The Night Tiger(115)

A pause. “Yes.”

“Who is it?”

“Ming.” I studied her covertly. How much did she want Robert as a son-in-law?

“Oh. Ming.” My mother gave a sigh of relief. “You know that’s not going to happen. He’s engaged.” Still, she gave me a searching look. Did she suspect?

At dinner, my mother and I watched each other warily. The prospect of her confessing her debts to my stepfather filled me with dread, but she seemed far more concerned about my missing a chance with Robert. I read the suspicion on her face; she didn’t quite believe I was still hung up on Ming, yet not a word passed our lips because my stepfather was there. He sat, oppressively silent, while we picked at our food. You could have cut the air with a knife. I glanced at Shin’s empty seat at the table too many times and when I caught my mother’s eye, dropped mine guiltily. This was no good. I’d give myself away at this rate. So I went to bed, praying that morning would come quickly.



* * *



But what came instead were dreams. Not the sunlit place where I always met Yi, but other strange visions. Perhaps I’d been worrying too much about the events of the last few days, because I was at a railway interchange with many platforms and corridors and stairs that connected below the tracks. It was like a reverse image of the Ipoh Railway Station. That was white and grand, but here all was dark, narrow, and grimy. Dusk was falling, a blue hush, and crowds of silent, wraithlike figures were rushing here and there. All I knew was that I must choose a train soon, or be left behind.

The people themselves were indistinct. If I stared hard, they dissolved like smoke, but as soon as I glanced away they were back, bustling around on some important business. Walking over to the edge of the platform, I peered at the railway tracks. They ran away like crooked ladders into the distance. A pair of opposing signs pointed to Hulu and Hilir, meaning upstream and downstream in Malay, though that made no sense in a railway station. The track labeled Hilir made me think that far away, at the other end, I might find Yi. It was a wink of a thought that I dismissed, though I had the feeling that if I called Yi right now, he’d appear in that same noiseless, frightening way.

Sooty smoke drifted over the platform as a train rattled in. People hurried to get on and I hesitated, wondering if I’d be trapped here forever if I didn’t make a decision soon. A spare old man—a foreigner with light eyes and a grey, scrubby beard—made his way across the platform. The edges of the dark suit he wore seemed to fray and blur as though it was unraveling into the falling dusk. His mouth moved as he pointed at my traveling basket.

“I beg your pardon?” I said.

Still no sound, like a radio that had gone silent, but I could tell from the careful, exaggerated movements of his lips that he was trying to speak to me.

Put it back, he mouthed, nodding at my basket. And I knew, in that inexplicable way of dreams, that he meant the remaining finger—the thumb from Pei Ling’s package.

“Where? The hospital?”

But he only smiled. Thank you for everything. Then he was passing me, climbing onto the train.

“Wait!” I cried, running after him.

He turned and looked at me genially. Courteously. I stared into his eyes, those light-colored eyes, and realized that they had slit, vertical pupils, like the eyes of a cat. Horrified, I took a step back.

The old man bowed his head. I am going now. He put his hands together in a gesture of apology and gratitude, and I saw then that his hands were intact with all ten fingers. Steam and gritty smoke billowed. There was only the scream of the train whistle, the deep vibration of the tracks, and a greyness that descended on everything.



* * *



The train whistle had become a caw, the harsh croak of a crow walking up and down the ledge outside my window. Pressing my hands against my eyes, it occurred to me that besides meaning “upstream” and “downstream,” the words hulu hilir also meant “beginning and end” in Malay. I sat up in the morning hush. It was a dream, nothing more. Or was it? One way or another, I’d never wanted to talk to the dead.

Put it back, he’d said. Shivering in the cool morning air, I picked my way over to my traveling basket. I’d packed the lists of names to show Koh Beng as well as the severed thumb, the one from Pei Ling’s mysterious package. Today I’d go to Batu Gajah and replace it among all the other specimens in that pathology storeroom, and put an end, hopefully, to all this.

But that’s not what I told my mother. “I’m heading back to Ipoh.”

She’d nodded without comment, though her eyes were doubtful. She was still worried about Robert. But I wasn’t planning to see Robert again—only Shin. I had to tell him about my dream. Remembering the old foreigner’s left hand, with its five intact fingers, I was certain that we’d done right in burying the finger in Dr. MacFarlane’s grave.



* * *



When I arrived at the hospital in Batu Gajah, it was half past eight in the morning. A little early for the crowd that had gathered, milling around in front of the main entrance.

“What happened?” I asked a middle-aged woman in a yellow samfoo.

“Accident. Police won’t let us in, even though I told them I had an appointment and the poor fellow’s dead already.”

Alarm shivered through me. “Who died?”