The Tiger's Wife

“Of course,” he says, and I can hear he has not doubted me.

“But I do not concede that you won the bet,” I say, angry at his entitlement, angry at myself. I open my coat and feel for the book, which I find is still there.

“I did win it, Doctor.”

“The bet was for proof, Gavran, and you proved nothing,” I say. “Everything you did could have been a trick.”

“You know that’s not true, Doctor,” he says. “You said you were a betting man. The terms were fair.”

“It was a late night,” I say, “and I hardly remember it. There could have been a thousand ways for you to stay underwater for so long.”

“Now that’s not true either,” he says, sounding, for the first time, disconcerted. “You are welcome to shoot me,” he says. “But I am walled up.”

And you’ll damn well stay that way, you lunatic. I am thinking we must have someone from the asylum on standby before we let him out of the drunk tank in the morning. We must have someone here to help him, so that he does not go wandering like this, scaring people to death. They will end up calling him a devil—they will say the devil has come to the Waters—and there will be a panic. I find myself wanting to shame him, to ask him to put the back of his head against the wall so I can feel for bullet holes from the last time we met—but I do not do this. Some part of me feels shame, too, for I have not forgotten the bet, and the confidence with which he is offering to let me shoot him—and not for the first time—makes me doubt myself. Besides, it is late, and there is nothing to do but talk to him.

“All right,” I say.

“All right what?” the deathless man says.

“Let’s say you’re telling the truth.”

“Really, let’s.”

“Explain to me how it’s possible. You cannot prove it, so at least explain. Let’s say—you are deathless. How does that kind of thing come to happen? Are you born with it? You’re born and your priest says—well, here is a deathless man. How does it happen?”

“It’s not some gift, that I should be born with it. It’s punishment.”

“I doubt most people would say that.”

“You’d be surprised,” he says.

“None of the people in this room would say it.”

“They would in the condition they are in. Deathless does not mean un-ailing.”

“So—how does it happen?”

“Well,” he says slowly. “Let’s begin with my uncle.”

“Praise God—the uncle. Tell me about your uncle.”

“Let’s suppose my uncle is Death.” He says this like he is saying my uncle is Zeljko, my uncle is Vladimir. He lets it hang between us for a while, and then, when he doesn’t hear me say anything, he says: “Are we supposing?”

“All right,” I say eventually. “All right. Let’s suppose your uncle is Death. How is this possible?”

“He is the brother of my father.” He says this naturally. Cain is the brother of Abel; Romulus is the brother of Remus; Sleep is the brother of Death; Death is the brother of my father.

“But how?”

“That’s not important,” the deathless man says. “The important thing is that we are supposing.”

“We are, so we’ll keep supposing. Being the nephew of Death, I assume you are then born deathless?”

“Not at all.”

“It does not make much sense to me.”

“Even so, that’s how it is. I am hardly the first nephew of Death, and those before me have not been deathless.”

“All right.”

“Now. Let’s suppose my having this uncle entitles me to certain rights. Let’s say that when I turn sixteen, my uncle says to me, ‘Now you are a man, and I will give you a great gift.’ ”

“I understood it was a punishment.”

“It is. The gift he is talking about is not deathlessness. That comes later. He says to me, ‘Anything you want.’ And I think very hard. I think for three days and three nights, and then I go to my uncle and I say: ‘I should like to be a great physician.’ ”

This doesn’t seem very plausible to me, asking Death to make you a doctor. I tell him so. “Your business would be putting him out of his,” I say.

“That does not matter to my uncle,” the deathless man says. “Because in the end, even if I heal every man who comes my way, the last word in all the world falls to him. He says to me, ‘Very well. I will give you this gift— you will be a great physician, and this you will do by being able to tell immediately whether or not a man is going to die.’ ”

“That would make you the first,” I say. “Physician, I mean, who can reasonably predict whether or not he is going to lose a patient. Truly, after you, there have been no others.” I am smug about saying this.