Dada 85

I breathed in the scent of the cool earth and didn’t feel sleepy any more. I thought about my colleagues at work. They`d be getting up to go to the market about now. This was always the most difficult time of the day (for me) with the boats arriving full of fish that had waited the night in the river. Iskra would be waiting as well but that would be somewhere else. I thought about Mo a little more, but then I was distracted by the sound of a bell ringing from somewhere inside the home just like you could hear on the quayside before the market was to open. You could hear the early hustle and bustle behind the windows and then everything quietened down.

I looked up. I suppose that’s when I started looking at the sky – face down on the bed. Neck craned  as if I could see the colours through the window and not feel the lash imprinting itself through my shirt. The beatings were not the worst. The footsteps on the stairs came later, always after the dark,  when the air of eternity would close around me and the light sucked into a kind of simple silence before the door would open gently and my father’s act of contrition begin again.

 The caretaker crossed the courtyard and told me that the director wanted to see me.

I went to his office. He had me sign several documents. I noticed the Chinese doctor was dressed in blue even down to his striped trousers which seemed lighter. The Director picked up the phone and called out to me:

“The undertakers have just arrived.  I will ask them to close the coffin. Do you want to see you Dada one last time before they do?”

I said no. He spoke quietly into the phone and gave the order: I heard him say,

 “Tell the men they can go ahead.”