Why was she spending so much time there?
She couldn’t answer that.
Does a bee know why it’s drawn to a flower? A mysterious power suddenly calls, impossible to resist. What might seem folly to one creature seems to another the only possible way forward.
One morning, as the ice on the highest branches was beginning to melt, the door of the hut opened and the Man came out to dig the snow that had piled up.
The Tiger didn’t see him immediately – she was several leaps away – but she caught his scent very clearly. Cautiously, she retraced her steps, careful not to reveal her presence.
All she could hear was the cawing of a crow close by.
Suddenly, a voice echoed in the silence.
‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
The Tiger stopped.
Where did that voice come from? She hesitated, her paw hovering in mid-air above the snow.
Run away?
Or move forward?
She moved forward.
When she was so close that she could feel the breath of the Man, she heard the voice again.
‘Why are you hiding? I know you live next to me.’
At that, the Tiger gathered her courage and walked out into the open.
The Man had a shovel in his hand. They stared at each other for a long time, in silence. The only thing moving was the Tiger’s tail.
‘Remember,’ Mother had once warned her, ‘the gaze of the man and the tiger can never meet. We’re not the ones who are afraid: it’s men who flee in terror.’
How long did they remain like that, perfectly still?
‘Take him out. Eat him so I can eat too,’ the crow cawed impatiently up on the branch.
But the Tiger did not move.
The rays of the sun were touching the snow, making it sparkle with light.
Little clouds of steam were coming out of both their nostrils.
‘Is it you I hear talking to me?’ the Tiger asked, at last.
‘Yes,’ the Man replied.
‘But men and tigers don’t speak the same language.’
‘They don’t speak it if they don’t want to. I inhale; you exhale. The whole universe breathes. For this reason, every voice is the same.’
Are you deceiving me, perhaps? the Tiger thought, but the Man seemed to read her mind.
‘If I am here, it is precisely to avoid any deception.’
In the days that followed, the Tiger learned to approach the Man. He didn’t call her, but she felt irresistibly drawn to him. She would follow him around as he was shovelling snow, fixing his skis or chopping firewood.
‘Aren’t you afraid that I might maim you?’ she asked him the next day.
‘If you’d wanted to eat me, you could have done it a thousand times already. Look up there,’ he added with a smile, ‘and see how disappointed that crow is.’
‘You really feel no fear at all?’ the Tiger roared softly.
The Man sighed. ‘I have one particular fear, yes, and it’s always the same. Not the fear of death but of not being able to be myself.’
That night, dozing off in front of the Man’s door, the Tiger slept soundly – more so than she had in a long time. She was no longer alone. For mysterious reasons, someone else shared her fear.
‘Are you a shaman?’ she asked him one evening in the hut, while the wind hissed through the cracks between the logs.
The Man remained silent for a long time, and then, with a distant voice, he answered, ‘My grandfather was one, and so was my father and my grandfather’s father. I was supposed to be one as well.’
‘So you’re not, then?’
‘No.’
‘Then why do people come looking for you?’
‘Because they think I am one.’
‘You deceive them?’
‘It is exactly because I don’t deceive them that they leave empty-handed.’
‘Empty-handed?’
‘No amulets, no magic formula.’
‘And they come back?’
The Man shook his head. ‘They go to seek elsewhere what they do not find here.’
‘What is it that they don’t find?’
‘A solution that will allow them not to change.’
The Tiger remained silent for a while. Then she said, ‘You’re not a hunter either, though.’
‘No, I’m not. I hunt only what I need to feed myself.’
‘Why don’t you live in the village with the other men, then?’
In the twilight that was illuminated by the afterglow of the sunset, the Tiger saw the Man’s face turn around to stare at her. The whites of his eyes gleamed in an extraordinary way.
‘And you? Why do you not live like the other tigers?’
CHAPTER TEN
A Hand and Its Glove
Even though he wasn’t a shaman, the Man was able to foretell what was going to happen. Whenever he sensed he was about to receive a visit, he would send the Tiger out into the forest. It was better if no one knew that a man and a tiger lived together, sharing their food and their thoughts. Once he was alone again, all he had to do was say ‘Come back’, and the Tiger would return solemnly to the hut.
They also went hunting together.
‘Something wants us to put an end to its days,’ he would occasionally say, getting to his feet.
He would take his rifle and together they would head off to meet the animal that had sought him out. The Man was, in fact, able to talk to all living creatures, just as he did with her.
‘There is an appreciation for life,’ the Man had explained, ‘just as there is a gratitude for death. The two things are intertwined, like a tree and the vine that engulfs it.’
The Tiger had never thought about death, perhaps because she had not yet seen one of her kin lying lifeless. The only death she knew was the one that she regularly bestowed upon other living creatures.
‘I’ve never thought about it,’ she said that night, by the fire.
‘The fear of death is a privilege reserved for humans.’
‘Why are they afraid?’
‘Because they leave behind the known for the unknown.’
‘Even the tigers?’
‘Even the tigers, of course.’
‘But tigers are not afraid.’
‘They’re not afraid because they are unable to imagine the future.’
‘Is that the only reason?’
‘No. It is also because they are not forced to choose.’
‘Choose what?’
‘Between doing good or evil.’
‘Humans think we are evil. That’s why they kill us.’
‘You just act according to your nature. The evil that humans see in you is the evil that thrives in their hearts.’
‘What about me, then?’
‘What about you?’
‘Why can’t I live like the other tigers?’
‘I cannot live like the other humans either.’
‘Why?’
‘Sometimes it just happens like this. Someone is born and they refuse to walk on the same path that others have trodden.’
The Tiger recalled the time her mother had taken her and her brother to the hut that the woodcutters had abandoned, encouraging them to sniff and learn the scent of anything that had been touched by the humans, teaching them to be wary of their cunning ways. Humans carried those long canes that shoot fire, and they could also craft devious traps.
‘What’s a trap?’ Little Tiger had asked.
‘A trap is something you can’t see and that captures you when you least expect it.’
‘Like a game?’ asked Tiger Cub.
Mother had shaken her head gravely. ‘It’s not a game. For a tiger, a trap means certain death.’
She had then tried to explain to them what the traps she had seen looked like.
‘You notice the trap only once you’re already inside. That’s why you should never let yourself get distracted; never look higher than ground level while you walk. Alwa
ys sniff the air carefully and change course immediately if you catch the smell of humans from afar.’
In the early days she spent close to the Man, the Tiger often remembered the serious look in her mother’s eyes as she told them those things. What if the friendly demeanour of that human was just a different kind of trap? That’s why she had hesitated so much before crossing the threshold of his Hut. That apparent mellowness, that way he had of talking to her as if they were cubs from the same litter – couldn’t those simply be a way to trick her?
But then, as the sun set after a frosty day, the Man had turned to look at her before entering the hut.
‘Why don’t you come inside? It would be nice to sleep next to each other. In exchange for your warmth I could tell you some stories.’
The Tiger had stared at him for a long time, shaking her head to get rid of the ice on her fur.
Nearby, some crows cawed loudly.
‘You don’t trust me?’
The Tiger didn’t answer.
‘You think I only want your fur instead of your company?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But I trusted you. You might have wanted only my blood and my flesh instead of my company.’
‘I’ve never thought about your blood and your flesh.’
‘Nor have I ever thought about your fur.’
The Man had remained on the threshold a while longer, holding the door open. The dim light of a small lamp shone at the back of the room. The sun had set; the creatures of the night had yet to start making their noises, while those that belonged to the day were already quiet. The only sound was the crackling of the fire in the stove.
‘So?’
A thousand conflicting thoughts were swirling around in the Tiger’s mind. Her head kept telling her that she still did not know enough about the countless tricks of humans, while her heart pushed her to go inside.
Eventually, she listened to her heart.
With slow steps and her tail raised halfway, she approached the door. As she stepped inside, she experienced for a brief moment what her prey must feel just before they meet their end. The pang of unadulterated dread.
Something terrible could have happened – something final.
Nothing did.
‘Welcome!’ the Man had said, pointing at a rug where she could lie down.
They spent a good part of their first winter together just like that: lying by the fire next to one another, talking.
The first story the Man told her was his own. Until then, other than considering them a possible meal or a potential danger, the Tiger had known nothing about humans and their ways – she had never even caught a glimpse of one of their cubs. Slowly, by listening to him, she came to know about their world. The more the Man spoke of himself, the more it seemed to the Tiger that he was talking about her too. Both had disappointed their parents; both had refused to become what tradition and nature expected them to become.
One evening, in a moment of silence, they heard a faint noise coming from the table next to them.
Skreech…skreech…skreech.
‘Do you hear that?’ asked the Man.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a woodworm. Such a small creature you can barely imagine it. It just hides in there and, slowly and patiently, it’ll eat away the entire table. One day I will put down a plate and the whole thing will collapse into a heap of sawdust.’
‘What kind of story is this?’ asked the Tiger.
‘A story that concerns us.’
‘Can woodworms attack us?’
‘Not our bodies, but our souls. You are a tiger with a woodworm inside you; I am a human with a woodworm inside me.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because, just like me, you don’t settle.’
‘Settle? What does that mean?’
‘Accepting things as they are, even if they are wrong – even if they lead to your death rather than life.’
‘But you die anyway.’
‘The soul can die long before the body.’
‘So?’
‘Those who have a woodworm inside them are always looking for another horizon.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they always sense another world beyond the one in which they live.’
The Tiger pondered this idea.
Hadn’t that been precisely her own state of mind since the day she had left the den? She had never perceived any territory as her own. She had never stopped walking towards the East, towards the land where the sun rises. Why did she ever do that, if not because of the profound and unfathomable conviction that there was another world concealed beyond the horizon, and that, one way or another, that world had something to do with her?
‘You don’t know it yet, but you feel that you must know it,’ said the Man. ‘You sense a fire within you, and you don’t know where the spark that generated it is hiding. Isn’t that so?’
‘It is…yes,’ the Tiger admitted thoughtfully.
During that long winter, the Tiger and the Man got to know each other like no one else had before.
When the thawing snow began to drip from the roof, the Man said, ‘Now we are just like a hand and its glove.’
The Tiger learned about all the invisible inhabitants of the taiga. There were goblins, ghosts and demons. The Man had learned all their stories from his father and grandfather. Both had been great shamans, moving between dimensions just as ordinary people walk through doors.
‘I could call them with a whistle, and they would be at my feet in a flash,’ he once confided to her.
‘Then why don’t you?’
‘Because between freedom and power, I chose freedom.’
The Tiger was not yet able to fully understand his words, so, on an uneventful day, she begged him to cast one of those spells.
The Man uttered some unintelligible words and clapped his hands loudly three times.
Suddenly, a fearsome creature materialized right in front of them. It looked like some sort of ball, but it wasn’t. At first it was an oval, then it became a rectangle. Unusually long and curly nails poked out from its body. Bristly silver hair that seemed never to have known a pair of scissors covered its face, wrapping around its body like a tangled web. Above its tiny nose flashed a pair of eyes so narrow they looked like slits. The creature had no ears, and its mouth appeared to be frozen in an endless yawn.
The Tiger backed away warily.
‘What is that?’
‘The demon that was closest to us.’
‘Who is that?’
‘The demon of boredom.’
The Tiger looked more closely at the demon, noticing that its body exuded a kind of mist. The closer it got to her, the more she felt overpowered by a sort of irresistible drowsiness.
The Man clapped his hands three times and said some more mysterious words and, just like that, the demon vanished.
The Tiger felt better immediately.
‘Remember that demons are like dogs: they love human company. You must always be very careful with demons. If you call them or let them get too close, there is a risk that they’ll never go away.’
‘Show me the opposite energy to that demon,’ the Tiger said.
The Man took a tiny bell from his pocket and began to sing in a voice that the Tiger had never imagined he could have, alternating his song and the tinkling of the bell.
For a moment that seemed to the Tiger to last for ever, nothing happened.
Then, all of a sudden, a giant, luminous whirlwind that looked as if it contained all the colours and shades of the universe rolled in from the edge of the glade.
The Tiger braced herself to face the gusts of a tornado, but when it passed over their heads she realized the only strength inside it was that of a caress. The strange apparition emitted the most beautiful colours and scents in the world.
‘What is this?’ she asked the Man, as soon as the vortex had moved on.
‘It’s the energy that makes ever
ything bloom, that makes the buds bulge and that, when the right season comes, turns them into flowers.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wanderers in the Taiga
How long did the Tiger remain with the Man?
The snow melted, and buds and catkins started to appear on the bushes and trees. The great ritual of mating began, soon followed by the appearance of a new generation of creatures. When the youngsters were ready to leave their dens and nests, billions of insects descended upon the taiga. After the insects came the berries and, after the berries, the leaves turned yellow once more. Red, orange, golden yellow. At times, it seemed as if slivers of sun were falling to the ground.
Once again the snow returned, leaving the bare branches of the trees standing against the sky, like the hooked fingers of an old crone. The first flakes were followed by many others, and the landscape yet again resembled the one that had welcomed the Tiger the first time she came to the hut.
When the snow retreated from the glade, the visits of the humans were likely to become more frequent, so the Man and the Tiger dug a deep den in the dense forest, hidden behind the trunk of a large, dead tree. As soon as she sensed someone approaching, the Tiger would hide inside and fall asleep as she waited for the Man to call her back to the hut.
Whenever they were sure there were no humans around, the Man and the Tiger would wander across the taiga together. The Man always carried a leather shoulder bag and he collected berries and buds and tree bark as he walked, separating them from the fungi that he put in a small sack.
His tiger companion always attracted the attention of a large number of crows. Swarms of mosquitoes and insects fluttered around, tormenting the Man but never managing to penetrate the Tiger’s long, thick fur.
Every now and then, the Tiger came home with some prey, though it was never particularly impressive. In those moments, she couldn’t help recalling her father’s disappointed expression as she returned from one of her first hunting forays with a hare still warm in her mouth.