staged plays and invited all the mums, grannies and granddads to the school to see the performance. Kam Shan had been given a part in the Easter play and Six Fingers organized a joint outing for the Gold Mountain wives of Spur-On Village. Kam Ho had run a fever during the night and overslept. His brother left for the school play without him, so he had to go with his mother.

They got everything ready the night before, including a bamboo basket filled half with eggs and half with sesame cakes and layer cakes. The eggs were a present for the teachers, and the cakes were to eat on the way. Six Fingers went into the courtyard, the basket on her arm, to find her mother-in-law holding a broken egg between finger and thumb, berating Ah-Choi. “This would never have happened if you'd got out of bed earlier. You pay no attention to me these days. No one in this house does what I say.” “What happened?” Six Fingers asked Ah-Choi. “One of the hens must have laid an egg with a soft shell, and it got trampled and broken in the coop.”

“Next time, check the nest first thing each morning so this doesn't happen again,” said Six Fingers with a wink in Ah-Choi's direction. “Now go and light the hand-warmer for Mrs. Mak, the weather's still cold.” “Really? The sun's hot enough to make you sweat!” Another wink from Six Fingers. “If I tell you to go, then go. No wonder the Missus says you don't pay her any attention. You're so lazy, you'll have maggots growing under your feet.” Ah-Choi finally took the hint and went to the kitchen.

After she had gone, Six Fingers called Kam Ho: “Come and say good morning to Granny.” Mrs. Mak took the little boy's hand and the vertical frown lines at the corners of her mouth and between her brows resolved
themselves into horizontal ones. “Kam Ho, you've still got a temperature. You shouldn't go to school. Stay here and keep Granny company.” “But I want to go and see Kam Shan in the school play!” “I'd forgotten! What a bad memory Granny's got!” she said, slapping her forehead. “What part's your big brother going to play?” “A donkey. He's going to be a donkey. Jesus is going to enter the city riding on his back.” “That teacher needs a good beating,” exclaimed Mrs. Mak. “Fancy making your big brother a beast of burden!” “Kam Shan laughed all the way through the rehearsals, Granny, so the teacher made him be the donkey as a punishment.” Mrs. Mak gave a gap-toothed laugh at this. “And so he should! He's a naughty boy, your brother, not like my little Kam Ho, who's so honest, and good to his old granny.”

Six Fingers took the boy by the hand. “We have to be off, Mum, otherwise we'll be late for the play. Ah-Chu and Ah-Lin are waiting at the entrance to the village.” Mrs. Mak's eyebrows drew together again. “Are you going too? To where those hairy foreigners are? I wonder you young women aren't scared of them!” Six Fingers knew her mother-in-law was referring to the Protestant missionaries. She smiled: “They all dress like us and wear their hair in a pigtail, Mum. You'd never know they were
yeung fan
to look at them. They speak our language too, and they're friendlier than the Chinese teachers from the North.” “Huh! If the
yeung fan
look like us, then a wolf looks like a sheep,” Mrs. Mak retorted. And she turned towards the kitchen and shouted for Mak Dau.

Mak Dau was sharpening knives for Ah-Choi. Machetes, meat cleavers, vegetable knives, potato peelers, knives for scraping the bristle from the pigs' hides, all were laid out on the floor. Mak Dau was finishing with the potato peeler. He had been at it for a while and the blade was covered with a layer of swarf. Mak Dau wiped the knife clean with an oily cloth and held it up to his eyes. He blew gently on the blade and it made a humming noise. Hearing Mrs. Mak's call, he stuck the knife in his belt and ran to the courtyard.

“Go with Kam Ho and the young Missus to the school. It'll be mayhem there so you take good care of them and when the play's finished, come straight home.”

“Yes, Missus.” Mak Dau nodded. He was the sort of young man who did not waste words. The corners of his eyes and the spot between his brows expressed what he was thinking. It took a good hour to get from the house to the school on foot, without stopping on the way. If you took break to have a drink or eat snacks, then it was two hours. He took the boys to school every day, but he had never made the trip with the young Missus before.

Mak Dau could hold his own with any of the dozen or so residents of the household, except the young Missus. With her, he could hardly get word out. She was perfectly friendly to him, not severe like the old Missus. But Mak Dau was more afraid of the young Missus's friendliness than the old lady's severity. Severity was straightforward, and straightforward silence was an adequate response. The friendliness of the young Missus was much more nuanced, so his answering silences had to be nuanced too. All the same, Mak Dau was happy to be accompanying her today.

He looked up now and saw that Six Fingers had exchanged her cottonpadded jacket for a new lined one. It reached to the knees and the mauve fabric was embroidered all over with a design of dark green asparagus ferns. The jacket buttoned slantwise with traditional knot buttons and a light green handkerchief hung from the opening. Now that she was no longer wearing the thick winter jacket, you could see her full figure. The ferns trembled lightly as her jacket rose and fell. She wore a jade hairpin in the bun at the nape of her neck, and an agate pendant hung from one end of it. The pendant tinkled next to her ear every time the young Missus moved. Every tinkle made Mak Dau's heart skip a beat, and his breathing became a little ragged.

“Shall I carry it for you, Missus?” he asked, indicating Six Fingers' basket. “There's no need for that. You look after Kam Ho. He's not over his cold yet.”

Six Fingers, Kam Ho and Mak Dau joined the others on the riverbank and the party set out. The man and the boy walked in front and the half-dozen women followed, leaving behind footprints of all shapes and sizes in the soft surface of the track.

The talk among the women was of their menfolk. “When's your Ah-Kyun arriving?” Six Fingers asked Ah-Lin. “Soon. We heard he's got to
Hong Kong. We're waiting for a letter from the hospital and then someone'll go and get him.” They were talking about Ah-Kyun's remains. He had died of consumption in Gold Mountain. That was more than seven years ago so Ah-Lin had been a widow for all that time. The first year she wore a white felt flower of mourning stuck into her bun, but had changed this for a black one in the second year. The black flower of widowhood had remained there ever since and she never went without it.

The truth, however, was that Ah-Lin had been a widow long before she put the white flower in her hair. Ah-Kyun had taken a concubine in Gold Mountain and had only been home once in more than a decade. When he left again, he took his eldest son with him. Ah-Kyun had been ill for quite a few years, and for all those years the concubine had supported his two families through her work in the tea-shack. After he died, she had gone to live with another man, again as his concubine, and after that it was Ah-Kyun's son who sent dollar letters home. Ah-Lin said that her husband knew he was going to die and that was why he had taken his son to Gold Mountain, to take over responsibility for supporting the family back home. She also said that Ah-Kyun was a kind-hearted man and that was why he would not abandon his family in China. And that he had made it clear to his son that he wanted to be buried at home. And that being a lawfully wedded wife was quite different from being someone's fancy woman. As Ah-Lin said all these things, the colour rose in her face, so that she looked like a peachy-cheeked bride in a wedding sedan.

“Huh!” said Ah-Chu. “It depends on the man whether he comes back or not. Auntie Cheung Tai exchanged marriage contracts with Uncle Cheung Tai, and even when she died, he never came home for her funeral.” Auntie Cheung Tai had died the year before and it was Six Fingers, as her adopted daughter, who had buried her. Her husband had not shown up. There was a reason for Ah-Chu's remark: her husband had come home last year and got himself a second wife from Tung Koon. Within four months, he was gone, in a hurry to save enough for the head tax and a boat passage. But he still had not told them which wife he was going to take to Gold Mountain.

“Your Ah-Fat hasn't been back for years. Has he got a woman over there?” asked someone.

When Ah-Fat last saw Kam Ho, he was only a month old. Now he was going to school and Ah-Fat was still not back. He had been short of money in recent years and though he sent dollar letters every couple of months, they were for much smaller amounts. What had gone wrong? asked Six Fingers in one of her letters. Ah-Fat's reply had been brief. I'll tell you more when I come home, he had said. She knew then that there had been some trouble. She imagined all sorts of things, and these imaginings weighed heavily on her. But still she smiled at the women's questions: “It's fine if he's found a woman. At least I don't have to worry about him.”

Halfway to the school, the women grew tired. They looked for a shady spot to sit down, and took out the cakes. Kam Ho had been asleep on Mak Dau's back and had dribbled on his shoulders. Mak Dau set him down and gave him to Six Fingers. He found a spot to sit some distance away, took off his jacket and sat down on a stone to let the sweat dry in the sun. Next to him a big yellow butterfly with black markings rested on the leaf of a shrub. The black and the yellow reminded him of the border of a paper window covering, standing out so clearly they could have been cut out with a knife. In the bright sunshine, the butterfly's wings fanned gently.

Pity I didn't bring a cricket cage, Mak Dau thought. It's so pretty; could have caught it and given it to the young Missus to hang from her bed curtain.

The wind got up but the warmth of the sun mellowed it, and smoothed its sharp edges. The wind blew the smell of Mak Dau's sweat over to where the women were sitting. He was wearing a rough cotton vest under his jacket. It had shrunk through much washing and now his muscles threatened to burst out of it. “How many head of cattle are you buying this year?” Ah-Chu asked Six Fingers. “None,” she replied. “We bought them all last year and the year before.” Ah-Chu pursed her lips and nodded towards Mak Dau. “But haven't you just bought a bull? Look at those muscles. He'd plough a fine furrow!” There was much ribald laughter at this. At a safe distance from their in-laws, the women's talk got quite smutty.

Kam Ho pulled at his mother's sleeve. “I need a poo, Mum.” Six Fingers was strict with her children, and they were not allowed to piss and crap wherever they wanted outdoors. Now she looked around her at the land,
which was open and flat, and she could not see anywhere for him to go. But there were a couple of trees not too far off which, at a pinch, afforded some sort of cover. Next to them were the ruins of a wall a couple of feet high. Six Fingers took Kam Ho by the hand and they walked over to the wall.

Kam Ho went behind the wall, pulled his jacket up and his trousers down and squatted. Suddenly, there was a gust of wind in his ears and darkness covered him. First, he thought he must have dropped into a deep pit, but then he felt his body moving, even though his feet were not touching the ground. He seemed to have grown wings and to be soaring like a bird. “Quick, someone's coming,” he heard a gruff voice say in an accent which was not local. He realized he had fallen into the hands of bandits.