The Night Tiger(41)
Shin nodded glumly. “Is that all you talked about?”
“Why?”
“There are rumors about that doctor.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s a good surgeon, very competent. But they say he has an eye for local girls.”
“That’s not surprising—they’re all like that.”
He shot me a swift glance. “You’ve changed.”
Of course I had. Things like love affairs and call-outs and mistresses no longer shocked me; I’d learned more about them in a week from the other girls at the May Flower than I ever had in my school days, even if Hui said I was still hopelessly na?ve.
“How do you know about him anyway?” I asked.
“My roommate told me.”
The card William Acton had given me lay in my pocket, like a train ticket to a long-awaited destination. I wanted to tell Shin about the possibility of nurse-training but he didn’t seem particularly encouraging. We weren’t equals anymore, I thought resentfully. I didn’t have a scholarship to medical school, or the luxury of choosing summer jobs.
At the canteen, I wanted to try the exotic Western food—sardine sandwiches, chicken chops, and mulligatawny soup—listed on the blackboard. Shin said patronizingly, “You should see the mess hall at our college. There’s a much better selection.” Then he stopped, remembering, I supposed, how much I’d wanted to go to university. I fixed a stiff smile on my face to hide my irritation.
It was now two in the afternoon, and the tables were mostly deserted. When we were almost done, we were joined by the orderly who’d been wheeling the old man earlier. He had a jowly face, like a cheerful piglet. Drops of perspiration trembled on his upper lip.
“How come you’re here on your day off?” he asked Shin, plonking down a steaming bowl of fishball noodles. “Wah! You even brought your girlfriend. What kind of cheap date is this?”
I couldn’t help smiling; his small eyes were so humorous. “I’m Shin’s sister. He’s making me work for him today.”
“I didn’t know you had such a beautiful sister. Why didn’t you introduce us earlier? I’m Koh Beng and I’m single.” We shook hands across the table. His palm, as I feared, was sweaty. “What kind of work are you doing?”
“Cleaning out the pathology storeroom,” said Shin.
“Nobody wanted that job. Don’t you find pickled organs frightening?”
“Sorting the files might be worse,” I said.
“Have you seen the preserved head? Apparently if you hold it up at midnight, it talks.”
I gave him a skeptical look, and he winked. “There are other strange things locked up in that room: a sorcerer’s pelesit that looks like a grasshopper in a glass bottle and has to be fed blood every month, and a finger from a weretiger—one of the harimau jadian who can put on a human skin and walk around in daylight.” Turning to Shin, he said, “How about I help your sister clean up?”
Shin looked exasperated. I said quickly, “We’re almost done,” though it wasn’t true at all. “What time is the last train to Ipoh?”
“I’ll take you back,” said the irrepressible Koh Beng. “I’m heading there this evening. I’m single, by the way.”
“So you mentioned.”
“Just making sure.” Koh Beng might look like a piglet but I couldn’t help finding him amusing. What’s more, he clearly knew it.
“I’ll take her back myself,” said Shin coldly. “Or you can stay over if you want. My friend said you could bunk with her for tonight.”
“Who’s this friend?” asked Koh Beng, taking the words out of my mouth.
“A nurse.”
“Your brother’s only been here a week but he’s already caused so much drama among the nurses.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Still smiling, I felt vaguely irritated. But it was true, there was nothing surprising about Shin acquiring yet another girlfriend.
* * *
Shin’s first girlfriend was two years older than us, the cousin of one of my school friends. To be honest, I hadn’t expected him to pick her, though she was nice enough. What I’d liked about her, however, was that she seemed so mature and even-keeled, though I didn’t realize he was dating her until almost a month had passed.
“Shin’s out a lot, isn’t he?” I’d remarked to my mother one evening.
We were sitting at the kitchen table in companionable silence. The oil lamp shone on her sewing and my library book. I’d given up on poisoning and was now reading Sherlock Holmes purely for entertainment. All was calm and ordinary. You could scarcely believe that Shin and my stepfather had traded blows here, wrecking the old table, and then smashing out into the back courtyard, or whatever finally happened that terrible evening. But that’s the way people are, I think. We forget all the bad things in favor of what’s normal, what feels safe.
My mother bit off her sewing thread. “He’s probably seeing Fong Lan home.” Fong Lan was the daughter of the carpenter who’d built my mother’s new kitchen table—my stepfather’s way of apologizing to her after the fight with Shin.
“That’s nice of him.”