The Night Tiger(50)

I shuddered at the memory of the blackness in the depths of the river. “So you want me to tell your brother to stop whatever he’s doing?”

The little boy looked sad. “Yes. And tell him to beware the fifth of our set. There’s something a bit wrong with each of us, but the fifth one is especially bad. You should be careful, too.”

“I’ll do my best. If I meet your brother, I’ll pass him the message.”

“You mustn’t say you’ve met me.” He looked so serious that I nodded solemnly as well. “I won’t forget your kindness. If you ever learn my name, then you can call me.”

Call you? I’d no intention of coming here again. And of course, it was a dream, I told myself. Only a dream. With that thought, my consciousness dropped off a shelf into somewhere grey and soft and empty.





19

Batu Gajah

Sunday, June 14th




In the end, they don’t kill the tiger.

Ren stays up, sitting with Harun and the other drivers on a long bench behind the Kinta Club, as they talk and smoke and wait for their masters, until his eyelids droop. He has no memory of Harun bringing him, stumbling with sleep, to the car. It’s long past midnight by the time they drive William home, bumping over the gravel drive. Ren goes straight to bed and isn’t aware of anything until the sun is shining in his face.

“It’s past eight o’clock already,” Ah Long growls, looking in on him.

Ren jumps up, remembering the hunt last night. “Did they get it?”

“No. Though they waited all night.”

The hunters had concealed themselves in a makeshift hide positioned downwind from a tethered goat. It was a place carefully chosen to appeal to tigers, under shade and close to water since tigers drink copiously after feeding. The hours had dragged on and on, punctuated only by the occasional terrified bleating of the goat. But the end result was the same. Not even a glimpse of a tiger. Afterwards there were dozens of theories. It was the wrong spot; they should have used a spring-gun trap; they should never have embarked on this without a pawang, or medicine man, to charm the tiger.

“Are there really such people?” asks Ren.

To his surprise, Ah Long nods. “They can call leopards and wild boar, too. Even monkeys. It depends on how powerful they are.” He rubs his upper lip gruffly. “Well, that’s what they say. Now make sure you lay the breakfast table before he gets up.”



* * *



“TUAN, are you going to church?” asks Ren. While William ate breakfast, he polished his master’s shoes with brown Kiwi shoe polish, purchased yesterday in town, till they were bright. William inspects them and says they remind him of ripe chestnuts, though Ren has no idea what he’s referring to. Some kind of fruit, he thinks, though he can’t imagine a fruit that looks like shoes.

“Yes, I’m going this morning.” He’ll drive himself as Harun has Sunday off.

“Is it true that the tiger has left this area?”

William nods. It’s as if the tiger has vanished utterly, leading to lurid speculation that it’s not a normal beast. Word has already gone round that Ambika was a loose woman and that’s why she was taken. Rumors like this make William noticeably uneasy. Ren can only conclude, as he stands on the gravel drive to see the car off, that William must be a kindhearted and sympathetic person.

When the housework is done, Ren hurries back to his quarters to examine the finger that he took—no, stole—from the hospital yesterday, though it fills him with a nameless dread. The trousers he wore last night are still hanging on their hook. Ren takes out the bottle, setting it on the window ledge. Outside, the thick bamboo hedge is wet and soft with dew. A mynah bird picks its way across the grass, head cocked in a yellow-eyed stare. In the morning sunlight, the finger looks just as sad and grisly as it did yesterday in the pathology storeroom.

Ren stares until he gets dizzy but his cat sense is strangely quiet. Yesterday, his head was filled with its quivering hum, but today there’s only stillness. A hushed expectancy.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Ren wills his cat sense to return. He’s missed it desperately in the three years since Yi died. It was gone when he needed it most: those last few months with Dr. MacFarlane, when he said those strange things that confused and alarmed Ren. The old doctor’s eyes would open wide as he whispered, in a glassy trance. Long, detailed descriptions of killing deer and wild boar, creeping silently from behind them. The sudden rush, choking the throat by biting. Wrenching the head to break the neck.



* * *



The first death occurred during the rainy season, when the monsoon hung like a grey curtain over the wet red earth. Ren can’t forget that time; it plays back like a reel of film that he doesn’t understand, no matter how often he watches it. If he closes his eyes, he can still see the figure of the old doctor, writing in one of his notebooks. He’s been ill, vomiting in the bathroom downstairs though when Ren goes to check on him, there’s nothing to clean.

“I cleaned up myself,” Dr. MacFarlane says. His eyes are bloodshot and when Ren serves him a simple supper of leftover curry, he grimaces. “Take it away. I can’t eat meat.”

Later, Ren finds him staring at the endless rain streaming off the veranda roof. “Ren,” he says without turning around, “what do you think of me?”