Dada 73

The old man bowed his head and apologised. “It`s all right: I cut in, “it`s all right.” I agreed with what he said and found it interesting the difference between the different customs, what is there to hate in that? In the little mortuary, he told me he had no money at all when he first came to the home. The job paid for his coffee and cigarettes and some little trips he added

Dada made him laugh he said with his stories about being sewn up in a canvas bag and thrown into a lifeboat threatened to be lowered or beaten with hot shovels when the stokers were drunk on rice wine. He made him laugh every afternoon when he brought him his secret little drink.

‘ Here,’ he indicated. Since he considered himself healthy to be at the home, he had offered to take on the job of caretaker and that brought him a few coins and even a trip to Kuching now and then, when he and his wife could be bothered to take the bus. I pointed out to him that when all was said and done, he was still one of the residents but he said he wasn’t. I had already been struck by the way he said “they”, “the others” and, more rarely, “the old people” when he spoke about the home’s  occupants , some of whom were the same age as him and some even younger but he didn’t see himself as one of them. His wife originally came from this island and that is why they came back, ‘he said.

I thought, that’s why most people come back – because of some decision made outside of their daily lives. I remembered my father’s footstep on the stairs and knew what was coming. Gradually I realised what starts out as ordinary chance often becomes part of the normal

‘Naturally each case is different.’ he said. He was the caretaker and to a certain extent he had more privileges and some authority over them. Then the nurse came in. Night had come suddenly.  Very quickly, the sky had grown heavy and dark above the glass roof. The caretaker switched on the lights and I was blinded by the sudden burst of brightness. He invited me to come to the dining hall to eat, but I wasn’t hungry.