He would probably not have hated them if he had known what is easy to guess: that the blacksmith was terrified. Climbing up Galina, knee-deep in snow, the gun, for all its honored past, a deadweight against his ribs, the blacksmith was convinced that this was the end for him. Like everyone in the village, he had faith in the rituals of superstition. He gave money to beggars before traveling, put pennies in the shrines of the Virgin at crossroads, spat on his children when they were born. But, unlike his fellow villagers, he was renowned for having a deficit. He had been born in a lean year, without a ducat under his pillow. To make matters worse, an estranged aunt had once allegedly lifted him from his crib and praised heaven for what a beautiful baby, what a gorgeous, fat, blessed, rosy child he was—forever sealing his destiny to be impoverished, crippled, struck down and taken by the devil at some unexpected time, in some terrifying way.
Of course, it hadn’t happened yet. But he could not imagine anything more terrifying than a tiger. And there he was—thirty-nine years old, happily married and with five children—on his way to meet the devil. All his efforts, all his many precautions and prayers, the countless coins he had thrown to gypsies and circus folk and legless soldiers, all the times he had crossed himself while traveling on a lonely road at night, had been counteracted by the simple fact that the gun, like the misfortune, was his birthright, and that, regardless of his qualifications, he was the one intended to carry it against the tiger.
Like his companions, the blacksmith did not know what to expect. He would have been just as surprised to discover that the tiger was a small but cunning cat with very big feet as he would have to find Satan—whether horned and cloven-hoofed or robed in black—riding the tiger around a massive steaming caldera in the forest. He hoped, of course, that they would not meet the tiger at all. He hoped to find himself at home that night, eating goat stew, and preparing to make love to his wife.
The day was intermittently gray and bright. Along the ridges, where the mountains sloped in and out of the pine-filled valleys, they could hear the echoing crack of the red deer stags in rut. A freezing rain had fallen during the night, and the trees, twisting under the weight of their ice-laden branches, had transformed the forest into a snarl of crystal. The dogs plodded along, running to and fro, sniffing at trees and pissing wherever they could, seemingly unaware of their purpose on the trip. Luka was bracing himself up the mountain, using his pitchfork as a staff, and talking, too loudly for the blacksmith’s taste, about his plans to raise the price of meat when the Germans came through in the spring. Jovo was eating cheese, throwing slices of it to the dogs, and calling Luka a filthy collaborator.
On the ridge midway up the mountain, the dogs grew excited. They snuffled impatiently through the snow, whimpering. There were yellow patches melted into the snow, an occasional pile of scat here and there, and, most important, a clot of brownish fur clinging to a bramble by the frozen stream. Most assuredly, Jovo told the blacksmith, the tiger had crossed here. They followed. They crossed the sheet of ice and went uphill, following the dense pines through a rocky pass where the sun had melted the snow, and then reaching a small crevasse that they had to help each other across with the dogs, whining, tied to their packs. The blacksmith thought about suggesting they turn back. He couldn’t understand Jovo’s calmness, or Luka’s tight-jawed determination.
It was late afternoon when they came across the tiger in a clearing by a frozen pond, bright and real, carved from sunlight. The dogs saw him first, sensed him, perhaps, because he lay partially obscured in the shadow of a tree, and the blacksmith felt, as he saw him get up to meet the dogs with his ears flat and his teeth bared, that he would have passed the tiger by. He felt his organs clench as the first of the dogs, the bravely stupid, half-blind shepherd, reached the tiger and went end over end when the big cat lashed at him, and then pinned him with all its enormous weight.
Jovo seized the other dog and held it in his arms. From the other side of the pond, they watched the tiger crush the thrashing red dog. There was blood on the snow already, from something the tiger had been eating, something that looked like pork shoulder, something that Luka was observing keenly while his grip on the pitchfork tightened.
Later on, at the village, Luka and Jovo would praise the blacksmith for his strength and resolve. They would talk about how he bravely raised the gun to his shoulder. Over and over again, Luka and Jovo would tell the villagers about how the blacksmith fired, how the bullet struck the tiger between the eyes, sending up a tremendous, rusty spurt. The noise the tiger made: a sound like a tree breaking. The tiger’s invincibility: how they watched while it got to its feet and cleared the pond in a single bound and brought the blacksmith down in a cloud of hellish red. A snap like thunder—and then, nothing, just the blacksmith’s gun lying in the snow, and the dead dog across the pond.
In reality, at that moment, the blacksmith stood stone-still, staring at the yellow thing in the bracken. The yellow thing stared back with yellow eyes. Seeing it there, crouched at the pond’s edge with the body of the red dog under it, the blacksmith suddenly felt that the whole clearing had gone very bright, that brightness was spreading slowly across the pond and toward him. Luka shouted to the blacksmith to hurry up and shoot, idiot, and Jovo, whose mouth had dropped open, had now taken off his hat and resorted to slapping himself in the face with it, while the remaining dog, shivering like bulrush in a high wind, cowered around his legs.
After uttering a little prayer, the blacksmith did actually raise the gun to his shoulder, and did cock it, sight, and pull the trigger, and the gun did go off, with a blast that rocked the clearing and spasmed through the blacksmith’s knees. But when the smoke cleared and the noise of it had died down in his ribs, the blacksmith looked up to discover that the tiger was on its feet and moving swiftly to the frozen center of the pond, undeterred by the ice and the men and the sound of the gunshot. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Luka drop his pitchfork and break for cover. The blacksmith fell to his knees. His hand was rummaging through the clots of yarn and the buttons and crumbs that lined the bottom of his pocket, searching for the encased bullet. When he found it, he stuffed it into the muzzle with shaking hands that seemed to be darting everywhere with the sheer force of terror, and fumbled for the ramrod. The tiger was almost over the pond, bounding on muscles like springs. He heard Jovo muttering, “Fuck me,” helplessly, and the sound of Jovo’s footsteps moving away. The blacksmith had the ramrod out and he was shoving it into the muzzle, pumping and pumping and pumping furiously, his hand already on the trigger, and he was ready to fire, strangely calm with the tiger there, almost on him, its whiskers so close and surprisingly bright and rigid. At last, it was done, and he tossed the ramrod aside and peered into the barrel, just to be sure, and blew his own head off with a thunderclap.
No one would ever guess that the gun had misfired. No one would ever guess that Luka and Jovo, from the branches of the tree they had scrambled up, had watched the tiger reel back in surprise, and look around, puzzled. No one would ever guess, not even after the blacksmith’s clothed bones were found in disarray, many years later, that the two of them waited in that tree until the tiger pulled the blacksmith’s legs off and dragged them away, waited until nightfall to climb down and retrieve the gun from what was left of the blacksmith. No one would guess that they did not even bury the unlucky blacksmith, whose brain was eventually picked over by crows, and to whose carcass the tiger would return again and again, until he had learned something about the taste of man, about the freshness of human meat, which was different now, in snow, than it had been in the heat of summer.
BIS WAS SNORING ASTHMATICALLY ON THE DOORSTEP OF the upper patio, and he started at the sound of my footsteps and bellowed like a moose until I reached him. I pushed past him with my knee, and then he followed me to the upper porch, where I sat at the top of the staircase above the main road. Bis hung around for a moment or two,
