The Tiger and the Acrobat

  No creatures, no movement.

  Why wasn’t Mother coming back?

  Little Tiger couldn’t understand.

  She waited one more week, hunting hare to eat. Then, after yet another sleepless night, she decided that since Mother had not returned, she would go after her. Perhaps she had fallen into a trap, or maybe she was hurt and needed her help.

  She couldn’t wait any longer.

  So she started walking in the opposite direction to her brother. If he had gone where the sun sets then she would go to the East, where it rises. Invigorated by this decision, she crossed the river, springing nimbly from trunk to trunk, and then ventured into the Great Forest.

  After walking for several days, however, Little Tiger stopped. Eight times the sun had risen, and eight times it had disappeared, swallowed up by the darkness of the night. Although she had kept up a good pace, that magnificent red disc had not got closer. How could that be possible? If she followed a hare or a fox, at some point the distance shortened, until it disappeared.

  Why is the sun immune to this law?

  Little Tiger kept on walking, trying to unlock this secret, but she could feel the mystery flying further out of reach – just like when she was a cub and she tried pouncing on the pheasants feeding in the glades. Too much clumsiness, too much hassle, and all she was left with were a few feathers between her paws. The solar disc behaved in exactly the same way. The more she chased it, the more it eluded her.

  Was it the only thing that eluded her?

  Didn’t she feel the same sense of bewilderment towards the snowflakes that rested on her fur? For a moment, there was absolute perfection before her eyes. What seemed to be just a dot floating in the air turned into a tiny perfect star when it reached her paw, barely lasting the time it took her to blink.

  And so?

  What was the mystery hidden behind the impermanence of perfection?

  Although she was failing to reach the sun, Little Tiger didn’t want to give up. She had to get to the edge of their Kingdom, at all costs.

  ‘We will meet again in the Taiga beyond the Sky,’ Mother had said, a few days before disappearing.

  And where on Earth could such a Kingdom start if not in the exact spot where each day begins?

  Snowstorms raged and then subsided. The birches and maple trees put on their leaves, only to lose them again. The undergrowth filled up with berries; the air with swarms of insects. The ground became a quagmire; the quagmire became ice and was, in turn, covered by snow. The birds migrated, leaving the sky silent and empty. The trees became naked again, and Tiger, who was no longer little, pushed on towards the East, chasing the sun that continued to elude her.

  One morning, the Tiger woke up and felt a sort of emptiness in her stomach. It wasn’t hunger, because she had devoured a young boar the night before. It was something different. For two years now, she had walked alone, and that journey was beginning to take its toll. Her mother, her brother and the carefree life of the den were nothing but faded memories.

  Ahead of her, there was only nothing.

  Was that the purpose of her life?

  She knew that she would have to build a Kingdom for herself, but she had no idea how and, most importantly of all, to what avail.

  Perhaps that was the reason for the void she felt in her stomach: that she was no longer able to understand the purpose of her actions.

  Surely she needed to meet the father of her children, breed cubs and raise them, release them into the world and breed others, like her mother had done, and her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother? That way her Kingdom would stretch to the edges of the taiga, reaching the sun, the moon, and even the border between the sun and the moon.

  Repeating what others have done.

  Was this really the meaning of life?

  ‘The sky sets a destiny for everyone,’ Mother had told her.

  ‘A tiger must always be a tiger!’ Father had growled.

  What did they mean?

  ‘You must not let any other nature in,’ had been her father’s warning.

  ‘The thoughts of the Fox shall not be your thoughts. The eyes of the Crow shall not be your eyes,’ her mother had urged.

  Now, as she walked wearily across the taiga, the Tiger could not forget the fiery look in her father’s eyes. What would he say if he saw her wandering so aimlessly? He would be disappointed – very disappointed. Maybe he would tell her she was only fit to become a rug.

  Was it really so?

  During the previous season, she had caught the scent of a male on a birch trunk. She had left her own scent in turn, but nothing had happened. Was it her fault? Or was it Fate that compelled her to be a tiger that was not a true tiger?

  And if her destiny was not that of a tiger, what could it be?

  The Tiger felt a great emptiness inside her.

  That void was nothing more than a well, a gaping chasm between her mind and heart. It was a hollow that swallowed her attention and it was from there, from that unfathomable depth, that all of the questions surfaced.

  At first, the Tiger thought that being patient would be enough. Just by waiting there, sitting on the edge, she would find the answers sooner or later.

  But all that came from the bottom of the well was a slight dripping of water. Darkness was darkness, and remained so even if she leaned inside and roared with all the strength in her body. All she got back was the echo of her own voice.

  Raaaaawwr…rrrr…rrrr…

  The Tiger felt lonely.

  Another form of nature had crept up inside her, like the fungi on the trees.

  What form of nature was it?

  Where did it come from?

  Of one thing, at least, the Tiger was certain: instead of choosing, she had been chosen.

  But by whom?

  Why?

  And when?

  All of these questions kept echoing back and forth, pointless and silent, between the walls of the well.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Tiger of Nothing

  Days and months passed. Months turned into years.

  The Tiger had walked for so long that the leaves on the trees had changed many times and generations of cubs of all kinds had begun to scurry out of their dens and shelters.

  She had fed herself, yes, but absentmindedly. She ate only the small prey that ended up beneath her paws. She was not at all like her mother, who hunted fiercely. Feeding the children or merely staying alive – that was the difference between them.

  In this way, still moving towards the East, the Tiger had become the Queen of Nothing. She had claimed no territory, experienced no encounters that might lead to any sort of future. Her skin seemed to be hanging off her bones, her eyes marked by the volatile uncertainty of her days.

  Leaving the beaten track for an unfamiliar path contained within itself the seed of madness. She knew that this had always been the rule.

  But what if it wasn’t enough for her?

  What if she couldn’t settle?

  Dreadful is the loneliness of those tigers who have chosen the path of the wanderer. Here today, gone tomorrow, chasing shadows and dreams, chasing the nagging thought that is forever whispering: Keep going, this is not the place yet.

  But keep going where?

  And why?

  From time to time, feeling desperate from too much loneliness, she even tried to talk to other species of animals.

  ‘Come closer. Eat with me,’ she said to a fox who had walked by the clearing while she was eating, but the fox, certain that he would only end up being the final titbit of her meal, walked away with the light steps of his kind.

  Her second attempt was with a bear, a she-bear who had emerged from the den with her younglings to enjoy the first summer sun. Seeing her arrive, the bear stood up on her hind legs in all her fierceness, slashing the air with her clawed paws.

  ‘Come on, if you want to fight! I’m ready!’ she challenged her.

  The Tiger remained still for
a while, undecided. Would she be able to make the bear understand that all she wanted was a little company?

  No, she would not. So she turned around slowly, leaving the menacing bear to defend her den.

  Being the terror of everyone while not wanting to be the terror of anyone: such was her curse. Denying her own nature to reach out to a new one, which was as yet unknown to her; wandering around in complete loneliness, wishing for nothing but the comfort of company.

  During the fourth year of uninterrupted wandering, the Tiger realized there wasn’t much of a difference between a tiger without a Kingdom and a rug.

  She didn’t want to be what others expected her to be, and a great weariness fell upon her. She had given up their Kingdom in the taiga to find another one, but in this she had failed.

  She had spent many seasons travelling towards the East, convinced that, eventually, the sun would reveal the secret of its light to her. But years had passed, and the distance remained the same. The sun rose, the sun set, and her initial joyful energy had slowly and inexorably turned into deadly exhaustion.

  What kind of future lay ahead of her?

  To keep going around in circles between sunrise and sunset? To drag her feet along a path that no longer held any surprises? The monotonous hunting of small prey to ensure her survival?

  What had this long journey of hers been, then?

  Maybe it really would be better to be turned into a rug.

  Maybe it was because of such thoughts, or maybe because Fate had already mapped out her path, but at some point, the thing that Mother had always feared ended up happening.

  It all happened rather accidentally.

  In the hushed silence of the winter forest, the Tiger suddenly heard the crunching of snow. She realized right away that no paw could make that noise.

  Who could it be, then, if not a human being?

  And yet there were no villages or roads nearby.

  With cautious steps, her belly brushing the ground as she crouched down low, she moved in the direction of the noise, and after a while she saw them among the pine trees.

  There were indeed two men – the first ones she had ever seen!

  They did not look particularly threatening as they made their way through the snow, walking on strange feet similar to those of the ducks. She could also hear their voices. They were arguing, as if they were anxious about something. One of them had a gun, but they did not look like hunters.

  Not even a child would venture into the taiga without a weapon. They had no dogs with them, which was a good thing.

  Crawling on her stomach and keeping downwind, the Tiger began to follow them.

  Where were they going?

  She really couldn’t work it out.

  And so, before the sky turned dark, she arrived at the hut. It was in the middle of a clearing. Two wooden logs, that reminded her of men’s legs, rested under the roof next to a pile of logs. A plume of smoke was coming out of the chimney and a light was shining behind the glass.

  Someone did live there, after all. She had never noticed that before, although she had passed by the hut several times already.

  It was there that the two men were heading. The Tiger saw them shake the snow from their felt boots and timidly knock on the door, waiting.

  When the door finally opened, the night was already descending on the taiga. The two visitors bowed to the silhouette of a man, who bowed back, before they were each swallowed by the wooden wall.

  This meeting unsettled the Tiger.

  Who could live in that house? Certainly not a hunter. In all the time she had circled around that area, she had never heard the echo of a shot, even from afar.

  So who was it, then?

  Humans usually take comfort from living next to each other, Mother had told her. If they leave the village for the forest it is only because they have a task to accomplish: procuring food or skins, picking mushrooms, gathering berries. Once their task has been completed, they immediately return to their kin.

  Why had those men come here? From the purposefulness in their steps, it was clear that they weren’t lost – they knew exactly where they were going. And if they knew, there had to be a reason.

  A reason they knew, but that the Tiger could not figure out.

  The next day, a snowstorm began and erased any trace of the men’s passage.

  The Tiger was still crouching, waiting not far from them. In the raging storm, only the tips of her ears and tail were sticking out.

  The door of the hut had never been opened; the fire inside had never gone out. There was no noise to be heard aside from the wind that howled through the trees, furiously sweeping the snow from the branches that bent gently and elegantly, creaking and sometimes crashing.

  As the third sunset dawned, the storm began to subside.

  By the middle of the night, the clouds had dissolved and the moon was shimmering, suspended above the pine trees, surrounded by a magnificent parade of stars that were reflected on the sparkling snow blanket.

  The Tiger shook the snow from her fur. She had lived through so many storms already. And when each one came to an end, she could not help but wonder at the enchanted harmony they left behind.

  Was this one of life’s rules perhaps?

  Under the brutal lashing of the elements, reality becomes blurred: it seems there is no longer any order and everything is irretrievably lost. Then, suddenly, everything comes together and order is restored in the world, along with a sense of awe at the beauty and balance that permeates all things.

  The Tiger moved closer to the hut and began to wait, sheltered by the thick snow.

  She did not know what she was waiting for – she just knew that she was breaking the Great Law, which states that tigers and men should be masters of territories very distant from each other. There was no hope of survival for the human being who dared to cross the threshold of the Kingdom of a tiger. The same could be said for a tiger who, either by mistake or folly, trespassed into the territory of men.

  She knew she was disobeying her mother’s teaching. The very teaching that was handed down from generation to generation.

  Danger, danger, danger! said every fibre of her body, from her whiskers to the very tip of her tail.

  ‘Remember: you get close to the man only to devour him. If you let him act first, the risks you take are unpredictable and incalculable.’

  ‘What risks?’ she had asked.

  ‘The rifle. The rifle that draws blood, and the rifle that puts you to sleep. The leghold trap, the net that tangles you and turns you into a fish. You struggle, you try to free yourself, but there’s no hope left for you.’

  Why, then, did the Tiger decide to take such a big risk?

  She did not know, but she knew she couldn’t help it.

  Soon after the dawn of the third day, the door opened and the two men left. With a bow they bid farewell to their host on the threshold. They put on their snowshoes and headed back the way they had come. They weren’t chatting as they had been when they arrived; instead, they seemed lost in thought, silent.

  For a moment, the Tiger was unsure what to do.

  Should she follow them or stay close to the hut? Of course, if she followed them, sooner or later she would end up at a village – a risk she did not feel like taking.

  The Man in the log cabin seemed more interesting. Who could he be, she wondered, to escape the company of other human beings? Someone like her, perhaps. Someone who had chosen – or who had been chosen – to open up to another dimension. Maybe he didn’t even own a gun. Maybe he too had that unfathomable void inside him, only capable of generating questions.

  Those long days spent watching the hut had taught the Tiger that she was more comfortable waiting than she was ambushing. She had no desire to tear or mangle, or to display any form of supremacy. The hunger that consumed her was, rather, for knowledge. So, alert, head erect, forelegs crossed, her long tail softly flicking across the surface of the snow, she began her wait to meet the M
an.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I’ve Been Waiting for You

  The snow continued to fall, covering the previous layer that hadn’t yet melted. The deer were having a hard time digging through the thick blanket to find food in the soil. They raised their heads towards the branches, stretching their lips to nip at the lichens and using their horns to scrape the bark from the tender trunks of the birch trees.

  The Tiger loved the winter more than the summer; the still silence of the snow more than the humming of myriad insects. Food was hard to come by, true, but filling her belly had never been her main concern. The white blanket that covered everything infused her with a kind of inner majesty. Wasting time chasing bloodsucking parasites belonged to a whole other dimension.

  Despite this, she sometimes felt as though she were being tormented by hissing and humming noises, even in the dead of winter. It wasn’t mosquitoes or horseflies, but the obsessive persistence of her own thoughts. They crept inside her head, where there was no door she could open and let them out. Crushing these thoughts beneath her paws or striking them with her tail was out of the question too. In spite of all her imposing strength, in such moments she felt helpless.

  The Tiger spent weeks circling the hut discreetly, careful not to be seen or heard. She saw the Man emerge for short periods of time, carrying a basket to gather firewood.

  She studied him.

  He looked neither young nor old. Or, better yet, neither soft nor chewy, as Mother had described. Truth be told, she had seen more of his back than his face.

  Once she thought she heard him singing.

  If the Man had ventured further from the woodshed, he probably would have noticed that the snow around the hut had been trodden by the heavy paws of a tiger. What would he have done then? Would he have reached for his rifle?

  Oddly enough, the Tiger wasn’t afraid at all. She could attack first, of course, to defend herself, but that prospect left her completely indifferent. If she devoured him, the only thing she’d get out of it was a full belly for a few days. Then she would be back to square one.