Ah Long asks if he’s hungry. “I have to prepare the master’s dinner. Come to the kitchen when you’re done.”
At that moment, there’s a blinding flash of lightning and a boom. The electricity in the main house flickers and blinks out. Ah Long clicks his tongue in annoyance and hurries off.
Alone in the gathering darkness, Ren unpacks his meager belongings and sits timidly on the cot. The thin mattress sags. A finger—a single digit—is so small that it could be hidden anywhere in this large house. His stomach knots with anxiety as he counts in his head. Time is passing; since Dr. MacFarlane’s death three weeks ago, he has only twenty-five days left to find the finger. But Ren is tired, so bone weary from his long journey and the heavy carpetbag that he’s been carrying, that he closes his eyes and falls into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
The next morning, Ah Long prepares William’s breakfast of a boiled egg and two dried-up pieces of toast barely smeared with butter, even though there are at least three tins of Golden Churn lined up in the pantry. The butter comes from Australia by way of Cold Storage. Soft at room temperature, it’s a beautiful yellow color. Ah Long doesn’t eat butter himself, but he still rations it for his master.
“Like this,” he explains to Ren in the kitchen. “No need to buy so much.”
He resembles the toast he prepares, crusty and hard-hearted. But Ah Long is also honest, and if he’s frugal with William’s food, he’s just as stingy about his own rations. At the old doctor’s house, they ate thick slices of Hainanese white bread, toasted over charcoal and spread with butter and kaya, a caramelized custard made from eggs, sugar, and coconut milk. Ren can only think that this new doctor, William Acton, has a rather sad-looking breakfast.
When Ah Long judges the time is right, he pokes his pinched face through the dining-room door.
“Boy is here, Tuan,” he announces, before disappearing back into his lair.
Obediently, Ren slips into the room. His clothes are plain but clean—a white shirt and khaki knee shorts. At the old doctor’s house, he had no official houseboy’s uniform and now wishes he did, as it might make him look older.
“Your name is Ren?”
“Yes, Tuan.”
“Just Ren?” William seems to find this a little odd.
Of course he’s right. Most Chinese are quick to give their family names first, but Ren isn’t sure what to say. He has no family name and no memories of his parents. He and his brother Yi were pulled as toddlers from a burning tenement, where families of itinerant workers slept. No one was certain whose children they had been, only that they were clearly twins.
The matron of the orphanage named them after the Confucian Virtues: Ren, for humanity, and Yi, for righteousness. Ren always thought it was odd that she’d stopped at two of the Five Virtues. What about the others: Li, which was ritual, Zhi, for knowledge, and Xin, for integrity? Yet the other three names were never given out to new children at the orphanage.
“What sort of work did you do for Dr. MacFarlane?”
Ren has been expecting this question, but he’s suddenly overcome with shyness. Perhaps it’s the eyes of this new doctor, which pin the words in his mouth so they won’t spill out. Ren looks at the floor, then forces his gaze up. Dr. MacFarlane taught him that foreigners like to be looked in the eye. Ren needs this job.
“Whatever Dr. MacFarlane wished.”
He speaks respectfully and clearly, the way the old doctor liked to be addressed, and lists the chores he’s accustomed to: cleaning, cooking, ironing, caring for the animals that Dr. MacFarlane kept. Ren is unsure whether or not to admit that he can read and write quite well. Gazing anxiously at William’s face, Ren tries to gauge his mood. But the new doctor seems unperturbed.
“Did Dr. MacFarlane teach you English?”
“Yes, Tuan.”
“You speak very well. In fact, you sound just like him.” The expression on William’s face softens. “How long were you with him?”
“Three years, Tuan.”
“And how old are you?”
“Thirteen, Tuan.”
Ren holds his breath at the lie. Most foreigners have difficulty telling the age of locals. Dr. MacFarlane used to joke about it all the time, but William’s brow furrows, as though he’s making a swift calculation. At last he says, “If you can iron, I have some shirts that need to be done.”
Dismissed, Ren starts towards the door in relief.
“One more thing. Did you ever help out Dr. MacFarlane in his medical practice?”
Ren freezes, then nods.
William turns back to his newspaper, unaware that the boy is now staring at him with a frightened expression.
* * *
Surprised that Ah Long isn’t lying in wait outside the door, Ren finds his way back to the kitchen. In his experience, servants are invariably suspicious of newcomers. During his early days at Dr. MacFarlane’s, the housekeeper followed him from room to room until she was satisfied that he wouldn’t steal.
“You never know,” she’d said long after Ren had become an indispensable part of the household. “Not everyone is as well brought up as you.”
Kwan-yi, or Auntie Kwan as Ren had called her, had been a robust, middle-aged woman with a temper. She was the one who had run Dr. MacFarlane’s untidy household with an iron hand, the one who trained Ren to cook rice on a charcoal stove without scorching the bottom of the pot and to catch, butcher, and pluck a chicken in half an hour. If she’d only stayed on, everything might have been different. But Auntie Kwan had left six months before the old doctor died. Her daughter was having a baby and she was going to move all the way down south to Kuala Lumpur, to help her out.
Dr. MacFarlane said he’d find a replacement, but months went by and the old man became preoccupied with other matters. He’d already shown signs of this before Auntie Kwan left, which seemed to give her unease at her departure. Ren, trying not to cry, had clutched her fiercely and unexpectedly. She’d pressed a grubby slip of paper with an address into his hand.
“You must take care of yourself,” she said, worried.
He was prone to accidents. Once a tree branch had crashed down, missing him by inches. Another time, a runaway bullock cart almost pinned him to a wall. There were other near misses—so many that people said Ren attracted misfortune.
“Come and see me,” she’d said, with a hard squeeze. And now, he wonders whether he should have done that instead. But he owes the old doctor a great deal, and there are promises that Ren must keep.
* * *
In the breezy kitchen, Ah Long is moodily hacking up a chicken. Ren, standing at a respectful distance, ventures to say, “The master asked me to iron his shirts.”
Ah Long says, “Laundry’s not back yet from the dhobi. Wash the dishes first.”
Ren is quick and neat, scouring the pots with a coconut brush and soft brown homemade soap in the deep sink outside. When the dishes are done, Ah Long examines his work. “The master’s gone out, but he’ll be back for luncheon. You can sweep the house.” Ren wants to ask if there are other servants, but the look on Ah Long’s face restrains him.
The house is surprisingly bare. The wide teak planks are worn smooth and the unglazed windows with their turned wooden bars look out onto the intense green of the surrounding jungle. There’s little furniture other than the rattan armchairs and dining set that look as though they came with the house. No pictures on the walls, not even the indifferent watercolors so beloved by English mems.
Dr. MacFarlane had been an untidy man whose interests spilled into every part of his house. Ren wonders how it’s possible that the two men could have been friends. He thinks back to the old doctor’s dying request, counting the days again. The lorry driver’s warning about dogs being eaten worries him. He’d been hoping to find the finger quickly, perhaps in a cabinet of preserved specimens. That would be the best solution. But Dr. MacFarlane wasn’t even sure if it would be here.
“He might not have it anymore,” he’d said hoarsely. “He might have given it away. Or destroyed it.”
“Why don’t you ask him for it?” Ren had said. “It’s your finger.”
“No! Better if he knows nothing.” The old man grasped Ren’s wrist. “It must be taken or stolen.”
* * *
Ren is sweeping the floor with careful flicks when Ah Long comes by to tell him to do the master’s study as well. Pushing the door ajar, Ren stops short. In the dim light of the half-closed shutters, he sees glassy eyes and an open mouth, fixed forever in a snarl. Ren tells himself that it’s only a tiger skin. The sad remnant of some long-forgotten hunt.
“Does the master hunt?”