“He told me it was a nurse at the Batu Gajah hospital,” said the aunt, in an undertone. Shin’s ears pricked up at this. “That’s all I know. Now please leave.”
We walked back to the bus stop in silence. It was past noon now, and the glare from the road was so dazzling that I wanted to cover my eyes. My face was tender where Ah Yoke had attacked me. Shin stopped under a large tree.
“Wait here.” Crossing the road to a small shop, he returned with an enamel mug of water and a bottle of iodine. He tilted my face to examine it. I closed my eyes. His hands were cool and deft.
“You’re going to have a black eye and some spectacular scratches.”
I winced. One of Ah Yoke’s flailing elbows must have caught me in the eye. “I suppose that serves me right for slapping you on the bus.”
Shin didn’t laugh but continued to study my face. I pulled away.
“Don’t look at me,” I said. “Is it very bad?”
“Those scratches should be disinfected.”
Obediently, I stood still as he rinsed his handkerchief and cleaned my face. How was I going to explain this to Mrs. Tham, let alone show up for work at the May Flower? If I skipped work, I wouldn’t be able to make the next payment for my mother; my stepfather would skin us alive if a debt collector showed up at the house. I calculated furiously. At five cents a dance, could I make up the shortfall?
“Stop thinking so hard,” said Shin. “You’ll wear out your tiny brain.”
I opened my eyes indignantly. “How rude! When I beat you at almost every exam in school!”
In answer, he just wiped harder.
“You’re wiping off all my face powder,” I complained.
“Makeup won’t improve someone like you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He applied iodine to the scratches and it stung. Or perhaps it was my pride.
“I’m quite popular, thank you.” I thought about some of my regulars at the May Flower—the ones who were at least putting in a credible effort to dance. Mr. Wong, the optometrist from Tiger Lane who only liked waltzes; old Mr. Khoo, who’d told me his doctor had advised him to get some exercise; Nirman Singh, the tall skinny Sikh whom I was certain was a schoolboy although he vehemently denied it. They’d all find other girls to dance with this week. Maybe they’d prefer them.
“So what are you worried about?” Shin rinsed his handkerchief with the last of the water.
I shook my head, unwilling to involve him further. “I need to get back to work.”
“You’re not going home?”
“Mother will only worry if I show up like this.” It would raise uncomfortable questions in Falim, with its network of gossip. Everyone knew about my stepfather’s temper.
Shin returned the mug to the shop, and we caught the bus back without speaking. There were too many people around, in any case, to discuss the bizarre events of that morning. Self-conscious about my scratched face, I kept my eyes on my lap. Shin got off at Falim, but not before slipping the glass bottle with the dried finger into his pocket.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, forestalling my objections. And with that, he jumped off.
A sense of unease descended upon me; I shivered as a plump woman carrying a live chicken squeezed in. It was a white rooster with yellow eyes, the pupils angry dots. At Chinese funerals, a white rooster was released into the graveyard at the end of the ceremony. Of course, this lady might just be taking it home for dinner, but the sight of the white bird on Shin’s recently vacated seat filled me with dismay. As though the chill, liquid shadow haunting me had passed onto Shin.
9
Batu Gajah
Friday, June 5th
On rainy days, the new doctor, William Acton, writes letters. They’re all to his fiancée, Iris, though he knows she hasn’t read a single one.
Dear Iris, I think of you every day. The rain peters out and a weak sun appears. William puts down his pen.
On days when it doesn’t rain, he goes for long walks early in the morning with a pair of binoculars, ostensibly for bird-watching. William hesitates before taking the familiar detour through the neighboring rubber estate. He’s been secretly seeing a local woman, the wife of a plantation laborer. Her name is Ambika, and she’s Tamil, with smooth brown skin and long curling hair that smells like coconut oil. There’s a raised scar—a keloid—on her left breast in the shape of a butterfly. How many times has he pressed his lips against it? He finds it beautiful, although Ambika covers it up.
William always pays her, yet he thinks she likes him. At least, her smile is warm, though she never refuses his money. He thinks their meetings are a secret, and perhaps they are to the European community and even her husband, who drinks too much.
At least one other person knows, however. One of William’s former appendectomy patients—a Chinese salesman. It was pure bad luck that he caught Ambika and William together a few weeks ago when his car broke down near the rubber estate, leading him to cut through for help. They sprang apart as soon as they became aware of the intruder and the salesman said nothing, but he’d given William a look. That was the worst part, the knowing in his eyes. For unlike other locals, he knows William’s name and exactly where he works. Talk is bad for William, especially after what happened in England. To make matters worse, Ambika recently asked for more money. When William hesitated, she gave him a sullen stare, an expression that she’d never shown him before.
Walking through the rubber estate, he admires the neat rows of slender trees, imported from South America. Each tree has thin cuttings on its trunk and a small cup into which the milky latex sap drips. Before dawn, the tappers make their rounds, emptying each cup into a bucket. Ambika is one of them, though it’s her husband who takes the buckets to the processing center afterwards, making this a convenient time to meet her. Checking his watch, William quickens his pace.
But the familiar lean-to, with its corrugated metal roof, is empty. It was the same when he stopped by a few days ago. Where has she gone? With no one to ask, he has little choice but to continue on to work at the Batu Gajah District Hospital, where the staff thinks he sometimes takes the long walk for exercise.
* * *
In his office, William is out of sorts. He pulls out the letter he started that morning.
Dear Iris,
I’ve inherited a new Chinese houseboy. His name is Ren and I’d put his age at ten if not for the assurance that he’s almost thirteen. He comes to me from poor MacFarlane. Hard to believe he’s gone—I still remember when we went to Korinchi to look for tiger-men, harimau jadian, as the natives call them.
Malaya, with its mix of Malays, Chinese, and Indians, is full of spirits: a looking-glass world governed by unsettling rules. The European werewolf is a man who, when the moon is full, turns his skin inside out and becomes a beast. He then leaves the village and goes into the forest to kill. But for the natives here, the weretiger is not a man, but a beast who, when he chooses, puts on a human skin and comes from the jungle into the village to prey on humans. It’s almost exactly the reverse situation, and in some ways more disturbing.
There’s a rumor that when we colonials came to this part of the world, the natives considered us beast-men as well, though nobody has said that to my face.
William scratches the bridge of his nose.
Of all the things MacFarlane has presented me with over the years, this houseboy has to be one of the strangest. After all, a boy isn’t a pet or an animal. He seems grateful for the work and has tidied my study obsessively, opening every cupboard—
A knock on the door. Time to make the rounds at the wards and afterwards there’s an incisional hernia surgery.
* * *
Later that afternoon, William returns to find a surprise visitor waiting in his office. She sits on the edge of his desk swinging a sandaled foot. William is moderately acquainted with Lydia Thomson, the daughter of a rubber planter, although he has the feeling she’d like to change that.
The papers on his desk are disarranged, whether through her choice of seating, or because she’s been looking through them. William, tired from hours of standing in surgery, has difficulty adjusting his expression from irritated to pleasantly neutral.
“What can I do for you, Lydia?” he says, pulling out a chair for her.
They’re on first-name terms, as almost all the foreigners in this little town are. Batu Gajah—no, the whole of colonial Malaya—is full of Europeans who’ve fled half a world away for some personal reason or other. Many are lonely; Lydia is clearly one of them. Gossip says she’s here to find a husband. She isn’t too old, perhaps twenty-five or -six, though she’s entering the dangerous years. Still, she’s one of the local belles, volunteering often at the hospital