The Night Tiger(126)

William smiles humorlessly and says something about out of the mouths of babes. Then he announces he’s tired and is going to bed. No need for dinner tonight. His feet drag on the stairs, like a man sentenced to death.



* * *



The next morning, William doesn’t come down. Ah Long, frowning at the untouched breakfast, cocks his head at Ren. “Go and see what’s happened.”

Ren climbs the stairs, feeling the smooth, cool wood beneath his bare feet. All the way up, like a cabin boy climbing the lookout mast. At the window at the top, he remembers how he’d thought of the white bungalow as a ship in a storm, the deep green jungle a rolling ocean. In it were all manner of strange beasts, including Dr. MacFarlane, roaming around in the form of a tiger.

Ren shakes his head; the image vanishes. Already it’s receding, that dim fearfulness about his old master: the dark loneliness, the promises about severed fingers and digging up graves. Even his worries about forty-nine days have subsided, a calamity averted though if you asked Ren, he couldn’t tell you what or why. Only that he’s certain, down to his bones, that the finger has returned to Dr. MacFarlane. He has an odd vision—small and bright, like a fever dream—of Ji Lin on her knees, digging hastily with a spade. Dropping something in, then sealing it under the damp red earth. Whatever happened, he has faith that she wouldn’t let him down. Though since he woke up in the hospital after Nandani’s death, he can no longer recall these things well, as though the long night has ended and day has begun. A day that beckons with the promise of school. Excited, Ren quickens his steps. Dr. MacFarlane would have been pleased; he always meant to send Ren to school.

The door to William’s room is closed. Ren knocks, then tries the handle softly. It’s locked. Puzzled and a little frightened, Ren reports to Ah Long.

“Is he sick?”

“Might be.”

Ah Long gets up. He rummages in the kitchen drawer, then together they ascend the stairs. The house is so quiet that Ren imagines that everything—the walls and the ceiling, the grass outside and the bowl-shaped whiteness of the sky—is holding its breath. No sound but the quiet padding of their feet and the thudding of Ren’s heart. At the locked door, Ah Long stops and bends his ear to the keyhole. Nothing.

With a sigh, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the enormous bunch of keys that he keeps in the kitchen drawer. He searches through them, counting under his breath. Takes one out and fits it to the lock. As the door swings open, he says sharply, “Don’t come in!”

Frightened, Ren waits outside. He doesn’t need to listen to Ah Long’s hasty movements. Walking over to the bed, drawing back the curtains. That stillness is familiar to him—the one that tells him that the occupant of the room has gone away forever. And Ren, leaning back against the wall, feels hot tears stream silently down his face.





52

Falim/Ipoh

Wednesday, July 1st




And so we were back where we started. In that long, dim shophouse filled with the metallic scent of tin ore and the dampness that seeped from the lower floor. Discharged from the hospital, his broken arm in a neat white cast, Shin had come home.

My mother was happy that we were both back, though I was due to return to Mrs. Tham’s in a few days. I should visit Hui, too. Tell her that I’d quit the May Flower, though she’d probably figured it out by now. There were so many matters I wanted to discuss with Shin, but we had no opportunity. My stepfather’s silent presence filled the front of the shophouse where he conducted business, and my mother twittered about, cooking our favorite childhood dishes, though I begged her not to strain herself.

“It’s good that you’re home,” she said, fussing over Shin’s arm.

That was one thing I was glad about at least, that she was so fond of him. Perhaps it would all come out right for us. After all, Ren had been discharged after making a remarkable recovery. And neither Shin nor I had died yet. I kept my thoughts about Yi to myself, hugging them like a sad secret. If the dead lived on in people’s memories, then I’d keep him safe forever.



* * *



That night I sat at the kitchen table in the warm pool of lamplight, rereading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I’d loved it enough to buy my own copy from the secondhand bookstore, though Koh Beng and his string of murders had dampened my enthusiasm for detective work. Still, it was better than being left to my own thoughts. My mother and stepfather had gone up to bed, and Shin was out with Ming.

The reality of what Shin and I were doing weighed on me. What sort of future would we have? Perhaps in this life, Shin and I could only be siblings, false twins destined to be together, yet apart. It was so still that I could hear the clock ticking far in the front of the shophouse. A hollow chiming. Ten o’clock. The rattle of the front door. And now Shin was back, his quick familiar step walking down the long dark passageway, past the heavy weighing scales, past the first open courtyard with its piles of drying tin ore.

“Shin,” I called softly, getting up.

It was dim in the corridor, where the yellow lamplight spilled from the kitchen. All my thoughts, my good intentions flew out of my head when I saw him. Wordlessly, I tugged him over to the table. He gave a sharp glance upstairs.

“They’re asleep,” I said.

We sat next to each other, demurely. I felt oddly shy, my pulse racing. How strange it was, to be sitting like this in my stepfather’s house. As though everything and nothing had changed between us. If I closed my eyes, we could have been ten years old again.