by Yangsze Choo
Maybe he really was a demon, doubling himself so that everywhere I went, he followed me. But no—it was coincidence, a stroke of bad luck. Besides, there was no hint of recognition on his face, eyes screwed tight against the setting sun.
“Shin!” I choked back panic. “Who is that?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “That’s my roommate, Wong Yun Kiong. The one I told you about. We call him Y. K.”
“I thought Koh Beng was your roommate.” The cheerful, porky one.
“No, Koh Beng’s just a friend.”
We were out in the open, on the grass beneath the giant trees and there was nowhere to hide. If I made a run for it he’d surely recognize me. Or perhaps he already had.
“Please don’t let him see me!”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain later. Please!” Squeezing my eyes tight, I buried my face in Shin’s chest. It was the only thing I could think of. For an instant, he stiffened. Then his arms slid reluctantly around me. Warm breath on my neck, the heat of his skin. It gave me a strange sensation, a light-headedness that I put down to anxiety. I’d danced with scores of strangers; this was nothing to get flustered about.
Footsteps crunching on dry leaves drew nearer. Then I heard a voice. I recognized it right away, though I’d only heard it once.
“Hey, Lee Shin! You brought your girlfriend here?”
I clutched Shin, feeling his shirt slide between my fingers.
“I’m off duty,” said Shin. “Come on, can’t you see I’m busy?”
The tread of feet, circling closer. Shin’s chest was broader than I remembered, harder to span with my arms. His heart was beating rapidly, or was it my own?
Y. K. Wong’s voice again. “I’ll let you off if you introduce me to your girlfriend.”
“She’s very shy and you’re embarrassing her—go away!”
A laugh, then the footsteps retreating. “Don’t forget to introduce me!”
I froze, counting the seconds. When I reached ten, I jerked my head up to see if he’d really gone, but Shin gripped me warningly. “Not yet!” he hissed. Then, “You’d better have a good explanation for this.”
The heat from Shin’s hand on the small of my back seeped feverishly up my spine. Releasing me abruptly, he said, “What was all that about?”
Red-faced, I gave a vague account of how Y. K. Wong had come looking for the finger. Shin’s jaw tightened. “How did you really meet all these men—first that salesman with the finger, and now my roommate? If you won’t tell me, I’ll ask him myself.”
I’d have to come up with something better. “I went to a dance hall with friends,” I said at last. “That’s how I met them both—the salesman and your roommate.”
“Why are you going to places like that? It’s all right for men, but not for you, especially since—”
“Since what?” I said. “Since I’m a girl? So you can go tomcatting all over town, but I should wait at home to get married?”
It was easier to pick a fight than admit the shameful truth: that the best-paying job I could get at short notice involved smiling and letting strangers put their hands on me. I was furious at Shin’s superiority, telling me what to do, yet ashamed of my own stupid, shortsighted choices. For if I feared Shin finding out, how much worse would it be if my stepfather did? And what about nurse-training, that I’d been so excited about earlier? Moral-character recommendations mattered, particularly for unmarried women; I hadn’t thought so far ahead when I’d blindly followed Hui to the May Flower.
A pause. “Has anyone asked you to marry him?”
“There’s no one to marry,” I said bitterly. Ming’s name hung in the air between us, unspoken yet so clear that I almost expected it to ring like a bell.
Shin said coldly, “Well, don’t get married without consulting me.”
“Why?”
He looked irritated. “Because you’d probably make a stupid decision.”
“What makes you think I’m stupid? I said no to the pawnbroker’s cousin!”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to kick myself. That was an embarrassing interlude Shin didn’t know about. After he’d gone off to medical school, I’d in fact had a proposal. Hearing that I wasn’t going to study anymore, the local pawnbroker had approached my stepfather on his cousin’s behalf. I’d said no, and surprisingly, my stepfather hadn’t pressed the issue.
“The pawnbroker—you mean my father’s friend? That old goat.” Shin spoke quietly, but his face had turned pale.
“Not him, his cousin,” I faltered.
Shin didn’t resemble my stepfather—at least, not much. Everyone said he favored his long-dead mother. But when his face blanched, it was exactly the same way that my stepfather’s turned white with rage.
I hated to see that look on his face. It made me want to curl up, cover my eyes, run away. For deep in the darkest, most cowardly recess of my heart, I was afraid that one day I’d turn around to discover that Shin, in some monstrous, nightmarish twist, had transformed into his father.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said bitterly. “I won’t do anything. I never have.”
He walked off. I knew those squared shoulders, that dropped head, and I was filled with unbearable pity and misery.
After a bit, I caught up behind him and tugged his hand. “Friends?”
He nodded. It was getting dark, the buildings fading into grey nothingness. We walked in silence for a while, hand in hand as though we were children again. Like Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods, I thought hazily. My face felt dull and increasingly hot. Whether we were following a trail of breadcrumbs or headed to a witch’s den, I’d no idea.
At last I said, “I’d better get to the station.”
“It’s too late,” he said. “The evening train’s gone.”
“What shall I do then?” I sank down on the coarse grass, too tired to care about stains on my dress. There was no one about anyway, although the electric lights in the hospital had winked on.
“Stay over. I told you I fixed it up. Don’t worry about Y. K.—he’s off tonight to visit his parents.”
My head drooped. It was heavy, as though an invisible dwarf was standing on it and stamping its feet triumphantly. Shin felt my forehead. “You have a fever! Why didn’t you say anything?”
* * *
Shin’s nurse friend was out, but he found me a spare bed in the staff hostel for visiting relatives. As he was signing the register, Koh Beng came around the corner.
“Not going back to Ipoh tonight?” He wore a fresh shirt and cotton trousers with a comb tucked in the back pocket, his hair plastered wetly to one side. It was Saturday after all, and the night was just beginning.
“My sister’s tired,” said Shin.
Koh Beng gave me a sly glance. “I heard from Y. K. earlier that she’s not really your sister at all. You dog!”
I looked at Shin. What are we going to do?
“That’s right, she’s my girl,” he said coolly.
“Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Because I’m signing her in as a relative.” Fortunately there was no one at reception to hear this, though a few nurses had passed through, dressed fashionably to go out. It might have been my imagination, but at least a couple of them gave me unfriendly stares.
Koh Beng looked disappointed. “Well, Ji Lin, if you ever get tired of him, don’t forget about me.”
I smiled weakly. My head throbbed as though the invisible dwarves were now pounding it gleefully with mallets; I wondered if I was going to have another strange dream. “I’m going to bed.”
Shin pressed a bottle of aspirin into my hand. “If you need anything, send me a message.”
I nodded and followed the housekeeper into the women’s side of the staff hostel. The housekeeper, an older auntie-type lady, didn’t say anything either. Her back was stiff with disapproval, and I wondered if she’d overheard Koh Beng’s loud remarks. She unlocked a room, a narrow cell-like space wi
th just enough room for a single bed, and handed me the key along with two thin cotton towels.
In the doorway, she turned back, her mouth a thin line. “The guestrooms are really only for family members, not ‘friends.’”
“But we are family,” I said. “By marriage, that is.” I’d meant to say by our parents’ marriage, but my tongue was thick and dry, as though it was too large for my mouth.
She looked relieved. “Oh, so you’re getting married, then? Did you register already?” Lots of young couples registered early at the courthouse so they could apply for housing together. Not having the energy to disabuse her, I smiled feebly.
“So how long have you known each other?” she asked.
“Since we were ten years old.”
“Childhood sweethearts, then!” The housekeeper looked pleased. “And such a pretty, well-dressed girl like you.”
Here was my cue to advertise Mrs. Tham’s dressmaking shop but I felt so ill that I could barely speak. After she’d left, I washed up. I’d have loved to ask the nurses about what it was like to work here, but instead I swallowed two aspirin tablets and lay down. My last thought before I fell asleep was to wonder whether or not we’d locked the pathology storeroom door.
* * *
I was floating. Weightless in water. Above me was a circle of light. With a few lazy kicks, I swam towards it. My head broke through, and gasping, I found myself gazing at a familiar scene. The same sunlit riverbank, overgrown with thickets of bamboo and lalang, the same clear river.
In real life, I couldn’t swim this well but now I delightedly did a few flips. Peering down through the crystalline water, I saw the bleached sand of the riverbed, shadowed with ripples, then the shallow bottom dropping off into blackness. What was it, this nothingness on the bottom of the river? Uneasy, I paddled away from it. The shadow was still there, half a body’s length behind, as though the bottom of the river had fallen away or been eaten by darkness. And it was moving.
The faster I swam, the faster it closed on me. Lungs burning, my thrashing arms and legs propelled me desperately forward. Ahead on the riverbank, a figure burst into view. It was the little boy from the train station.
“Over here!” he shouted.
In a burst of terror, I exploded out of the water and flung myself on the riverbank, wheezing. The little boy bent urgently over me.
“What was that?” I gasped. “That shadow under the water?”
He blinked. “I’m not really sure myself. I can’t go in the water, you see.” Yet his averted gaze made me think that he was lying, or at least, avoiding the topic. “You shouldn’t go in, either. Come on!”
He turned and started walking fast, his head barely higher than the tall grass. I knew where we were heading already: the railway station. I could see its peaked attap roof. Besides, there was nowhere else to go. All around us was green, half-cultivated wilderness, the remains of abandoned farms with tapioca plants and papaya trees. Farther back, the thick blue ridge of hills and jungle pressed in.
When we reached the platform, the little boy turned with a sigh of relief. “I was frightened when I saw you in the water.”
“Has that shadow always been there?”
He nodded. “It’s to keep people on this side from going back over. The last time you came in the water, it didn’t notice you. But this time it did. That’s a bad sign.”
“Why’s that?”
He studied my pajamas carefully. To my surprise, they were dry and clean as though I hadn’t just swum a river and dragged myself through muddy undergrowth. “You don’t belong here.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He looked unhappy again. I’d become accustomed to that look; it meant that he didn’t want to lie but was unwilling to tell me for some reason. It struck me then: this quiet land, the empty station with a train that was always idle, could only be a waiting room.
“Are you one of my mother’s children?” I asked. Was this why he had called me older sister? “One of the Confucian Virtues?”
He looked astonished. “You’re very clever,” he said admiringly. “Because that’s your name, isn’t it? Wisdom.”
“Are you Ren, Yi, or Li?”
The troubled look again. “I’m not your mother’s child, though I’m part of the set. But I don’t understand why you’re the one who keeps coming here when I’m trying to reach my brother.”
“Do you mean Shin? He’s my brother, too.”
“No.” He hesitated, chewing his lip. “I’m worried that my brother is going the wrong way. Following the wrong master.”
“Do I know him?”
“No, but you’ll recognize him.” The little boy’s eyes were shadowed with unease.
Although the coal-black locomotive with its empty carriages stood idle at the station, its position had changed. The first time it had been close to where the tracks rose from beneath the river. The second time it had been half out of the station, as though pulling away. Today it was lined up exactly with the platform. Staring at the train tracks, I had the disconcerting realization that there was only one line. No double tracks for a returning train, no platform on the other side, either.
The little boy followed my glance. “Don’t worry. You’ve never arrived by train, so you can go back on your own. At least, this time.”
I shuddered at the memory of the blackness in the depths of the river. “So you want me to tell your brother to stop whatever he’s doing?”
The little boy looked sad. “Yes. And tell him to beware the fifth of our set. There’s something a bit wrong with each of us, but the fifth one is especially bad. You should be careful, too.”
“I’ll do my best. If I meet your brother, I’ll pass him the message.”
“You mustn’t say you’ve met me.” He looked so serious that I nodded solemnly as well. “I won’t forget your kindness. If you ever learn my name, then you can call me.”
Call you? I’d no intention of coming here again. And of course, it was a dream, I told myself. Only a dream. With that thought, my consciousness dropped off a shelf into somewhere grey and soft and empty.
19
Batu Gajah
Sunday, June 14th
In the end, they don’t kill the tiger.
Ren stays up, sitting with Harun and the other drivers on a long bench behind the Kinta Club, as they talk and smoke and wait for their masters, until his eyelids droop. He has no memory of Harun bringing him, stumbling with sleep, to the car. It’s long past midnight by the time they drive William home, bumping over the gravel drive. Ren goes straight to bed and isn’t aware of anything until the sun is shining in his face.
“It’s past eight o’clock already,” Ah Long growls, looking in on him.
Ren jumps up, remembering the hunt last night. “Did they get it?”
“No. Though they waited all night.”
The hunters had concealed themselves in a makeshift hide positioned downwind from a tethered goat. It was a place carefully chosen to appeal to tigers, under shade and close to water since tigers drink copiously after feeding. The hours had dragged on and on, punctuated only by the occasional terrified bleating of the goat. But the end result was the same. Not even a glimpse of a tiger. Afterwards there were dozens of theories. It was the wrong spot; they should have used a spring-gun trap; they should never have embarked on this without a pawang, or medicine man, to charm the tiger.
“Are there really such people?” asks Ren.
To his surprise, Ah Long nods. “They can call leopards and wild boar, too. Even monkeys. It depends on how powerful they are.” He rubs his upper lip gruffly. “Well, that’s what they say. Now make sure you lay the breakfast table before he gets up.”
* * *
“TUAN, are you going to church?” asks Ren. While William ate breakfast, he polished his master’s shoes with brown Kiwi shoe polish, purchased yesterday in town, till they were bright. William inspects them and says they remind him of ripe chestnuts, though Ren has n
o idea what he’s referring to. Some kind of fruit, he thinks, though he can’t imagine a fruit that looks like shoes.
“Yes, I’m going this morning.” He’ll drive himself as Harun has Sunday off.
“Is it true that the tiger has left this area?”
William nods. It’s as if the tiger has vanished utterly, leading to lurid speculation that it’s not a normal beast. Word has already gone round that Ambika was a loose woman and that’s why she was taken. Rumors like this make William noticeably uneasy. Ren can only conclude, as he stands on the gravel drive to see the car off, that William must be a kindhearted and sympathetic person.
When the housework is done, Ren hurries back to his quarters to examine the finger that he took—no, stole—from the hospital yesterday, though it fills him with a nameless dread. The trousers he wore last night are still hanging on their hook. Ren takes out the bottle, setting it on the window ledge. Outside, the thick bamboo hedge is wet and soft with dew. A mynah bird picks its way across the grass, head cocked in a yellow-eyed stare. In the morning sunlight, the finger looks just as sad and grisly as it did yesterday in the pathology storeroom.
Ren stares until he gets dizzy but his cat sense is strangely quiet. Yesterday, his head was filled with its quivering hum, but today there’s only stillness. A hushed expectancy.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Ren wills his cat sense to return. He’s missed it desperately in the three years since Yi died. It was gone when he needed it most: those last few months with Dr. MacFarlane, when he said those strange things that confused and alarmed Ren. The old doctor’s eyes would open wide as he whispered, in a glassy trance. Long, detailed descriptions of killing deer and wild boar, creeping silently from behind them. The sudden rush, choking the throat by biting. Wrenching the head to break the neck.