“What’s wrong?”
Shin caught me as I fell, my thoughts tangled like riverweed, slippery and coiling. Dizzy, I steadied myself, pushing back. Sliding my hands along the width of his shoulders, the hard muscles that were those of a man and not a boy. My heart was racing like a horse on treacherous ground. If I weren’t careful, I’d make a fatal stumble.
He watched me with concern, dark brows frowning. Whatever it was I’d seen in his eyes—reflected shadows, a looking glass linked to another realm—was gone. There was only Shin and even then he was half a stranger to me.
“Do you often have spells like this?”
Spells. That was the right word. Dizzy spells, magic spells. The crooked twitch of a severed finger that had led us somewhere strange. I couldn’t speak, could only nod.
Shin’s hands gripped my shoulders. The pressure made me feel better. Then he was loosening my collar, working the top buttons quickly and deftly. Dazed, I wondered how many women he’d undressed. But he was careful, touching only the material of the dress. Careful not to touch me.
“Have you been tested for anemia? Lots of girls your age have it.”
Practical as always. I inhaled. Sunlight flooded back into the room, and the spell, whatever it was, lifted.
“Shin, have you ever dreamed about a little boy and a railway station?”
“No.” He sat down with a sigh, ignoring the dust.
“Well, I do. And it’s very odd because he talks to me. I feel as though I’ve met him before.”
“A little boy—is that me?”
I swatted him with a file. “Stop being so egotistical.”
He laughed and dodged. The file flew out of my hand and papers exploded everywhere, thin loose sheets covered with crabbed handwriting. It was Dr. Merton’s writing—lists and more lists of things mixed in with supplies that he’d ordered. Formaldehyde, spirits of tincture, scalpels. Fixatives for glass slides. And then I saw it: Finger donated by European patient. Dry preservation in salt.
I waved it under Shin’s nose. “This is it—the only finger so far that isn’t preserved in fluid!”
He read aloud as I peered over his shoulder. “Apparently this was a one-off, do-it-yourself preservation. Someone, a fellow doctor named—can’t quite read this—MacFarlane or MacGarland, who had a finger amputated on a jungle trip. Blood poisoning after an animal bite. I hope he didn’t do it himself.”
“No, it says W. Acton. William Acton—that surgeon who was just here. He told me he’d donated his friend’s finger.” The coincidence unsettled me, like a dark undertow.
“That’s a nice friendship,” said Shin drily.
I ignored him. “Packed in salt, which was probably all they had on them at the time. I wonder what they were doing.”
Discovering an actual record of the finger was a relief, I told myself. It had been removed by a proper doctor for medical reasons. The rest of it, the salesman’s obsession with luck, was just superstition.
“And here it is.” Shin took the now-familiar glass bottle out of his pocket and set it next to the other specimens we had already checked off.
“Put it behind, on the upper shelf,” I said with a shudder.
The sun sank lower, the light so golden that you could almost take a bite out of it, like the layered butter cake, kuih lapis, a cousin from Batavia in Dutch Indonesia had once brought to our house. Each moist slice had smelled like all the spices of the East Indies. The storeroom was almost done, the wooden racks wiped down and filled with rows of specimens. All the files had been put into filing cabinets and relabeled. Looking at the list of cross-tagged specimens, I felt a warm glow of achievement.
“Do you think Dr. Rawlings will pay extra for such a good job?” I asked Shin.
He was reading another file with a frown. “Doubt it. He agreed to one day’s overtime. That includes you, by the way.”
“We’ll split then?”
“Yes.” Shin said suddenly, “Are you having money problems?”
“There’s something I want to buy.” Changing the subject, I said, “What are you doing with your money?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me. An opaque, don’t-ask-me-questions look. “Saving up.”
Not for the first time, I wondered why Shin was working so hard. He had a scholarship, and my stepfather had also given him a generous living stipend. Whatever truce they’d come to after that terrible night when Shin’s arm was broken, it had worked itself out into an agreement that I wasn’t privy to. My stepfather was a hard man but he kept his word.
But Shin had continued working during the university term. His sparse correspondence mentioned a part-time job, and last summer and Christmas, work had kept him from coming home. What was he doing with all that money? At the May Flower, you could easily run up a tab. It wasn’t just the dancing of course. Ordering drinks or asking girls privately for call-outs, which meant buying them dinners and who knew what else, could easily spiral out of hand. I’d seen it happen and hoped Shin wasn’t doing that for some girl down in Singapore. Should I say anything to him?
No, it wasn’t my business anyway.
17
Batu Gajah
Saturday, June 13th
After leaving the hospital, William takes Ren to a café downtown where foreigners like to congregate. Ren, hesitating over the choices, whispers that he’d like a ham sandwich, please. Ham is a Western delicacy, brought in tins from Cold Storage, but William seems to think nothing of it.
Ren takes his sandwich outside where Harun, the driver, is waiting patiently by the car, an Austin that William purchased from his predecessor, Dr. Merton. The same physician who’d passed along the tenancy of the white bungalow, Ah Long, and Harun. Harun takes pride in its gleaming bonnet, the gentle curves of its chassis. It’s not large but it suits a bachelor like William, who drives himself on weekends.
“The other doctor never drove,” Harun said, explaining that Europeans come and go. Some leave after two years while others become lifers, so comfortable in their lush tropical lifestyle with servants that they can no longer cope with returning to England.
Ah Long told Ren that Dr. Merton hadn’t been a real doctor anyway. He spent his time dissecting diseased organs and cutting up dead bodies: neither of which Ah Long approved of. All parts of the body should rest together, he’d muttered. None of this scattering here and there. That only led to trouble, like the hungry ghosts whose remains were dispersed among strangers. Bones should be claimed by some filial son, not left in that dreadful room at the hospital filled with body parts in jars, all collected by Dr. Merton.
That must be the pathology storeroom, Ren thinks urgently. The one that made his invisible cat whiskers flicker. He’s sure that’s where the finger is. But who was the shadowy figure in the door this morning? Perhaps it was Dr. Rawlings, the pathologist who replaced Dr. Merton.
Dr. Rawlings is a family man, which is why he didn’t take over Dr. Merton’s bachelor quarters. Instead, he’d requested a larger bungalow for his wife and children. But they didn’t stay. One year—a year of monsoons and biting heat and scorpions found in shoes—was enough for them and they went back to England. Ah Long said that many of the foreigners here are a bit peculiar. Why else would they live like this in exile, with their families half a world away, he said darkly.
“Even the ladies?” asked Ren.
“Of course!” said Ah Long with a snort. “Like that daughter of the Thomsons. Lydia, they call her. There was a big scandal about her in England.” What it was exactly, Ah Long wouldn’t say. Now, Ren thinks about Miss Lydia helping out at the hospital earlier, and wonders what she’s run away from.
* * *
Ren watches a knot of boys playing SEPAK TAKRAW with a woven rattan ball. The ball flies out, almost striking the car. Ren grabs it in time. The boys come running, glancing guiltily at the gleaming car and Ren’s white houseboy’s uniform.
“Here you go.” He tosses it back. They’re younger than him, about eight or nine, the same age as Yi was when he died. One of them offers him a peppermint, dug from the depths of his pocket. It has bits of fluff on it, but Ren accepts it with grave ceremony.
“Do you work for the gwai lo?” the boy asks in Cantonese.
“My master’s a doctor.” Ren rubs the peppermint surreptitiously on his sleeve before popping it into his mouth. It tastes cold and furry.
“You work at the hospital?” Ren shakes his head, but the boy continues. “Have you seen the ghost there?”
“Lots of people have died in that hospital,” says another boy.
“I’ve never seen a ghost.” Except Yi, thinks Ren, but only in dreams so it doesn’t count.
“Did you hear that a woman was killed by a tiger just last week?”
“But that wasn’t in the hospital,” says the other boy. “That was in a rubber estate.”
“It’s a ghost tiger, a white one you know?”