‘You gone long time, Tuan,’ he said defensively.
‘Aww, that’s alright.’ Bob lit himself a smoke and inhaled deeply. ‘The cow was all eaten up,’ he announced. ‘If I’m going to shoot that tiger, I need to be onto the kill much quicker than this.’ He thought for a moment and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a notebook and pencil. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’m going to write the address of my house down here. Can you read some English? It’s only a mile or so away from here on the Kuala Trengganu road. Now, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you twenty dollars …’
The penghulu’s eyes lit up.
‘Now, the next time you or any of your people hear of a tiger killing a cow anywhere in Trengganu, you come and let me know, understand? So you see, it’s in your interest to help me out.’ He reached into his pocket, drew out his wallet and handed a twenty-dollar bill to the penghulu, who accepted it eagerly. ‘Another thing, you got any friends who can work with wood? Savvy? A carpenter, you know …?’ He mimed the action of sawing and hammering wood, and the penghulu nodded.
‘My cousin,’ he said with conviction.
‘Alright, let’s go and see your cousin. I want him to make me a special seat that I can rope up into the trees, a seat I can shoot from, you understand? I’ll meet his price, whatever it is! And look, I’m going to need men to help me later on, and they all get paid too. You’ll be able to buy a lot of cigarettes before we’re through. I’m a good man, chief, I always look after my friends. What do you say, are you going to help me out?’
The penghulu crumpled the twenty-dollar bill in his hand.
‘I good man too, Tuan! You not worry, I keep ears open, all over. I hear something, I send word, never fear!’ And he grinned, a wide golden grin. ‘Now, you come talk my cousin. He best woodman in all kampong. He make you good shooting seat, you will see.’ And he led Bob back in the direction of the village.
On the way back, to seal the bargain, they smoked the last two cigarettes.
It was a little after eight o’clock and Harry had already been up for something like three hours. He sat in his favourite rattan chair on the verandah remembering how, when he was younger, he had possessed the ability to sleep like a proverbial log. But as a man got older, his capacity for sleep seemed to dwindle. Now, the advent of the night was no longer a pleasure to him, but an irksome task that had to be endured in a seemingly endless fit of tossing and turning. More often than not, he would arise with the dawn and pace about his home, searching for little jobs to occupy himself while the hours slowly creaked past.
It was with a feeling of elation that he heard the metal garden gate clang open, telling him that Pawn had arrived to make the breakfast and, what was more important, today was the day she always brought Ché with her. They advanced slowly up the drive, an incongruous couple, she small and creaking in her sarong, he, a spindly hyperactive twelve-year-old, dressed in shorts and a torn T-shirt. He bounded up onto the porch ahead of his grandmother, his dark eyes flashing in merry greeting.
‘Good morning, Tuan!’ Like most young Malay boys, his English was excellent, and he had long ago lost any bashfulness that he might originally have possessed.
‘Good morning, Ché … Pawn …’ The old woman clambered up the stairs, grinning as always.
‘I am late, Tuan?’ she enquired fearfully.
‘Oh, I hardly think so! Anyway, I think we’ll leave breakfast for an hour or so. I haven’t much of an appetite yet.’
‘Yes, Tuan.’ She bowed very slightly and moved on into the house.
‘Ché, come and sit with me,’ suggested Harry. ‘Tell me all the news!’
Ché pulled up the spare seat and sat himself down on it, lifting his bare legs up so that he could rest his chin on his knees. Then he sat regarding Harry with a good-natured grin on his face.
‘The Tuan is well today?’ he enquired.
‘Oh, well enough, Ché, well enough. A little old, but there’s not much I can do about that is there? Now then, what’s been happening over in Kampong Panjang?
Ché’s face became very animated.
‘Well, Tuan, such excitement in the kampong two nights ago! A great tok belang killed a cow on the road just beyond the village. The cow belonged to my best friend, Majid, and he stood as close to the beast as I am to you!’
Harry smiled. He noted that like many Malays, Ché had a terrible reluctance to say the word ‘tiger.’ This stemmed from the old superstition that the very mention of the creature’s name was enough to bring its wrath down on one’s head. In most areas of Malaya, the superstition had faded except amongst the very old, but here in Trengganu it persisted amongst many of the inhabitants and may well have been passed on to Ché by his parents or grandparents.
‘A big tiger, you say? How big?’
‘Majid described him to me. He was fifteen feet long and stood as high as a fully grown deer. His eyes blazed like hot coals and his teeth were like great white daggers, this long!’ Ché held the palms of his hands six inches apart. ‘A truly terrible beast, Tuan. Poor Majid was fixed to the spot for a moment, but of course the beast did not attack him, for he was facing it.’
Harry nodded. He knew all about the fervent Malay belief that every good man had a verse from the Koran written on his forehead that proclaimed mankind’s superiority over the beasts of the jungle. Whenever confronted with this, a tiger is incapable of attacking its intended victim; and that was why, of course, nine times out of ten, a tiger would attack a man from behind. Beliefs like this were indelibly printed in the Malay consciousness and no amount of reasoning could shake that kind of faith. Harry could quite easily explain that Majid had probably been in no danger whatsoever; that a tiger only ever attacks a human being if it is very old or badly wounded, unable to catch its usual prey; moreover, that it would be quite natural for a tiger to attack from the rear, simply to maintain an element of surprise, but none of these arguments would make Ché cast off his own beliefs. So Harry simply asked, ‘Where do you think this tiger came from?’
The question was more complicated than it might seem to Western ears. To a Malay’s way of thinking, no tiger could just be there, a native cat wandering out of its jungle home. Ché thought for a moment before replying.
‘Some people in the village say that it might be a weretiger. There is an old bomoh who lives along near Kampong Machis and he claims to have the power of turning into a h – tok belang. But more likely, it goes the other way about. A beast from Kandong Balok has been living amongst us for some time and now is seeking his old ways.’
Harry nodded, knowing better than to laugh and cause offence. He knew all about Kandong Balok, the mythical kingdom of tigers that lay far beneath the earth in a secret place. There ruled Dato Uban, the king of all tigers, in a home made of human bones and thatched with human hair. From time to time, one of Dato’s subjects would yearn to live as a human and then this particular tiger would leave Kandong Balok by means of a secret tunnel. En route, a mysterious transformation would occur, the tiger would take human form and would go to live in some kampong, the other inhabitants never dreaming that such a creature dwelled amongst them. Sometimes, the changeling would become homesick and would visit Kandong Balock occasionally, reverting to its original form as it moved through the tunnel. Other times, the beast would simply hunger for raw flesh and, like the troublesome weretigers, would change its shape and kill cattle or even human beings.
The kampongs were rife with stories about weretigers, which were usually told to a huddled family audience late at night, in the glow of a solitary oil lamp. Details varied, but the basis was always more or less the same. A woman