We burnt the paper offerings on the second evening, once all the minor rituals had been dealt with. Father’s friends had ordered the most elaborate and expensive offerings they could think of, the grandest luxuries fit for a man of Father’s standing. Firstly, there was a paper motorcar, a Mercedes-Benz, bronze-coloured as Father’s last car had been. It was five feet long and had a paper chauffeur sitting at its paper wheel. Then there was a paper aeroplane, a Boeing 747.
“Is he going to need that in the afterlife?” I asked Mad Dog.
“He never got a chance to fly in an airplane,” he replied, smiling, “so we thought we would give him a treat.”
Finally there was a paper house, virtually life-size, a replica of the Harmony Silk Factory. It had galleried windows overlooking the courtyard as the factory did, and an open-air kitchen at the rear. I wandered around this house, looking at the tiny details. Little potted ferns, carefully painted green, decorated the red-tiled courtyard. They were the only kind of plant which ever grew happily in the courtyard, and their dark leaves used to add to the coolness of that sun-shielded space. The shutters had been painted pale jade, and through the open windows I could see the black-and-white chequerboard floor of the upstairs sitting room. I saw the rosewood furniture that we never used, preferring instead to sit on rough wooden chairs. Father’s safe room was there too, locked as usual. The shop was full of beautiful things, colourful cloths and sparkling glass cabinets and boxes of jewels. The revolving dining room no longer revolved, but it had its European Old Masters on the walls. My bedroom, which looked out onto both the courtyard and the back of the house, was kept as neatly as always. Through the window I could see the river, wide and brown and muddy. I could see the wooden pontoon underneath the ancient banyan tree. We used to swim there, my friends and I, diving from the bridge into the warm, thick water. We used to climb the tree and swing from its trailing vines until we were twenty yards out and then let go, splashing from a great height into the river. Early in the evenings we would creep onto the pontoon and lower pieces of meat on fishhooks into the water to catch catfish, which emerged from murky recesses to feed at night. From my window I could see the herons and egrets and storks wade through the shallows in the morning. I used to wake up early — at dawn, when everything was pearl-coloured and soft — so that I could see them flying smoothly across the mist-covered water, their sleek heads tucked gently into their necks.
My books lined the teak shelves that Father had built when I was ten and hungry to read. If I thought he was in a good mood I would read him stories from these books, singing and screeching as I imagined the voices of all the characters. Occasionally he would smile. I was pleased because I thought I had made him happy, and I would embellish my stories further, making them up as I went along. When he smiled he looked as if he remembered what life really was, and so I would tell even more stories. But sometimes he would realise I wasn’t just reading from the book; he would get angry and scold me for making things up, for telling tales. His face would turn black with fury, as if he hated me more than anything in the world. Life would drain from his face, leaving it empty once more.
We set fire to the house, the car, and the aeroplane just as it was turning dark. Hennessy XO was poured in a ring around the paper replicas to protect against thieving spirits; its heavy perfume laced the twilight air. As Johnny’s son, I had the responsibility to set the offerings alight, and I did so quickly, touching my burning roll of newspaper to the house in as many places as possible before the flames became unbearable. I ran back to stand with the other mourners. We stood under a purple sky and watched the house burn down.
Death, I remembered Father saying, erases all traces of the life that once existed, completely and forever.
HE NEXT DAY I left as soon as I could. I slipped away from the throng of people returning from the cemetery and headed for my car, hoping to leave before I was missed. I did not want to say too many goodbyes.
The old Englishman in the wheelchair had parked himself in the kitchen, where he sat nodding and mumbling to himself. He was holding a parcel wrapped in a piece of cloth. He held it up to me as I approached him.
