The two men were conversing in Cantonese.
‘There is no gold in the Aurora,’ Ah Quee was saying.
‘Can you be certain?’
‘The claim is barren. It is as if the earth has been already turned.’
‘Turned earth can be surprising,’ replied Ah Sook. ‘I know of many men who make their livings out of tailing piles.’
‘You know of many Chinese men who make their livings out of tailing piles,’ Ah Quee corrected. ‘And then they are beaten, even killed, by those men whose eyes were not as sharp.’
‘Money is a burden,’ said Ah Sook. This was a proverb he quoted often.
‘A burden that is felt most keenly by the poor,’ said Ah Quee. He glanced sidelong at the other man. ‘Your trade has also been slow, of late.’
‘It has,’ said Ah Sook, evenly.
‘The whore has lost her taste for the smoke.’
‘Yes. I cannot account for it.’
‘Perhaps she has found an alternate supplier.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You do not believe that.’
‘I do not know what to believe.’
‘You are suspicious of the chemist.’
‘Yes; among other men.’
Ah Quee mused a moment, and then said, ‘I do not think that the fortune I uncovered ever belonged to Anna herself.’
‘No,’ Ah Sook agreed. ‘That is likely. After all, she did not remark its theft.’
Ah Quee glanced at him. ‘Do you think of my action as a theft?’
‘I do not wish to impugn your honour,’ Ah Sook began, but then he hesitated.
‘Your implication goes against your wish, Sook Yongsheng.’
Ah Sook ducked his head. ‘Forgive me. I am ignorant, and my ignorance shines brighter than my intent.’
‘Even ignorant men have opinions,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Tell me. Am I a thief to you?’
‘It is the wish for secrecy that defines a theft,’ the hatter said at last, somewhat lamely.
‘In saying so, you impugn the honour of more men than me!’
‘If I speak untruly, I will swallow back my words.’
‘You speak untruly,’ Ah Quee snapped. ‘When a man finds a nugget on the goldfields, he does not proclaim it. He hides it, and speaks nothing to his fellows. Here on the goldfields, every man has a wish for secrecy. Only a fool speaks of his discoveries aloud. You would be no different, Sook Yongsheng, if you came upon a pile.’
‘But the gold you speak of was not discovered on the field,’ Ah Sook said. ‘You found your fortune in a woman’s pocket; you took it from her person, not from the ground.’
‘The woman had no knowledge of what she carried! She was like a man who camps beside a river rich in gold, and sees nothing, suspects nothing.’
‘But the gold in a river does not belong to anyone; nor does it belong to the river.’
‘You have said yourself that the gold could not have belonged to Anna!’
‘Not to Anna; but what of the tailor’s claim upon it? What of the tailor’s purpose, in hiding such a sum in the folds of a woman’s gown?’
‘I had no knowledge of the tailor,’ said Ah Quee hotly. ‘When you come upon a silver penny, do you ask who forged it? No: you ask only who touched that penny last! I am not a thief, for taking something that was lost.’
‘Lost?’
‘Lost,’ said Ah Quee. ‘That fortune had been claimed by no one. It had been stolen before me, and it has been stolen since.’
‘Forgive me,’ said Ah Sook. ‘I stand corrected.’
‘A whore is not a concubine,’ said Ah Quee. He was getting worked up; evidently this was a subject on which he had desired to defend himself for some time. ‘A whore cannot become respectable. A whore cannot become rich. All the prestige and all the profit belong to the whoremonger, never to the whore. Yes: the only one who truly profits from her trade is the man who stands behind her, purse in one hand, pistol in the other. I did not steal from Anna! What could I have stolen? She owns nothing. That gold was never hers.’
They heard hoof beats behind them, and turned: a pair of riders, both sitting very low in the saddle, were heading for Hokitika at a canter; both horses were in a lather, and both riders were making very free with their crops, to urge them still faster. The Chinese men stood aside to let them pass.
‘Forgive me,’ said Ah Sook again, when they were gone. ‘I was mistaken. You are not a thief, Quee Long.’
They resumed walking. ‘Mr. Staines is the true thief,’ said the goldsmith. ‘He stole with intent, and then fled without compunction. I was foolish to place my trust in him.’
‘Staines is in league with Francis Carver,’ said Ah Sook. ‘The Aurora’s records prove as much. That alliance is reason enough to doubt his worth.’
Ah Quee glanced across at his companion. ‘I do not know your Francis Carver,’ he said. ‘I have never heard his name before today.’
‘He is a merchant trader,’ said Ah Sook, without expression. ‘I knew him in Guangzhou, as a boy. He betrayed my family, and I have sworn to take his life.’
‘This much I know already,’ said Ah Quee. ‘I should like to know more.’
‘It is a pitiful story.’
‘Then I will listen with compassion. A betrayal of any of my countrymen is a betrayal of me.’
Ah Sook frowned at this. ‘The betrayal is mine to avenge,’ he said.
‘I meant only that we must help each other, Sook Yongsheng.’
‘Why do you say “must”?’
‘Chinese life is cheap in this country.’
‘All life is cheap, upon a goldfield.’
‘You are wrong,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Today you saw a man strike me, pull my hair, insult me, and threaten me with death—all without consequence. And there will be no consequence. Every man in Hokitika would sooner take Mannering’s part than mine, and why? Because I am Chinese and he is not Chinese. You and I must help each other, Ah Sook. We must. The law is united against us; we must have the means to unite against the law.’
This was a sentiment that Ah Sook had never heard expressed; he was silent for a time, digesting it. Ah Quee took off his hat, struck it several times with his palm, and replaced it on his head. Somewhere in the bush nearby a bellbird gave its lusty, open-throated cry; the call was taken up by another, and another, and for a moment the trees around them were alive with song.
It was by preference, and not by necessity, that Sook Yongsheng lived and worked alone. He was not surly by temperament, and in fact did not find it difficult to form friendships, nor to allow those friendships to deepen, once they had been formed; he simply preferred to answer to himself. He disliked all burdens of responsibility, most especially when those responsibilities were expected, or enforced—and friendship, in his experience, nearly always devolved into matters of debt, guilt, and expectation. Those men he did choose to call his intimates were those who demanded nothing, and gave much; as a consequence, there were many charitable figures in Ah Sook’s past, and very few upon whom he had expressly doted. He had the sensibility of a social vanguard, unattached, full of conviction, and, in his own perception at least, almost universally misunderstood. The sense of being constantly undervalued by the world at large would develop, over time, into a kind of private demagoguery; he was certain of the comprehensive scope of his own vision, and rarely thought it necessary to explain himself to other men. In general his beliefs were projections of a simpler, better world, in which he liked, fantastically, to dwell—for he preferred the immaculate fervour of his own solitude to all other social obligations, and tended, when in company, to hold himself aloof. Of this propensity, he was not at all unaware, for he was highly reflexive, and given to extensive self-analysis of the most rigorous and contemplative kind. But he analysed his own mind as a prophet analyses his own strange visions—that is, with reverence, and believing always that he was destined to be the herald of a cosmic raison d’être, a universal plan.