rattled in. People hurried to get on and I hesitated, wondering if I’d be trapped here forever if I didn’t make a decision soon. A spare old man—a foreigner with light eyes and a grey, scrubby beard—made his way across the platform. The edges of the dark suit he wore seemed to fray and blur as though it was unraveling into the falling dusk. His mouth moved as he pointed at my traveling basket.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
Still no sound, like a radio that had gone silent, but I could tell from the careful, exaggerated movements of his lips that he was trying to speak to me.
Put it back, he mouthed, nodding at my basket. And I knew, in that inexplicable way of dreams, that he meant the remaining finger—the thumb from Pei Ling’s package.
“Where? The hospital?”
But he only smiled. Thank you for everything. Then he was passing me, climbing onto the train.
“Wait!” I cried, running after him.
He turned and looked at me genially. Courteously. I stared into his eyes, those light-colored eyes, and realized that they had slit, vertical pupils, like the eyes of a cat. Horrified, I took a step back.
The old man bowed his head. I am going now. He put his hands together in a gesture of apology and gratitude, and I saw then that his hands were intact with all ten fingers. Steam and gritty smoke billowed. There was only the scream of the train whistle, the deep vibration of the tracks, and a greyness that descended on everything.
* * *
The train whistle had become a caw, the harsh croak of a crow walking up and down the ledge outside my window. Pressing my hands against my eyes, it occurred to me that besides meaning “upstream” and “downstream,” the words hulu hilir also meant “beginning and end” in Malay. I sat up in the morning hush. It was a dream, nothing more. Or was it? One way or another, I’d never wanted to talk to the dead.
Put it back, he’d said. Shivering in the cool morning air, I picked my way over to my traveling basket. I’d packed the lists of names to show Koh Beng as well as the severed thumb, the one from Pei Ling’s mysterious package. Today I’d go to Batu Gajah and replace it among all the other specimens in that pathology storeroom, and put an end, hopefully, to all this.
But that’s not what I told my mother. “I’m heading back to Ipoh.”
She’d nodded without comment, though her eyes were doubtful. She was still worried about Robert. But I wasn’t planning to see Robert again—only Shin. I had to tell him about my dream. Remembering the old foreigner’s left hand, with its five intact fingers, I was certain that we’d done right in burying the finger in Dr. MacFarlane’s grave.
* * *
When I arrived at the hospital in Batu Gajah, it was half past eight in the morning. A little early for the crowd that had gathered, milling around in front of the main entrance.
“What happened?” I asked a middle-aged woman in a yellow samfoo.
“Accident. Police won’t let us in, even though I told them I had an appointment and the poor fellow’s dead already.”
Alarm shivered through me. “Who died?”
“A young man who worked here. A hospital orderly, they said.”
Shin! Terrified, I ran forward. “Let me through, please!”
A Malay constable was on guard, and I struggled frantically through the crowd, their irritation changing to murmurs of interest and pity.
“My brother’s an orderly here,” I said breathlessly to him. “Do you know who died?”
“I don’t know the name, but if you’re family, I’ll take you through. This way, to the European wing.”
Dry-mouthed, I ran after him. We crossed over to a part of the hospital I’d never been to. Around the corner of a half-timbered two-story building, we approached a knot of people. They were looking up at the roof, then at the grassy area next to the building.
“That’s where it happened.” The constable nodded, eyes on a tall Sikh officer who was putting away a notebook. “Captain Singh, she wants to know if it’s her brother.”
“What’s his name?” His eyes met mine in a penetrating, amber gaze.
“Lee Shin,” I said, holding my breath. “He’s an orderly here.”
He glanced at his notebook. “No. It was a Mr. Wong Yun Kiong.”
My knees sagged. Thank goodness! But the name was horribly familiar. “Do you mean Y. K. Wong?”
“Did you know him?”
What should I say? As I hesitated, someone brushed past me.