The Night Tiger(61)
Now Yi is pantomiming, How are you?
He points at himself and gives a thumbs-up. “YOU?”
Yi also gives a thumbs-up. Don’t worry.
About what? He must mean about the tiger and Dr. MacFarlane and all the deaths before and the ones to come. Of course Yi would know. He always knew everything that troubled Ren.
Ren calls back that he’s fine, he has a job and has also found the finger and is keeping it in a safe place. It’s difficult to mime all of this, but Yi seems to understand. Perhaps the sound works only one way, but Ren doesn’t want to waste his time with Yi figuring it out.
Time is running out.
Even as he thinks this, water laps his bare feet. Jumping back, Ren realizes that the sandbank is getting smaller, or perhaps it’s the water that’s rising.
“There’s a tiger in the garden,” he shouts across the water. “But don’t worry, I know what to do.”
Yi looks concerned.
“I’m going back to Kamunting after the party.”
Yi shakes his head.
“It’s all right, I have permission. Then I’ll do what Dr. MacFarlane told me to.”
Yi’s arms explode, pantomiming something complicated. The small face is tight with worry.
“I’m not frightened,” Ren says.
Ask the girl.
What girl? Ren can’t think of any girls or women except Auntie Kwan and she’s gone down south to Kuala Lumpur.
The water is rising, rippling translucently over the muddy sand. There’s something odd about it. It’s viscous, a little too thick, but clear enough that he can see every pebble and floating leaf. There are no tiny fish in the shallows. No crystalline shrimp, no water skaters. Nothing living.
“I’ll swim over to where you are,” calls Ren. “Just wait!”
He puts one foot in the water. It’s surprisingly cold and a swirling current tugs at his ankle. But the other bank isn’t too far.
No! Yi doesn’t want him to get in the water. Now he’s urgently signing him to stop.
Ren isn’t a fast swimmer, but he’s confident he can dog-paddle far enough. He stands ankle-deep in the shallows. It’s freezing. He’s never felt cold like this. Dr. MacFarlane once borrowed a large, expensive-looking book of fairy tales when he was teaching Ren to read, and Ren had pored over the beautiful illustrations of snow and ice and the kind of gloomy weather that Dr. MacFarlane said was so common in Scotland. Dreich, he’d called it. There was a story about a little girl who sold matches, and the last picture showed her lying in the snow. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling and the artist had drawn faint blue shadows at the corners of her mouth. Was this chill what she’d experienced?
He grits his teeth. Beyond the shallows of the sandbank, the water is murky. Something stirs in it, and he hesitates. On the opposite bank, Yi is signing frantically. No no no! But Ren is bigger and stronger now than when they were parted. He looks at the river with the confidence of an eleven-year-old and is sure he can make it.
Now the water is up to his waist, swirling and eddying darkly. It tugs hard. The chill is almost unbearable, eating through his spine and sucking all the heat out of his body.
Yi is kneeling on the other bank. His face is contorted, tears stream down as he gesticulates wildly. STOP!
Ren wants to tell him not to cry; he’ll be there soon. But his teeth are chattering so much that he can’t form the words. With a final rush of courage, Ren plunges his head under the icy black water.
22
Ipoh
Monday, June 15th
Morning. I stared at the ceiling again—this time the familiar one at Mrs. Tham’s house. Sitting up, I fumbled for the ring Shin had given me, still knotted in a handkerchief. I wondered what she looked like, this girl whose finger was a different size from mine. The soft metal and rich color indicated it was twenty-four-karat gold. My mother always told me to make sure to get twenty-four-karat jewelry, not eighteen or some other inferior number.
“Because you can pawn it,” she’d said matter-of-factly. “You get a better deal.”
Of course, she must have had some experience with pawnshops after my father died. In my brief time working at the May Flower, men had given me gifts: silver pendants, thin bracelets. I’d been reluctant to accept anything, but the other girls said I was foolish to turn down one of the few perks of the job. My mother had been right, however. None of those trinkets was worth anything at the pawnshop, though I’d tried a couple of times, thinking to reduce her debt faster. I wondered how much money Shin had spent. He was always the one who ended things with girls, not wanting to commit. As far as I knew, he’d never given anyone a gift like this.
* * *
Yesterday after Matron had left us, I’d tried to return it to Shin with a smile, saying, “You should keep this safe for your girlfriend.” That was nice and friendly and just what I might have said to him a few years ago.
“Hang on to it,” he said. “It’ll look suspicious if you give it back after telling everyone we’re engaged.”
That was when I ought to have followed up and asked what his girlfriend was like and when he was bringing her back home, but somehow, I couldn’t. If you’d told me a month ago that I’d feel so awkward and sad about my stepbrother getting married, I’d have laughed it off, but now there was only a strange loneliness. It was like losing him all over again, like when he’d decided to shut me out. But there was a difference: it wasn’t simply that Shin was being friendly, as though whatever had troubled him before was now resolved. He’d become more reliable, more grown-up. More attractive.