The Night Tiger(30)

“It’s a third-class carriage, I’m afraid,” said Shin.

I didn’t care. I was so excited that I had to stop myself from jumping up to look at everything, from the hard wooden seats to the windows that slid up and down. Amused, Shin put my basket on the rack above the seat and I noticed for the first time that he’d brought nothing with him.

“Were you in town last night?” I asked. “Mrs. Tham said she saw you.”

“I stayed with a friend.”

I wondered who it was—maybe a woman—but felt I shouldn’t pry.

“So why are we going to Batu Gajah?” I’d been there once to visit one of my mother’s relatives. It was a pretty little town, sleepily satisfied with its position as the center of colonial administration for the Kinta district. “It’s not because of the finger, is it?” My face fell.

The train gave a final, ear-splitting whistle. “Of course it’s because of the finger,” said Shin. “Don’t you want to find out where it came from?”

I considered telling him about narrow-faced Mr. Y. K. Wong, but couldn’t explain without mentioning the dance-hall part. Instead, I nodded.

“Anyway,” said Shin, “I went down to Batu Gajah early on Monday. They’re a bit short-staffed and were glad enough to have me.” He was looking out of the window, but I understood, without his saying anything, that Shin couldn’t stand being in the same house as his father. No doubt that was why he’d stayed in Singapore during the last holiday break.

“How is it?” I asked.

“I’m bunking with another orderly—he’s friendly enough. The first thing I did was to look up that salesman, Chan Yew Cheung. His aunt said he’d been close to a nurse at the hospital, so I tried to find out if he’d been a patient. Unfortunately, the patient registrations are locked up in the records department. But I lucked into something else.”

“What? The nurse who gave it to him?” Knowing Shin, that would be a fairly easy job.

“No, the pathology department. It’s run by a doctor named Rawlings. They’re fixing up that part of the hospital, and there are boxes of records and specimens to move. He asked me to work overtime and finish it this weekend. It’s just donkey work, but I jumped at it. Also, he said to get some help. I said I knew someone who’d do it for cheap.”

“Is that me?” I asked indignantly.

“Don’t you need a part-time job?”

For a heart-sinking moment, I thought he must have found out about everything—my mother’s debts, my dance-hall work—but he was only joking.

It wasn’t as though I didn’t trust him; I knew he had a soft spot for my mother. But I was sure, down to my very bones, that getting Shin involved would be trouble. One of these days, either he or my stepfather would kill the other. It had very nearly happened a couple of years ago.



* * *



That evening, I’d been over at a friend’s place for dinner. On my return, I was surprised to find all the neighbors standing in the street in front of the shophouse. The fading light dyed everything in cold blue shadows. Not a time to be out chitchatting, as I noted in alarm. Someone was saying that they ought to call the police but my mother was begging them not to. It was just a family disagreement, she said, and it wouldn’t happen again.

I rushed over, anxiously scanning her for telltale signs of injury. But she seemed unhurt and in fact, when I slipped into the shophouse, it was my stepfather who was holding a bloody towel to his face. I’d never seen him with any kind of wound and, for a treacherous instant, was pleased to see a mark on him, even if it was just a bloody nose.

The interior of the shophouse was completely silent. That frightened me more than anything. “Where’s Shin?” I said, though it took all my nerve to speak to my stepfather. He said nothing, only glared in silence.

Dropping my schoolbag, I ran through the house. Past the hanging pendulum scales, past the silent piles of raked tin ore. My breath came in short gasps; my side hurt. I wanted to call out to Shin but my mouth was sealed with terror. If he didn’t answer, then he must be severely injured. Or dead. My stepfather’s beatings had tapered off over the years: Shin had learned to watch the mood, to be careful what he said and did. Why, only a few weeks previously my mother had said she was glad that Shin had grown up so well, which was her way of saying he wasn’t getting into trouble with his father, but I’d had my doubts. I never trusted that man.

I ran through the long, long house. It was dark, and no one had lit any lamps. I could barely see into some of the corners; the shadows were so thick that they gathered like soot, soft and blurry. Or perhaps it was the tears in my eyes. There was no sign of Shin. Gasping, I took the stairs two at a time, flinging the bedroom doors open though I didn’t really believe he was upstairs. Not if he was hurt. Or maybe he really was dead. And still in the front room, my stepfather sat like a gargoyle, alone.

I ran to the back again. All the way to the kitchen, searching. We’d had favorite hiding spaces to play in—the cupboard under the stairs, the narrow space between the water jars—but Shin was too big now to fit in most of them. At last I went through the kitchen again into the last courtyard, the one with the high wall that led to the back alley. And there I found him, huddled behind the chicken coop.

I could barely make out his shape in the dim blue twilight, propped up against the back wall. His legs, so much longer than when we were children, stuck out in front as though he were exhausted.