“To kill it?” asks Ji Lin.
Ah Long glances at her as though he’s just registered her presence for the first time. “To frighten it off, so the guests can leave. You can’t kill a tiger with that kind of shot.”
He turns on his heel and disappears. And now Ren realizes that the mood in the house has changed. There’s a rising buzz, cries of alarm and pleasurable excitement. A tiger! The same one the fellows at the Club were waiting up for the other night? Mrs. Banks is wailing to her husband, I knew we should have left earlier, but the men are enthusiastic. This is what they have come East for: adventures like tigers in the garden, Oriental dancing girls, and cobras in their beds. Rawlings says loudly, “It’s probably gone already,” though nobody wants to believe him.
But Ren has a terrible, sinking feeling. There have been too many coincidences tonight, too many warning signs. He should have paid attention to them, but he’s been distracted. Now Nandani is gone, and the tiger is waiting, right where its pugmarks were found yesterday. What kind of beast returns so soon when there is no kill?
Ren knows that spot is where he buried the finger. If he returns the finger, perhaps the tiger will give back Nandani. With a strangled cry, he darts towards the veranda.
“What are you doing?” Ji Lin catches him by the sleeve.
“I have to get it back.” He has the peculiar sensation that she’ll understand him. “It wants the finger.”
“What finger?” In the dim light, her face has a greenish pallor.
“Dr. MacFarlane’s finger! I must put it back!”
With a sharp tug, Ren frees himself and runs out of the veranda doors. Now is the time to get it, before William comes out with a shotgun. He’s not afraid of the tiger, he tells himself. This kind of spirit tiger, that only hunts women with long hair.
It’s a lie though, because he’s terrified. His head is pounding, his lungs burning. But Ren is certain, down to the marrow in his bones, that there’s very little time left for Nandani. Perhaps she’s already dead. But no, the tiger has come back as a sign to him. A last chance.
I’m sorry, he gasps. He should have obeyed Dr. MacFarlane’s wishes from the beginning. He promised, didn’t he? This is what happens when promises are broken.
Outside, the darkness has a wet green scent, as though the earth itself is exhaling. Ren runs blindly over the lawn, heading for the rubbish dump. Breath wheezing as he trips, scrambles, gets up. Behind him, distant shouts. Doors slamming, windows opening.
And now he’s scrabbling in the soft earth, heaving aside the stone that he used as a marker. No spade, nothing but bare hands and broken fingernails.
Hurry, hurry!
Then he hears it, a rumbling snarl. It’s pitched so low that the air trembles; he can feel the reverberations in his bones. Every muscle in his body freezes, the hairs on his head stand on end. At this moment, Ren is no longer a boy or even human. He’s nothing but a hairless monkey caught on the ground.
The growl goes on and on, a steady rolling that fills the air. Dazed, he can’t tell which direction it comes from. Then there’s a coughing bark, a harsh rattle that cuts off abruptly and silence.
From the house he can hear faint shouts. A girl’s voice screaming stop or no.
But Ren is digging like a madman. So close, he can feel the edge of the biscuit tin. Thumbnail tearing. Sliding up the lid. It’s open and the little glass bottle clinks into his grimy hand. Ren heaves a sigh. Crouching, he turns towards the house. And then there’s a flash and a deafening roar.
Eyes wide, Ren hits the ground. He’s so surprised, he feels nothing but numbness. Lifts his left hand. It’s wet and slippery and looks like raw meat. Then the pain hits him in the side. Ren folds over, crumpling like old newspaper. The last thing he sees is his girl in blue. She’s holding him in her lap; there’s blood all over her pretty dress. It’s all right if it’s her, he thinks as he presses the glass vial from his good right hand into hers.
29
Ipoh
Saturday, June 20th
Kiong was the one who got us all out that night. As soon as he realized there was trouble, from all the shouting and carrying on, and then of course, that gunshot, the sound that cracked open the night. It was he who, searching for me as the last straggler, ran out with the crowd spilling onto that dark lawn and grabbed me. I had no memories of that. If I closed my eyes, I was still there. The white muzzle flash, the high sharp scream of a young animal.
My dress was covered in blood, dark blotches staining the pale blue silky material. None of the other girls wanted to sit too close to me. They huddled up towards the other side of the car, talking in hushed tones. Pearl was crying. She had a little boy of her own, I remembered.
I should have stopped him. When the boy took off, rocketing out of the veranda doors, I should have gone back to the house to warn them that he’d gone out, but like a fool, I ran after him, stumbling around in the dark in that unknown garden, tripping and falling and circling back to the house. If only I hadn’t wasted all that time! And then the black shape of the man, coming out of the house with a gun. I knew it right away—one of my stepfather’s friends used to hunt wild boar—that sticklike shadow and the way he was carrying it, tucked under his arm.
“Stop!” I screamed as he lifted it. “No!”
But it was too late.
Shouts behind us: Acton, did you get it? But I already knew what he’d shot. I raced past him, sobbing. The old cook pushing his way through with a lantern, his face grey. And in the circle of lamplight, the boy crumpled on the ground.
So small. That was the first thing I thought when I saw that pathetic little body, the shadows of the trees and bushes looming above him. He must have been digging, because his arms were stained up to the elbows with earth. There was a look of utter astonishment on his face. I couldn’t look at his left side and arm, soaked in blood that looked black in the light. That arm—was there even a hand left? I was on my knees beside him, on the rough grass and upturned earth. He looked at me and his mouth moved.
“Put it back,” he said faintly. “In my master’s grave. I promised.” He pressed something into my palm with his good right hand. Men shoved past, barked orders.
“Move aside! Move, please!”
A hand grabbed my elbow. It was Kiong. “Time to go.”
“Wait!” I wanted to hear what the men were saying as they lifted him up, his limp body just like Pei Ling’s dangling foot. There were doctors here tonight; they’d know what his injuries were like and if he would live or die.
Kiong dragged me away. I couldn’t break his iron grip on my arm. “We’re leaving now.”
And so we had. The other girls were already waiting in the car. There was a flurry of questions when they saw me, but I’d no words to answer them.
“But what were you doing out there?” said Hui. She seemed agitated, more so than me in fact. Numbness paralyzed my hands and feet; my tongue was thick and dry.
“I saw him run out,” I said at last. “So I tried to stop him.”
“You might have been shot!” Hui squeezed me hard.
“Don’t,” I said. “My dress has blood on it.”
* * *
The way back seemed shorter than our journey out, on mile after mile of pale, ribbonlike road. After a while, the other girls started talking again, speculating about what had happened.
“What an idiot, shooting his own houseboy,” said Rose.
“Well, it seems he’s an orphan, so there’s no family to complain on his behalf if he dies,” said Anna.
I said nothing, only stared out of the window. My fingers were still clutched tight around the object that the boy Ren had given me. I had a stomach-clenching feeling that I knew exactly what it was from the shape of the slippery glass cylinder. I didn’t have to look. Didn’t want to look.
There were no pockets in my dress, and the little bag I’d brought with me had been left behind in the rush of leaving. There wasn’t much in it anyway, just my house keys and lip rouge. Hui had taught me not to leave telltale information like my name or address in my bag if I ever had to go out for work. But in the meantime, I had nowhere to put my burden, this unwanted gift that Ren had slipped me.
Why did he have the finger? It was like a curse, one of those dark tales when you try to discard something but it always returns to you. The image of the little boy from my dreams and Ren’s face blurred together. The same, yet not the same.
Now we were passing streets that I knew, the village of Menglembu, and very soon, Falim, where my stepfather’s shophouse was. Kiong planned to drop us off at our homes since it was so late. But how could I possibly slip into Mrs. Tham’s dress shop in a bloodstained dress with no keys?
“Stay over with me,” Hui whispered, as though she’d been reading my mind. “I’ll lend you clothes.”