must have heard the sadness in my voice, because she stopped fiddling with my bandages and hugged me. “No, it doesn’t. As long as he makes you happy.”
“Really?” My spirits rose. Why had I ever doubted her?
“Does Shin approve?”
“Of who?”
“Of whomever it is you like.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. “Yes, he does.”
51
Batu Gajah
Thursday, July 2nd
Ren watches his master closely after Lydia’s departure. Does his stomach feel better after drinking the medicine? But William goes out to the veranda, tearing at his stiff collar as though he can’t breathe. He sits there, motionless, head in his hands as somewhere out in the dense jungle canopy, a bird sings. It’s a merbuk, a zebra dove whose soft haunting call echoes through the vast green space.
“Tuan, are you sick?”
William turns, face pale and beaded with sweat. He doesn’t look well, but he smiles briefly. “You’re a good boy, Ren. I’ve been thinking: would you like to go to school?”
Surprised by this good fortune, Ren can only blink and stammer. “Yes. But the housework—”
“You needn’t worry about that. We’ll be getting new servants anyway.”
Does this mean that Ren has lost his job? “Of course not,” says William, reading his worried look. “There’ll be some changes; it can’t be helped. But I’ll make sure you go to school. It’s the least I can do.” He makes a wry face.
Ren understands about guilt and bewilderment. Yi hasn’t come to his dreams anymore, not since the last time by the river. In fact, he can find no trace of his twin at all. That faint radio signal has ceased transmitting, or is it tuned to another station now, one that he can’t hear? Whatever it is, he thinks of Yi with love and sadness. One day, they will be together again.
* * *
Dismissed, Ren starts back to the kitchen. Then he turns. It’s not his place to ask, but he gathers up all his courage. “Tuan, are you marrying Miss Lydia?”
A tilt of the head. It’s hard to read his master’s expression. “You don’t like that idea?”
“She said her Chinese name was Li. Like yours.”
“Does it make us a good match, then?” There’s bitterness in William’s voice. Ren wonders what the rest of that long conversation was about, the one that ended with Lydia looking so pleased and his master so ashen.
“I don’t know,” says Ren honestly. He’s confused. Which one of them is the mysterious Li then? Or perhaps he’s been mistaken and neither of them is. Pressing his fingers into the numb white mark on his elbow only makes him dizzy, the air grows heavy and dark. He remembers the filmy cobwebs clinging to Lydia that made him recoil. “She’ll make things difficult for you, that lady.”
William smiles humorlessly and says something about out of the mouths of babes. Then he announces he’s tired and is going to bed. No need for dinner tonight. His feet drag on the stairs, like a man sentenced to death.
* * *
The next morning, William doesn’t come down. Ah Long, frowning at the untouched breakfast, cocks his head at Ren. “Go and see what’s happened.”
Ren climbs the stairs, feeling the smooth, cool wood beneath his bare feet. All the way up, like a cabin boy climbing the lookout mast. At the window at the top, he remembers how he’d thought of the white bungalow as a ship in a storm, the deep green jungle a rolling ocean. In it were all manner of strange beasts, including Dr. MacFarlane, roaming around in the form of a tiger.
Ren shakes his head; the image vanishes. Already it’s receding, that dim fearfulness about his old master: the dark loneliness, the promises about severed fingers and digging up graves. Even his worries about forty-nine days have subsided, a calamity averted though if you asked Ren, he couldn’t tell you what or why. Only that he’s certain, down to his bones, that the finger has returned to Dr. MacFarlane. He has an odd vision—small and bright, like a fever dream—of Ji Lin on her knees, digging hastily with a spade. Dropping something in, then sealing it under the damp red earth. Whatever happened, he has faith that she wouldn’t let him down. Though since he woke up in the hospital after Nandani’s death, he can no longer recall these things well, as though the long night has ended and day has begun. A day that beckons with the promise of school. Excited, Ren quickens his steps. Dr. MacFarlane would have been pleased; he always meant to