The Night Tiger(15)

“What are you doing? If you take that off she’ll bleed to death!”

“It’s too tight and too close to the wound. She’ll lose the leg.”

Ren grits his teeth, willing the new tourniquet to hold. Around him people are muttering, but no one else appears to take charge. Ren checks the pulse in her ankle. Still some slow bleeding. Twisting the knotted stick, he slowly increases the pressure until it stops.

The woman is beginning to stir again, moaning as they hold her down and he syringes the wound with hydrogen peroxide. It’s all he has on hand, but as the raw flesh bubbles and foams, he feels the onlookers turn away. The blood makes him dizzy. Breathe, he tells himself. If you don’t breathe you’ll faint.

At last it’s over. The dressing he puts on top soon becomes soaked, but it’s better than the glimpse of bone.

“You should take her to the hospital now,” he says over the relieved chatter. “She needs stitches.”

They put her into the wheelbarrow again, and he worries how she’ll endure the journey. If he had some morphine, he’d give her a quarter grain. He isn’t supposed to do that. The old doctor always warned him away, locking the medicine cabinet, but he’s seen him administer it enough times.

Ren begins to clean up the litter of dressings. His legs are weak; his hands tremble uncontrollably. He hadn’t even asked for the woman’s name or what caused the injury, although he was dimly aware that someone had given an explanation. All that had consumed him was stopping the blood.

He’s about to fetch water to scrub down the veranda when Ah Long says, “Leave it. Go and change.” Then he realizes his new white houseboy’s uniform is spattered with blood.

“Soak the clothes in cold water,” says Ah Long. “If it doesn’t come out, you’ll have to make a new set out of your own wages.” He has a curious expression on his face, both sour and grudgingly respectful.

Ren washes himself in the small bathhouse behind the servants’ quarters, scooping water out of a large pottery jar with a dipper and sluicing it over his body. When he closes his eyes he can still see the blood seeping onto the wooden planks. Like Yi’s blood, he thinks, oozing out from beneath his own fingers. He’d placed his hands on his brother’s chest, trying to stanch the flow. But it was hopeless. Yi’s body turned cold, his eyes rolled up in his head. His small chest rattled its last.

When Ren returns to the main house, Ah Long is preparing lunch for the servants. Ren has discovered that there are indeed others: a woman who helps with the laundry, the Malay driver, Harun, and two Tamil gardeners. But he and Ah Long are the only ones who live in the servants’ quarters behind the large bungalow.

Since William is at the hospital, Ah Long has put together some simple noodles in broth. Shredded chicken and boiled greens are piled on top, with a gloss of fried shallot oil. Ren notices that Ah Long has given him a larger portion than usual, with extra meat. They eat in silence. When they’re finished, Ah Long says, “You shouldn’t have done it. If she dies after you treated her, it’ll be your misfortune.”

“Will the master be angry?” Ren recalls the dressings he’s used, the half-emptied bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He’ll boil the glass syringe; fortunately he didn’t use a needle. He never had to ask Dr. MacFarlane for permission.

“He doesn’t like anyone touching his things.”

Ren is silent. What had he been thinking? And he hasn’t even completed the task the old doctor set him. With a feeling of panic, he tallies the time since Dr. MacFarlane died. Only twenty-three days left.

“What happens during the forty-nine days after someone dies?” Ren asks Ah Long.

Ah Long, thinking that Ren is still worried about the young Sinhalese woman, says, “She won’t die. At least, I hope not.”

“But what happens anyway?”

“Aiya, the soul wanders around. It goes and looks at people and places it knows. Then if it’s satisfied, it leaves.”

“What if it’s not satisfied?”

“It won’t pass on. That’s how hauntings occur.”

Ren’s eyes widen, and Ah Long says, “Don’t worry, that’s just superstition.”

“Can a wandering spirit turn into an animal?”

“Hah? No, there are stories, but it isn’t true.”

Ah Long is so dismissive of the idea that Ren is somewhat comforted. In the bright sunshine, there’s nothing to worry about. Today, he’s saved a life. How much weight does that carry?





8

Falim

Sunday, June 7th




Despite my aching head, I fell into a deep sleep as soon as I burrowed into my narrow bed. So deep that I felt pleasantly drugged, floating in cool water down a river of dreams.

Bright riverbanks flickered lazily past, the images tiny and clear as though seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Thickets of bamboo and underbrush, sunlit elephant grass. It was the sort of landscape with tiny figures you might see from a train, and even as this thought occurred to me, I spotted a locomotive. It stood, billowing steam, at a small railway station.

Strangely, the train tracks started beneath the water, the submerged railroad ties snaking up from the white sandy bottom and climbing the bank. There was no one in the train except a little boy, about eight years old. He smiled and waved from the window, showing a gap where one of his front teeth was missing. I waved back at him. Then I was floating away again, led by the current until I woke in the grey dawn.