Gold Mountain Blues by Ling Zhang Page A

so many tears left. Sometimes he felt as though her tears were tentacles dragging him down, and that he would be devoured by her grief. But he also knew that today he had only to lift his foot over the threshold and he would be out of reach of her tears in a place where her grief could not touch him any more.
    â€œAh-Fat, light the lamp.” Her voice was suddenly harsh.
    He did as he was told. His mother gripped the door jamb and pulled herself to her feet. She pointed her finger in his face and ordered him: “Kneel down. Kneel before your dad.”
    Ah-Fat knelt before his father’s portrait. The flagstones felt hard and cold through the thin cotton of his trousers. His father’s face wore a weary, even sleepy expression in the faint glow of the lamp. His father could not look after him now.
    Ah-Fat felt the tears well up. He twisted the end of his sleeve into lump and stuffed it into his mouth. By swallowing hard a few times, he got himself under control.
    â€œDad, my uncle’s going to till our fields, with your blessing and protection,” he said.
    Then he went on: “Dad, I’m going to Gold Mountain. But I’ll be back, rich or poor, dead or alive. I’ll never let the incense go out at your tomb.”
    His mother knelt by his side. Her nose was stuffed up from crying and he could feel her laboured breaths fanning his cheeks. Her bound feet in their pointed slippers looked like upturned conical bamboo shoots as they trembled gently under her long loose cotton jacket.
    â€œAh-Fat’s dad, please let him die rather than touch opium. If he ever gets addicted to opium, ever, he’ll be stripped of your family name, and then he’d better not think of ever crossing this threshold again.”
    By the time Ah-Fat walked out of the courtyard, the sky was turning pale. The neighbours’ chickens had been cooped up all night and now scurried impatiently along the field verges hunting for scarcely wakened worms. Two belligerent young cockerels fought over a large black worm, flapping their wings fiercely. Ah-Fat threw a clod of earth at them to break up the fight, and they flew off with loud squawks, scattering feathers in the air. In the distance he could hear the squealing of the water wheel as it began to turn. Many villagers started their work before the sun was up.
    Ah-Fat picked a stalk of bristle grass from the verge. It was heavy with dewdrops. These were God’s tears, he remembered his mother saying. He twisted the strands together and pushed it up his nose. The thunderous sneeze he gave seemed to shake every bit of his body loose—bones, muscles, veins. All the accumulated mess and muddle which had weighed on him for all of his sixteen years was sneezed out through his nostrils and he felt cleansed and fresh.
    He found Red Hair’s family and the porter he had hired waiting outside their house. Red Hair was a man of the world, and his baggage was differentfrom Ah-Fat’s small bundle. At each end of the carrying pole hung a brightly gleaming rattan box. Red Hair’s mother shielded her eyes and peered at the sun to reckon the time. It was a month since Red Hair’s wife had given birth and she was no longer confined to the house. With her forehead wrapped in a scarf against the morning chill, she stood cradling her infant and holding Six Fingers by the hand. She talked to Red Hair in low tones. Then she placed the baby’s palms together. “Daddy’s going to Gold Mountain. Say a nice bye-bye to Daddy,” she said, her voice breaking before she had finished the sentence. The baby stared fixedly at his father and suddenly began to bawl so loudly the veins stood out purple on his forehead. Red Hair’s wife rocked him and shushed him, and finally pacified him by letting him suck on her finger.
    Then she used her leg to give Six Fingers a hard shove forwards. “What did I teach you last night? What do you say?” Even though she