My thoughts stopped coming: the cleric had stopped talking. There was a clatter at the door; a scrape; a shuffle-thump, shuffle-thump. The cleric stared. We all turned. Gopi was cycling in, his shoulders heaving, making his sleeves flap. His eyes were big from the physical effort of his pedaling, and his shirt was stuck in a dark patch to his back. He took a seat at the front, alone, and he watched the coffin as if it was a magician’s box.
The cleric, who might have thought Gopi was going to interrupt with Hindu wailing, quietly resumed, “Let us pray.”
We knelt on the stone floor. Gopi had to look back to see how it was done. I was anxious for him, balanced on that wobbly knee; he managed by steadying himself on the chair next to him.
A sound of enormous wheezing filled the room as we stood; it was not ours. A clapped-out harmonium had begun asthmatically to breathe “Jerusalem” at the back of the room. Yardley and the others seemed glad to have a chance to sing, and they did so with the hoarse gusto they gave the obscene songs Frogget started at the Bandung on Saturday nights. Frogget had a fine voice, higher than one would have expected from a feller his size and (Gopi and Gladys were both weeping for Leigh — why?) all the voices rang in the room, echoing on the yellow walls and drowning the fans, the firecrackers, and even the woofing harmonium with the hymn.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
We gave the lines in the last part—Bring me my bow of burning gold, Bring me my arrows of desire—the sahib’s emphasis, trilling the r in the command resolutely.
The cleric walked over to the coffin and sprinkled it and prayed out loud. I started thinking of the man out back, stoking the fire like a fry cook in clogs, stirring the coals in a black kitchen, sweating worse than we were and wiping his face on his shoulder, banging his poker on the furnace door to slam the hot ashes from the tip. What burial customs.
It was over. The cleric flung his arms into the sign of the cross, a novice’s flourish of sleeves, and blessed us and said, “Amen.” The coffin was rolled out of the room through a rear door and we all went out to our cars.
“You ready?” I asked Gladys.
Her tears had dried. She looked at me. “This short time or all day?”
Before I could answer Yardley was beside me asking, “You coming along? We’re going for a drink. The day’s a dead loss — no sense going to work.”
“I’ll be there in a little while,” I said, and seeing Hing leaving, smiled and waved him off. Hing’s face was tight; he was unused to the lecturing at Christian services and might have expected the brass band, the busloads of relatives, the banners and pennants and cherry bombs that saw a Chinese corpse to the grave.
“Short time,” said Gladys. “Where I am dropping?”
I did not reply. Yardley and Frogget faced the sky behind me. I turned to look. Smoke had started from the chimney, a black puff and ripples of stringy heat, then a gray column unimpeded by any breeze shooting straight up and enlarging, becoming the steamy air that hung over the island. Despair is simple: fear without a voice, a sinking and a screamless fright. We watched in silence, all of us. Coony ground his cigarette out and gaped; then, conscious that we were all watching the smoke, we looked away.
“Who’s paying for this?” Yardley asked.
“I am,” I said, and felt sad. But when I got into the little car with Gladys and started away, throwing the shift into second gear, I felt only relief, a springy lightness of acquittal that was like youth. I was allowed all my secrets again, and could keep them if I watched my step. It was like being proven stupid and then, miraculously, made wise.
PART TWO
1
FOR AS LONG as I could remember I had wanted to be rich, and famous if possible, and to live to the age of ninety-five; to eat huge meals and sleep late out of sheer sluttishness in a big soft bed; to take up an expensive but not strenuous sport, golf or deep-sea fishing in a fedora with a muscular and knowledgeable crew; to gamble with conviction instead of bitterness and haste; to have a pair of girl friends who wanted me for my money — the security was appealing: why would they ever leave me? All this and a town house, an island villa, a light plane, a fancy car, a humidor full of fat fragrant cigars — you name it. I guessed it would come to me late: fifty-three is a convenient age for a tycoon; the middle-aged man turning cautious and wolflike knows the score, and if he has been around a bit he can take the gaff. It did not occur to me that it might never happen.
Being poor was the promise of success; the anticipation of fortune, a fine conscious postponement, made the romance, for to happen best it would have to come all at once, as a surprise, with the great thud a bag of gold makes when it’s plopped on a table, or with the tumbling unexpectedness of thick doubloons spilling from the seams of an old wall you’re tearing apart for the price of the used wood. One rather fanciful idea I’d had of success was that somehow through a fortuitous mix-up I would be mistaken for a person who resembled me and rewarded with a knighthood or a country estate; it was as good as admitting I did not deserve it, but that it was far-fetched made my receptive heart anticipate it as a possibility. It might, I thought, be a telephone call on a gray morning when, fearing bad news, I would hear a confident educated voice at the other end say, “Brace yourself, Mr. Flowers, I’ve got some wonderful news—”
Wonderful news in another fantasy was a letter. I composed many versions of these and recited them to myself walking to the 8-A bus out of Moulmein Green in the morning, or killing time in a hotel lobby when a girl was finishing a stunt upstairs, or dealing out the porno decks, or standing on the Esplanade and staring at the ships in the harbor.
One started like this:
Dear Mr. Flowers,
It gives me great pleasure to be writing to you today, and I know my news will please you as much…
Another was more direct:
Dear Flowers,
I’ve had my eye on you for a long time, and I’m very happy to inform you of my decision concerning your future…
Another:
Dear Jack,
I am asking my lawyer to read you this letter after my death. You have been an excellent and loyal friend, the very best one could hope for. I have noted you in my will for a substantial portion of my estate as a token thanks for your good humor, charity, and humanity. You will never again have to think of…
Another:
Dear Sir,
Every year one person is singled out by our Foundation to be the recipient of a large cash disbursement. You will see from the enclosed form that no strings whatever are attached…
Another:
Dear Mr. Flowers,