“No, it’s a weretiger—it turns into an old man.”
Ren’s stomach clenches in alarm; this account of an old man who turns into a tiger is all his fears come true. “Who said it turns into an old man?”
The smallest boy pipes up, “Someone saw an old man walking in the rubber estate in the dark. But when they went to look, there were only tiger prints.”
Ren can’t help asking, “Did he have a missing finger?”
The boys look at each other. Ren can see their minds busily working, no doubt adding that detail to the story.
Unbidden, a memory wells up in Ren. The crooked shadows of a plantation at dusk, the figure of an old man, dressed in white. It’s too far to see his face but he walks with that familiar stiff gait. The gloom deepens, the trees closing in like silent figures, the only light the whiteness of the old man’s clothes. Ren runs after his master, calling Dr. MacFarlane to come back to the house. It’s one of his master’s fits, when he shivers with cold, sweats feverishly, and doesn’t seem right in his mind.
It’s so dark that Ren can barely see his own feet. There’s the familiar suffocating panic, the fear that the old doctor will fall down or get lost or turn to show him a snarling, unrecognizable face, and Ren will be all alone again in the dark.
Now Ren shivers despite the blazing sun. The boys are just repeating a local story, he tells himself. Still, how long has it been since Dr. MacFarlane died? He counts anxiously. There are now only fifteen days left. He must get the finger back this evening. Then he’ll bury it in Dr. MacFarlane’s grave and make things right.
The little boys drift away. After buying the items on Ah Long’s shopping list, Ren and Harun wait in the shade. To pass the time, Ren learns to roll cigarettes, though the thin paper is fiddly and the tobacco falls out. Harun is patient, not complaining when Ren makes ugly, stumpy cigarettes that look like carrots, rolling and rerolling the same piece of paper so as not to waste.
“You mustn’t smoke though,” says Harun, taking it away. “How old are you again?”
Ren swallows. “Thirteen.”
Harun studies him carefully. “I started working when I was twelve years old. There were nine children in our family and I was the oldest. It’s not easy.”
Ren keeps his head down. First he must complete his task. “Do you think the tiger killed the woman in the rubber estate?”
Harun rubs his chin. “No matter what the magistrate says, it’s strange. Tigers become man-eaters when they’re old or sick and can’t hunt, but who ever heard of a tiger that stopped partway and refused to eat its kill? There must have been something wrong with the body.”
“Do you think a man can become a tiger?” It’s the same question that Ren has asked Ah Long and William in turn.
Harun takes a long drag on his cigarette. The end of it glows bright red. “My grandmother told me about a tiger village, near Gunung Ledang in Malacca. The posts of the houses are made of jelatang, the stinging tree nettle, the walls of men’s skin, the rafters of bones, and the roofs are thatched with human hair. That’s where the weretigers live, the harimau jadian who change their shapes. Some people say that they’re beasts possessed by the souls of dead people.”
Ren doesn’t like this story. It’s too much like the ramblings of Dr. MacFarlane in his last days, when the old man would rouse himself from his fits, giving fragmented accounts of where he’d been and what he’d done.
“I went far this time,” he said to Ren once, his pale eyes wandering. “I killed a tapir six miles away.”
“Yes,” Ren said soothingly. “Yes, I know.”
“I’m afraid,” he muttered, clutching Ren’s small square hand. “One of these days, I won’t return to my body.”
Ren doesn’t like to remember Dr. MacFarlane like that, all rheumy-eyed and shaking, his pink scalp visible through the strands of grey hair. He wants to remember him cradling a sick baby, taking apart a wireless to explain how the batteries work. It was malarial fever, that was all. Soon Dr. MacFarlane would recover, take large doses of quinine, and all would be back to normal. But two days later, a local hunter stopped by to show off the tufted ears and tail of a tapir. He said it was a tiger’s kill, partly eaten, that he’d found six miles away and Ren had stiffened at the news, glancing at Dr. MacFarlane, who was silently writing in his notebook.
“Is that so?” the old man had said, his eyes placid and hooded. But Ren, remembering his remarks, had wondered.
Now, Ren regards Harun with a worried expression. “Is that a real story?” he asks, “About the tigers with human souls?”
Harun exhales; a thin stream of smoke drifts out of his nostrils. “My grandmother would never say if it was true or not. She used it to frighten us into going to bed.” He stubs the cigarette out. “I think Tuan will go to the Club next for dinner. If you want to go home, I’ll give you a lift. Better not walk until after the hunt.”
“Will there be a tiger hunt?”
“Tonight. There’s a goat tied up in the rubber plantation and a local hunter, Pak Ibrahim, will lie in wait for it with Tuan Price and Tuan Reynolds. The others will sit up late at the Club, waiting for news.”
Spotting William’s lanky figure, they both scramble to attention. He’s deep in conversation with another foreigner, a man with a toothbrush mustache. Ren listens covertly as they mention tigers.
“Apparently Rawlings had a bee up his bonnet at the inquest. Wanted to make it a suspicious death,” says the man.
“Yes, I heard,” William says. “The magistrate overruled him.”
“What else could it have been except a tiger? Farrell hasn’t any patience for tall tales.”
Ren’s heart sinks. They’ve decided it was a tiger after all.
Harun opens the car door as William folds his legs into the back of the Austin, and just as Harun predicted, tells him to drive to the Kinta Club at the top of the hill in Changkat.
“Harun can send you back after he’s dropped me at the Club,” he says to Ren as an afterthought. “Or do you want to stay to hear if they catch a tiger tonight?”
Ren explains that he forgot something at the hospital, but yes, he’d like to wait. In the mirror, he sees William and Harun exchange an amused glance. It’s the indulgent look that grown-ups give to children’s whims, and it makes Ren feel hot and embarrassed, though he tells himself he has a task to complete.
* * *
Ren finds himself back at the Batu Gajah District Hospital at that odd hour when late afternoon is turning into evening. The sky beyond the covered walkway is powdery pink, the sun burning low between spectacular clouds that float like cream cakes. But Ren has no time to admire them; the fizzing tingle he sensed this morning at the hospital is still there, running like a live wire. Who or what can be sending him a signal, if it isn’t Yi?
First, he must check the pathology storeroom. Near the outbuilding, now striped with the long shadows of trees, he hesitates. The door that was ajar this morning is closed. Ren tries the handle softly; it gives way under his hand.
Inside is a large, high-ceilinged space with windows that open onto the other side of the building. From William’s offhand remark about storerooms and moving boxes, Ren imagined a warehouse piled with relics, but this room is very orderly. Late shafts of sun slant in, although there’s a growing dimness in the corners, as though tiny unseen creatures are gathering in the shadows.
Ignoring the faint buzzing in his ears, Ren steps farther in. This is the room he imagined, when the task of finding Dr. MacFarlane’s missing finger fell upon him. This room, with its rows and rows of specimens in every conceivable kind of glass container. Next to the tall windows is an empty box and a step stool, as though someone has just left it. The impression is so strong that Ren can almost see a slim figure unpacking the last box. No, the way the stool is positioned makes him think that it was used to place something high up on a shelf.
The finger is definitely here; he only has to close his eyes to feel the tingle. High on that shelf. He pushes the stool closer and climbs up. Past the bigger containers with their hideous, floating contents, past a jar with a two-headed rat in it. It’s hard to feel with his cat sense now, there’s too much static. He never imagined there’d be so many specimens. Straining precariously on tiptoe, Ren’s eyes are barely level with the shelf he wants.