All the Way to the Tigers Read online

  ALSO BY MARY MORRIS

  Gateway to the Moon

  The Jazz Palace

  The River Queen

  Revenge

  Acts of God

  Angels & Aliens

  The Lifeguard

  House Arrest

  The Night Sky

  Wall to Wall

  The Waiting Room

  Nothing to Declare

  The Bus of Dreams

  Crossroads

  Vanishing Animals

  Copyright © 2020 by Mary Morris

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.nanatalese.com

  Doubleday is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Cover design by Emily Mahon

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Morris, Mary, 1947– author.

  Title: All the way to the tigers : a memoir / by Mary Morris.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Nan A. Talese, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019026131 (print) | LCCN 2019026132 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385546096 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385546102 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: India—Description and travel. | Safaris—India. | Morris, Mary, 1947– —Travel—India. | Novelists, American—20th century—Biography. | Tiger—India—Anecdotes. | Women travelers—Biography. | New York (N.Y.)—Biography.

  Classification: LCC DS414.2 .M675 2020 (print) | LCC DS414.2 (ebook) | DDC 915.404/532092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019026131

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019026132

  Ebook ISBN 9780385546102

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Mary Morris

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  To Kate and Chris

  And to wild things everywhere

  He would go on a journey. Not far. Not all the way to the tigers.

  THOMAS MANN, Death in Venice

  1

  India, 2011

  WE HAVEN’T MOVED in what seems like hours. It’s late afternoon in January, and I can see my breath. Our jeep is at a crossroads where my driver and guide sit in silence. Ajay is listening. His eyes dart, skimming the woods. But mainly he listens. I’m listening too. Though I’m not sure what I’m supposed to hear. I’ve got two horsehair blankets across my legs, a hot-water bottle cooling in my lap, and a scarf wrapped around my head. I’m shivering, not only from the cold but also perhaps from a fever, and coughing from a virus that’s sunk deep into my chest. As the sun is going down, a family of langur monkeys gathers in the trees.

  Something rustles the bush, and there’s chatter above. A bird with turquoise-and-black feathers that look like an evening gown flits through the forest. Another with two long purple plumes perches on a low-hanging branch. Ajay points to the scat of an elephant in the road, but it’s a tame elephant, one of four used by the rangers to patrol these woods. A jackal bursts from the brush and crosses our path. But the tiger eludes us. It is the tiger everyone comes to see. Not the snake-eating hawk, the spotted deer, the wild boar. It’s all about the tiger.

  Sudhir, our driver, wants to push on, but Ajay motions for him to be patient. Ajay is still listening. It is almost dusk. The other jeeps have called it a day. In fact there were very few. I’ve seen almost no tourists. I am alone with my driver and guide in this jeep that holds eight. It’s getting colder, almost freezing as the darkness settles in. I am in the jungle, sick and cold, with blankets wrapped around my thighs, searching for tigers. We’ve been out for days without a sign, but Ajay and Sudhir want to persist. It has become a point of pride. I’ve seen beautiful birds, I tell them. White-spotted and sambar deer. I’ve seen a jackal race down the road and monkeys, mocking
us from trees. I don’t need to see more. But it seems that I am the one thing in this jungle that they won’t listen to. Slowly Ajay raises his hand. He’s whispering to Sudhir. He listens, then points, and now both men are pointing in different directions. “What is it?” I ask. As always I hear nothing.

  “Sambar deer alarm call. She is warning spotted deer.”

  Suddenly we are off as Sudhir zigzags along the twists and turns of the rutted dirt road. I bump up and down in the back, holding the frame as we approach a fork. “Go right, go right,” Ajay mouths, his hand waving Sudhir on. We race down into a big meadow surrounded by trees. Once more we stop and the men stand up. Ajay borrows my binoculars. He scans the meadow, focused on some movement in the brush. “In there,” Ajay says. “She’s somewhere in there.” Ajay explains that all unseen tigers are referred to as “she.” The tiger, hidden in the brush, is always she.

  We wait for her to move while we stand still. There’s an eerie quiet in the air as we sit, watching. Using my hand as a visor, my eyes scan the woods as well. She’s out there. I have no doubt. My guide knows too. We are silent and the jungle around us is quiet as we wait for the bushes to rustle and the tiger to emerge. She’s crouching in the tall grass that hides her stripes. But I’m willing to wait. In my own way I’ve been waiting for a long time.

  2

  Brooklyn, 2008

  ON A WINTER MORNING I turn to my husband over coffee. “Let’s go skating,” I say. It is a clear, crisp day—the beginning of an eight-month sabbatical that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. My calendar is empty of obligations—devoid of anything except the words JURY DUTY. It is jury duty that preoccupies me that morning. I received a summons the week before and I am obsessed with it. What if I’m put on a case? I fear being tied down. Otherwise nothing stands between me and months during which I can do whatever I choose.

  I’ve spent seven years waiting for this sabbatical. Given that we change all the cells in our bodies every seven years, I am a different person than I was the last time I had a leave. And this is my first leave in more than twenty years when I don’t have a child at home. I’m looking forward to months of free time and travel. On sheets of paper I’ve written wish lists of the things I plan to do, places I’d see.

  We are going to Rome, where Larry will run in the Rome Marathon and I’ll take a watercolor class—something I’ve always wanted to do. Then on to a house swap in Spain. Our daughter, Kate, who is spending the year in Ireland, is going to join us for her spring break. Then we’ll travel to Morocco. Soon we’ll be taking a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar. These journeys are my lifeblood. And at times they are also my livelihood. I’m contemplating a year of nomadic roaming. I have things to do. Adventures await. Time lies before me like an open road, and I want to begin by going skating with my husband.

  “Sure,” Larry replies, seeing how eager I am, “let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  Ice-skating is something I’ve done all my life. I grew up on skates and skated as an adult for years. Childhood friends of mine—brother and sister twins—competed at the national level in pairs and I loved watching them practice at our rink. I have fantasies of my own. I love zipping around as the three tenors croon or the theme song from The Lion King soars. Larry, a Canadian, is also an excellent skater. We skate apart and together. We waltz on blades. People admire our dance steps.

  But I have no business skating that day. The previous year a back injury kept me off the ice. Last May I had surgery for a ruptured disk. Now, with my newfound freedom, I’m eager to return. Yet despite all the stretching and swimming I do, my back is still stiff from that injury, but I want to go. So I pop four Motrin and I’m off. Isn’t that what real athletes do?

  As I’m lacing up, one seasoned skater pauses as she’s leaving to tell me to be careful. “The ice is hard,” she says. I’m not sure what “hard” ice means. It seems redundant. Isn’t ice always hard? But when I get out, I understand. The ice is so solid that my blades only graze the surface. I can’t get a grip. Still, for almost an hour Larry and I zoom along. It feels so good to be back and, though I am a little rusty, I can still do most of my moves. Front crossovers, back crossovers. We even waltz for a song or two. Then we skate apart again. I’m just getting into a groove when Larry whizzes by, pointing to an imaginary watch on his wrist. “Time to go,” he says.

  But I want to skate a little longer. I hold up my fingers. “Just five more minutes,” I mouth. It’s a moment I’ve gone back to many times.

  3

  I ALWAYS want to stay longer than I should. Like someone who is compulsively late, except I am the opposite. I linger. At a party I’m the last to leave. On a morning walk I stall. I’ll stare at a bird in flight, sunlight flickering on a lake long after my husband or dog have moved on. I keep people on the phone until they tell me they have to go. I stay at the movie until the final credits roll. Perhaps because I grew up with an impatient father. A man who always had to arrive early and leave before anyone else. He hated traffic jams, delays. Anything that took him out of his way. Anyplace where he might get lost. As a child, I missed the end of movies, the curtain calls at a show. There was never a detour for ice cream.

  Every spring we went to the circus, but my father made us leave before the last act. He couldn’t take the departing crowds. And the last act was always the big cats. As the cage was being set up, my father stood. “Let’s go.” Though we pleaded, he wouldn’t relent. I never got to watch the lions, the tigers, the green-eyed panthers growling from their pedestals, leaping through flaming hoops. Before the first crack of the whip, we were gone.

  4

  AS A CHILD I had a tiger dream. I had it often, and it was always the same. There is a tiger at the foot of my bed. He sits on his haunches, sharpening his claws on my bedposts. I stare at him. His claws extended, focused on his task. He is never in a hurry. His amber eyes are on me. When his claws are sharp, he gets into a crouch as tigers do. And then he pounces. He springs through the air and just before he lands on top of me, I wake up. Years later I learned that you cannot dream your own death. But it never occurred to me that the tiger meant to kill me. He had something else in mind.

  5

  India, 2011

  THE MINUTE I arrive in Delhi, I know I’ve packed the wrong clothes. I thought I was heading into some warm, tropical zone. But it seems not. My friend Susan, who’d been to India the previous winter, warned me. She went to Rajasthan and told me that she was freezing. “Bring layers. Bring warmer clothes than you think you will need. A sweatshirt, a fleece jacket. And bring a hot-water bottle. You won’t be sorry.” But I would be much farther south than Rajasthan in a more temperate zone, so I didn’t pay too much attention to this. Still, at the last minute I tossed the hot-water bottle into my bag, and I’m grateful that I did.

  It is freezing here. As cold as New York except for one major difference: The houses don’t have heat. All I have that’s got any warmth are a sweatshirt, a light sweater, and a cloth jacket. Even the layers won’t be enough. I arrive at the guesthouse where I’ll be staying. It’s about one in the morning, and it is no warmer inside than it is outside.

  Despite the late hour Charlotte, her husband, and Juli greet me. Juli, a small, thin girl with a wide smile and bright, dark eyes, places a garland of marigolds around my neck, then hands me a glass of guava juice. The juice is sweet and from a can, but it tastes surprisingly good. I am exhausted as I go into my room, where it is still very cold. Charlotte apologizes. “We were going to buy a space heater but we didn’t get around to it today.”

  “It is chilly.” I am wishing I had a space heater. Also I don’t want to admit this, but I’m not feeling very well. My throat is raw and there’s a sore blistering in my mouth—a bad sign for me. I am hoping that a good night’s sleep will make me feel better, but I sleep only two hours, as if I’ve had a good solid nap. I am clear
ly not on Delhi time. I go out of my room in search of some water to drink. There, on a small cot, I see the child, curled under a blanket near the stove. Fast asleep.

  I had assumed that Juli was a relative or granddaughter of the family, but it turns out that she is an orphan girl who has been loaned by the nuns. There is apparently an orphanage nearby and they let some of the children work in households. In exchange the children are given lessons. Over tea just after dawn Charlotte explains that Juli’s only real chance is to pass a national exam, which will admit her to private school. Otherwise her life will probably be lived on the street. She says this casually, as if she’s asking me to pass the milk.

  Just after seven I shower and get dressed. An old friend of mine, Catherine, who has been working on a Fulbright in Hyderabad, is flying up to Delhi to spend the day with me. I am struck at the odd synchronicity. It was Catherine I met when my journeys began in Mexico three decades ago, and now it is Catherine who will briefly be my guide again. She’s taken an early flight and will meet me at Charlotte’s guesthouse by ten. She has a driver and guide arranged. In vintage Catherine fashion it’s all been taken care of, and I’m fine to just go with the flow.

  Catherine and I met at the pool of Hotel Quinta Loreto in San Miguel de Allende. She was swimming an interminable mile in the tiny pool, and when she was done, I asked if I could borrow her goggles. We’ve been friends ever since. For years we traveled all over Latin America together. When I told her I was on my way to India, she told me she’d be in India! “I’ll meet you anywhere,” she said. We haven’t seen each other in a few years.

  Now it is January 2011—almost three years to the day of our last meeting. She looks good. Strong and youthful. The car she hired is waiting to take us around. Catherine has our itinerary all mapped out.

  * * *

  —

  It’s rush hour in Delhi. We move at a snail’s pace. We pass people living in cardboard boxes on the median strip. On that same strip laundry hangs to dry on electric cables. People live on the sidewalks, beneath their fruit stands, in their rickshaws. Last year a drunk Bollywood star ran over a family of four who lived beside their cart, killing them all. In the rubble of a building that crashed to the ground, former residents huddle before a small fire. We pass a butcher shop, a chicken store, a fish market in tin shacks with no refrigeration. A woman zips by on a moped wearing a fringed lampshade as a helmet. We pass a winter “steal” market where you can buy hubcaps, sockets, spark plugs, tires, ball bearings, vinyl seats, steering wheels—all from stolen cars.