The Night Tiger(83)

29

Ipoh

Saturday, June 20th




Kiong was the one who got us all out that night. As soon as he realized there was trouble, from all the shouting and carrying on, and then of course, that gunshot, the sound that cracked open the night. It was he who, searching for me as the last straggler, ran out with the crowd spilling onto that dark lawn and grabbed me. I had no memories of that. If I closed my eyes, I was still there. The white muzzle flash, the high sharp scream of a young animal.

My dress was covered in blood, dark blotches staining the pale blue silky material. None of the other girls wanted to sit too close to me. They huddled up towards the other side of the car, talking in hushed tones. Pearl was crying. She had a little boy of her own, I remembered.

I should have stopped him. When the boy took off, rocketing out of the veranda doors, I should have gone back to the house to warn them that he’d gone out, but like a fool, I ran after him, stumbling around in the dark in that unknown garden, tripping and falling and circling back to the house. If only I hadn’t wasted all that time! And then the black shape of the man, coming out of the house with a gun. I knew it right away—one of my stepfather’s friends used to hunt wild boar—that sticklike shadow and the way he was carrying it, tucked under his arm.

“Stop!” I screamed as he lifted it. “No!”

But it was too late.

Shouts behind us: Acton, did you get it? But I already knew what he’d shot. I raced past him, sobbing. The old cook pushing his way through with a lantern, his face grey. And in the circle of lamplight, the boy crumpled on the ground.

So small. That was the first thing I thought when I saw that pathetic little body, the shadows of the trees and bushes looming above him. He must have been digging, because his arms were stained up to the elbows with earth. There was a look of utter astonishment on his face. I couldn’t look at his left side and arm, soaked in blood that looked black in the light. That arm—was there even a hand left? I was on my knees beside him, on the rough grass and upturned earth. He looked at me and his mouth moved.

“Put it back,” he said faintly. “In my master’s grave. I promised.” He pressed something into my palm with his good right hand. Men shoved past, barked orders.

“Move aside! Move, please!”

A hand grabbed my elbow. It was Kiong. “Time to go.”

“Wait!” I wanted to hear what the men were saying as they lifted him up, his limp body just like Pei Ling’s dangling foot. There were doctors here tonight; they’d know what his injuries were like and if he would live or die.

Kiong dragged me away. I couldn’t break his iron grip on my arm. “We’re leaving now.”

And so we had. The other girls were already waiting in the car. There was a flurry of questions when they saw me, but I’d no words to answer them.

“But what were you doing out there?” said Hui. She seemed agitated, more so than me in fact. Numbness paralyzed my hands and feet; my tongue was thick and dry.

“I saw him run out,” I said at last. “So I tried to stop him.”

“You might have been shot!” Hui squeezed me hard.

“Don’t,” I said. “My dress has blood on it.”



* * *



The way back seemed shorter than our journey out, on mile after mile of pale, ribbonlike road. After a while, the other girls started talking again, speculating about what had happened.

“What an idiot, shooting his own houseboy,” said Rose.

“Well, it seems he’s an orphan, so there’s no family to complain on his behalf if he dies,” said Anna.

I said nothing, only stared out of the window. My fingers were still clutched tight around the object that the boy Ren had given me. I had a stomach-clenching feeling that I knew exactly what it was from the shape of the slippery glass cylinder. I didn’t have to look. Didn’t want to look.

There were no pockets in my dress, and the little bag I’d brought with me had been left behind in the rush of leaving. There wasn’t much in it anyway, just my house keys and lip rouge. Hui had taught me not to leave telltale information like my name or address in my bag if I ever had to go out for work. But in the meantime, I had nowhere to put my burden, this unwanted gift that Ren had slipped me.

Why did he have the finger? It was like a curse, one of those dark tales when you try to discard something but it always returns to you. The image of the little boy from my dreams and Ren’s face blurred together. The same, yet not the same.

Now we were passing streets that I knew, the village of Menglembu, and very soon, Falim, where my stepfather’s shophouse was. Kiong planned to drop us off at our homes since it was so late. But how could I possibly slip into Mrs. Tham’s dress shop in a bloodstained dress with no keys?

“Stay over with me,” Hui whispered, as though she’d been reading my mind. “I’ll lend you clothes.”

I hesitated, and she must have sensed it, because she said, “You’ve had a shock. Come on, I’ll take care of you.”

She said it so kindly that my throat closed up. I would really like that, I thought. For someone to pry open my tightly clenched fingers and take away the little glass bottle with a dead man’s finger in it. As we passed my stepfather’s store on Lahat Road, I bit back the urge to jump out, run home. I wanted my mother. Wanted to bury my face in her lap, feel her soft hand on my hair, and forget about everything but the two of us.