I followed them down a short corridor, lined with more shelves of bird supplies, to a door the woman unlocked with a key hidden in a jar. It opened onto a sitting room, bright with the light from a window that looked out onto a small garden. She motioned for us to sit down, and then looked toward Uncle Ho.
“I have told Madam Jia that you are a member of my family and that I stayed at your home last night. Jia and I are friends from a long time ago. Our grandfathers knew each other. As children we played in the alleys of the bird market in Shanghai. We made plans to have a bird stall of our own some day. Although they did not have names then, Jia said we would call ours Fragrant Hills.”
He smiled at the woman. “Our lives have taken different paths. I am glad you chose that name for your shop here in the United States, or I might not have found you.”
Their glances held for a moment and then Madam Jia turned to me. “Forgive us for having spoken in the language of our childhood. We will not do that from now on. Ho has many things he wants us both to know.”
“Actually there are not so many, it is just that they are complicated. You already know how I gained entry into the United States. I was invited by one of the big casinos. I am sure you are both wondering how that came about.” He smiled at each of us in turn.
“Even after so many years there are those who still speak of my days as a Gambling Master. Time and repetition of the story have magnified the truth, but that is what is believed. When the casino agent approached me, he referred to that reputation and assumed I was a wealthy man. At first I thought I should tell him that had been a long time ago, but as I listened to him I realized that my old standing would enable me to get to this country, and so I said nothing to contradict him.”
“So, it is true that you have come here to gamble?” Madam Jia was leaning forward, staring at Uncle Ho.
“Life is a gamble,” Uncle Ho said with a soft laugh, and then nodded. “It is true, now that I am here, I am expected to gamble. I know very little about the kind of gambling that goes on inside the glittering palaces on the wide boulevard you call the Strip. The only gambling I know is the betting that takes placein cricket fights. I will not find a cricket fight here, I am sure. Casinos do not like winners, so they are hoping I will lose. That might not be very difficult.”
I thought of the “whales” story again, and the big bucks the casinos expected their high rollers to play. It didn’t sound like Uncle Ho had that kind of money. It was scary to think what might happen if he reneged on his part of the bargain. The days of backstreet murders were gone, but there was still a lot of talk about those times, when a cheat could be found in an alley with his throat cut.
Something else was bothering me. It was those brown peas. I’ve seen enough old movies set in Macao and Hong Kong and Shanghai, to know something about opium dens. If those little brown pellets had anything to do with the poppy, I was in big trouble.
I set the opium thought aside for a minute and went back to my other worry. “Uncle Ho, do you have any money to gamble with?”
“If by money, you mean American currency, I do not have that. All my wealth is there.” He nodded toward the birdcages.
Madam Jia’s impatient voice startled me. “Ho! I cannot wait any longer. How did you manage to hide them all these years? You were in prison for so long, and then you were sent to the countryside. I thought you had died there.” Tears sprang into her eyes.
“You must not be sad,” Uncle Ho said. “Those times are in the past. I am here. Did you ever think that would happen?”
“Years ago I used to dream…” Hastily she shook her head, chasing the memory away. “But enough of that. I am not the little girl you chased in the market alleyways. I have lived many years. You must tell me, now. Where did you hide them?”
“I am surprised that you have not guessed.” A look of mischief sparkled in his eyes. It was clear Uncle Ho wasn’t about to be hurried. “Do you remember the caves?”
“Of course, I remember the caves! How could I forget?”
Uncle Ho turned to me. “In Shanghai there was a small mountain range near where I lived as a boy. I climbed there often with my friends. The paths were steep, with giant boulders and tall pine trees that gave off a fine fragrance when the windblew. We were always looking for treasure. We found pinecones. It was a child’s game.
“We wouldn’t let Jia come with us. She was too small, and she was a girl. But she was curious.”
Madam Jia leaned back into her chair, a quiet smile lighting her face.
“I should have known when I told Jia that we had found some caves, she would not be content to be left behind. Without our knowing, she trailed after us one day, but once she entered the caves she lost her way.
“Jia did not come home to her family that night. No one knew where she was. The next morning her grandfather came to my house and spoke to my grandfather.”
“Ho found me,” Madam Jia said, her eyes sparkling with the delight of memory. “He guessed what I had done, and he came for me. I was in a cave that had many niches carved into its sides. Before the light was gone, I counted them, from right to left and back again until I reached the top. There was one large niche all by itself. It seemed it was as high as the sky. I called it the moon niche. When Ho found me I told him that if we ever had any treasure to hide, that would be a good place.”
Uncle Ho nodded, and their glances held for a moment, sharing an old memory. “It was many years later, when the country was under Mao’s grip, that I thought of those caves. The government had been watching me and I knew one day they would come to my door and I would be thrown in prison. It had happened to many of my friends.
“I might die or I might live, but if I were to live I was determined to save my treasure for that day. I chose a dark night and made my way back to the hillside of my childhood and hid my winnings in the niche Jia had given the name of the moon.
“It would be a long time before I would return to that place and to Shanghai. I hardly recognized the city of those early years. New and towering buildings were everywhere, old ones had been torn down, streets and alleyways I had known were gone. At the foot of the hillside that led to the caves, bulldozers and cranes were in place, waiting to level the land and collapse the caves.
“I was dressed as a peasant, with a bamboo pole across myshoulder, the day that I climbed the steep hills for the last time. I found the cave I was looking for and came out on the other side, so that if someone were watching they would simply see an old man taking his birds for a walk, and not guess what treasure he had.”
Madam Jia brought her hands together at the end of Uncle Ho’s story and rose from her chair.
“The time has come for us to see your treasure. I will bring the water and the bowls you asked for.” She nodded toward a long table in front of the window. Sunlight splashed on its light blue cloth cover. “We will do our work there.”
She asked me to come with her into the kitchen. She put a large basin in the sink and began filling it with hot water and gave me a stack of dishtowels and some soup bowls to take to the table. When the basin was full I carried it there. She followed with a large sieve.
I thought about asking a few questions then, but it looked as though I’d have some answers soon. And besides, they were both having such a good time.
I stood to the side as Uncle Ho sprang open the drawers in each of the birdcages. In small handfuls he dropped the brown pellets into the sieve which Madam Jia lowered into the water. It gradually turned muddy.
“They must soak for a while,” she said.
We changed the water several times, until it finally became clear and the pellets were no longer brown. Uncle Ho counted and separated them, and Madam Jia carefully spread them on the dishtowels to dry in the sun streaming in through the window.