The Tiger's Wife

by Téa Obreht

  I get up and I push him back down, and I say to him: “Please don’t do that again, you are in a serious condition, very serious.”

  “It is not so serious,” he says, smiling. He reaches around and fingers the bullets in the back of his head, and the whole time he is smiling at me rather like a cow. I can picture his fingers moving around on the bullets, and the whole time he is touching them I am reaching for his hands to stop him, and I can imagine his eyes moving around, in and out of his head, as the bullets push his brains about. Which, of course, isn’t happening. But you can see it all the same. Then he says: “I know this is probably very frightening for you, Doctor, but this is not the first time this has happened.”

  “I’m sorry?” I say.

  He tells me: “I was once shot in the eye at Plovotje, during a battle.”

  “Last year?” I say, because there was a political skirmish out at Plovotje, and several people died, and moreover I believe him to be mistaken about the eye, because neither of his eyes is missing.

  “No, no, no,” he says. “In the war.”

  This other battle at Plovotje, in the war, was something like fifteen years ago, so this is not impossible. But still, there is the matter of his having both eyes, and I have decided, by now, that there is nothing to do but ignore him, and I tell myself that yes, it is true, the bullets have made mincemeat of his brains. I tell him I know he is in great pain, and that these things are hard to accept. But he is smiling so persistently that I stop and look at him hard. Perhaps it is brain damage, perhaps it is shock, perhaps he has lost too much blood. Suffice it to say that he is looking at us with such profound calm that Dominic whispers a question to him in Hungarian, and even I know he is asking whether this man is a vampire. Gavo merely laughs—pleasant, polite as always—and Dominic looks like he is about to cry.

  “You misunderstand,” Gavo says. “It’s not a supernatural matter—I cannot die.”

  I am dumbfounded. “How do you mean?”

  “I am not permitted,” he says.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I am not permitted,” he says again. Like he is saying, for my health, I am not permitted to dance the kolo, or to marry a fat woman.

  Something makes me ask: “Then how were you drowned?”

  “I wasn’t. As you see.”

  “People in this village will swear that you were dead when they pulled you out of the water and put you in that coffin.”

  “They are very nice people. Have you met Marek? His sister is a lovely woman.” He makes a pleasant, round gesture with his arms.

  “How did twenty people mistake you for dead if, as you say, you were not drowned?”

  “I was conversing with a certain gentleman, and he was not too happy about what I had to say, so he held me underwater,” Gavo says. “I may have passed out. Sometimes, under strain, I tire easily. These things happen.”

  “A man held you underwater?” I say, and he nods. “What man?”

  “A villager, no one of particular importance.”

  This is becoming more and more complicated, or possibly about to become very simple, so I say: “Is he the same man who shot you?”

  But Gavo says, “I really don’t know—I was shot in the back of the head.” He sees the way I am looking at him, and he says: “I feel that you and I, Doctor, are not understanding one another as we should. You see, it is not that I won’t accept death, or that I pretend it hasn’t happened and therefore I am alive. I am simply telling you that, as sure as you are sitting here in this church, in front of God and your Hungarian fellow—who will not let go of his crowbar because he still thinks I am a vampire—that I cannot die.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “My uncle has forbidden it.”

  “Your uncle. Who is your uncle?”

  “I am not disposed to say. Especially because I feel you will be laughing at me. Now”—dusting himself off again—“it is getting late, and no doubt some of your villagers will be hovering outside to see what progress you are making. Please let me up, and I will be on my way.”

  “Do not get up.”

  “Please do not pull my coat.”

  “I forbid it. Your brains, right now, are plugged up in your head by two bullets, and if one of them dislodges, everything in there is going to come running out like pudding. I would be insane to let you up.”

  “I would be insane to stay here,” he says to me in an exasperated voice. “Any minute now your Hungarian is going to go outside and call in the others, and then there will be business with garlic and stakes and things. And even though I cannot die, I have to tell you that I do not enjoy having a tent peg put in my ribs. I’ve had it before, and I do not want it again.”

  “If I can promise the villagers will not be involved—if I can promise you real doctors, and a clean hospital bed, no stakes, no shouting, will you be still and let me do my work?”

  He laughs at me, and I tell him I want to take him to the field hospital, some twelve kilometers away, to make sure he is properly cared for. I tell him I will send Dominic on foot to get some people to come out with the car, and that we will carry Gavo out in the coffin, and make him comfortable on the drive. I even humor him, I tell him that, if he is not going to die, he can at least get out of this church in some acceptable way, some safe way that will ensure he will not be shot at again. I tell him this because I think, on some level, that he is afraid of the man who shot him, and all the while he is looking at me with great sympathy—this great sympathy, as if this is so pleasant for him, he is so moved by my gesture, by the fact that I care so much for his plugged-up brains. He says all right, he will stay until the medics come, and I give Dominic instructions, I tell him to walk back to the field hospital and have them bring the car out with a stretcher and one of the other field surgeons. Dominic is very nervous at the idea of my staying in the church with a vampire, and I can see that he is not at all looking forward to the prospect of walking twelve kilometers in the dark, especially after what he has seen, but he agrees to do it. He will set off immediately and, on his way, he will give the nearest sentry orders to quarantine the nearest bridge so that sick people from the village cannot leave, and no one traveling in this direction can cross to stop at the village. Gavo shakes Dominic’s hand, and Dominic gives him a feeble smile, and off he goes.

  Now I am alone with Gavo, and I light some of the lamps in the church, and the pigeons in the rafters are cooing and fluttering here and there above us in the darkness. I roll up my coat and I put it down like a pillow in the coffin, and then I take out my bandages and I start to bandage Gavo’s head so that the bullets will not fall out. He sits very patiently and gives me that cowlike look, and for the first time, I wonder if somehow he is going to make me feel safe and pleasant enough to fall asleep, and then I will find myself starting awake with him standing over me, growling like an animal, his eyes bulging like a rabid dog’s. You know I don’t believe in these things, Natalia, but at that moment, I find myself feeling sorry for poor Dominic, who does.

  I ask Gavo about his drowning.

  “Who is the man who held you underwater?” I say.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Gavo says. “It doesn’t matter at all.”

  “I think it may,” I tell him. “I think he may have been the man who shot you.”

  “Does it matter?” Gavo says. “He hasn’t killed me.”

  “Not yet,” I say.

  He looks at me patiently. I am passing the bandage over one of his eyes, and now he looks like a mummy, like a mummy from one of those movies. “Not at all,” he says.

  I do not want to go back to this business of deathlessness, so I say to him: “Why did he try to drown you?”

  And like a shot, he answers: “Because I told him that he was going to die.”

  Now I am thinking, my God, I’m bandaging up a murderer, he came here to kill someone and they tried to drown him and they shot him in the head in self-defense, and that is what this whole thing has been about. Dom
inic has left only a half hour ago, and I have all night to be alone with this man. Who knows what might happen? I tell myself, if he starts toward me, I’ll hit him in the back of the head and turn over his coffin and I’ll run like hell.

  “Did you come to kill him?” I say.

  “Of course not,” Gavo says. “He was dying of tuberculosis—you’ve heard what they’re saying around the village, I’m sure. I only came to tell him, to help him, to be here when it happened. Come now, Doctor—blood on pillows, a terrible cough. What was your diagnosis even before you came here?”

  I am very surprised by this. “Are you a doctor?”

  “I was once, yes.”

  “And now? Are you a priest?”

  “Not exactly a priest, no,” he says. “But I have made it my work to make myself available to the dying and the dead.”

  “Your work?”

  “For my uncle,” he says. “In repayment to my uncle.”

  “Is your uncle a priest?” I say.

  Gavo laughs, and he says: “No, but he makes much work for priests.” I finish bandaging him up, and he still won’t tell me who his uncle is. I am beginning to suspect he may be some political radical, one of those men who have been instigating the skirmishes in the north. If that is true, I would rather not know who his uncle is.

  “You may want to identify the man who tried to kill you,” I tell him. “He could hurt others.”

  “I very much doubt that. I doubt anyone else is going to tell him he is about to die.”

  “Well, then, I would like to know who he is, so I can give him medicine.”

  “He is beyond medicine,” Gavo says. “It is very understandable that he was angry. I don’t blame him for trying to drown me.” He watches me put my things away and close up my medical bag. “People become very upset,” Gavo tells me, “when they find out they are going to die. You must know this, Doctor, you must see it all the time.”

  “I suppose,” I say.

  “They behave very strangely,” he says. “They are suddenly filled with life. Suddenly they want to fight for things, ask questions. They want to throw hot water in your face, or beat you senseless with an umbrella, or hit you in the head with a rock. Suddenly they remember things they have to do, people they have forgotten. All that refusal, all that resistance. Such a luxury.”

  I take his temperature, and it is normal, but he sounds to me like he is getting more agitated.

  “Why don’t you lie back down?” I tell him.

  But he says: “I’d like some more water, please.” And out of nowhere, probably from inside the coffin, or from inside his coat pocket, he pulls out a little cup, a small white cup with a gold rim, and he holds it out to me.

  I tell him I am not going out to the village well and leaving him here by himself, and he points to the vestibule and tells me that holy water will do just fine. You know me, Natalia, you know I don’t believe in these things, but you know I cross myself if I go into a church out of respect for people who do. I do not have a problem giving holy water to a man who is dying in a church. So I fill up the cup, and he drinks it, and then I give him another, and I ask him how long he has been without urinating, and he tells me he isn’t sure, but that he certainly doesn’t feel like it now. I take his blood pressure. I take his pulse. I give him more water, and eventually he agrees to lie back down, and I sit against one of the pews and I untie my shoes and think about poor Dominic. I have no inclination to doze off, but I am deep in thought—I am thinking about these people, and their epidemic, I am thinking about the bridge over the nearby river, the quarantine lanterns lit. I am thinking about why we’ve quarantined ourselves, who would come this way in the dead of night to this small, faraway village. An hour, maybe an hour and a half, goes by this way, and Gavo is making no noise inside his coffin, so I lean over him to look inside. There is something very unsettling about someone looking up at you from a coffin. He has very large, very round eyes, and they are very open. He smiles at me and he says, “Don’t worry, Doctor, I still can’t die.” I go back to sitting against the pews, and from where I am sitting I see his arms come up and he stretches them a little, and then they go back inside the coffin.

  “Who is your uncle?” I say.

  “I don’t think you really want to know,” he says.

  “Well, I’m asking.”

  “There is no point in telling you,” Gavo says. “I confided in you as a fellow man of medicine, but I can see you will not believe me, and this conversation cannot go anywhere if some part of it is not taken in good faith.”

  I am honest. I say to him: “I am interested in who your uncle is because you believe it explains your being unable to die.”

  “It does.”

  “Well?”

  “If you do not believe I cannot die—even though a man held me underwater for ten minutes and then shot me in the back of the head twice—I do not see you believing who my uncle is. I do not see it.” I can hear him shuffling around in the coffin, his shoulders moving, his boots on the bottom of the coffin.

  “Please hold still,” I say.

  “I would like some coffee,” he says.

  I laugh in his face, and I tell him is he crazy?—I am not going to give him coffee in his condition.

  “If we have coffee, I can prove to you that I cannot die,” he says.

  “How?”

  “You will see,” he says, “if you make the coffee.” I see him sit up, and he leans out of the coffin and looks inside my traveling bag, and he takes out the coffee box and the paraffin burner. I tell him to lie down, for God’s sake, but he only says: “Go on, make us some coffee, Doctor, and I’ll show you.”

  I have nothing else to do, so I make coffee. I make coffee with holy water, the smell of the paraffin burning inside the church. He watches me do this while he sits, cross-legged, on the velvet cushions of his coffin, and I find that I’ve given up insisting he lie down. I stir the coffee with a tongue depressor, and the brown grit spreads through the water in a thick cloud, and he watches it, still smiling.

  When the coffee is done, he insists we both drink from the little white cup with the gold rim. He says this is how he will prove what he means about being deathless, and by this time I am intrigued, so I let him reach out of the coffin and pour me a cup. He tells me to hold it in my hands and not to blow on it, to sit with it until it becomes cool enough to drink in one swallow. While I’m holding the cup, I’m telling myself that I am crazy. I am sitting, I tell myself, in a church, drinking coffee with a man who has two bullets lodged in his head.

  “Now drink it,” he says, and I do. It is still too hot, and it burns my tongue, and I cough when I’ve finished it. But he’s already taking the cup from my hands and peering inside. He tips it my way so I can see. The bottom is clotted with grit. Then I realize what’s going on.

  “You’re reading my coffee grit?” I say. I am dumbfounded. This is what gypsies do, or magicians at the circus.

  “No, no,” he says. “Sure enough, grit is involved. In this grit, I can see your death.”

  “You must be joking,” I say.

  “No, I can see it,” he says. “It is there. The fact that you have grit, in and of itself, is a certain thing.”

  “Of course it’s certain,” I say. “It’s coffee. Everybody has grit. Grit is certain.”

  “So is death,” he says. Then he holds up his hand, and he pours himself a cup. He holds it in his hands, and I am too angry at myself to speak, too angry that I allowed him to persuade me to make coffee just to be mocked like this. After a few minutes, he drinks his coffee, and a thin little stream of it runs down his neck, and I am thinking about the bullets quivering in his skull and praying they don’t dislodge—or, now, maybe I am praying that they do.

  Gavo holds out the cup to me, and the cup is empty. I can see the white bottom, and the inside of the cup is as dry as if he had just wiped it with a towel.

  “Satisfied?” he says, looking at me like he’s just done something wonde
rful.

  “I’m sorry?” I say.

  “I have no grit,” he says.

  “This is a joke,” I tell him.

  “Certainly not,” he says. “Look.” And he runs his finger across the bottom of the cup.

  “That you have no grit in your coffee cup proves to me that you are deathless?”

  “It certainly should,” he says. He says it like he has just solved a mathematical equation, like I am being difficult about something that is fact.

  “It’s a party trick.”

  “No. It’s not a trick. The cup is special, that is true, but it is not a joke cup—it was given to me by my uncle.”

  “To hell with your uncle,” I shout. “You lie down and shut up until the medics get here.”

  “I’m not going to the hospital, Doctor,” he says, flatly. “My name is Gavran Gailé, and I am a deathless man.”

  I shake my head and I turn off the paraffin burner, and put away the coffee box. I want to take his cup away, but I don’t want to provoke him. He never stops smiling.

  “How can I prove to you that I am telling the truth?” I think I hear resignation in his voice, and I realize he is tired, he has tired of me.

  “You can’t.”

  “What would satisfy you?”

  “Your cooperation—please.”

  “This is getting ridiculous.” I am so stunned at his audacity in saying this that I have nothing to say to him. He looks like a lamb, sitting there in that coffin with big lamb eyes. “Let me up, and I promise to prove to you that I cannot die.”

  “There is no such thing as a deathless body. This will end in complete disaster. You’re going to die, you stubborn bastard, and I am going to go to prison over you.”

  “Anything you want,” he says. “Shoot me, stab me if you like. Set me on fire. I will even put money on it. We can even bet the old-fashioned way—I can name my terms after I win.”

  I tell him I will not bet.

  “You are not a betting man?” he says.

  “On the contrary—I do not waste my time with bets I am sure to win.”