I shuddered at the memory of that black shape, rising from the depths of the water.
“But I made him go back. There’s no use coming that way. He would have just separated from his body and it would be even worse.”
“Like a coma, you mean?”
Yi blinked. “I don’t know what that word means.”
“When your body’s alive but the mind is gone.”
“Yes. Then we’d both be stuck here waiting for his body to die.”
“Well,” I said wearily, “you’ve got your wish. Your brother is dying right now.”
Yi dropped his head. Stared miserably at his feet.
“So what are you going to do?”
He burst into tears again. “Yi means righteousness. I’m supposed to be able to choose the right thing, but I can’t!”
“Don’t cry,” I said, resisting the urge to hug him. Now that I knew exactly where I was, I had a tingling sensation of danger. “You meant well.”
“But that’s not good enough!” he shouted, rubbing his red, anguished face. “Meaning well isn’t the same as doing the right thing. Maybe we’re all cursed. We should have all been born together in the same family, or even as the same person, not separated like this by time and place.”
The five of us should have made a kind of harmony. After all, weren’t the Confucian Virtues supposed to describe the perfect man? A man who abandoned virtue lost his humanity and became no better than a beast. Dazed, I wondered whether that was happening to all of us.
“It’s all a problem with the order—the way things are being bent and rearranged. The further each of us strays, the more everything warps,” said Yi miserably. “And the fifth one is the worst.”
“What are you saying?”
But he was fading. The world was fading back to grey, and struggle as I might, I could only gasp and thrash as my mouth and face were covered with a choking softness.
“Yi!” I screamed. “Leave Ren alone!”
30
Batu Gajah
Sunday, June 21st
Ren’s eyes flutter open. Close. Open again. There’s a dryness in his mouth, a thick feeling in his head, as though someone has stuffed it with cotton wool. An unfamiliar face swims into view. A foreign woman, her hair pinned severely back with a white cap.
“He’s awake.”
Another face. It’s William. Mouth tight and strained. Two lines are etched deeply under his eyes. “Ren, can you hear me? We’re at the hospital.”
The hospital. That explains the feeling of empty air around him, the hollow length of a hospital ward. The bed is bigger, too, longer than the cot Ren sleeps on. There’s a heaviness on his left side, and he can’t feel his arm at all.
“Does it hurt?”
Under the layers of numbness, there’s pain in Ren’s body. A deep ache that’s buried by some artificial means. The light is bright; it’s daytime already.
“Mr. Acton, you’d better go home now.” It’s the nurse. “You’ve been here all night.”
“Just a moment, Sister.” William turns back to him.
How strange. Ren can see all these threads coming from William now. Gossamer threads that spew out, like the unraveling of a silkworm. He’s never been able to see them before, only felt their spark of energy. But now his cat sense is stronger than ever, or perhaps it’s just that his body is so broken. He knows it without even looking at William’s haunted face.
“Ren, I’m so terribly sorry. I shot you last night.”
So that’s what it was, the flash and the roar that tore him apart. Ren looks at William with wide, unblinking eyes.
“But you’ll be all right. Well, almost. You’ve lost a lot of blood but we managed to take out most of the shot. It was the wadding around the shot that really worried me—infection in the soft tissues, you know.” William’s jaw is moving like a clockwork toy that’s been wound too far.
“Mr. Acton!” It’s the nurse again. “That’s quite enough!”
William stops. Passes a tongue over dry lips. “Yes, of course. If you need anything, let me know.”
It’s hard to speak; Ren’s throat is so parched. “Nandani,” he says. His eyes signal a question.
William stares at him blankly. “Ah. Nandani. I don’t know where she is. Don’t worry—she’s bound to turn up.”
No, you have to find her! Ren’s anguished expression cuts like a knife. William makes a tight grimace. “Of course we’ll find her. All right? Just … rest now. It’s very important that you get some rest.”
* * *
Ren sinks back into half sleep. Dimly, he’s aware of doors opening and shutting. The sun climbs higher then starts to wane, though Ren doesn’t know what day it is. Somewhere, his body is getting weaker and colder, or is it feverishly hot? His painful side is examined, the bulky dressing on his arm unwrapped.
“—bleeding again. Looks bad.”
“—risk of infection.”
* * *
Ren closes his eyes. Behind them, another landscape unfurls, bright and burning like a fever dream. And there it is, the tiger that he’s feared for so long. It stands before him, unbelievably large. Lean muscular bulk tapering into a twitching tail. This isn’t the moth-eaten, forlorn tiger skin that’s stretched out on the floor of William’s study, or the wraithlike white creature Ren has imagined, wandering in the jungle with Dr. MacFarlane’s face. It’s simply a huge, bright beast. An animal that he cannot comprehend. Surprisingly, Ren feels no fear, just an overwhelming sensation of relief.
So that’s what you are, he thinks, though it seems undignified to address it.
The stripes on its brilliant coat ripple; the yellow eyes glare like lanterns. Ren can only drop his gaze. The tiger makes a deep hrff sound. Then it turns and walks away, with a deliberate tread that’s heavy and delicate at the same time. Where is it going?
In the shimmering landscape, Ren sees a familiar shedlike outline—a railway station, just like the one he boarded at Taiping when he took his first and only train ride after Dr. MacFarlane’s death. It seems quite natural to follow. He takes a step forward. Then he remembers something.
“Nandani—where is she?” he calls after the tiger.
There is no answer, only the white tip of its tail swaying hypnotically. Then he sees them: the uneven tracks of a woman’s feet. Slender, pretty footprints, the left leg dragging in a limp.
“Is Nandani here?” If she is, she must be heading towards the station. Ren takes another step. The tiger turns its head and snarls. Is that a warning? Ren doesn’t know, but his side hurts, a fiery pain that spreads through his body, up his useless left arm and hand. Gritting his teeth, Ren forces himself to walk on, following the footprints towards the train station.
31
Ipoh
Sunday, June 21st
A crash. The breath was knocked out of my body, my face pressed against a hard, cool surface. For a moment I lay there, motionless.
“Ji Lin—are you all right?” Hui stood over me; I was lying on the floor of her room, tangled up in the thin cotton blanket. The sun streaming into her room was high and hot.
“You fell out of bed, having a nightmare,” she said. “Thrashing and crying about someone named Yi. I was afraid to wake you.”
Chinese people have an aversion to suddenly waking people from sleep, in case the soul separates from the body. I hadn’t thought that Hui would be so superstitious, though I was grateful for it. Who knew where I’d been wandering?
I sat up groggily, my thoughts a nest of ants. I had the feeling that I’d almost managed to grasp something slippery, the tail end of an idea that had vanished with a flick, just as Yi’s crying face had.
“What’s wrong?” said Hui.
I glanced at the blue dress I’d worn last night. Still neatly rolled up on a chair, just as I’d left it. I didn’t want to tell Hui about the finger in its glass bottle. It would only upset her. There were other, more pressing worries. Like whether Ren had survived the night, and what to do with the slim glass vial wrapped in my bloodstained dress.
* * *
And so, the finger had returned to me. I examined it with a feeling of inevitability and horror when Hui had gone off on an errand, after lending me a frock. It was the same, down to the number on the lid and the slight dent on the metal screw top.
Dr. MacFarlane’s finger, Ren had said before he ran out into the night. How had it found its way from the pathology storeroom, where I’d left it, to last night’s party? I felt sick. If only I’d stopped Ren from rushing out. Or if I’d shouted louder as William Acton walked purposefully out of the house with his shotgun tucked under his right arm. The trail went round and round, the finger appearing and reappearing—yet I had the dim sensation that there was a pattern to all of it. When I’d asked Yi what to do with it in my dream, he’d seemed strangely uninterested. Do what you think is right, he’d said. But perhaps it was just because all he really cared about was Ren. And Ren, as we both knew, was dying.
* * *