The Tiger's Wife

“Well done, Doctor,” he says.

“We must take some precaution,” I say. Gavo looks annoyed. “It would be irresponsible of me to let you go into that lake without some precaution.” I am looking around for some way to hold him to shore, and there is a length of rope tied up around a post on the jetty, and I take this rope and tie the free end of it around his waist. He watches me do this with great interest.

“I want your word,” I say, “that you will pull on the rope when you begin to drown.”

“I will not be drowning, Doctor,” he says. “But because you have been so kind to me, I will give you my word. I will pledge something on it.” He takes a few moments to think about this, tugging at the rope around his waist to make sure the knot is tight. Then he says: “I pledge my coffee cup that I will not die tonight, Doctor.” And he takes it out of his breast pocket and holds it up to me between his fingers, like an egg.

“I don’t want your damned cup.”

“Even so. I pledge it. What will you pledge, Doctor?”

“Why should I pledge?” I ask him. “I am not going into the lake.”

“Just the same, I should like you to pledge something. I would like you to pledge something against my death, so that, when we meet next, we needn’t go through this again.”

It is all ridiculous, but I look around for something to pledge. He will be pulling on that rope, I tell myself, and soon. I ask him if I can pledge the paraffin burner, and he laughs at me and says, “You mock me by pledging that. Come, Doctor. You must pledge something of value to you.”

I take out my old Jungle Book—you know, that old one I keep in my pocket—and I show it to him. “I will pledge this,” I say. He is looking at it with great interest, and then he leans forward with the cinder blocks on his feet and sniffs it.

“I take it this is something you would not want to lose?”

It occurs to me that I had better be clear, as we are both pledging things that mean a great deal to us, so I say: “I pledge it on the grounds that you will begin to drown.”

“Not that I will die?”

“No, because you have pledged to pull on the rope before that happens,” I tell him. “This is your chance,” I say, “to change your mind. The medics are probably already on their way.” This is a lie, Dominic is probably only halfway to the field hospital by now. But I try. Gavran Gaile smiles and smiles.

He holds out his hand, and when I go to shake his, he puts something cold and metallic in my palm. The bullets, I realize. While I’ve been arranging this trip into the lake, he has taken them out. I am looking down at them, shining with blood, matted with clumps of hair, and suddenly Gavo is stepping back toward the edge of the jetty, and he says to me: “Well, Doctor, I will be seeing you shortly.” Then he leans over and drops into the lake. I cannot remember the splash at all.

I can hear Dominic’s voice saying to me, “My God, boss. You’ve send a man with two bullet in his head into lake with stones tied his feet.” I don’t do anything, not while there are bubbles, and also not when there are no bubbles anymore. The rope straightens out a little, but then it is still.

At first, I tell myself that maybe I should have tied Gavo’s hands to his ankles—perhaps, with his hands free, he has too much accommodation to untie himself and break off a hollow reed, or push up a lily pad, and conceal a breathing mechanism from me, like something out of a Robin Hood film. Then it occurs to me that I haven’t thought this out properly, because, if he dies in that pond, he will not come up easily with those bricks tied to his feet. Then I remember that he was originally buried for having drowned, and I tell myself that this is a man who holds his breath—this is a man who plays jokes on honest people by performing a circus trick so that others will believe themselves guilty of his death, and he can walk away with some sick feeling of triumph, some feeling of having made fools of them.

“I am not going anywhere,” I say to myself, “until he either comes up or floats up.” I sit down on the bank and I hold on to the rope. I take out my pipe and I start to smoke it. I can picture the villagers sitting at their darkened windows, staring out at me in horror—me, the doctor, who let a miraculous survivor drown. Eventually five minutes pass, and then seven. Ten minutes, twelve. At fifteen I’ve really got that pipe going, and the rope is as stiff as a board. He’s not coming up, and there are no bubbles. I am thinking that I have misjudged the depth of the pond, that the rope has tightened around his waist and broken all his ribs. I am beginning to pull the rope now, but gently, every few minutes, so that, if by some miracle of God he is alive, I do not hurt him, but so that he will be reminded to pull back on it. He does not do this, however, and I am absolutely convinced, at this point, that he is dead, and I’ve been tricked into a huge mistake. His body is floating limp, I tell myself, like he’s been hanged, floating over his own feet like a balloon. A man is not a porpoise, is what I am thinking. A man cannot survive a thing like this. A man does not just slow his heart down because he feels he should.

After an hour, I have cried a little, mostly for myself, and I am out of tobacco. I have stopped tugging. I can already see my firing squad. Or maybe, I am thinking, a little cave somewhere in Greece. I am thinking about what I could change my name to. The night is going by and by, until, eventually, it is that hour before dawn, when the birds are coming awake.

This is when the most extraordinary thing happens. I hear a sound in the water, and I look up. The rope is moving through the water, rising up, wet. Light is beginning slowly in the east, and I can see the opposite bank of the lake, where the woods come all the way up to the bulrushes. And there he is, Gavran Gaile—the deathless man—climbing slowly and wetly out of the lake on the opposite side, his coat completely drenched, water grasses on his shoulders. He’s got the cinder blocks on his feet, and the rope around his waist, and it’s been hours. I am on my feet, but I am very quiet. Gavran Gaile’s hat is dripping over his ears, and he takes it off and shakes the water out of it. Then he bends down and unwinds the chains from his feet. He does this like he is taking off his shoes, and then he undoes the knot of the rope around his waist and lets it fall back into the water.

He turns around, and it is really him, really his face, as smiling and polite as ever, as he says to me, “Remember your pledge, Doctor—for next time.” He waves to me, and then he turns around and disappears into the woods.

THE FIRST NIGHT AT BARBA IVAN AND NADA’S PLACE, I slept for three hours, and after that my dreams filled up with the music of the cicadas and I woke up stifled by the heat. My bed faced the window that looked out over the vineyards behind the house, and through it I could see an orange half-moon falling down the spine of the hillside.