The Night Tiger(36)

“Are we supposed to do all of this today?”

“Well, it’s a good chance to check if they have any missing fingers,” said Shin. “They wanted it moved, and I’ve done most of that. We just need to organize the specimens. Want to have lunch first?”

I glanced at the jars of gruesome-looking specimens. Bits of entrails floated in murky baths, together with bottles of rattling vertebrae.

“No,” I said. “Let’s start now.”

What was the purpose of this collection anyway? Shin said he’d no idea. Despite doing all the heavy lifting, he was in a good mood. I could tell from the way he whistled in the corridor as he trundled boxes over. We got along best when there was a job to be done, just as we’d done the housework swiftly and efficiently when we were younger. If we were both hired as janitors, I thought, there would be no disagreements between us.



* * *



My mother was an exemplary housewife; on this, my stepfather could never fault her. She was obsessively clean, taking the wooden bedframes outside to pour boiling water over every cranny, so that we never had bedbugs.

When we first moved to the shophouse, she was reluctant to ask Shin to do housework. He was a boy after all, though he was willing enough. She poured out her affection on us, softhearted to the point of foolishness even. Stray dogs and beggars made a beeline for her, and more than once she gave away our dinner and had to beg us not to tell my stepfather. I’d hold out, bargaining for something better, but Shin always capitulated. I could read him easily; the quick nod, the hopeful expression. He was hungry for affection.

I think my mother would have liked more children. Certainly, my stepfather was disappointed in that. Several times the local midwife was called in because my mother had miscarried. But no one would ever tell me exactly what had happened or why.

The matchmaker had made such a fuss about how Shin and I were destined to be siblings, how we were practically twins since we were born on the same day and were named after two of the five Confucian Virtues, that I felt sure that the other three children—Ren, Yi, and Li to give them their rightful names—must be waiting impatiently to be born. I pictured them jostling each other in the dark, waiting to be let out into the world. But they never came. And each bloody episode increased my fear that they would steal my mother away with them.

I’d told Shin about this when we were talking quietly one night. He was lying on the floor in his room and I was sitting in the narrow corridor, the open doorway between us. This was just in case my stepfather should suddenly emerge from his room. We must have been about thirteen at the time, and he’d become increasingly strict. I could no longer set foot in Shin’s room, and he, of course, was never allowed in mine.

The moon was very bright that night, a sharp slice of white. It was too hot to be in bed and the only relief was the cool wooden floor planks.

“Do you think they’ll have more children?” I asked.

“No. It’s harder when you get older.” From time to time, Shin would display a kind of calm rationality that I envied.

“But I’m afraid.”

Shin rolled over and propped himself up on his elbows. “Of what?”

I told him my fear of losing my mother and how I couldn’t help thinking there should be three more of us, like the matchmaker had said.

He was quiet for a while. “That’s rubbish.”

“Why?” I said, stung. “Is it any more rubbish than what you said about the mo and dream-eaters?”

Immediately, I was sorry for my words, since I knew how Shin treasured that scrap of paper from his own mother. But he only said, “I haven’t had bad dreams in a long time. I don’t think I dream at all in fact. Besides, all this talk about three more siblings is stupid. Why should there be any more?”

“Because there are only two of us right now.”

Shin sat up abruptly. “Don’t count me in. I’m not really your brother, you know.”

Climbing into his bed, he turned his back on me. Rejected, I retreated to my own room. It worried me sometimes that perhaps he was just putting up with me. That he’d wanted a different kind of sister, not someone who argued with him all the time and outscored him on tests. Whenever I felt bad, I thought about numbers. In Cantonese, two was a good number because it made a pair. Three was also good because it was a homophone for sang, or life. Four, of course, was bad because it sounded like death. Five was good again because it made a complete set, not just of the Confucian Virtues, but also for the elements of wood, fire, water, metal, and earth. In any case, it didn’t matter how prickly Shin was. Whether he liked it or not, he was still the only brother I had.



* * *



The door of the pathology storeroom opened abruptly. Thinking it was Shin back with another load, I said without turning round, “Don’t put it there. Put it on the other side.”

Silence. An odd tingling alerted me that something was wrong. I turned to see a stranger in the doorway. A foreigner. Tall and raw-boned, he wore glasses. The rest—pale face, pale hair, pale arms burned unevenly by the sun—looked like all the other Europeans to me.

“I’m looking for Dr. Rawlings.”

Shin had said that Rawlings was the resident pathologist, but I’d no idea whether he was here on a quiet Saturday or not. The man gave me a sharp look. His colorless eyes pierced like needles behind the glass lenses. I feared they would soon see that I wasn’t hospital staff at all.