“—stalked from behind. Neck broken—”
Listening, Ren finds the description frighteningly familiar. When they take their leave, Dr. MacFarlane’s face is grey and tight. All his earlier spirit has deserted him.
Later, when Ren sweeps the downstairs bathroom he finds a strand of dark hair in the corner. Longer than his arm, it’s hair from a woman’s head. Staring at it, Ren doesn’t know whether he missed it last time, or whether one of the ladies used the facility during the visit.
That night, he dreams that Dr. MacFarlane is bent over and vomiting in the downstairs bathroom again. It’s very dark in his dream; what little light there is blue and wavering as though a lightning storm is raging outside. Transfixed, Ren watches from the open door as Dr. MacFarlane lifts his head, slavering, his eyes like a wild animal. Thrusting his left hand into his mouth, the one with the missing finger, he pulls out a long, coiling black strand of woman’s hair.
* * *
The memory ends, like a strip of film that flickers to a halt. Ren has an uneasy feeling that at some point he’s made a misstep, although he has no idea what it was. If only he’d had his cat sense to help him at the time.
Now, he turns his attention back to the glass bottle. There’s no hiding place in his bare little room, but he’s saved an empty tin and slips the vial into it. Tucking it under his shirt, he walks out to the very end of the garden, right where the green lawn gives way to jungle near the rubbish dump. There, he digs a hole in the soft earth and buries the tin, placing a large stone to mark the spot.
When he takes leave to return to Kamunting, he’ll dig it up and rebury the finger in Dr. MacFarlane’s grave and be done with his responsibility.
* * *
William listens to the church service with only half an ear, his eye busy scanning the pews. Holy Trinity is built of dark wood, shady and cool, but though it’s still morning, it’s so humid that sweat trickles down his collar. The church is quite full as there are now more locals than Europeans who attend. The Tamil woman standing next to him shifts over, and William wonders suddenly whether he smells like blood.
The scent of the operating room often clings to him with its sharp top note of disinfectant and murky undertones of bone dust and blood. It never quite leaves his nostrils, even though he’s scrupulous about washing his hands and bathing frequently. But he hasn’t been in the operating room since Friday, so it must be the ghost of a scent.
On Friday, there was an explosion on a mining dredge. One man lost both hands above the wrists, and William had resorted to Krukenberg’s procedure, popular since the Great War. He seldom performs it, preferring to save every inch of wrist that he can, but in cases like this it’s the best he can offer. By dividing the two bones of the forearm, the stump can be used like chopsticks. It’s an ugly solution that amplifies the mutilation. There will be no discreet hook, no wooden hand to deceive at first glance; only two raw-looking prongs like lobster claws instead of forearms. But they work far better than prostheses. The man will be able to grip items with full sensation, open doors, even handle implements. Thinking it over, William is sure he did the right thing, though he can’t imagine that any woman would like to be touched by those sad claws. What is a hand without fingers? The loss of even one throws everything off balance.
Now the congregation is kneeling, reciting together:
“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us…”
William doesn’t kneel as he’s standing in the back, though he has the urge to do so. Those things which we ought not to have done—the words perch on him like soft heavy birds.
He considers the question of Ren. William didn’t instruct him to shine his shoes, but they were done this morning, placed neatly at the entrance. For the first time, he truly understands his mother’s sighs about the worth of a good servant. But Ren is only a child. He’s so obviously bright that it’s selfish, almost monstrous, to keep him for himself. I should send him to school.
Down in one of the front pews, he spots Lydia’s profile and is struck again by how her coloring resembles Iris’s, his fiancée, with her fine freckled skin and bright hair. Iris smiling at him: that familiar feeling of infatuation, when he thought he’d do anything to please her. Iris, cold and distant, accusing him of canoodling with other women when it was ridiculous, he never did, not once when he was with her. The irony of it. And then Iris, furious the last time he saw her, her small pink mouth open in a silent scream. Murderer. He shudders at the memory.
* * *
When the service is over, last night’s unsuccessful tiger hunt is the talk of the congregation.
“What did I say?” It’s Leslie, his young colleague from the hospital. He grins. “They were bound to make a hash of it with Price on board.”
Leslie dislikes Price for some reason. In a small community like theirs, every minor offence counts, which is why William has to be careful that nobody ever connects him with poor Ambika’s dismembered torso. So he must stay friendly with Leslie, who talks too much, with too many people.
“About our get-together,” says Leslie, referring to the monthly dinner party that William hosts next. “Is it all right if I fix up some entertainment?”
William isn’t particularly keen, but he says genially, “Whatever you like.”
“It’s a surprise!” says Leslie, looking pleased as he heads off. Too late, William realizes he forgot to mention that he’s promised Lydia she could come to their next gathering, but it doesn’t matter. Lydia fits in well with that crowd. Far better than Ambika ever could have.
The rumors that Ambika was singled out by witchcraft or angry spirits in the form of a tiger are troubling, mostly because they accuse her of being a loose woman. Which she was, he supposes. Suddenly and acutely, he misses her. A fog of misery and loneliness descends on him, but Ambika’s little hut remains empty. She will never return to it.
William tells himself that from now on, he’ll be a better person. Put in a good word for that Chinese girl in the pathology storeroom yesterday, the one who’d asked about nursing. The girl was charming with her cropped hair; it went well with her straight brows and dark eyes, tilted like a doe’s, as she stared him down. She was like a pretty boy, all slim limbs and narrow waist, so that he felt like seizing her, hard, to hear her gasp. He wonders what it would be like to trace a finger along that slender nape, down the hollow between her small pointed breasts. She’s not his type, but when he thinks about her, he wants to touch her.
His type is more like Nandani, the girl whose leg Ren saved. Even as he considers this, he sees her face in the crowd. It startles him—is it really her, or do all local girls with long braided curls look similar? But she’s smiling shyly, her heart-shaped face dimpling. William has a sudden rush of confidence.
Sometimes—unexpectedly—what he wishes for comes true. Doors open, obstacles are removed. Like Rawlings’s suspicions of foul play, brushed aside by an impatient magistrate. Or the fortuitous timing of that salesman’s obituary in the newspaper. Call it coincidence or just plain luck, it’s happened a little too often in his life.
Smiling back, he makes his way over to Nandani. She leans on wooden crutches.
“How’s the leg?” Her English, as he recalls, isn’t so good, not like the other girl, the Chinese one. They speak a patois of Malay and English, but that’s all right.
“Better,” she says shyly.
“I’ll give you a ride,” he says. She lives on a nearby rubber estate, after all.
But Lydia has found him. “Are you going back, William?”
His first reaction is annoyance, but then he realizes that it is in fact a good thing. What was he thinking, to give a local girl a lift home in front of everyone at church? He’s slipping up. It’s better to have Lydia around. Perfect, in fact, as he can drop her off first, and then Nandani. “Would you like a lift?”
Lydia is delighted. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all—I’m dropping off a patient.” He deliberately charms her.