The Two Sisters of Borneo (22 page)

The funeral home was in Fanling, a northern suburb in the New Territories. Uncle had chosen it because it was only a kilometre from the cemetery in Wo Hop Shek, where he had chosen to be buried.

When he had explained the arrangements to her, Ava had asked, “Why Wo Hop Shek? Why Fanling?”

He had owned the plot, he said, for more than forty years. He was just starting his first gang then, in Fanling, and there had been a lot of opposition. He decided it would be prudent to plan for the worst, so he bought the plot. He had looked in Hong Kong and Kowloon, but even then land was being sold by the square inch and hardly anyone was buried anymore. Even finding places to put ashes was a challenge. And anyway, the idea of being cremated didn’t appeal to him then, and it did so even less now. The plot at Wo Hop Shek Cemetery had given him peace of mind.

The funeral home came to collect his body late that Saturday night, after Dr. Parker had completed the paperwork. They placed Uncle in a silver-coloured basket-weave container that was to transport him to Fanling. He had bought a new suit — black, of course — and a new white shirt and new shoes a few months before. Lourdes sent them from the apartment to the funeral home so he could be dressed quickly in clothes that represented the start of his new life.

The reception at the funeral home would be brief, as Uncle had requested. It was scheduled for between eleven a.m. and three p.m. on the Tuesday. There was no embalming. Uncle had wanted a closed casket, so as soon as he arrived in Fanling he was dressed in his new suit and laid in a steel coffin with the traditional three humps.

Sonny, Lourdes, Uncle Fong, and Ava had decided that they would maintain a vigil at the funeral home. They split the time into six-hour shifts. Ava took the first and the last. Sonny drove her to Fanling on Saturday night so she would be there when his body arrived. She had been on the phone for most of the evening, talking to her mother, her sister, Maria, Mimi, her father, and May Ling. Both her mother and Maria wanted to come to Hong Kong. Ava discouraged them. The timing was tight, and the truth was that Ava wasn’t sure she could handle the additional emotional pressure they would bring.

On Sunday morning she went back to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to see Amanda. Her sister-in-law’s room wasn’t in R Block, but simply being at the hospital sent tremors through Ava’s body.

She hadn’t told them she was coming and didn’t know what to expect, so it was with some trepidation that she walked into the private ward. There were two beds in the room. One was empty. In the other, Amanda lay on her back, a string of tubes running from her arm. Her head was bandaged diagonally, the right eye almost completely covered.

Ava approached the bed. Amanda’s left eye and what she could see of the right were closed. Ava sat in a chair beside the bed and reached for her hand. She had been sitting quietly for five minutes, maybe longer, when she heard a sound at the door. She turned and saw Michael.

“Hey,” he said.

“Maybe I should have called,” she said.

“No, I’m glad you came.”

He walked towards her. She stood, wincing as her knee reacted to the change of position, and reached up. They clung to each other.

“I heard about Uncle,” he said when they finally separated.

“I knew it was just a matter of time, but it turned out that no time was ever going to be right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sorry about Amanda. How is she?”

“Better — at least, better than she was. She fell asleep just about half an hour ago. She’s been awake and alert, which is a blessing. She’s concussed, but there doesn’t seem to be any brain damage. The orbital bone will knit just fine, they think, although she’ll probably have some kind of scar above the eye.”

“Thank God.”

“That’s what Jack Yee keeps saying. You just missed him. We’re taking turns sleeping in the other bed.”

“He left a note for me in Borneo.”

“I know.”

“When you see him, tell him we got the person who did this.”

Michael closed his eyes. “He’ll be happy, but you know you can tell him yourself. He plans on going to Uncle’s funeral.”

“That won’t be the place, or the time. Please do it for me.”

“I will.”

“And do me one more favour: don’t come to the funeral yourself. You and Amanda have just got married. I don’t want to bring any more bad luck into your lives by letting you attend a funeral. I know that’s superstitious, but I believe it all the same.”

“So does Jack, and so does my mother. So don’t worry, I won’t be going.”

Ava turned towards Amanda. She leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Tell her that I was here. Tell her that May and I love her and worry about her and are praying for her.”

“I will.”

On Tuesday morning, the day of Uncle’s farewell, Ava arrived at the funeral home at five a.m. for the final vigil and for final inspection of the room they would be using. It was long and narrow, and Uncle’s coffin was placed on a raised platform at the far end. It wasn’t common for the coffin to be visible at a Chinese funeral, but he wanted it that way and gave no reason. In front of it, on an easel, was a large photo of him that was a particular favourite of Ava’s. He was seated outside a restaurant, wearing his black suit, his shirt done up to the collar. He was leaning forward, a cigarette burning in one hand, his eyes locked onto the person taking the picture. What Ava loved about it was his eyes. They were so alive, so alert, so full of intelligence — and, Ava thought, so full of warning. He had been a complex man. The photo did him justice.

Around the coffin were a circle of white candles and a second circle of incense sticks. The candles would be lit before people started arriving. The incense was for the guests to light if they chose.

It was traditional for the family to sit on one side of the room and the guests to sit on the other. The funeral home director had suggested that, given the small size of Uncle’s “family,” they forego the tradition. Ava had to intervene before Sonny took the man’s head off. So there were four chairs to the right of the coffin with Ava, as his closest “relative,” sitting next to it to receive guests. A hundred chairs were set up to the left, though they doubted they would need that many. As it was, the four chairs would be only partly occupied, because Sonny and Uncle Fong would be standing at the door to welcome the guests and give each of them a white envelope that contained a small white towel, a candy, and a coin. The towel was to dab away tears. The candy represented something sweet in a time of bitterness. The coin was for the guests to take away, to buy something sweet when memories of the deceased came to them.

The guests themselves would bring white envelopes with money for the family. The amount in each packet would come to an odd single number, normally achieved by a bill plus a small coin. Just as the double number eight, so prevalent at Amanda’s wedding, represented happiness, the single number was meant to represent a one-time occurrence.

The plan after the visitation ended was for the hearse to drive the kilometre or so to the cemetery. Ava, Sonny, Lourdes, and Uncle Fong would walk behind it, and any of the guests who chose to do so also were welcome.

At six o’clock Ava changed into her mourning clothes: a plain white skirt and a white tunic made from burlap. The top had a hood that she would wear from the time the first guest arrived until Uncle was buried. Sonny was already dressed in a thin surcoat of sackcloth over a white gown; he had a white band tied around his forehead. Uncle Fong would be dressed identically.

During her vigil, Ava had avoided any close contact with the coffin; it still seemed unreal that it contained Uncle. It wasn’t until she arrived that morning and saw the photograph and the chairs set in position that it began to take hold that he was gone.

“Sonny, do you think you could leave me alone for a little while?” she said.

“I’ll go and talk to the funeral director about the wreaths. There are only three set up here, and I know more were sent.”

“You do that,” Ava said.

When she was alone, she took an orange and some money from her purse and approached the coffin. She knelt and placed both at its base. Then she lit an incense stick and pressed it between her palms. And then she prayed. She prayed to God, to every god, to any god who would listen. Her Catholic god, the Buddhist god, the Taoist god.

The man she had known was a gentle, generous, loving, and thoughtful man. Whatever deeds he had committed before she met him were unknown to her. All she knew was a man who had done immeasurable good, who had saved businesses, saved families, saved so many poor souls from ruin.
Please see him as I saw him
, she prayed.
Please accept him into whatever eternity there is.
Tears welled in her eyes and she found herself unable to continue. She remained there in front of the coffin, on her knees, silent, the incense stick burning down to its base between her palms.

She had no idea how long she had been there when she heard Sonny say, “Ava, I’m sorry to disturb you, but we have a problem.”

She pushed herself to her feet. Sonny stood at the entrance of the room with the funeral director, who was looking alarmed. “What is it?”

“Wreaths. We have too many wreaths,” Sonny said.

“They started arriving late in the day yesterday and they just kept coming,” the director said. “We’ve filled our storage room and then some. I’ve never seen so many whie chrysanthemums.”

“How many are we talking about?”

“At least eighty, and they’re still arriving.”

“They’ll fill this room. We won’t have space for a single chair,” Sonny said.

“How many funerals do you have going on here today?” Ava asked the director.

“Only this one.”

“And how many other rooms do you have?”

“Three.”

“Put five more wreaths here; that will give us four on either side of the coffin. Then put some in the foyer — it’s large enough — and the rest in one of the empty rooms. I’ll pay for any extra space we’re using.”

“Do we need to transport them to the gravesite as well?” the director asked.

“Yes,” Ava said. “Rent a truck, do whatever you have to do, but if people thought so well of Uncle as to send him flowers, the least we can do is make sure they’re placed either on or somewhere near the gravesite.”

“It will cost —” he began.

“Just do whatever you have to. I’ll pay,” Ava said.

When he left, Ava turned to Sonny. “Who is sending all these wreaths?”

“I looked at some of the cards. You have a lot of former clients.”

“That’s true enough. It’s nice that they remembered.”

“And many of the societies.”

“What do you mean by ‘many’?”

“I saw wreaths from at least nine or ten gangs in the 14K Group and a couple from the Wo Group. Also the Big Circle Gang, the Tung Group, and a huge one from one of the mainland Sun Yee On gangs. The only ones larger were from Changxing and May Ling Wong and Xu.”

“How did they find out about Uncle’s funeral?”

“I know he wanted it to be more private, but it was silly of him to think that word wouldn’t get around in an instant.”

Ava looked at the hundred chairs they had set up for guests. “Sonny, do you think we have enough seats? What if everyone who sent a wreath shows up?”

“That’s not likely, especially with the triads.”

“Still, we have to expect that some will come. And there might be more ex-clients than we imagined, so maybe we should ask for another hundred chairs. This room can hold two hundred.”

“Okay, I’ll go talk to the guy.”

“Better to be prepared for more rather than not have enough.”

“I know,” he said, and then hesitated.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I forgot to tell you that Uncle Fong has hired a funeral band. He did it without asking me. They’ll walk with us to the cemetery. That is, if you don’t mind.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You could say no.”

“Would Uncle have liked a band?”

Sonny smiled for the first time in days. “Yes, he would have liked a band.”

“Then I guess we have a band.”

While the funeral home staff came in to set up more chairs, Ava retreated to the foyer. Wreaths now covered every wall, and she thought it looked splendid. She opened her Chanel bag and took out her phone. She had turned it off the night before, when she went to bed. There had been a number of calls.

Her mother and Maria had left messages saying that she and Uncle were in their prayers.

Her father said he was coming to the funeral with Jack Yee.

May Ling had called to say that she and Changxing had arrived in Hong Kong. Then she had left a second message an hour later. Jacob Smits had taken Ah-Pei’s confession, both written and on videotape, to Meijer, hoping to coerce him into voluntarily returning their money. Meijer had refused. So Smits, with May Ling’s approval, had gone to his police contacts with the information he’d acquired earlier and the confession. He was quite confident that charges would be laid.

Smits had also given the entire package to the bankruptcy trustee and spent several hours going over it with him. May had just been informed that the trustee had contacted the bank in Aruba and asked them to freeze the account until the legal issues surrounding the bankruptcy were resolved. It was going to take some time, but meanwhile Ah-Pei had returned the money from the Kuala Lumpur account.

One way or another, their investment would be restored. But at that moment it couldn’t have mattered less to Ava.

The door of the funeral home opened. Lourdes, dressed in a white skirt and blouse, with a white scarf tied around her head, stepped tentatively inside. Uncle Fong followed. Ava turned off her phone and put it back in her bag.

Lourdes had been crying almost nonstop since Uncle had died. The funeral director had said to Sonny that he had never heard louder wailing.

“She has a lot to grieve,” he said.

She now seemed to have cried herself out, although her eyes were shot through with red. Ava said, “I prayed at the coffin by myself this morning. If you like, we can stay out here and you can have some quiet time with him as well.”

“I can’t pray anymore.”

“Then let’s go inside and sit. The guests will be here soon enough.”

Lourdes stared at the wreaths. Sonny and Uncle Fong circled the foyer, looking at the condolence cards that accompanied them. Ava took Lourdes by the arm and joined the men. There were flowers from her father, Jack Yee, Simon and Jessie To, Tommy Ordonez and Uncle Chang in the Philippines, Soeprapto and his father in Indonesia, the Wo Group from Tsuen Wan, 14K from Guangzhou, and Chi Hsien Pang in Taiwan. And there was an immense wreath from Andrew Tam, a former client whose own uncle had been one of the men who swam from China with Uncle. As she read the card, she noticed Uncle Fong eyeing her.

“What is it?” she said to him.

“Sonny told me you approved the band. I’m very happy about that.”

“I guess I am too. I should have thought of it myself and I didn’t. Thank you for being so considerate.”

Ava and Lourdes went back inside. The extra chairs on the guest side made the family side look even emptier. Ava didn’t care. Uncle had always respected tradition, and she wasn’t about to dishonour this one.

Lourdes sat with her eyes closed and her lips moving. Ava assumed she had found another prayer and sat quietly next to her, lost again in her own thoughts.

At ten o’clock Sonny and the funeral director barged into the room. “We have another problem,” Sonny said.

“What is it this time?”

“People have already started to arrive. They’re beginning to crowd the entrance.”

“Crowd?”

“There must be fifty or sixty already, and they’re nearly all triad. They’re coming from all over. Uncle Fong says there are some very senior people among them, including the head men from Taiwan, Malaysia, and Los Angeles, he thinks, though he’s less sure about that.”

“Well, we did put in these extra hundred seats.”

“It’s just that we have a very small courtyard, and we can’t have people standing in the street,” the director said.

“What are you suggesting?”

“That we open our doors early.”

“How early?”

“Now.”

Ava looked at Sonny, who just shrugged. “Then let’s do that,” she said.

When they turned to leave, it occurred to her that there might be one more problem. “Tell me,” she shouted after them, “do we have enough white envelopes if we have two hundred guests?”

“I have boxes of them,” the director said.

It took them five minutes to lay out on the tables the first batch of white envelopes that Sonny and Uncle Fong would distribute. The candles around the coffin were lit, and Lourdes began to sniffle again.

Then the door to the room opened and the guests began to enter. Ava and Lourdes remained seated, their heads bent towards the floor. Then Ava heard the first man greet Sonny. His name was Wing, and he identified himself as being from 14K Sai Sing Ton. He approached the coffin solemnly and stopped directly in front of the Uncle’s photograph. He bowed three times, his head reaching his knees, the tattoos on his neck visible as he lowered his body. Then he turned to where Ava and Lourdes sat. He bowed again, just as deeply, but only once. Ava lowered her head in acknowledgement.

For the next hour they walked in at a rate of about two a minute, bowing three times for Uncle and once for Ava and Lourdes. The early arrivals were nearly all triad, from major groups such as 14K, Wo, Sun Yee On, and Luen, but they also represented a broad spectrum of local gangs from places such as Mong Kok, Tai Po, Tsim Sha Tsui, Macau, Sheung Shui, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. Some had worked for Uncle. Some had worked alongside Uncle. Some had been colleagues of equal rank, at least until he became chairman. As they identified themselves at the door, Sonny and Uncle Fong helped her classify them by addressing them by title or relationship.

Not many of them spoke to her, and those who did were the senior ones, the gang leaders. Most of them seemed uncomfortable around her and mumbled their condolences. A few referred to her by name and let it be known that they had heard of her exploits with Uncle.

They were all hard men, rough around the edges and dangerous looking even when they had no visible scars, missing fingers, or tattoos. Still, with Ava they were unfailingly polite, and as they bowed to Uncle she saw in their faces a respect that verged on veneration. It was, in a way, unsettling. Her relationship with Uncle had existed mainly outside his previous life. Trying to connect the man she had known with the one who had been tough and ruthless and shrewd enough to make his way to the summit of the worldwide triad hierarchy seemed impossible and improbable, despite the fact that she knew it was true.

Partway through that first hour, with people lined up at the door all the way back through the foyer and into the courtyard, Uncle Fong came to Ava’s side. “I thought this might happen, but I didn’t want to say anything,” he said. “Uncle was so respected . . .”