The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger’s Wife is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Tea Obreht

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

RANDOM HOUSE is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Portions of this book appeared previously in The New Yorker in different form.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Obreht, Tea.

The tiger’s wife: a novel / Tea Obreht.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-679-60436-5

1. Women physicians—Fiction.   2. Orphanages— Fiction.

3. Grandparent and child—Fiction.   4. Family secrets—Fiction.

5. Balkan Peninsula—Fiction. I. Title

PS3615.B73T54 2011

813?.6—dc22         2010009612

www.atrandom.com

Jacket design: Anna Bauer

Jacket illustration: Mary Evans Picture Library

v3.1

For Stefan Obreht

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1 - The Coast

Chapter 2 - The War

Chapter 3 - The Diggers

Chapter 4 - The Tiger

Chapter 5 - The Orphanage

Chapter 6 - The Fire

Chapter 7 - The Butcher

Chapter 8 - The Heart

Chapter 9 - The Bear

Chapter 10 - The Crossroads

Chapter 11 - The Bombing

Chapter 12 - The Apothecary

Chapter 13 - The River

Acknowledgements

About the Author

In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers. He puts on his hat, his big-buttoned raincoat, and I wear my lacquered shoes and velvet dress. It is autumn, and I am four years old. The certainty of this process: my grandfather’s hand, the bright hiss of the trolley, the dampness of the morning, the crowded walk up the hill to the citadel park. Always in my grandfather’s breast pocket: The Jungle Book, with its gold-leaf cover and old yellow pages. I am not allowed to hold it, but it will stay open on his knee all afternoon while he recites the passages to me. Even though my grandfather is not wearing his stethoscope or white coat, the lady at the ticket counter in the entrance shed calls him “Doctor.”

Then there is the popcorn cart, the umbrella stand, a small kiosk with postcards and pictures. Down the stairs and past the aviary where the sharp-eared owls sleep, through the garden that runs the length of the citadel wall, framed with cages. Once there was a king here, a sultan, his Janissaries. Now the cannon windows facing the street hold blocked-off troughs filled with tepid water. The cage bars curve out, rusted orange. In his free hand, my grandfather is carrying the blue bag my grandma has prepared for us. In it: six-day-old cabbage heads for the hippopotamus, carrots and celery for the sheep and deer and the bull moose, who is a kind of phenomenon. In his pocket, my grandfather has hidden some sugar cubes for the pony that pulls the park carriage. I will not remember