The Night Tiger(60)

The gardener explains that the front paws tend to be larger than the back. There are four toes and a dewclaw, corresponding to a thumb, on the front paws of a tiger. It looks as though the animal was standing under the trees at the edge of the garden. That one foot, the front paw, is the only mark on the edge of the lawn.

“Tigers are cunning,” says the gardener. “It was checking the house.”

Ren’s heart races. What does it mean that the print is right next to the stone that marks the buried finger? He wishes there was some grown-up he could ask for advice, but if he tells William, he’ll have to admit to the theft of the finger. Unconsciously, he squeezes his own small hands, wringing them anxiously. There are nine days left of Dr. MacFarlane’s forty-nine days of the soul. Surely that’s enough time to return the finger?

Ah Long peers at the blurred print. “This tiger is missing a toe,” he says. “The small toe on the left front paw.”

Ren closes his eyes, inhaling. His ears are sharpened; the hairs on his head prickle. He listens hard, but there’s nothing. Not a flicker from his cat sense. Only a silence so profound that it fills the green hollow of clipped lawn that the white bungalow sits in, like a fishbowl in the middle of the jungle.

“Should we put out an offering?” the gardener says diffidently. He’s Hindu and Ah Long is nominally Buddhist; between the two of them lies a tradition of little offerings and sacrifices, but Ah Long scowls.

“What are we going to offer—a chicken? I only have three and they’re needed tomorrow. Besides, we don’t want it to come back.”

If it were wild boar or deer then they might scatter blood or human hair to keep them away, but such things don’t deter a tiger. The gardener makes a little bow to the silent jungle and says something in Tamil.

“I asked him, Sir Tiger, please do not come back,” he says with a slight smile. Ren gazes at his dark, wrinkled face. He has no idea whether the gardener is really worried or if this is just one of those things that happens from time to time, like monsoons or floods. In his time with Dr. MacFarlane, they never had a tiger roam so close to the house despite all the old man’s ravings. Or perhaps, there were no marks outside because the tiger lived within. The image of Dr. MacFarlane’s white face, his left hand with its missing finger curled on the thin cotton blanket, swims before Ren’s eyes, and he blanches.

Ah Long catches his arm. “No need to be so frightened! Tigers range for miles, and it’s long gone by now.”



* * *



That evening, Ah Long informs William about their discovery in the halting English that he uses with his employer. It’s the second tiger pugmark discovered near the bungalow; the first one occurred around the time that poor woman died.

“So Tuan, you no go out alone at night,” Ah Long concludes.

A flicker passes over William’s face. “You too. And Ren, don’t wander around by yourself.”

Ren fetches a dish of fried ikan bilis, tiny little fish in spicy chili sambal. Serve from the left, remove plates from the right—that’s what Auntie Kwan taught him. The room is stuffy despite the open windows. The flowers that the gardener brought in—bird of paradises, canna lilies, thin woody branches of hibiscus—are stiff and look like funeral offerings. Ren’s skin is tight and shivery; his throat hurts. The pawprint in the garden is a gnawing worry.

“Not well?” William beckons Ren over and places the back of his hand against his forehead. It’s a large hand, professionally impersonal. “Hmm. Fever. Go and ask Ah Long for an aspirin and lie down.”

Ren hasn’t finished the dinner service or the washing up, but William has given him an order. He walks to the kitchen, and the old man, examining his pale face with concern, hands him an aspirin and tells him to go to bed.

Ren walks unsteadily out of the kitchen door, down the covered walkway to the servants’ quarters in the back. His face is burning, his legs rubbery. Growing up, Yi was always the sickly one; if there was flu or food poisoning, he was bound to get it before Ren. “I’m the warning system,” Yi had said, scrunching his face up in a smile. “I’ll go before you.” And in the end, he had.

Ren, shivering now in his narrow cot, pulls the thin cotton blanket over himself. Despite the warmth of the room, he’s freezing. His bones ache. Yet there’s a sense of peace, that lightheadedness that comes with being sick. He can’t think coherently about the tiger anymore.

And then he begins to dream.



* * *



It is the old dream, the one where Ren stands on a railway platform, only this time the train is stopped at the station. And Ren isn’t there. He’s on a little island—more like a sandbar—in the middle of a river, gazing at the train from across the water. Sunlight shines through the train’s empty windows. Where is Yi?

Ren walks from one end of the sandbar to the other, shading his eyes as he squints across the water. Then he sees him, scrambling and waving wildly on the opposite bank. He jigs from one foot to the other in a familiar manner. How could Ren have forgotten that jig?

“Yi!” he yells. The small figure on the other bank puts his hands around his mouth and calls back, but there’s no sound.

Why is there no sound? And then Ren realizes something else. Yi is so small. Not only due to the distance, but because he’s still eight years old, the age he died. It’s Ren who’s changed. But Yi looks so delighted to see him that there’s a lump of happiness in Ren’s throat.