“Why?”
“The body must be made whole again when you die. Anything added must be removed, and anything missing replaced—otherwise your soul won’t rest in peace.” Enjoying my surprise, he went on to describe the rest of his trip in detail. Some people were talkers while others danced in sweaty-palmed silence. On the whole, I preferred the talkers because they were absorbed in their own world and didn’t pry into mine.
If my family discovered I was working here part-time, it would be a disaster. I shuddered to think of my stepfather’s rage, my mother’s tears, as she’d be bound to confess her mahjong debts to him. Then there was Shin, my stepbrother. Born on the same day as me, people used to ask if we were twins. He’d always been my ally, at least until recently. But Shin was gone now, having won a place to study medicine at the King Edward VII Medical College in Singapore, where native talent was being trained to combat the lack of doctors in Malaya. I’d been proud, because it was Shin and he’d always been clever, yet deeply envious because between the two of us, I’d scored higher marks at school. But there was no use thinking about what-ifs. Shin never answered my letters anymore.
The salesman was still talking. “Do you believe in luck?”
“What’s there to believe?” I tried not to grimace as he trod heavily on my foot.
“You should, because I’m going to be very lucky.” Grinning, he took yet another turn too sharply. From the corner of my eye, I noticed the Mama glaring at us. We were causing a scene on the dance floor, staggering around like this, and it was all very bad for business.
Gritting my teeth, I scrabbled for balance as the salesman unleashed a dangerously low dip. Undignified, we teetered. Arms flailing, grabbing at clothes. His hand cupped my buttocks as he peered down my dress. I elbowed him, my other hand snagging in his pocket. Something small and light rolled into my palm as I snatched it away. It felt like a slim smooth cylinder. I hesitated, panting. I should put it back; if he saw that I’d taken something, he might accuse me of being a pickpocket. Some men liked to make trouble like that; it gave them a hold over a girl.
The salesman smiled shamelessly. “What’s your name?”
Flustered, I gave him my real name, Ji Lin, instead of Louise. Worse and worse. At that instant, the music ended, and the salesman abruptly released me. His eyes were fixed beyond my shoulder as though he’d seen someone he recognized, and with a hurried start, he was gone.
As if to make up for the tango, the band launched into “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby!” Couples rushed the dance floor as I walked back to my seat. The object in my hand was burning like a brand. Surely he’d come back; he still had a roll of dance tickets. If I waited, I could return what I’d taken. Pretend he’d dropped it on the floor.
The smell of rain blew in through the open windows. Unnerved, I lifted the ribbon separating the dancers’ seats from the floor and sat down, smoothing my skirt.
I opened my hand. As I’d guessed from the feel of it, it was a thin-walled cylinder made of glass. A specimen bottle, barely two inches long with a metal screw top. Something light rattled inside. I stifled a cry.
It was the top two joints of a dried, severed finger.
3
Batu Gajah
Wednesday, June 3rd
When the train rattles into Batu Gajah, Ren is on his feet, face pressed against the window. This prosperous little town, the seat of British administration for the state of Perak, has a peculiar name: batu means stone, and gajah, elephant. Some say the town is named after a pair of elephants who crossed the Kinta River. Angered by this act, the deity Sang Kelembai turned them into two boulders rising out of the water. Ren wonders what those poor elephants were doing in the river, that they should be turned to stone.
Ren has never traveled by train before, although he’s waited for the old doctor at the Taiping railway station many times. The windows are open in the third-class carriage despite the particles of soot, some as large as a fingernail, that blow back as the steam engine rounds a bend. Ren can taste the heavy monsoon wetness in the air. He presses a hand against his carpetbag. Inside is the precious letter. If it rains hard, the ink might run. The thought of the old doctor’s careful, shaky script washing away sends a stab of homesickness through him.
Every mile that the train rattles onward takes him farther and farther from Dr. MacFarlane’s rambling, untidy bungalow, his home for the last three years. He’s gone now. The small room where Ren stayed in the servants’ quarters, next to Auntie Kwan, is empty. This morning, Ren swept the floor for the last time and neatly tied up the old newspapers for the karang guni man to collect. As he closed the door with its peeling green paint, he saw the large spider that had shared the room with him silently rebuilding its web in the corner of the ceiling.
Treacherous tears fill his eyes. But Ren has a task to complete; this is no time to cry. With Dr. MacFarlane’s death, the forty-nine days of the soul have begun to tick away. And this town with its strange name isn’t the first place that he’s lived without his brother Yi. Ren considers the stone elephants again. Were they twins like Yi and himself? Sometimes, Ren feels a tingle, like the twitch of cat whiskers, as though Yi is still with him. A flicker of that strange twin sense that bound them, warning him of events to come. But when he looks over his shoulder, there is no one.
* * *
Batu Gajah Station is a long, low building with a sloping roof that lies next to the railway line like a sleeping snake. All over Malaya, the British have built similar stations that fall along familiar, tidy lines. The towns repeat themselves, with white government buildings and grassy padangs, clipped like English town greens.
At the ticket office, the Malay stationmaster is kind enough to pencil Ren a map. He has a handsome mustache and trousers starched to knife-edge creases. “It’s quite far. Are you sure no one will fetch you?”
Ren shakes his head. “I can walk.”
Farther down, there’s a cluster of Chinese shophouses leaning against one another with their overhanging second floors and little sundry shops spilling out below. That way leads to town. But Ren takes a right instead, past the Government English School. He glances longingly at the wooden building with its whitewashed, graceful lines, imagining other boys his age studying in the high-ceilinged rooms or playing games on the green field. Doggedly, he keeps walking.
The hill climbs towards Changkat, where the Europeans live. There’s no time to admire the many colonial bungalows built in the style of the British Raj. His destination is on the far side of Changkat, right up against coffee and rubber plantations.
Rain splatters the red earth furiously. Gasping, Ren starts to run, clutching his carpetbag. He’s almost reached a large angsana tree when he hears the rattle of a goods lorry, engine rasping as it climbs the hill. The driver shouts from the window. “Get in!”
Breathless, Ren climbs into the cab. His savior is a fat man with a wart on the side of his face.
“Thank you, Uncle,” says Ren, using the polite term to address an elder. The man smiles. Water trickles down Ren’s trousers and onto the floor.
“The stationmaster told me you were going this way. To the young doctor’s house?”
“Is he young?”
“Not as young as you. How old are you?”
Ren considers telling him the truth. They’re speaking Cantonese, and this man looks kind. But he’s too cautious to relax his guard.
“Almost thirteen.”
“Small, aren’t you?”
Ren nods. He’s actually eleven. Even Dr. MacFarlane hadn’t known that. Ren added a year, as many Chinese did, when he entered the old doctor’s household.
“Got a job there?”
Ren hugs the carpetbag. “Delivery.”
Or a retrieval.
“That doctor lives further away than the other foreigners,” the driver says. “I wouldn’t walk here at night. It’s dangerous.”
“Why?”
“A lot of dogs have been eaten recently. Taken even when they were chained to the house. Only the collars and heads were left.”
Ren’s heart squeezes. There’s a buzzing in his ears. Is it possible that it has started again, so soon? “Was it a tiger?”
“Leopard’s more likely. The foreigners say they’ll hunt it. Anyway, you shouldn’t wander around when it gets dark.”
They pull up at the bottom of a long curving drive, past the clipped English lawn to a sprawling white bungalow. The driver honks the horn twice, and after a long pause, a skinny Chinese man emerges onto the covered veranda, wiping his hands on a white apron. As Ren clambers down, he thanks the lorry driver over the rattle of rain.