DaDa 101

‘There’s much wickedness on this island I told you that. Your great grandmother was no half wit but a cheerful girl and merry as could be. She was a woman at fifteen when the sea Dayaks rose up. When he put them down, the rajah took her to work in the house but it wasn’t long before he had her beneath him. Nine months later you could see the result. She was of the mix so they couldn’t give her back. They  got the Chinese to marry her, to look after her and the baby.

‘Blood thicker than water?’ don’t you believe it,’ she said.

‘Your Dada was no more Chinese than anyone, that’s why they hated him on the ships and treated him like shit. His blood was the same all over this scabrous island,  maybe that was why he won them over, why the seamen followed him, because he was some kind of hybrid. All blood is mixed below deck. I  pictured the Dada’s words flowing from our balcony. He was a kind of hero to them.

‘It was never about the seaman ; more’s the pity ‘she said.

The Dada would bellow and rage and beat his chest and I would have to go and calm him  before the detectives would arrive once more to our door. 

‘There is much wickedness on this island,’ she said.

My lawyer thought I was ignoring him. He left looking very angry. At one point I was going to call him back and tell him I was wrong. But in the finish I didn’t bother. I didn’t need him as a friend; I had friends of my own. I didn’t want his sympathy either, just so as he could defend me better. Maybe  it was natural for him to feel that way. I had made him uncomfortable. I didn’t want to do that. It’s just that he wanted to act as if he was a friend of mine, just like the ones I smoked with but when all was said and done, he wasn’t. There wasn’t much point in him pretending either that the great dome of the Federation would protect us all. The door slammed after him. It did not bother me too much because it all seemed like too much frustration. And anyway what would he know of jail? He had never opened a pay packet in his life; even if they’re guilty, people like him can always buy themselves out of trouble.