The door creaked a little and Old Mother, thinking it was Ah Kum Soh or Ah Bock returning home, asked, “Who is it?”
Having got up and ascertained that it was neither, she stood still and waited expectantly.
“You have come back,” she said. “You have come back so soon.”
The old man stood before her, thinner than in life. He said nothing, and he looked at her, not with the look of irascibility as in the last weeks before his death, but with sadness.
“You have come back,” said Old Mother again. “You have something to ask of me. What is it?”
The old man still said nothing, and Old Mother became impatient.
“When you were alive,” she said, “I called you ‘The-one-with-gold-in-his-mouth’. Tight-lipped, as if opening your mouth would mean gold falling out for others to pick up. What is it?”
The old man kept resolutely silent, not with stubbornness, but with sadness. Old Mother heard a sigh, as from a burdened heart.
“Is it about your sons?” she asked. And it was at this point that the old man began to weep silently.
“Do not weep,” said Old Mother, but she did not go up to him to comfort him. In life, she had never touched his shoulder, his arm, to comfort. She referred to him as ‘Ah Boon’s father’ or ‘Ah Siong’s father’, never ‘my husband’. ‘Husband’ embarrassed her.
“Do not weep,” said Old Mother again. “I will be all right. The Almighty God in Heaven looks after the old. Now that you are in Heaven, you will also take care of me and see that I come to no harm.”
Old Mother strained to hear. The words came very faintly, with great effort: “Ah Siong.”
“Ah Siong will take care of me; you take care of Ah Siong, too,” said Old Mother, beginning to weep herself. “You take care of him in that far off country and give him success and happiness so that he can come home soon and take care of me in my old age.”
The old man nodded, his wispy beard quivering on his chin. He did not disappear in a puff of smoke or haze; he simply walked away. Old Mother saw him close the door behind him. She went to the window to watch him, and saw him walk away in the dimness of the moonlight.
“Who’s that?” called Angela.
It was strange – this place she was in.
“Who’s that?” she called again, and walked into a room.
The old man was there, lying on the bed. Beside him was a walking stick, the stout one with the brass head that he had, in a fit of vexation in his illness, tried to hit Old Mother with.
He was dead already – or was he? She thought she heard a rattle from his throat, a kind of rasping sound, as she heard at the birthday dinner.
She walked up, slowly, deferentially, and he opened his eyes and looked at her.
“Are you all right, Father?” she said, a little timidly, for the old man never stopped staring at her. “Can I get you anything, Father? A cup of hot water?”
“He can’t hear! He can’t hear! He’s dead!”
The idiot was suddenly beside the bed; strange that his words came through so clearly, usually he slobbered unintelligibly. He was carrying Michael on his shoulders; he began to prance around the room and the boy laughed with joy.
“Mikey – Mikey, please get down,” pleaded Angela, stretching out her arms. “Come to Mummy, Mikey.”
“Not dead yet, but you want him dead!”
This from Old Mother. The room suddenly filled with people. She could see Ah Kum Soh and the old servant Ah Kheem Chae and another very old servant, Ah Siew Chae who had died so very long ago.
“This can be easily managed,” said Old Mother with asperity. “Ah Kum Soh,” she said in an imperious voice. “Knock on that coffin. Keep knocking, with your knuckles, like this. That means he will die soon. That means the coffin is saying, ‘Come, come. I invite you. Come!’”
The knockings on the coffin began. The massive, solid curved surfaces resounded with knocks. It sounded as if several people were knocking on the coffin at once.
“Knock, knock, knock, knock,” said Old Mother, laughing. “See, the coffin is saying, ‘Come! Come! It’s time!’ Soon he will be dead. ‘The-one-accursed-with-a-short-life’ will be dead.”
The body was now on a white-draped bier.
“Put his body into the coffin now,” commanded Old Mother, and two swarthy Indians lifted the fragile white corpse and laid it in the coffin.
Knock, knock.
“See, the knockings continue,” said Old Mother. “I will join him soon!”
The idiot, still carrying Michael on his shoulders, began to howl and to pull her away from the coffin.
“Oh my God” – gasped Angela.
“I tell you the child’s a girl,” whispered Old Mother. They stood outside the door, listening for the first cries of the child. They heard the moans of labour inside, soft low moans.
“How do you know? The child’s not born yet,” said Wee Tiong.
“It’s a boy, and it’s dead,” said the old man.
“How can you both talk like that while Choo is inside giving birth?” cried Wee Tiong in anger. Then he said, “Please, Father, please, Mother, do not talk like this.”
“There, I told you!” cried the old man triumphantly as a child was brought out, dead. “A male-child, quite dead. He can lie in the coffin beside me.”
“Make sure you have a proper coffin when you die,” said Old Mother.
Wee Tiong closed his eyes tight, pressed his hands against his ears. He was crying, and the tears collected inside his glasses, making him perceive things only dimly.
He chased her round the garden with his walking stick. He was in his death-clothes; he must have just got up from his coffin.
“You did not do your duty as a daughter-in-law!” he shouted in anger at her, waving the walking stick wildly in the air.
“You did not come near my coffin to pay last respects. What sort of daughter-in-law are you?”
He spoke in English, he who was always shy of words outside his own dialect. Gloria ran and hid behind a bush. It was no use. He caught up with her, and then she eluded his grasp and ran into a building, an old Chinese temple with many carved pillars and priests in yellow robes walking about and chanting.
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph – ” she panted, and out of the shadows emerged the idiot, grinning, to catch her and deliver her to the old man.
“You unfilial daughter-in-law,” he rasped, his beard moving stiffly on his chin.
“Oh, Blessed Mother of God – ” she had a rosary in her hand. She gripped it, to protect her from the evil.