The Night Tiger(106)

Bang. The door in the next carriage crashes shut, as though slammed by an invisible attendant. Ren sees the door on their own carriage quiver as though it’s about to go as well. Desperate, he makes a mad dive. Feels the air cut his ears, the force of the door brush his skin. And it’s bright, so very bright now that he can only grimace and squint as tears leak out from behind his eyes.



* * *



Someone is mopping the floor. There’s the swish of water being wrung out, the clatter of a bucket. Ren is lying on a bed—a hospital bed, as he now recalls. His chest heaves, his heart races, because didn’t he just dive through a train door? He’s here yet still there, the fragments of the two places overlapping. If he closes his eyes he can still see Nandani’s shocked expression, the faint smirk on Pei Ling’s blanched face. No, he doesn’t want to think of her.

“Awake, are you?” A wiry little man is looking down at him. In one hand he holds a mop. Ren blinks painfully and struggles to sit up. His mouth is parched, and the custodian pours him a cup of lukewarm water. “Shall I call the nurse?” he says in Cantonese.

Ren shakes his head. “What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

There’s a bustle, some noise in the corridor, and one of the nurses sticks her head in. Gravely, she beckons to the custodian. “Can you lend a hand?”

He follows her out. Ren can hear their voices from the next ward.

“—move to the morgue?”

“Yes, her family’s been contacted.”

After a few minutes, the custodian returns for his mop, a troubled look on his face. Through the open door behind him, Ren glimpses a gurney being wheeled out. Someone is lying on it, covered in a white sheet. “Who is that?”

“Another patient.”

Two pale feet stick out. Slim enough that they can only belong to a woman. There’s something about their stillness that makes Ren’s stomach lurch.

“Why is her face covered?” Ren says. “Is she dead?”

The custodian hesitates, mumbling, “Sometimes it’s time for people to go.”

Time to go. It gives Ren a mixed-up sensation. “Did you know her?”

“She was a nurse here.”

A sick feeling in Ren’s gut. Those narrow feet, the left one hanging at an odd angle. He tries to scramble out of bed; he must see her face! But the pain in his side twists. He gives a cry of anguish. Alarmed, the custodian makes a grab at him. “What are you doing?”

“I think I know her. Please, let me see her!”

Drawn by the commotion, the nurse looks back in. “What’s happening?”

“The boy says he knows her.”

She purses her lips and shakes her head. “Out of the question!” and gives Ren an annoyed, disapproving glance, as though he’s done something wicked.

The gurney is being wheeled away and Ren wants to cry. Instead, he digs his fingers weakly into his pillow. “What was her name?”

“Pei Ling.”

And now Ren is really sobbing. Not for that little nurse Pei Ling, but for Nandani, because he finally understands where she has gone.





42

Taiping

Saturday, June 27th




No sooner had I dropped the glass bottle with its withered finger into the hole I’d dug in Dr. MacFarlane’s grave than I heard Shin’s voice, deliberately loud to warn me of their approach. Frantically, I shoveled earth back into the hole and stepped away. As Shin and the caretaker’s mother came around the corner, I waved and joined them, tucking the spade back in the bag.

“Seen all you wanted?” asked the old lady.

Shin seized my hand in his. “Yes, we must get going.” We thanked her for her time, and let ourselves out of the churchyard as quickly as possible.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him under my breath, as he set a brisk pace. “Why are you holding my hand?”

In answer, he turned it over. It was streaked with red clay.

“Do you think she noticed?”

“Hope not. There’s some on your knees, too.”

I glanced down. All my excursions lately had ended in dirt and grime. From the cobwebs and dust in the pathology storeroom, to Ren’s bloodstains, and finally this. Earth from someone’s grave.

“Did you bury it?”

“All done,” I said softly.

Glowering clouds had hidden the sunset and gave the sky a hazy, bluish quality. A trembling dusk descended. I could taste the humidity in the back of my throat with every breath that I took.

“What time is it?” Absorbed as we’d been in the old lady’s tale, I’d forgotten to check the clock at the church.

Shin glanced at his wristwatch. “Twenty to eight.”

The late train to Ipoh left at eight o’clock, and we were still a mile away from the station. I glanced around anxiously, but the street was deserted with not a trishaw in sight.

Shin looked at the sky. “I think it’s going to—”

The heavens opened and the first fat raindrops splattered, like flattened tadpoles, on the dusty road.

“Run!”



* * *



I never could understand those English books in which people go on long damp walks over the heath (whatever that was) in the rain with only a deerstalker hat and an Inverness cape to protect them. Rain in the tropics is like a bathtub upended in the sky. The rain falls so hard and fast that in a few minutes you’re soaked to the skin. There’s no time to think, only the overwhelming need to run under shelter. And run we did.