The Night Tiger(130)
“I’ll borrow your class notes every night,” he said with mock seduction. My stomach gave a little flip. If Shin kept looking at me like that, I was going to make a fool of myself, and he knew it.
“Shin.” I took a deep breath. This was going to be difficult to say.
In answer, he traced the palm of my hand delicately with his finger.
“We can’t get married.” I stared straight out of the window. His finger stopped. “At least, not now.”
He was silent for a long time. “Because of your mother?”
“No, we ought to think things through properly—it will be hard for you at school and work. People will talk. And I want to live on my own for a bit. Find a job, take care of myself. I don’t want you to be responsible for me, when you’re still studying. And I’m not ready to get married right away.”
“How long?”
“I’m not sure.”
“A year,” he said without looking at me. “In a year and a day, if you haven’t made up your mind, then you’ll be mine.”
“I told you there’s no such thing as belonging to anyone!”
But he only said maddeningly, “There has to be a time limit. Otherwise we’ll just go on and on like this. I refuse to play at being twins anymore.”
A year and a day. It sounded like a dark path strewn with thorny vines and unknown beasts. Were we out of the jungle yet, Shin and I? I’d no idea of the terrain ahead, but perhaps that was all right. I had a sudden vision of high-ceilinged rooms, long sunlit hallways, and quiet libraries. The King Edward Medical College, of which I’d heard so much. Shin laughing across a table with a group of fellow students. Myself, getting on a crowded bus while balancing a box full of books. Frying rice in a cramped apartment kitchen, listening for familiar quick footsteps on the stairs. Shin and me, walking by a river in the cool evening air, eating fried bananas and arguing companionably. Strangely enough, in all these scenes I was dressed fashionably enough to please Mrs. Tham. The breeze from the open train window whipped my short hair and bangs. My heart soared.
“All right,” I said, laughing. “Friends?”
Shin rolled his eyes, but stuck his hand out in the familiar gesture. “Your mother said some terrible things about me the other night. But she was right. I’m definitely going to seduce you.”
53
Batu Gajah
Two weeks later
When it’s all over—the police and the funeral and the well-meaning rush of visitors—Ren sits on the back kitchen steps. The house is empty; there’s only him and Ah Long left packing up the master’s things. Not that there’s much. William had very few personal effects though he had, in his characteristically efficient way, drawn up a will. Very recently, the lawyer said. Ren knows about lawyers; he remembers the one in Taiping who took care of Dr. MacFarlane’s affairs, and how he’d grimaced at the mess of papers stuffed into the crannies of the old doctor’s desk. But William’s affairs are neatly arranged.
Heart failure was the official verdict. Miss Lydia made a scene at the funeral, crying and carrying on that she was his fiancée, which was a surprise to lots of people, including her own parents. Her grief and fury were astonishing. Embarrassing, even. She wanted everything that had belonged to him, but the lawyer said she wasn’t in the will and a fiancée wasn’t the same as a wife. The servants have spread the gossip through their swift channels, and everyone knows about this by now.
Ah Long sighs and shrugs. “Lucky he didn’t marry her.” The lines on his face are deeper and his wiry frame has shrunk. As he moves around the empty house, packing away the good silver and crystal to be sent back to the Acton family, his steps are slow and less sure. He doesn’t seem to care about the bequest that William has made: To my Chinese cook, Ah Long, a sum of forty Malayan dollars for his loyal service, though it is a princely gift.
Ren doesn’t have the heart to rejoice, either, despite the fact he, too, is mentioned. There’s a scholarship fund for Ren to go to school, though the monies can only be used for education.
“I don’t want it,” he says to the lawyer’s surprise.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to study. Not right now.”
The lawyer frowns. “Why not wait? Give yourself time to think about it.”
* * *
After his departure, Ah Long calls Ren over to the formal dining room, the table’s polished surface marked by neat piles of unopened mail. They’re all addressed to William and will be forwarded to his family.
“What is it?” Ren asks.
Ah Long holds up a white envelope. For a dizzying second, Ren wonders whether his master has finally received an answer from that lady Iris, the one that he wrote letter after letter to. But no, this letter is for Ren. His name is written on it as a single Chinese character. That’s the part that Ah Long can, thankfully, read.
“For me?” Ren has never in his short life received anything like a letter, though he knows how to write one. Dr. MacFarlane taught him the format, when they were practicing dictation. Ren slits the envelope open carefully. Inside is a single piece of paper.
“Who’s it from?” asks Ah Long suspiciously.
But Ren is reading slowly. It’s short, no more than a few sentences, and when he’s read it through twice, he tucks it away.