often. But it feels so real.” Ren explains about the train and the river, and how if he’d tried just a little harder he might have made it over to the other side.
“Has your brother ever asked you to come to him?”
“Why?”
Ah Long sighs and looks up at the ceiling. It’s quiet. So quiet in that dark and empty hour before dawn, when not even the birds are stirring. Malaya is situated near the equator; the sun doesn’t rise until seven in the morning, and the days are almost exactly twelve hours long.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” asks Ah Long.
Ren is surprised. Ah Long treats religion with the same suspicious necessity with which he regards electricity, radios, and motorcars.
“I don’t know,” says Ren. But the dreams aren’t the same as those stories he’s heard of pale apparitions that haunt banana trees, or women with long black hair and backward-pointing feet.
“I had an uncle who could see them,” says Ah Long. “He was a cook in a household in Malacca. A lot of peculiar things happened in that house, he said. They had a beautiful daughter who was supposed to marry a dead man.”
“Did she really?” Ren is so interested that he sits up straight.
“No, though he was from a very wealthy family. They wanted her to become a ghost bride.”
“What happened to her?”
“She ran away with someone else. But years later when my uncle was a very old man, he said she came back to visit him. And strangely enough, she looked exactly the same as when she left home at eighteen. Though that’s another story.
“My uncle saw ghosts all the time. It was very disturbing. Unlike the living, they were always in the same place. For example, there was one particular rickshaw that he said always had a passenger in it: a little boy who’d try to sit on people’s laps. And another time a woman sat next to his bed all night, combing her hair and crying. But he gave me some advice that I’m going to tell you right now, because I think you need it.”
“And what’s that?”
“Don’t talk to the dead.”
Ren is silent for a moment. Nobody has ever given him any advice on this. “Why not?”
Ah Long scratches his head. He looks tired and old. “Because the dead don’t belong in this world. Their story has ended—they have to move on. You can’t be obeying them from beyond the grave.”
Ren’s thoughts fly instantly to Dr. MacFarlane. “Won’t honoring their wishes make them happy?”
“Cheh, happy or not, that’s their business, not yours.” Ah Long gets up creakily. “If you’re feeling better, go back to bed.”
“But today is the party,” Ren suddenly remembers.
“I’ve been cooking for more years than you’ve been alive. As if I couldn’t manage without you!”
Ah Long sets a tin mug of warm Horlicks next to Ren and turns to go. He puts one hand briefly on Ren’s head. “Remember what I said,” he says gruffly.
After drinking the hot malted-milk drink, Ren lies down, pulling the thin cotton blanket over himself. Ah Long doesn’t understand, he thinks. There’s just a little more to be done, and then it will all be over.
24
Falim
Tuesday, June 16th
By the time Robert’s car stopped with a screech of brakes outside my stepfather’s shop, it was almost eight in the evening and quite dark. Robert jumped out but I was already at the front door, fumbling for my keys. All was dim behind the shutters; were things so bad that they’d taken my mother away? Wind stirred in the shadowy overhang, the ghosts of siblings waiting to be born. Or maybe they were already wandering this world somewhere.
The door opened with its familiar creak. My stepfather’s face peered out. Deep fissures between his mouth and nose underscored his resemblance to a stone carving. To my surprise, he looked relieved, even pleased to see me.
“Where’s my mother?” I asked, my heart in my mouth.
“Resting. She’s all right.”
He stared at Robert, then at the car that was beached on the curb like a gleaming whale. Robert offered his hand, introducing himself, as I ducked past anxiously. A shadow appeared behind my stepfather. Shin.
I’d always told myself that Shin didn’t look like his father, but from certain angles, there was an eerie similarity. The flickering oil lamp my stepfather carried made their features swim, so that for a nightmarish instant, they looked like the past and future of the same person. I mumbled something about wanting to see my mother, but couldn’t disguise