‘Are you a fox, then?’ he had asked her, before vanishing into the forest without saying goodbye.
It was the foxes that caught mice, hares, partridges, pheasants: all the small creatures they could easily carry between their jaws. A tiger’s prey was large, immovable, and a great many other inhabitants of the taiga could benefit from their death.
‘That’s why they call us Queens,’ her mother had explained, that same evening in the den. ‘They fear us and respect us. They fear us for our power; they respect us for our generosity. Many die because of us, but many more are able to survive thanks to us.’
During their hikes, the Man and the Tiger occasionally had fun chasing each other and romping among the trees like cubs, before collapsing together on the soft carpet of moss, exhausted. In those moments the Tiger felt that the Man became just like her in all respects.
They found ways to play even during the long winter months. With so little space to move inside the hut, the Man’s challenge was to touch the Tiger’s tail with the tip of his nose as it whipped through the air.
Sometimes, the Man went off to visit his kin and came back to the hut sad and pensive.
‘Did they hurt you?’ the Tiger would ask.
The Man would shake his head. ‘No, but their pain got inside my heart.’
Many people with serious ailments would call upon him, convinced that he would be able to help them. The most harrowing cases were those mothers who begged him to heal a sick child.
‘There is nothing more terrible,’ the Man had confided to her once.
The Tiger had nodded, remembering the expression of pained apprehension on her mother’s face every time she and her brother wandered away from the den.
‘There are pains that come from ourselves,’ the Man went on, ‘and others that come from the sky. The first are like knots in a tightrope. You have to be patient, to recognize the kind of knot it is and then have strong enough fingers to untangle it. As for the others, sadly, there is nothing you can do.’
‘Nothing?’ the Tiger repeated, amazed. Until that moment, she had thought there were no obstacles that the Man couldn’t overcome.
‘If a child dies, it dies. Not even the most advanced healing methods will be able to bring it back to life.’
‘We’re all going to die.’
‘When our time comes, yes. But some die before their time, before they’ve taken their first steps, too early on their journey. And we find that hard to accept. The injustice of Fate. Some have a lot; some a little; others nothing at all. If I leave the hatch of the stove open with the fire burning while I’m out hunting and a piece of burning wood falls out, and on my return I find a pile of smouldering ash instead of my house, who’s to blame?’
‘You.’
‘But if a storm breaks out while I’m wandering around the taiga and lightning strikes the house, and as I walk back I can already see the fire from afar, who’s to blame?’
The Tiger pondered quietly, then said, ‘The sky, which drops lightning where it should not.’
‘That’s right,’ the Man agreed. ‘But then, the real question becomes: can the sky wish us harm?’
The Tiger then thought about the sky, which she had so often looked up to as she wandered around the taiga with the Man. She had seen it at night and by day; she had gazed upon it both when it was sunny and when it was covered by snow-laden clouds, and every time she had found it absolutely beautiful. She would look up and feel its deepest breath. There was nothing harmful coming from it – quite the opposite, in fact. That breath gave her peace and quiet.
‘Maybe there is another sky – a smaller, darker one,’ said the Tiger. ‘A sky we’re not able to see.’
‘Yes, perhaps there is something that eludes even the sky, and whatever eludes the sky eludes us too. It’s not the night but a shadow. And in this shadow something is at work that should not be.’
The hut was engulfed in the deep silence of the snow. The Man lay down next to the Tiger and confessed that, in the presence of the despair of a mother who was losing her child, he behaved exactly like his father and grandfather, the shamans.
‘I can’t help it. They come here after a long journey, helpless, exhausted, bearing their small gifts, and as soon as our eyes meet I see the bright light of hope shining. They expect something from me – how on Earth could I ever disappoint them?’
The fire in the hut was dying, but the Man didn’t seem to be cold.
‘When I was younger, I was firmer. I chose not to deceive them: I would send them away, telling them that I couldn’t help them, that it was not my place to save lives, and invited them to take their gifts back. But the sight of their curved backs walking away would haunt me for days, keeping me awake at night. With my words, with my own arrogant presence, I had extinguished the power of the maternal love that shone so desperately inside them. I had put my ideas in the place of my heart, and this had driven me towards the Sky of the Shadow.’
At that point, the Man sighed and stood up to rekindle the fire in the stove.
‘In the end, I think this is exactly what alienates us from the Great Harmony: instead of welcoming and embracing, we keep making our small, pitiful calculations. This is good; that is not. I wonder, at times, who or what we think we are.’
‘We tigers think we are tigers,’ replied the Tiger, who still had a long way to go before she could fully understand what the Man was saying.
‘For us humans it is much more complicated to try to be profoundly human.’
Shivering, the Man wrapped himself in the fur he used as a blanket and resumed his tale.
‘The first few times, I was distraught. I would sprinkle water on the child with a leafy branch or with one of the child’s belongings if they had brought any, and, while I uttered the mantra, I told myself that I was deceiving them. But then I felt warmth return to the mother’s hands; I saw her eyes flooded by the intensity of her gratitude; and I felt that none of that could possibly hurt her.’
The Man’s eyes glowed in the dark.
‘At times, however, something incredible happened. The child went home healed, holding their mother’s hand.’
‘That means you truly do have powers.’
‘The only power I have is to ask. The pain of the mothers becomes my own, and I offer that pain to the sky, asking for it to be dissolved.’
That night, feeling the Man’s back against her own, their breaths synchronized like bellows, the Tiger struggled to fall asleep. Many of the things the Man had said kept echoing inside her. Not having borne any offspring yet, she wondered what her greatest sorrow might possibly be. Certainly not death, since she had long before worked out that when death comes, life ceases to exist. She felt the Man’s body beside her and suddenly realized that he had become much feebler over the last year.
I was alone before, but now I’m no longer alone. If he dies, she thought, then this will be for me the greatest sorrow.
CHAPTER TWELVE
That Fateful Day
In the years that followed, the Tiger found herself reliving every minute and every hour of that fateful day.
The early summer sun had already dried the mud left from the thaw. The trees were covered with fresh leaves and the tender green of their youth glowed brightly against the blue sky. The air was abuzz with the singing of birds that chased and courted each other in the trees.
After the long winter months, even the Man seemed more cheerful than usual. They had gone out together just before sunrise to collect the flowers of a specific shrub that had healing properties for certain diseases.
Along the way, the Tiger saw butterflies flutter around and felt the impulse to chase them as she had done when she was little.
‘Why don’t you?’ the Man encouraged her, reading her mind.
‘I’m too old,’ the Tiger replied, embarrassed.
‘Innocence is ageless,’ the Man said, and then began to sing.
His voice sounded childlike. He continued singing o
n their way back, as he carried two bags full of flowers.
‘Is there something in particular that makes you happy?’ the Tiger asked him.
The Man paused for a moment and gestured widely at the sky above.
‘That can make you happy?’ asked the Tiger.
‘Is that not enough for you?’
Was it perhaps his singing that prevented him from hearing? Or old age? Was it that sudden euphoria that made him so distracted? Why did something happen then that should never have happened?
Back at the hut, the Man gently laid the flowers on a plank to let them dry under the large canopy that served as a shelter for the firewood, while the Tiger went inside to rest.
She was just about to lie down when she heard voices.
The voices of human strangers.
She cowered in the darkest corner of the hut and listened as the Man returned their greeting. From the tone of their voices, they didn’t seem to be sick people in need of help.
What had brought them here?
Maybe the Man knew them and was expecting them. But if that were the case, why hadn’t he warned her? Why hadn’t he sent her to her den as usual?
A strong smell of alcohol wafted up her nostrils. Alarmed, the Tiger sat still, listening.
For a while she heard them talk about the weather, like humans often do when they meet, then one of the visitors said in a low voice:
‘We know you have a tiger that does your bidding like a cat. They say its fur is magnificent. We have come to offer you a bargain.’
The Tiger had no idea what a bargain was, but she heard the Man’s voice hardening.
‘The Tiger is not for sale,’ he said curtly, ‘and she only does her own bidding.’
‘With the money we are offering you,’ the larger visitor insisted, ‘you could finally buy a house in the village and give up this miserable life.’
‘And if you wanted to perform with her, you could get really rich,’ suggested a third man, with a purple face.
‘I don’t need anything,’ replied the Man.
The men kept trying to convince him, luring him with new prospects of wealth and income, but the Man put a stop to their flood of words.
‘The Tiger is not for sale!’
At that, one of the men stood up abruptly, while another gave a violent kick to the water bucket, yelling: ‘You stubborn old man! Stupid, stubborn old man! You’re going to regret this!’
Through a crack in the door, the Tiger watched the strangers walk away, swearing and gesticulating, while the Man sat on his old chair just outside the door. She saw him pull the pipe from his jacket and light it calmly, as if nothing had happened.
She, meanwhile, had never felt so confused in her whole existence. Some real humans had come – humans of the kind that filled the Man’s heart with pain. They had found them, and things would never go back to the way they were.
She approached the threshold with cautious steps.
‘Now what?’ she wanted to ask the Man, but before she could utter the words, the glade echoed with the sharp crack of gunfire.
The first thing the Tiger saw was the pipe falling, then the Man’s head reclining as a red stain spread across his leather jacket, just above his heart.
A stain that resembled a flower, and that kept expanding on each side.
The Man’s eyes were now closed, just like when he slept, but his lips were smiling.
‘What an idiot!’ she heard the men say. ‘Stupid old man, you just died to save a beast.’
‘A beast that would have made you rich.’
They were approaching the hut again, with guns ablaze this time, ready to fire.
At that moment, the Tiger remembered she was a tiger. Instead of waiting for them to come to her, she gathered all her strength and sprang from the hut with a fearsome roar.
The first one to shoot was the largest of them; he hit her mid-flight.
His purple face and bloodstained boots were the last things the Tiger saw before darkness descended within her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Welcome to the Circus!
How many noises, how many smells had the Tiger experienced in her life before that moment? Those in her den, when her little cub’s eyes were yet to open to the light of the world. Then those in the hissing wind of the taiga, as she wandered around in search of her Kingdom. That wind buffeted her ears relentlessly, cutting through her fur like a thousand ice blades. And then the slow breathing of the earth upon which the hut was built. The storm outside, and the joyful crackling of the stove.
But what she felt now was something she truly couldn’t decipher.
She had slept – of that she was certain – but the kind of sleep she was waking up from was different from what she had experienced in the past. She couldn’t hear the noise of the forest, nor could she hear the slight rustling sounds the Man made as he slept by her side. She felt cold coming from below her belly, but a very different cold from the snow.
It was a dead, unstable cold.
Her body was bouncing as if she were riding the rapids of a river on a tree trunk.
‘Man?’ she whispered softly, with her eyes closed. ‘Man?’
Nobody answered.
She opened her eyes, but she saw nothing – around her it was pitch black.
What was happening?
She was filled with a great agitation. Could that be death, perhaps?
All of a sudden, the shaking and jerking ceased, and the Tiger heard a hustling and bustling, mixed with muffled human voices.
When the hatch opened, letting the light in, the Tiger roared and leaped up towards the source of the light, but her muzzle bumped into something cold and hard that was holding her captive.
She couldn’t understand what it was.
She heard some humans laugh.
Two of them had a rifle in their hands; others approached the truck holding tools and began to assemble something.
When the steel tunnel was ready, the bars that held her prisoner were raised and the Tiger felt the walls of the truck rattle under hard blows. She got up, keeping her head low and her belly flattened, and darted through the space that had opened up in front of her.
Applause greeted her exit.
‘Welcome! Welcome to the circus!’
It was a travelling circus, which had three other tigers aside from her. They were older than her, and two of them had never known freedom. The third had lived in a tropical jungle long before.
The next morning, the Tiger was carried in a special cage to where a human was waiting for her, whip in hand.
He was very different from the Man of the hut.
‘I know you’re a clever tiger. Now show me!’ he told her, waving a flaming torch at her.
In response, the Tiger crouched low to the ground, roaring with all the power she could muster.
‘What does he want from me?’ the Tiger asked her companions later that night.
‘The simplest thing. He wants you to obey him.’
‘I had a man friend once.’
The old tigers roared with laughter.
‘Impossible! Humans either kill you or order you around. There is no other way.’
‘Learn to jump through a ring of fire, learn to sit down on cue, and your life will become a walk in the park,’ the oldest tiger advised her.
‘A walk…?’ echoed the Tiger, bewildered.
‘Yes,’ the others replied in unison. ‘Comfortable, easy and safe. Plenty of food and no danger.’
The Tiger remembered the scent of the taiga. That scent was the smell of freedom. She crouched in a corner of the cage and looked sadly at her companions.
That kind of talking wasn’t worthy of a tiger.
For a few days, she didn’t even feel like roaring. The pain she felt was much more intense than the strongest pain she could have imagined. The Man, the only creature who had managed to break through her loneliness and connect with her, was no more. She knew that. He was dead. And he was d
ead because of her, for her sake: to allow her to live. That fateful day, the thing she feared most in the world, had happened. Along with her friend, the Tiger had also lost the very essence of her nature. Her freedom.
During training sessions, she kept cowering in a corner. The Tamer cracked his whip and waved his torch, but she remained motionless, not showing the slightest reaction.
After a few days, the Tamer abandoned his tools and kneeled down close to her, speaking gently.
‘I know how you feel. I’m not a fool and, although you might find it hard to believe, I do love tigers.’
‘I could shred you to pieces in a second,’ hissed the Tiger.
‘It’s a risk I take every second,’ the Tamer replied. ‘And it is a risk that makes me feel more alive every day. You could kill me, of course, but it would be the last thing you do in your life, because you’d be killed a moment later. Such is the law of the circus. Shredding me to pieces might quench your hatred, but it won’t give you back your freedom.’
After that brief, honest exchange, the Tiger was left alone in the cage. She didn’t see the Tamer again, and her days felt endless.
Twice a day, her soft-bellied companions rushed through the tunnel that led them to the centre of the ring. Every time they would come back buzzing with excitement.
‘Did you see the crowd?’ they would ask each other, over and over. ‘Did you see how enraptured they were?’
‘Soon, you too will understand the importance of a cheering crowd,’ the oldest tiger told her one evening, in response to her puzzled look.
And so it was with a certain relief that, after some time, the Tiger resumed her training sessions. Within a few months, she learned to do everything she was taught.
‘You really are a clever tiger,’ the Tamer told her one day, as he scratched her behind the ear to show his appreciation.
Her debut was scheduled shortly afterwards, to coincide with the circus’s arrival in a Big City. Everywhere, in streets and squares, colourful posters invited people to come to the show. The menacing picture of a roaring tiger, with jaws gaping so wide that you could see all the way down its throat, loomed over a large headline that read: