Everyone liked his the way he played, but if they asked him for a solo, he always refused. The most he would do was a bit of spluttering with his tongue, not making any sound, just to tease the audience. ‘Don’t keep us waiting, One Eye,’ they shouted. ‘It’s like you’re going down on a woman and then not screwing her.’
There was always a big crowd around the band, humming along to the tune while the bereaved family went around offering tea and welcoming the guests. But they weren’t perfect. For instance, they always dragged out the notes of Hold Me In Your Arms, which kept you in suspense, as if you were about to step out into the void. And when they had to get up and lead the procession for the coffin it was mayhem — there was no way the pallbearers could keep in step behind. Luckily the funeral was usually such chaos by then that no one noticed.
There was lots to look out for before the procession set off. First the coffin was turned around, the head of the coffin raised up, and my father began the service. The chief mourners bowed low, my father read out the rites and the sons and daughters walked three times round the coffin. The coffin was nailed shut with plenty of nails — to symbolise the dead man’s descendants, my dad told me. Then the coffin was lifted up again and they were off, the eldest son leading the way holding the funeral banner and the second son walking behind, cradling a board with the name of the departed. Other family members followed on with white-wrapped mourning staffs, the oldest daughter-in-law carrying a pot full of delicious food to be buried at the head of the coffin, so that the departed had something to good to eat. The relatives in the procession were a patchwork of different colours: light yellow, dark yellow, red and white. The band members never wanted to leave, and just stood there gawping.
My dad was always furious: ‘What are you doing still hanging around? Are you a bunch of stiffs?’
He always called them stiffs when they were standing around. He yelled at them when they were busy too, busy eating that is. The banquet after the funeral was the part they looked forward to the most — they would head back to the house, sit down at a table and tuck in. Whenever we got new musicians, they were always skinny as monkeys, but gradually they filled out. Every time a main dish came into the room they had to stand up and play it in. They’d get up slowly, still eating, snatching mouthfuls between notes. ‘How can you play with your mouths full of food,’ my dad would shout. ‘You’ll choke!’
Dad was never greedy and always full of energy. He was the boss. When he did a reading, people shouted ‘Bravo!’ The band would strike up and play another tune, then Dad would do another reading — they were always appropriate to the deceased. If it was an old man he would read:
‘Take your time, old man,
We will see you to the door.
Your relatives and friends will see you on your way,
They’ll drink themselves under the table for you.’
‘Bravo!’
‘Go in peace, old man,
Go where you will.
Keep on spending your money,
Get that pork knuckle on to cook.’
‘Bravo!’
‘Go without a care,
Your sons and grandsons are all scholars.
Each generation is stronger than the last,
They have power, they have wealth.’
‘Bravo!’
‘Laugh and be happy, old man,
You’ve left the family in good hands.
When they piss into the bottle,
They don’t spill a drop.’
‘Bravo!’
Everyone always loved it. They drank, they toasted the departed, they talked, and drank, and drank again, and talked, and made a tremendous racket.
2
But good times never last. Once everyone had eaten their fill and picked their teeth, they gathered up the gifts from their hosts and staggered off, like a noisy crowd heading home after a film. Dad lit the hell money and the flames consumed the colourful bank notes. I wanted to hang around, but it was time for me to go, time to go and not come back. The first time I asked the host ‘When are we coming back again?’ he was appalled.
‘Stupid kid!’ shouted my dad, and clouted me.
All the grown-ups said I was stupid. I couldn’t understand why. Why was the host so grumpy just because someone had died? It didn’t make any sense. Whenever grown-ups talked about death, they just kept repeating the same things.
After the service was over, there was a week of offerings to the spirit of the departed. This was called ‘doing the sevens’. The sevens were fun — the best part was burning paper houses. They were made from strips of bamboo, tied together with string and pasted all over with paper. The houses were magnificent, big and bright, nicer than the real houses the families lived in. There were courtyards in front and gardens behind. There were beds and furniture, TVs and music systems. And there were maids. The painter would wet his brush with spit and dip it in the paints. He’d draw two fat bulges on their fronts and give me a multi-coloured, paint-besmeared grin. Once he gave one of the servants a big bulge in its crotch. I didn’t understand.
‘Boy servant,’ said the painter.
I still didn’t understand. It was a woman who died, the painter explained with a smile. I half-understood, and smiled back.
Then he drew something else. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘A mobile.’
‘A mobile?’ I’d heard of those.
‘You can do all sorts of things with a mobile,’ the painter said.
While we were making the paper house outside, the Daoist priest was reciting prayers inside the house with his eyes closed. The priest summoned the immortals, drawing them in with delicate eddies of incense. Crowded into the memorial hall, they ate and drank their fill. The priest was a superman. No one was really scared of my dad but they were all scared of the priest. He was paraplegic.
He had been handsome when he was young, so they said, an all-round good-looker, though a little short. So when he heard about a machine that could make him taller, he decided to buy one with the money he had put aside to get a wife — he reckoned he’d have no trouble getting married once he was bigger. ‘Who wants to live with a deformity?’ he said, ‘I’d be better off dead.’
The machine made him taller all right, but after a year it had weakened the muscles in his back so much he couldn’t straighten up when he walked — it was too painful. Sweating with fear, he scuttled off to see a doctor, who said the machine had strained his spinal cord. He was lucky to be able to stand up and walk at all, even with a hump. He spent days crying and moaning in despair, until he was completely exhausted. It was too much to bear. He wasn’t even as tall as he had been before. He tried to kill himself, but his friends stopped him. At least he could still walk, they said, it was just that his back was a bit painful, that was all.
Eventually, he became paralysed.
His friends took every knife, every piece of rope, every medicine bottle out of his reach so he couldn’t kill himself. He had to go on living in agony. He used to ask for a massage, for people to press, knead, beat or stand on his back while he cried out in anguish as if he was being tortured. But after it was over he relaxed, bliss written all over his face. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Life is good!’
For him, it was bliss to be numb, to feel no pain. I realised later that people often live with pain. Happiness is just the lack of pain, health the absence of an aching belly or creaking joints. As soon as you start to feel something, you’re ill.