Shadows & Tall Trees 7

by Michael Kelly

  “Hello?” Sanjay called into the darkness. He stalked through the half-excavated living room, gaping at the house’s bones. The kitchen light was on; but it was empty. No sign of intruder or umbrella.

  He looked down: a puddle of water stood on the kitchen floor. Scowling, thinking of scathing words for the construction workers, he pulled a filthy towel off the sawdust-covered kitchen counter and mopped up the water. Then he switched off the light and went back to his parents’ house, certain that grief and exhaustion were taking their toll on his mind.

  As for us? We were still learning how to walk on land, but Sanjay could no longer see us with the light off.

  Back on the verandah, he lit another cigarette, coughing again, ragged hacks that dislodged tiny flecks in his throat. Sanjay thought of Dad, two kilometres away in his hospital bed, withering from man to patient to corpse. Anil Mirchand’s body rested in the embrace of three great machines that drained his kidneys and force-fed oxygen into failed lungs.

  Sanjay put out the cigarette early and went to bed; recoiling as though he’d been granted a fleeting, terrifying vision of his own fate.

  But he didn’t sleep well. No son should, on the night of his father’s death. His eyes opened to darkness and its phantoms, furniture transformed to huddled shapes. Vidya was already awake, sitting up in bed with her back to Sanjay, a shroud of blankets gathered around her as she stared out the bay windows into the humid Singapore night.

  The telephone’s urgent ring cut through the hum of the air conditioner. Sanjay fumbled for the receiver and put it to his ear.

  “Hello?” he rasped, as Vidya turned on her bedside light, chasing the shadows back to their corners.

  “Mr. Mirchand?” the nurse said in his ear. “His pulse is dropping. You should come now.”

  “Okay. We’ll be there soon. Thank you.”

  He put down the phone. Vidya turned to face him, blinking in the sudden light.

  “It’s time,” Sanjay said.

  She nodded. “I’ll wake Mummy. You start the car?”

  Dad passed at 4.45am. The private hospital wasn’t far from home, but they only just got there in time. Anil Mirchand had left the faculty of speech behind days ago, his illness shifting from a medical concern to a spiritual one. Sanjay stood by the bed with Mum and Vidya, watching the old man’s pulse drop—he hadn’t been an old man until six months ago. He held the withered hand of a man who’d once been father and mentor, watching the green spikes on the monitor and the ragged, mechanical breaths that punctuated the long silences growing further and further apart, until they finally ceased, and Sanjay found himself holding Dad’s corpse-hand. Dad looked as empty and slack-jawed as he had all week, but some final essence had fled his body. The oxygen tubes rested pointlessly in his nostrils, continuing to force air into lungs that no longer needed it.

  “Dad—” Sanjay began, but whatever he’d had to say was choked away. They stood in silence around the hospital bed until Mum slowly began to chant the Gayatri Mantra.

  “Om bhur bhuvah svaha, tat savitur vareniyam…” Mum prayed again and again, hands together over her mouth, tears dappling her cheeks. They stood there like that, holding each other, red-eyed, standing vigil over the empty vessel. It was the only moment of peace Sanjay would have the entire day. Twenty minutes later, Dad’s younger brother arrived. Sunil Uncle was wailing and tearful, Sanjay noted, as though he hadn’t been the one to drive his older brother to the grave.

  Dad’s funeral consumed the entire day. They placed three obituaries in the newspaper: one from the family, a second from Saagar Raj Limited, and a third—at Sunil Uncle’s insistence—from the board of directors. An unnecessary indulgence, meant to show anyone who read the paper that this dead man was an important one. But among the dead, even the rich walk barefoot, thorns and smouldering ashes in their heels.

  Sunil, of course, had wanted the most expensive casket, wanted to send his Bhai off to God in a gaudy monstrosity. Send him off like a king, Sunil had demanded. Sunil Uncle never spoke. He wheedled, he accused. He made it seem like you were never doing enough. That conversation about the casket was the closest Sanjay had ever come to physically harming his uncle.

  And so Sanjay stood silently, watching Sunil Uncle welcome mourners to Dad’s house, hooded eyes glistening tearfully under his glasses. Crocodile tears, Sanjay thought, and looked away. He was sick of his uncle’s face. But they were both Anil’s pallbearers, and so Sanjay found himself standing next to Sunil again and again over the course of the day.

  Together, Sanjay and Sunil hefted Dad’s casket onto the hearse, soft merchant backs straining under its weight. Together they stood, sweaty and barefoot outside Mount Vernon Crematorium to welcome the mourners, feet burning on the hot tiles. Hello, hello. Thank you for coming. Sunil Uncle, ingratiating himself to the new Minister for Trade and Industry, Dad’s old friend since donkey’s years ago as Sanjay watched out of the corner of his eye. Finally, they stood together in the crematorium hall, flanking Dad’s casket as the priest chanted, sprinkling rose water as family and friends adorned the body with garland after garland. Sanjay and Sunil did not speak, they did not meet eyes; they interacted with each other only at the priest’s behest.

  When the ceremony was over and everyone had said goodbye to Dad—though by now his body was empty as a broken ship—Sanjay, Sunil and the rest of the pallbearers picked up the coffin. In the far wall, a metal cap revealed a hungry opening, just the right shape for a casket. This hole led to a place of scorching heat; a place the living could not enter, but we were there as the casket began to burn: first wood, then flowers, and finally flesh. We lay there with Dad as he began to cook. Sanjay stood for a moment by the opening, his face flush with inhuman heat. Then the cap swung shut, and he followed the crowd outside, his bare feet filthy now, white kurta stained with sweat. The mourners still surrounded him, shaking his hand, looking into his eyes with morose expressions and consoling words that echoed forgotten in the pristine concrete halls of the dead. Sanjay wanted a cigarette. But he remembered Dad’s laboured, machine-assisted breathing, and swallowed the urge.

  Around him jostled old men and women with liver spots emerging from the collars of bone-white shirts and saris. They shook hands and leaned on walking sticks, speaking to each other in hushed tones. Older than Sanjay’s father: his grandfather’s contemporaries. Our contemporaries, who remember when Singapore was called Syonan-To. If only we had been allowed to grow old.

  “Sanjay,” Sunil murmured. He turned to see his uncle flanked by two suited men. One Indian, a young man with hair slick as oil on water. The other Australian, huge and balding, an ogre of capital.

  “You know our investment bankers, no? They’re helping us with the deal,” Sunil said. “Ravi and…”

  “…Chet,” the big man said, extending his hand in a menacing clasp. “Sorry for your loss, mate. Your father was a giant. He’ll be missed.”

  “Our condolences,” Ravi said. He sounded almost like an Englishman. “Please, let us know if there’s anything we can do for you in this difficult time.”

  “Thank you,” Sanjay said.

  “I imagine we’ll be seeing more of each other soon,” Chet said.

  Sanjay’s eyes narrowed, but the bankers turned and walked away, Chet’s suited form towering over the crowd. He bent to whisper to his colleague.

  “They are good guys,” Sunil muttered. “Very kind of them to come.” This was finally too much.

  “Uncle,” Sanjay hissed, releasing some of the venom that had been building in him since morning. “I can’t believe you invited them here.”

  “Why, behta? They wanted to come. They knew your father. Even visited him in hospital.”

  Sanjay bit his tongue. Why, so they could help you cheat him on his deathbed?

  “I know how difficult it is, behta,” Sunil soothed. “Really. I’m here to help. We’re family.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Sanjay snapped, turning and leaving to find Vidya and
Mum.

  Dad’s old Jaguar still waited on the driveway when they returned to Mum and Dad’s house, its big cat lines smothered under a grey tarp. Dad loved that car, but had to stop driving soon after his midlife crisis gave way to a medical one. Sanjay looked mournfully at the Jag as he pulled up next to it. Like Dad, the car no longer belonged to the living. Sanjay killed the engine and helped Mum out of the car. She’d been so strong, standing straight-backed through Dad’s illness and death, but now when she grabbed her son’s arm, she weighed him down like a dropped anchor. They staggered up the ramp that had been installed when Dad could no longer climb his own front steps.

  Inside, Mum sat at the dining table and put her weary face in her palms. She’d grown so thin, the last few months, mirroring Dad so much that Sunil Uncle, who almost understood, had asked if she wanted to have a CT scan with him.

  “I’m going to sleep in the guest room tonight,” she said.

  “You sure, Mum? Do you want me and Vidya to sleep in your room with you?”

  “No. I … I can’t sleep there tonight,” she said. Her voice, so calm all day, finally broke, and out surged the flood of sorrow that had been building for months.

  “Can I get you something to eat, Mummy? I think there’s leftovers,” Vidya offered.

  They ate in silence, exhausted, as though all the energy expended in caring for Dad and sustaining him through his decline had been consigned to the fire with his body.

  After putting Mum to bed, Sanjay and Vidya went upstairs. Sanjay lingered in the hallway for a moment, in front of the ancestral photographs of his grandfather and great-grandfather. He felt closer to this pantheon of ancestors, now that Dad had joined their number, and bowed his head to them.

  While Vidya brushed her teeth, Sanjay sat in bed with a stack of the company’s financial reports. Saagar Raj Limited owned thirteen ships, dry bulk carriers that sailed the world’s arteries, as they had for nearly half a century since the War.

  Sunil Uncle wanted to sell the ships, to unburden himself of their tonnage. Sanjay disagreed—like Dad he loved ships, but more than anything he suspected his uncle of fraud. He hated the way Sunil Uncle conducted himself, sneaking into hospital with a stack of papers for his weak, sedated brother to sign. Sanjay caught what he believed to be his uncle’s sin, a single line on a shareholder’s resolution worth three million dollars. Six ships for each brother, but what about the seventh? Sanjay, like Sunil, was already a rich man. But he battled his uncle over crumbs, like we did in those filthy holds, rats gnawing on fingers and toes.

  “You don’t have to do that right now, you know,” Vidya said, emerging from the bathroom.

  “What else am I supposed to do?” Sanjay asked.

  “Try to rest. You need it.”

  “I’m going to see him tomorrow,” Sanjay said. “When we scatter Dad’s ashes.”

  “That’s not an appropriate time to talk business, honey,” Vidya said, climbing into bed.

  “Appropriate? Sunil’s been anything but appropriate this whole time.”

  “Listen … I don’t trust him either. But you still don’t know for sure.”

  “I don’t,” Sanjay conceded. “But I also don’t know how not to bring it up.”

  “Just don’t. Wait till next week. Speak to the lawyer first. It’s really not the right time,” Vidya said.

  “He brought his investment bankers to the cremation today. Can you believe that?”

  Vidya shook her head. “He’s always been a little crazy. Be glad that he’s trying to leave the company. You won’t have to see him anymore.”

  Sanjay sighed. “Well, I’ll have to see him a lot more until then.”

  Vidya slept well. Sanjay did not. He will never sleep well again. We watched him toss and turn, toss and turn, angle his head up to peer into the room’s darkest corners, and then we went out into the hallway, to the ancestral portraits.

  Ah. There he is. L.K. Mirchand. Dad’s dad. The rot at this family’s heart. Lal Krishna Mirchand, sent across the kala paani, the black water, on the eve of War to manage his father’s shipping offices. We did not know him then, but we know him now. L.K., who would name his ship Saagar Raj, the Sea King; who would later trade that ship along with his soul, his sins congealing into crores and crores of gold.

  Sanjay thinks of his grandfather as a pioneer, an empire-builder. But we remember L.K.’s guilt shining bright as a lighthouse. It called to us as we drowned, shackled in steel, hungering for the peace that was stolen from us. Robbed of hearth; of home; of sons and daughters and grandchildren. But we were trapped, unable to answer the call until finally those steel bones were cracked and we could smell the open, salty sea.

  And so we set sail, not quite free, but no longer prisoners; something else now. We came back here, back again across the black water to Singapore. Like the hungry flower that blossomed in Dad’s lungs and bones, we are part of Sanjay, entwined into this family, mixed into the brick and stone of this house bought with our bodies. We have been here since the beginning, and we will consume him, because we are so very, very famished. We have not eaten in half a century, and you, Bhai Lalchand, O Water King, you and your sons have eaten so very much.

  The next morning, Sanjay drove to his uncle’s house, a low-slung mansion on Singapore’s East Coast. Sunil lived alone. No wife, no children. A lifelong bachelor. Sanjay waited outside the gold-trimmed gates, honking twice before Sunil emerged. Sanjay watched his uncle tread slowly up the driveway. The premature ageing had afflicted him too: his hair mostly receded, dark spots devouring his face, the hawk nose turning bulbous beneath his glasses. He walked like a breeze could knock him over.

  Finally, he opened the passenger side door and got in. The two men drove in silence, each waiting for the other to speak.

  “Turn right here,” Sunil directed.

  “I know the way.”

  “Listen, Sanjay…” Sunil began, hesitantly. “I’m done with all this. With the business.”

  Sanjay did not respond; he let his uncle continue his pitch as they drove. “You know me. I’m more into the numbers than the ships. I’d rather cash out, set up a small investment company. You can stay, if you really want. I just don’t want to be in this business without your father. You know, my Bhai—”

  A tide of rage surged through Sanjay, his fingers clenched the wheel. “Don’t talk about my Dad,” he snarled, pulling them to a stop at a signal light. In front of the car, a Chinese woman held her aged father’s hand as they crossed the street together.

  “He was your Dad; well; he was my Bhai! I’ve been in business with him since before you were born. You think I’m your enemy? I’m not.”

  “Then why are you trying to fleece us?”

  “What? I’m not trying to fleece you, Sanjay.”

  “Come on, don’t lie to me.”

  A car honked behind them. The light had turned green. “I saw the shareholder resolution you had Dad sign,” Sanjay said as they accelerated. “He was on morphine. He was dying, for God’s sake. And you got him to sign away one of the ships. Our flagship. The Saagar Raj. You thought you could take advantage of him. Of us.”

  Sunil stared at him, horrified. “No, no … that’s not what you saw, Sanjay.”

  “I know what I saw. Now what am I supposed to do? Take you to court? So the papers can say we’re having a family feud? So everyone can see what a bad son I am?”

  “No, behta. We aren’t selling that ship!”

  “Oh, so you’re selling everything you own in the company, but you’re keeping our ship? You—”

  “No!” Sunil shouted. “We’re giving it away! You don’t understand anything, Sanjay.”

  “What? Why the hell would you give it away?”

  “We’re selling the ship and giving the money to charity! I’ve set up a foundation in India. Under your father’s name! And I’m giving $50,000 on top. Out of my pocket. You should do the same, since you’re such a good son.”

  The words hung bitter in the
recycled air between them.

  “Look, Sanjay,” Sunil offered, calmer now. “You think I’m crazy. But I’m not. I’m sorry your father didn’t tell you about this. But we have a responsibility. To pay our debts.” Sunil chewed on his lip and stared out the window. He almost understood.

  They did not speak again, not until they reached the crematorium. The building had two entrances: one held auditoriums to host the living. The other held only what was left of the dead. They parked the car and met the priest in the lobby. He’d been waiting for them; keeping their place in line. Nowadays even Brahmins bow before money.

  Finally, when it was their turn, Sunil Uncle, fearful he might catch a glimpse of us, said to Sanjay: “You should go in alone.”

  Sunil needn’t have worried. We’d already had our fill. What remained of Dad waited for Sanjay on a low metal table that still radiated heat. A sea of ash; fragments of skull and hip rising like islands. Low columns in the shape of single vertebrae, like the ashen tubes Sanjay’s cigarettes leave when they burn unattended.

  The priest handed Sanjay the urn, and began to chant and sprinkle water as Sanjay scooped Dad into it. He thought about Dad; his voice, his grin, cracking jokes and drinking father-son whiskies over football games. But none of that existed in the end. Only ash. Soon the urn was full; the steel table empty except for sprinklings of human dust, and Sanjay’s silk shirt stained with Dad’s ashes.

  They drove east, to the ferry terminal, past those beaches where the Japanese lined up all those Chinese men and boys. So many we knew: shopkeepers and accountants, teachers and labourers; the sand stained red as shallow water filled with blood and bullets. We remember.

  At the ferry terminal, Sanjay, Sunil Uncle and the priest met the undertaker. The tall Tamil man pressed his palms together to greet the priest, his forehead already marked with crimson.

  “Boat is ready?” the priest asked.

  “All ready,” the undertaker replied, leading them to the jetty, where a sunburnt Chinese man waved at them from his moored motorboat, hands stained with engine oil. The priest climbed aboard first, and held out his hand to help Sanjay, who clutched Dad’s urn tight to his body as he stepped aboard the rocking deck. Sunil Uncle followed, refusing the priest’s help, waving his arms wildly to balance himself. The undertaker undid the moorings as the boat sputtered and growled to life. The boat picked up speed, and soon they were out on the water. Sanjay breathed deep: gasoline, kelp and salty brine. He felt most free on the ocean. But the last time we boarded a ship, it was below deck, in chains.