Dada Fourteen

The finish of the case came like a song; the conclusion to a drama, the end of a rainbow being emptied into the sea, rubbed away by the sound of the wind and incessant rain. But I was wrong. The full stop did come with a certain stillness but it was accompanied by the mad bedlam of the labyrinth. It made me wonder who was really on trial. Was I as much of a traitor to Malaysia as my Dada or was I the bit player, the man holding a triangle in a great orchestra; only the State or eternity of these islands would know if I was allowed any say. It is always interesting for the prisoners in the dock to hear oneself being talked about. And certainly in the speeches of my lawyer and the prosecuting council a great deal was said about me, more about me personally than about my crime. In reality there wasn’t much difference between the two speeches. Counsel for the defence raised his arms to heaven, spoke about my ‘deprived’ associations and pleaded guilty with extenuating circumstances. The prosecutor made a similar gesture but asked for the guilty plea due to my ‘depraved’, sodomite and traitorous background. There was nothing ‘extenuating’ about my circumstances he said. One matter about this aspect of my trial was irritating, quite often when being spoken about so much I was tempted to put a quick word about myself. But my lawyers expressly forbid that. It would do me more danger than any good he said. ‘You won’t improve your case by talking’ he warned. In fact there seemed to be a conspiracy that was being waged against me to keep me from opening my mouth. Were they scared of what I had to say? My fate was going to be decided out of hand. They did not want to hear about this fucked up island and its history ; or that we Dayaks of the coastlines and rivers were not made for farming but running the waters in junks and sampans and gigs; or of robbing and coming back to our villages to lie in hammocks to feel the sun and watch the sky. Our time was not to be measured by the fields and the clock or the passage of the great lighted ball around the earth but of the moon and the night and the pull of the tides. We were as unusual as the Chinese but we lived here first and our primary love was of the moon and the sea and the blessed waves. It was quite an effort at times for me not to not cut them all short and say; ‘Shut your fucking traps. Who is on trial anyway. Does the prisoner have any say in what is going down here.’ It was me who was sitting in the dock on trial for murder, could I not speak? On second thoughts, I had nothing to say. It would make sense to them anyway. Hearing yourself being talked about for so often you start to lose interest very soon and could not be bothered to score the points. It was too tiring within that heat with everyone sweating until the conditioner was turned so high that the cold ran through the court like a knife and some of the jury started to sneeze. I thought of the nurse at Dada’s funeral with her bruised face and her notion of the shiver. The air cooler would then go back to its lumbering uncertainty and we would all sweat again. Under those circumstances it was no wonder my attention wandered.