The Night Tiger

by Yangsze Choo

“The body must be made whole again when you die. Anything added must be removed, and anything missing replaced—otherwise your soul won’t rest in peace.”

The matron of the orphanage named them after the Confucian Virtues: Ren, for humanity, and Yi, for righteousness. Ren always thought it was odd that she’d stopped at two of the Five Virtues. What about the others: Li, which was ritual, Zhi, for knowledge, and Xin, for integrity? Yet the other three names were never given out to new children at the orphanage.

A keramat animal is a sacred beast, a creature with the ability to come and go like a phantom, trampling sugarcane or raiding livestock with impunity. It’s always distinguished by some peculiarity, such as a missing tusk or a rare albino color. But the most common indicator is a withered or maimed foot.

“No, the dream-eater is a ghost animal. If you have nightmares, you can call it three times to eat the bad dreams. But you have to be careful. If you call it too often it will also gobble up your hopes and ambitions.”

Lucky Shin, I thought enviously, as I often had during our childhood. To be born a boy and win a scholarship to medical school. Good looks were just the icing on top of that.

relentlessly. “Twins are special, I suppose. Especially boy-girl dragon and phoenix twins. Do you know that the Chinese believe that boy and girl twins were husband and wife in a former life? And that they couldn’t bear to be separated, so they were reborn together?”

“He took a stick to me. The carrying pole.” The carrying pole was used for heavy loads. Strong and heavy, and flattened to balance on one shoulder, it was a deadly weapon when rival Chinese clans fought gang wars. If my stepfather had really hit Shin with it, he must have lost his mind. He could have maimed him.

Whenever I felt bad, I thought about numbers. In Cantonese, two was a good number because it made a pair. Three was also good because it was a homophone for sang, or life. Four, of course, was bad because it sounded like death. Five was good again because it made a complete set, not just of the Confucian Virtues, but also for the elements of wood, fire, water, metal,

But that’s the way people are, I think. We forget all the bad things in favor of what’s normal, what feels safe.

Was that love or stupidity? But maybe that was just the hardheaded part of me, calculating my chances of survival. I wouldn’t give myself away to some man, become one of his possessions. Not without the economic assurance of a wedding ring. Even then, from what I could see of my mother’s choice, perhaps the price was too high.

For Cantonese speakers, thirteen was a good number. Sup sam sounded a lot like the words sut sang, which meant “always survive.” Fourteen, on the other hand, was terrible because it sounded like “certain death.”

“Ren is benevolence isn’t it? Yi is righteousness, Li is ritual or order. Zhi is wisdom and Xin is faithfulness.” Rawling counts them off on his fingers as he recites, “Without Li, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?”

Chinese people have an aversion to suddenly waking people from sleep, in case the soul separates from the body.

asked, “Do you know any superstitions about fingers?” “Well, the Malays say that each finger has a personality: the thumb is the mother finger, or ibu jari. Then you have the index finger, jari telunjuk, which points the way. The third finger, jari hantu, is the ghost finger, because it’s longer than the others. The fourth one is the ring finger; in some dialects they call it the nameless one. The little finger is the clever one.”

A chill of wonder and unease seeped through me. From the other side of the river of death, had Yi swapped Koh Beng and me around like pawns in some game, bringing me back from the dead by stealing a life? If so, what had happened to Yi—and was this, then, his dark gift to me? I began to tremble uncontrollably.

From which he gathers that there’s a secret, like a white and yeasty maggot, which threatens to undermine the neat and orderly life of the hospital.

The slanting afternoon sunlight casts patterns of light and dark in the hall. Lydia takes off her sun hat and a trick of the shadows makes it look as though she has long dark hair. Ren stops, surprised. The open doorway, the woman standing in it. For a fearful instant, he’s reminded of the pontianak, that vengeful female spirit that comes calling at the doors and windows. Instinctively he starts forward, although it’s already too late. William has let her in. You’re not supposed to let them in. But these are foolish thoughts that his master would be offended to hear. Perplexed, Ren blinks. The dimness in his head recedes; his cat sense is fading and maybe that’s a relief as well.

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.

If the dead lived on in people’s memories, then I’d keep him safe forever.