Ignoring the question, Shin looked pointedly at the rattan basket that I hugged on my lap. “Is it in there?”
I knew he was talking about the finger, but didn’t reply. What cheek, after being so unfriendly earlier!
“That was quite a slap you gave me.”
“How was I to know it was you?”
I’d reacted unthinkingly, a lesson learned from dancing with strangers. Feeling rather sorry, I peeked at his face to see if I’d left a mark.
“So are you going to tell me about this finger?”
There was no point holding out as Shin was clearly planning to follow me, so I gave him an edited version of events. How the salesman had come by my (unnamed) place of work and dropped the bottle with the finger, and how the next day he had died.
“And that’s all,” I said. “Now will you please go home? It’s rude of you to ditch Ming.”
“I didn’t leave him alone. Or are you worried that Ah Kum will make a move on him?”
“He’s engaged!” I snapped. “And besides, Ah Kum is only interested in you, not Ming.”
He turned his head to look out of the window. I felt rather guilty. Shin was, in his own way, looking out for me.
“Friends?” I said, holding out my hand after a while. Shin could stay quiet for days but I could never hold a grudge against him. There wouldn’t be anyone to talk to in that house if we didn’t make up. He didn’t look at me, but stuck out his right hand, and we shook, a little too heartily, to show that everything really was all right between us.
The bus deposited us on the main road in Papan and roared off in a cloud of dust. I coughed violently. Never mind the face powder I’d applied—I was now covered with white dust. Shin’s lips twitched, but mercifully, he didn’t laugh. We had to ask around for the address, as Papan had quite a few streets with small houses on them.
“That’s the Chan house,” an old lady said. She studied my grey cheongsam and bouquet of white flowers. “Did you mean to come for the funeral?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re too late. It was yesterday.” Seeing my crestfallen face, she said, “The newspaper misprinted the date, but they told all the family ahead of time. Didn’t you know?”
“We’d still like to pay our respects.” Shin smiled at the old lady, and she succumbed, giving us detailed instructions. Deflecting her questions, we hurried off.
The house was a small, single-story wooden building with a guava tree in the front yard and a skinny yellow dog tied to it. There were still signs of the funeral that had taken place, though the two large white paper lanterns with the name of the deceased written on them no longer hung on the sides of the door. Ash and scraps of partly burned colored paper blew around the compound—the remains of paper funeral goods burned for the deceased. I wondered whether they had burned plenty of dancing girls and garlicky chicken rice for the salesman in the Afterlife, then felt remorse for such irreverent thoughts.
At our approach, the dog hurled itself at us, barking madly. The guava tree shook, and I nervously eyed the rope that held the animal back.
“Excuse me!” I called out.
An older woman came out, shushing the dog. She looked enquiringly at us. “Oh dear, I told Ah Yoke that the date was wrong in the newspaper! Are you here to see her?”
I had no idea who Ah Yoke was, but I nodded. We took off our shoes as the woman showed us into the front room of the little house, dominated by a family altar wreathed with joss sticks and offerings. I placed the bouquet of white chrysanthemums on the altar. Bowing, we paid our respects to the deceased, the same portrait used in the newspaper obituary. The salesman stared out of the picture, stiff and formal. Chan Yew Cheung had been twenty-eight years old, to which had been added, as was customary, three more years to increase his life span. One year from the earth, one from heaven, and one from man. Soberly, I thought that even with the borrowed years, his time here hadn’t been very long.
Setting down two cups of tea, the woman said, “I’m his aunt. Were you friends of Yew Cheung? It was such a shock. He was always so strong—I never thought I’d outlive him.” Her face creased, and I was afraid she was going to start crying. I felt more and more uncomfortable.
“What happened to him?” asked Shin.
“He went to see a friend in Batu Gajah, but it got late and he still hadn’t come home. Ah Yoke was upset. You know how she can be. The next morning a passerby found him. He must have slipped and fallen into a storm drain. They said he broke his neck.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. And I was. I hadn’t liked the salesman much, but sitting in the house where he had lived, on a rattan armchair that he must have used, I felt a cold shadow settle on me.
“Actually, I didn’t know Mr. Chan well,” I said. “He was a customer at our shop and he happened to leave something behind. Then I read he’d passed away and thought I should return it.”
“In that case, you’d better talk to his wife.” She got up and parted the curtain of wooden beads in the rear of the house. “Ah Yoke!” she called. “This young lady has something from Yew Cheung.”
There was a long pause. Shin and I shifted uncomfortably in our seats. The aunt had just begun to say, “She’s very upset, as you can expect—” when a woman rushed into the room, hair wild and face swollen with crying. She flew straight at me.
“Bitch!” she shrieked. “How dare you come here?”
Shocked, I could barely block her with my arms, even as she slapped and scratched hysterically. Shin leaped up and dragged her off me. She fell in a heap on the floor and started to scream. It was a horrible noise, like a pig being slaughtered.
The aunt said, “Ah Yoke, what’s wrong with you? I’m so sorry! She’s been like this since yesterday. Are you hurt?”
Shaken, I put my hand to my throat. Ah Yoke was still lying on the floor. Her screams had died down into whimpers. “Give it,” she said. “Give it back to me.”
“What does she want?” I asked, horrified.
“Ah Yoke,” said the aunt, “you’re mistaken. This young lady works at a shop. She’s not one of Yew Cheung’s girls.” Darting a quick glance at me, she said, “You’re not, are you?”
I shook my head. “I only met him once.”
“See?” The aunt was patting Ah Yoke’s head. “She didn’t know him. And look, she came with her young man today.”
Ah Yoke continued to sob and writhe on the ground, her hands clenching and unclenching. Her body contorted unnaturally, her movements like a snake. She didn’t seem human anymore. I felt dizzy; if not for Shin’s grip, I’d have fallen to my knees.
“You’d better go,” the aunt said quietly. “Yew Cheung was my nephew, but he wasn’t a saint. He played around. And yesterday, you know, there were some girls here. Bar girls and prostitutes. They wanted to pay their respects, but they shouldn’t have come. I guess she mistook you for one of them.”
Shame colored my face. A dance hostess wasn’t anything to be proud of, either. I’d made my own troubles when I took the finger, and now I had to get out of them myself. Taking out the glass bottle, I set it on the floor.
“Do you recognize this?” I asked Ah Yoke.
She sat up slowly, her long black hair straggling over her face like drowned strands of riverweed. “It’s his,” she said dully.
“Was this what you were looking for?” I said.
Shaking her head, she started to cry, making no attempt to brush away the tears running down her white, swollen face. It felt indecent to watch her; her face was so raw and naked. I stood up, but she snatched at the hem of my skirt.
“Did he give you anything else? A gold pendant?”
“No.”
Oddly, she seemed to take heart at this. “Last week he bought a pendant for another woman. That’s what I wanted to know about. Not this.” She jerked her head towards the finger. She hadn’t touched it once. Her eyes were puffy, the lids painfully pink. “It was his good luck charm. Since he had it, his sales record improved a lot.”
“When did he get it?” asked Shin. She stared at him as though registering his presence for the first time.
“Three … maybe four months ago. He got it from a friend. Actually, I think he stole it.” Ah Yoke made a face as though there was a bad taste in her mouth.
“I’d like to return it to you,” I said. In that neat little wooden house, amid the utterly ordinary furniture and daily objects—a crocheted doily on the table, a palm-leaf food cover to keep off the flies—the withered finger looked even grimmer and out of place. I glanced at the aunt and realized that she didn’t look surprised. She’s seen it before, I thought.
Ah Yoke shook her head wildly. “Don’t leave it with me!” I was afraid she was going to start screaming again.
The aunt hustled us to the door. “You’d better go now.”
“But what about the finger?”
She tucked it firmly into my basket again. “Do whatever you like. Or give it back to whoever he got it from.”
“And who was that?” asked Shin.