Gold Mountain Blues (53 page)

Ah-Fat had paid back the debts on the
diulau
and had saved up enough to pay the head tax for his wife and daughter. But he was in no hurry to bring them over to Gold Mountain. He decided he would save up for one more season and then sell the farm and go home to live out a peaceful retirement. They would all go, and he would marry both his sons to decent girls—he still refused to acknowledge the woman Kam Shan lived with.

But that season was the ruin of Ah-Fat. His cleverness did him in.

His cleverness was like a candle which lit only the road before him. He had no idea that behind him, the skies had darkened. He had no inkling that his wealth had fanned the flames of jealousy among his competitors. He naively believed that hard work and prudent saving would be enough.

The year before, an American businessman had come to Vancouver to open a different kind of market: the produce was laid out on shelves and the customers could select for themselves, like in a department store. Ah-Fat was fired with enthusiasm and adamant that, by hook or by crook, he would sell his own produce direct to the supermarket. It would save such a lot of time and bother. And by dint of cutting his profit margins to the bare minimum, he finally succeeded in getting his produce on the supermarket shelves.

But, unbeknownst to him, someone was watching his every move.

The meat and vegetables bearing the label of Ah-Fat's farm had only been in the supermarket two weeks when disaster struck.

Ah-Fat was taken to court over allegations that his chicken meat was contaminated and had given several customers serious food poisoning.

The supermarket owner saved his own skin by dumping all Ah-Fat's produce and suing him in court.

The government blocked all Ah-Fat's bank accounts and carried out an investigation.

In the years since he set up his first laundry, Ah-Fat had been taken to court many times. He used to say he was in and out of Gold Mountain courts more frequently than his own house and knew the judges better than his own wife. Each time he had had a lucky escape, even turned it to his own advantage once or twice—but not this time. On previous occasions, he was a small man who could take it. But this time, he was a big businessman, and it broke him. No sooner had the trial begun than his
creditors sprang up like mushrooms after spring rain. Banks, fertilizer merchants, the water, electricity and coal suppliers. He might get away from one but he could not avoid them all. The little cash he had left was only enough to pay off Loong Am and the other workers. Eventually, Mr. Henderson advised Ah-Fat to declare bankruptcy. Overnight, his flourishing business crumbled to dust, leaving him without a cent. The burden of supporting the family fell on Kam Ho, whose wages now went straight to his father before his own hands had time to warm the notes.

After this, Ah-Fat aged rapidly. It showed not in his face or his body but in his eyes. He had been a keen-eyed man with a sharp, crystalline gaze. Now his eyes were clouded, as if grains of sand had been dropped into them. Whenever Kam Ho went home to see his father, he would find him sitting alone in a room shrouded in smoke, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was living on his own, and on the days when he could not be bothered to cook for himself, he got by on a mug of tea and a dry biscuit.

“Go home,” said Kam Ho. “Go back to Hoi Ping and live with Mum. Mum'll feed you with good food.” Ah-Fat shook his head vigorously. “I can only go when I've made money. Otherwise they'll say I've come home as a beggar.” “Who would dare accuse you of being a beggar?” protested Kam Ho. “Look at all the property our family owns. Besides, I'll send you dollar letters every month and you can smoke all the tobacco you want.”

Ah-Fat looked at his son and tears welled up in his eyes.

“I sent you out to work the minute you got off the boat. I never gave you the chance of an education. Your brother never wanted to study but you've had to work too hard to study. If only you had, you would understand how things work here and you could have kept all these people from hounding me.”

Ah-Fat did not want to go back to Hoi Ping in the state he was in now.

He sold the only thing he still possessed—the house he had lived in for over a decade—and moved back to Vancouver. When he left the place that had caused him so much trouble, he was only a few months short of his sixtieth birthday.

Ah-Fat did not get a lot for the house in New Westminster and could only afford a very small house in Vancouver. He did his best to find work.
But his cooking skills were limited and he could not work in a kitchen. He asked in laundries but as his sight was failing, he could not do the mending or ironing. He got a job in a general store, helping to unload goods but sprained his back on the first day. In the end the only thing he could do was turn his own house into a little shop and set up in business writing letters, Spring Festival couplets, marriage announcements and purchasing contracts. However, demand for his services was negligible because, unlike in the old days, there were plenty of young people around who could read and write for themselves.

Ah-Fat realized to his consternation that at the age of sixty, he was completely useless. He could not even support himself.

One day Kam Ho said to him: “Get Kam Shan to come back and live with you, Dad.” It was all so long ago since Kam Shan had run off with the girl prostitute and the Spring Gardens brothel had been closed for many years. There would not be any trouble if he came back to Vancouver. Kam Ho had made this suggestion before and his father had always been set against it. This time, however, he said nothing. Kam Ho took his silence as agreement.

Kam Ho knew why his father had given in: Kam Shan's woman was going to have a baby. This was her first. Her former profession had damaged her health and for years she was unable to conceive. Ah-Fat was getting on in years and longed to hold a grandchild in his arms, so his heart finally softened. After ten years of estrangement, Kam Shan and the woman left Kamloops and moved in with his father in Vancouver.

Jenny squatted under the tree, watching the ants. The dog sprawled next to her, watching her watch the ants. There was not a sound to be heard, not even that of a leaf tumbling from the tree. The schoolchildren had gone to school; the office workers had gone to work. The street seemed as still and lifeless as a pricked bubble. Kam Ho looked up at the sky, then down at the ground. It was nearly midday and the shadows were thin.

Why haven't they come? he wondered to himself.

It was not warm enough for the crickets to start chirping but he was beginning to sweat. He could actually have chosen a cool, shady corner in
which to pluck the chicken clean but he preferred to sit where he was, with no shelter from the sun, because he got a better view of the street from one end to the other.

A faint sound reached his ears and he leapt up from his stool. It was a bell, a cart-horse bell. There were plenty of hawkers who sold their vegetables house to house but only one hung a bell around the horse's neck. Kam Ho shaded his eyes with his hand and, as he peered into the distance, black dot came into view around the corner at the end of the street.

Kam Ho's heart began to thump so loudly anyone in the garden could have heard it. He threw down the chicken, pulled off his apron and buttoned his shirt up to the neck. He had long ago grown out of the Chinese-style tunics and trousers he had on when he arrived. Instead, Mrs. Henderson bought his clothes for him: a Western-style outfit of waistcoat, shirt, trousers and leather shoes. And at last there was solid muscle and flesh inside them too. If it had not been for the ridiculous apron, no one would have imagined that this well-dressed, good-looking, strapping young man was actually the servant in the fine house behind him.

Kam Ho flew to the gate and then felt he had been too impulsive. He was just about to go back and wait in the garden when the dog shot past him into the street and set up a furious barking. The dog was old and jowly by now but his bark was as formidable as ever and the sound bounced off the walls of the houses. Kam Ho knew that the vegetable hawker's daughter was afraid of dogs and would not get down if it was loose. He yelled at the animal but, bossy as ever, it gave an answering bark. It sounded as if man and dog were having an argument. The man finally got the upper hand and the dog skulked back into the garden with its tail between its legs.

As the cartwheels rolled nearer, Kam Ho heard a man's hoarse voice shouting in a strong Cantonese accent: “Vegs, fresh, come!” The broken English reminded him of himself when he first arrived at the Hendersons'. He suppressed a smile. This was the girl's father. Her English was a bit better than her dad's, but he knew she was too shy to shout.

A handful of women emerged from the neighbours' houses with baskets in their hands to cluster around the cart. Then Kam Ho heard her voice, thin and timid but floating clear above all the other voices. He listened as
she and her father bargained, took the money and counted it, and gave back the change.

His heart hammered wildly in his chest. His money was damp from being clutched in his sweaty palm. Anxiously, he rehearsed his order as he waited his turn. Mrs. Henderson had turned all the housekeeping money over to him now and he was in sole charge of the food shopping. Kam Ho did not want to talk to the hawker's daughter in front of this scrum of women and waited his chance to catch her on her own.

The chance finally came. The women dispersed and there was quiet around the cart. The girl sat down on an empty basket, pulled out a handkerchief tucked into her front and wiped her forehead. She was wearing a blue cotton tunic, buttoned slantwise, and wide-legged trousers. Her hair was tied with a red ribbon. Her garb was typical of a country girl from Canton, and he would have found it a little unrefined on anyone else. His tastes had become more discriminating in the years he had been at the Hendersons'. On her, however, he felt it was just right.

She had come three times with her father to sell their produce, always on a Wednesday morning. He did not know her proper name, or how old she was, though he had heard her father call her Ah-Hei. He reckoned she was about seventeen or eighteen and had been in Gold Mountain a year or so. Girls who had been here a long time dressed in Western clothes and new arrivals could not speak English.

She spotted him standing on the street. She tucked her handkerchief away and grinned. After a moment Kam Ho realized she was smiling at him. He went weak at the knees. He wanted to smile back but found the muscles of his face frozen into immobility.

The few paces up to the side of the cart seemed like an endless journey. His face was red with exertion by the time he got to her.

He passed over the sweaty money and as he drew his hand back, felt something hard and angular scratch the skin on the back of his hand. It was the calluses on her palm. Like him, she had had a life of hard toil. She held the money in her hand and waited silently, looking at him. Finally she gave a little laugh and, pointing at the vegetable baskets, asked: “What do you want?” He suddenly woke up. He had not given her his order. The blood
rushed so violently to his face that he thought his head was going to explode.

Keep your voice steady, his brain urged his lips, but his lips took no notice. They bounced and shook like spring rice being beaten in a mortar so his words ended up pounded to shreds.

“A handful of radishes … a head of broccoli … two hearted cabbages … just two.…”

She deftly bundled them up and gave them to him. “Anything else? You always get these.”

He was startled. She remembered him, and what he bought every time. He felt himself grow calmer, and the plan he had been turning over in his mind for a week began to come together.

He needed to find the right moment to speak to her father. He wanted to tell him that his father had been a fruit and vegetable hawker himself and that he knew the wholesaler who offered the best prices in Gold Mountain. Then he could casually ask where they lived … and say that he would get his father to introduce them to the wholesaler.

There was a grain of truth in what he was planning to say. He really did want his father to go to the girl's house, but not to discuss vegetable prices. He wanted his father to be quite direct and discuss Kam Ho marrying the girl.

The head tax had gone sky-high in recent years and most migrants could only afford to bring their sons. Very few brought daughters. As result, almost no Chinese girls were to be seen on the streets of Gold Mountain. His father had said more than once that he wanted his mother to arrange a match for him back in Hoi Ping but Kam Ho was not enthusiastic, although he found it hard to explain why to his stubborn father.

“I don't want to marry like Mum and you, with me here and her over there, neither of us knowing when we can be reunited.”

As soon as the words were out, he knew he had said the wrong thing. His mother and father should have had that reunion by now, only Kam Ho had taken her place on the boat and come instead. But on this occasion Ah-Fat did not lose his temper. He just sighed and said: “So you want to be a bachelor for the rest of your life?” Kam Ho felt like sighing too but he could not bear to see his father looking so glum. He put on a smile instead
and said: “Wait till I've earned enough for three head taxes and I'll go back and get married and bring out Mum and my sister and my wife.” His father laughed: “By the time you've earned that much, there'll be no point in bringing them out here. You might as well go back to Hoi Ping for good, and enjoy life.” Kam Ho felt there was some truth in what his father was saying, but all the same, Kam Ho had been in Gold Mountain for years, and there were good things about living here. Only, he could not say that to his father.

But now, this young Cantonese woman—Ah-Hei—seemed to be God's answer to Kam Ho. They were on the same side of the ocean, which made things much easier. And he had seen her face so there would be no unpleasant surprises when he lifted the red wedding veil. She did not come to him embellished by the matchmaker's silver tongue but stood right in front of him, in the flesh. He would not have to raise the money for the head tax, he only had to gather the courage to reach out a firm hand and take hold of her.