The afternoon sun was still fierce. Haji lay stretched out in the shade of a bamboo thicket, his head resting on his great paws. Aligned with the shadows cast through the bamboo screen, the jet-black stripes that crisscrossed his tawny body served to render him virtually invisible. He lay stock-still, but for all that he was not comfortable. There was a dull ache of hunger in the pit of his stomach and his right forepaw throbbed relentlessly where the spines of a tok landak had struck him some weeks ago. He had long since chewed the protruding ends away, but the barbed heads had remained buried deep in the flesh of his foot, where they had begun to suppurate. The earlier agonizing pain had given way to a constant nagging ache that was with him every moment of the day and night.
He was an old tiger, and sixteen years of prowling swamps and jungles without serious harm should have taught him more caution. But the hunting had been bad for a long time now and the porcupine’s succulent flesh had been a tempting proposition. Perhaps Haji was simply not as fast as he had once been. At any rate, in attempting to flip the spiny creature over onto its back to expose the vulnerable underbelly, something had gone wrong. The tok landak had scuttled away to safety, leaving Haji roaring with pain and frustration. Since then, the hunting had not got any easier.
Haji lifted his head slightly and stared through the screen of bushes into the kampong, twenty yards to his right. A large group of Upright cubs were playing a noisy game of Sepak Takraw, kicking a rattan ball to each other over an improvised net. The cubs were very skilful and the ball rarely touched the ground. The frenzied cries and shouts of their strange squeaky language echoed on the still air. Haji’s yellow eyes took in every movement. He watched with curiosity and a little fear; he feared the Uprights as he feared anything which he did not readily understand, but something had called him from the depths of the jungle this day and he had forsaken the constant hunt for food in order to travel out into patches of secondary jungle and scrub. He knew he would not rest easy until it was done. Now, here he lay, closer to the Uprights’ lair than he had ever been, and there was nothing for him to do but lie silent and still while he watched.
The Uprights had always mystified him: these strange hairless creatures that walked on two legs, possessed incredible powers, could march around the jungle, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a bigger and stronger creature was lying mere inches from where their tiny feet trod. On the few occasions when Haji had actually made his presence known, the Uprights had all reacted in a variety of extraordinary ways. Some had simply fled, howling and screaming in a most curious fashion, while others had clambered clumsily onto the branches of nearby trees. Most confusing of all, two of these uprights had on separate occasions produced some black sticks that roared fire at Haji, a moving fire that seemed to tear at the bushes and earth, shattering it into abrupt movement. On these two misadventures, it had been Haji who chose to run away, for such things were not then within the range of his experience. He knew now that the black sticks carried death to those animals who did not run quite fast enough, though he could not comprehend how such a thing might be brought about. Once, while Haji had been painstakingly stalking a large rusa, an Upright had approached from another direction, pointed his black stick at the beast, and the roaring fire had struck the rusa so hard that his whole body shook. Then he had fallen, as dead as a stone.
Haji put out his long rasping tongue and licked absentmindedly at his paw. The action revived fresh spasms of pain from the wound and he growled softly at the discomfort. It hurt his pride to think how clumsy he’d been with the tok landak, but it was a pride tempered with healthy respect. He would have to be very hungry indeed before he tackled another of the wretched beasts.
An extra loud yell from the cubs focused his attention, and suddenly something crashed down into the bushes by his side, startling him and almost putting him to flight. But he caught himself as he realized that it was just the rattan ball, which had sailed over the heads of the nearest cubs and come to a halt mere feet from Haji’s outstretched paws. He sniffed at it suspiciously, but it lay quite still and harmless and he relaxed again. After a few moments, there was a pounding of naked feet on earth and one of the cubs approached the undergrowth. He snatched up a length of stick and began to poke around in the bushes, probably more wary of snakes than of anything else. He did not see Haji lying in the shade of the bamboo. Haji watched with calm interest. The Upright was small and carried no black stick. He seemed to offer little threat.
The other cubs began to shout and wave. Tired of the game, they were moving on. They beckoned for the lone cub to accompany them, but he pointed into the bushes and jabbered something in his curious high-pitched voice. Evidently the rattan ball belonged to him and he wanted to retrieve it. The others wandered away and it was very quiet now. The Upright turned back and began to employ the stick more aggressively, muttering softly to himself as he searched. He moved a few steps nearer to Haji and looked there, stooping down on one knee and pushing the thick leaves aside with his bare arm. He was so close now that Haji could smell his half-naked little body; the faint odour of sweat drifting from beneath his armpits; the aroma of rice and cooked meat on his breath. Now, the cub’s gaze fell on the bamboo thicket. Through the gaps in the upright stalks, he could perceive the shadowy sphere that was his ball. With an exclamation of relief, he moved forward and thrust an arm into the thicket to try and retrieve the ball. It was quite a stretch.
Haji gazed at the little brown hand as it grasped the ball, no more than two feet from his own paws. It was a strange-looking arrangement, more like a soft brown crab with wriggling feet than anything else. But it gripped the ball surely and snatched it out from the cover into sunlight. The cub got to his feet as though to walk away, but then he hesitated, sniffing the air suspiciously. He gazed intently into the thicket, scratching his head in puzzlement. Then he sank down again onto one knee, reached out to push the screen of bamboo aside …
‘Ché!’ A mother’s voice from somewhere in the kampong. ‘Ché!’ The cub frowned, half turned, stared off into the jumble of tumbledown dwellings as though reluctant to answer his mother’s call. He turned back to the bamboo, reached out his hands again …
‘Ché!’ Again the call, more insistent now. It was time to eat, or wash, or sleep. The cub’s tiny fingers, curled around the stems of bamboo, slid gently away. With a sigh, he collected his ball and trudged wearily homewards, forgetting now the unfamiliar odour that had initially roused his curiosity.
Haji watched the cub walk away into the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. Soon, the sun would die bloodily on the horizon and the brief twilight would come and go in silence. In the high-stilted kampong houses, oil lamps would be lit and prayers would be muttered to safeguard the villagers from the demons of advancing darkness. And for Haji, the long night’s hunt would begin.
He got to his feet and, silent as a ghost, he limped away.
Harry ‘Tiger’ Sullivan was occupying his favourite table at the Officers’ Mess, Kuala Hitam barracks. It was a table like all the others, but it was placed in a strategic position where the sitter could take in every corner of the Mess at a glance. Harry had been using the same table for something like eighteen years now, and it was an unspoken custom in the Mess to leave it free whenever Harry was around. In retirement, he used the table as often as he had when he was a Lieutenant Colonel with the resident regiment, the Fourth Gurkha Rifles. He had now been retired for five years but was as much a central figure at the Mess as he had ever been. Nobody would have dreamed of questioning his presence there.
Trimani, the white-coated Tamil barman, approached the table with the customary chilled glass of ‘Tiger’ beer. The care and reverence with which Trimani went about the task made it almost a religious ceremony. The glass