Dead Money

by Srinath Adiga

  “He wanted a house and car, too? How demanding,” Raymond remarked. “Question. Logical one. If there were people up there driving cars, don’t you think we’d be able to see them through a telescope?”

  The man inserted his hand into the cloth bag and took out a thick wad of notes.

  “Whoa. You lied about having no money.”

  “It’s not real,” the man said.

  “I know. Can I see it?”

  The man grudgingly peeled off a note and gave it to Raymond. He arranged the rest in a neat pile next to the house and car.

  Raymond held the note up to the sun, as though checking if it was counterfeit. It looked like an American dollar, except the words “Federal Reserve” were replaced by “Bank of Diyu,” and in Benjamin Franklin’s place was a fierce-looking Chinese emperor with a goatee and handlebar moustache. Raymond recognized this as hell money, the currency of the underworld. He remembered burning these at his grandmother’s funeral.

  His eyes slid back to the man, who flicked his lighter and held it to the paper house. The house caught fire. Fanned by a breeze, the flames swelled and leapt to the car and then the pile of money. The burning notes curled, buckled and blackened before dissolving into flecks. The man closed his eyes and ushered the thickening smoke toward the sky.

  “Do you really think your father’s got a house, car and loads of money because you burnt bits of paper? Hmph. You know what this is? Guilt. A constant reminder that you’ve never done enough for your parents. A guilt that ought to die with them. But society’s found a way of keeping it alive so they can sell you bits of paper like this,” Raymond said, waving the hell money note in his hand.

  The man dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his feet. “I feel sorry for you,” he said. “A man who doesn’t honor his ancestors is a lost soul. I’m not stupid. I know burning paper money isn’t going to make my father rich. It’s just a symbol of respect. Besides, if there were a way I could get real money over to him, I would.”

  Raymond’s eyes widened when the man uttered the words. He looked at the hell money in his hand, then at the man.

  “What?” the man asked, unnerved by Raymond’s stare.

  “You just gave me an idea,” Raymond said, and left.

  7.

  AT FIRST GLANCE, THE LIBRARY LOOKED LIKE yet another shopping mall, a brightly lit atrium with polished floors, a cascade of escalators at one end and bubble lifts jetting up and down the wall at the other. The reference section was on the ninth floor. Raymond walked through the anti-theft sensors and was welcomed by the pleasing sight of bookshelves, rows upon rows of them, the light from the window shining on the colorful striations of spines.

  It took him back to the only part of his childhood he could reminisce about with any fondness: sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of a library, a world away from the beatings at home. Not to mention the jibes at school, boys making fun of him for looking like a bamboo pole or being unable to shoot hoops.

  Sometimes he’d spend the whole day there, crouched behind a tower of books. When he finished one pile, he’d bring another one out, the hunger in his mind far exceeding the one in a stomach fed by plain noodles and soy milk. He devoured books on finance, business and English, things he considered important for his avowed goal of making money. Because money was the ticket out of his shitty existence, not quantum physics or amphibian anatomy. In a way, he’d come full circle. Back then, money was going to save his spirit, now it was to save his life. One could split hairs, but weren’t they the same thing?

  The section on Chinese mythology was under the green sign pointing to the fire exit. Raymond crouched to the bottom shelf and tilted his head to read the spines. He dragged selected titles out with his finger, made a pile and took it to a table.

  Just as he sat down to read, he was startled by a loud roar, one of those summer storms that arrived unexpectedly. Large drops of rain splattered the window, within seconds dissolving everything from view: the treetops and tennis courts of Victoria Park, barges in the harbor, filing-cabinet blocks of Tsim Sha Tsui. Soon there was a wall of water, as if the building had sunk into the ocean.

  He picked up the first book, Beliefs Concerning the Afterlife. The title was embossed in gold on a smooth red cover. He opened it, inhaling the smell of rum and tea that rose from the aged pages.

  Chapter 1: The Duality of Souls.

  Every living being has two souls, Hun and Po. Hun represents the sublime self—it’s light and airy, just like a cloud. The Po soul is indissolubly attached to the body’s material elements. It represents the tangible, including the seven sensory gateways: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and one mouth. Hun controls the Yang spirits, and Po controls the Yin. Upon death, the Hun and Po separate and seek to reunite again …

  Po, being the body soul, needs constant nourishment in the Land of Yellow Springs. It needs money to buy food and rent accommodation. Members of the deceased’s family can aid its journey by burning paper money and offerings …

  A low growl broke his concentration. He craned his neck to peer over the top of the milky glass partition. A boy in a pale blue school uniform was slumped over a desk, snoring away. Raymond scowled and returned to his book.

  Chapter 2: Judgement and Reincarnation.

  The underworld is like a large city, teeming with Hun souls awaiting judgement at the Ten Courts of Hell. Each court is presided over by a judge who rules a specified behavioral domain. Tribute can be paid to the judges by burning paper money …

  Souls hope for an early release from the underworld so they can cross the Golden Bridge and enter the court of the Jade Emperor. But the chances of obtaining an easy release from the cycle of birth and reincarnation are near impossible …

  The storm continued to pound the window. Raymond sat hunched at his desk, forehead furrowed with the concentration of someone studying for an exam. When he was in this frame of mind, he could burn through the pages. He swiftly worked his way through his pile of books. When he finished, the rain had stopped. Night had fallen on the city. The floodlights of the tennis courts shone brightly above the canopy of trees in Victoria Park.

  Raymond leaned back and rubbed his eyes. They felt heavy, as if all the words he’d consumed in the last few hours had accumulated in a weighty mass behind the corneas. He knitted his fingers and sat still as if meditating.

  A few minutes later, he took out his diary and opened a fresh page. A tingle of excitement shot through his body as he wrote the words neatly:

  “Afterlife Dollars.”

  8.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, RAYMOND PULLED up outside the Kowloon City ferry terminal, a long, single-story block with a wavy roof. A group of students scurried toward the gangway as a vessel belched its horn. An old lady in a floral shirt stood beside the car and reprimanded him for parking in a bus zone. Unable to bear her screeching voice, Raymond raised his window. Suddenly, exhaustion hit him with the force of a dumping wave. He closed his eyes and let out an extended sigh. He hadn’t slept one bit the previous night. At first, it was the excitement of the idea that had kept him awake. When that fizzled, the inevitable worry:

  Is it going to work?

  One minute, he thought it would. Next minute, it felt completely harebrained. If he wasn’t sure himself, how on earth was he going to convince bank managers or venture capitalists? He pictured himself in a boardroom trying to pitch the idea to a bunch of stern-faced investors. What would they say? In all likelihood, they’d pick up the phone and ring Castle Peak mental hospital to report a missing patient.

  Assuming that didn’t happen and he somehow managed to raise the capital, what about the logistics of setting up a business? Where would he even start? Then the question. The most important one of all. The reason he was doing this in the first place. Would he make fifty-three million before Wu found out about the missing money?

  At some point during the night, he’d decided that there was no way he would, that it was all a bloody pipe dream. He c
rumpled the piece of paper on which he’d scribbled the rudiments of a business plan, and flung it away in frustration. But this morning, he retrieved it from the bin, uncrumpled it and examined it again.

  Something happened as he stared at the scrawling of numbers and words on the crinkled page. The old tightrope-walker feeling hummed inside him. This time, the canyon was wider and the rope greased. He’d no idea how he was going to reach the other side, but the sheer impossibility of the task was calling out to him as a challenge. Besides, what were his choices? But it was good when life didn’t present you with any forks in the road. You had to walk the only path available and hope for the best.

  A hand tapped the glass, interrupting his thoughts. George was waving in the window. Raymond released the central lock and pushed the passenger seat right back. George squeezed his body into the coupe’s tight space with a series of huffs and grunts. His next challenge was finding enough slack in the seat belt to pass over his ever-growing belly.

  “You need a bigger car,” George grumbled after completing the onerous task of seating himself.

  “You need to lay off the fried chicken,” Raymond said with a smirk.

  The ferry terminal shrank in the wing mirror as he pulled away from the curb. He piloted the car through the middle-class hell of Kowloon City. Each street identical to the next: newly painted tenement blocks with grocery shops, medicine stores and chicken rice stalls on the ground floor, and flats on the floors above. An entire suburb populated by people like George.

  “Remember when we used to fish back there?” George said, tilting his head at something in his window.

  Raymond knew what he was referring to without looking. It was a pagoda at the end of a pier, near the old Kai Tak airport. As kids, they’d go there on weekends with a fishing line spooled around a can of Coke, and scraps of meat from the butcher’s floor for lure. A cheap pastime for two kids with limited pocket money. They had snagged plenty of plastic bags, bottles and hard hats, but hardly any fish.

  “You had no patience for fishing, as I recall,” George continued. “More interested in watching planes land than catching fish, always hoping for a crash.”

  “What’s your point?” Raymond said, sensing the prelude to a lecture.

  “Your problem is you’re not just an adrenalin junkie, you’re drawn to destruction. Including your own.”

  Raymond scoffed, “You missed your calling in life. You should’ve been a shrink, not an accountant.”

  George sighed and looked out the window. For a while, neither of them spoke. The silence between them had an edge these days. Raymond blamed it on Trudy, George’s wife. For some reason, she didn’t approve of Raymond, and George had to sneak off to meet him as though he were having an illicit affair.

  Buildings fell away behind them as they climbed a hill. The harbor appeared when they reached the top, a gleaming sliver of water trapped between Kowloon and Hong Kong. A few seconds later, it disappeared behind a screen of tropical vegetation, plumped by the previous night’s rain. A brown road sign announced they were entering a nature reserve.

  “I may have found a way to pay Wu back,” Raymond announced.

  George looked at him.

  “It’s a long shot. But still my best hope.”

  “What is it?”

  Raymond breathed softly.

  “Afterlife Dollars.”

  The words felt fragile in his mouth, as though he were releasing a newborn chick into an abattoir.

  George blinked.

  “You know how they say you can’t take your money with you when you die? Well now you can,” Raymond explained.

  “You mean like hell money?”

  “Kind of. But for real.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s like a forex service. You give me Hong Kong dollars and get Afterlife Dollars for your next life.”

  “And where are you getting these Afterlife Dollars from?”

  Raymond shrugged. “Nowhere. That’s the beauty of it.”

  “But you said it’s real?” said George, utterly confused.

  “Only in people’s heads. Like heaven and hell. Something to hold on to, you know …” Raymond raised his eyebrows suggestively.

  George gasped. “A con! You want to con people!” he cried, shaking his head in indignation.

  Raymond grimaced. “You know, that’s exactly the kind of ill-considered remark I was hoping you wouldn’t make. What do you think money is, huh? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a piece of paper that’s not even big enough to wipe your ass. Yet banks and governments have everyone believing it can be exchanged for goods and services. Isn’t that a con? By your own definition?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Yes, it is. Only you don’t see it because you’ve taken it as a fait accompli.”

  “Fait what?”

  “Fait accompli. French. Something that has already occurred and you’ve got no say in it. Therefore, you accept it as gospel truth.”

  “You’re such a smooth talker. You can justify anything.” George snorted.

  “I’m not justifying anything.” Raymond gritted his teeth. “I’m trying to bring you around to a more enlightened point of view. Nothing’s real. Everything’s make-believe. That T-shirt you’re wearing,” he said, jerking his thumb at George’s wide torso. “Why did you buy it? Because you think it makes you look cool,” Raymond said before George could answer. “Is it really making you look cool? Or is it clever marketing? A brand that makes you believe it’s cool by parading some cool people wearing it. But in reality, it’s just a piece of crap made in a sweatshop. What I’m proposing is no different. For centuries, temples and churches have grown rich by selling afterlife myths. But these myths have passed their expiry date. The public is craving something different, something fresh. I’m doing what every smart businessman does: exploit a gap in the market. Give the public what they want. Don’t you understand, George?”

  “First gangsters and now this,” George thundered. “What’s going on? I feel I hardly know you anymore. You know how this is going to end, don’t you? No one will believe your crap. You’ll get your ass thrown in jail for fraud. And when that happens, don’t come crawling to me, expecting me to help you.”

  Raymond recoiled, stung by George’s vehemence. Where was this hate coming from? Had the poison Trudy relentlessly poured into his ears finally gone to his head?

  Raymond inhaled sharply and looked straight ahead, anger concentrated in the extremities of his body. The hands gripped the wheel tightly, foot slammed the gas pedal, causing the automobile to surge through the dappled forest light. A yellow traffic sign warned of a winding road ahead.

  George opened his mouth, but all Raymond could hear was the blood thrumming in his ears.

  “Slow down!” George shouted.

  Raymond held his foot on the pedal for a few more seconds, then transferred it to the brake.

  “Fuck,” he muttered softly.

  “What?”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Raymond looked down at his foot.

  “What? What?”

  “The brakes don’t work.”

  George gaped at the windshield. The road wound like a slack rope from the top of the ridge, with the bush on one side. On the other side, a strip of brown earth about three meters wide separated them from a thousand-foot drop into the valley.

  Suddenly, the car’s left-side wheels slid off the camber and ploughed into the dirt. George pressed his palms on the dashboard and screamed as they careened toward the drop. Raymond wrenched the steering wheel to drag them back to the road. The automobile overcorrected, screeching across the centerline into the oncoming lane. The red-and-silver shape of a taxi appeared from around the corner. George screamed again as Raymond swerved sharply to avoid a collision. The taxi clipped the wing mirror as it passed the Maserati.

  “Kill the engine,” George cried.

  “I can’t. The power steering won’t work.”

  “Watch o
ut!”

  The road hooked sharply to the left. The car flew into the bush, bouncing on uneven ground, dry branches snapping across the windscreen. A few moments later, they joined the road as it wound back on itself. But the momentum carried the car over the centerline again, depositing them directly in the path of an oncoming bus.

  George opened his mouth and bit his fist. Raymond swung the wheel, dragging the automobile across the tarmac. For a few heart-stopping moments, the car skirted along the cliff edge.

  “We’re going to die!” George burst into tears.

  “Shut up! I can’t drive with you crying like a bitch.”

  Raymond held the wheel tightly, face taut with concentration. It was like maneuvering a supermarket trolley moving at breakneck speed. He had to steer carefully; too hard, and the rear tires would go skidding over the edge. He turned the wheel gently, in small arcs, coaxing the vehicle away from the brink.

  Finally, the car returned to the tarmac with a thud.

  “Oh God, please help us!” George cried, hands joined in prayer.

  “Kuan Ti,” Raymond said. “Pray to Kuan Ti. Chant his name.”

  “Kuan Ti. Kuan Ti …”

  “Louder.”

  “KUAN TI. KUAN TI …”

  “Say it as if you were a six-year-old.”

  “Koo-an Ti. Koo-an Ti. Koo-an Ti …”

  “It’s not working. Kuan Ti likes nursery rhymes. Sing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep,’” Raymond commanded.

  George blinked.

  “Sing, asshole! Do you want us to die?”

  “Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. One for the master. One for the Dane. And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.”

  Raymond gently leaned his foot on the brake. The car slowed down.

  “It’s working!” Raymond cried.

  George stared blankly.

  “Look.” Raymond slammed the brake to demonstrate. The sharp deceleration jerked the car and pitched their bodies forward.

  George gasped in relief. “Thank you! Thank you for saving my life,” he gushed to the sky, cheeks glistening. With sweat or tears, Raymond wasn’t sure which.