Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories (6 page)

Ping expected his mother to be angry. Instead she leaned back and sighed.

“What good sons I raised,” she said. “Shek looked out for his younger brother even in death, and you came back an honest man. Now I can die with a clear conscience.”

IN 1914, THE
Year of the Tiger, a man named Ko made the most difficult decision of his young life. He said farewell to his sweetheart and journeyed alone to Canada. They had loved each other since their village childhoods, and he promised to return and marry her. In the meantime, his pocket held a photograph. It was black and white, but had been tinted to give her pink cheeks and red lips. They had exchanged studio portraits, and he imagined she studied his picture every day, the same way he worshiped hers.

In Canada, he paid the head tax with borrowed funds, approached a Chinatown job broker, and landed in the kitchen of a downtown restaurant. Day after day, he peeled potatoes, carrots and beets. Week after week, his knife reduced bushels of onions and cabbage to thin slices. His hands grew chapped from cold water, but soon he learned to season roasts of meat, make savory gravies and bake lightweight cakes that could be iced and decorated. It took ten years to clear his debts, but Ko thoroughly mastered the Western kitchen.

During this time, Canada changed its laws and banned Chinese from entering. Chinatown was furious, for no such rules applied to any other immigrants. But men such as Ko who had already paid the head tax could visit China and re-enter Canada if they had the proper documents.

Finally, Ko shopped for thoughtful gifts, packed his bags and sailed home. His parents welcomed him joyfully, as did his sweetheart. Family and friends gathered to celebrate the wedding, for the devotion between Ko and his bride was well known.

After the rounds of festivities, Ko gently explained that Canada would admit him but not her. She was surprised such cruel laws existed to keep families apart and begged him to stay behind. But he argued there was no future for him in China and promised to return as soon as enough money was saved.

But when he went back to the restaurant where he worked, the doors were locked and newspapers covered the windows. Ko looked elsewhere for work, but jobs were scarce. So he took the train east through the mountains and into the prairies, where every small town had a café run by Chinese. He traveled throughout the three inland provinces, but no cafe owner would hire him.

The prairies loomed like an ocean of land stretching flat to the edges of the earth. Ko felt small and afraid. There were few trees and no mountains to hide behind. From time to time, distant streaks of lightning attacked the ground and cracked the sky with light. Ko wondered who would inform his wife if a flash of electricity from the sky should hit him.

Then he came to a small town with an ice-rink and four churches, several stores and two schools. It also had an empty cafe with five dusty booths, a counter with nine stools and living quarters for the owner. The business had been dead for a long time. The bank that owned it wanted to recover some of its money, so it set a low price and lent Ko some money. He bought it and then pumped pails of water to scrub the long mirror, the windows and chairs, the range and the oven.

On opening day, the café leaked aromas of hot coffee, fresh-baked bread and sugar-glazed doughnuts onto the street.

At mid-morning, the bell over the door tinkled and in strode the seed-and-feed storekeeper, a man with an ample belly. After coffee and apple pie, he exclaimed, “Welcome to our town! This tastes wonderful!”

“Very ordinary,” Ko said modestly. “You like?”

“Of course. People will fill your place in no time. I guarantee it!” Then he leaned close. “Sure hope you'll stay. Other China men tried to run this place, but they claimed it was haunted and quit.”

Ko gulped.

“Didn't the bank warn you? Years ago, this cafe was so busy that the China man hired a farm girl as a waitress. She worked six days a week, from dawn to dusk. Then he sold the business and returned to China. But the girl had secretly fallen in love with him, and in her sadness she doused herself with kerosene and lit a match. You believe in ghosts?”

Ko just shrugged and let the question go unanswered.

That night, he fell into bed after a steady stream of lunch, coffee break and supper customers. At midnight, a loud crash awoke him. In the kitchen, a dinner plate lay broken on the floor. He frowned. He had washed the dishes in a soapy hurry, so maybe the plate hadn't been stacked properly. He swept up the pieces and went to sleep.

The next night, another noise awoke him. In the dining room, a chair had toppled over. Maybe it hadn't been properly balanced when he swung it onto the table to mop the floor. He set it upright and went back to bed.

On the third night, before going to sleep, Ko fried a steak and made toast, coffee and gravy. He set out cutlery and a napkin and placed the food near the stove to keep warm. Then he switched off the lights.

That night, nothing disturbed him.

From then on, Ko put out a meal each evening. It might be a chicken leg or a hamburger, a slice of roast or beef tongue —whatever the daily special was. In the morning, the food would still be sitting there, cold and dry. He shrugged and concluded ghosts did not eat but could enjoy the aromas instead.

Five years went by, and then another five. Ko developed a steady routine. He kneaded dough for bread early in the morning, he chopped a week's supply of wood every Sunday, and he planted a garden of lettuce and tomatoes. In the summer, the oven and stove roasted him; in the winter, he brought in ice from outside and melted it for drinking water. The townspeople were friendly, but no one invited him home, so he sat alone at nights. He longed to return to his wife and China, but his debt to the bank wasn't paid off yet.

When chores were finished, he wrote letters to his wife describing the work of the cafe. He never mentioned leav­ing out food in order to keep the peace. Their wedding portrait stood close by, and one glance at her face always eased his loneliness. He had always hoped to start a family, but grimly realized that time was hurtling by without any regard for him. In the mirror, his reflection showed many gray hairs.

One night, a weary Ko left the sink cluttered and fell into bed without washing everything. The next morning, he found all the dishes clean and dried.

Another day, he overslept and awoke just in time to open the door to customers. But he found the kitchen fire roaring, coffee brewed, and cookies browning in the oven.

After this, whenever Ko ever felt lonely in the evenings, he sat by the stove beside the dish of food he had put out. A dreamy feeling would overtake him, and sometimes he saw a woman's face smiling at him. Sometimes he caught a whiff of perfume, a fragrance he recognized from the girls who came to his restaurant. The druggist said farmers' daughters used it in the summertime when water shortages limited the number of baths people could take. On nights before he fell asleep, he would hear a woman humming popular songs from the radio.

Then public attitudes toward the Chinese changed, because China fought with the Allies against Japan, and Chinese Canadians enlisted in the Canadian armed forces. Now that Chinese were viewed as fellow Canadians, immigration laws were amended to admit them in small numbers. Ko jumped for joy and immediately sent for his wife. As excited as a new bridegroom, he counted off the days until her arrival.

At the station, she came down the steps of the bus clutching the railing with hands brown and thin from too much sun and not enough food. During the war, no money could get through to the homeland. Her hair was newly curled, and her sandals were too small.

But Ko still saw the woman he had married years ago. He escorted her around the cafe\ the living quarters and his little garden. He showed her how to open the refrigerator, turn on the neon sign and twist the blinds shut. He planned to teach her a new English sentence every day.

That evening, while he watered his yard, the wind hummed through the tomato vines. He heard a murmuring rush of words.

“I'm going, Ko. She's home, so I'm going...”

He stopped leaving food on the stove that night. And nothing ever disturbed the reunited couple.

But the long separation had taken its toll. Ko's wife tried to prepare traditional meals for him, but they lived so far from a Chinatown that she couldn't find ingredi­ents such as water chestnuts and lotus roots. What she served tasted lifeless and dry. She tried to help him in the kitchen, but didn't know the recipes of the cafe\ Sometimes her bread wouldn't rise or her doughnuts fried up as heavy as rocks. The churchwomen invited her to tea, but she drowned under their high voices and gay laughter.

She longed for China. In her village, women gathered at the river to wash clothes, at the stone courtyard to dry the grain, and under the banyan tree to shell peanuts for roasting. They would laugh and chat and challenge each other s stories. If there was a village wedding or birthday, they came together and cooked enough to feed all the families. On special occasions, opera troupes passed through the village and performed on the open-air stage. She and her friends watched the performances all afternoon and well into the night.

But here, when she watched Ko banter with customers, her heart turned to ice at missing his words. When Chinese newspapers arrived, weeks late, she had to wait for Ko to find a free moment to read to her. She tried to learn English, but her tongue stiffened no matter how she tugged and stretched it. And her brain stewed in a lazy fog, unable to recall new words no matter how often she repeated them.

One day, as she took clean glasses into the cafe, a child dropped a ball. Transfixed, Ko's wife watched it bounce across the floor. Her neighbor's boy in the village had a similar ball. Without thinking, she began singing a lullaby the women once used at bedtime. All the diners looked up, for they had never heard such a tune. She threw her apron over her face and ran from the room.

After that day, she stopped trying to learn English. When Ko reproached her, she snapped, “I'm too stupid for the New World!”

When he bought her a new dress, she moaned, “The clothes here do not fit me properly.”

When he gave her jewelry, she complained, “I'm not as pretty as the women here.”

She lost her appetite and couldn't sleep. Her hair began to fall out and her teeth loosened and blackened. Ko took her to a doctor, but she grew weaker until she couldn't walk or sit up. When Ko fed her soup, she cursed him for leaving their homeland. Still, every night he slipped into their bed and let his body keep her warm.

Late one night, her eyes
filled with tears and she whis­pered, “You have been a good husband. I should never have come here. I loved you, but you changed more than I could. Please forgive me.” Her head rolled to one side and she stopped breathing.

Ko shook her but found no pulse. All night, he sat beside the stiffening body, weeping silently.

“A curse upon this New World!” he thought. “If I could start over, I would have stayed home, close to my woman. Why work so hard if a man can't have a family?” Finally, his weariness overtook him and he fell asleep.

When he awoke, another day's new light was breaking through the window. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the air, as did the murmur and chuckle of conversations. He jumped when he noticed the bed lay empty.

He ran into the café and saw customers seated at the counter with steaming mugs in their hands. His wife glided by with a pot of hot coffee.

“Good morning, husband,” she smiled. “You were weary so I let you sleep. Look how sunny it is today.”

Ko grabbed her hands and found them warm and soft. He saw a pink face and bright eyes.

“How did this happen?” he stuttered.

His legs felt weak, and he didn't know what to think. She frowned and gave him a puzzled look. He lunged forward and put his head on her chest, and heard a heart beating steadily.

Then he caught a familiar smell — the scent of a perfume that used to drift through the cafe on lonely nights.

IN MIDDLE CREEK
village in South China, whenever Lew So-ying's little boy Jee-wah asked about his father, she would set aside her sewing and repeat her husband s words.

“Your father lives in the biggest city in Gold Mountain, where towers loom higher than fifteen pagodas stacked one atop another. People inside do not climb stairs, but ascend to the top in a flying cage. Your father's office has a telephone and electricity, glass windows and a huge table. He owns a business and a building, and he is always meeting people and signing documents.”

Jee-wah listened thoughtfully, trying to imagine the look of flying cages and electricity. And his chest would puff out proudly.

As So-ying told these tales, even her own eyes
misted with longing. She pictured stone columns guarding a grand entrance to a mansion, and saw maids serving meat to her husband Lok-hay at every meal: fresh fish in the breakfast rice porridge, strips of lean beef with lunchtime noodles, and juicy chicken at dinner. In the village, So-ying's family cooked meat once a week and considered itself lucky. Her husband sent money but she spent it carefully, paying workers who tended the family's fields, minding her parents-in-law and maintaining the ancestral tombs.

Sometimes Jee-wah asked, “Why does Baba have to work in Gold Mountain?”

“Son, your father is earning money to build a new house here. When he has enough cash for land and carpenters and bricklayers, he will return to the village and relax for the rest of his life.”

The boy persisted, “Why doesn't Baba sell his building and business now and come home to be with us?”

“Because he has debts to repay. Because he needs enough money to send you to good schools.”

“Can we go and live with Baba in Gold Mountain?”

“No,” she replied. “It is not allowed. For many years, Chinese have not been welcome there.”

News came that the immigration laws had changed. But Lok-hay did not send for them.

Then the Communists seized power throughout China, vowing to take land and property from the rich and give it to the poor. The new government labeled those who used helpers in their fields as greedy landlords. So-ying's friends and neighbors turned against her, accusing her family of owning too much land and whispering she had secretly buried her gold jewelry. Lok-hay feared for So-ying and Jee-wah's lives and paid smugglers to whisk them to Hong Kong. There, tickets were waiting.

So-ying gasped when the airplane roared off the runway and lifted over the rooftops and then the hills of Hong Kong. When she saw the ocean glittering far below, she shut her eyes, afraid of falling from such a height. How could such steel and metal soar like a bird, she wondered. She felt dizzy when the flight ended, but Lok-hay's friends transported her to the train station in a big automobile with springy seats.

The train ride through the mountains and across the prairies took three days, and Jee-wah sat glued to the window, watching towns and trees and power poles pass by. So-ying rejoiced at the quiet time. The thought of being reunited with Lok-hay after thirteen years brought color to her cheeks. They had wed twenty-five years ago when she was sixteen. He had sailed back to China several times to see her, but only one son had survived the years of war and hunger. And Jee-wah had never seen his father.

As the train chugged along, So-ying dreamed of cooking invigorating soups for her husband. She would sew fitted shirts for him and massage his weary neck. Never had she imagined arriving in Gold Mountain and traveling in such splendid comfort. Now she would witness genera­tions reconnected as her son embraced his father. Lok-hay would show him the ways of North America.

She tied her hair with a bright ribbon and practiced smiling in a mirror. Up and down the corridor she hobbled, trying to master high-heeled shoes. If fellow villagers had seen her, they would have fallen down laughing. The other passengers aboard the train smiled, for So-ying's happiness infected everyone.

When the train reached its destination, a conductor helped her down the steps, and through swirling snowflakes she saw Lok-hay in the crowd.

“That's your baba,” she whispered to Jee-wah.

Lok-hay's hair had thinned, but his face glowed and his stomach stuck out. The family shook hands and smiled nervously. Mother and son had never seen their breath puff out like fog in the frigid air.

Lok-hay hurried them into a taxicab, and when it came to a faded brick building, he announced, “I live here. This is the hotel I run.”

The sign hung lopsided and its paint was peeling and cracking. On the stairs, a woman wearing a tight dress, crimson makeup and strong perfume stumbled by, weak from too much drink. The hallway reeked of bleach and broadcast the rumble of adults quarreling in small rooms. A tiny window at the hall's end and weak lamps emitted dim light, as if secrets needed shade.

Lok-hay opened a door. “This is your room,” he announced. It had puffy wallpaper, two beds as limp as hammocks and a washbasin. When So-ying peered into the closet, a mouse scampered out. The toilet and bath were located down the hall.

So-ying gripped her bag tightly. Jee-wah stared at her with narrowed eyes as though she had lied to him all his life. Her gaze fell to the floor. This was not the gracious life she had pictured in her mind.

Had Lok-hay lied to her? she wondered. Or had she let her imagination fly too wildly?

Then her husband said, “Come, there are people to meet.”

Behind the hotel office was a cheerful apartment filled with framed pictures and calendars, upholstered chairs and cushions, a radio and a big box television. A Chinese woman stood up smiling, as did two teenaged girls with curled hair.

Lok-hay cleared his throat. “So-ying, this is Lan, my local wife. Lan, this is my First Wife, So-ying, and my son, Jee-wah. So-ying, meet my local daughters.”

So-ying turned and ran to her room. For twenty-five years, Lok-hay's letters had declared affection for her. Not once had he mentioned a second wife. Not once had he mentioned having other children. She dropped onto the bed and burst out weeping. The long trip had exhausted her, and very quickly she cried herself to sleep.

Later, when she saw Lok-hay alone, she whispered, “Why did you not tell me about them?”

“There was no need,” he replied briskly. “I never thought the Chinese would be allowed to immigrate again. Caught in between, I decided to have one family here, and one in China.”

“You should have told me,” she protested. “I am your First Wife.”

“You still are,” he said. “And you are the mother of my son. You have nothing to fear. Are you angry?”

She looked away and stared at the wall. Eventually she said, “I know that life here was difficult. You were lonely and lacked company.”

“Lan is kind and gentle,” her husband insisted. “She speaks English and helps me run this hotel.”

“But you vowed to come back to China and build a big house.”

He looked her straight in the eye. “I would have kept my promise. Lan has no desire to go to China. But now the Communists make our return impossible.”

In the following days, the daughters fitted the newcomers with galoshes and showed them the sights of the city. In a department store, So-ying tried to pay but fumbled counting the correct bills. As the sale was rung through, she grabbed the purchases before a clerk bagged them, causing the stepdaughters to redden in embarrassment. When they registered Jee-wah for school, So-ying stood silently as the girls chatted with the principal and signed all the documents. The boy watched his half-sisters intently, as if he already knew they would soon teach him all about the New World.

In the hotel, So-ying watched her husband heave heavy coal into boilers that heated the building, soak bedding in cement tubs, and crawl on his knees to wax and polish the long halls. Lan and Lok-hay ran busy through the day, seven days a week. Lan bent over a sewing machine powered by a foot pedal to mend sheets and towels. She dipped pillowcases into starch before ironing them, and explained to So-ying how this extended the life of the cloth. Even during mealtimes, the telephone rang and boarders banged at the counter to borrow keys, pay rent or bemoan the lack of heat. So-ying offered to help, but Lan said respectfully, “You are the First Wife. You don't need to work.”

Every night, her son raced to Lan's apartment to watch television. For hours he sprawled before the swirling lights, mesmerized by the jingles, armed cowboys and constant smiles. Sometimes he fell asleep there and didn't return until morning. When So-ying complained, her husband replied, “This way he will learn English faster.”

Now and then, she saw Lok-hay press his lips to Lan's mouth. So-ying longed to smile the same way as Lan. Sometimes, Lok-hay or Lan took the children to the movies, but So-ying stayed home, as she knew no English. She hid her hurt inside like a mound of ice that couldn't melt, and sat alone in her room. The faded, yellowing blossoms on the wallpaper brought her no cheer. The sink was rusty, but no matter how she scrubbed, she could not clean it. When she felt the four walls closing in, she ambled along the corridors of each floor by herself.

On one such stroll, she heard an anguished voice call out, “Save me!”

She looked around. Again she heard the call for help, and followed it to a door. She tapped lightly on the frame.

“Are you all right?”

The door swung open. The curtains were drawn shut but a lamp threw a glow over an old man in bed. He had bushy white hair, a face brown and speckled as a potato, and big-boned hands.

“Please,” he cried out, “bend my toes toward my shin. Use your strength, for a terrible pain burns down there.”

So-ying obeyed, and the man's face gradually relaxed.

“Sit,” he commanded, “and keep an old man company. How long since you came here?”

“Too long,” she replied bitterly.

“Me, too,” he said. “Seventy-five years.”

“Twice my age!” exclaimed So-ying. “I have only been here for four months.”

The old man's eyes
brightened. “Then you have fresh memories of China. Tell me all you remember.”

After that, she visited the old man regularly. On each occasion she told him about her village routines: awaking to the rooster's call, munching cold rice at breakfast, wading through the paddy to supervise planting, lugging water home, shouting over the walls at neighbors. She described tiled roofs tinged with green moss, golden fields at harvest time and soft hills that glowed pink at night. She recalled the people of Middle Creek village: Gossip Chen whose tongue had swelled up and prevented her from speaking, Toothpick Jin who married the shortest girl in the district, Four-Eyes Ming who wore sunglasses to hide his one glass eye, and Fatty May who devoured five bowls of plain rice at every meal because she had never eaten enough as a child.

These memories teased smiles onto So-ying's face. But she feared losing this friend to her son and stepdaughters who dominated the dinnertime conversations, so she told no one about him. After each day's story, the man sighed with immense satisfaction, for he longed to see China again. He called her a godsend who brightened an old man's final dark days.

Then one day she arrived and found his room empty. The curtains were open and sunlight poured in. The bed was neatly made with blankets stretched from side to side.

Downstairs in the office, she asked, “What happened to the man in Room 424?”

The knot in Lok-hay's throat bobbed nervously. “Why, the tenant there died four years ago. That room is haunted. Renters run out, screaming that an old man stands there, rocking and shaking the bed. The door has been locked ever since.”

“You mean no one lives there?”

“Not for four years.”

So-ying shuddered and fell faint. Then she threw her shoulders back and declared, “I'll take that room. Our son will appreciate having a room to himself.”

She moved in and waited. But the old man never came back, even though she stayed in all day with the curtains closed and murmured his name. As the bedside clock ticked on, she tried to recall village life, but the memories wouldn't come without an appreciative audience.

One day at dinner, So-ying watched Jee-wah ignore his bowl, half full of rice. Lok-hay said rice was cheap here and wouldn't force the boy to swallow every grain. His girls ate dainty amounts of rice and preferred raw vegetables. So-ying could barely eat as they munched uncooked spinach and lettuce like water buffalo chewing straw.

Then Jee-wah spoke. “Baba, parents are invited to school to meet the teacher. Will you come?”

So-ying perked up. Here was a chance for Lok-hay and her to go out alone with their son. Here was an opportunity for outsiders to acknowledge she was Jee-wah's mother.

Lok-hay nodded absently. “Of course I will.”

Then Jee-wah turned to So-ying. “Ma, I want Lan-Mother to come with Baba. You don't understand English, so what's the use?”