All the Way to the Tigers

by Mary Morris

  Suddenly the man turns around and runs away. Larry leaves to talk to the staff and see what is going on and, while he is gone, the young man returns. Behind him is a woman who is talking into a red cell phone. Putting her phone against her thigh, she explains. “You’ve been discharged. You’re going home.” The young man is mentally challenged and is here to wheel me out of the hospital. She also explains that it is his first day and I am his first patient.

  “Does he know what to do?” I ask, somewhat dismayed.

  “He’s in training,” the woman says. Then she has him bring the wheelchair over to the side of my bed, where, without either the woman or the young man bothering to help me, I swivel into it, keeping my leg raised.

  As the woman continues her conversation on the phone, making her plans for the evening (should they meet at the restaurant or at her house?), the challenged young man speeds me through the narrow corridors, muttering under his breath, “Stay away from the walls. Stay away from the walls.” He zips along as if this is a bumper-car race, and we have to win. I keep my eye on my leg as we careen toward the double automatic doors, which miraculously open and the young man stops at the taxi stand. Moments later Larry arrives, with my few belongings clutched in his hand, and guides me into a waiting cab.

  Outside, it is cold. A damp chill in the air. I have been in the hermetically sealed walls of the hospital for days and the muted sunlight and cool air come as an awakening. I keep my face pressed to the window as we drive through the bleak February landscape of the neighborhood where I live. After a few moments the cab pulls up in front of our house, and as it drives away, I stand in the street, staring at the curb, unable to move.

  The curb is no more than six inches high, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to me. Even with my walker I have no idea how I’m going to get over it. Larry sees me standing, shaking my head. “Steps,” I remember my father saying angrily toward the end of his life as he tried to get into a doctor’s office. “You didn’t tell me there’d be steps.”

  Larry clasps his arms around me, lifting me up onto the sidewalk. From there I hop with the walker to our front stoop—the one I toppled down a week before—and slide up the steps on my backside the way the occupational therapist has taught me to do. And to think that a week ago I’d been worried about jury duty.

  37

  THE ROMANS used to crucify tigers to discourage others of their species from preying on humankind.

  38

  India, 2011

  THAT EVENING I speak to the manager about how cold it is in my tent and that it doesn’t really have hot water. He looks perplexed. “I’m a little sick,” I tell him. I ask if perhaps I couldn’t have an actual room. Given that I am the only guest, it isn’t that hard for him to make an adjustment. There is a bungalow available. It is made of concrete, and he promises me it has hot water. Right after supper, where the waiter still stands beside me, water pitcher in hand, I move into the cottage, which is a bit more expensive, but at least it has walls and isn’t open to the elements and the air. And I’m assured there is hot water. I’m a little embarrassed for making a fuss. My mother almost always changed hotel rooms and tables in restaurants.

  My bungalow is tucked down a stone path at the edge of the woods. I like it right away. The worker who takes me there turns on the hot water to prove that it has hot water. He leaves the water running as he shows me the room—which in fact needs no explanation.

  But we discover a large grasshopper sitting on my bed. It is bright green and the size of an ashtray. I am afraid he will kill it, but instead he gets a plastic cup from the bathroom, where the water is still running. Carefully the young man captures the grasshopper, and then cradles it in his hands. He steps out onto the patio to let it go, and the grasshopper hops away. Then the young man turns off the shower, content that I have hot water, and is gone.

  I unpack, put my things into drawers, into the bathroom. I am thrilled to take my first hot shower since arriving in India. I turn it on and wait, but the water is ice-cold. I wait and wait, but there is still no hot water. The man was so anxious to prove to me that there was hot water, I reason, that he depleted my supply. I rinse off, deciding to postpone my shower until the next day. I lie down and immediately drift off. On the wall above my head is a painting. Shiva is playing a flute and the sacred cows are dancing.

  39

  New York, 2010

  BEFORE I LEAVE on this journey, I see my internist, a lovely Chinese American woman who is conservative in her practices and very thorough. I go over some routine matters, some prescriptions that need refilling. Then I tell her that I am going to India and wonder what shots or pills I will need. “No problem,” Dr. Kwok says blithely, opening a map of the world. She homes in on India. “Just where exactly are you going to be?”

  I search around, pointing to the major cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, to which she merely nods. To Varanasi, where she grows slightly more engaged, and then I put my finger on a large green patch in the center of India where Rudyard Kipling set his classic colonial story (though, oddly, he wrote it in Vermont) The Jungle Book. “And I’m going there.” I’m pointing to the very core of the Indian subcontinent.

  Dr. Kwok’s eyes grow wide and for a moment she says nothing. Then, “You’re going to need everything.” Over a period of several weeks she inoculates me for all the infectious diseases she can except for the plague and Japanese encephalitis, which “shouldn’t be a problem,” as she puts it, unless I will be working in the fields near a contaminated water supply in summer. And she reminds me, as if I had to be reminded, that it is winter. I forget to ask for a prescription of antibiotics. Why would I need antibiotics?

  40

  MY MOTHER, standing on the stairs, is scolding me. Her red polished fingernail points in my direction. That is my first memory. But there are others that seem more confused. Am I really in a basket in the backseat as we drive to Indiana? A funnel cloud appears in the distance, touching down, and my father drives like a madman to beat the storm. And later me crying by a brook under a crab apple tree because my father had promised me a river and an orchard.

  I recall the day when my brother was stricken with a mysterious illness. He’s a newborn and it’s summer, a bright hot summer day. I am three years old when my brother wakes up from a nap, gasping. He is only a few months old and his windpipe has closed. He has to be rushed to the hospital and my mother is taking him in a car. I don’t remember who drove the car, but she is sitting in the backseat. A blazing summer day and I’m wearing shorts, a T-shirt. I’m standing outside with my nanny, who is dressed in white—a whiteness that is blinding. Everything else is green. The lawn, the trees. Though it is hot outside, in the car it is cool and dark. I know because I try to crawl in. My mother cradles my brother and just as they are about to leave, I jump into the car to hug her. Perhaps I fear she is leaving for good. Perhaps I only want to say goodbye, but she pushes me away. She shouts to the nanny, “Get her out of here.”

  My nanny, in the blinding whiteness, drags me away, crying, screaming.

  A few days later we go to pick up my mother. I’m not sure if she’s been home while my brother’s been in the hospital, but I know we go to pick her up. My brother isn’t with her. He has to stay in the hospital another day or so. But she is coming home. I’m in the backseat, staring out the rear window when I see her walking toward us. She’s smiling in a snug gray dress, a hat, gloves. Her lipstick is bright red against the gray. It is a gloomy day, and all the leaves have fallen from the trees. Suddenly it is winter.

  Years later, when I have grown up and moved away, it will occur to me that this cannot be. Only days before it was summer. But this is how I remember it.

  41

  WHEN THE NATIVE PEOPLE of Siberia hunt elk or deer, they always leave a haunch behind for the tiger. And in return the tiger always leaves something behind for them. For centuries they lived in ha
rmony.

  42

  WHEN MY DAD turns eighty, I call to wish him a happy birthday, and he says, “I had the strangest dream last night.” He isn’t a person to talk about his inner life, but this is what he told me. He says that when he was four years old, his family moved to Nashville, and the night before they moved he had to sleep in a bed with his aunt and uncle. She was very fat and he was very skinny and Dad couldn’t breathe. “I haven’t thought about that night in Nashville in seventy-five years, and now I remember it like it was yesterday.” And then he starts to cry. “My whole life lives inside of me,” my father says.

  He lives another twenty-three years. When he is starting to fail, I have a dream. I dream that we are on a boat going somewhere. Just the two of us. On a river. We had once, when I was a girl, gone on an outing on the Fox River and I recall it as one of the few happy days of my childhood. That is, a day when he didn’t lose his temper. In the dream it is evening and we are going to a party. Ahead on the river there’s a house that is lit up with Japanese lanterns. People are milling about, having drinks, eating appetizers. There’s a dock and my father drops me off. “Aren’t you coming with me?” I ask him and he replies, “No, you’ll be going back alone.”

  In May 2005 my father is dying. He is, after all, a hundred and three. He’s so old that once when we tried to renew his heart medication, the pharmacist called to say that he can’t fill this prescription for a three-year-old. We had to explain that his computer must have defaulted, and my father needs his medication. I have a ticket to go see him the day after my birthday. That evening Larry, Kate, and I go to Show Boat at Lincoln Center, a musical my father loved. I am eager to tell him about it. He used to sing “Ol’ Man River” to me in his deep baritone, “He don’t say nothing, But must know something…He keeps on rolling along.”

  After the show as we’re walking home, a woman in a heavy winter coat is barreling toward us, dragging a suitcase. I’m walking behind my family as she passes. When she comes to me, she raises her foot and kicks me in the gut, right into the street. For a moment I can’t breathe. I’m shocked and in pain and Larry rushes me home. Shaken, I get right into bed, and a little later my brother calls. My father passed away half an hour before, almost precisely when the woman kicked me in the gut.

  For months I’m lost. I go into a depression that I can’t snap out of. My daughter is leaving for college and I’m going to go down the Mississippi River in a houseboat. I sink lower and lower. One night I have another dream. This one much darker. I am a schoolgirl in a uniform (something I never wore) and heading home. It’s a bright sunny day. I pass a playing field where I see my father, umpiring at home plate. I call out but he doesn’t seem to hear me. I call again and he turns. He looks right at me but he doesn’t see me. He has no eyes.

  43

  WHEN YANN MARTEL was writing Life of Pi, the tiger was the third choice. First he tried the elephant, but it was too big for the boat. Then he tried a rhinoceros. Same problem. Then he came to the tiger.

  44

  Brooklyn, 2008

  EVERY DAY that I’m laid up I cancel a hotel, a ferry ride, a flight. I call the keeper of a riad in the Sahara, I call the boat company that was to take us from Algeciras to Tangier. I tell them I’ve had an accident and won’t be coming. Each stranger on the other end tells me that they are sorry. Some say they will pray for me. They all refund my money. I promise that I will come next year when I am well. Then I get off the phone and weep.

  Other than these phone calls, I spend my days reading. There’s not much I can do and little that I want to do. When I’m not canceling travel plans, dealing with my insurance, or fielding the calls of friends and neighbors asking how I am, I’m reading. In the fall I’ll be teaching a class called the Writer and the Wanderer. I plan to focus on stories that happen during journeys, such as A Passage to India or The Sheltering Sky. On the Road. Then I decide to read Death in Venice. It is about a journey too, isn’t it?

  It is chilly in the den and I sit, my injured leg raised. I’m wrapped in a caramel-colored blanket I’d purchased that winter. That blanket is one of the few things that brings me comfort and eases my pain. I love snuggling into its soft, plush cotton. I want to be tired. I so want to be tired. But unless I’m taking medication or drinking wine, I’m wide awake. I just want the time to pass. I’m praying for sleep as I read the opening pages, but to the contrary I’m all wired up.

  I read along for several pages until I come to a line that hits me like a bolt. As Aschenbach, the protagonist, decides he needs to get out of Munich, Thomas Mann writes, “He would go on a journey. Not far. Not all the way to the tigers.” I stop, the book frozen in my hands. I can’t read on. There are sentences that lie beyond this, but I can’t bring myself to turn the page. I sit, mesmerized. I read this line over and over. It is as if no other words come after it. Tigers. The word ripples inside my brain.

  Tigers.

  Though I know little about them, they’ve always intrigued me. Mysterious beasts who travel alone. I am impressed by their solitude. I am drawn to their hunger. They’ve inhabited my dreams. What would it mean to go all the way to the tigers? What if I decide to do just that? Perhaps when my ankle is better, I will do this.

  I put it on a mental bucket list. One more thing to do before I die. And then I forgot about it. It was an idea like so many others that at first seems incredibly important, essential at the time, then gets filed away. And is forgotten. For now I’m not going anywhere. For now I am staying home.

  45

  WENDELL BERRY WRITES, “It may be that when we no longer know what to do / we have come to our real work, / and that when we no longer know which way to go / we have come to our real journey.” When I read this quote, it resonated with me. But now it resonates more. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I have no clear path. I have no idea what I’m going to do next. What seemed obvious just days before is now muddled and confused.

  46

  India, 2011

  ONCE MORE at six in the morning there is the knock at my door. At least now I actually have a door and the bungalow is warmer than the tent. But still it is very cold as I tiptoe across the floor. Again a man stands there with a tray of tea and biscuits. I’m not very hungry, though the lemony tea feels good on my throat. I head to the jeep where Sudhir waits for me. My hot-water bottle is already tucked beneath the horsehair blankets. It is still dark out as I huddle under the blankets. We clomp along the bumpy road to the game preserve.

  Again there is the wait as we pay the entrance fee and our papers are checked—a process that takes way too long. Then we drive up to where the guides are waiting to be hired for the various jeeps. They must be taken in order. In the dim light I spot Ajay’s pink scarf wrapped around his neck. He’s sitting four or five seats down from the guide who is designated to be ours.

  I tap Sudhir on the shoulder. “Isn’t there anything we can do to have Ajay as my guide again?”

  Sudhir looks at me and shrugs. “Well, you’d have to bribe the guy who is waiting first in line.”

  My heart sinks until Sudhir informs me that the bribe is the equivalent of two dollars. I hand Sudhir the rupees. The man is more than happy to agree. If he gets another jeep, he’s made double for the day. And if he doesn’t, he still comes home with a day’s pay.

  Ajay is the only person I want in the jeep. I have come to like his quiet, gentle way. I like the way he listens. I am amused by the pink wool scarf of his wife’s that he wears against the cold and the way he chuckles when he pretends not to understand something that he does. Sudhir pays the bribe and waves. Once more the three of us are together. I feel less feverish, but I’m still coughing. They look at me, their faces filled with concern, but I pop a cough drop and look away.

  When the gates open, we are among the first jeeps to enter because again we are one of only a few jeeps. From the trees above, langur monkey families stare
down at us. We drive for a while until we are far away from the other jeeps, until the only sounds we can hear are those of the jungle. Then Sudhir pulls to the side of the road and turns off the engine.

  For several moments we sit listening, watching. Ajay listens for the alarm calls of peacocks, monkeys, deer. I am in the back. I am always in the back. They are in the front, talking mostly in Hindi. I do not know what they are discussing but I assume it has to do with where the tigers might be. Or perhaps it is about me. About this sick, hacking woman who keeps insisting on going out in this startling cold on what might prove to be a futile mission. What we in the Old West call a wild-goose chase. But I like to think they are not talking about me. They are serious, thoughtful men. It is all about the tiger.

  After a couple of hours we drive to the sunny spot in the middle of the preserve where the elephants are chained. The hotel has packed a snack of bread, cheese, and a piece of fruit, and we pause to eat it. On the fire, mahouts are frying up the chapatis for the elephants’ lunch and the elephants, hungry and restless, tug at their chains. I use the bathroom and then we drive off again. We go deeper into the jungle than we have before and the road is more pitted. I bounce and dust swirls around my head, making my coughing even worse. I wrap my scarf tightly around my throat and mouth.

  Then Ajay raises his hand. Sudhir pulls over and turns off the engine. And again that silence that is this jungle. For a few moments they whisper, then they are quiet again. If they are not talking, they are listening. Sometimes it seems they hear something because they point their fingers into the air. They cock their heads to see if this is an alarm call or just some ordinary animal sound. Ajay tries to help me hear whatever he does. He has spent his life learning to tell the differences among all these sounds that escape me. “Do you hear this, Mary?” he asks me over and over again. Wild chickens, wild boar rutting, white-tailed deer calling to her young. Peacocks calling to assemble. “No tiger.” Ajay shakes his head.