The Night Tiger(7)
The obituary was a small notice, but the word “suddenly” had an ominous air. So the salesman’s prediction about being lucky had been wrong. Because according to my calculations, he’d died the day after our encounter.
With a shudder, I put the glass bottle, wrapped in my handkerchief, on the table. It seemed heavier than it ought to have been.
Hui said, “You don’t think it’s witchcraft, do you?”
“Of course not.” But I couldn’t help recalling a Buddhist statue I’d seen as a child. It was a little thing made of ivory, no bigger than this finger. The monk who’d shown it to us had said that a thief had once stolen it, but no matter how often he tried to sell or throw it away, it reappeared in his possession until, guilt-stricken, he’d returned it to the temple. There were other local tales as well, such as the toyol, a child spirit made from the bone of a murdered infant. Kept by a sorcerer, it was used to steal, run errands, and even commit murder. Once invoked, it was almost impossible to get rid of, save by proper burial.
I studied the newspaper carefully. The funeral would be held this weekend in the nearby town of Papan, a bit farther out from my family home in Falim. I was due back for a visit; perhaps I could return the finger. Give it to his family, or drop it in his coffin so it could be buried with him, though I wasn’t sure how to manage it. What I was certain about, however, was that I didn’t want to keep it.
5
Batu Gajah
Wednesday, June 3rd
The person who really runs the new doctor’s household is a taciturn Chinese cook named Ah Long. He’s the one who takes charge of Ren, dripping wet as he is, and ushers him through the bowels of the house to the servants’ quarters in the back. The outbuildings are separated by a covered walkway, but it’s raining so hard that the spray wets them to the knees.
It’s difficult for Ren to judge adults’ ages, but Ah Long seems old to him. A wiry man with knotted arms, he offers Ren a rough cotton towel.
“Dry up,” he says in Cantonese. “You can have this room.”
The room is small, barely eight feet across, with a narrow window of louvered glass panes. In the blue gloom, Ren can make out a single cot bed. The household is eerily silent and he wonders where the other servants are.
Ah Long asks if he’s hungry. “I have to prepare the master’s dinner. Come to the kitchen when you’re done.”
At that moment, there’s a blinding flash of lightning and a boom. The electricity in the main house flickers and blinks out. Ah Long clicks his tongue in annoyance and hurries off.
Alone in the gathering darkness, Ren unpacks his meager belongings and sits timidly on the cot. The thin mattress sags. A finger—a single digit—is so small that it could be hidden anywhere in this large house. His stomach knots with anxiety as he counts in his head. Time is passing; since Dr. MacFarlane’s death three weeks ago, he has only twenty-five days left to find the finger. But Ren is tired, so bone weary from his long journey and the heavy carpetbag that he’s been carrying, that he closes his eyes and falls into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
The next morning, Ah Long prepares William’s breakfast of a boiled egg and two dried-up pieces of toast barely smeared with butter, even though there are at least three tins of Golden Churn lined up in the pantry. The butter comes from Australia by way of Cold Storage. Soft at room temperature, it’s a beautiful yellow color. Ah Long doesn’t eat butter himself, but he still rations it for his master.
“Like this,” he explains to Ren in the kitchen. “No need to buy so much.”
He resembles the toast he prepares, crusty and hard-hearted. But Ah Long is also honest, and if he’s frugal with William’s food, he’s just as stingy about his own rations. At the old doctor’s house, they ate thick slices of Hainanese white bread, toasted over charcoal and spread with butter and kaya, a caramelized custard made from eggs, sugar, and coconut milk. Ren can only think that this new doctor, William Acton, has a rather sad-looking breakfast.
When Ah Long judges the time is right, he pokes his pinched face through the dining-room door.
“Boy is here, Tuan,” he announces, before disappearing back into his lair.
Obediently, Ren slips into the room. His clothes are plain but clean—a white shirt and khaki knee shorts. At the old doctor’s house, he had no official houseboy’s uniform and now wishes he did, as it might make him look older.
“Your name is Ren?”
“Yes, Tuan.”
“Just Ren?” William seems to find this a little odd.
Of course he’s right. Most Chinese are quick to give their family names first, but Ren isn’t sure what to say. He has no family name and no memories of his parents. He and his brother Yi were pulled as toddlers from a burning tenement, where families of itinerant workers slept. No one was certain whose children they had been, only that they were clearly twins.
The matron of the orphanage named them after the Confucian Virtues: Ren, for humanity, and Yi, for righteousness. Ren always thought it was odd that she’d stopped at two of the Five Virtues. What about the others: Li, which was ritual, Zhi, for knowledge, and Xin, for integrity? Yet the other three names were never given out to new children at the orphanage.
“What sort of work did you do for Dr. MacFarlane?”