6

Gold Mountain Affair

Years four to eleven of the Republic (1915–1922) Vancouver and New Westminster, British Columbia

Dear Ah-Yin,

I have been back in Gold Mountain for more than a month but I have been worried about many things, and it is only now that I can pick up my pen to write and tell you that I am fine. During the months that I spent at home with you, I left the hired hand in charge of the farm here. There was a drought last year so the crops were poor, the livestock suffered from disease and income from the farm slumped. I have been using manure as fertilizer for years but recently my yeung fan neighbours took me to court saying it stank and contravened public hygiene regulations. This incurs heavy fines but luckily an old friend from my railroad days, Rick Henderson, was good enough to help by engaging an excellent defence lawyer for me.

But what weighs most heavily on me is Kam Shan. After he came back from the Redskin tribe at the beginning of the year, there was a big change in him. He learned all he could about farming and livestock, and threw himself into the work. It was wonderful—the prodigal son returned. But to my dismay I have just learned that he has been secretly sheltering a whorehouse girl with the connivance of a church pastor, and sneaking valuables and money out of our house to keep her. That boy has always been pigheaded and ungovernable. Finally, yesterday, I felt I had no option but to kick him out. My dearest wish is to get the farm income up again, and save enough to bring you over to Gold Mountain. Kam Shan has always been close to you and, who knows, you may be able to bring him into line. My uncle and aunt can look after my mother. I have given them a home for many years, and looking after Mum will be a small way for them to show their gratitude, and will set my mind to rest. Kam Ho is thirteen now, and when he is old enough, we can find him a suitable bride to settle down with in Hoi Ping. It won’t be long before you give birth and, whether it is a boy or a girl, you can leave the baby with my uncle and aunt to look after for the time being. My most urgent task is to get you here as soon as possible. You and I have spent so little time together, and so much time apart. I miss you very much and feel guilty that I have not been able to fulfil the promise I made you all those years ago.

Your husband, Fong Tak Fat, New Westminster, the sixth day of the eighth month, 1915

Ah-Fat was up early, washed and dressed. In the southeast corner of the room, he lit a stick of incense and knelt down. The corner held a statue of Tam Kung which he had brought back on his last trip home. He had been kowtowing to the statue every day since he heard that Six Fingers was on her way. Tam Kung was the god of seafarers and Six Fingers was journeying across the ocean on her way to Gold Mountain. Ah-Fat was on tenterhooks. He had not forgotten how, five years before, Kam Shan had been put in the port detention centre on his arrival and Ah-Lam’s wife had killed herself there. It was only by putting his worries in the hands of Tam Kung that he could settle to his daily work.

Six Fingers, his wife, would be finally reunited with him in Gold Mountain.

He made his decision on the very day of his departure from Hoi Ping. Twenty-one years. He and Six Fingers had been married for twenty-one years.

For twenty-one years, he and his mother, Mrs. Mak, had been in tug-of-war, and Six Fingers was the handkerchief tied at the midpoint. Both he and his mother wanted her. His mother’s way of showing this was to nag him to get a concubine, either from Gold Mountain or Hoi Ping. She did not know the market conditions in Gold Mountain but she knew that in Hoi Ping girls would go with a Gold Mountain man for next to nothing. Ah-Fat refused and let the whole thing drag on as the days, and years, went by.

His mother knew that when Ah-Fat came back from a day’s work in the fields, he cooked his own dinner, or ate cold leftovers. If ever his jacket got caught on the cart, there was no nimble-fingered woman to mend it for him. If Ah-Fat had a headache or a fever, there was no one to administer home treatments or mop his brow. When Ah-Fat was young, Mrs. Mak steeled herself to this, but he was getting on in years, and now she could not bear it.

Mrs. Mak was blind and no longer able to see his face but she could still hear her son perfectly well. He only had to call “Mum!” in a low voice as he stepped over the threshold for her to tell instantly that he had changed. His voice sounded as hollow as a worm-eaten hazelnut. He had supported family that had as many members as a tree had branches, yet he had been reduced to a desiccated nut. Ever since her son left for Gold Mountain at sixteen, every ounce of his energy had gone into transforming his labour into dollar letters to send home.

The morning Ah-Fat left Hoi Ping, the porter carrying his suitcases led the way. Behind came blind Mrs. Mak, supported on either side by Six Fingers and Kam Ho. All three were going with him as far as the entrance to the village. Kam Ho looked at his father: “You’ve put on weight, Dad,” he said. “Your jacket won’t button up.” His father smiled. “It’s all the soups your mother’s been giving me. She’s been trying to fatten me up like a soft-shelled turtle. Don’t envy me. Once I get back to Gold Mountain, all this fat’ll soon be gone—there’s no soup for me there.” Six Fingers turned her face away and said nothing. She knew that if she opened her mouth to speak, the tears would flow. Her belly was showing now and she walked more heavily than usual. She took a few more slow steps and managed to swallow the lump in her throat. “Don’t listen to your father’s teasing, Kam Ho,” she said. “There’s plenty of fancy things to eat in Gold Mountain. How could they miss homemade soup?”

Mrs. Mak suddenly came to a halt, scowling. She thumped her walking stick so hard it dented the earth.

“Hurry up and save some money when you get back to Gold Mountain, Ah-Fat,” she said.

“Yes, Mum, to buy more fields,” said Ah-Fat, who had heard this injunction from his mother time and again. Fields, fields, more fields. When Six Fingers and Kam Ho were kidnapped by Chu Sei, their land had to be sold in haste to raise the ransom. Mrs. Mak had never forgotten the painful process of buying back their fields afterwards. She did not believe in money, even when she held the silver coins tight in her hand. She could only be reassured by standing atop the dykes which enclosed her family’s own fields.

“No, not fields,” said Mrs. Mak, waving her stick in the direction of Six Fingers. “Hurry and save enough money to take her away with you.”

Ah-Fat and Six Fingers were mute with astonishment. They had waited and waited for Mrs. Mak to speak these words, and after twenty years, they seemed more improbable than a flowering sago tree.

When Six Fingers found her voice, she said: “Mum, I’ll always be here to attend to you.” “Huh!” came the reply. “As if I don’t know where your heart lies!” The old woman had a sharp tongue and her words could pepper her listener painfully in the face. But Six Fingers had long since grown a thick skin and was inured to such wounding comments.

She merely gave a slight smile and said: “Mum, what will you do if I go?” “Huh!” Mrs. Mak said again. “I’ll live with his uncle and aunt. Ah-Fat’s money has made them as fat as Bodhisattvas. Ah-Fat’s uncle would be a nobody without that money, so he can hardly refuse.”

Ah-Fat hitched up his gown, knelt in the road and kowtowed three times before his mother. She could not see him but she could smell the dust raised by the knocking of her son’s head. “I won’t forget your kindness, Mother,” he said. “When I get back to Gold Mountain, I’ll earn masses of money so you can buy masses of land. And if I can’t come home every year, then I’ll get Kam Shan to come home and pay his respects to you like good grandson.”

At the mention of Kam Shan, Mrs. Mak’s grim expression relaxed and a flicker of a smile appeared on her face.

“You go back and tell Kam Shan that the sugared almonds that he sent were very nice, but they were much too hard for me. Remind him Granny hasn’t got too many teeth left and next time he should send something softer.”

Ah-Fat grunted assent and glanced sidelong at Six Fingers. They both smiled but said nothing. They had kept Kam Shan’s disappearance from Mrs. Mak but she nagged Six Fingers for news of him. In the end, Six Fingers was cornered. She penned a couple of letters “from Kam Shan” herself and read bits of them out to the old woman. Ah-Fat had brought a few curios with him and passed them off as presents from Kam Shan, and Mrs. Mak had suspected nothing. It was only now that Kam Shan had returned that Ah-Fat and Six Fingers could relax their vigilance.

So Six Fingers’ journey to Gold Mountain was a hurried decision made that morning—but one that took Mrs. Mak twenty years to resign herself to.

When Ah-Fat arrived back in Gold Mountain, he burned incense and prayed every day. He was determined to save up the head tax for Six Fingers as soon as possible even if it meant postponing repayment of the debts from the diulau. Harvests improved and his savings grew. Within two years, he had enough for the head tax.

When Ah-Fat had finished his prayers to Tam Kung, he went to make up the bed. The cotton wadding in the quilt was not brand new but he had fluffed it up and it was nice and soft. The old quilt cover was threadbare from much washing, so Ah-Fat had bought a new one of fine linen, English-made, from the department store in Vancouver. He planned to change the quilt cover. After that, he would set off with the horse and cart to buy a few household necessities in town, and then to the barber for shave. By then it should be just about time to go and meet the boat. It was due to dock at three o’clock.

Ah-Fat was just sewing up the quilt when the hired hand, Loong Am, put his head through the door and said: “Now that Auntie is coming, we can have soup for dinner. We won’t have to eat the mouldy rice you cook up every day that even a pig would turn up its nose at.” Ah-Fat spat out the end of the thread. “You’ve got a lot of nerve moaning that you’re hard up, you young punk,” he retorted, “as if you haven’t done well out of me for years. And even if I give you a few extra cents it won’t get you sons and grandchildren. You’re better off going home to get yourself a wife, then she can cook you tasty soup whenever you want.”

Loong Am gave a cackle of laughter. “You’re so stingy, Uncle, you don’t let a cent slip through your fingers. I’ll never make any money from you. I’m lucky to get enough to eat, let alone a wife.”

Ah-Fat gave Loong Am the needle and thread. He was getting longsighted, and finding it more and more difficult to thread needles, write letters and cut his fingernails. “Uncle, my kid brother saw Kam Shan a few days ago in Kamloops,” Loong Am said as he poked the thread through the needle’s eye.

Ah-Fat did not answer, but the hand holding the scissors paused in mid-air.

After Kam Shan left two years ago, he wandered from place to place. He did not dare show his face in Vancouver because he had snatched the girl from the brothel. He had been heard of in Port Hope, and then Yale. At New Year, he had mailed his father a cheque for fifty dollars. There was no address on the envelope, but the postmark was Lytton. Ah-Fat had been there when he was building the railroad, though nothing now remained of it. It was hard to imagine what Kam Shan had been up to, to save such a lot of money in this ghost town. Ah-Fat’s eyes flickered in agitation for days afterwards, but there had been no further news.

He regretted throwing his son out. The boy was trouble whether he was at home or not. But at least if he was home, Ah-Fat could keep an eye on him. If he was away, Ah-Fat had no idea what he was doing and never stopped worrying about him. He used to believe that what the eye did not see, the heart did not grieve over. He did not believe that any more. His son’s misdeeds were a thorn in his side when he could see them. But now that Kam Shan was gone, he found himself entangled in a bramble bush from which he could not extricate himself. No sooner had he pulled one thorn out than he discovered another. It would have been better to have him close by.

The thorns hurt when they stabbed him and they hurt when he pulled them out. But Ah-Fat shared his pain with no one and, in consequence, no one mentioned Kam Shan in his presence. It was as if he had never had a son—though if he did hear Kam Shan’s name on someone’s lips, his eyes flickered for days afterwards.

“Kam Shan rents a corner of a shop and does a roaring trade taking people’s photographs. Most of his customers are Redskins,” Loong Am was saying. “They pose with boots on, with guns at their waists, like cowboys.”

“Just him … alone?” Ah-Fat asked after a moment’s silence. This was the first time since Kam Shan’s departure that he had asked after him.

Loong Am knew what his boss was getting at. He gave an apologetic cough, then said reluctantly: “That woman, she’s there too.” He looked up to see if Ah-Fat was angry, then went on: “My brother says her English is better than Kam Shan’s. The White women and the Redskin women all want to talk to her.”

Ah-Fat’s face darkened like a storm cloud.

Loong Am pulled a knotted handkerchief out of his pocket and put it in Ah-Fat’s hand. “My brother told Kam Shan that his mum was coming out to Vancouver, and Kam Shan asked when. He wanted to go and meet the boat. My brother told him not to, in case it made you angry. Kam Shan just stood there like an idiot, then he went upstairs and brought down this handkerchief and asked my brother to give it to Auntie so she could buy herself some clothes in town. Kam Shan said not to let you see.”

Ah-Fat threw the bundle onto the bed without looking at it. Loong Am coughed again. “You’ve got a fierce temper, Uncle!” he said. “Kam Shan did nothing wrong, after all. What would you do if a girl hung onto your coattails like that? Wouldn’t you take her in? Kam Shan must have got his good nature from you. Besides, why look a gift horse in the mouth? He’s got a girl without you having to buy wedding gifts or pay the head tax. If you don’t like her, get him another woman as his first wife and be done with it. Why get in such a temper about it?”

Ah-Fat still said nothing but his expression softened.

When Loong Am had gone, Ah-Fat shut the door and opened the handkerchief. It contained a pile of small change and a bundle of crumpled low-value notes, damp from grease or sweat. Ah-Fat counted the money: twelve dollars and eighty-six cents.

That boy! He was still his flesh-and-blood son. Ah-Fat’s eyes welled up. At least now he knew that Kam Shan had settled down. Ah-Fat had sent him away and he could not call him back. But once Six Fingers arrived, perhaps she could bring them back together.

Ah-Fat drove his horse and cart to the docks, his head filled with longing for Six Fingers—and Kam Shan too. He could not bring himself to think of Kam Shan directly, only by way of Six Fingers. She was the bridge between father and son. Neither could reach the other except through her. Without her mediation, they would only ever look at each other from opposite banks.

But it was not Six Fingers who disembarked that day. It was Kam Ho.

He was the last off the boat. He staggered under the weight of a carrying pole with two enormous suitcases, inching his way along like an ant burdened with a lump of mud. Ah-Fat nearly buckled at the knees with astonishment.

“What’s happened to your mother?”

“Mum said I had to come because Kam Shan’s left and you need help.”

“Was that your granny’s idea?” asked Ah-Fat, seizing his son by the front of his jacket.

“No, it wasn’t. Granny told Mum to come too but Mum said that if she came it would add to your expenses, and she wouldn’t be able to pull her weight. I didn’t want to come. It was Mum who insisted on buying the ticket for me.”

As Kam Ho stammered out his explanation, he saw Ah-Fat’s face fall. He knew then that his dad did not want him here. He had stumbled in his very first steps in Gold Mountain. How many steps did he have to take before he could stand tall and proud in his father’s eyes? Kam Ho walked slower and slower, bent ever lower under his burden, as if to hide in his own shadow.

“What are you crying for? I haven’t done anything to hurt you.”

Ah-Fat frowned in distaste at the sight of his son’s tangled, filthy hair and the dried-up puke on the front of his jacket from the long sea journey.

He wondered how on earth his two sons had turned out so different from one another.

“This is it.”

Ah-Fat jumped down from the cart, handed the blue bundle to Kam Ho and walked towards to the house. It was big, two storeys, with a garden in front. Kam Ho stood outside the iron gate looking into the garden. He could not see the front door, only three porches. The midday sun beat down, bleaching everything white. The three porches stood out like black holes against the white glare. When Kam Ho thought about who lived in these black holes, a cold shiver ran down his spine in spite of the heat of the sun.

“I don’t want to go, Dad! I want to stay at home and work on the farm with you” was what he wanted to say.

He had held the words back from the moment they left home. Now they had turned to stone in his mouth and he was not able to utter them.

When Ah-Fat first raised the idea, he did so gently.

“The Hendersons’ maid has gone back to England to get married, and they can’t find anyone to help out. Mrs. Henderson is not a well woman, and she needs a servant,” he had told Kam Shan.

“Mr. Henderson is a friend I met when I was building the railroad. He’s helped me and your uncle Ah-Lam a lot. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have had the money to buy all this land.”

It was only after Ah-Fat had talked his way around the subject of the Hendersons for some time that Kam Ho finally caught on. His father wanted him to go and be their houseboy, the way that Ah-Choi and Ah-Yuet were servants. Mr. Henderson had saved his father’s skin and he could not turn him down now.

The shock of this realization stuck like grains of uncooked rice in Kam Ho’s throat, making it difficult to breathe. When he could speak again, he protested: “But I’ve never cooked. I don’t even know how to light the stove.”

“Mrs. Henderson will teach you.”

“But I don’t understand the yeung fans’ language!”

“You’ll pick it up.”

“But.…”

Gradually his father’s patience wore thin. His eyebrows drew together in a frown and his scar thickened. “I can’t imagine why your mother sent you out here!”

Kam Ho shut his mouth then. Ah-Fat had touched a nerve, one that remained raw for years. The boat that brought him should have been carrying his mother, who could make life comfortable for his father as he got older. That comfort had been snatched away by his arrival, even though he had not wanted to come. He, Kam Ho, would never be able to redeem himself as long as he lived.

During that morning’s journey, Kam Ho slumped listlessly over his bag of belongings. He was silent. He could not speak—his eyes brimmed with tears and he knew that if he opened his mouth to speak, the tears would flow. He had been in Gold Mountain for four days and had seen nothing and no one except for his father and their farm. Gold Mountain was a bottomless pit and his father was the lifeline that hung down over the edge. Without him, Kam Ho would be lost in this pitch-black hole and never see the light of day again. But today, his father demanded that he leave that one familiar face and walk through a stranger’s door, to wait on a yeung fan woman. He had no idea if he would be able to stomach the food she ate, or sleep in the bed she provided. Worst of all, he did not know a word of her language.

“When you were at home, you had servants to wait on you. Now you’re going to a yeung fan house to wait on them. Don’t put on any ‘young master’ airs. Any kind of noises—farting, burping, coughing—you do them out of earshot. At mealtimes, if she doesn’t ask you to eat with them, then you eat in the kitchen. Wash your feet every night before going to bed. There’s a piece of salt fish in the bag, so if you don’t like their cooking, you can eat this with it.

“You’ll work six days a week and have one day’s rest. When you’ve cooked the Saturday dinner, you can go. I’ll come and pick you up and bring you back first thing Monday morning.

“You’ll get one dollar twenty-five a day, including your day off, that’s thirty-seven dollars fifty a month. All your board is covered, so you should be able to earn quite a bit in a year.”

As he pushed open the iron gate and walked in through the middle porch, Ah-Fat suddenly put his arm round his son’s shoulder. Kam Ho was so skinny that his bones dug into Ah-Fat’s hand. Kam Ho heard his father’s voice crack a little as he said: “There’s a lot of money in Gold Mountain, and one dollar is equal to several dollars when you send it home. If you and I can keep this up for a few years, we can clear the debts from the diulau.”

His father knocked on the door and a dog barked on the other side so furiously the sound made the windows and door frames rattle. The door opened a crack and a woman’s face appeared. She shut the door and shouted at the dog. The dog gave an answering bark. Dog and woman continued this exchange of shout and bark until finally the dog admitted defeat and quieted down. At that, the woman opened the door.

She was tall and lanky with a pallid complexion and pale eyes. She was so colourless, in fact, she looked as though she had been steeped in water for days until all the flavour had drained out of her. She was wearing tight-fitting top and a floor-length skirt. When she turned around, Kam Ho quickly shut his eyes in case her waist snapped.

The woman and his dad exchanged a few words but Kam Ho understood nothing. He shrank, trembling, against his father. He gripped his bag as if it were the only thing that held him together.

“Mrs. Henderson asked how old you are. I said fifteen, but she doesn’t believe me. She thinks you only look about ten,” Ah-Fat explained.

“Only bloody ten!” Kam Ho swore, but silently. It was the rudest utterance he was capable of.

“Mrs. Henderson asks if you have any questions.”

“I’m not going to make her bed for her, no way,” said Kam Ho after a long moment’s thought.

His father hooted with laughter. Then turned back to the woman and said, with a straight face: “My son says he doesn’t know how to make beds.”

Mrs. Henderson frowned. “From what Rick says, your boy doesn’t know how to do anything. Making beds is the simplest task, but of course I’ll teach him.”

His dad ruffled Kam Ho’s hair and was gone, taking that protective shadow with him and leaving Kam Ho exposed to the woman’s gaze. When Kam Ho turned to look, his father had already jumped onto the cart. “Saturday, Dad, as early as.…” he said, but the words were snatched away by the wind. The horse was already clip-clopping down the street.

Kam Ho threw down his bag and leaned against the door frame, sobbing.

The tears, so long suppressed that they felt like grit in his eyes, fell heavily to the floor. His father was gone and he had no sky to shelter him or earth to hold him up. How was he going to face the world?

The woman stood in the doorway, watching him silently. The dog came out and, extending a blood-red tongue, began to lick the salty tears from his jacket.

“Just a year, Dad, that’s what you said,” Kam Ho said to himself.

It was something he was to repeat to himself countless times in the days to come.

Until finally, he stopped believing it.

“E … gg.”

Mrs. Henderson took an egg from the basket on the table, held it up for Kam Ho and pronounced the word for him.

She put the egg back and made a circular motion with her two hands in the air, enunciating:

“Ca … ke.”

Once she had done this, she pointed to a photograph of Mr. Henderson on the side table, then to her mouth to indicate eating.

Kam Ho had been at the Hendersons’ for two weeks, and this was the method Mrs. Henderson had adopted for speaking to him. He did not understand in the beginning, and he did not understand now. When he first arrived, his inability to understand was like a great black cowl; now, though the cowl was still in place, glimmers of light seeped through here and there.

He understood that Mrs. Henderson wanted to make her husband a fried egg. Actually, what she really wanted was to make him a cake, a birthday cake.

Mrs. Henderson took an egg, tapped it lightly on the edge of the bowl until the yolk and the white slipped glistening out of the shell. She did the same with the second. The yolk of the third egg was broken and she threw it into the rubbish bin. She picked up the fourth egg, then suddenly changed her mind. Putting it back in the basket, she took Kam Ho’s hand and pronounced slowly: “You do it.”

Kam Ho guessed that she wanted him to do as she had done. He took hold of an egg and cracked it on the edge of the bowl. The contents shot into the bowl, taking with them some of the eggshell. With the second, he knew to tap it lightly. The yolk and the white slid into the bowl. When it came to the third, he tapped it lightly and threw it into the rubbish bin.

Mrs. Henderson started, then burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that her forehead came up in a bump.

Mrs. Henderson was severely arthritic, and the pain was so bad that it seemed to crawl through every artery and vein of her body. At night when she went to sleep, it was in her fingers, but when she got up in the morning, the pain had travelled to her shoulders. When she drank her coffee, the pain was down in her back and when she stood up, it was in her knees. Her face usually bore a frown of pain and she rarely smiled. But since Kam Ho had come to live with them, she had laughed several times—laughed until she cried.

The first time was the day of Kam Ho’s arrival. In the afternoon, she decided to take him through the sweeping of the sitting room and the kitchen. She took a feather duster and showed him how to pass it over the tables and walls. When they got as far as the dining table, Kam Ho suddenly saw something sticking out of the wall next to it, and gave it a poke. There was a click and the room flooded with light. Kam Ho gave a shocked cry and sat down on the floor, covering his ears with his hands. She realized that the boy had never seen a high-wattage electric light before. He thought he had been struck by lightning. In Hoi Ping, they still used oil lamps and even in his New Westminster house, his father only had two ten-watt light bulbs, a bit brighter than oil lamps but still nowhere near as bright as these.

The next morning, when Mr. Henderson was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and Kam Ho was boiling water in the kitchen, there was a sudden shrieking from the living room. After much searching, Kam Ho discovered the noise was coming from a black box on the side table. Mr. Henderson came running out of the bathroom with the toothbrush sticking out of his froth-covered mouth, and gestured to the black box. Kam Ho bundled up a tablecloth and muffled the box as best he could. It rang more quietly but he could still hear it. So he fetched cushions from the sofa and pressed them on top of the box. Still it rang. Mr. Henderson related the incident to his wife at breakfast and she laughed until she shook. Poor child, she said, he’s never seen a telephone. How come his father never told him about telephones?

When she finally stopped laughing, and wiped the tears from her eyes, she picked the cracked egg out of the rubbish and brought it back to the table. As she broke it into the bowl, she could not suppress a sigh. Oh Lord, how often must I explain to this Mongol boy that you don’t throw every third egg away? she wondered.

Mrs. Henderson took a wooden spoon and lightly beat the eggs in the bowl, then gave the spoon to Kam Ho and made him do the same. He cut a comical figure, his shoulders hunched and his hands beating ferociously as if using a brickbat to smash a fly. It was the same every time he learned some new household skill—he learned to go through the motions but never seemed to understand why.

Mrs. Henderson watched as a tuft of hair on the back of his head bounced up and down in time with his movements. She suppressed a smile. It occurred to her that if she did not tell him to stop, this hare-brained Chinese boy would just carry on beating until he shattered the bowl. She looked for a semblance of expression on his bent face. It was as if a cloth were drawn taut over his features, masking them completely. In fact, his whole body seemed to be enveloped from top to bottom in an impenetrable suit of armour. She sometimes felt as if she wanted to pierce a hole in it, just to see what kind of blood would flow out.

But there was no need for that. On the first Saturday after his arrival, as he washed the vegetables in the kitchen, he began to look as if he was losing his wits. His ears quivered like those of a guard dog, straining to hear movement outside the front door. He was desperate for his father to turn up and take him home. Finally, she had found the chink in his armour— and it told her that he hated being at her house.

Her knees began to hurt and she had to sit down on a chair. Kam Ho’s eyes were fixed on the eggs he was beating. They looked strange, these Mongols, she thought: flat, open faces, eyes that looked like two fine slits slashed in a sheet of pastry. Their clothes were peculiar too. On top, they wore what looked like long coats fastened not up the front but at the side up to the armpits. Only a short length of trouser leg was visible, the cuffs tied with string around each ankle. Their shoes and socks were made of cloth. What a performance it must be to go to the toilet wearing an outfit like that!

What they ate was as peculiar as what they wore. A few days before, she had smelled something strange, and had walked all around the house to trace its source. It was coming from Kam Ho’s room. There she found Kam Ho chewing on a piece of dried fish, which he hastily stuffed into a drawer as soon as he saw her. It looked and smelled like a piece of rotting garbage. She had noticed that he ate very little at the table, and reasoned that he must have been getting hungry. His stomach was not used to the Hendersons’ food. She threw away his bag of salted fish, though to touch it nearly made her vomit. She expected that he would protest. But he did not. His face remained as tightly masked as always, with not a shadow of expression showing through.

The next day at dinner, she served him a piece of fish steamed in the French way, pouring melted butter all over it. He took it to the kitchen to eat—he never sat down with them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him eat it all, though with difficulty and frequent pauses.

Many years ago, her husband, Rick, had worked with some Chinese railroad navvies and could still tell stories that sounded as fantastic as the tales from the Thousand and One Nights. Of course, that was before their marriage. She was the daughter of a Manchester cloth merchant and had come to Vancouver when she married Rick. She had had no close contact with any Chinese apart from the man who ran the Chinese grocery. When Rick suggested that they take on Kam Ho as a houseboy, she had been without her English maid for a week. This was the third maid to depart in the last few years. A properly trained maid was the greatest gift that the Lord could bestow on a British housewife. But all great gifts were hard to find and harder to keep hold of. A young maid who had crossed the Atlantic to Canada would be sure to meet in her mistress’s drawing room some decent young man desperate for a wife. Love and marriage quickly followed. It was rare to find a European maid anywhere in Vancouver nowadays. The result was that young Chinese boys were finding their way into White housewives’ kitchens.

Two years ago, Rick left the Vancouver Hotel and started work at the Hudson’s Bay Department Store as purchasing manager, which meant making frequent business trips to London, Paris, Munich and the Canadian East Coast. His job was tiring, and whenever she talked to him about getting a new servant, she felt his impatience. So when he suggested they employ Frank’s son, although she did not agree straightaway, she did not veto the idea either. Rick’s nerves were like a rope stretched thin and her ailments were the heaviest drag on it. Since she did not want the rope to snap, she had to deal with things on her own, but that was only a stopgap measure. In due course, she would find another rope to bear the weight of her problems.

This new rope was a simpleton of a Mongol boy she called “Jimmy.” (She could not get her tongue around his Chinese name so she made up one of her own for him.)

“Stop, Jimmy, stop!” Mrs. Henderson said to Kam Ho.

But Kam Ho was deaf to all sounds except those of the banging of the wooden spoon against the bowl. Mrs. Henderson had to stamp her foot hard before Kam Ho heard. The spoon stopped, while his hand remained haplessly quivering—like a horse jerked to a halt by its master that carries on galloping on the spot.

Mrs. Henderson massaged her knee joints and stood up. She began the complicated process of making the cake. Flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, water, oil—she measured the proportions carefully according to the recipe. Not forgetting, of course, the vanilla custard which Rick adored. She had no idea how long it would take this Chinese boy to learn the art of baking. She hoped not too long.

Today was Rick’s fifty-seventh birthday. She pretended it had slipped her mind and had not given him the slightest hint that she remembered. In fact, she had been making meticulous preparations for this evening for a few days. She had bought the wine, a fifteen-year-old red Bordeaux. They would start with a clam chowder. The appetizer was pâté de fois gras on lettuce. The main courses would be smoked salmon and shoulder of lamb. And the dessert would of course be the cake. These dishes, normally only to be found in European-style restaurants, all would be made by her. She knew that Rick was tired of the dinner parties he had to go to, preferring to slump into his own armchair to relax and then eat a simple home-cooked meal. The cake needed forty-five minutes in the oven, so it was too early to bake. Rick got home at six o’clock, so she would put it in at half past five. After Rick had come in through the door, taken off his coat and loosened his tie, the cake would appear on the cake plate, warm and spongy soft. Then she would exclaim in pretended astonishment: “Good heavens! What a nice cake. It must be somebody’s birthday!”

In fact, all this preparation, although intended for his enjoyment, paled in comparison with the preparations she made for herself. She had had the best dressmaker in Vancouver make her an evening gown in the latest Paris fashion. It was of crimson satin, trimmed with lace. The first time she had met Rick in Manchester, she was wearing a long crimson dress. They had both been guests at the house of a friend. He was a balding forty-eight-year old man and she, at twenty-six, was already an old maid. They were both past the best time for marriage, but a successful man, no matter how old, could always find a mate. She held herself back that day, not making any special effort to talk to him or distinguish herself from the bevy of other young women. But he stared so intently at her outfit that she seemed to feel his gaze on her all the way home that evening. The next day she accepted his invitation to lunch. She never forgot that he liked the colour crimson. She was the daughter of a textile merchant and had grown up surrounded by bales of cloth. She knew just what fabric and colours flattered her figure and made the sparks fly. This evening, she was eager to see those sparks in the eyes of her husband.

She looked up at the wall clock. It was a quarter to three. She had plenty of time to take a short nap on a chair before going upstairs to dress for dinner. She put down the cake tin she had prepared, and suddenly felt searing pain biting into her knees. The pain was so savage that she slumped to the ground before she even had time to cry out. Kam Ho ran over to her. Drops of moisture squeezed out from between tight frown lines on Mrs.

Henderson’s face, whether tears or sweat he could not tell. Blood welled up—she had jabbed her fingernails into her temples.

Kam Ho stood frozen to the spot, then suddenly dropped to his knees, pulled her hands away from her face, and pinched the fleshy Tiger’s Mouth acupressure point between her thumb and index finger. Mrs. Henderson’s eyes widened in surprise as the pains in her knees gradually eased. Kam Ho pressed his lips together until they went white and his wrist trembled as if from cold. His whole circulation seemed concentrated in his pincer-like fingers, turning them into two livid sausages. Mrs. Henderson remained completely still; she was afraid that the slightest sound or movement on her part might call the pain back again.

After a while Kam Ho finally gave a sigh and released her hand. She stood up shakily, aware that the burn was still in her knees but was no longer so raw and painful. She looked up with an expression of relief to see Kam Ho’s face slowly cracking into a smile—his first since coming to her house.

“My mum … I …,” he stammered, gesturing into the far distance, then to his hand.

He was speaking in English.

She was so overcome by the pain, and then the relief, that at first she did not understand. It was only as she was limping up the stairs that she realized the boy must have been trying to tell her that his mother in faraway China had taught him how to soothe pain.

Mr. Henderson did not get home at six o’clock that day. In fact, it was a quarter to eight by the time he walked in. The dining room was in darkness, lit only by two red candles on the table. They had burned low and tears of melted wax poured down the silver candle holders. The candles formed hazy rings of light in which Mr. Henderson could make out two long-stemmed wineglasses.

“Phyllis, why are all the lights off?” he called out, flipping the switches on. In the electric light, the two candles were reduced to dim fireflies. Mr. Henderson saw that the table was laid for two: silver cutlery, gold-rimmed English bone china, monogrammed linen napkins and a lace tablecloth. His wife normally kept them in the display cabinet and rarely took them out for use; his mother-in-law had sent them from Yorkshire as wedding presents. In the corner between the kitchen and the dining room, a dark shape rustled. It was Kam Ho. He had been dozing on a footstool when the lights came on, dreaming some dream about his village and the river.

Kam Ho rubbed his eyes and stood up to take Mr. Henderson’s coat and hat. A smell hung around the garments. Mr. Henderson was snorting a bit like a water buffalo and his breath was heavy with alcohol. “What’s my wife got all this stuff out for?” he asked. Kam Ho did not know what to say and stood looking at his master mutely. Mr. Henderson took out his handkerchief and wiped a drop of spittle from the corner of Kam Ho’s mouth. “Where’s my wife?” he asked thickly. Kam Ho understood these words and he pointed upstairs.

They heard a rustling on the stairs, like the sound of locusts jumping from leaf to leaf. Mr. Henderson knew without looking round that this was the sound of his wife’s skirts brushing the floorboards.

“Why are you so late, Rick?”

Mr. Henderson glanced at his wife but was overtaken by a loud belch before he had had time to say anything. It was quite clear that this was not just a single solitary belch, but the standard-bearer for a multitude of others just waiting behind. There was no time to waste. He rushed to the toilet and shut the door firmly behind him.

Mrs. Henderson stood outside the toilet door, listening to the taps running. Eventually the noise subsided. In the interval between one burp and the next, her husband spoke: “I’m sorry. I went for a drink with Mark. His wife has gone to France, and he didn’t want to go home so early.” Mark was Mr. Henderson’s boss.

Finally Mr. Henderson opened the bathroom door and emerged. He came face to face with his magnificently dressed wife. She looked down at her toes, and her cheeks glowed a faint pink, like a girl waiting to be asked to dance by a boy at a promenade.

“Uh, very nice. The colour suits you,” Mr. Henderson muttered indistinctly, patting his wife on the shoulder as he walked past her.

She stiffened momentarily, and the soft satin folds of her gown stiffened with her. She said nothing, but continued to stare down at her toes. The pink glow on her cheeks gradually receded, exposing an expanse of gaunt pallor underneath.

Kam Ho trembled. There was a soft pattering in his ears—Mrs. Henderson’s tears hitting the floor.

“Have you invited guests tonight, dear?” Mr. Henderson asked his wife, leaning over the banister and wafting a scent of Lux soap down the stairs.

My dear mother,

Your letter arrived a few days ago. I was very happy to hear that Granny is in good health and my little sister can walk now. There has been fighting all over Europe in the last few years and a lot of men from Gold Mountain have joined up. With no one to work the land, Dad has been able to buy a lot of it cheaply. Mr. Henderson says the war will be over soon and then prices of land and farm products will go up. Dad says that there is a lot we can do with such good land in the future. I have been at the Hendersons’ a year now and still want to go home and help Dad with the farm, but Mrs. Henderson’s health has not got any better. Dad says he owes Mr. Henderson a debt of gratitude for all his help in the past and has told me to stay another year. I have learned to cook and wash and clean around the house and when I am free, Mrs. Henderson teaches me a little English. Please do not worry about me. I am making progress in everything. My brother, Kam Shan, has been here a few times. He lives in Kamloops now, quite a way from Vancouver, and has opened a photographic studio. There are a lot of Redskins living out there and they love having their pictures taken so it is easy to make money. Dad and Kam Shan are still not speaking, but now that all three of us are earning, we will be able to pay back the debts on the diulau sooner. Then we can put money by so you and my sister can come to Gold Mountain and we can all be together.

Most humbly, your son, Kam Ho

Year five of the Republic, the eighth day of the ninth month, Vancouver, British Columbia

According to Mrs. Henderson, this was the coldest of all the ten years she had spent in Canada.

Kam Ho had never worn a hat but this winter he did. It was an old one of Mr. Henderson’s, checked, with a broad brim. Mr. Henderson had a big head, and on Kam Ho, the hat was constantly slipping right down over his eyes and nose so he had to stop and push it back.

One crisp morning, Kam Ho looked out the front door and saw long transparent sticks hanging from the eaves. The morning sunshine glinted feebly off the strange spiral shapes hidden inside them that resembled water weeds. Kam Ho had no idea what icicles were, and he knocked one down with the old broom kept in the front hall, and poked one end into his mouth. The coldness made his jaw drop open, but the ice soon melted on his tongue and the water began to trickle down his throat, stabbing his gullet as it went. He licked his numb lips and found grains of dirt stuck there. He spat the dirt out with a “pah!” and then remembered he had an urgent errand to run.

He had been taking this route once a week for a year by now and knew it well. He knew all the trees on all the corners and the cracks in all the paving stones.

After going out of the Hendersons’ garden gate, it was a short walk to a middling-sized street, just big enough for pedestrians and carriages. Of course, a street this wide in Hoi Ping would only be found in town. He walked fifteen minutes along this street, turned right and came to a school. To go straight ahead, he had to walk around the school along a narrow alley, but that added an extra fifteen minutes to his journey. So Kam Ho used to take a shortcut across the school’s small playing field, and in another five minutes cut through to the street on the other side. It was a short street. Kam Ho had counted carefully and there were only twenty-one houses from end to end. But he did not go right to the end. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth houses there was a narrow passage, just wide enough for a person and a dog, which brought him out at the back of Canton Alley.

He did not need to walk through to Canton Alley itself—the stuff he was looking for was not on sale there. Instead, he quietly made his way past the piles of rubbish and waste paper and pushed open the back door of a shop which went by the name of the Kwong Cheong General Store. They stocked exactly the same stuff as any other shop of this type in Chinatown— fruit, vegetables, rice and condiments—and it was all laid out in exactly the same way, with the dry goods at the back and the fresh vegetables in the front. But this was the only place in Chinatown where Kam Ho could get what he needed today. And it would not be found displayed on the shelves.

He made his way in through the back of the shop, acting just like a regular customer, picking up a handful of yellow beans from a sack, holding them to his nose, sniffing and putting them back again. Then he picked a salted duck egg out of a basket and shook it to see if the yolk was runny. But this was just for the benefit of the shop’s customers. Once they had gone, he went straight up to the counter and gave the empty bottle he was carrying to the owner, together with the money he had been carrying in his pocket. The shop owner did not bother to count it. He could tell from the weight of the coins that it was the right amount. The bottle was an old sesame oil bottle; the label was dark and transparent with grease. The owner bent down, felt around behind the counter until he found what he was looking for, then filled the bottle with the stuff and gave it back to Kam Ho. That was all there was to it. No need to talk, or even to look at each other. The owner knew that the young man would be back within the week.

Kam Ho went out the way he had come in, and started on his way home. The whole trip took him an hour or so. Usually, if the children were on a break when he came to the school, he waited until a neatly dressed woman teacher, her blouse buttoned up to the neck, rang the handbell for the children to go back into class before crossing the school playing field.

But today he could not wait. Rather, it was Mrs. Henderson who could not wait. Her shoulders had pained her all night. Kam Ho’s room was at one end of the house, and Mrs. Henderson’s at the other, but Kam Ho could hear her moans as she tossed and turned. No sooner had Mrs. Henderson seen her husband off to work that morning than she sent Kam Ho to get the bottle filled.

Not with sesame oil, but with opium juice.

His brother, Kam Shan, had told him that opium soothed pain. Kam Shan happened to be visiting on a day when Mrs. Henderson had an attack of arthritis. He told him to buy opium juice in Chinatown so she could try it. The Gold Mountain government had banned opium years ago, Kam Shan said, and shut down the opium dens. Now, only the Kwong Cheong General Store sold it, but even then, only on the quiet—under the counter to known customers. He just had to mention the name Red-Eye Bat. Kam Ho stared at his brother and said nothing. Kam Shan had lived in Kamloops for years and only came to Vancouver occasionally, but he still knew the secrets of every store in Chinatown.

It was then that Mrs. Henderson started to drink opium juice. It turned out to be so effective that she would hardly let the bottle out of her sight.

As Kam Ho approached the school, he saw half a dozen children on the playing field chasing each other with sticks. They’re enjoying their game so much they won’t notice me, he thought to himself, I’ll just cut through. He tucked the bottle inside his jacket and, making himself as inconspicuous as possible, snuck across the field.

Ching Chong Chinaman sitting on a wall,

He thinks one cent’s worth twenty-four.

He heard the sharp cries as the children pinched their noses and assumed ladylike tones. Then there was a pattering of laughter behind him and he knew they were coming after him.

Chink Chink Chinaman sitting on a fence

Trying to make a dollar out of ten cents

The shrill cries were swelling into a confused clamour. They were on his heels. He clutched the bottle to his chest and sped on.

But his body suddenly flagged. Something hit him on the back. Pain flared up until his back and shoulders were on fire. They were throwing stones. The children were the same size as he was, and so they had no fear of him. He may have been seventeen but he had not grown much and still looked like a child.

A fierce pain jabbed him in his gut, as if a rope was tightening around his intestines. Tighter and tighter it pulled until his guts felt like they were trussed up. He pressed the bottle against his belly, exhaled sharply and the tension suddenly eased off. But his belly took that as an invitation to let go completely and something hot filled the crotch of his trousers. He smelled the stink.

Faster, faster, his head told his legs, but by now his head was not in charge. He heard a ping on his forehead, like the sound of a watermelon left to rot and burst open in the field, and something hot and sticky trickled down into his eyes, gluing them together. His eyes were no use any more. He had only his legs, driven on by blind instinct. They knew which way to take him without his eyes telling them.

Gradually the rabble receded into the distance.

When Mrs. Henderson came to open the door of the house, Kam Ho was standing there with blood pouring down his face. He pulled up his jacket and extracted the bottle. Pushing it into her hands, he said: “My hat … gone,” and slumped to the ground.

He was woken up by something icy cold on his chest. He was lying in a bed. Beside him stood Mrs. Henderson and a man in a black hat and glasses. The man looked familiar somehow. It was Dr. Walsh, Mrs. Henderson’s doctor.

Dr. Walsh moved the cold thing around Kam Ho’s chest a few times and said: “His heart rate is fine but his temperature is one hundred and five degrees. Apart from infection in the external injuries, there’s still some gastric infection. How many times has he opened his bowels today?”

“I’ve lost count. My poor bed,” said Mrs. Henderson.

“Did he eat anything unusual yesterday?”

Mrs. Henderson shook her head. “Those Mongols are like horses. They eat anything. But he eats the same as us now, and Rick and I haven’t had any problems.”

“Apart from medicine to settle his stomach, you need to get the fever down. Do you have any ice in the house?”

Kam Ho felt as if he were lying on a thick layer of billowing cloud. The voices of Mrs. Henderson and the doctor floated in and out. He did not understand but he knew they were talking about him.

“Henry, I’ve just had a thought!” he heard Mrs. Henderson exclaim. “This morning, I saw the stupid boy break off an icicle and eat it.”

Kam Ho did not hear what the doctor said in reply because just at that moment, he sank into a trough in the cloud.

He just hoped it was not Mrs. Henderson who had taken off his trousers and cleaned him up.

That was the last clear thought he had before falling into a deep sleep.

It was evening when he woke up, the evening of the third day, as he discovered later. He guessed the time of day from the light coming through the curtain. The room was gloomy. The light was off, but one candle burned on the windowsill. The candle threw a flickering shadow over blue expanse; the blue assumed a shape that was sometimes angular, sometimes round.

As Kam Ho stared at the form, it gradually turned into a woman’s back, topped by two bony shoulder blades draped in a blue nightgown. The nightgown trembled. The woman was crying.

“… He eats the leftovers. I don’t even know if he gets enough to eat at each meal. Last Christmas, when Rick’s aunt came from Halifax, we didn’t let him go home for the holiday and we didn’t pay him any extra either.… Once he helped Rick into bed and Rick’s shirt tore at the seams, and called him a Mongol ass.… Oh Lord, you know everything that goes on, you know all the injustices there are in this world. Now you’re punishing me, you’ve made him the burden I have to carry. You’ve made me bear the weight of my own sin. I can’t bear it, Lord. I beg you to take this burden from me.… Every life is created by you, even a Mongol’s life.…”

Kam Ho turned over in bed. “Ma’am,” he said softly. The woman started in surprise. She had been kneeling for too long and her legs had gone numb. She struggled to her feet, tottered over and fell to her knees again at the bedside. She suddenly reached out her arms and embraced him. Two warm mounds under the thin nightgown pressed against his chest, so hard he could hardly breathe.

“You’re finally awake, child,” the woman murmured.

The next morning, after Mr. Henderson had left for work, Mrs. Henderson put on a thick fur coat and stood waiting in the hall. “You’re coming with me,” she said, pointing at Kam Ho. He wanted to ask where they were going but did not dare because her face was ugly with rage.

He followed her out the door. She walked today like a mother hen ready for battle, her claws splayed, and her feathers ruffled. Kam Ho had to trot to keep up. His legs felt like cotton wool. He was unsteady on his feet and wavered from left to right and back again. He had been in bed for some days, and although the sun was getting in his eyes now, he still felt cold. The wind whistled down the road, cutting through his cotton jacket and whipping him painfully. He was not wearing a hat—he could not get one on because his head was topped with a thick layer of bandages. He kept his ears warm by covering them with his hands.

Mrs. Henderson crossed the playing field and marched up to the school door. She stood before the janitor, her hands on her hips, and said in a loud, clear voice:

“Go and get the principal this minute!”

Kam Ho sat on the doorstep plucking a chicken.

He had bought the chicken already plucked but it was not up to Mrs. Henderson’s standards. She could not stand the black dots which showed through the skin. They made her think of bluebottle maggots and things like that. So Kam Ho had to go over the chicken once more and remove every last feather root.

The roses in the garden were in a riot of bloom, covering the garden fence in swaths of scarlet. There was a tree in the street—he did not know its name—from which hairy flowers like caterpillars fluttered down in the breeze. Jenny staggered over to where Kam Ho sat, her outstretched hands full of the flowers. “Jimmy, Jimmy!” she cried. “Look … flowers!” Jenny was three and a half years old. She dribbled as she chattered, so she always had to wear a bib around her neck.

She was Mr. and Mrs. Henderson’s adopted child and had been with them for a year. Although the couple had been married nearly twenty years, they were unable to have children. The germ of the idea to adopt a baby had been in Mr. Henderson’s mind for a long time, but his wife would not agree. She was determined to prove her womb was fertile and was just waiting for the right combination of seed and weather. But as her thirtyninth birthday came and went, she grew less confident, and finally agreed to adopt.

But it was all far too late. Mr. Henderson was learning to be a father when he was already old enough to be a grandfather. Once, all three of them were out shopping and he bumped into an old friend he had not been in touch with for years. The friend gripped him by the hand and shook it, exclaiming how well he was looking for his age: “I had no idea your daughter and granddaughter were so grown up,” he said. Mr. Henderson did not enlighten him. From then on, he was reluctant to go out in the company of his wife and daughter.

Kam Ho gave Jenny’s chin a wipe with the bib. “Go and watch the ants moving house,” he said. He was not paying attention to the toddler, or indeed to the chicken. His mind was elsewhere. Kam Ho’s ears were erect and quivering like rabbits, straining to hear a clanging sound from the street outside. It was not Saturday, and he was not waiting for his father. He was waiting for a different cart.

A vegetable cart.

The war in Europe was finally over. And now that it was done, the Gold

Mountain soil had its farmers back. Almost overnight, the streets and alleyways of Gold Mountain towns teemed with vegetable and fruit sellers. They came knocking, sometimes several times a day, laden with baskets of fresh produce carried on shoulder poles or packed into horse-drawn carts.

The Hendersons’ house was a stone’s throw from the vegetable market which stocked everything they needed. But Kam Ho preferred to buy from the hawker who came to their own front door. It was fresh, cheap and convenient. At least, that was what he said to Mrs. Henderson, to whom he could not explain the real reason.

He had been with the Hendersons for seven years. The first two years he longed to go home but his father would not have him back. His father owed the Hendersons a debt of gratitude that could never be repaid. By the third year, Kam Ho had lost interest in moving. The job was a meal ticket after all, one which he was used to, and a lot less bother than looking for a new one. Later on, Ah-Fat’s farm failed and he needed his son’s wages to support the whole family, so even if Kam Ho wanted to leave, he could not.

The men came home from the battlefields, swapped their army uniforms for civvy clothes and looked around to discover that others had grown rich from their absence. Ah-Fat had used this time to secure the title deeds of neighbouring fields. Before everything went wrong, he owned the biggest farm for hundreds of miles around. He had long given up selling door to door. He had a team of nine horse-drawn carts to distribute his vegetables and fruit, meat and eggs to the markets.

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.

“It’s always the women who come and buy from us. Isn’t there a woman in your house?” asked her father, sweeping the debris of old leaves from the floor of the cart. The girl had been brushing the mud off the front of her jacket but now she paused and he knew she wanted to hear what he would say.

“I’m in charge of the housekeeping,” he said boldly after a moment’s hesitation.

The first sentence was the most difficult, and after this the words came fluently.

“The master of the house is the boss of Vancouver’s biggest department store, the Hudson’s Bay Company. When the English emperor came on a visit, the master was invited to tea. The mistress is always going out to dinner parties with him so I’m in charge of the house.”

This was the longest answer that Kam Ho had ever given in his life and when he finished he was surprised at himself. It was so much easier than he ever imagined.

The girl’s father tut-tutted in astonishment. “No wonder they live in such a grand house,” he said.

“Have you ever seen the English emperor?” the girl asked him as she looked up.

He found it difficult to answer. He could not bring himself to lie boldly and say, yes, he had seen the emperor. But neither did he want to say no, because he was basking in the sparkling look of admiration she gave him. Then the words slipped off his tongue. He smiled slightly: “We ordinary folk can’t meet the emperor. But I’ve seen a photograph that the master brought home. He’s quite young and handsome.” Kam Ho felt satisfied with the way he had put it. It did not sound in the least boastful, but still impressive enough.

“Jimmy! Jimmy!” Mrs. Henderson was calling him.

Kam Ho was not about to answer immediately but his chain of thought had been interrupted and he found he had dried up. He picked up the vegetable basket and said: “Could you bring some beans next week?” Before the father could reply, the girl nodded her head. Kam Ho knew he would see her again next week.

“Jimmy! Jimmy!” the call came again.

Kam Ho had to go. Though he had said a lot, still he had not time to say what he really wanted to. Still, there would be next Wednesday.

As he went through the garden gate, Kam Ho suddenly stopped, put down the basket in his hand and looked for a sharp pebble. He cut the stem of a rose and ran up to the cart. Throwing the rose onto the basket where she sat, he said: “It smells nice. Have a smell.” He really wanted her to put it in her hair but he did not dare suggest that. He was afraid, not of her, but of her father. The man stood between him and her and he had not yet worked out a way of sneaking past him.

When Kam Ho climbed the steps to the house, he nearly collided with Mrs. Henderson; the doorway was dark as he went in out of the sun’s glare, and he did not see her.

“Mr. Henderson’s coming home early today, and he’s taking Jenny to Stanley Park to see the sailing boats. Go and make us a picnic lunch, and of course you’re coming with us too.”

Kam Ho said, “Yes, ma’am,” but he had no idea what he was saying yes to, because he was not listening. He had left his eyes and ears outside. Far away down the street, he saw more women coming out of their houses and going up to her cart. He heard her timid voice like a leaf brushing his ears. “Fresh greens. Just harvested from the fields. Our own crops, no bugs in them,” she said in answer to each of the women’s questions.

“Was it prickly, Jimmy?” asked Mrs. Henderson.

“What?”

“The rose,” said Mrs. Henderson with a slight smile.

He looked down, almost burying his head in the cleanly plucked chicken in his hand. He could not answer because he knew that as soon as he opened his mouth, he would blush. This summer, very strangely, his blood would sometimes, without any provocation, start to ripple like oil in his face.

Mrs. Henderson put the vegetables Kam Ho had bought into a basin and picked up the basket. She walked across the garden, out into the street and then along until she got to the cart. She exchanged greetings with the other housewives and then handed the basket to the Chinese girl.

As she did so, she whispered something into the girl’s ear. The girl’s eyes suddenly lost their shine. It was as if a film of rust covered them. The rust spread, stiffening her face, and then travelling down her neck until her whole body was rigid.

“My servant,” Mrs. Henderson said, “the Chinese boy, forgot to give you back the basket. Poor lad, he’s not all there. He often forgets things.”

The next Wednesday, the cart did not come.

The Wednesday after, it came but the girl was not on it. Her father and brother came instead. After much stammering, Kam Ho finally asked about her.

“She’s gone to Edmonton to live with her aunt, who’s going to send her to school there,” said her father. “Her auntie says Gold Mountain girls should go to school too.”

Kam Ho paid for his vegetables but went away without them. He went in through the garden gate, up the steps and across the hall. Jenny called him, Mrs. Henderson called him, but he heard neither of them. He went straight to his room, shut the door and sat down on his bed.

Ah-Hei had gone.

Ah-Hei was a spark from a fire, momentarily lighting his way, before going out and leaving him in darkness once more. It was a different darkness than before—and he could not bear it.

He sat for a long time in his room. He heard a clattering downstairs: Mrs. Henderson was in the kitchen making coffee and toast, and preparing a salad for lunch. Getting lunch was the servant’s job, he should be doing it himself. But he felt completely drained of energy, unable to move muscle. He would sit there until the world ended and the sky fell in.

Mrs. Henderson opened the door. He heard her footsteps but he did not turn around. Ah-Hei had let him down, her father had allowed her to go; all heaven and earth were against him. He had let himself down and now he had nothing more to live for.

A pair of arms went around him from behind and held him tight. His neck melted in their soft warmth. The warmth lapped over him and he wanted to pull free but did not have the strength.

Let me drown, then, he thought to himself, and be done with it.

“Poor child. Poor, poor child,” came Mrs. Henderson’s whispered voice. Kam Ho’s tears began to flow.

That night, he had a dream. He dreamed his mouth was full of rose thorns. He kept trying to spit them out, and then discovered that what he was spitting was not thorns but his own teeth, handfuls of them, red and white, like persimmon seeds.

He awoke covered in sweat. Then he remembered something his mother had told him as a child.

“If you dream your teeth are falling out, it means someone in the family is to die. If it was the top teeth, then it would be an old person. If the bottom teeth, it would be someone young.”

He racked his brains but could not remember which teeth he had lost.

Year eleven of the Republic (1922) Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, China

In the middle of the fourth month it began to rain and did not stop until the Dragon Boat Festival at the beginning of the fifth. When it stopped, the ground was covered with a pebbly carpet of mushrooms and the banana trees had burst into luxuriant growth. Inside, the walls of the houses were covered in snail trails.

Ah-Choi, the cook and a servant were busy at the stove preparing to boil leaf-wrapped rice dumplings for the festivities. When the water boiled, the cook threw some ash into it. After the harvest, they burned the rice stalks and stored the ash. Now, sprinkled into the water through a fine sieve, the ash gave the dumplings a flavour all of their own.

They had made up the dumplings the night before. There were four kinds—sausages, sweet bean paste, salted egg and dried shrimp. Kam Sau squatted on the floor tying them up with reed, into bunches of five. Each bunch would be tied with one other so that ten were boiled together. She was in grade two at the local school and would go up into the third grade when the summer was over. The school, funded by Gold Mountain men, was in the nearest town. The children boarded there during the week and came home on Sundays, but since this was the Dragon Boat Festival, they had an extra day’s holiday and Mak Dau had fetched Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen home. Ah-Yuen was Mak Dau’s son and just four months younger than Kam Sau. When Kam Sau was enrolled at the school, Six Fingers enrolled Ah-Yuen too. He would be a friend and company for Kam Sau.

Six Fingers was burning sagebrush to fumigate the house. When she reached the passageway, she came upon Mak Dau cleaning a revolver he had purchased from a local militiaman a few weeks ago. He was sitting on the floor, having placed it on the stool. When Kam Ho’s last dollar letter arrived, Six Fingers gave half to Mak Dau to buy it. Mak Dau said it was lightweight and convenient, and could be tucked discreetly into his waistband on long journeys. Six Fingers was a thrifty woman but she did not mind spending money on guns, since her husband and sons were away. A household without men looked weak and defenceless and a defenceless house was a target for robbers. The guns were her defence. This revolver was the third they had bought; the other two were shotguns.

“When you’ve bought it, wrap it in red silk and lay it on top of the box. We’ll celebrate its arrival with firecrackers,” ordered Six Fingers. Although she was keen to avoid attracting unwelcome attention to the family’s wealth, she was perfectly happy to show off the acquisition of a new weapon.

“You put it back together exactly the way you take it apart,” Mak Dau instructed his son. “Anyone can take a gun apart but you have to have good head on your shoulders to be able to put it back together.”

“Why ever are you teaching things like that to such a little kid?” Six Fingers scolded him.

Mak Dau chuckled. “It’s a wicked world,” he said. “Anything a boy can learn about defending himself is going to come in useful.”

Six Fingers squatted down with them. “What new subjects are you going to study when you go up into the next grade?” she asked Ah-Yuen. The boy coughed and spluttered from the sagebrush smoke. He took handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his nose before answering: “Nature, geography and music, and we’ll carry on doing Chinese, math, English and history like before.” Six Fingers looked at the boy approvingly. “He wipes his nose on his handkerchief,” she said to Mak Dau, “not on his sleeve the way you do.” “We’ll be doing etiquette too,” Ah-Yuen piped up. “What to wear, and how to eat and behave, and we’ll get marked on it too.”

Mak Dau tapped his son on the head. “An empty kettle makes the most noise,” he admonished him. “You don’t want the Missus laughing at you.” Six Fingers threw down the brushwood. She began to comb Ah-Yuen’s hair with her fingers, lost in thought.

Mak Dau knew she was missing her own sons. He checked there was no one around before lowering his voice and asking: “Have there been any letters?” She shook her head. “Not since last New Year. That’s more than twelve months. Not a single one. Has something happened that they’re keeping from me?”

“What about the two young masters? Why don’t they write?” “You know what a temper he’s got,” said Six Fingers. “Both the boys are afraid of him. Neither of them would dare write and tell me if he doesn’t want them to. Kam Ho has written, but just to say that Kam Shan is back in Vancouver and has moved in with his dad.”

“Don’t worry, Missus,” said Mak Dau. “The dollar letters keep coming. I’m sure nothing’s happened to the master. You must miss the boys, though … one gone twelve years, the other seven years. I miss them too.”

Six Fingers bent her head and tears fell on her shoes. With sole responsibility for a substantial household, she could never let herself go in front of the servants. She knew how easy it was to appear weak before them and so buttoned her feelings up tightly. If she cried, it was only in front of Mak Dau. Mak Dau felt unsuccessfully in his pocket for a handkerchief, then pulled out Ah-Yuen’s, folded it with a clean bit uppermost and gave it to Six Fingers. She wiped her eyes and said with a faint smile: “Kam Shan wrote to say his woman is pregnant and no matter if it’s a boy or a girl, he’s bringing the baby home to meet Granny.”

“You’ll be a granny in no time at all, Missus,” said Mak Dau. “But to me you still look as young as a new bride.” Six Fingers gave a little snort. “You’ll have wasps sticking to that honeyed tongue of yours if you don’t look out! And don’t you dare make fun of me!” Mak Dau felt so aggrieved that the veins bulged on his forehead. “Oh no, Missus!” he exclaimed. “I’d never be so bold as to make fun of you. It’s really true—you haven’t changed. You look just the same as when I first entered the household.” Six Fingers’ eyes had a faraway look in them: “I made the bridegroom’s shoes for Ah-Yuet to give you. It seems like just yesterday. But look how big the kids are now. In all this time, of course I’ve changed.”

There was a loud knocking from the ceiling above—Mrs. Mak’s walking stick, signalling to Six Fingers that she wanted to come downstairs. “I’ll come and carry you down, Mum,” she shouted. But as the tempting smell of dumplings wafted up the stairs, the old woman became impatient. “All that wealth my son’s earned,” she wailed fretfully, “and I haven’t even had a bite. You’d rather feed the rats than me.”

“What a way for the old Missus to talk to you, Missus,” Mak Dau said disapprovingly. “It sets a bad example to the servants.” Six Fingers only smiled. “She gets confused sometimes. But sometimes she’s as bright as a button.” “Then let me carry her,” said Mak Dau. “She’s too heavy for you.”

“No, I can carry her. She’s as light as a feather nowadays.” Mak Dau sighed.

“You have such a lot on your shoulders, Missus. I’m just a rough sort and I can only do heavy work, but do let me help you out in any way I can.” Six Fingers was touched, and did not trust herself to speak for a few moments. Then she said: “The thing is, I’m the only one she’ll let carry her.” Mak Dau gave one of his dazzling smiles. “Just watch how I do it then,” he said and stomped off up the stairs.

After a moment, there was more stomping, heavier this time, as he came downstairs again with Mrs. Mak on his back.

Six Fingers fetched a wicker chair for Mrs. Mak to sit on. The dumplings were ready, and the old woman sniffed: “You didn’t put enough ash into the water.” Six Fingers smiled: “No one’s got a nose sharper than you, Mum.” She got out a large dish and a small dish. “Ah-Yuet, put two of each flavour into the big dish, nice neatly made ones. And one of each flavour into the small dish.” The larger portion was an offering to the ancestors, the smaller one was for Kam Sau’s great-aunt upstairs. She was a widow now. The great-uncle had died a year ago and she shared her rooms with her son and his wife, as her daughters had married and left home. After the old man’s death, she began to suffer from heart trouble and was too frail to come downstairs.

Ah-Yuet was ladling oil into the large bowl when her hand slipped. The bowl dropped with a crash to the floor. It was a porcelain offerings dish which Ah-Fat’s father had bought in an antique shop in Canton when he became rich overnight—it had been in the family for a long time. There was an appalled silence in the room. Mak Dau smacked his wife across the face. “I’ve never seen a clumsier woman than you!” he raged. “You’ve been with the Missus all these years, and you still haven’t got any better!”

Mak Dau often corrected Ah-Yuet but only behind closed doors. She had never before been disgraced like this in front of the rest of the household. Mutely, she held her hand to her cheek and her lips trembled like leaves. Six Fingers frowned at Mak Dau. “It doesn’t matter how clever you are, you should never hit your wife in front of the old Missus.” At that, Ah-Yuet burst into noisy tears. “It’s just an old dish!” shouted Six Fingers at her. “What are all these tears about? Hurry up and clear it up and bring another one.”

It was obvious to them all that these words were meant for Mrs. Mak’s ears; since she was blind, she could not see which dish had been broken.

Mrs. Mak smiled scornfully and beckoned Kam Sau to her side. “Yes, Granny?” Mrs. Mak took the little girl’s hand in hers. “Stay away from her,” she said. “She’s got it in for our ancestors.” There was an embarrassed silence; the “she” must surely mean Six Fingers. But to everyone’s surprise, Mrs. Mak went on: “Huh! That mole’s an evil omen … blood-soaked it is.…” The mole was on Ah-Yuet’s chin, and indeed, it was bright red.

Six Fingers went to her. “Mum,” she said shakily, “can you see Ah-Yuet’s mole, really?” Mrs. Mak did not reply. Instead, she looked Six Fingers up and down. “Can’t you find something nicer to put on to honour the ancestors? Hasn’t Ah-Fat bought you anything?” Six Fingers had not had time to change out of her plain grey, black-trimmed cotton tunic.

When they had recovered from their astonishment, there were cries of “The old Missus can see! She can see!” Kam Sau stretched out two fingers. “How many fingers is that, Granny?” she asked. “Don’t you make fun of me, you little madam! With my heavenly eye, none of you can ever hoodwink me!”

Six Fingers shot a glance at Mak Dau and they left the room. Making sure no one was following them, Six Fingers wiped the sweat from her face and said to him: “Things are not looking good for the old Missus. Get her burial shoes from the funeral shop and be quick!”

Mrs. Mak died at noon that day, still clutching a half-eaten bean paste dumpling in one hand.

She had lived for seventy-four years.

For the last twenty of them, she had been alternately lucid and confused. One last drop of oil kept the lamp of her days alight for a long time before it went out. In the end, she exhausted not only her own reserves but her daughter-in-law’s as well. When Six Fingers sent Mrs. Mak on her way to the next life with the most ostentatious funeral that Spur-On Village had ever seen, she was forty-five years old.

When the wake was over, and the last of the guests had been seen out of the diulau, Six Fingers bolted the iron door and went upstairs. She sat on her bed and gently wiped the dust from the dressing table mirror. In a piece of clear glass the size of a palm-leaf fan, she looked at her face. She wore no powder. The fine lines at the corners of her eyes and cheekbones were puffy with tears. The white flower she wore in her bun hung crooked. She pulled it out, then put it back in again straight. She would have to wear the white flower of mourning for some time yet, but she did not mind. It made the grey hairs less obvious.

“Twenty-eight years ago, you promised that I would join you in Gold Mountain, Ah-Fat. Now, finally, you can fulfill that promise,” Six Fingers murmured to herself.

Year twelve of the Republic (1923), Vancouver, British Columbia

When Mr. Henderson pushed open the garden gate, Jenny was standing on tiptoe under a tree, talking to a robin that sat in the branches.

“Do you go to sleep with your eyes shut or open?”

The bird gave a tweet, which might have meant yes or no. Jenny was annoyed and screwed up her nose: “Hasn’t your mother taught you to speak properly?”

Mr. Henderson burst out laughing and went over to his daughter. He was about to give her a bear hug, but thought better of it, and instead stroked her face. Jenny had been ill almost continuously this year, with measles and a cold that led to bronchitis. She had a long-festering infection where she had fallen and hurt herself, too. Her body seemed as frail as tissue paper. Just touching it would make a hole. They had made progress though; the dribbling had stopped and she no longer wore the bib, but kept it in her apron pocket.

He took her hand and they went to the front door. It was locked and he had to use his key to open it. He almost had it open when Kam Ho came running out of the kitchen, looking flustered. Mr. Henderson sniffed: “What’s that burning smell?” he asked. “Did you boil the footbath dry?” Kam Ho wiped his hands over and over again on the apron and stammered: “It could be the … the Chinese medicine the Missus takes.” “Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Henderson. “My wife swigs your Chinese bilge like there’s no tomorrow! Why don’t you invite the witches and wizards from Chinatown over too.”

Kam Ho was used to Mr. Henderson’s jokes but this one he found offensive. A flush stained his face like vermilion ink spreading across rice paper. Kam Ho was a man of few words, but his face spoke his feelings in their stead. Mr. Henderson had seen him flush many times—sometimes from embarrassment, or alarm, sometimes for some unexplained reason. But this time it was anger, the kind of anger which he had to choke back.

Mr. Henderson roared with laughter and clapped Kam Ho on the shoulder. “When I first met your father, Frank,” he said, “he was younger than you are now, but not nearly so thin-skinned. In fact, he was as tough as old boots.” Kam Ho was still red in the face, and Mr. Henderson produced a note from his pocket and pushed it into his hand. “When you go home this weekend, take your father to the new French restaurant in the bay. Tell him it’s on me.”

Kam Ho took a quick look—he was holding a crisp, new twenty-dollar bill. This was more than half his monthly salary, and certainly enough to buy several excellent meals in any restaurant. Both Mr. and Mrs. Henderson would occasionally top up his monthly wages with a bit extra, but never with a note this big. It seemed to numb his hand with its weight. He would like to have said: “No, it’s too much. I can’t accept it.” But the words refused to come. “Thank you,” he mumbled. If only Mr. Henderson had not made that offensive comment about Chinese bilge, it would have felt dignified and right to thank him. As it was, he had made that comment and Kam Ho was still angry. He felt cheapened.

But he was in no position to nurse injured feelings. Immediately, he knew what he wanted to do with the money. He would not be taking his father to a French restaurant. In fact, he would not let him catch sight of the twenty-dollar bill. He would add it to the pile of small change he was saving, then he would turn it all into a letter addressed to his mother and sealed with the Gold Mountain government’s official stamp. He had been putting money by for the head tax. He was going to make sure that his father got the family reunion he had been denied for so many years.

Kam Ho took Mr. Henderson’s briefcase and overcoat and went to the kitchen to make coffee. A cup of strong, black coffee was the first thing he wanted when he got back home—no milk, no sugar. He liked the smell of it more than the taste, and would bring the cup, clasped in both hands, to his nose and breathe deeply as the steam curled up and misted his face. He took so long over it that, sometimes, Kam Ho thought he had fallen asleep. Once, he was on the point of taking the cup from his hands when Mr. Henderson suddenly opened his eyes and said: “Jimmy, coffee in heaven can’t be any better than this.”

When he had finally finished his coffee, he asked: “Where’s Mrs. Henderson?” “She had a headache today, so she’s just taken her medicine and gone to sleep.” He would like to have said she had just drunk that “Chinese bilge.” The note in his breast pocket warmed his chest and suddenly made him talkative. He was surprised to find he could tell a joke too—but in the end, he refrained.

“Well, when she wakes up, go and get my things ready. I’m going to Saskatoon tomorrow.” Kam Ho knew he had a supply depot there and made frequent trips every year. “Is it nice there?” he asked. “That depends on who you ask. It’s nice for cattle and horses. It’s nothing but grass and more grass.” Kam Ho smiled despite himself. “There’s another good thing about it,” Mr. Henderson went on. “The fishing’s really good. Next time I make a trip, I’ll take you with me and we can do some fishing.” “I can fish,” said Kam Ho. “When I was a kid, my brother and I used to tickle trout in the river. Will we go with the missus?”

“Huh! Go with her? If the sun’s too hot, she gets a headache. If there’s a wind, her knee throbs. She can’t walk because her feet hurt. If it’s overcast, she can’t see where she’s walking and if it’s bright, the sun gets in her eyes. Look at Jenny. She’s growing up to be just like her mother, too fragile to touch.”

Kam Ho heard a slight creaking on the stairs. He had wanted to warn Mr. Henderson that his wife was on her way down but could not stem the outburst. Mrs. Henderson appeared behind her husband, and with a slight smile, she said: “I’m not really so delicate, am I, Rick? And I suppose Bridget was more robust than me?” Bridget was Mr. Henderson’s first fiancée, but she had died of heart failure before they married.

Mr. Henderson looked embarrassed, then laughed and said: “Don’t lock the door when Jenny’s playing in the garden.”

Mrs. Henderson did not reply. “Take Jenny to wash her hands,” she told Kam Ho, with a meaningful look at him. “It’s time to eat.” The glance meant that he should prepare drinks for them. Mr. Henderson’s job meant that he was often out in the evening and rarely ate with his family. When he was at home, his wife liked them to have a drink before dinner.

Kam Ho took Jenny to wash her hands and then fetched a bottle of ten-year-old port from the cellar. Mrs. Henderson’s taste for port, acquired as a young woman in England, had followed her to Canada. Kam Ho put two long-stemmed glasses down in front of them. Mr. Henderson frowned and glanced at Kam Ho. He did not like wine, regarding it as a lady’s drink. His tipple was whisky, sometimes on the rocks, sometimes straight. Anything else he did not dignify with the name of “a drink.”

In the eight years that Kam Ho had been with the Hendersons, the greatest skill he had learned was to read their expressions. The problem was that their expressions were often at odds, and Kam Ho found himself forcibly pulled to one side. Even when he understood what they each wanted, he did not know how to act. In the beginning, he often felt bruised by the conflict. Then he learned to interpose his own energy between their conflicting energies, making three forces instead of two. This protected him from being crushed.

Kam Ho imperturbably poured a glass of port for each of them and gestured to Mr. Henderson. “Ma’am wants to drink to your health,” he said, “and wish you a safe journey and a speedy return, isn’t that so, ma’am?”

Mrs. Henderson downed her port in one gulp and waved her empty glass at Kam Ho. He refilled it and she gulped it down again. She had had a severe headache all day. She had taken some opium juice but before she could settle down to a nap, Mr. Henderson returned home. She was still in her nightgown, as she often was these days: a crimson Japanese silk kimono embroidered all over with butterflies in shades of blue, green and pink. It reached to the floor but was cut low at the neck, revealing a hint of snowy-white bosom.

Kam Ho did not dare raise his eyes. He found that glimpse of white flesh electrifying. Mr. Henderson must have been crazy about her before she fell sick, he thought. How sad that he no longer felt affection for her. How sad that she kept trying to revive it. Mrs. Henderson treated her husband like a god, as Kam Ho well knew, and wanted nothing more than to cling to him for shelter. But her husband did not want anyone plucking at him or doting on him. This was obvious to Kam Ho but Mrs. Henderson still could not see it. She grasped desperately at any bit of him she could reach, until there was nothing left.

“Do you enjoy being away from home, without Jenny and me bothering you, Rick?” she asked now, waving her empty glass at Kam Ho.

Kam Ho looked at Mr. Henderson, not daring to fill it up again. Mr. Henderson took his wife’s glass from her. “That’s enough. You’ll frighten Jenny if you go on like this.” At his words, the flush on Mrs. Henderson’s cheeks rose upwards until even her eyes reddened.

“Just listen to you!” she said. “What a good daddy you are. Jenny, when was the last time your daddy got drunk? I think he must have forgotten that you were there.”

Mr. Henderson threw the glass down and stalked up the stairs. The wine dribbled along the crease in the white tablecloth as if the table had split in two and blood was oozing from the wound. “Daddy!” cried Jenny, and burst into loud sobs.

Heavy footsteps rattled the stairs as Mr. Henderson came down again. At the door, he took his coat from the closet, put it on and bent to tie his shoelaces. Kam Ho dashed after him and blocked the way. Mr. Henderson straightened up and looked at him. “I’m going to stay the night in a hotel,” he said. “Look after Jenny for me.” He brushed Kam Ho off as effortlessly as if he were a leaf, and went out. Kam Ho watched as his portly figure, carrying a small grip, was swallowed up by the deepening dusk of the street. It struck him that Mr. Henderson was looking rather stooped these days.

Jenny had stopped crying and was braiding her dolly’s hair. Kam Ho cleared away the wineglasses and mopped up the spilled wine. It was very quiet. The only sound came from the kitchen, where the stew bubbled away, its glug-glugs sounding like rich, oily farts. Kam Ho felt Mrs. Henderson’s eyes on him, needling him painfully. It was clear she wanted to talk to him, but just now, he did not feel like it. He let the needling go on.

“Do you think a man is capable of sticking by a woman, Jimmy?” she asked.

A simple question, but one that Kam Ho could not answer. He was twenty-three years old, but so far his emotional life had been uneventful, the only ripples in its gentle onward flow caused briefly by the Cantonese girl, Ah-Hei.

Behind him, Mrs. Henderson gave a short laugh. “It’s pointless to ask you, isn’t it, Jimmy. I mean, you’ve never known a woman, have you? I mean really known.…”

Kam Ho could feel drops of sweat beginning to bead his forehead and the tip of his nose. He was hot with embarrassment, the drops of sweat almost steaming. He felt the blood rushing to his face—he must have turned scarlet. Flustered, he went over to the stove and lifted the lid of the pot. It fell to the floor with a clanging noise.

“Mr. Henderson went off without any dinner,” said Kam Ho.

“Of course. But he’s not the only one. I’m hungry too,” said Mrs. Henderson.

That night he dreamed that the Hendersons’ dog had climbed in through the window and onto his bed. The dog’s red tongue began to lick him, slurping at his face. The dog was a great weight on his chest, and he could hardly breathe. He pushed and pushed at it, and finally woke himself up.

He opened his eyes and saw a pair of eyes gleaming at him in the darkness. There was a full moon, and its light filtered in through cracks in the curtains and caught the gleam, making the eyes flare blue. Kam Ho’s hair stood on end but a hand clamped itself over his mouth, stifling the cry of alarm he was about to utter. Another hand slithered through the opening of his pyjamas, exploring his chest then gliding down his belly until it finally reached the place between his legs.

Kam Ho felt as if his body was a fuse. The fingers played over him, setting him alight. The flames flickered back and forth. Between his legs, he grew rock hard. The flames licked at his thing and it grew fiery hot.

A groan escaped Kam Ho.

With an immense convulsion, he released a flood of hot liquid, startling them both.

The fire died down, leaving Kam Ho feeling drained, emptied of all energy. But a feeling of ineffable pleasure lingered. He had the vague sensation of being light, of floating like a cloud in the sky. Almost, but not quite. Because something was pulling him down. As his eyes became used to the semi-darkness, he saw it was a nightgown with shimmering butterflies. He was filled with a sense of doom, and his teeth chattered in terror.

Two soft, moist lips touched his cheeks. A breath, which smelled of spearmint, skittered across his ears, and he heard:

“Jimmy, it’s not a sin to go looking for pleasure. Don’t be afraid,” she breathed.

He slept deeply after that. When he awoke, the sun was shining hot on his face. He leapt out of bed and scrambled around for his clothes.

He was too late to prepare Mrs. Henderson’s breakfast.

Mrs. Henderson. The name made his heart thump, and memories of the night before came flooding back. That dream. It was just a fantasy, wasn’t it? He comforted himself with the thought that he had been having very strange dreams lately. But when he threw back the covers, he found a stain about the size of a Buddha’s hand. He traced its soft edges with finger. It was still wet. He slumped down onto the bed, his heart in his mouth.

It was no dream. It had happened.

He sat on the edge of the bed. The moments passed. When he could not sit there any longer, he got to his feet and, as he did so, he saw the corner of something sticking out from under the pillow. A piece of paper. On it, the crowned head of the old English Queen.

A five-dollar bill.

It seemed to burn his hand, raising a blister on his palm.

He dressed and quickly packed his belongings. There wasn’t much— three or four outfits, a pair of shoes and some letters from his mother. He still had his old bag, faded with washing. He put everything into it, tied it shut and slung it over his shoulder. How small it was.

He did not know who his next employer would be, or where his next meal would come from. He was even less certain how he was going to tell his father. But he could work that out as he went along. The most important thing was to leave without delay.

He had just stepped out of his room when he heard Jenny give a shrill wail: “Mummy!”

He threw down the bag and flew back up the stairs. Mrs. Henderson was lying on her back in the bath, her hand dangling over the edge, a fat, red worm crawling across her wrist. Kam Ho was rooted to the spot in horror. He peered at the floor. A crimson pool was spreading across it.

Mrs. Henderson’s blood.

Kam Ho tore up his shirt and tied the strips tightly round Mrs. Henderson’s wrist.

“Why? Why?”

Mrs. Henderson’s eyes were shut as if in sleep. Her nightgown ballooned in the water; the butterflies’ wings were soaked through and floated lifelessly on the surface.

“Are you trying to frighten me to death?”

Kam Ho was not aware that he was crying. But he felt something scouring his cheeks as painfully as a caustic burn.

Mrs. Henderson opened unseeing eyes, then shut them again.

“I know you want to go. You, Jenny, and him too. You’ll all leave and I’ll be left alone,” she murmured.

He tried to get her to sit up, gripping her wrist with its improvised bandage with one hand, and holding her by the nape of her neck with the other. But she stiffened up and gave him no help at all. His clothes were soon soaked and the water slopped over the edge of the bathtub, making puddles on the floor.

“If you sit up and let me call Dr. Walsh, I swear to God I won’t leave,” he said.

As Kam Ho walked down the street, he admired the sky overhead—it was a beautiful blue. He had not been outdoors for a month. Since Mrs. Henderson had returned from hospital, her health had declined even further. She would not let him out of her sight. Today he had finally been granted a day off to go home. Unbeknownst to him, summer was already upon them. The lilacs had come and gone, and so had the cherry, apple and pear blossoms. All along the branches of the trees which lined the street, tiny green fruits had set, looking as if they might leak drops of acid. Crows cawed as they flew overhead, but he was used to them now. They were so common here that if they really were birds of ill omen as folks said back home, disaster would befall all the inhabitants of Gold Mountain. Disaster would not single him out. Nothing was going to dampen his spirits today.

Kam Ho had one hand in his pocket, tightly clutching a heavy cloth bag. Through the thin fabric, the banknotes seemed to stick out tiny tongues which licked his palm eagerly. He had counted and recounted them. He remembered how he acquired each one. The ten-dollar bill on which someone had scrawled an obscenity was from his first wages. The five-dollar bill with a bit of one corner missing was a present from the Hendersons on his second Christmas with them. And then there was the five-dollar bill with a tiny cigarette burn at the tip of the monarch’s nose— that was the one Mrs. Henderson had stuffed under his pillow.

Over the past two years, Kam Ho had sent regular dollar letters back home to his mother, and provided his father with pocket money, but had saved every cent of what was left. His father had an inkling of what his son was doing, but had no idea that it all added up to so much. In fact, Ah-Fat often accused him of being so tight-fisted he would happily cut a cent coin in two. He also said he was cheap not to buy a present when Kam Shan’s woman had her baby. But Kam Ho held his tongue. He regarded his cloth bag as a bucket which he was filling with water drop by drop. He was biding his time until the bucket was full, then he could speak out. He had had to wait a very long time for that moment to come.

When he got to the house, only his father and Yin Ling were at home. Yin Ling, Kam Shan’s baby, was five months old, and lay snoring gently on the bed with a thin coverlet over her. Kam Shan’s woman was a waitress at the Lychee Garden Restaurant six days a week. She left Yin Ling at home and Kam Shan took her twice a day to the restaurant to be breastfed.

Kam Ho found his father leaning over the table, grinding ink. Business was always slow between festivals, so most of the time the ink he prepared each morning went unused. By noon, if no customer had darkened his door, the ink developed a hard black crust. Ah-Fat had put up with unimaginable hardships all his life, but the one thing he could not bear was idleness. It made him as bad-tempered as a bear with a sore head.

True to form, his father greeted Kam Ho with an irascible snort: “Oh, so you’ve remembered you have a family!” Kam Ho laughed: “Mrs. Henderson’s been ill, and Mr. Henderson wouldn’t let me take a day off.” “Huh!” Ah-Fat snorted again. “Why on earth would a man as capable as he is choose a wife like her? If he was in Hoi Ping, he’d have got rid of her and married again long ago.” “It’s Mr. Henderson who makes Mrs. Henderson ill,” said Kam Ho. “If he treated her a bit better, she wouldn’t be sick.”

Ah-Fat threw the ink stick down, spattering the table with black drops. “And what the hell would you know about it?”

Kam Ho was imperturbable. Nothing and no one was going to wipe the smile from his face today.

“How’s my brother? Is he a bit better?”

A month or so before, Kam Shan had been on his way to take portrait photographs in Port Hope when he was thrown from his horse and broke a leg. The bone-setter had attended him, but he was still hobbling.

His father scowled. “He was in pain all last night. He’s gone to get some ointment from the herbalist.”

Yin Ling woke up, pushed her little hands out of the blanket and broke into a wail. Babies at this age grew faster than weeds and she was much bigger now than when Kam Ho last saw her. He picked her up and, pulling a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket, pushed it into her bib. “Don’t cry, baby!” he said cheerfully. “Uncle’s going to buy you candies!”

Ah-Fat turned to look at his son. “When did you get so generous? Tripped over a pile of dollars on your way here, did you?”

Kam Ho put the baby down, then unhurriedly pulled the cloth bundle out of his pocket and put it down in front of his father.

“Yes, I did. Five hundred and twenty-nine dollars, eighty-five cents to be precise. Count them.”

Ah-Fat opened the bundle and looked at the heaps of coins and stack of dollar bills of different values wrapped around them. He was lost for words.

“I’ve saved up enough for the head tax to bring Mum here. Use that ink to write and tell her to buy the next passage.”

His father seemed to shrivel up before his very eyes. Finally he slid to the floor and wrenched at his hair as if he was trying to pull it out.

“Oh Buddha of Mercy, why do you play such cruel tricks on me? What have I done to deserve it?”

Had joy driven his father crazy? Kam Ho rushed over and tried to help him up. But Ah-Fat pushed him away. Pointing to the bed, he stammered: “Go … go and read … the paper.”

The Chinese Times lay on the bed, and someone had used a writing brush to make a big circle around an article on the front page.

The Parliament of Canada today passed a bill denying entry to people of the Chinese race or of part-Chinese descent, with the exception of consular staff, properly accredited merchants (not including owners of restaurants or laundry businesses), or university students. The family dependants of those already resident in Canada are prohibited from joining them. Current residents are required to register with the government within one year of the passing of this bill; the penalty for non-registration is deportation from Canada. Any Chinese wishing to make visits to China must return to Canada within two years. After that period, they will be denied entry. The sole permitted port of entry is Vancouver. Any boat entering Canadian waters is only allowed to carry one Chinese per two hundred and fifty tons deadweight.

When construction began in the west of Canada, the land was completely desolate. But, fearing no hardships, Chinese immigrants threw themselves valiantly into the back-breaking and dangerous work of building roads and railroads. But the government has behaved most treacherously towards the Chinese now that work has been completed, and placed numerous obstacles in our way to employment. A head tax, the first in the world, was imposed, and now this is followed by a new immigration law which, in preventing family reunions in Canada, is an insult to our country and our people. As a result, hundreds of thousands of families will be separated forever by an ocean. Our Republican government has reacted by making immediate diplomatic representations, but given its weakness internationally, these are unlikely to be effective. In the meantime, we have no option but to put up with this humiliating and bullying piece of legislation!

Kam Ho threw down the newspaper. He too, seemed to become smaller. He and his father squatted silently on the floor holding their heads despairingly in their hands, oblivious to the heart-rending wails of the baby lying on the bed. What a terribly cruel twist of fate. They had often seen such situations acted out on opera stages but they never expected to become part of the tale themselves. Kam Ho had built up his hopes, along with his savings, over eight long years and then, just as he was about to reunite his mother and father after decades of sacrifice and separation, disaster found him after all.

From deep in his lower gut, Kam Ho felt an impulse climb up to his chest and then to his throat, presaging, perhaps, a long sigh. It changed before it passed his lips—it became a little chuckle that surged and fell and surged again until Kam Ho found himself shaking with mad gusts of laughter.

He must have been driven over the edge, thought Ah-Fat in alarm, and thumped his son on the back. Kam Ho coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and finally stopped shaking. He stood up, wiped his nose and asked: “Where’s the Benevolent Association in all this? They’re always here when it comes time to pay our dues, but you can’t see them for dust when we get clobbered.”

“They’re meeting to decide on a policy. Your brother goes every day,” said Ah-Fat. “All the branch Associations are sending representatives to Parliament to protest. It’s not just ours. Victoria, Montreal and all the rest are, too. But it’s no use. Ordinary people can never defeat the government, not their own government, and certainly not a foreign one.”

Kam Ho saw for the first time that the livid worm of a scar that crawled halfway up his father’s face had shrunk to a hair, like a crack in a porcelain bowl. Even its colour had faded. His dad was really getting old. He would never have resigned himself to this in the old days. To the young Ah-Fat, all government officials, at home or abroad, were bastards and he would not hesitate to take a machete to them.

“If Mum can’t come, Dad,” said Kam Ho, “you should go back and live with her there. In two years, you can return if you want.”

His father said nothing.

After a few moments, he reached out and took hold of the bag of money on the table and gripped it as tightly as if his life depended on it.

“Let me have this money, son,” he said.

He spoke in his usual peremptory tones, but Kam Ho saw a hint of an entreaty in his father’s eyes. His father had never begged for anything in his life. A wave of bitterness flooded over Kam Ho, that his father had been so reduced.

“Dad, you do whatever you want with the money.”

His father’s dull gaze suddenly came to life. “I’m going to divide it in two—the bigger portion I’ll give Kam Shan so he can take you and Yin Ling back to see your mother and get his leg treated by a decent doctor at the same time. And while he’s there, he can get your mother to find you a bride. The rest of the money is to keep me. You and Kam Shan stay in China for two years and I’ll stay here and work for two years. I can’t believe my luck’s completely run out yet.”

Ah-Fat’s eyes reddened like a gambler’s at the fan-tan table as he spoke. “Dad, you shouldn’t need to work at your age. Kam Shan and I’ll look after you.”

Ah-Fat stiffened. “Just give me two years.… When you and Kam Shan get back, I’ll give every cent back to you. I can’t go home looking like disgraceful old tramp.”

The baby, Yin Ling, had cried herself to exhaustion and only choked whimpers came from the bed. Kam Ho went to pick her up and saw blister the size of a pebble on her forehead.

He sighed. “I can’t go. Kam Shan will have to take his family without me. I promised to stay with Mrs. Henderson—it’s vital for me to stay.”

Year seventeen of the Republic (1928)

Vancouver, British Columbia

Opium juice was getting harder and harder to find. The police raided the Kwong Cheong General Store so often that the terror-stricken owner squirrelled his stocks away in the darkest corner he could find. Kam Ho could always be relied upon to sniff out a supply, but the price had gone sky-high. By the time Mr. Henderson discovered that astronomical sums of housekeeping were being spent on “Chinese herbals,” his wife was in the throes of opium addiction. Mr. Henderson did not say anything. He just tightened his grip on his purse. Mrs. Henderson’s efforts to extract money from him were fruitless.

She was forced to find other ways to subdue her pain.

This morning, she had just seen Jenny off to school when excruciating pains began to attack her knees. It felt as if they hid a nest of hungry, restless rats that gnawed at her every movement. She was defenceless against pain this acute. Kam Ho’s acupressure techniques had no effect any more.

She had hardly had time to cry out before the rats were on her again, taking her breath away. She lay upon the sofa, staring at her husband as he turned away, put his brown-and-white King Charles spaniel on the leash, and went out for a walk. Although he was a senior adviser at the chamber of commerce, he went to the office only a couple of times a week—for meetings or to put his signature on a few documents. He found himself with a great deal of leisure time on his hands these days; one way of divesting himself of it was to take the dog for a walk. He took it out after every meal. His invariable habit gave him the greatest pleasure, and was postponed or interrupted only if some major event intervened. His wife’s arthritis did not count as a major event.

This was the Hendersons’ third dog. The first two were golden retrievers. The first died of old age, and the second was lost off leash while they were out walking. The dog had chased after a pretty feral bitch and never returned. Mr. Henderson had been inconsolable.

He had grown vague about people in the years since he retired, but he remembered everything about his dogs. They were his reference points. If he could not remember the year in which something happened, he would describe it as “the spring when Spotty arrived,” or “the time when Leggy chewed up my Italian shoes,” or “the time when Ruben got mange.”

When Mr. Henderson left the house with Ruben, Kam Ho was in the kitchen washing up. Breakfast was simple and Kam Ho had only a few coffee cups and side plates to wash, but he was in no hurry to finish. In his pocket there was a letter from his mother, sent to him via his father. There was a photo in the envelope, a very small one, showing the round face of a young girl. She looked no different from the average village girl—high cheekbones, thick lips and an expression so wooden that it was hard to tell whether she was happy or sad.

Her name was Au Hsien Wan and she lived in Wai Yeong Village; she was distantly related to the Au family in their village. So his mother’s letter had said.

His mother wrote that the girl was eighteen years old, that she had had a few years of primary school, that she could read and write and do math. Their horoscopes had been done and matched perfectly.

It was not the first time Kam Ho had looked at such a photograph. When Kam Shan came back from his visit home three years ago, his mother had sent him with half a dozen pictures for Kam Ho. The matchmaker had given her many more to choose from but she had rejected any who had not been to school; she liked women to be literate. Six Fingers had not got on with Cat Eyes for the whole two years that she spent in Hoi Ping with Kam Shan and Yin Ling because Cat Eyes could not even write her own name. Kam Ho kept the photographs his mother sent him over the years and looked at them every now and then. He would spread them out on the bed as if he had suddenly become the Yellow Emperor of old in the Forbidden City, selecting his empress and concubines from a bevy of beauties.

Kam Ho’s head may have been in the clouds, but his feet were firmly on the ground. He knew he could not marry any of the girls in the photographs because anyone he chose to marry would be condemned to live life apart from him while he toiled in Gold Mountain. He did not want marriage like that of his mother and father. He would rather be a lonely bachelor than pine for a wife he could never see.

Some Gold Mountain men felt the same as Kam Ho but were not as stoical, and shacked up with Redskin women. These unions produced children, but no marriage documents were exchanged and they did not ask for the ancestors’ blessings. When well-meaning friends suggested that Ah-Fat should get his son a Redskin woman, he grimaced. “He might as well marry a sow.” When he heard this, Kam Shan laughed. “Lots of Redskin women are good-looking and hard-working, and lots of Chinese women are ugly and lazy. Don’t tar them all with the same brush!” “And what about when they have children, whose ancestors do they pay their respects to?” retorted Ah-Fat. “Any grandson of mine may not be royalty but he’ll be every bit a Chinese and not a barbarian.” Since Kam Shan’s woman had been unable to give the Fongs a grandson, he had nothing to say to this.

Kam Ho had plans of his own. He was secretly saving money to take his father back to China for good. With the money he had borrowed from his son a few years back, Ah-Fat had opened a small café. Since he knew nothing about preparing restaurant food, he was dependent on a cook. The cook had slovenly habits but there was nothing Ah-Fat could do about it. The café brought in so little money that after he had paid the man’s wages there was almost nothing left. The business limped along for a few years and even though his sons urged him to give it up, he insisted on keeping it going. He had borrowed money from his son and was duty bound to pay it all back. But Kam Ho knew that his father was secretly hoping that he could make enough money to put on a show of respectability when he went back home to his wife. With increasing age, Ah-Fat did not swagger as he once had, but he still had some pride. He would not let Six Fingers down.

The truth was, however, that Kam Ho was not as desperate for a woman as Chinatown’s other bachelors. Kam Ho had a secret that he guarded so closely that no one could have dragged it out of him.

Working for the Hendersons had changed him. Under Mrs. Henderson’s watchful eye, Kam Ho had grown from a sapling to a great tree that thrived in the dew and the sunlight. He’d matured from a skinny whippet of a kid into a strapping young man. Without her, those well-developed biceps would have hung on him like useless flesh. But Mrs. Henderson offered him forbidden fruit, fed herself to him until every fibre of his being hungered for her. Kam Ho was choosy and was loath to accept a less tasty dish.

Till now, Kam Ho had been content to disregard the letters and photographs his mother sent him, but today was different. Something his mother said needled him, not painfully, but perceptibly. It disturbed his peace of mind.

“If you don’t come home and get married, your father will never live to see a Fong grandson.”

It was a reminder to Kam Ho that his father would be sixty-five this year. That was the yeung fan way of reckoning it; they lopped off the beginning and the end of life. Back in Spur-On Village, people included both ends in their tabulation; by their reckoning, Ah-Fat was sixty-seven, only three years off an age almost unheard of in the countryside. Kam Ho shivered involuntarily. He dried his hands on his apron and took the photograph from the envelope, put it in his pocket and went to the living room.

He could not wait any longer. He had to tell her. Today.

He walked in to find Mrs. Henderson curled up on the floor, her forehead beaded with sweat. She was having an arthritic attack. He was about to help her up when she stretched out a hand and pointed to the kitchen. He knew that meant the opium juice. He had bought some last week but only the dregs remained. He could not buy more for another three days when Mr. Henderson gave him the housekeeping money. He got the bottle and rinsed it out with water, adding half a teaspoon of brown sugar to the diluted mixture. Then he poured it into a black cup to disguise its pale colour and handed it to Mrs. Henderson.

She took a mouthful. “Jimmy, you’re as big a cheat as the rest of them!” she wailed, and smashed the cup down. It shattered, and the opium and water mixture trickled across the floor. Kam Ho looked at the claw-like hand that still held the handle; Mrs. Henderson’s bones looked as if they had been bored by locusts. The opium juice acted as an insecticide, but no sooner had it killed one swarm than another took its place. They plagued her bones, and the opium could not kill them all.

Kam Ho squatted down to clean up the broken china. He was doing sums in his head, wondering if he ought to dig into his own savings to buy her some juice. He picked her up and carried her to her bed. He got a towel to wipe the sweat from her forehead. She reached out one hand and gripped him fiercely by the front of his shirt. He struggled to free himself and some of his buttons came off. His mind was on other matters today but Mrs. Henderson was not going to take no for an answer. Her hand followed the familiar route through the opening of his shirt, but today it was as if her hand had scales. Her touch irritated him.

Suddenly Kam Ho had had enough. He shrugged off her hand, pulled up her dress and, forcing open her legs, thrust himself into her. It was the first time he had ever taken the initiative. Now, he took her without ceremony, like a rough-mannered peasant. Mrs. Henderson was so startled that she struggled to sit up—then realized that the pains in her joints had disappeared.

It was not the first time she had felt the pain ebb away when he was with her. The locusts had not the slightest compunction in what they did to her aging body. They had no fear of her but they did fear him. His vigour swept them away like sand carried down by a stream in spate.

Kam Ho was covered in sweat, and worry tugged at him. He turned his head to look at her. Mrs. Henderson lay pink-cheeked, sweat-soaked tendrils of hair clinging to her forehead and a faint smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She was not displeased. He relaxed.

Starting from when they first became intimate, he gradually gained confidence. She hesitated about giving him money but, all the same, insistently pushed small sums under his pillow, which he accepted. Kam Ho began to enjoy what they did and missed it terribly when for a few days she did not come to him. After that, he refused the money, even crumpling up a two-dollar bill and flushing it down the toilet in front of her. From that day on, she did not give him money. Kam Ho stopped feeling that he was at her beck and call and started to feel that she should do things to please him. Every Christmas, when Mr. Henderson gave him a Christmas gift, he would clap him on the shoulder and say: “I don’t know how you’ve managed to mellow my wife’s character but she’s been so much sweeter these last years. You’ve saved me a lot of trouble.”

Kam Ho, weighing the fat envelope stuffed with notes in his hand, felt brazen but also proud.

He helped her into fresh clothes, feeling how relaxed her body was compared to its rigidity just a quarter of an hour ago. She had got thinner this summer, her breasts slacker, like a Buddha’s hand fruit desiccated in the sun. It occurred to him that she had once been plump with juices; he had leached her dry. He felt a spasm of misery. But, miserable or not, there was no time to lose. He had to speak.

He pulled the photograph of the girl out of his pocket and gave it to Mrs. Henderson.

“I want to take a trip back home, ma’am, and marry this girl.”

Mrs. Henderson said nothing in reply and did not look at the picture. He could almost hear her heart plummet. She stared at the wall through eyes that appeared like deep, dark, dried-up wells, with crumbling stones lying at the bottom.

Kam Ho did not dare look at Mrs. Henderson. He stared at his hands, feeling himself grow hot. Finally, he stammered:

“I can’t … can’t not go. My d-dad, grandson.”

Still there was no reply. Then he heard the sound of stones grinding against each other in the well’s arid depths. A frail, reedy voice emerged.

“Six months,” Mrs. Henderson whispered. “I’ll give you six months.”

Dear Ah-Fat,

Kam Ho arrived home about five days ago, and because he has so little time before he has to leave, we held the wedding yesterday. The situation is very volatile here. There are bandits everywhere and we have had to be very discreet about the wedding presents. We sent all the gifts under cover of darkness to the Au family and they did the same. Fortunately, Mak Dau was able to accompany them, armed, which was reassuring. In a troubled world, it is only guns that can assure our safety, so we may buy more next year. The wedding banquet was very simple, only a dozen or so tables and family guests. Kam Ho was such a little boy when he left for Gold Mountain, only fourteen years old. He is so different now I would not recognize him in the street.

Last time you left, Kam Sau was still in my belly. Now she is sixteen and has never met her father. She has graduated from high school and is preparing to take the entrance exams for the provincial teacher-training college. The college is in the city and I am worried it is not safe for her to travel there alone, so I am thinking of betrothing her to Mak Dau’s son, Ah-Yuen. Although they are not of the same rank as our family, Ah-Yuen is very bright and has done exceptionally well in his school exams. He is a young man with a promising future. Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen have been brought up together and are genuinely fond of each other. What do you think? If you agree, they could become engaged this autumn and get married when she graduates from college. You should come back and preside over the ceremonies.

Kam Ho says you are reluctant to come home because you want to earn more money. You know the Fong family properties and fields bring in enough income to sustain us for years to come. Besides, you are getting on in years and should be home with our family where you belong. I do hope you will make a decision as soon as possible. Even the tallest trees belong to their roots. The grass grows tall on your mother’s grave and, although I go regularly and keep it neat, she needs her son to come and pay his respects. Has Kam Shan’s leg improved? Has Yin Ling started school yet? There is a wealth of knowledge for her to learn in foreign schools but she should not forget the glories of her own language. I will finish here and hope you are in good health,

Most humbly, your wife, Ah-Yin, ninth day of the first month, eighteenth year of the Republic, Spur-On Village

Year nineteen of the Republic (1930)

Vancouver, British Columbia

Business was dismal at Ah-Fat’s café that day, no more than four or five customers, ordering just small portions of sausage-flavoured rice. The cook spent all afternoon propped against the stove asleep. He woke up, crammed down a large bowlful of sausage-flavoured rice, wiped the grease from his mouth, then cut himself a fat slice of cooked pork and wrapped it in a lotus leaf to take home with him. Ah-Fat had it on the tip of his tongue to tell him to put the meat back in the fridge, that it would do for tomorrow too, but he felt that would sound too harsh. He was silent for a long moment and finally pretended he had not noticed. Instead he turned his anger on himself for being so feeble.

Ah-Fat cleared away the remaining food, then went to hang a yellow silk flower in the doorway. Tomorrow was Dominion Day in Canada. It was also the seventh anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Benevolent Association had instructed all Chinese immigrants not to mark Dominion Day with the Canadian flag, since that would be humiliating, but had distributed badges with the character for China on it. Ah-Fat always wore the badge and made his sons do the same. But nothing ever changed, though the Association held protest meetings every year and articles appeared regularly about the exclusion of Chinese.

Ah-Fat was losing heart.

Just as he was about to put up the shutters, a woman came in and ordered roast-duck noodles. Ah-Fat pulled out the meat and noodles again and prepared her order. The woman looked around for a place to sit and eat. Ah-Fat’s café was small and most customers took their orders away, so there were only two small tables and four rickety wooden chairs. She chose a clean chair, sat down and, taking a handkerchief from her pocket, wiped the table clean.

She wore a black skirt and a grey blouse, faded with much washing, and fraying at the cuffs, but still neat and clean. She appeared to be in her forties and her hair was streaked with grey. The sleek bun at the nape of her neck was adorned with a sprig of jasmine. She was extremely thin and sat perfectly straight. She wore a Benevolent Association “China” badge on her blouse. But she looked different from the usual regulars in Chinatown— and since there were very few new arrivals now, Ah-Fat knew all the women by sight. He did not recognize her.

He took the bowl of noodles and a cup of soy milk to her. “Have you just arrived in Vancouver?” he asked her politely. The woman nodded but did not speak. She wiped the chopsticks with her handkerchief and began to eat. She ate slowly, picking up the individual noodles as carefully as if she were doing embroidery. She seemed preoccupied and her ears trembled like a startled rabbit.

Ah-Fat was in a hurry to get home but it would be impolite to rush her. He brought her a second cup of soy milk when she had almost finished the first and took up his position behind her. The woman waved the milk away. “I won’t charge you, you’re the last customer,” Ah-Fat reassured her. “I’ll have to pour the rest down the drain otherwise.” She accepted it and unhurriedly continued with her meal.

“Where is it from?” she asked.

Ah-Fat thought she meant the soy milk. “Ah-Wong’s shop next door,” he said. The woman laughed. “I meant the opera music.” It occurred to Ah-Fat that she was dawdling over her meal because she wanted to listen to it. He kept a record player on the kitchen cupboard so he could put opera records on when there were no customers in the shop. The machine was old, the records extremely scratchy, and every now and then the needle would jump a groove.

“It was given to me many years ago by a friend,” Ah-Fat said. “Do you like opera?”

The woman shut her eyes and began to hum along, keeping pace with the long drawn-out notes of the singer. Her voice was so sweet and true that Ah-Fat’s interest was piqued and he found himself humming along with the notes. Their voices soared and dipped in time with the music from the record.

“Did you see any of Gold Mountain Cloud’s performances?” she asked as they finished.

“When she came to Vancouver, I saw all twelve performances. I sat in the front row, right in the middle. It was twenty cents a ticket, really cheap.”

“How did she sing?”

“She hadn’t made a name for herself back then but she sung the male roles so strongly she made the rafters vibrate. She could beat a dozen male singers any day. As soon as I heard her I knew she was destined for great things.”

The woman opened her eyes and extended a couple of fingers. “May I have a cigarette, please?” she asked. Ah-Fat pulled the packet from his pocket and lit one for her, then one for himself. Her teeth were stained yellow, he noticed. She must have been a heavy smoker for many years. She certainly smoked with style—legs crossed, head tipped back, her extended fingers trembling slightly. Then the smoke rings would waft gently from between her lips, floating upwards, gradually losing definition until they bumped against the walls and dissolved one by one into the air.

“You really think Gold Mountain Cloud was good?” she persisted. Ah-Fat laughed out loud. “I was a huge fan of hers,” he said. “It took me an hour to walk there every day but I was always there before they opened up. After the performance, I used to hang around in the hopes that I could get a word in. But I was just a fish-cannery worker—she had a rich gentleman waiting to take her to dinner every night. After the last performance, though, she sent me a record as a gift and that’s the one I’m playing now.”

The woman turned around and stared Ah-Fat in the face. “That scar on your face. It’s hardly noticeable any more.”

Ah-Fat was astonished. After a long pause, he asked: “Is it really you? Gold Mountain Cloud?”

She answered simply: “It was all so long ago, like another life.”

After she had made a name for herself in San Francisco, she took up with one of her admirers, a rich Hawaiian Chinese called Huang. She left the stage, married him and they settled in Honolulu. For a few years, she lived the life of a wealthy lady. Then one day, Huang fell foul of a gangland dealer and was stabbed to death in an opium den. Gold Mountain Cloud was forced to return to San Francisco, where she went back on the stage, taking any singing parts she could get. In the intervening years new roles had taken the place of the old ones for which she was famous, so she could only get minor accompanying parts. Later still, she lost her voice and even those parts dried up. Once famous far beyond Gold Mountain, now she was forgotten. She was reduced to relying on handouts from her elder brother, who had given up singing long before and ran a small store in Montreal. She did not get on with her sister-in-law and when, last month, her brother died of tuberculosis, Gold Mountain Cloud came to Vancouver.

“Where are you living? What are you doing for a living now?” asked Ah-Fat.

“I look after props and costumes at the theatre. I can sleep in a corner of the wardrobe room, which saves me paying rent.”

“Do they pay you?”

“Enough for a bowl of noodles.”

Ah-Fat gave a long sigh. After such fame and wealth, to be reduced to such poverty. What could he say?

That Saturday evening, after serving the Hendersons their dinner Kam Ho set off for home. As he passed the gate, he saw his father waiting for him at the end of the street. Fear seized his heart and he ran down the street. “What’s happened?” His father said nothing, just pulled out his cigarettes and gave him one, taking another for himself. Ah-Fat stood there without moving, smoking his cigarette, until the ash at the tip trembled and dropped to the ground. Finally he asked Kam Ho: “Have you brought any money with you?”

Kam Ho was silent. His trip back home and his marriage to Ah-Hsien had exhausted all his savings. His wife was expecting a baby soon and he was sending every cent back to Hoi Ping.

“Twenty … or if you haven’t got twenty, ten will do,” his father persisted.

“What for?”

Ah-Fat remained silent but his expression said it all. He threw down the cigarette he had just lit and ground it under his feet. He hawked and spat angrily: “If your old dad asks to borrow a bit of cash, do you have to have a signed-and-sealed loan agreement?”

“I sent a dollar letter back home just yesterday,” said Kam Ho, pulling a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. Ah-Fat took the note, which was moist from Kam Ho’s sweaty palm.

“Dad, we’ve never been gamblers, the odds are stacked against us. And at your age, you really shouldn’t be wasting money like this.”

Blood rushed to Ah-Fat’s face. He was tempted to screw up the note and fling it back into his son’s face. But then he remembered Gold Mountain Cloud’s jade bracelet, so flawless it glowed like a candle flame at night. This five-dollar bill, plus the five which he had saved himself, would ensure that she would not need to part with it. At least, not today.

He gritted his teeth and thrust the note into his pocket.

From then on, Ah-Fat would occasionally borrow money from Kam Ho. If not twenty, then ten. If not ten, then five. If Kam Ho could not spare him five, then he would take three or even one dollar … or even a few cents. Finally the day came when Kam Ho refused to give him anything. “There’s my son Yiu Kei’s one-month-old celebration and then there’s Mum’s birthday to think of. The family needs more guns. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know. Dad, when was the last time you sent a dollar letter home? Who’s been supporting the family all this time? Why are you taking food out of the mouths of your wife and grandchild for gambling?”

Ah-Fat stiffened and the veins on his forehead bulged. With an enormous effort, he swallowed back his anger.

“Next year. Next year, I’ll sell the café and go back home. I’ve been making a note of every cent I borrow from you and you’ll get it back with interest when I sell up,” he muttered.

Kam Ho shouted with laughter. “Your café? It loses money every month. You keep the food so long the sausage is crawling with maggots. No one’s going to buy the café off you even if you pay them to take it off your hands!”

Ah-Fat’s face turned livid purple and he swallowed back hard words that felt like grit in his gullet. His youngest son, whom he had always slighted, called the shots now—this was something he had never expected. Kam Shan, whose leg had never properly healed, could not support himself, and the burden of supporting the families in Canada and China lay on the shoulders of just two people—Kam Ho and Cat Eyes.

It had taken Ah-Fat all these years to learn two unpalatable facts: one, that the one who sent home the dollar letters could afford to talk loud; two, that the one who begged could not stand tall. Often he was on the point of explaining to Kam Ho what he was really borrowing money for, but when it came to it, he just could not get the words out. They went round and round in his head but he could never find the way to say what he wanted to say. It somehow seemed easier to allow Kam Ho to get the wrong end of the stick.

And so he kept silent.

Just you wait, he thought. Your old dad’s not got much longer to live. And if I can’t earn back my self-respect and go home with my head held high, then I’ll never go back, he thought fiercely to himself.

Year twenty-five of the Republic (1936)

Vancouver, British Columbia

As Jenny looked at her face in the hand mirror, she grew more and more despondent. Her face was too flat, her eyes too far apart and small at that, so she always looked half-asleep. Her cheeks were covered in freckles, but that was not the worst of it. She had none of the curves that most of her peers were developing. She was still as flat as a board.

There were three more weeks before the high school prom. Her mother had already booked the hairdresser and ordered her evening dress, and six months ago her father had booked tables for fifty at the Vancouver Hotel for a celebratory coming-out dinner. Or that was the excuse. In England, well-off families would hold dinners to launch their sons and daughters into society. Her father adopted the English custom, but his real aim was to find his daughter a rich husband. A rich husband was the furthest thing from Jenny’s mind. All she hoped for was that some boy, any boy, would take her by the hand and lead her onto the dance floor.

Almost all the girls in her year had prom partners. Mary had fixed hers up in the first year of high school; Susie had had invitations from three boys and still had not made up her mind. Jennifer had accepted Billy’s invitation then switched to Vincent; Billy and Vincent came to blows in the school grounds. Miss Smith, the headmistress, punished both boys by making them each clean the blackboard and carry the French teacher’s dictionaries and class notes for a week.

That sort of thing only happened to other people, Jenny thought forlornly. Jenny had not yet received so much as a glance from a boy, let alone an invitation. The only other girl in the same situation was that odd Chinese girl with the slit eyes, Linda Wong. Who wanted to be lumped in with a girl whose hair and clothes stank of cooking oil? Jenny shuddered at the thought.

Jenny knelt down on the floor and joined her hands together in prayer. She had said many prayers in her life, though most of them were grace before meals or at bedtime. But the prayer she said now was an urgent entreaty:

“Merciful Father in Heaven, I beg you not to make me go to the prom without a partner, like that Chinese girl, Linda Wong. Lord, I have committed many sins in the past. The year before last, when Mummy refused to let me wear lipstick at Christmas, I made a secret curse that she would die soon. When my classmates teased me for having a Mongol houseboy, I put diarrhea medicine into Jimmy’s food. When I didn’t want to go to science lessons, I said I was sick and got Mummy to write a note for me. And every time I go to church with Mummy and Daddy, I sit there counting my fingers and wishing that Pastor Carter would hurry up and get his sermon over with. Lord, you have thousands of reasons for punishing me, but please, could you hold off until the prom is over? I’d rather jump into burning sulphur than walk into the prom alone, but the Sunday school teacher said that only heathens who don’t believe in God get punished that way. I do believe in you, Lord, please don’t let me down. There’s only three weeks to go. I beg you to make me get an invitation as quickly as possible, hopefully tomorrow. Apart from Jack, who has a snotty nose, any boy will do. If you give me the boy who Susie doesn’t want, even that’s better than nothing. If you’re listening to me, I beg you to give me a sign you’ve heard.”

The teddy bear on the bed suddenly fell to the floor. Jenny’s heart leapt. She knew that was God’s answer, and that she would not be forced to walk into the prom alone. Very soon, maybe tomorrow, she would get a late invitation. No more would she have to get her school bag ready ten minutes before the end of school and rush out as soon as the bell sounded, just so she could be spared the other girls’ chatter about the prom. She would be able to talk to Mary, Susie and Jennifer easily about what kind of prom dress she was going to have and what colour it would be.

Jenny felt a great weight lift from her shoulders. She was unaccustomed to that feeling of weightlessness, and clasped her hands tightly over her chest as if afraid she might suddenly take off and float up to the ceiling.

She began to inspect herself in the mirror, in minute detail. The mirror was not big enough so she had to tilt it slowly and look at herself bit by bit. She was surprised to see a faint red flush on her cheeks which somehow made her freckles less obvious. Her chest was as flat as ever but if she squeezed her chest together hard between both hands, she could see something resembling a cleavage. Her neck was too long, but that was because she wore her hair up. If she spread her hair out, or braided the ends into French-style braids, that would change things a lot. Jenny carried on inspecting herself all over and was encouraged to realize that she could remedy every shortcoming.

Jenny’s hand turned sideways and the mirror grew legs and took her eyes through the half-open door to the living room. In the corner of the living room by the curtained French windows, she saw two people: her mother and Jimmy.

Jimmy was holding a jug and pouring the water from it into a cup which he held in the other hand. Jenny knew all about Jimmy giving her mother Chinese herbal medicine (“Chinese bilge,” as her father called it). Her mother had been taking it for nearly twenty years to ease her pain. The price of this “Chinese bilge” climbed higher every year, and this caused increasingly bitter arguments between her parents. The older her father got, the cheaper he became; the older her mother got, the more she needed her medicine.

Jenny watched in the mirror as her mother drank the “bilge” and Jimmy gave her a towel to wipe her mouth with. But she did not take the towel. Instead, she gripped Jimmy’s sleeve. Jimmy pulled his arm back, but she hung on and finally he allowed her to wipe her mouth on his sleeve. Jenny could hardly believe her eyes.

Her mother had come to rely more and more on Jimmy as the years went by. He was her walking stick, the pillow she rested on, the handkerchief on which she dried her tears. Many of Jenny’s classmates lived in her street and they all knew that the Hendersons had a Chinese houseboy. Once Susie had said: “Someone saw that Chinaman scrubbing your mother’s back. Is it true?” Mary joined in the fun then. “I’ve heard that when Chinese people get their wages, they don’t put them in the bank, they stuff the money in the bottom of their shoes. Is your Jimmy like that?” Jenny flushed furiously at these stupid questions. Finally she spluttered some rude comment about Jimmy scrubbing Susie’s mother’s back—and did not speak to either of her friends for a week afterwards.

They did not ask Jenny any more questions about Jimmy after that, but even so, Jenny saw the suspicious looks they gave her. Their eyes were full of scorn, perhaps pity, as if they were saying to themselves: “Such a nice girl. What bad luck that she’s got a Chinese houseboy.” She tried to grow a thick skin and refused to let them needle her. But eventually her pride shrivelled under their relentless gaze.

In the end, it all got too much for her. One day, she was coming home from school when she met Jimmy walking to meet her along the pavement, as he usually did. She would not let him touch her school bag. She walked straight past him and up to her mother’s room. She stood in front of her mother, and hesitated a moment. It suddenly seemed as difficult to broach the subject as drilling a pinhole in an iron curtain.

She looked down at her toes, and stammered: “Mummy, do we really … really need Jimmy?”

Her mother made no attempt to probe at what lay behind the question. She simply took the words at face value. Holding Jenny’s hand she said, after a pause: “Yes, we do. Your father, I, and you too, we all need Jimmy.”

Jenny was annoyed at her mother’s casualness. She pushed away her hand. “It’s not us, it’s only you,” she said. Her mother was unperturbed. “If you don’t believe me,” she said placidly, “you go and ask your father. Who, apart from Jimmy, is willing to listen to his endlessly repeated jokes and laugh as if it was the first time he’d heard them?” Jenny felt deflated. She was quite well aware that her father depended on Jimmy as much as her mother did.

“Actually, you need Jimmy too,” said her mother.

“Of course, you were too young to remember, but it was Jimmy who bathed you and changed your nappy when you were a baby. When you had diphtheria, who was it that put you to sleep by resting you on his stomach? Do you think your breakfast would fly itself to the table if we didn’t have Jimmy? Would your skirt get washed and folded and put away? The dust on your desk doesn’t clean itself. If Jimmy left today, you’d have to become the cook, cleaner, gardener and nurse to me, tomorrow. I’ll send him away straightaway if you’re ready for that.”

Jenny left her mother’s room without another word that day. But when she thought that Jimmy’s monkey-like yellow paws had once reached into the most secret places on her body, she felt her skin crawl.

Jenny could perfectly well have turned away from the mirror or pulled the living-room door shut. Seeing that sleeve pressed against her mother’s mouth had upset her and she did not want to look at herself in the mirror any more. But she kept looking at them. That was a mistake.

Her mother finished wiping her mouth but still did not let go of Jimmy’s arm. Instead she gripped his hand and pressed it to her cheek. She saw her mother’s hand wrapped around Jimmy’s like a gaping python, slithering down her neck, in through the opening of her gown and coming to rest on her breasts.

Jenny heard an almighty crack, as if her head had exploded into myriad fragments. She had dropped the mirror, and it shattered. She was treading barefoot on shards of glass, but felt no pain.

Mrs. Henderson let go of Jimmy’s hand but it was too late. Jenny whirled past, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind her. Mrs. Henderson stood up and found that her knees, devoured by so many years of pain, were suddenly filled with renewed vigour and elasticity. Heedless of her body, they hurtled her legs forward. Down the stairs she rushed in pursuit of her daughter, and out into the street.

She caught up with Jenny at the end of the street. She glimpsed a flash of Jenny’s pink dress, seized hold and flung herself on top of it. Jenny struggled but could not free herself. She elbowed her mother savagely in the chest. Mrs. Henderson felt as if she had been clubbed. She lifted her head, then saw stars.

When she came to, a group of people were standing around her. She heard a woman holding a parasol say to a man: “It’s been a day for strange happenings on this street. Just now Jenny was dashing down the street and, just in front of the school gate, she was hit by a car, poor thing.”

Mrs. Henderson suddenly recalled Jenny’s eyes. When Jenny had looked at her, her eyes had blazed like brilliant beads.

Mrs. Henderson began to claw frantically at her cheeks, over and over, until they were covered in bloody streaks. No one knew that she was trying to dig out the glass beads buried in her face.

Dear Kam Ho,

The fifty dollars which you entrusted to Tai Sek Lou for me have arrived safely. He told me that you and your brother have finally convinced your father to close the café and are pressing him to buy his passage home for good. He has always been so stubborn and it is hard for him to face coming home in poverty. I hope you and your brother will continue to support and comfort him.

The Japanese invaders have got as far as Wai Yeong, and one market day, their planes strafed a crowd of market-goers. Three of your wife Ah-Hsien’s family died and two were injured. Only your father-in-law and brother-in-law escaped because they had taken their sows to a nearby village to be mated. Your younger brother-in-law’s death was especially terrible—half his body was blown into a tree and his guts spilled all over the ground. Apart from bombing, the Japanese army commit atrocities wherever they go, raping, killing, pillaging and burning.

Given the current instability here, your father should stay where he is for now, and be in no hurry to come home. As he gets older, he hardly ever bothers to write. I have had almost no letters from him this year. I am lucky to have your frequent letters which are a great comfort to me. Your sister, Kam Sau, and your brother-in-law, Ah-Yuen, have graduated from college and returned to set up a school here. They teach boys and girls together, and the school is beginning to make a name for itself. Pupil numbers are going up. Your son, Yiu Kei, has started school. He is a bright boy and is making good progress. All the teachers are pleased with him. He and Kam Sau’s son, Wai Kwok, are inseparable friends. It is sad that Yiu Kei has not yet met his father and has only the vaguest idea who you are. I too am getting older and long to have my children and grandchildren around me. I will only be happy when your father, you, Kam Shan and Yin Ling all come home after the war is over and we can be a family once more.

Your mother, eighth day of the eleventh month of the twenty-seventh year of the Republic, Spur-On Village

Year twenty-nine of the Republic (1940)

Vancouver, British Columbia

Kam Ho got up in the morning and went to make coffee. In the kitchen, he glanced out the window at the cherry tree. Almost all its leaves had fallen but he saw some small red dots and went out into the garden to look. The tree had suddenly grown a slender new branch and a few buds had sprouted. He cut the branch off, put it in a vase and carried it in and up the stairs for Mrs. Henderson.

At the foot of the stairs, he bumped into Mr. Henderson, who was on his way out to walk the dog. “Good morning!” Kam Ho greeted him. “Did ma’am sleep well?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt foolish. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson had had separate bedrooms for a number of years now.

Mr. Henderson did not reply, just peered at the vase in Kam Ho’s hand. “You’re not going home next weekend. I’m taking you to White Rock to do some fishing.”

Kam Ho had gone fishing a few times with Mr. Henderson and had discovered that the head of the family was a poor fisherman—impatient and clumsy. Mr. Henderson’s real reason for going off with a mountain of tackle was to get away from home and spend a bit of time outdoors. He reminded Kam Ho of a small boy ditching school. Kam Ho hesitated, then said: “Then there’ll be no one at home. Ma’am.…” Mr. Henderson shook his head resignedly: “Of course.…” Kam Ho watched him walk away with the dog, and was struck by how doddery he was getting as the years went by.

By the time Kam Ho went into her room, Mrs. Henderson was awake and staring blankly at the ceiling. Kam Ho drew her hands out from under the covers and began to untie the cords which bound her wrists. All the muscle tone had gone and they were as slack as hot-water dough, which made things much more difficult for Kam Ho.

Since Jenny died, Mrs. Henderson had been alternately confused and lucid. As time passed, her moments of lucidity grew shorter and shorter; her bouts of confusion, on the other hand, lasted longer and longer. She frequently scratched her own face though she seemed to feel no pain. She explained that she was trying to dig out Jenny’s eyes. Every evening before bedtime, Kam Ho tied her wrists together.

Kam Ho saw a row of red pea-sized blotches on Mrs. Henderson’s wrists and guessed that she had had a restless night. He brought the vase close so that she could see the cherry blossom buds. “It looks like it’s going to snow any moment, yet they’re opening up. Isn’t that strange?” he said.

Mrs. Henderson ignored the flowers and buried her face in Kam Ho’s hair. “Jimmy, I can hear a shushing sound.” “It’s probably the coffee boiling,” said Kam Ho. She shook her head. “No, it’s not that. It’s your grey hairs growing.” Kam Ho smiled despite himself. “What you mean is I’m forty years old, and a Chinese man is old at forty. I should be a grandfather by now.”

“But you’re not a father yet.” Mrs. Henderson touched his face gently. “Your son died.”

The family back home had kept the news of Yiu Kei’s death from Kam Ho, but in the end he had heard about it anyway, from a fellow countryman who had gone home on a visit. He had never seen his son except in photographs which his mother sent. His son had been dependent on Kam Ho for all his needs, but had no hold on his affections. By the time the news reached his ears, Yiu Kei had been dead for nearly a year and Kam Ho had felt scarcely more than a few moments’ sadness. But Mrs. Henderson’s caress brought it all back to him and he felt a stab of grief for which he was not prepared.

“My Jenny can be his companion,” said Mrs. Henderson.

Kam Ho was startled. This was the first time for a long time that she had talked sense. He helped her to sit upright and changed her nightgown. Her whole body was slack as a filleted fish today and she kept flopping over to one side or the other until Kam Ho poured with sweat.

Finally he got angry. “If you won’t help me, I’m leaving and never coming back!” he said. The threat usually made Mrs. Henderson behave, but today for some reason it had no effect at all.

Kam Ho dropped her hand and turned to go. When he reached the door, there was a cry from Mrs. Henderson: “Jenny’s come!” Kam Ho felt a chill of dread. “You’re off your head!” he shouted at her. “But that’s message from Jenny,” said Mrs. Henderson, pointing at the cherry blossom in the vase. “Jenny’s telling me to go with her.”

Kam Ho gave an involuntary shiver. He suddenly remembered his granny saying that flowers which blossomed out of season were a portent of disaster. He grabbed the vase and carried it out, cutting up the branch with scissors before throwing the bits into the garbage. When he got back upstairs, Mrs. Henderson was asleep, resting against the headboard. He could not shake her awake. He fetched a wet towel, wrung it out and put it on her face. Finally, she opened her eyes slightly. There was a look of muddied confusion in them, like a pond stirred up by a rainstorm.

“Ma’am!” cried Kam Ho in a voice cracked with panic. Mrs. Henderson’s mouth was opening and closing like a dying fish. No sound came out, and her eyes began to cloud over. He forced himself to call out a few times, but it was no use and he stopped. He knew he should dress her, that this was probably his last chance. He rifled through her wardrobe and picked out a dress which she had bought the Christmas before Jenny died. Frantically, he began to undo the silk ribbon tie of her nightgown.

Suddenly he felt her hand shift ever so slightly in his. He put his ear to her mouth and heard the faintest of whispers. It took him some time to make out her words: “Don’t want.…”

“Don’t want what?” he asked, but she did not have the strength to reply. “You don’t want this dress?” he asked, but she just lay still and looked fixedly at him.

“You don’t want the pastor to come?” Still she stared at him.

He slapped the bed in frustration. “Oh God, tell me what it is she doesn’t want!” Then her hand gave a slight movement again. Suddenly, light dawned.

“It’s him? You don’t want him to come in?” he asked.

She blinked once and the hand he was holding relaxed.

When Mr. Henderson came back from walking the dog, he heard a faint noise from upstairs. It was something like bees beating their wings in the sunshine or filaments vibrating against each other in a light bulb. “Jimmy!” he shouted, but there was no answer. “Phyllis!” He stood at the bottom of the stairs straining his ears. The noise was coming from his wife’s room. Going up, he knocked a couple of times, then pushed the door open and went in without waiting for an answer.

His wife lay on the bed, dressed in a bright red dress. It was such a vibrant red that it seemed to reflect off the walls. It had been a very long time since he had seen her in anything that brilliant. Jimmy was kneeling by the bed. He was wiping her face with a wet towel, in a manner that was almost comical—his arm held over her, the hand trembling slightly, his movements so gentle and careful that she might have been a priceless Ming vase.

Jimmy was crooning faint sounds through the smallest crack in his lips, the way the mature silkworm spits tangled silken strands to create its cocoon. It must be some sort of a song, Mr. Henderson guessed, but he understood nothing of it. How could he know that Kam Ho was singing a lullaby which had been sung to him by his mother in Hoi Ping when she nursed him at the breast?

A magpie sings Happy New Year

Dad’s gone to Gold Mountain my dear

When he returns to bring his fortunate back here

We’ll buy house and land far and near

Mr. Henderson lost patience. “Jimmy, can’t you see she’s off her rocker! She’s in bed with high-heeled shoes on!”

Jimmy turned slowly to look at him, then pointed to the door.

“Get … out.”

The day after Mrs. Henderson’s funeral, Kam Ho was summoned to her lawyer’s office.

“According to her will, she’s settled her entire estate of four thousand dollars on you.”

Kam Ho was dumbfounded. After a pause, he said doubtfully: “But that’s impossible. She was dependent on her husband. She had no money of her own.”

The lawyer opened the filing cabinet and took out the will. He pointed to the already fading signature. “She made this will ten years ago,” he said. “At the time, the beneficiaries were her daughter, Jenny, and you. Now that Jenny is dead, you are the sole beneficiary. The money was a personal gift from Mrs. Henderson’s mother to her daughter, given to her before she married. She had the right to dispose of it as she wished.”

By the time Kam Ho came out of the lawyer’s, it was dark. A bonechilling wind whistled down the street and a bird sitting on the bare branch of a tree give a loud sibilant call. He looked up—it was a balding old blue jay. Kam Ho threw a stone at it. It squawked, before flying low over his head. Kam Ho remembered Mrs. Henderson’s claim that Jenny had sent her a message in the cherry blossoms after she died. He wondered if Mrs. Henderson was sending him a message now, with the bird.

Why, he thought, did you spend your whole life squeezing money out of your husband a few cents at a time, when you had a pile of money of your own? You could have bought all the opium juice you wanted! Why put yourself through hell? But there was no answer.

At last, the tears began to flow.

When he got back to the Hendersons’, the house was dark, but he knew Mr. Henderson was home by the faint smell of gin lingering in the kitchen and the passageway. He made his way upstairs in the dark. He did not want to turn on the lights and risk running into Mr. Henderson. He had packed his bag the night before; he retrieved it from the bed and went back downstairs.

Suddenly the light came on in the hallway, dazzling him for a few moments.

“Jimmy, why don’t you stay?” The tremulous voice was coming from the shadows.

Kam Ho did not answer. He slung his bag over his shoulder. He would open the door, go down the cracked front steps and be gone. This light, this man, this house, none of it had anything to do with him any more.

But the voice followed him and grovelled at his feet, clutching his trouser bottoms.

“I know you’re angry with me because I didn’t treat her well, but you know why that was?”

The voice paused a moment, then gathered strength and went on: “You. It was you.”

Kam Ho dropped his bag in surprise.

“It’s you I wanted, ever since the first day you arrived. But she got between us. I couldn’t get to you. So I kept out of the way. Those business trips, you know.

“I never wanted her. It wasn’t her fault. I just never liked women. Any women.”

A rotund pink face emerged from the shadows and pressed towards Kam Ho.

Kam Ho flung himself out the door and down the steps. On the last step, he twisted his ankle. He looked round but was relieved to see that Mr. Henderson was not following him. He sat down and rubbed the bump that was coming up. He reached for his bag, but realized that he had left it behind.

He had given up twenty-five years of his life in that house. Why was he bothering about a bag?

He walked and walked in the night air. His head felt viscous like the glue his mother used to paste the soles on his shoes when he was little. Throughout his life, he had walked only one road. It had been a long and hard one but the only effort required was from his feet. There was no need for thought. When he was young, it was his mother who had told him which road to take. When she said, Go to Gold Mountain, he got on the boat and went. After that, it was his father who chose his road. His father said, Go to the Hendersons’, and he went. Later still, it was Mrs. Henderson who showed him the road. She said stay, and he stayed. For twenty-five years.

The cheque in his pocket opened up countless roads before him. And now he would decide which one to take. He secretly admired his brother for the way he had charted his own course. Kam Shan had chosen his own road from the very day he was born. Though his parents had harsh words with Kam Shan for his rebellious streak, Kam Ho knew they liked his spirit and his guts. Now, of course, his brother was old, and had to accept being kept by his wife.

After so many years working for the Hendersons, Kam Ho had a pretty good idea of the number of uses to which he could put the cheque in his pocket. He could give some to his father for his boat passage home. He could give some to his mother to buy fields that stretched to the horizon and beyond. He could give his brother a portion so he could buy a proper house with a garden. His brother and his woman were used to life in Gold Mountain and would not easily settle back in Hoi Ping. His brother had never formally married the woman and Kam Ho still did not know how to address her. So with his brother he called her “she.” When he bumped into her and could not avoid addressing her directly, he made do with “Hello!” or “You!” She never complained but he had felt awkward about it for years.

Of course, the most important reason for buying his brother a house was Yin Ling. She was a seed that had been planted in Gold Mountain soil. She would rather die than allow herself to be transplanted to the countryside of Hoi Ping. And if she would not go, then her father would not go either. And neither would his woman. Six Fingers had been talking about a big family reunion in Spur-On Village for years, but it was nothing more than a dream.

When he got to the end of the street, it occurred to him that he had not included his wife in the plans he had made for his cheque. He had lived with her for only a few months in the diulau after their marriage, and that was a very long time ago. She hardly ever wrote to him though she was literate. Sometimes she added a sentence at the end of a letter from his mother: “The leather shoes you sent for Yiu Kei are really nice” or “What shall I get for my father’s longevity celebration later this year?” Without looking at the photograph, he could not even bring her face to mind. He had a dim memory that she had a mole on the left side of her mouth. On anyone else, a mole like this would have enlivened their features but on Ah-Hsien it just made her appear more wooden.

When he had entered the bridal chamber after their wedding banquet and taken off her veil, he was astonished to find that she was asleep, sitting upright on the bed, and drooling from the corner of her mouth. When he woke her up, she looked at him in bleary-eyed confusion as if she did not know who he was. He blew out the candle. In a few thrusts he was finished with her. She had not made a murmur, even of pain. He assumed it was because she knew nothing of what men and women did together, but as the days passed, there was no change in her. He realized that that was just the way she was. He was experienced with women, after all. Going to Ah-Hsien after Mrs. Henderson was like drinking plain water after having tasted osmanthus flower nectar. He found Ah-Hsien completely flavourless.

Which road should he take? The road back to Hoi Ping with his father, where he would live out his days with a doorpost of a wife? Or stay with his brother and do without a woman for the rest of his life? He went back and forth over the options, but could not make up his mind. The only decision he came to was to stop thinking. He would go back to where his brother and father lived, climb up to the attic room where he had a bunk bed and sleep on it. Then he would see. He could at least enjoy peace of mind. No one would expect him to get up to work for them, talk to them or feed them opium juice.

When Kam Ho arrived at the house, he found the door unlocked and pushed it open but saw no one inside. Then he heard the faint sound of opera—his father must be playing that old record of his. He bent down to take off his shoes and suddenly saw an unfamiliar pair of women’s shoes. He could tell at a glance that they did not belong to Cat Eyes. Cat Eyes had been used to working in the fields as a child and had big feet. These shoes were dainty, with white soles and blue uppers with peonies embroidered on them in pink. Two small butterflies rested on the peony petals, as if about to take flight. It was rare to see dainty old-style cloth shoes like these in Chinatown nowadays.

Kam Ho went inside, and nearly fell over a pile of belongings—Yin Ling’s coat and school bag. He hung the coat on the coat stand, made his way through the messy living room, down the dark passageway and into the kitchen. There he saw a man and woman standing in the kitchen by the window, singing opera. The woman seemed not to have warmed her voice up and sang hesitantly and huskily. However, she took both male and female roles while the man accompanied her.

The man was not singing but tum-te-tummed and tra-la-la’d as if he was the fiddle accompanying the woman as she sang.

The dancing butterflies have long gone

The oriole laments the shortening sun

Neither chevalier nor archer was I born

My only art is in poetry and song

To die for my fallen empire I really yearn

Rather than in shame and disgrace lingering on

But when I see the south in the grip of invaders

My people homeless and country war-torn

I’d be resigned to this life in shameful captivity

So that in peace my subjects can live on

Weeping blood and tears, your majesty

Yet with all your compromises, the new emperor shows no sign of mercy

The clouds of war hang over the southern sea

We caged birds have no hope of breaking free

Kam Ho thought he recognized the opera about Emperor Li Houzhu and the young empress Zhou. His father was humming the string accompaniment. The woman had her back to Kam Ho and all he could see was her bun at the nape of her neck. Her hair was streaked with grey, and he guessed she must be an opera friend of his father’s. He knew that after he closed his café, his father had spent days in the Cantonese Opera Club in the company of other opera fans. Every now and then, he would bring one home and they would sit and smoke and sing and talk opera, until Kam Shan kicked up a fuss.

Kam Ho gave a loud cough, and the singing was neatly cut off in mid-note. “Today’s not Saturday,” his father exclaimed with raised eyebrows. “What are you doing here?”

Kam Ho’s breath was taken away at his father’s words. When he could speak again, he said: “You mean I can’t come home any other day?”

The woman who had been singing turned around and the corners of her mouth twitched in a slight smile. “You must be Kam Ho,” she said. “Your father says you’re the most dependable son in Chinatown.”

The woman was wearing a dark green silk qipao dress, he saw, with a jade pin at the collar. She had a pearl hairpin stuck into her bun. Her whole outfit seemed to come from another age, and even smelled a little musty. Kam Ho did not like the ingratiating tone in her voice. He smiled coldly. “I hope you’re not taken in by what my father says.”

The woman was taken aback at the rebuff but maintained her composure and continued to smile quietly. “Come here, Kam Ho,” said his father, gesturing to her. “You’re looking at Gold Mountain Cloud, a star of Cantonese opera. Twenty or so years ago, you could have asked anyone in the streets of San Francisco and they would all have known her name. She was queen of the opera in those days.”

Kam Ho suddenly recalled that the singer on the old opera record his father kept playing was called Gold Mountain Cloud. He grunted, then asked: “Where’s Yin Ling?” “Her Chinese class is going on a march tomorrow, to collect money for the Chinese troops, for planes to fight the Japs. Yin Ling’s gone to rehearse.” “And my brother?” “The Association’s organizing a recruitment drive for the Chinese army, and they’re having a meeting.” It was on the tip of Kam Ho’s tongue to say that his brother, with his injured leg, could not even support himself, so could not possibly go and fight the Japanese. But he did not want to make comments like that in front of a woman he did not know, so he simply turned round and went upstairs.

In the attic room, he lay down on the bed. It was wooden and squealed under his weight. Down below, the piercing sound of the strings and the singing started again, filtering up through the floorboards and assaulting his ears. He pulled the quilt over his head but the sound cut through as easily as if the quilt were just fish netting. He flung off the quilt and thumped on the floor but that only earned him a few moments’ respite. Then there was a clattering of cooking utensils; it was his father making dinner.

It occurred to Kam Ho that he had arrived at dinnertime but his father had not asked him if he had eaten. Instead he was cooking now for this Gold Mountain Cloud woman. His father had never cooked a meal for his mother in his entire life. And his mother had brought up his three children and looked after Mrs. Mak until the day of her death.

Downstairs the clattering was interspersed with the woman’s laughter. Kam Ho’s heart felt as if it was leaping like frogs in a pond after rain. He felt around the pillow, the quilt and the bedside cabinet. Lucky for them, he did not find anything that could serve as a weapon. He might have rushed downstairs, knife at the ready, if he had had one.

Gold Mountain Cloud had really done nothing to offend him. And it was also true that both he and Kam Shan enjoyed Cantonese opera. Last year the Singapore Red Jade Opera troupe had come to Vancouver. He had been there three weekends in a row and bought tickets for best seats in the middle of the front row. Any other day, any other time, he would have been happy to brew a cup of tea and sit down with the woman for a good chat about Chinese opera in Canada. But today was not the right time. The unworthy way his father behaved towards this woman made him think of his mother pushing him onto the boat to Gold Mountain. Every year his father said he would go home to her; every year his mother continued to wait. It seemed as if his father’s boat would never arrive, while his mother continued to grow older. And his mother was growing old alone and lonely—how could his father be enjoying himself with another woman? Especially a woman like Gold Mountain Cloud.

Kam Ho felt he could not stay at home a moment longer. He would put on his shoes and make a run for it. He fished around for his shoes under the bed with his feet, but they only brought out an old newspaper. He was flipping through it when he saw a news item under a huge headline on the middle page.

The situation of the war in the Pacific is becoming more serious every day. Overseas Chinese are buying Victory Bonds in order to raise money to provision the national army. Some hotheaded youths are even thinking of returning to China to join up, all the quicker to slaughter the Japanese bandits. Opinions differ among the Overseas Chinese on joining up. Some feel that when their country is in difficulty young men have a duty to do all they can to protect it; others that we have been in Canada for such a long time that it has become our second home. The Canadian army is now short of soldiers and our young people should join its army as a way of winning the trust of the Canadian government. However, if the provincial legislature of British Columbia persists in refusing Chinese the right to vote, our young people cannot join the army to serve the country. The Chinese have recently set up an association with the aim of persuading the federal government to allow our young people to join the army as Canadian residents, as a way to express loyalty to the country they consider to be theirs.

 

With a small shock, Kam Ho realized where he wanted to spend the cheque he had in his pocket.

Would it be enough to buy a plane? he wondered. He would ask his brother tonight.