The Night Tiger(18)

“I’m so sorry,” I said. And I was. I hadn’t liked the salesman much, but sitting in the house where he had lived, on a rattan armchair that he must have used, I felt a cold shadow settle on me.

“Actually, I didn’t know Mr. Chan well,” I said. “He was a customer at our shop and he happened to leave something behind. Then I read he’d passed away and thought I should return it.”

“In that case, you’d better talk to his wife.” She got up and parted the curtain of wooden beads in the rear of the house. “Ah Yoke!” she called. “This young lady has something from Yew Cheung.”

There was a long pause. Shin and I shifted uncomfortably in our seats. The aunt had just begun to say, “She’s very upset, as you can expect—” when a woman rushed into the room, hair wild and face swollen with crying. She flew straight at me.

“Bitch!” she shrieked. “How dare you come here?”

Shocked, I could barely block her with my arms, even as she slapped and scratched hysterically. Shin leaped up and dragged her off me. She fell in a heap on the floor and started to scream. It was a horrible noise, like a pig being slaughtered.

The aunt said, “Ah Yoke, what’s wrong with you? I’m so sorry! She’s been like this since yesterday. Are you hurt?”

Shaken, I put my hand to my throat. Ah Yoke was still lying on the floor. Her screams had died down into whimpers. “Give it,” she said. “Give it back to me.”

“What does she want?” I asked, horrified.

“Ah Yoke,” said the aunt, “you’re mistaken. This young lady works at a shop. She’s not one of Yew Cheung’s girls.” Darting a quick glance at me, she said, “You’re not, are you?”

I shook my head. “I only met him once.”

“See?” The aunt was patting Ah Yoke’s head. “She didn’t know him. And look, she came with her young man today.”

Ah Yoke continued to sob and writhe on the ground, her hands clenching and unclenching. Her body contorted unnaturally, her movements like a snake. She didn’t seem human anymore. I felt dizzy; if not for Shin’s grip, I’d have fallen to my knees.

“You’d better go,” the aunt said quietly. “Yew Cheung was my nephew, but he wasn’t a saint. He played around. And yesterday, you know, there were some girls here. Bar girls and prostitutes. They wanted to pay their respects, but they shouldn’t have come. I guess she mistook you for one of them.”

Shame colored my face. A dance hostess wasn’t anything to be proud of, either. I’d made my own troubles when I took the finger, and now I had to get out of them myself. Taking out the glass bottle, I set it on the floor.

“Do you recognize this?” I asked Ah Yoke.

She sat up slowly, her long black hair straggling over her face like drowned strands of riverweed. “It’s his,” she said dully.

“Was this what you were looking for?” I said.

Shaking her head, she started to cry, making no attempt to brush away the tears running down her white, swollen face. It felt indecent to watch her; her face was so raw and naked. I stood up, but she snatched at the hem of my skirt.

“Did he give you anything else? A gold pendant?”

“No.”

Oddly, she seemed to take heart at this. “Last week he bought a pendant for another woman. That’s what I wanted to know about. Not this.” She jerked her head towards the finger. She hadn’t touched it once. Her eyes were puffy, the lids painfully pink. “It was his good luck charm. Since he had it, his sales record improved a lot.”

“When did he get it?” asked Shin. She stared at him as though registering his presence for the first time.

“Three … maybe four months ago. He got it from a friend. Actually, I think he stole it.” Ah Yoke made a face as though there was a bad taste in her mouth.

“I’d like to return it to you,” I said. In that neat little wooden house, amid the utterly ordinary furniture and daily objects—a crocheted doily on the table, a palm-leaf food cover to keep off the flies—the withered finger looked even grimmer and out of place. I glanced at the aunt and realized that she didn’t look surprised. She’s seen it before, I thought.

Ah Yoke shook her head wildly. “Don’t leave it with me!” I was afraid she was going to start screaming again.

The aunt hustled us to the door. “You’d better go now.”

“But what about the finger?”

She tucked it firmly into my basket again. “Do whatever you like. Or give it back to whoever he got it from.”

“And who was that?” asked Shin.

“He told me it was a nurse at the Batu Gajah hospital,” said the aunt, in an undertone. Shin’s ears pricked up at this. “That’s all I know. Now please leave.”

We walked back to the bus stop in silence. It was past noon now, and the glare from the road was so dazzling that I wanted to cover my eyes. My face was tender where Ah Yoke had attacked me. Shin stopped under a large tree.

“Wait here.” Crossing the road to a small shop, he returned with an enamel mug of water and a bottle of iodine. He tilted my face to examine it. I closed my eyes. His hands were cool and deft.

“You’re going to have a black eye and some spectacular scratches.”