The Night Tiger(100)

“Yi said that the order was all messed up, and that we should try to fix it.”

“What order?”

“The way things have been done. Like a ritual.” I frowned, trying to recall what I knew about Confucianism.

“Has it occurred to you that you might just be hallucinating all of this?”

We got on the northbound train this time. Another third-class carriage with hard wooden seats, but my spirits rose. I loved trains.

“But what else can I do? And how do you explain the dreams, and Yi?”

“He only tells you what you already know,” said Shin maddeningly. “It’s like a conversation with yourself.”

“What about Ren, then? He looks exactly like Yi, only older. And he recognized me that night.”

“Coincidence. All small Chinese boys look the same.”

“Dr. MacFarlane and his finger? The five of us and our names, and how everything fits together—how do you explain all of that?”

He shrugged. “I can’t.”

“If Ren dies, at least I’ll have done what he asked.” I shivered. Yi’s words, his master’s business, echoed in my head. Darkness. Rustling leaves. I thought of the newspaper article about a headless female torso discovered in a plantation. Who, or what, was Ren’s master?

“And the thumb from Pei Ling’s parcel?”

“You should tell Dr. Rawlings about it. Say that you suspect someone, maybe Y. K. Wong, is stealing body parts.”

Shin said, fierce and low, “I’m going to kill Y. K. when I see him again. Locking you in like that.”

“Don’t!” Alarmed, I glanced at him. “But you ought to report him. If he’s been selling weretiger fingers and goodness knows what else as amulets, that explains why the salesman had a finger in his pocket. They were friends—Pei Ling said as much, that her lover had a friend at the hospital who she didn’t much like.”

“And what about the rest of Pei Ling’s package?”

That was more complicated. Perhaps it was blackmail, or they’d had a falling out of sorts. Dimly, I was aware that the patterns were moving, shifting into a new configuration, like the image of fingers I’d had in my head. Five fingers, playing an unknown tune. I had the uneasy feeling that it was a dirge.



* * *



The note next to the name J. MacFarlane on the handwritten list in Pei Ling’s package had said Taiping/Kamunting. I was sure that he must be the person Ren had referred to when he’d run out into the darkness that night. And I was equally certain that he was dead, since Ren had mentioned a grave.

Taiping was a quiet little town, the state capital of Perak though there was talk that Ipoh would soon receive that honor. I wasn’t quite sure where Kamunting was. Perhaps it was one of the satellite villages around Taiping, just as Falim was to Ipoh. If Dr. MacFarlane was a foreigner who’d died in that area, there was only one place he could be: the Anglican cemetery.

I explained this to Shin, and he nodded, which made me suspicious. He was being far too docile about this spur-of-the-moment trip.

“Do you have work tomorrow?” I asked. Taiping was more than forty miles from Ipoh by rail, but it would take a while to get there because of the winding track and all the stops at Chemor and Kuala Kangsar. At this rate, we wouldn’t arrive until five o’clock in the afternoon. There was a late train starting back at eight, more than enough time to visit the cemetery, but I was worried about Shin.

“I don’t start my shift until tomorrow afternoon,” he said, closing his eyes. “Stop talking. I need to think.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was just using it as an excuse to go to sleep, but I left him alone. The train jolted along slowly, the trees passing in a steady green blur. The breeze from the open window blew away the cobwebs in my brain.

Ren, I thought. Are you still alive? Yi had said he’d discovered that as long as he lingered on that shore, he could draw Ren to the other world. The world of the dead. Perhaps the finger, that dried blackened digit that rattled in my bag, exerted the same weighty pull. Ren seemed driven to obey whatever promise he’d made, to the point of running out into the night when there was a tiger outside. Or perhaps he’d been lured out to be shot and killed in the dark.

The best I could do was to complete the task for him and bury that finger. Sever at least one lingering attachment that drew him towards the dead. The other one, however, I feared was too strong. The train rattled onward, the jungle passing like a dream, and I closed my eyes.

There was a grinding hiss. With a start, I discovered that the train had shuddered to a stop.

“Sleep well?” Shin looked amused. I had, in fact, though I realized with embarrassment that my head was pillowed on his shoulder. People were lifting their luggage off the racks overhead. We were the only two without belongings.

“You were knocked out, too,” I said, as we clambered off the train. “Or were you just ‘thinking’?”

He seemed to be in a remarkably good mood. “No, I’m done with that. By the way, who was that girl at the dance hall? The one who tried to pull my hair out?”

“That was my friend Hui,” I said.

Somehow, I felt uneasy about this interest. Please, Shin, I thought, not Hui. So far, Shin had never dated any of my good friends, no matter how they made eyes at him. It hadn’t mattered to me before, wrapped up as I’d been with Ming, but it did now.