The Tiger and the Acrobat

  As a terrifying ravine opened up suddenly before her, she would find herself repeating: ‘I didn’t make it! I didn’t make it!’ like the Rag-Man.

  But nobody would hear her; her paws would start losing their grip, and as she tried desperately to cling to thin air, she would fall into the ravine.

  What would be left of her then?

  A few scratch marks on the mountainside. Food for crows, splattered at the bottom. Maybe a poster or two with her picture on, forgotten at the bottom of some box at the circus…the bloodthirsty Siberian tiger.

  But, ultimately, wasn’t that how all creatures ended up – as food for someone else? Was there anything else beyond that?

  As she rested on a carpet of pine needles, the Tiger thought about how she had managed to disappoint even the Tamer. They had worked together for years.

  ‘You’re my pride,’ he would often whisper in her ear at the end of a show.

  It was true that the Tamer loved tigers; he understood them. But what do you call the kind of love that sacrifices the freedom of another?

  At that moment, she realized she was feeling nostalgic for her life at the circus. Not for the bars and cages, of course, but for the roaring applause that greeted her appearance on the stage, for the audience holding their breath in anticipation as she prepared to leap through the flaming hoops.

  Was dreaming of the freedom of flying just another crazy idea? She was old and heavy, and the only thing she had to look forward to was an impassable mountain range. The lightness of the Little Acrobat would never be hers.

  And yet, if she were to be born again, what would her fate be?

  In a few years, the Tamer’s belly would have grown even larger. He hadn’t been the handsome young fellow coveted by all the ladies for quite some time now.

  And the same had happened to her. The boredom of captivity and the comfort she found in food had weighed her down, and the magnificent black and orange stripes of her coat had begun to lose their lustre. Soon the skin of her belly would sag down to the ground and her roars would no longer scare anyone. People would see her rotting teeth, her tongue coated with a white glaze from eating too many chickens. Instead of applauding, they would shout: ‘Look at that mangy tiger!’

  Her master would then start to diet, and he would put her on a diet too. Instead of fresh beef steaks, she would be given only pellets.

  Then, one day, when her paws were no longer strong enough for her to leap through the hoops – the day when even climbing on her stool would take too much effort – the Doctor would appear at the door of her cage.

  He was a nice man, the Doctor. He had been caring for her for many years, and he smelled good too. He would walk inside and say, ‘How’s it going, old girl?’, gently scratching her between the ears.

  The Tamer would appear behind the Doctor, his hair now completely white and his large belly bulging out of his ratty suit. His booming voice wouldn’t have its normal cheerful tone, but would be slightly shaky, cracking with sadness.

  Intrigued, the Tiger would look at him with renewed interest and notice something she’d rather not see. The Tamer’s eyes – those eyes she knew so well – would be clouded over and watery. They would well up with a flood of tears that he could hardly hold back. Then, and only then, would she finally realize. As they would say, her time had come.

  Igor, the bear that had danced the cha-cha-cha for so many years, wiggling his huge body for the audience’s amusement, had met a similar fate. The Doctor had given him a shot as he lay on the ground, and his huge paws had flailed around for a few seconds – his last dance – and then he had remained motionless, like a giant boulder, his fur matted, the flies already feasting on his nose and eyes without him even bothering to wave them away.

  A bulldozer had arrived a few minutes later. With a great deal of effort and a lot of fuss, some workers had picked up Igor’s body, and he had disappeared from the circus for ever.

  The same thing would happen to her. The Doctor would fiddle about with his tubes, while the Tamer stroked her paw, whispering through his tears, ‘Goodbye, old girl. You’ve been the best.’

  With a final twitch, she would open her mouth to try to resist – to escape, to maul everyone. But instead of a roar, she would manage only a miaow. In that very moment, the large syringe would pierce the sagging skin of her neck, bringing eternal darkness to her mind and heart.

  Is this really what I want? the Tiger wondered, lying down at the edge of the forest.

  How could she regret such a miserable fate? It would be a thousand times better to become food for the crows and the foxes.

  While the Tiger was engrossed in these thoughts, the sunlight started to flood the tallest mountain peaks. The valley down below was still immersed in darkness, while up there a rosy light embraced even the tiniest rock fragment.

  How different it was from the sun that rose above the taiga! As much as that sun had looked like you could reach out and touch it with your paw, this one was clearly well beyond her reach.

  As the light finally filled every corner, the Tiger realized she was thirsty. She didn’t have to walk far to find a river. It flowed wildly among the rocks in twists and jumps and turns, with the occasional small bend where the flow was gentler.

  The Tiger leaned over one such bend and saw her image reflected on the water’s surface. She could see the dark silhouettes of fish trying to resist the current below her wide-eyed reflection. It had been so long since she had seen herself! The bowls in her circus trailer had reflected only their metallic base.

  Just as there is a horizon in the sky, thought the Tiger, there must be a horizon in the water. It is the life in water that reflects the living.

  She drank some more and then stood motionless, looking at herself.

  How long had it been since she had first discovered her own reflection?

  Their mother had taken them down to the river that first time. The Tiger still remembered her words: ‘Don’t be afraid! What you see is your face. Always be worthy of what you see.’

  Hearing her mother’s voice inside her head, she suddenly felt weak. She crouched down, touching the water with her front paws.

  How much time had passed since she had begun her journey to find her?

  Where was her mother now?

  Would the Tiger be able to see her, just as she was able to hear her voice?

  ‘Between those who give life and those who receive it there is a thread that never breaks,’ her mother had told her once.

  At the time, the Tiger couldn’t understand whether that was a good or a bad thing.

  Was she worthy of the image she had seen reflected in the water many years before, she wondered, or had she betrayed it?

  And what kind of image was it, after all?

  The image of someone who was very thirsty.

  She had come there only to drink, just as she had done when she was young – just as she was doing now, as she leaned over the river.

  I am thirsty, thought the Tiger after a while. I’ve been looking for water my whole life, but none of the water I have found has managed to quench my thirst.

  ‘Yours is not the kind of thirst that water can quench,’ the Man of the hut had once told her. ‘Wonder creates space for questions inside you, and questions are like the raging waters of a river. You cannot stop them; you can never catch a drop and say, “This really is the last one.” ’

  The sun was now at its peak, and there were no clouds in the sky. The birds chirped, calling to each other from between the branches of the last fir trees, while bees buzzed over the flowers in the grass.

  The Tiger took one more sip of water, and then, lurking in the shadows, she splashed the water loudly as she tried to catch some fish.

  When she was finally sated, she moved away from the river, walking towards the mountains.

  What lay beyond them?

  Wasn’t that what she had wanted to know from the very beginning? Things as they seem; things as they are.

&
nbsp; CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Wall to Climb

  Instead of starting to climb straight away, the Tiger searched for a smoother path to the peak, first through the higher pastures and then along the foothills where a few solitary trees still stood, mighty and majestic.

  Driven by hunger, she ventured out on to the scree slopes every now and then to hunt down large, horned prey, or fat little creatures that disappeared under the rocks, hearing the sound of many – too many – stones and pebbles scatter beneath her paws like the balls that the monkeys tossed in their circus tricks.

  The Tiger wasn’t accustomed to feeling the ground slide around underneath her paws; she growled as she walked, as if there were some hidden enemy nearby. She climbed up and then slid back down. She tried climbing again, and down she went once more.

  One of the things a tiger can always count on is their steady step. If their step falters, the whole world starts to sway.

  How much more will I have to endure? she wondered. I wanted to discover the mystery of the sun, and I ended up in a cage.

  I wanted to become an acrobat, and instead I ended up being a clown. If I were still in the circus, they would all laugh at me. Is there anything more laughable than ferocity that stumbles, unable to stand steady on her own legs?

  It was while trying to catch a marmot one day that she tumbled downhill, dragging hundreds of stones along with her. Some of the stones struck her on the head as she fell, leaving her unconscious at the bottom of the scree.

  When she came back to her senses and opened her eyes to see the huge rock towering above her, the words of the Man of the hut came to her mind.

  ‘Sad are those lives that never meet a wall to climb.’

  Back then, the Tiger didn’t have the faintest idea what a wall could be. The taiga was flat and seemingly endless. There were no obstacles on the horizon.

  ‘What is a wall?’ she had asked.

  ‘It’s an obstacle that stands in your way.’

  That day they were out foraging for berries, and she didn’t feel like asking any more questions. In the evening, however, lying on the rug, she couldn’t help asking the Man the reason why anyone should be sad about not finding obstacles on their path.

  ‘A mushroom lives a mushroom’s life; a bee lives the life of a bee; and a tree a tree,’ he replied. ‘The same goes for stones, water and clouds. Even lightning lives its own life, and so does hail. But everything changes when it comes to humans.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked softly.

  The wind was very strong that night. It pierced through the logs in the walls of the hut, shaking it fiercely as if trying to blow it away. The windows rattled, and everything that was not fixed down trembled and swayed: the lantern, the bucket, the rifle, the pitcher balanced precariously on the stove.

  For a while, the rattling and swaying were the only answers to her question. She was convinced the Man was already asleep when she heard his voice in the dark:

  ‘A treasure is never found lying on your doorstep.’

  That night, the Tiger had struggled to fall asleep. She was still young then, and inexperienced. For two whole seasons she had done nothing but walk far and wide across the taiga.

  As she looked back on those days, she tried to remember whether she had ever met a real obstacle. Rivers, of course. Treacherous waterways covered in ice or flowing wildly with the powerful tides of the thaw. Rivers, however, only needed to be crossed. You had to be skilful – there were indeed many dangers – but once you’d crossed, the landscape was identical to that which you had left on the other side.

  A river was no wall, then.

  Early one morning, as she slept lightly, she saw her mother’s eyes again. She wore the same attentive expression as she had while keeping watch over her sleeping cubs. It was because of her mother that the Tiger had started her journey. The Tiger didn’t have to climb a wall to go to look for her, but she had still left behind everything she knew in order to face the unknown.

  There was a gaping void in her heart, right where her mother used to be. No Kingdom could ever have filled it.

  Nothing she knew had the power to fill that absence.

  The next evening, while the storm still raged, she had asked the Man to tell her more about the wall.

  ‘There are walls you climb with your hands, and others you climb with your heart,’ he had replied. ‘Just as there are creatures that know only the monotony of the flatlands, and others that are always compelled to climb.’

  Then the Man sat down on the rug and put a piece of wood in the stove, telling her as he did so about the steep wall he had had to climb in the course of his life.

  A long time ago, when he was young, he had had a wife; a dearly beloved wife. That wife was pregnant with his child, but just before the child was born, they had both been killed by a drunk robber. In just a few seconds, everything he held most dear, everything that gave purpose and hope to his life, had been wiped away. Blood fell on the snow, and the body of his beloved wife turned into a lifeless puppet.

  Where would he ever find her gaze or her breath again?

  How could he know what his child’s eyes looked like – those eyes that would never open to see the world?

  ‘I had two choices before me. Go on a killing spree and murder all the robbers I found, or face the wall, retire and try to understand. Neither would give me back what I had lost, but while one choice would only cause more pain and bloodshed, the other could perhaps lead me to understand the meaning of what had happened to me. I wasn’t by any means certain – it was only a hope.’

  ‘Hope?’ The Tiger had never heard that word. ‘What is that?’

  ‘It is the humble power that carries the world forward.’

  Back then, the Tiger couldn’t understand the meaning of those words, but now that most of her life was behind her, she recognized the truth in what the Man had said.

  Wasn’t it the hope of finding her mother that had led her to leave the certainty of the Kingdom? And why had she abandoned the reassuring routine of the circus if not for the hope of regaining the dignity of her early days?

  Only stones can survive without an inner life. Everything else – everything that lives – is driven and defined by hope.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Walnut and the Shell

  For over a year, the Tiger lived between high-altitude grasslands and scree slopes at the foot of the great rocky walls of the snow-capped mountains. She had arrived together with the spring blooms; she had faced the mild summer warmth and the short, violent thunderstorm that drenched every single hair in her fur. Then the days had begun to shorten, the grass had become yellow and the snow had made its appearance over the highest peaks and valleys.

  She had missed the snow so much!

  Narrowing her eyes, she was able to catch its scent even from miles away. She recognized its texture as easily as if it were beneath her paws.

  Frozen. Less frozen. Soft. Almost melted.

  Seeing the snow again brought an unexpected feeling of peace to her heart.

  Instead of walking tirelessly back and forth – a habit from her long years in the circus that had somehow stuck – she spent most of her time lying in any sheltered area she could find.

  During those long, idle hours, she would often think about her life in the hut. The Man’s words remained inside her, like dormant seeds under the winter snow. She would remember the fire of the stove, the blowing wind, the long days spent talking on the rug.

  There was so much the Man knew!

  And how few of these things did she understand back then?

  Too young were her ears, too inexperienced her heart.

  The Man had often loved to challenge her with a riddle. One in particular had lingered in her mind.

  ‘What’s the difference between a pebble and a seed?’

  ‘The pebble is heavier!’ she had replied.

  The Man had burst out laughing.

  ‘The seed has a future, which the pebble
does not!’

  Now the Tiger knew. Seeds and thoughts were equally alive; they could wait years for life to grow inside them.

  Sometimes, when the sky was obscured by autumn clouds, the Tiger would find herself overwhelmed by a slight melancholia. If only she had managed to save the Man at least! He had sacrificed his life for her, but she hadn’t managed to do the same for him. She should have slaughtered his three murderers before they had even had the chance to speak. But she was too fearful, too inexperienced.

  She had waited. Too long.

  And he had died.

  ‘There is no malice in you,’ the Man had told her one evening. ‘You’re not able to see the evil around you.’

  ‘Is that a good thing?’

  ‘It is a gift. And, like any other gift, it is also a burden.’

  Her burden was not having been able to save his life. Not being able to see or imagine evil compromised any battle. It meant always being defeated by the powers that rule the world.

  Sometimes the Tiger regretted not dying as well on that fateful day. If only the bullet had been a real bullet that had pierced her heart just like the Man’s! Instead, she had been forced to live.

  ‘This bloody beast is worth more alive than dead!’ the murderers had said.

  Is that a curse? she wondered. Or did that too have some sort of hidden meaning?

  ‘No berry falls from a bush without a reason, nor a leaf, and neither does a single hair of your fur.’

  How many times had she heard him repeat this phrase during their walks?

  ‘Who decides that?’ she asked him one day, with all the boldness of her youth.

  ‘The invisible.’

  ‘What I cannot see?’

  ‘What nobody can see.’

  ‘Nobody sees it but it’s there? Is this a riddle?’