by Yangsze Choo
“She’s not my wife,” William said, smiling.
“Then you should make her yours. A good woman like that.”
It’s a common misconception, given that they’ve been thrown together recently. He’s squired Lydia to a charity auction. Driven her home after a couple of dinners, though he should be careful not to flirt too much with Lydia. It’s his weakness; old habits die hard. Now, looking at her in his office, William wonders what Iris would think of all this.
“I don’t need the notes.” He’s been too familiar with her, he realizes belatedly.
“Oh, it was no trouble at all! I’d stopped by to pick up my father’s medicine,” she says.
“And how is he?”
“Much better, thanks to you.”
William is too conscientious not to explain to Lydia that the routine gallbladder operation he performed on her father would likely have turned out well under any circumstances, but she keeps smiling at him no matter what he says. The cleaning lady appears with two teacups on a tray, a digestive biscuit tucked into each saucer. Suppressing a sigh, William hands Lydia a cup.
“Were you very busy today?” she says brightly.
“Not really. Though I’ve been presented with a mystery.”
“What is it?”
“Apparently a patient came to my house this morning and received medical treatment from an orderly. Though I haven’t got an orderly at home.”
“Oh.” Lydia frowns.
William was surprised to see the young woman, an attractive Sinhalese girl, on his afternoon rounds at the hospital. She explained in a mixture of halting Malay and English that she’d been taken to his house for treatment that morning. No, she couldn’t remember who it was, as she’d fainted. Someone in a white uniform. Her uncle, who’d brought her in, would know, though he’d already gone home. William examined the wound, resulting from a heavy iron cangkul, or hoe, that had slipped and cut the back of her calf. It was deep and must have bled a lot. She could have died if it hadn’t been stanched.
Lydia’s voice recalls him to the present. “Did you solve your puzzle, then?”
“No. I wasn’t home at the time.”
He has nothing against her. In fact, she’s proven both diligent and practical, campaigning for powdered milk to be distributed to local children. But for some reason, she always makes him feel guilty. Perhaps it’s her coloring. She has the same light hair, the same fine skin as Iris, though Iris’s eyes were grey, and Lydia’s a bright, frenetic blue.
“But I actually saw you this morning, walking in the rubber estate. You seemed to be looking for someone.”
Blood rises, a hot guilty brand on William’s neck. She couldn’t have seen anything. Not this morning, anyway. He hopes Lydia will finish her tea and go away, but she says, “I hear you have a new houseboy—the one from Dr. MacFarlane’s household.” Seeing she’s piqued his interest, Lydia continues. “Apparently the old doctor took him in because the locals thought he was cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“Some superstition or other. And then there were all those deaths afterwards in Kamunting.”
“What sort of deaths?”
“In the past year, at least three people were killed by tigers. Though some people were saying it must have been the same animal.”
“A man-eater.” William leans back in his chair. He’s not sure whether Lydia is really interested in him, or simply finds him a challenge. Sometimes her flirting seems almost malicious.
“They say it’s a ghost tiger, which can’t be killed by bullets and vanishes like a spirit. All the victims were women. Young women, with long hair.” Aware of William’s scrutiny, two spots of color appear on her cheeks, an unexpectedly girlish blush. “You must think I’m very silly,” she says. “It’s all superstition anyway.”
“There are no such things as ghosts, Lydia.”
As I should know, he thinks to himself.
* * *
The next morning is Saturday, and William calls Ren into his study. Nervous, Ren carries in the midmorning tray with a bone china teacup and a plate of Marie biscuits.
“Ren,” says William. “Would you mind sorting this for me?”
With dread, Ren sees that the medical kit he used yesterday is spread out upon the desk. Rolls of bandages, bottles of iodine, chlorodyne, and tinctures, and a mess of metal implements. The half-empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide stands reproachfully to one side. Quickly, he rolls up the dressings and sorts the bottles by usage, as Dr. MacFarlane taught him. Poisons and emetics in the inner compartment, to reduce accidents. Scalpels and scissors that need frequent sterilization in another. The thick hollow needles are already in a vial of alcohol. His hand trembles as he picks up the glass syringe he boiled the other day.
When he’s almost done, William says, “I see you know what you’re doing.”
Ren lifts his eyes, but as usual, the doctor’s face is hard to read. He doesn’t seem angry, however.
“Were you the one who treated that woman yesterday?”
“Yes, Tuan.”
“You did a remarkably good job. I think she’ll keep the leg.”
Ren shifts uncomfortably.
“Was there already a tourniquet?”
“Yes, but it was too tight and close to the wound.”
“So what did you do?”
Ren describes his actions, forgetting his nervousness as William listens intently. It’s a rare feeling that he hasn’t experienced since the old doctor died.
“Next time,” says William, “you must tell me if you treat anyone. And I think I’d better oversee you. Can you read?”
Ren nods.
William raises an eyebrow. “Is that so? Tomorrow is Sunday. If you want to spend your half-day off going over basics, I shall be free in the afternoon.”
* * *
After the boy has gone, William walks out and leans on the wooden veranda railing. Branches shiver as a troop of monkeys passes, their whoops piercing the still morning. A flash of black and white as an indignant hornbill takes flight. William slings his binoculars around his neck and walks down the steps, over the clipped lawn that’s the gardener’s pride, and farther into the undergrowth. He recalls MacFarlane’s letter, the trembling handwriting promising he’d find the boy interesting, and wonders what else there is to discover about Ren.
Although William could have found a house closer to the European quarter in Changkat, he doesn’t mind the bungalow’s isolated location. There’s an old elephant trail not too far from the house though he’s never seen any elephants. It rained the night before and the red clay is soft underfoot.
William halts abruptly. There in the mud is a tiger pugmark. He’s never seen one so close to the house before. It’s so fresh that a blade of grass, trodden into the print, is still green. Tigers are rare near town, though there are still many in the deep jungle. A skillful tracker could probably estimate the animal’s age and physical health, but from the size and squareness, William guesses it was a male.
A surveyor for the Federated Malay States Railways once told him how a tiger had carried off one of his best coolies. The workers slept twelve men to a camp house, their bedding laid out on the floor. This particular man, strong and well-built for a native, was sleeping in the middle of the row. The door was left open to let in the breeze. In the morning, he was missing. Tiger prints were discovered and tracking them for a quarter of a mile led to the recovery of his head, left arm, and legs. The torso and entrails had been devoured. In the night, the tiger had silently entered, picked its way over the sleepers, and selected the best specimen.
* * *
William keeps no dogs to warn him of any approach and now regrets it. He has an old Purdey shotgun in the house, but it isn’t loaded. He ought to warn Ah Long and the boy not to wander from the house in the evening. Turning back, he sees Ah Long on the veranda.
“Tuan!” he shouts. “Hospital!”
William is the medical officer on call this weekend. He h
urries up the steps. “What is it?”
Ah Long’s Malay is bad and his English even poorer. He should have the boy take messages in future, but for now, Ah Long is the bearer of news even he can express clearly. “Someone is dead.”
Out of the corner of his eye, William sees Ren staring, white-faced, at him. He looks terrified.
* * *
Harun is off duty so William drives himself. The incident has taken place at the same plantation that he walked through on Friday morning; the message was brief and only mentioned that a body had been discovered. Most local deaths are caused by malaria or tuberculosis, though snakebites and accidents are also common.
The manager of this estate is Henry Thomson, Lydia’s father. As William pulls in, he sees a small knot of people. Thomson’s thin figure hovers near the tall bulk of a Sikh police officer and his Malay constable. The officer introduces himself as Captain Jagjit Singh, an inspector in the Federated Malay States Police. His English is excellent, and William guesses that he, like many police officers in Malaya, was recruited from the Indian Army to supplement the dearth of trained officers.
“The body was found past noon,” he says. “Looks like an animal attack, but we can’t rule out foul play. We couldn’t get hold of Dr. Rawlings, and I’d like to establish a cause of death before we move it.”
They’re walking now, heading deeper into the rubber estate. Distracted by the sameness of the trees, William wonders whether he’s ever passed through this portion of the estate.
“Who found it?” he asks.
“One of the rubber tappers.”
Thomson has been silent, his thin, worried face looking down at the dry leaves on which they tread, but now he says, “I’m not sure if it’s one of my workers. We’ll need to do a roll call.”
“What makes you think it might be foul play?” asks William.
Captain Singh hesitates. “It’s hard to say. There’s not much of it left.”
* * *
Arriving at the scene, a dip in the ground covered by undergrowth, they see the squatting figure of a Malay constable left on guard. He stands up hastily with a look of relief. Thomson excuses himself. “I don’t need to see it again,” he says.
William walks over. A slim arm protrudes from under a bush. It has a greyish pallor; a line of ants crawls over it. Pushing his way into the bush, William lifts the low whiplike branches out of the way.
“Has it been moved?” he calls over his shoulder.
“No.”
William stares down at what was once a woman. Two outstretched arms are still attached to a torso. Part of a green blouse wreathes one shoulder. Beneath the thin cotton, the punctured rib cage shows the shattered white ends of bone and a hollow bloody darkness. Rubbery-looking skin is beginning to peel from the edge of the wounds. From the pelvis down, there is nothing.
“Where’s the head?” says William, fighting back his sickness. There’s a sickly sweet carrion smell rising from the body and the shimmering wriggle of maggots. Their size, and the fact that it takes eight to twenty hours for them to hatch in this tropical climate, puts the time of death somewhere around Thursday night or Friday morning.
“We haven’t found it yet.” Captain Singh stays carefully upwind from the smell. “We’re still searching in a quarter-mile radius.”
William forces himself to look at the body again, but his mind is already made up. “It’s an animal. Those deep punctures on her torso look like tooth marks. The cervical spine has been severed. Her shoulders are also marked. It probably got her by the neck and suffocated her first.”
“What do you think then—leopard or tiger?”
Leopards are far more common in Malaya than tigers, outnumbering them by at least ten to one. William knows several residents whose dogs have been eaten by leopards.
“Tiger, maybe. The spacing of the bite marks looks a bit large for a leopard. Also, it takes a certain amount of jaw strength to break the spine. You should ask Rawlings—I assume he’ll be doing the autopsy?”
Rawlings, the hospital pathologist, is also acting coroner, the one who will weigh and measure out the sad secrets of this body. William takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and holds it over his mouth. The pressure alleviates his nausea.
“No tracks,” says Captain Singh.
William looks at the ground, thickly carpeted with dried leaves. In the absence of bare earth, it will be hard to find pugmarks.
“I think she was killed somewhere else,” he says. “There isn’t enough blood—perhaps this part of the body was taken for a second meal.”
Tigers, he knows, will return to a carcass repeatedly, even when the meat has gone high. It may be difficult to find the other body parts, as a tiger’s range can cover many miles. His thoughts leap to the fresh prints near his bungalow.
“I’ll get a tracker and some dogs,” says Captain Singh. “But something about this doesn’t look typical. Doesn’t it strike you that not much has actually been eaten? Tigers tend to go for the abdomen first, not the limbs. But here the torso is largely intact.” Like many Sikhs, he’s a tall, rangy man, made even more imposing by his white turban. His sharp amber eyes are fixed on the corpse.
William takes a final look himself and stiffens. On the left breast, the greyish skin is still intact and there, unmistakably, is a raised keloid scar in the shape of a butterfly. He knows this mark intimately, has paid money to run his fingers over it, and not even the handkerchief pressed desperately against his face can save him now.
William lurches out of the undergrowth and vomits by the side of a tree.
10
Ipoh
Sunday, June 7th
I returned to the dressmaker’s shop with a scratched face and the beginnings of a black eye. I’d hoped to let myself quietly in, but Mrs. Tham opened the door at the rattle of my key.
“Your face! Ji Lin, what happened to you? Did you get into a fight? Have you seen a doctor?”
I told her that I’d slipped and fallen. It wasn’t a very good story, and I waited, holding my breath, for the questioning to start again, but surprisingly she stopped. Studying me, she said. “You went home to Falim, did you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see your stepfather?”
A look of pity crossed her face, and I understood that she, too, had heard the rumors about my stepfather’s temper. I felt like giggling hysterically. Of all the things that had happened this weekend, he was the least to blame for once. And the truth was, he’d never laid a hand on me. He didn’t need to.
From the very beginning, I’d discovered that it was beneath my stepfather to discipline a girl. That was my mother’s job, and at the slightest sign of his displeasure, he’d merely glance at my mother for her to bite her lips and softly reprove me. At first, I hadn’t understood the cost. Singing loudly or whistling were offenses. So was talking back to him. They resulted in my mother emerging from discussions with him, white-faced and holding her wrist gingerly. Bruises on her upper arms where hard fingers had dug in. These were never as spectacular as the punishments meted out to Shin, and my mother never referred to them. But both of us learned to dread the vertical line that appeared on his forehead, in the exact middle of his brow, and the whitening of his nostrils.
I suppose you could say he thought what he was doing was right and just, and boys needed to be whipped into shape, and wives should learn their place. I didn’t know and, frankly, I never cared to understand my stepfather. I only knew I hated him.
* * *
Peering into my small mirror, I was dismayed. My left cheekbone was swollen, and there were several long scratches across my face. And as promised, I was developing a nice shiner. Glumly, I ran the numbers through my head again. At five cents a dance ticket, which meant three cents to me, I was still short seventy-five cents this month for my mother’s debt. But there was no way I could work like this, despite the knot of anxiety in my stomach. Rather than going in and facing stares, it would be better to ask Hui to
tell the Mama that I couldn’t make it on Wednesday, so the next day after work, I went to visit her.
Hui sometimes worked evenings at another place, but I was fairly certain I’d find her at home. She didn’t live too far, which was how we’d become friends in the first place. Hui had brought a dress to Mrs. Tham’s shop, and I’d been given the task of altering it. It was a pretty frock—light frothy turquoise that looked like sea foam. I’d asked her what she wore it to.
“Tea dances. Have you ever been to one?” she said.
I hadn’t, although I’d taken dance lessons before.
“You look like you’d be good at it,” she’d said, and between this and our idle chatter, I’d made the mistake of taking the hem up a little too high for Mrs. Tham’s conservative guidelines. Laughing, Hui said it didn’t matter and that shorter was better. Later, I found out why, but by then we were already good friends.
Hui lived on Panglima Lane, the narrowest street in Ipoh. Cramped houses pressed against each other and strings of laundry hung overhead like gaily waving flags. Thirty years ago, it was notorious for its brothels, gambling, and opium dens, but now it was mostly private homes. In Cantonese, it was called Second Concubine Lane. I’d often thought it would be a terrible place for a rendezvous because the houses were so close to each other. You could practically see across from the upper floors.
“Hui!” I called out as I arrived.
“Upstairs.” Her landlord, an old man who chewed betel nuts and looked like a vampire because of his crimson-stained mouth, gestured towards the front room. I found Hui lying on her stomach in bed, leafing through a newspaper. She was wearing a thin cotton slip, her bare face shiny with face cream.
Her eyes opened wide when she saw my face. “Whom did you fight with?”
“How did you know?” I set two portions of nasi lemak, coconut rice wrapped in a banana-leaf packet with curried chicken and sambal chili, on the table. Hui’s room was larger than mine at Mrs. Tham’s, and littered with pots of rouge, face powder, and magazines.
