Dada 89

I also became conscious that for a long time the heat countryside and all its sound and smells seemed to be beating against my face. Since I had only my cap, I fanned myself with my piece of funeral cloth and a handkerchief. Then the man from the funeral home said something to me that I couldn’t hear. He wiped his head with a handkerchief he was holding in his left hand, and pushed up the brim of his hat with the other.

“What did you say?” I asked. “It`s terribly hot”, he repeated and angled his elbow at the sun.

“Yes”, I replied. A moment later, he asked: “Where is the rain? Is that your Grandfather in the coffin?” I said “Yes” again and wondered why the two should come together.

“Was he old?” he said. I replied “Very” because I didn’t know exactly how old he was, but he looked old, especially towards the last days he was with me.  Then he stopped talking.

I turned around and thought I saw my Dada walking though the shimmering countryside, his image appearing then disappearing like Kim Song’s in the ridges of the little hills.

A mixture of white men, sea Dayaks and Chinese, pirates and slavers together walked with him and were overseen   by  the Chinese compradors one of whom was carrying a whip.

‘They told him he was the son of a Chinese and Malay communist s who died in the jungle and this was his uncle.’

‘Patriotic to the last’ the man said. ’He married a Malay girl and yet this  own daughter said his own sad history went before them and betrayed them all.

‘How do you know this ‘ I asked, though with the heat and everything  I was beyond caring. Maybe everyone knew each other’s stories out here.

 ‘Your father was even fiercer in his denunciation of your grandad. He wanted to get on in the machinery of government. The suburbs were his dream. He was born in the jungle you know.’