I looked down, embarrassed. Ming was the watchmaker’s son, Shin’s best friend. He was a year older than us, serious and mature, and wore thin, wire-framed spectacles. I’d been in love with him since I was twelve—a hopeless, awkward crush I’d hoped nobody noticed, though my mother’s sympathetic glance seemed a little too knowing. Ming had done well at school and we’d all expected him to go on to further studies, but he’d unexpectedly taken over his father’s business. And a few months ago, I’d heard he was engaged to a girl from Tapah.
Good for him, I told myself, stabbing the chicken with my chopsticks. Ming was a sincere person; I’d met his fiancée and she seemed like a nice girl, quiet and not flashy. Besides, despite Ming’s kindness to me growing up, he’d never been interested. I knew that very well and had given up on him. Still, hearing his name filled me with an inky, twilight gloom.
My mother’s debts, Ming’s marriage, and my lack of a future were cold weights on a string of bad luck. And that wasn’t even counting the mummified bottled finger tucked at the very bottom of my traveling basket.
* * *
My stepfather always went to bed early. My mother had also adopted this habit, and soon enough, they retired to their room upstairs. I washed the dishes and put the leftovers into the mesh-screened food cupboard to keep lizards and cockroaches out. Each cupboard leg stood in a small saucer filled with water, so that ants couldn’t climb up. Finally, I collected the food scraps and took them into the back alley for the stray cats.
It had cooled down, though the sides of the buildings still radiated the heat of the day. The night sky was sprinkled with stars and a thin crackle of music wafted into the evening air. Somewhere, someone was listening to a radio. It was a foxtrot, a dance that I could do with my eyes closed now, humming under my breath.
The music ended in a smattering of applause. Startled, I turned.
“Since when have you been able to dance?”
He was a shadow in the darkness of the alley, leaning against the wall, but I’d know him anywhere.
“How long have you been here?” I said indignantly.
“Long enough.” Detaching himself from the wall, his dim outline seemed taller, his shoulders wider than before. I couldn’t see the expression on his face and felt suddenly shy. I hadn’t seen Shin for almost a year.
“Why didn’t you stay in Singapore?” I asked.
“Oh, so you didn’t want me to come back?” He was laughing, and I felt a rush of relief. It was the old Shin, my childhood friend.
“Who’d want you? Well, maybe Ah Kum does.”
“You mean the new girl at the shop?” He shook his head. “My heart belongs to the medical profession.”
The neighbor’s window banged shut. We were making too much noise in the alley. I headed back towards the fan of light spilling from the kitchen door.
“You cut your hair,” he said in surprise.
My hand flew to the shorn nape of my neck. Let the jokes begin, I thought grimly. But surprisingly, Shin didn’t say anything else. He sat down at the table and watched as I fidgeted, wiping down an already clean counter. The oil lamp had burned low and the kitchen was full of shadows. I hurriedly asked one question after another about what Singapore was like.
“But what have you been doing?” he asked. “Some poor woman probably has a dress that’s sewn inside out.”
I threw the dishtowel at him. “I sew very well. I’m extremely talented, according to Mrs. Beaky Tham.”
“Is her name really Beaky?”
“No, but it should be. She looks like a tiny crow, and she likes to walk into my room and open all the drawers whenever I’m out.”
“I’m sorry,” Shin said, laughing. And then he really did look sorry.
“What for?”
“Because you should be the one in medical school.”
“I could never go.” I turned away. It was still a sore spot for me. I’d been the one who’d first thought of being a doctor, or some kind of medical aide. Anything to heal the bruises on my mother’s arms, the sprains that she mysteriously developed. “I heard you saw Ming tonight.”
“And Robert.” Robert Chiu was Ming’s friend. His father was a barrister who’d been trained in England. All his children had English names—Robert, Emily, Mary, and Eunice—and they had a piano and a gramophone in their large house, which was teeming with servants. Robert and Shin had never really got along. I wondered why the three of them had been together.
“Ming asked about you—are you joining us for lunch tomorrow?” said Shin. Was it pity in his eyes? I didn’t want sympathy.
“I have to attend a funeral.”
“Whose funeral?”
I was annoyed with myself for not making up another excuse. “Nobody you know. Just an acquaintance.”
Shin frowned, but he didn’t question me further. In the lamplight, the angles of his cheekbones and jaw were the same, yet sharper, more mature.
“I need your help,” I said. Now was as good a time as any to show him the finger, without my mother or stepfather around to interfere. “It’s an anatomy question. Can you take a look?”
His eyebrows rose. “Don’t you think you should ask someone else?”
“It’s a secret. I can’t really ask anyone else.”
Shin’s face turned red, or perhaps it was just the low light. “Maybe you should ask a nurse. I’m not really qualified, and it’s better if a woman examines you.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not for me, silly.”
“Well, how was I to know?” Shin rubbed his face, now even more flushed.
“Wait here,” I said. “It’s in my room.”
I hurried upstairs, treading softly to avoid the creaky floorboards, and slipped down the corridor to my room at the back of the house. Moonlight flooded the shutters like pale water. Nothing about that room had changed, not even the position of the bed, still wedged against the wall that separated Shin’s room from mine.
When I was fourteen, my stepfather had considered moving Shin downstairs, swapping his bedroom for my stepfather’s office, but it proved too inconvenient. He was afraid that Shin and I might sneak into each other’s rooms, which was ridiculous. Shin never came to my room. If we wanted to whisper we crept into the corridor outside or sat on his floor, but my room was mine alone. It was the sole concession to the fact that I was a girl.
Thrusting my arm into the rattan basket that I used as a traveling bag, I fished out the glass vial, tucked in a handkerchief because I didn’t like to look at it.
Downstairs, I laid it next to the oil lamp. “Tell me what you think.”
Shin unwrapped the handkerchief, his long clever fingers untying the knot. When he saw the finger, he stopped.
“Where did you get this?”
Looking at his dark brows knitted together, I realized I couldn’t possibly let Shin know that I’d lifted it out of a stranger’s pocket while working as a dance-hall hostess. No matter how I tried to rationalize the faded gentility of the May Flower or the hardworking girls, it sounded wretched. Worse still, it would reveal my mother’s gambling debts.
“I found it. It came out of someone’s pocket.”
Shin turned the bottle from side to side, narrowing his eyes.
“Well?” I squeezed my own hands under the table.
“I’d say it’s the distal and middle phalanges of a finger. Possibly the pinky, from the size.”
“Could it be an orangutan’s?”
“The proportions look human to me. Besides, look at the fingernail. Doesn’t it look trimmed?”
I’d noticed that myself. “Why does it look mummified?”
“It’s dried out, so maybe it happened naturally, like beef jerky.”
“Don’t talk about beef jerky,” I said gloomily.
“So how exactly did you get this again?”
“I told you, I found it.” Pushing my chair back, I said hastily, “Don’t worry, I’ll return it. Thanks for taking a look. Good night.”
As I retreated up the stairs, I felt his opaque gaze following me.
7
Batu Gajah
Friday, June 5th
Since his arrival, Ren has learned two important things about his new master. First, Ah Long informs him that William is a surgeon and therefore should be referred to as “Mr.” or Tuan Acton instead of “Dr.”
“Why’s that?” asks Ren.
“No idea. Is a British thing.” Ah Long is shelling giant river prawns. “But that’s how you address him.”
The second thing he’s learned is that his new employer prefers a tidy environment, worlds away from the lively and chaotic household Ren left in Kamunting. Dr. MacFarlane often left half-eaten sandwiches and banana skins in the muddle of papers on his desk. This new doctor, William Acton, places his utensils neatly on the edge of the plate. The shining surface of his desk is broken only by the archipelago of inkwell, blotting paper, and pen.
Ren has already memorized the exact position of each object and replaces it correctly each time he dusts. Maybe it’s a waste of time as he doesn’t know how long he’ll stay here. Until his task is done—though what comes after finding the finger and returning it to his grave, Ren has no idea. Dr. MacFarlane gave no further instructions. A wave of homesickness strikes him, so intense that tears well shamefully in his eyes. Ren tells himself that he’s too old to cry. Twenty-six days have passed since his old master’s death and he feels a rising panic. But nobody else has died. Unless dogs count.