As I unwrapped the double layer of butcher’s paper, there was a rattling clink. I held my breath as a glass specimen bottle and a packet of papers slid out onto the kitchen table. I knew the shape and size of that bottle well by now. It contained a thumb. Not dried and withered, like the finger I’d taken from the salesman’s pocket, but preserved in a yellowish fluid like most of the other specimens from the storeroom. I stood the bottle upright next to the lamp. Strangely, it didn’t frighten me as much as the salt-cured finger with its blackened crook. Perhaps because it had an unreal air, like a scientific wax model. I was sure it came from that missing list of specimens we’d compiled.
The packet also contained some papers. Pei Ling’s girlish handwriting had addressed the envelopes to Mr. Chan Yew Cheung, the salesman. It didn’t seem right to read other people’s correspondence, but Shin’s warning about doing favors for strangers rang in my ears. A quick glance confirmed my suspicions. They were love letters—pages and pages of infatuated yearning. My eyes skipped over them, though not before picking up fragments like when will you tell your wife, and even more embarrassingly, your lips on my skin. In any case, the letters were genuine. And extremely indiscreet. No wonder she’d wanted them back. If they’d been sent anonymously to Matron, Pei Ling would have been dismissed.
At the bottom of the pile was a sheet of paper, torn from a notebook. The handwriting was different from Pei Ling’s—a more masculine hand. On the left side was a list of thirteen names, all locals. Chan Yew Cheung was the second-to-last one. There was a check mark next to it, a bold slash as though someone had marked it off. On the right side of the paper was another, shorter list. This one had only three names on it: J. MacFarlane, W. Acton, L. Rawlings.
I stared at the two lists. There was a pattern that I could almost see. Next to the name “J. MacFarlane” was a question mark and the words Taiping/Kamunting. I remembered that name, written-up in the pathology storeroom ledger as a specimen donated by W. Acton. I’d met William Acton myself when I was cleaning the room out. And surely L. Rawlings must be the same Dr. Rawlings who ran the pathology department. So the second list was British doctors associated with the Batu Gajah District Hospital.
The back of the paper contained numbers: running totals of what looked like initialed payments. Taking a fresh sheet of paper, I carefully copied the lists and wrapped the package back up, wondering if Shin had mentioned any of this to Dr. Rawlings.
It was past midnight. The roads were deserted at this hour and Shin had only the dim halo of the kerosene bicycle lamp. When I thought about him riding for miles in the dark, past silent mining dredges and lonely plantations, I felt a surge of anxiety. I could imagine, all too clearly, Shin getting run over by a lorry or dragged off by a tiger. A water buffalo had been killed recently, its half-eaten carcass recovered in a nearby plantation. Something was hunting, out there in the shadows. Hadn’t Chan Yew Cheung died on such a night, coming home late?
I checked my sleeping mother. Brushing the hair gently from her thin face, I was thankful she was all right, though a treacherous part of me thought that if she died, there’d be nothing holding me hostage to this house.
* * *
My mother recovered slowly, more so than from her miscarriages in the past. My stepfather said no more than usual, but he spent a surprising amount of time sitting with her. I wondered if, for the first time, he’d realized just how frail she’d become. She was very pale and her lips had no color, which alarmed me.
“Has the bleeding stopped?” Auntie Wong asked when she stopped by.
“Mostly,” my mother said.
Auntie Wong looked at me. “If she has a fever, you must take her to hospital. It could be an infection.”
I wanted to take her to the hospital right away, but it would have been exhausting for her to move. Astonishingly, my stepfather voiced the same concerns. He sat next to her and took her hand. “Let me know if you don’t feel well.”
I’d never heard him speak so intimately to her before, but she didn’t seem surprised, and I wondered whether this was the way