Looking up, Ren breaks into a smile and amazingly, so does Ah Long.
“You can serve it yourself,” he says.
Ah Long sprinkles finely chopped green onions on top and fans out a few tomato slices on the side. Setting it on a tray with a starched white napkin, Ren trots off with it. All the way down the long, polished wooden hallway and upstairs, where he knocks at the master’s bedchamber.
Like all the other rooms in the house, the airy, high-ceilinged room is painted white and is quite bare except for the four-poster bed in the center, hung with mosquito nets. The slanting afternoon sun, green and gold through the treetops, gives Ren a sudden feeling of déjà vu. It’s just like the old doctor’s room, back in Kamunting. Except it’s not Dr. MacFarlane sitting at a table by the window, but William, who is writing a letter.
“Thank you,” he says, with a guilty start as Ren sets the tray down.
“Did they find the tiger yet?” Ren asks.
“Not yet. It may be miles away by now.” William takes a bite. “Who made this?”
The worried look returns to Ren’s face. “I did, Tuan.”
“It’s very good. I’d like you to make all my omelets from now on.”
“Yes, Tuan.” Emboldened by this, Ren asks, “May I have permission to take leave soon?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Back to Kamunting. Just for a few days.”
William considers this. Ren has been working here for only a short while. By rights, he hasn’t accumulated enough leave to go anywhere, but he looks so hopeful. “To see your old friends?”
“Yes.” Ren hesitates. “And to pay my respects to Dr. MacFarlane’s grave. I’d like to go before the mourning period is over in twenty days.”
“Of course.” William’s expression softens. “You may take three days off if you like. Check with Ah Long about the dates—there’ll be a dinner party here. You’d better wait until afterwards. Do you need train fare?”
Ren looks confused at this offer. William sighs. “I mean, I’ll pay for your trip. Put some flowers on poor MacFarlane’s grave for me.”
* * *
Dismissed, Ren walks back to the kitchen. Since the gruesome discovery of the body, Ren has frantically stepped up his search for the finger. He has now explored every room and opened every drawer in the house. Sometimes he thinks that Ah Long suspects him, as more than once, the cook surprised him with his silent approach. He’s like an old, grizzled cat, a resemblance even more pronounced when Ah Long sits on the kitchen steps, slitting his eyes against the sun. Still, Ah Long hasn’t said anything.
Ren has the uneasy feeling that the finger isn’t in this house. Has never been, perhaps. There’s no way to explain it, just a tingling twitch of cat whiskers. When Yi was alive, he often felt this sixth sense. People said it was magic, but Ren knows it’s because they were a matched pair. Chinese say that good things come in pairs, such as the character for double happiness, cut out of red paper and pasted on doors for weddings, and the two stone lions that guard temples. As children, Ren and Yi were perfect doubles of one another. Seeing them, people would break into smiles of delight. Twins, and boys—how fortunate! But all this came to an end when Yi died. If a chopstick breaks, the other is discarded. After all, half of a broken pair is one: the unlucky number of loneliness.
Dr. MacFarlane once explained radio signals to him, saying they needed both a transmitter and a receiver to work. Ren immediately understood what he meant. He and Yi always knew where the other was, so much so that the matron at the orphanage would send one boy on an errand and keep the other with her. At any delay, she’d ask the remaining twin how far away his brother was. It was a useful skill, though no more marvelous than Pak Idris, the blind Malay fisherman by the Perak River who caught fish by hearing them underwater.
“What is it like?” Ren had asked.
“Like pebbles dropping,” he’d said. “Like a mirror, in which the fish are reflected.”
A mirror full of fish. Over the years, Ren has often thought about that phrase. What were the fish like to Pak Idris, who couldn’t see them? Were they like stars, moving in a dark firmament, or a field of flowers blowing in the wind? With Yi’s death, Ren has lost his beacon in this world. He no longer has