Dada 96

 ‘But it would not matter if he was Genghis khan or Deng Tsao Ping the communist; what does it matter that he led the seamen out on strike at the moment of independence. His real crime was his blood. How could it be different ? White, Chinese and Dayak; this is what they could not stand. His guilt was the chain of his being, his secret, the core of his shame.’

‘Muddied blood; they wanted him to serve as all they were not.’  Her words poured like a torrent at a religious feast.

The detective looked at me. He began the interview in a room with curtains at the windows. There was a small lamp on his desk that shone on the wooden chair where I had to sit while he remained  at a little distance in the cool dusk. The rain beat down on the windows.

I’d read of scenes like these in American detective books and it all seemed like a game to me. After our conversations however, I studied him more carefully, I saw a small man, like me, with delicate features and deep blue eyes. There was Chinese in him and perhaps he saw something of it in me. The top positions  do not favour them in the civil service and the police;  something inimical to my Ma and Da and why Dada caused them so much trouble. My father’s acts of contrition were always preceded by torrents of abuse and what followed after. 

‘You should not provoke him about your Dada ‘my mother would say.

Dada Nine

Immediately after my arrest, I was interrogated several times but they were just preliminary investigations about my identity. They didn’t last very long. Iskra and Mo had spoken for me but I did not know that then. That first time at the police station everyone seemed to know of my case but they acted as if they weren’t interested. It’s a Malay thing they said.

‘ we can’t afford to be seen as too European. ‘

A week later however the police examiner on behalf of the prosecution looked at me with a certain curiosity .To start with he only asked my name and address, my job title, date of birth and where I was born. Then he wanted to know if I had a lawyer.

I said I didn’t and why was it necessary

Why he asked

I replied that I found my case a very simple one.

He smiled and said, ‘that’s one way of looking at it, but the law is clear, if you don’t have a lawyer, the court will assign you one and it’s better that it comes through us.’

I thought it was very convenient that the legal system took responsibility for such details and told him so.

He agreed with me and said ‘we are a very modern and progressive democracy. The world outside of this hemisphere all thought we couldn’t do it but the law is very well thought out here ‘he said.

In the beginning, I didn’t take him seriously. What would the peninsula pirates have done, cut his tongue out or been killed in the process. Their law was the old law of the islands; if anyone comes near you, kill or be killed. My mind went back to the beach hut and the time the woman in blue first spoke to me.

‘Your dada is Ra chinese,’ she said. She looked at me.

Dada 94

In front of the cafe, came the relentless droning of voices, the clatter of coffee saucers and occasional clink of glass. Suddenly I heard the roar of the bus engine in the square. My joy when at last it would pull me away from here and some hours later deposit me into the red cluster of dust and lights of Kuching where the river snakes between the different city districts, defined by blood, like a jewelled ribbon. 

I knew I could soon go home and lie down in bed and sleep for twelve hours. I also knew I needed a pill or a tug of the crystal rock to sooth me into the calm of the night after the music in the clubs and furious dancing. Only afterwards would come the darkness and tranquillity of the sea and the uneasy dawn. I was drained by the events of these last few days.

I did not know then that I would meet Mo or that I would help my neighbour Iskra with his letter and it would be easier if old Srino would leave me alone about his bird. I did not know then that Iskra’s knife would be used to hang me, hang me, screaming and resistant under a grey and brooding Malaysian morning; nor others would come with their stories of death and luck and history that would be turned against me as much as Dada’s traitorous acts. None of this meant anything as I put my head to the pillow and dreamed few thoughts that night but instead fell to a deep sleep beneath the window and the tack tack tack of the rain..

Dada 93

She was right, although all I could think of was the pimp who was beating her. There was no escaping it.

Certain moments from that day have stayed with me. The look on the Kim Songs face when he caught up with us for the last time nears the village. Great tears of fear and pain were flowing down his cheeks. But because he had so many wrinkles, they collected there. They formed little pools in the furrows of his devastated forehead, covering it in a glistening film of water like the tar pools on the road. I was sorry for him. The way you are always sorry when you have been through something with someone, a resistance, an uprising, a trip outside of the ordinary matters of the everyday where everything close seems to suddenly to dissolve. I could see why he and the Dada were such friends.

Then there was the grave, the plot freshly dug up the hill side where the Dada could look out over the sea. I would not say to home because his face might as well be turned to Europe the way he spoke of the Blue Funnel Line and its great diaspora among the Chinese. Borneo was his home but you would not think so the way Ma and Da spoke of his betrayal. One who did not belong among us, neither to them nor to the federation of Malaysia itself.

Village people came out on the streets. Red geraniums were sprinkled all the way up to the grave to clear the ground of ghosts. In the little cemetery area, there was a moment when someone fainted. They sank like a puppet doll collapsing to the stage when the master lets go of the strings. The earth – the colour of blood even through the puddles – the throwing of wood and smoke over Dada’s coffin, the soft white of the blue and black and yellow cloths, the smell and cologne and tobacco all mixed together a great perfume that only the Catholics offered the Dada. More people, more voices, the village, was comforting me as it would with any of the fallen. It would not let me stand alone. I was suddenly grateful. 

Dada 92

 I noticed that the road in front of me was curving. I realized Kim Song knew the area and was taking a short cut to catch up with us. By the time we came around the bend, he was behind us. Then we lost sight of him again. He took another country lane and did the same thing several times, rising up and down like the pitching of a ship. All I could feel was the blood pumping across my temples, everything that happened was taking place at a snail’s pace and yet so quickly, even the daylight that went from blistering sun to heavy rain weighed our steaming clothes like stones. The teeming solace came and went and there was freshness in the air after its departure but a part of me shivered even in the heat. sed. i ed next. the fee. i ad man stretched out in front of them, nothing to them. but g on crying with the samet

It was difficult to remember anything about the ceremony itself except one comment stood out. As we were entering the village, the nurse spoke to me. She had an unusual voice that seemed inconsistent with her strong face, a trembling, persecuted, Kalimantan voice.

“If you walk too slowly; she said, you risk getting sun stroke. But if you go too quickly even with this rain, you’re sweating by the time you reach the church and then you catch a chill.”