Gold Mountain Blues by Ling Zhang Page A

so none of the follow-up work could proceed.
    The proper name for the explosive they used was nitroglycerine, but no one ever called it that. They just called it Yellow Water. When put into bottles, it looked about as harmless and innocent as lemonade, pretty even. No one could have imagined it capable of razing mountaintops. It was hotheaded stuff too, and had to be handled with the greatest care. If, by some mishap, a drop escaped and landed on hard rock, and it happened to be a hot day, the whole lot would go up in smoke in the blink of an eye.
    The tunnel to be built was through a cliff face, and could only be reached by crawling across loose scree. The first man to go up was handpicked by the foreman because he had the most blasting experience. As he crossed the last bit of scree, he trod upon an overhanging rock, lost his footing and fell. There was a deafening, muffled roar—not of detonated explosives but of cascading rock which rolled with him down the mountain. Man and Yellow Water bottle alike hit the surface of the water, floated for a moment, then disappeared from sight.
    The second navvy got up the steep slope without incident, but near the entrance to the tunnel twisted his ankle on a loose stone. All that could be seen was his blue cotton jacket fluttering in mid-air like a sparrow hawk with a broken wing, and then the whole cliff face shook. When the dust cleared, the men’s mouths opened and shut ludicrously, but no sound came out. They had been deafened by the blast.
    The yeung fan foreman kicked angrily at a pile of loose stones by his foot. There was no need for an interpreter; the navvies knew he was swearing. But there were no more takers, no third man ready to give up his life on the mountainside.
    Not that day.
    Not the day after, either.
    On the third day, the men awoke to find they had an extra egg with their breakfast. They gathered together afterwards, to find the foreman smoking gloomily. He sat on a low rock and the men formed a circle around him. The foreman smoked on and on, lighting the next cigarette from the butt of the one before. The pile of half-finished cigarette ends grew around him. The men were surprised to see that their young foreman’s hair was thinning on top—and he suddenly seemed vulnerable to them. This foreman was their boss, but there were still others above him. He hadto answer to the foremen’s foreman. Progress had been nil the first day, nil the second day. If there was still no progress today, then he would have to figure out a way to complete four days’ work by end of day tomorrow. The men gradually began to feel that they did not want to be in his shoes.
    Finally the foreman threw his cigarette away, stood up and pointing at the record-keeper said: “You tell ’em.”
    The men opened a crack in their ranks and the record-keeper walked into the centre. He stared at his toecaps and, stammering slightly, said: “He … he says anyone who’s successful in getting the explosives into the hole and detonating them, can, can apply to, to get his wife over to Gold Mountain. One ticket will be paid for.”
    There was a silence so absolute you could hear the wind rustling in the trees and the moths flapping their wings on the underside of the leaves. Ah-Fat’s fingertip gave a tiny quiver. He was not aware of it—but Red Hair was. Red Hair grabbed hold of his hand in a grip that was as sharp, savage and unrelenting as a crab’s pincers. Ah-Fat could hear the bones crack. “I’ve got a wife, you haven’t,” Red Hair whispered in his ear.
    To the record-keeper, Red Hair said: “You tell that kwai lo (white devil) that if he doesn’t keep his word, I’ll kill his mother.”
    The record-keeper relayed most, though not all, of the message. He was adept in sandpapering away the roughest edges of the words he had to translate. The frown lines on the foreman’s face gradually relaxed into