by Yangsze Choo
“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?”
Ren has been expecting this question, but he’s suddenly overcome with shyness. Perhaps it’s the eyes of this new doctor, which pin the words in his mouth so they won’t spill out. Ren looks at the floor, then forces his gaze up. Dr. MacFarlane taught him that foreigners like to be looked in the eye. Ren needs this job.
“Whatever Dr. MacFarlane wished.”
He speaks respectfully and clearly, the way the old doctor liked to be addressed, and lists the chores he’s accustomed to: cleaning, cooking, ironing, caring for the animals that Dr. MacFarlane kept. Ren is unsure whether or not to admit that he can read and write quite well. Gazing anxiously at William’s face, Ren tries to gauge his mood. But the new doctor seems unperturbed.
“Did Dr. MacFarlane teach you English?”
“Yes, Tuan.”
“You speak very well. In fact, you sound just like him.” The expression on William’s face softens. “How long were you with him?”
“Three years, Tuan.”
“And how old are you?”
“Thirteen, Tuan.”
Ren holds his breath at the lie. Most foreigners have difficulty telling the age of locals. Dr. MacFarlane used to joke about it all the time, but William’s brow furrows, as though he’s making a swift calculation. At last he says, “If you can iron, I have some shirts that need to be done.”
Dismissed, Ren starts towards the door in relief.
“One more thing. Did you ever help out Dr. MacFarlane in his medical practice?”
Ren freezes, then nods.
William turns back to his newspaper, unaware that the boy is now staring at him with a frightened expression.
* * *
Surprised that Ah Long isn’t lying in wait outside the door, Ren finds his way back to the kitchen. In his experience, servants are invariably suspicious of newcomers. During his early days at Dr. MacFarlane’s, the housekeeper followed him from room to room until she was satisfied that he wouldn’t steal.
“You never know,” she’d said long after Ren had become an indispensable part of the household. “Not everyone is as well brought up as you.”
Kwan-yi, or Auntie Kwan as Ren had called her, had been a robust, middle-aged woman with a temper. She was the one who had run Dr. MacFarlane’s untidy household with an iron hand, the one who trained Ren to cook rice on a charcoal stove without scorching the bottom of the pot and to catch, butcher, and pluck a chicken in half an hour. If she’d only stayed on, everything might have been different. But Auntie Kwan had left six months before the old doctor died. Her daughter was having a baby and she was going to move all the way down south to Kuala Lumpur, to help her out.
Dr. MacFarlane said he’d find a replacement, but months went by and the old man became preoccupied with other matters. He’d already shown signs of this before Auntie Kwan left, which seemed to give her unease at her departure. Ren, trying not to cry, had clutched her fiercely and unexpectedly. She’d pressed a grubby slip of paper with an address into his hand.
“You must take care of yourself,” she said, worried.
He was prone to accidents. Once a tree branch had crashed down, missing him by inches. Another time, a runaway bullock cart almost pinned him to a wall. There were other near misses—so many that people said Ren attracted misfortune.
“Come and see me,” she’d said, with a hard squeeze. And now, he wonders whether he should have done that instead. But he owes the old doctor a great deal, and there are promises that Ren must keep.
* * *
In the breezy kitchen, Ah Long is moodily hacking up a chicken. Ren, standing at a respectful distance, ventures to say, “The master asked me to iron his shirts.”
Ah Long says, “Laundry’s not back yet from the dhobi. Wash the dishes first.”
Ren is quick and neat, scouring the pots with a coconut brush and soft brown homemade soap in the deep sink outside. When the dishes are done, Ah Long examines his work. “The master’s gone out, but he’ll be back for luncheon. You can sweep the house.” Ren wants to ask if there are other servants, but the look on Ah Long’s face restrains him.
The house is surprisingly bare. The wide teak planks are worn smooth and the unglazed windows with their turned wooden bars look out onto the intense green of the surrounding jungle. There’s little furniture other than the rattan armchairs and dining set that look as though they came with the house. No pictures on the walls, not even the indifferent watercolors so beloved by English mems.
Dr. MacFarlane had been an untidy man whose interests spilled into every part of his house. Ren wonders how it’s possible that the two men could have been friends. He thinks back to the old doctor’s dying request, count
ing the days again. The lorry driver’s warning about dogs being eaten worries him. He’d been hoping to find the finger quickly, perhaps in a cabinet of preserved specimens. That would be the best solution. But Dr. MacFarlane wasn’t even sure if it would be here.
“He might not have it anymore,” he’d said hoarsely. “He might have given it away. Or destroyed it.”
“Why don’t you ask him for it?” Ren had said. “It’s your finger.”
“No! Better if he knows nothing.” The old man grasped Ren’s wrist. “It must be taken or stolen.”
* * *
Ren is sweeping the floor with careful flicks when Ah Long comes by to tell him to do the master’s study as well. Pushing the door ajar, Ren stops short. In the dim light of the half-closed shutters, he sees glassy eyes and an open mouth, fixed forever in a snarl. Ren tells himself that it’s only a tiger skin. The sad remnant of some long-forgotten hunt.
“Does the master hunt?”
“Him? He only collects,” Ah Long mutters. “I wouldn’t touch it myself.”
“Why not?” Ren is uneasily fascinated by the tiger skin. Despite the indignity of being draped across the floor, its fur worn away in patches, the glaring glass eyes warn him away. Tiger eyes are prized for the hard parts in the center, set in gold as rings and thought to be precious charms, as are the teeth, whiskers, and claws. A dried and powdered liver is worth twice its weight in gold as medicine. Even the bones are taken to be boiled down into jelly.
“Aiya! This tiger was a man-eater. It killed two men and a woman down in Seremban before it was shot. See the bullet holes in the side?”
“How did he get the skin?”
“He’s keeping it for a friend who told him it was keramat. Cheh! As if a keramat tiger could ever be shot.”
Ren understands only too well the meaning of these words. A keramat animal is a sacred beast, a creature with the ability to come and go like a phantom, trampling sugarcane or raiding livestock with impunity. It’s always distinguished by some peculiarity, such as a missing tusk or a rare albino color. But the most common indicator is a withered or maimed foot.
When Ren was still at the orphanage, he once saw the tracks of the elephant Gajah Keramat. It was a famous beast, a rogue bull that had ranged from Teluk Intan up to the Thai border. Bullets were magically deflected from Gajah Keramat’s mottled hide, and he had the uncanny ability to sense an ambush. That morning, the sun’s burning rays had dyed the dirt road blood red, spotlighting the men huddled over the tracks leading out of a culvert, across the road, and then into secondary jungle. Ren stopped to goggle at the excitement.
“Tentulah, it is Gajah Keramat.” There was a hiss of agreement.
Wriggling his way to the front of the crowd, Ren saw how the elephant’s shrunken left forefoot had pressed a curious mark in the damp red earth.
Later, when Ren entered Dr. MacFarlane’s household, he’d related the incident to the old doctor. Dr. MacFarlane had been fascinated, even writing it down in one of his notebooks, the words inked across the page in his careful copperplate. Ren hadn’t known then just how deep this interest in keramat animals would run.
A shudder travels up his spine now as he regards the tiger skin on the floor. Is this, then, the link between the old doctor and the new one? And is death now coming on soft feet, or has it roamed ahead, like a shadow set free from its owner? He hopes, desperately, that it’s merely a coincidence.
6
Falim
Saturday, June 6th
One of my mother’s conditions of boarding at Mrs. Tham’s dressmaking shop was that I would return home to Falim often. Each time I did, I brought a treat to make up for the fact that I wasn’t homesick at all. Today it was rambutans, the hairy, red-skinned fruit that snapped open to reveal a sweet white interior. They’d been selling them by the bus stop, and I’d bought a bundle wrapped in old newspaper. As I sat on the bus I rather regretted it, as the rambutans were crawling with ants.
Once, Falim had been full of vegetable gardens, but the outskirts of Ipoh were encroaching every year. Already, the tin tycoon Foo Nyit Tse had built a new housing estate as well as a grand mansion on Lahat Road that was the wonder of the neighborhood. My stepfather’s store stood in a row of narrow-fronted shophouses, their upper stories jutting out to form a shady five-foot walkway or kaki lima. Though only eighteen feet wide, it was surprisingly deep. Shin and I had once paced out its length and found it to be almost a hundred feet.
When I arrived, Ah Kum, the new girl that my stepfather had hired to replace me, was penciling notes into the ledger.
“Back today?” Ah Kum was a year older than me, a cheerful gossip with a mole beneath her right eye, like a teardrop. Some people said that such a mark meant she’d never be lucky in marriage, but Ah Kum didn’t seem bothered. In any case, I was very grateful to her. If she hadn’t started working here, I’d never have been able to leave.
“Want some?” I dumped my bundle of rambutans on the counter.
Ah Kum twisted a fruit open. “Your brother’s back.”
That was news to me. Shin was supposed to return next week. “When did he arrive?”
“Yesterday, but he’s out right now. Why didn’t you tell me he was so good-looking?”
I rolled my eyes. Shin and his female admirers. Obviously they weren’t aware of his true personality, as I’d often explained to him. But Ah Kum had only started working here after Shin left for Singapore—how was she to know, poor girl?
“If you think he’s so wonderful, you can have him!” I said, ducking as she swatted me. Our laughter was cut short by a footfall from the second floor. Suddenly sober, we glanced at each other.
“Is he in?” He could only refer to my stepfather.
She shook her head. “That’s your mother.”
I went deeper into the shophouse, inhaling the familiar dark scent of earth and metal from the stockpiled tin ore. Upstairs, shuttered windows opened over the courtyards, bringing light and air to the family quarters. This large upper room was used as a private sitting room, away from the business of the shop below. Sparsely furnished with rattan armchairs, a square card table for mahjong, and a few large sepia photographs of my stepfather’s parents, it had scarcely changed since my mother and I had moved in ten years ago. A long rosewood sideboard was covered with school trophies and ribbons. The earlier ones were equally divided between Shin and myself, but the last few, after my stepfather decided I’d been educated enough, were all Shin’s.
My mother was sitting by the railing, gazing at the pigeons as they strutted and burbled along the ledge.
“Mother,” I said softly.
Over the years, she’d become very thin. Her bone structure was still lovely though, and I was struck by the delicate outline of the skull beneath her skin.
“I thought you weren’t coming till next week.” She looked happy to see me. I could always count on that from my mother; sometimes I thought I’d do anything to keep her smiling.
“Oh, I just felt like it. I bought rambutans.” I didn’t mention that I’d come home carrying a mummified finger, or that I planned to crash a stranger’s funeral tomorrow.
“Good, good.” She patted my hand briefly.
Glancing around, I passed her an envelope. My mother’s lips trembled as she counted the money. “So much! How did you manage to get so much money?”
“I made a dress for a lady last week.” I wasn’t good at lying, so I always kept my statements short.
“I can’t take it.”
“You must!”
It had been two months since I’d discovered my mother’s debts, though I’d been suspicious for a while, noting her anxiety and the small luxuries she’d given up. She even ate less at mealtimes. And especially, no more mahjong parties with her friends. For it was mahjong that had done this.
Upon questioning, she’d broken down. It had been deeply unsettling to see my mother weeping like a child, pressing her hands against her mouth while the tears ran si
lently down her face. One of her friends had recommended a lady who lent money privately. She was very discreet and, most importantly, wouldn’t mention it to my stepfather.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” I’d said angrily. “And what kind of interest rate is thirty-five percent?”
My stepfather could have repaid it. He made a good living as a tin-ore dealer—but we both knew what would happen if he found out. And so, bit by bit, we squirreled away money. She was much slower than me. My stepfather scrutinized the household accounts every week, so she had to economize without alerting him. But since I’d started working at the May Flower, I’d been able to pay down some of the principal. My mother always tried to refuse, but in the end, I knew she would—indeed, must—take it.
She hid the money away in the toe of her wedding slippers. My stepfather would never look there, though he liked her to dress well. She’d wanted to sell her jewelry, but he often requested that she wear certain pieces and it would be difficult to explain where they’d gone. His attention to clothes extended even to me, and growing up, I was always well dressed. My friends said I was lucky to have such a generous stepfather, but I knew it was all his own vanity. He was a collector and we were his acquisitions.
I’d never told Shin how I felt about his father. I didn’t have to.
* * *
When my mother and I had first moved in, I’d been amazed at how strict my new stepfather was with Shin. He seemed to expect absolute obedience. At home, Shin barely spoke unless he was spoken to; he was a shadow of the boy that I came to know outside the house. In fact, I was rather surprised at how popular Shin was. Knots of children appeared every day to play with him. Since they were all boys, he didn’t bother to introduce me but simply ran off. That impish, excited look on his face was never seen in the house, and soon I discovered why.
Shin had gone off one afternoon while I had to stay behind, pinching the roots off an enormous pile of fat, crisp bean sprouts. I didn’t like them, but my stepfather did, and so my mother often fried them with salted fish.
