Dada 80

Someone had told me that black and a touch of blue was the right thing to do in Sarawak. You couldn’t go wrong that way. I heard the director tell me that the hearse was waiting out on the road and at the same time the holy man immediately started to pray.  After that, everything happened very quickly. The men walked over to the coffin carrying a large cloth to cover it. He followed behind. The director and I went outside.

There was a women I didn’t know standing by the door. “This is Rama Abdulla” said the director. I didn’t catch the woman`s name, but I realized who it was again. Faces sometimes pass me by. She was the nurse from Kalimantan who worked at the home. Her scarf was black today. She nodded. There was no smile on her long, bony face, and then we all stepped aside to let the body pass. She was there to keep an eye on Kim Song and to make sure he came to no harm, the director said. We followed the pall-bearers out of the home. The hearse was waiting in the front of the door. Polished, shiny and oblong, it seemed too small to carry a man. Beside it stood the chief undertaker and funeral director, a short man in a ridiculous outfit, and the old man who looked a little self-conscious.

I confirmed within myself that this was Dada’s special friend. He had on a light cap with a round top and a big brim, like you see them wearing at baseball games in America. He took it off as the coffin came through the door. He wore  a suit with trousers that hung down over his shoes and a blue bowtie that looked too small for the large collar of his white shirt. This was all I remember. His lips were trembling beneath a nose that looked as if it had been constructed within a concertina of wrinkled flesh. He might have been a boxer in his youth.