Although the air she breathed was the same as in her cage, it immediately felt different.
For a moment, she pictured everything that could happen as soon as her paws touched the ground: the alarm, guns ablaze everywhere and the despair of the Tamer to whom she had become attached over the years.
But then she remembered her father’s stern eyes as he told her, ‘You are a tiger!’ before disappearing into the forest.
So she jumped down from the trailer.
As soon as she reached the ground, she realized that the Little Acrobat was no taller than she.
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long time, in silence.
Then the Tiger came closer, brushing her big head against the child’s.
‘Your whiskers are tickling me,’ the Little Acrobat laughed.
‘Goodbye! I will always love you,’ the Tiger told him, before she turned around and started running, never looking back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the City of Humans
What did the Tiger know about the world of humans?
How could she know the extent of the concrete mountains inside which they lived; of the asphalt rivers along which they travelled, like herds? Until then she had been convinced that there was only one road – the one along which the circus caravan travelled – and that all humans lived in those buildings they passed by along the way. She was certain that there was an open horizon somewhere beyond that barrier, and that once she crossed that horizon, she would find herself in her taiga again.
But it wasn’t like that.
The buildings were followed by more buildings, and the roads crawling with traffic cut through every space like a tangle of knots, blocking her way.
The first human who saw her jump from one side of the road to the other in the middle of the night probably thought they were hallucinating.
It was only at the crack of dawn, when the circus caretaker noticed the empty cage, that the alarm went off and the news of a savage beast prowling around the city outskirts turned into a reality.
For the first time in her life, the Tiger found out what it meant to be prey. Everyone was hunting her down; everyone wanted to kill her.
The sky was crossed by helicopters and there was no street or back road that wasn’t patrolled by groups of armed humans.
Children were forbidden to leave their homes, which drastically reduced her chances of asking for help or even just information. The mere sight of her tail would have drawn gunfire upon her.
There were several incidents in those days. Just wearing something orange and black was enough to draw some lunatic’s attention.
The Tiger found herself cursing her fur – so useful in the taiga yet so useless in the outskirts of a city. It would have been much better if her fur were the colour of a rat’s.
Luckily, a few miles from the circus, she came across an almost-dry ditch covered by reeds, and there she crouched and waited for nightfall.
As soon as it was dark, she stepped out cautiously, without any idea of where she was going.
The faintest noise would make her hold her breath.
She spent the first three days like that.
Every now and then, her heart filled with gloom.
Had she escaped from her prison only to spend the rest of her days in a ditch, like a frog?
What if that escape was the greatest mistake of her life?
By now, she had started feeling very hungry. Aside from some rats and a snake, she couldn’t find anything to eat.
Her body had grown accustomed to regular mealtimes in the circus, and when each one came around her stomach would growl, demanding her daily ration.
She had left behind something she knew, something familiar, to embrace a world unknown. But hadn’t she done that when she was young, too? Instead of marking out a territory where she could rule with her offspring, she had ventured East, to find out what lay beyond the horizon. The sun continued rising and setting, seemingly oblivious to everything the Tiger had to endure on her journey to meet it.
After a few more days and nights crawling in the ditch, the Tiger began to suspect she had only walked in circles. The landscape she could see beyond the reeds was always the same.
Not even the smells indicated anything different.
The smell of humans – too many humans.
The smell of engines – too many engines.
The smell of guns too, which occasionally crackled and flashed somewhere around her.
Hearing those shots, the Tiger couldn’t help but think of the Man. She had heard that very same noise once before, and she had been alone in the world ever since.
One night, with her belly lying in the mud and a dark, gloomy sky above her, the Tiger thought the only sensible thing to do was to venture outside and meet the humans with their guns.
‘Here I am!’ she would say, after satisfying herself by devouring a few of them first.
Then they would shoot her with every weapon they had available, and she would die. And they would put their feet on her head, laughing. And everything would finally be over. The running, the escape, the chasing, the hunger, the thirst – and, with it, the feeling that she had always done the wrong thing in her life.
Her body would remain there, on the ground.
But what about all that was not her body?
When they were little cubs, their mother, speaking of the tigers that had lived before her, had told them: ‘They now walk in the taiga where no blood is shed.’
‘Why?’ Little Tiger had asked her.
‘Because there’s no more hunger there.’
‘But then,’ her brother asked, ‘if they don’t hunt, what do they do all day?’
Their mother had smiled gently.
‘I don’t know, but I will some day. And you will too, some day further ahead. All tigers find out eventually, when they leave their fur.’
During the long winters in the hut, the Tiger had asked the Man the same question.
‘What happens when you close your eyes and you can’t open them any more?’
The Man had remained silent, handling a piece of wood he was carving.
For a while, he went on carving as if he hadn’t heard the question.
The Tiger had pressed him. ‘Do you know the taiga where no blood is shed?’
The Man had nodded, barely moving his head.
‘Is that where we’re going?’
Instead of answering, the Man remained absorbed in his thoughts.
Woodchips were falling around him like snow, and a log crackled noisily in the stove.
A strong wind had picked up outside just as they were about to go to sleep.
Only when they were lying next to each other under the large rug did the Man say:
‘It depends on the fire you kindle.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Rag-Man
When the feeble city sun touched the ditch, the Tiger brushed off the musings of the night. The absence of light brings sad thoughts; when the sun returns, one needs to be brave enough to cast them away.
Besides, what kind of tiger is a tiger that gives up?
Should she be cornered, she would fight tooth and nail. A tiger never lets herself be struck from behind. At the very last moment she turns and lunges, so that she’s hit right in the head or the heart. Being shot in the back or the thighs is for deer or wild boars.
But how could she disappoint the Little Acrobat? He had set her free to allow her to pursue her dream, not for her to jump into the arms of her assassins.
With these thoughts in her head and caution in her muffled steps, the Tiger started moving along the ditch.
She bumped into a river rat and devoured it. It tasted like mud, but nonetheless she felt some strength rush through her body.
She moved forward and then stopped, moved some more and stopped again, her ears pricked and ready to pick up any noise, her tail brushing the water’s surface.
Suddenly, she heard the voi
ce of a human nearby.
Taken by surprise, she recoiled, snarling.
At first, all she saw was a heap of cartons moving haphazardly, but after a few moments the head of a human covered in rags poked out.
They stared at each other for a moment that felt endless.
With imperceptible movements, the Tiger flinched, her body ready to pounce.
‘Are you real?’ the Rag-Man asked, rubbing his eyes.
The Tiger noticed he wasn’t carrying a weapon.
‘I am a tiger,’ she answered.
He kept staring at her, taking a few uncertain steps in her direction.
‘I see that. It’s just that I’m not sure you really exist.’
The Tiger was surprised. That human could understand her, just like the children did.
‘What else would I be, then?’
‘A vision.’
‘A vision?’
‘Something that’s only inside my head.’
‘And why would I be inside your head and not in the ditch?’
The Rag-Man shook his head. ‘Because my whole life I’ve dreamed of meeting a real tiger. Look,’ he said, rolling up the sleeve of his shirt, ‘I even have one tattooed on my arm.’
The Tiger leaned forward slightly and saw the faded image of one of her kin painted on the man’s skin.
‘I wanted to be a tiger,’ he continued, lowering his gaze. ‘I dreamed about it as a child. I wanted to be the strongest, the bravest, the most noble.’
‘Why would you want that? It’s not easy being a tiger.’
‘It’s not easy being human, either.’
The two fell silent for a while.
The Tiger pondered the Rag-Man’s words. She knew what it meant to be strong and also to be brave, but she didn’t understand what it meant to be noble.
‘Noble?’ she repeated softly.
‘Yes. Only you tigers can act without self-interest. You are a Queen. You don’t need to make anyone like you. You go your own way; you eat what you need to eat. There’s no room in your life for fake business – everything you do is genuine.’
‘That’s why you wanted to be a tiger?’
‘Yes, because that’s how I felt inside. I’ve never had a hidden agenda in my heart.’
‘And that is noble?’
The Rag-Man nodded, then took his head between his hands, sighing. ‘I hadn’t realized that most humans have the heart of a baboon rather than a tiger. They are all flattery and smiles, masking a poison that flows freely. And why is that? For power. Power for a day, a month, a year. How can anything built on pettiness truly last? There is always someone pettier than you ready to step forward. I’ve been a fool. Instead of a tiger, I’ve become a loser.’
‘A loser?’
The Tiger couldn’t understand.
The Rag-Man wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Yes, a loser. Someone who lives in a ditch dressed in rags, with a cardboard roof over his head.’
The Tiger knew that feeling all too well. Instead of choosing the right path, she felt that she had always taken the wrong one. Some fates were truly alike, she thought. They weren’t born in the same den – she and the Rag-Man – but it felt as if they were siblings.
‘Are you hiding a weapon?’ the Tiger asked, as a precaution.
The Rag-Man pulled a tiny pocketknife out of his jacket. ‘Just this.’
‘Come closer then.’
‘Do you want to eat me?’
‘No, I want to prove to you that I am real.’
Hesitating, the Rag-Man moved closer.
‘Reach out and touch me!’ the Tiger encouraged him.
The Rag-Man complied, his hand shaking like a birch tree rocked by the wind.
‘It’s beautiful…’ he whispered, sinking his fingers into the Tiger’s thick fur. ‘Beautiful.’ Then, in a childlike voice, he asked, ‘May I hug you?’
‘You may,’ replied the Tiger.
The Rag-Man wrapped his arms around that mighty neck, burying his face in the striped fur. He remained like that for a long time, his body shaken by little gasps. The Tiger felt water dropping on her fur. It felt like rain, but it was slightly warm instead of cold. It was running down from the Rag-Man’s eyes.
It was the first time she ever saw tears.
‘I didn’t make it,’ the Rag-Man kept repeating in a sad chant. ‘I didn’t make it. I wanted to be a tiger, but I let myself be overpowered by baboons instead.’
The Tiger waited patiently for the tears to stop, then said, ‘If you help a tiger, you will become a tiger yourself.’
The Rag-Man lifted his face from the Tiger’s fur. His eyes were red and swollen, but in the depths something was beginning to sparkle that didn’t look like despair at all. It was no longer the look of a man behind bars: it was that of a free man, one beyond bars.
‘Everyone wants to kill me,’ whispered the Tiger after a while.
‘But I won’t let them,’ the Rag-Man exclaimed with a voice that sounded like a roar, springing up with unexpected energy.
Later, they sat down together to concoct a plan. Those bloodthirsty humans who wanted to capture her were no different from a pack of hounds, after all: they ran wherever they caught scent of a track, or wherever one might be.
The important thing was to let them believe that was the case.
The Rag-Man used his pocketknife to cut off a tuft of the Tiger’s fur. She, in turn, ripped the flaps of his jackets and his shirt with her teeth, then drew long, red marks on the face and neck of her new friend with her claws.
Their eyes met.
The Rag-Man was crying again. ‘Now I know that my whole life I was just waiting for you.’
‘Whoever saves a tiger is also a tiger.’
Before setting off to accomplish his mission, the Rag-Man hugged the Tiger tightly, telling her not to move until sunset. That would give him time to reach the opposite side of city, where he would set their plan in motion.
When the first evening shadows fell, he would jump from behind a bush, looking distraught and screaming: ‘Help! The tiger attacked me! It’s a miracle I’m alive!’
The tuft of hair and the scratches on his face would confirm that he wasn’t drunk.
‘Which way did it go?’ they would ask him.
Then he would shout: ‘Towards the sea! Towards the sea!’
And so it happened.
The following night, while the Tiger ran at breakneck speed towards the mountains, with the rediscovered energy of her youth, the road leading to the sea filled with cars and helicopters crowded the sky, risking collision as they flew.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Towards Freedom
How long had she been running?
She couldn’t tell.
The sun had risen and set several times. At night, the Tiger sought refuge in the bush; by day, she ran towards the mountains that stood high on the horizon. As she ran, her body gradually shed the heaviness of captivity. Merely jumping from stool to stool had caused her muscles to waste away and her lungs to become weak.
The Tiger knew she was no longer young, but as she ran, faster and faster, she felt as if she were regaining a part of her life.
The Earth was emanating its scent, and so was the sky.
The scent of rain, of lightning.
The scent of the sun that warms up all things on Earth.
Each evening, when she looked back from her hiding place at the road she had travelled that day, she saw that the city of the humans had grown smaller. Its bright lights twinkled in the night, projecting a faint arc that was suspended in the sky – until one evening, when, turning around, she saw that even that faint glow had disappeared.
Behind her lay the plains; ahead, the mountains.
During her life as a free tiger, she had spent many years running towards the horizon, never quite managing to reach it. Now she seemed to have arrived. By running and running, she had finally reached the furthest point. But, yet again, even that point seemed to hold
nothing for her.
Ahead of her she saw trees, trees and more trees. Trees that grew uphill rather than on flat land. And then rocks, and more rocks, that stood tall like an impassable barrier.
The rocks almost reached the sky, but they were not the sky. It was impossible for the Tiger to know what lay beyond those rocks, just as it was impossible to know where the sun went when it disappeared behind the trees in the taiga, and why it always rose from the opposite side.
Once again, the Tiger felt compelled to keep moving forward.
The first forests she crossed weren’t very different from those she had known in her youth. Firs, firs and more firs, and the smell of resin that permeates the air on hot days.
In the clearings, she saw boundless prey grazing quietly beyond a wall. It would have been very easy for her to eat one. Easy, but dangerous, because the humans would notice the signs of her passage and a big hunt would be moved to the mountains.
It was better to settle for the smaller creatures: hares, foxes, anything that would allow her to move forward without leaving a trace.
When the trees started thinning out on the mountain ridges, the Tiger stopped. There were no signs of human presence, aside from the thin plume of smoke rising from a woodcutter’s hut lower down.
The feeling of fatigue after the long journey and the emotions of the last few days were beginning to take their toll. The Tiger had a new obstacle to overcome, right in front of her. Its peaks stood high against the sky.
She was unsure what to do.
Turning back was pointless, but was there really any point in trying to go on? Tigers are not built to climb rocky mountains. Their paws are too big, their bodies too heavy. Their pads are perfectly suited to walk on snowy surfaces, on moss, lichens and leaves, but not on bare rocks. Even her long tail would be of little use, as unlike a squirrel’s tail it wasn’t designed to help her keep her balance. Attempting to climb the mountain might end up being no more than the last in her long list of failures.