The Tiger's Wife

“Yes, please,” says the man. “Water.”

I put my menu down and I look at him. He has lowered the book so that he can speak to the waiter, and I recognize him immediately. The waiter goes to get him the water, and Gavran Gaile does not raise his book back up; instead, he looks out over the river, and then around the balcony, and finally his gaze settles on me, and it is the same gaze of the man from inside the coffin—the same eyes, the same face, unchanged and whole, as it must have been in the drunk tank that night at the Church of the Virgin of the Waters, when I did not have the opportunity to see it.

The deathless man is smiling at me, and I say to him: “It’s you.”

He calls me doctor, and then he gets up and dusts off his coat and comes over to shake my hand. I stand up and hold my napkin, and while we are shaking hands in silence like this, it comes to me why he is here, but I cannot tell myself that I am surprised to see him. No, I realize, I am not surprised at all. His being here can mean only one thing, and, like the rest of us, he knows what is going to happen. He has come to collect, the deathless man.

“What a wonder,” he is saying to me. “What a remarkable, remarkable wonder.”

“How long have you been in town?” I say.

“Several days now,” he tells me.

I am tired, and all business, and I tell him: “Without doubt, you have been buying people a great deal of coffee.”

He does not smile at this, but he does not reproach me either. He does not confirm, he does not deny. He is just there. It occurs to me that he never looks tired, he never looks worn. I tell him I insist he join me for dinner, and he does, gladly. He goes to get his book and his cup, and the waiter brings us another place setting for him.

“Do you gentlemen know what you would like?” the waiter asks.

“Not yet,” my friend says to him. “But we will take narghile.”

I wait until the old man has left to get us the pipes, and then I say: “The best meal of my life, I ate here.” The deathless man nods at me in appreciation. “During my honeymoon,” I say. “You have never met my wife. We stayed here for our honeymoon, my wife and I, and we had lobster. Two years after the first time you and I met in that little village—do you remember it?”

“I remember,” he says.

“I was very young,” I say. “It was a beautiful honeymoon. For a week, I ate nothing but lobster. I could eat it still.”

“Then you should.”

“They haven’t any tonight.”

“That’s a shame.”

“You did not happen to get the last one?” I say.

“As you see,” he tells me, “I have not eaten.”

We sit in silence for a while, and he does not ask me what I am doing here. This is when it occurs to me that perhaps he knows something I don’t—that perhaps it is not someone else he is here to see, but, instead, that he has come to see me, that he is here for me in particular, and that thought fills me up. And I tell you, it is one thing not to believe, but quite another to entertain a possibility, and I don’t know if it’s the shelling or the evening or the Old Bridge on the water, but that is what I am doing as I sit there, hanging on to that napkin on my knees—I am entertaining the possibility.

“And have you been very busy?” I ask him.

“Not particularly,” he says to me, and he wants to say more, but at this moment the old waiter comes shuffling back with the narghile, which he sets up for us, cleaning the pipe lips, setting up the tobacco and tumbak in the bowl. When he finishes, there is a sweet roasting smell coming from the pipe, honey-and-rose smell, and he is taking out a pencil and piece of paper to write down our order.

“What do you say to the perch?” the deathless man asks me.

“I am a great lover of John Dory,” I say. “In the absence of lobster.”

“Shall we have the John Dory?”

“Let’s have the John Dory.”

“We’ll have the John Dory,” the deathless man says to the old waiter, looking up at him and smiling. The waiter bows from the waist, like we’ve made a very good choice. Which we have, we’ve really made a very good choice. It is probably the last John Dory the hotel will ever sell.

“Can I entice the sirs with some mezze?” the old waiter says. “We have an excellent ajvar with garlic, and also an octopus salad. We have wonderful sarma, and cheese with olives.”

“I feel some indulgence is needed,” the deathless man says. “Some indulgence is needed tonight. We’ll have it all. And, to go with the fish, the boiled potatoes with chard.”

“Very good, sir,” the waiter says while he is writing it all down with a stubby pencil.

“And, naturally, the parsley sauce.”

“Naturally, sir,” says the waiter.

He refills our wine glasses and leaves, and I am sitting there looking at the calm, smiling face of the deathless man, and asking myself why, in particular, indulgence is needed tonight. The deathless man takes the pipe of the narghile and begins to puff on it slowly, and big thick clouds of smoke are rising out of his nostrils and mouth and he looks very content, sitting there, with the blasts rocking the valley at Marhan.