by Yangsze Choo
“What’s the point of my being here?” I said, reminding her that Mrs. Tham had given me the week off. I’d have to return to Ipoh tomorrow, however, because of the private party on Saturday.
In these three days, I’d had no word from Shin. If he’d been run over by a lorry or eaten by a tiger, the police would surely have contacted us by now. Still, I couldn’t help glancing at the clock as the long, hot Friday afternoon advanced, expecting him to return for the weekend.
I’d hidden the brown paper packet with its severed thumb in Shin’s empty room. I knew where he used to keep his treasures, under a loosened floorboard in the corner, and I pried it up and slid the paper packet in. Standing in Shin’s room, the smooth wooden floorboards under my bare feet, I found it hard to believe that he’d occupied it for so many years. It was completely empty.
When he’d left for medical school, he’d sorted his belongings in a frenzy of activity. I’d watched silently from the doorway as he’d systematically cleared everything out, even the cheaply printed kungfu novels that we’d both collected.
“Can I have these?” I’d asked.
He’d nodded, barely turning his head. And I’d known then that Shin never meant to come home again.
Traitor, I thought. Deserter.
I threw myself on the neatly stripped bed, wondering if Fong Lan had lain here with Shin, and what they had done together. Whether he had unbuttoned her blouse slowly, and bent to kiss her, his hand sliding up to cup her breast. Had he smiled lazily at her the way he had at me, looking down through his lashes? Lying there in the darkness, I squeezed my eyes shut. I must kill it quickly: this raw, newborn emotion that fluttered in my chest.
* * *
So when Friday afternoon came round and I heard my stepfather’s voice raised in greeting in the front of the shophouse, I told myself that I mustn’t run out to greet Shin like a loyal dog. Still, my pulse quickened as footsteps made their way down the long passageway, all the way to the back kitchen where I was chopping up a steamed chicken. It was best to look cheerful, I decided. Not as though I’d stayed up half the night catching up on ten years’ worth of jealousy in one fell swoop. Cheerful and brisk, that was the way to go.
“Back again?” I said. “I was afraid you got squashed by a lorry.”
Turning, I was mortified to discover that it wasn’t Shin, but Robert who stood behind me.
“Is my driving really that bad?” he asked in surprise.
“I’m sorry—I thought you were Shin.”
Robert’s eye brightened at my flustered expression. “I don’t mind,” he said. “I like it when you talk to me like that, Ji Lin.” This wasn’t good. The way he said my name, shyly yet with pleasure, had all the hallmarks of infatuation. I’d seen it before at the dance hall, though it was easier to shrug off while being smoky-eyed Louise.
“I always envied Shin and Ming,” said Robert. “And how the three of you were so close growing up.”
I tried to laugh it off. “You have sisters, don’t you?”
“It’s not the same.” He drew closer, and I glanced at him in alarm. If he tried to go in for a kiss again, I might end up flinging the chicken at him. I wondered why I was so resistant to him. After all, he was a good catch. Not knowing what else to do, I served him some steamed sweet rice cakes, the kind that were puffy like clouds.
“Did you say that your father is on the board of the Batu Gajah District Hospital?” I asked casually.
He nodded through a mouthful of cake.
I took out the copy I’d made of the lists in Pei Ling’s package. It was worth a try, if he had any information that could shed light on them. “Do you recognize any of these names?”
Robert studied it for a long moment. “Lytton Rawlings—he’s the pathologist. And this one, William Acton, is a general surgeon.”
“What about J. MacFarlane?”
“I don’t think he’s on staff.” Robert frowned. “But I’ve heard that name before. There was an odd story going around, something to do with a woman’s death up in Kamunting. Where did you get these lists from—the hospital?”
A chill shadow swam below me. I regretted asking Robert, with his blundering, well-meaning ways.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“You look so sad, Ji Lin,” said Robert. “Are you worried about anything? Because if you are, you should tell me.”
His face with its silly, fashionably thin mustache peered anxiously at me. Of course I had worries. Worries about mahjong debts, loan sharks, and losing my part-time job. Plus the small matter of severed fingers and falling in love with my stepbrother, but I couldn’t possibly tell Robert any of this. At that moment, Ah Kum walked in. Finding us gazing at each other over the kitchen table, she backtracked with a congratulatory smirk.
My mother pressed Robert to stay for dinner, but he had a previous engagement. I was relieved. Shin still hadn’t arrived, and it was better if they didn’t meet. He had a bristling antagonism towards Robert that was part envy and part I didn’t know what—natural dislike, I supposed.
To my surprise, my stepfather came out to see Robert off with me. After his sleek, cream-colored behemoth had taken off with a squeal of brakes, leaving a skid mark on the edge of the curb, the two of us were left standing on the street. My stepfather, chewing on a toothpick, was expressionless as ever, but I felt his mood soften, which gave me the courage to say, “Robert’s father is on the board at the Batu Gajah Hospital.”
He grunted.
“He said that if I’d like to apply for a scholarship to study nursing, he’d put in a word for me.”
This was an old, sore argument that we’d had. My stepfather didn’t consider nursing a suitable job for a young woman, what with having to bathe and perform intimate acts for all manner of strangers, including men.
He turned to look at me. “It’s not a job for a single girl. But if you’re married, you can do as you please.”
I could hardly believe my ears. “Why does it matter whether I’m married or not? The job’s the same.”
“You’ll be your husband’s responsibility then.”
“Does it matter to whom?”
My stepfather removed the toothpick from his mouth and regarded it. “As long as he makes a living, I don’t care who you marry or what you do afterwards.”
I took a deep breath. “Do you promise?”
He looked me in the eye. It was impossible to know what my stepfather was thinking at times like this.
“Yes,” he said. “Once you’re married, you’re not my responsibility anymore. Nor your mother’s.” He nodded at the black scrape that Robert’s car had left on the curb. “But learn how to drive properly.”
26
Batu Gajah
Saturday, June 20th
It’s Saturday, the day of the party. Ah Long let Ren sleep in, and it’s almost nine o’clock in the morning when he wakes with a start. The fever has gone and the mysterious sensation of well-being still remains.
Hurrying, he scrambles into his white houseboy’s uniform. Ah Long is already busy in the kitchen, stirring a large pot of beef rendang, slow cooked with coconut milk, and aromatic with kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, and cardamom.
“Fever gone?” he asks.
Ren nods, bright-eyed.
“It’s nice to be young,” Ah Long grumbles, but he seems pleased, and after Ren has eaten breakfast, he sets him to work on the hundred-and-one last-minute preparations for the party.
William is around. Ever since the tiger print was discovered at the edge of the garden, he hasn’t gone out in the evenings but has, instead, locked himself up in his study and written more letters.
Ren often wonders where those letters go. The postman comes by and picks a few of them up, but never the letters with the thick, cream-colored envelopes addressed to a woman named Iris. Ren puzzles over this and can only conclude that William takes them to the Club and drops them in the postbox there. Or perhaps he hands them directly to her at some sp
rawling colonial bungalow. As much as he tries, Ren can’t picture what this Iris lady looks like. The only foreign woman who comes to mind is Lydia. She’s the one that he imagines opening the letters, drinking tea on the veranda. Going to the hospital with William. The funny thing is that they almost get along. It’s just that the master always pulls back, as though Lydia reminds him of something he wants to avoid. It must be very disappointing for her; there’s no one else around so well suited, according to servants’ gossip.
Ren sets the long table with plates and silverware and starched napkins cunningly folded into peacocks. The cutlery is real silver, from William’s family in England with a crest and a curling, ornate “A” engraved on each piece. Ren spent all of Wednesday morning polishing it. Each spoon and fork is weighty. Ah Long says it’s a measure of the master’s quality. The last doctor he worked for had stainless knives and forks, not good silver like this. When Ren timidly asks William if his family is famous, William only laughs shortly and says something about black sheep, though what sheep have to do with silverware isn’t clear to Ren.
William is on edge today. He smokes cigarette after cigarette, leaning on the wooden railing of the veranda and gazing at the lush green leaves of the canna lilies that surround the bungalow. It must be because of the note he got this morning, delivered by a Sinhalese youth of thirteen or fourteen with a sullen look.
Ren is shaking out a dustcloth at the front door when the boy comes by on a bicycle.
“Tolong kasi surat ni pada awak punya Tuan.” Give this letter to your master, he says in Malay.
It’s a folded handwritten note. The writing has a childish, unformed air as though the writer isn’t very confident about the letters. Mr. William, it says.
“Do you need something from my master?” asks Ren with curiosity.
The youth looks scornful. “Not me. My cousin. Tell him she wants to see him soon. Her leg is acting up.”
Ren has a flash of understanding. “Your cousin is Nandani? How is she?” Ren remembers the warmth of Nandani’s smile, the curling strands of her pretty black hair.
“She wants to see him.” He purses his mouth. “I guess you wouldn’t know, a little kid like you. How old are you?”
“I’m almost thirteen.”
The other boy laughs. “Don’t lie. You’re ten. Maybe eleven.”
He’s the first person to guess, and Ren falls silent. At this victory, the other boy says in a friendlier manner, “Give him the note, all right? You know, her father found out.”
“About what?”
“Never you mind.” He scowls and cycles off, leaving Ren holding the note. Not knowing what to do, Ren goes into the house and hands it to William. To his surprise, William doesn’t open it but puts it into his pocket.
“Do you need to send a reply?” Ren wonders why William won’t open the note.
“No. It’s just a misunderstanding.” William turns and walks back out onto the veranda.
* * *
At seven o’clock in the evening the first guests arrive, the men in light tropical dinner jackets made of cotton drill, the two women in pretty frocks. Lydia towers over the other lady, a mousy little brunette who’s the wife of one of the young doctors.
They mill around the front room, sipping drinks mixed by the waiter hired for the evening. He’s a friend of Ah Long’s, a young fellow Hainanese who works at the Kinta Club. His deft hands squeeze limes and shake ice into submission. Ren would like to watch, but Ah Long has him scurrying about so he only catches snatches of conversation amid the clink of glasses and laughter.
There’s Leslie, the red-haired doctor who’s on good terms with William, saying anxiously to the mousy wife, “I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Banks. I didn’t realize there’d be ladies tonight and I arranged for entertainment. Dancing, you know. Girls, but a very decent sort.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” she says, although she looks worried.
Ren ducks past them with a tray, wondering which of the men is Dr. Rawlings. Guiltily, his thoughts fly to the buried finger in the garden. Has the doctor noticed that the specimen is missing from the shelf? Ren recalls that tingling electricity, like a burst of static before a message comes through, that he sensed near the pathology room. He tilts his head from side to side, wondering if his cat sense will tell him if the source was indeed Dr. Rawlings.
But there’s no time to look. The long side buffet in the dining room is laden with tureens of rendang and fragrant, steaming rice. Sour green mangoes are shredded in a kerabu: a salad tossed with mint, shallots, and dried shrimp drizzled with lime and spicy sambal sauce. William likes local food and it’s fashionable to serve a curry dinner, though as a nod to the less adventurous, Ah Long has turned the breasts of the three chickens into cutlets, smothered with onion gravy and tinned peas. The dark meat has been twice-fried as Inchi Kabin, and there are little glass dishes of pickles and condiments.
And now they’re sitting down, William escorting little Mrs. Banks in on his arm, since married women take precedence over spinsters. Ren, standing at the sideboard to assist, scans the long table and the animated faces of the men, as they unfold starched linen napkins and sip from glasses. Real crystal glasses, as Ah Long informed him.
Lydia is at the other end of the table from William. She laughs often, easily outshining timid Mrs. Banks. Leslie leans over, murmuring something to William, who looks exasperated.
“Dance-hall girls? What on earth were you thinking?”
“—didn’t realize there’d be ladies tonight.” Abashed, Leslie drops his voice as William shakes his head.
“You ought to have told me.”
“I thought it would be more fun to surprise everyone.”
William beckons Ren over. “Tell Ah Long that there’ll be some girls coming. How many?”
“Five,” says Leslie. “And a chaperone. From a respectable establishment.”
“Very well. Five young ladies. When they arrive, show them into my study. I hope,” he says glancing at Leslie, “this is not a disaster.”
“It’s just dancing. Nothing more than you’d get at the Celestial on a weekend afternoon.” Leslie’s hair is such a surprising color, the sort of gingery orange that Ren has only seen on cats. With a start, he realizes he’s been staring and the two men are watching him in amusement.
“The dance hall will send a chaperone,” Ah Long says when Ren scampers off to inform him of this exciting development. “They’re quite strict about these things, otherwise they can’t do business.”
“Why’s that?” Ren wipes a dish.
“They don’t want any trouble, at least the decent places don’t.”
“What about the not-decent places?” asks Ren.
“Those places you shouldn’t go to. Not even when you’re older.”
Ren would like to hear more about dance halls, but he has duties to perform. The furniture must be rearranged and the floor powdered for dancing. As he drags the furniture to the sides, there’s laughter and the clink of glasses from the dining room. Ren wonders whether there’ll be leftovers, but even as he considers this, his sharp ears catch a discordant note from the kitchen.
“Nanti, nanti! You cannot go in there!” That’s Ah Long’s voice. Then, more urgently, “Ren!”
Dropping the tin of talcum powder, Ren sprints back. Is it the dance-hall girls? If so, why are they in the kitchen? But there’s only one young woman—Nandani. She looks completely out of place as she tries to explain something to Ah Long. Furious, he’s barred the door with one arm, still clutching a wok chan, the steel spatula he uses for stir-frying.
“You cannot bother him now. Go home!”
Nandani’s eyes light up when she sees Ren. “I want to see your master.”
“Does your leg hurt?” Glancing down, Ren sees her leg is still bandaged.
“No, it’s better.”
Ren takes Nandani out through the kitchen door to the covered area outside.
“How did you get here?
”
“My cousin gave me a ride on his bicycle. I need to talk to your master.”
She looks so sad and desperate that Ren is worried. Maybe she’s sick and needs medical help.
“My father is sending me away,” she says. “To my uncle in Seremban.”
Ren still doesn’t understand what this has to do with William but he sees the distress in her eyes. “I’ll tell him. Wait here.”
When Ah Long’s back is turned, Ren slips through to the dining room and quietly approaches William.
“Tuan, Nandani is here to see you.”
William doesn’t turn his head, but his face turns pale beneath his tan. “Where is she?”
“Outside. Behind the kitchen.”
William is silent for a moment. Then he pushes his chair back. “I’ll just be a moment,” he says cheerily to the gentleman on his left. To Ren, he murmurs, “Bring her round the veranda on the other side.”
As soon as William stands up, Ren feels a sharp tingle, a warning that an invisible clock has started to tick, running down the seconds and minutes that William is away from his guests. It’s rude to leave in the middle of dinner like this, and William doesn’t like loose ends and untidiness. So he hurries off to lead Nandani around the back of the house to the veranda.
She limps and stumbles on the uneven ground. “You can lean on me,” Ren says. They keep their voices low, although Ren doesn’t know why. The lights from the dining room cast warm shadows onto the grass; there’s a swell in the conversation and a burst of laughter.
“Who are they?” Nandani asks.
“Some doctors from the hospital. Are you hungry?”
She shakes her head, but Ren thinks that he’ll get her and her cousin a plate of food before they go. On the other side, William is already waiting, a dark shape on the veranda. Seeing him, Nandani hurries eagerly over.
Ren can’t hear what they’re saying at this distance, but William must be telling her something, because she nods from time to time. Then he puts an arm around her, or is it both arms? Ren is fascinated. Craning his neck, he can’t make out much in the gloom. Is Nandani crying? Ren takes a step sideways and bumps into someone. It’s Ah Long. He’s come padding around the corner in the darkness like an old, moth-eaten cat.
