The Night Tiger

Ipoh, Malaya. Wednesday, June 3

Twenty-year-old Ji Lin has been working at her secret side job at the May Flower Dance Hall, located in the city of Ipoh, for precisely 44 days, which is an unlucky number. Although she only dances with men there, the job is socially disgraceful. 

Ji Lin took the job to cover a debt of 40 Malayan dollars that her mother has incurred by playing mahjongg. Her day job as a dressmaker won’t cover the cost, and she doesn’t feel confident in her mother’s ability to pay it off: “my poor foolish mother couldn’t possibly come up with it by herself: she’d no luck at gambling” (3).

When Ji Lin began working at the Dance Hall, the madam (Mama), cut Ji Lin’s hair in the popular Western style. Mama promptly christens her “Louise,” after the American silent film star Louise Brooks.

On the evening of June 3, Ji Lin is dancing as Louise. Ji Lin compares the treatment the dancers receive to that of cattle. Though the men buy a ticket to dance with the girls, they often grope them. A salesman dances with Ji Lin and tells her about women in western Java who put needles under the skin of their faces to prevent aging, but the needles must be removed when they die: “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” (6).

Ji Lin thinks about the fallout if anyone discovers that she is working in the dance hall: Her stepfather would be furious, and her mother would be forced to disclose her mahjong debts. Her stepbrother Shin, traditionally her trusted ally, has left to study medicine at the King Edward VII Medical College in Singapore. Lin is jealous of her brother: She’d had better grades than him in school.

The salesman dips Ji Lin and gropes her. Her hand catches in his pocket and something rolls into it. Ji Lin keeps the cylinder and says nothing, afraid he’ll accuse her of stealing. Before he leaves, Ji Lin accidentally gives the man her real name. The cylinder contains part of a severed finger.

Batu Gajah. Wednesday, June 3

Ren takes a train to Batu Gajah with a letter of recommendation from Dr. MacFarlane, who has died. Ren tells himself that this is not the first time he has ventured without the company of his twin brother, Yi. Ren still feels his brother in his “cat senses,” which help him sense danger.

Ren arrives in Batu Gajah station, follows a hand-drawn map, and is then picked up in a lorry when it begins to rain. In Cantonese, Ren tells the lorry driver that he is 13, although he is actually 11. Ren says that he is headed for Dr. William Acton’s house. The man warns Ren not to venture into the doctor’s neighborhood after dark because something has been killing the dogs there. Ren asks if the attacker was a tiger, thinking of Dr. MacFarlane, but the man says it is probably a jaguar.  

Inside William’s home, the bespectacled Englishman, who is younger and skinnier than Dr. MacFarlane, greets Ren. William examines the letter from Dr. MacFarlane where elder doctor explains that he is near death and that he is bequeathing his houseboy, Ren, whom he recommends glowingly, to William.

Ipoh. Friday, June 5

Ji Lin has hidden the finger in the dance-hall dressing room because Mrs. Tham, the dressmaker whom she is apprenticing under, searches through her belongings when she is not home. Ji Lin has observed that the cylinder that contains the finger is always a bit unnaturally cold, and she wonders if the item has some unsavory magic attached to it. The finger has rotted: “Only the telltale crooked joint and yellowed finger [prompt] a lurch of recognition” for what it truly is (15). There is also a sticker bearing the number 168 (“a lucky combination that [sounds], in Cantonese, like ‘fortune all the way’”) on the cylinder’s lid (15).

Ji Lin has told her friend Hui about the finger. Ji Lin is worried that the salesman might come looking for her. The name “Ji” is derived from zhi, meaning knowledge. It’s one of the five Confucian Virtues; “The others [are] benevolence, righteousness, order, and integrity” (15). It is uncommon for girls to have this name, but it’s the one her father chose.

Ji Lin recalls when she was 10 years old then, three years after her father’s death. A matchmaker paired Ji Lin’s delicate and pretty mother with Ji Lin’s stepfather. He was a tin-ore dealer working out of the fruitful mines in the Kinta Valley where they lived. When Ji Lin first met her stepfather and Shin, her stepfather remarked that Shin (Xin) is a second Confucian Value, meaning integrity. Ji Lin did not approve of her mother’s marriage.

Back in the present day, Ji Lin conjectures that the finger isn’t necessarily human. She toys with the idea of asking her stepbrother, now enrolled in medical school, about it. She also feels her jealousy flare. She had once schemed to become a teacher, but when her stepfather learned that teachers may have to work in any of the far-flung towns and villages in Malaya, he ended her training. He’d also deemed nursing as unbecoming for a girl. If he’d had his way, Ji Lin would simply stay home and clerk for him until she was married off.

A doorman tells Ji Lin that the salesman with whom she had danced on June 3 died on June 4.

Batu Gajah. Wednesday, June 3

The elderly Chinese cook, Ah Long, is really in charge in William’s household. He shows the Ren his small room. Ren only has 25 more days to find the finger.

Later, when William calls Ren in to speak with him, the doctor finds it odd that Ren does not follow the Chinese tradition of using a family name before his first name. The narrator explains that Ren’s parents died in a fire when he was a toddler, but he and his twin brother, Yi, lived. Their rescuers weren’t certain who they belonged to. Ren and Yi got their names from the matron of the orphanage, and they are two of the Confucian Virtues: Ren meaning humanity, and Yi meaning righteousness.

Ren tells William that he did whatever Dr. MacFarlane wanted him to do, including sometimes assisting with his medical practice, and the doctor taught him how to speak English. Dr. McFarlane had counseled Ren not to alert William to the errand concerning his finger.

While sweeping William’s study, Ren observes the tiger pelt rug. Ah Long tells him that William is a collector, not a hunter, and that he himself refuses to touch the pelt. Ren finds himself very fascinated with the pelt, whose “glaring glass eyes warn him away” (26). The hard kernels inside of tiger’s eyes are highly sought after in the region, as well as many of its body parts, which are used as charms or medicine and sold in a black market. Ah Long informs Ren that this tiger killed two men and a woman in Seremban. William is holding onto the pelt for a friend, who believed the tiger was a keramat: a creature who disappears like a ghost and is distinguishable by some malformation, like a maimed foot. Ah Long laughs off the rumor.

When he was living at the orphanage, Ren glimpsed the tracks of the legendary elephant Gajah Keramat, which had a shrunken left forefoot. He’d run home to tell Dr. MacFarlane, and the doctor had enthusiastically listened and recorded some of Ren’s account in his notebook. At the time, Ren did not know the depth of MacFarlane’s fascination. He wonders to himself if the two doctors are linked through a mutual connection to keramats—and he hopes not. 

Falim. Saturday, June 5

Ji Lin arrives in Falim to visit her family and finds Ah Kum, the girl who her father hired as a replacement clerk for Ji Lin. Ah Kum informs Ji Lin that Shin is also back in Falim, and she says that she finds Shin attractive. Shin is widely considered handsome.

Ji Lin goes into the home, which is behind and above the shop. She greets her mother, who looks fragile. She gives her mother some of her dance hall wages, claiming that they came from a dress commission.

Ji Lin has always been surprised that her stepfather expects unwavering submission from Shin. Shin lives a double life: Displaying a lively personality outside of the house and becoming a silent shadow within it. One day, Shin went out with friends after forgetting to measure and bag some bundles of tin-ore for his father. When the patriarch came home, he began to savagely cane Shin. After watching her stepfather deliver two brutal blows that crumpled a crying Shin, Ji Lin rushed out screaming: “He’s sorry! He won’t do it again!” (30). Her stepfather was stunned, and she feared that he would cane her as well. However, when her mother materialized behind Ji Lin, her stepfather left.

Later, Ji Lin tended Shin’s wounds using Tiger Balm, and Ji Lin learned that Shin’s mother had died only a year previously. Privately, she thinks that if her mother had had a shop, she wouldn’t have had to marry Ji Lin’s stepfather. Ji Lin then pledged that she would never marry, and Shin concurred. Ji Lin told him he’d be fine without a wife, as his father was grooming him to take over the business. Shin told her that he’d be leaving as soon as he could. They discussed Shin’s paper with a Chinese character on it. It’s a “tapir,” superstitiously known as a dream-eater that his mother gave him to take away his nightmares. He cautioned that it can also eat one’s ambitions.

Shin and Ji Lin are not as close now. That evening, Shin does not join the family for dinner. Instead, he is out with his friends Ming and Robert. Ji Lin has been in love with Ming, the son of the local watchmaker, since she was 12, although he has recently become engaged. 

Ji Lin’s mother tells her that Shin will be spending the summer in Falim because he has secured a part-time position at the Batu Gajah hospital. He will be staying in the hospital’s staff living quarters. Malayans do not typically observe summer as a season, but the people in the area have adopted many of the conventions of their colonizers.

After dinner, Ji Lin goes into the back alley to take out the trash. Shin catches her there dancing the fox trot. Ji Lin, startled, sees that her stepbrother has grown taller and stronger. They slip right into their teasing, affectionate rapport. She peppers him with questions about life in Singapore. Ji Lin tells Shin that she’s in town to attend a funeral but remains vague about the details. She shows Shin the severed finger, and he confirms that it looks human. She evades his questions about where it came from.