All the Way to the Tigers Read online

  Misery is etched on faces. A man peers out from the blackest of holes. A young girl with brown bulging eyes, her skull wrapped entirely in gauze, makes eye contact with me as we pass. She has the blank stare of someone already leaving this world. Then she is lost behind a sign that reads “Don’t Urinate or Defecate in Public.” A clinical lab offers the analysis of blood, urine, stool, semen, and sputum. Live chickens and monkeys, all tied together by their feet, float on bicycle handles past the Presidential Palace. Crazed, starving dogs too lazy to beg lie down across the streets except for a lucky one that sits on the sidewalk, fat, in a pink wool coat, a collar around its neck. Pigeons shit all over a new Hyundai.

  I cannot take my eyes off this pulsing, mad city as we whirl through. Just before lunch I am coaxed into sitting on the ground beside a snake charmer and his hooded cobra. I am hesitant, but our guide reassures me. “It has no fangs.” So I sit as the cobra rises and twists and stares at me, just inches from my face, while Catherine laughs her head off, snapping pictures, and the snake charmer plays his melancholy tune. Later I will learn that you can’t actually defang a cobra because that will kill it, but you can milk it and hope that its venom hasn’t come back by the time you’re sitting next to it.

  At lunch I tell Catherine about my trip. “Tigers?” Catherine asks, digging into her curry. I tell her about my plan to find tigers. She nods thoughtfully. “How exciting. Are you going to Rajasthan?” Rajasthan is where most tourists go to see tigers, but I was very specific with the agent who helped arrange my trip. I didn’t want to go to the Golden Triangle. Not Rajasthan, not Jaipur, no Taj Mahal. I wanted to be off the tourist trail. But as I explain my purpose, a flicker of worry passes across Catherine’s face. “Well, good luck.”

  Near the end of the day I am coughing. “You want some cough drops?” Catherine asks and I take a cherry-coated something that feels gooey in my mouth. “You don’t look so well,” she says, not bothering to hide her concern.

  I nod. “I’m not feeling great.” I run my tongue over the blister that has begun to blossom on my inside lip. I harbor a secret virus that seems to live in my lower lip. When I get too stressed or run-down, it pulsates. Just before I get sick, it erupts. Doctors don’t believe me, but I know it’s there. It’s not really contagious—at least it doesn’t seem to be. No one in my family has ever gotten this. It’s my own private virus—one that mutated into its present form just for me. And once it’s revived, I dread the aftermath. I’m hoping against hope that some rest will make it go away, but I’m not really sure where that rest will be coming from.

  * * *

  —

  It’s evening as Catherine, with great fanfare, drops me off at Charlotte’s guesthouse. We say our goodbyes with air-kisses, given that I think I’m coming down with something. “Let me know how it goes,” Catherine calls as she slips back into her cab.

  When I get in, I am exhausted. All I want to do is sleep, but I am also hungry. Charlotte, who is busy on her laptop, tells me that there is a good restaurant nearby just across the main street. “I’ll walk you there,” she says.

  We make our way down a dark street until we reach an intersection. Before me stretches a four-lane road that seems to have more like a dozen lanes. On it is a hodgepodge of cyclists, cars, trucks, scooters, rickshaws moving in a clatter of horns. Endless beeping, honking, shouting. Charlotte points across the street. “Over there,” she says. I see a bunch of stands and shops and one that seems to be a restaurant. “The food is good.” And she leaves me.

  At first, I do what I’ve learned in the Western world. I wait for the light. But when it turns, no one seems to notice that it’s even there. In fact, there is no perceptible change. I step out, stick my toe in, but nothing interrupts this flow that has no beginning and no end. I stand like a nonswimmer before the sea. The green light comes and goes, then comes again, and I still make no progress. I decide to try and do what the natives do. I watch an Indian man as he makes his way across. A scooter just misses him. A taxi slams on its horn. He holds his hand out. Some cars seem to slow down. Sort of. Or weave around him. One or two stop. And my hero makes it to the other side.

  But I have yet to move. Hungry and thwarted, I stand befuddled at the corner of Madness and Chaos like a math student before an impossible problem. I have no idea how to cross this road. I can’t bear the humiliation of arriving in India and dying on my way to eat a bowl of curry. At last, defeated, I head back to the guesthouse. Charlotte looks at me, surprised. “That was very fast,” she says.

  “I didn’t get there,” I tell her. “I couldn’t figure out how to cross the street.”

  Charlotte nods. “Oh, I know. It is almost impossible. I never let my son go there.” I want to ask why she let me, but I don’t. There must be some logic operating here, but I can’t grasp it.

  “I’m still hungry,” I tell her.

  “Oh, well, you could order in. They have takeout.”

  “They do?” I wish I’d known this an hour ago, but no matter. We place the call. I order a vegetable curry that arrives in ten minutes. I sit at the dining-room table, eating alone except for Juli lying on her little cot, her eyes open, watching me. I want to ask her if she is hungry, but it isn’t hunger I see in her round, dark eyes.

  Two-thirty a.m. and I’m still wide-awake.

  6

  Brooklyn, 2008

  THE THREE TURN is a fairly simple maneuver. It consists of a pivot in which you shift your weight on one skate and reverse the direction in which you are skating. Your hip and shoulder must turn at the same time. The trick is to do it at speed on ice. It is this turn that enables a figure skater to go from forward to backward, inside blade to outside blade, right to left. There are eight separate three turns and, for the kind of skating I enjoyed, I should have mastered at least one of them by now. I spent years trying, but I hadn’t really improved. I’m too tentative. Afraid to put my whole body into it. I’ve been struggling for some time while I watch others, including my husband, do it effortlessly.

  Off to the side two fellow skaters are practicing theirs. Left, inside, forward. Right, outside, backward. They are women whose skating I’ve admired over the years. They move so gracefully. It just looks like a matter of confidence. Watching as they shift from forward to back, then forward again, I want to try mine as well. I just have to put my whole body into it. Don’t hesitate. I have a feeling this is the winter when I’ll master it.

  I skate over to the boards, ignoring my stiffening back. Or Larry, who is anxious to leave. He has to get to work. As I prepare for my turn, he gives me that signal again. “Two minutes,” I shout. He smiles and gives me a shrug. He’s used to my stalling tactics. He does what any parent in a similar situation would do. He pretends he’s leaving. I want to give the three turn a couple of tries. No more than that. Unless I want to get home on my own, I have to leave soon.

  I stand straight, arms out to the side. I begin my pivot, but I lack momentum—and perhaps the confidence—to complete it. I barely make it around at all and just glide back against the boards. I want one more try. I feel sure I can get it if I push off harder than I have before. I give myself a greater shove, but my blade doesn’t seem to hold the ice. As that skater warned me earlier, the ice is hard. Now I really know what she means.

  My foot spins out from under me like a quarter, twirling on the ground. I go down and hit the ice. The pain is excruciating as I sit, stunned, clutching my ankle.

  “Are you all right?” A man comes to a halt beside me. I grimace as I tell him I am. I want to be. Larry, who is just leaving the ice, skates back to me, a look of concern on his face.

  “It’s nothing,” I tell them, waving everyone away. “I’m fine.” I refuse the ambulance that the rink guards offer. (Later, when I learn that Natasha Richardson refused an ambulance before she died from a minor skiing fall, I understand how easily such a decision can be made.
I’m all right. There’s nothing wrong with me.)

  I’ve never broken a bone before. Why would I suddenly now? I’m not going to waste an afternoon in the emergency room for a sprain. I have things to do. I have plans. Never mind that my foot doesn’t seem to be fitting well into my ankle joint. I can’t really feel my foot at all. I used to joke that I don’t have time to move, get divorced, or die. I’m too busy for any of those things. I added going to the hospital to that list.

  My husband and the other man each give me a shoulder as they cart me off the ice, the way linebackers tote a fellow player with a crushed patella. A woman with a thick Russian accent, all bundled up, skates over. She tells me that I should go home and chop up onions, add hot pepper, pour vodka over the concoction, put it all into a sock, and wear the thing to bed, and in the morning I’ll be ready to dance.

  I thank the Russian woman for her advice as my husband removes my skate. There is a shot of pain, but then it subsides. I feel better out of the boot. Two skate guards help me to the car. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” one of them asks. I’m sure, I tell them as they cart me across the parking lot. In the car home I’m thinking about chopping onions.

  Larry parks as close as he can to the house, but I have to hop over the curb, then crawl up our front steps. Inside, I rest in the blue chair by the window with my foot raised. Larry packs my ankle in ice. But after an hour it’s clear that something is wrong. Now the pain is terrible and the swelling is getting worse. And my skin is turning very red. I need to get to the hospital. I need an X-ray. Larry phones his office to say he’ll be in later that day and helps me to the door.

  I make it out of the house, but something happens at the top of our front steps. I lose my balance. I try to grab Larry’s arm, but my other leg goes out from beneath me. So I fall again, striking my injured ankle on the concrete steps on my way down. I watch as my foot twists in a direction that I don’t think is possible. And frankly, it’s not.

  As Larry dials 911, I scream the way I’ve only heard people scream in horror films. I didn’t know that my vocal cords could make a sound as piercing as that. Half the neighborhood races out of their houses and stands in front of ours, gaping, not knowing what to do while my pain-racked brain waves them away.

  As I listen to the sound of an ambulance and the rescue squad approaching, I find myself thinking about giraffes. I saw a documentary about them once. A collapsed giraffe never rises again. Once the legs go out from under him, a giraffe’s life is done. I’m pondering this as an NYFD rescue squad member is cutting off the candy-cane Christmas socks my daughter gave me. “I’ll be all right, won’t I?” I ask him.

  “Ma’am,” the fireman says, staring at my shattered ankle, “you’re in shock.”

  7

  IN A RECENT POLL tigers are shown to be the most popular animals in the world—followed by dogs, horses, cats. Tigers are, so to speak, in our blood. But what makes us think that there is actual power to be had in tiger blood? In his rants Charlie Sheen said that tiger blood runs in his veins. Noted zoologists will counter by saying that tiger blood is the same as ours. Still, there is now a hashtag for #TigerBlood. And some of us can remember Tony the Tiger on the Frosted Flakes package; he was supposed to give us power to start the day. Or when we used to be able to gas up by putting a tiger in our tanks. In fact, the word “Viagra” derives from the Sanskrit word meaning tiger.

  In the most northern reserves of India tigers no longer roam. Their torsos are found with their paws, head, and testicles chopped off. They have been poached, their carcasses carted through Tibet into China, where the Chinese believe they will grow potent from tiger testicles and tiger marrow. They want to consume the tiger down to its very bones.

  8

  India, 2011

  AT FOUR IN THE MORNING a car comes to get me. I am flying from Delhi to Nagpur, where another car will meet me, this time to take me to the Pench Tiger Reserve. I’m heading south to the middle of Madhya Pradesh and two tiger reserves. At the airport I’m getting my travel legs back. Before going through security, I note the list of unauthorized carry-on items: knives, guns, ammunition, cricket bat, hockey stick, pepper spray, jar of pickles. Jar of pickles? Perhaps it is the intensity of the spice that makes it a threat. Why not other jars? Or is “pickles” generic for all condiments?

  Perhaps it is the Indian equivalent of snow globes—which can no longer be carried on board planes in the United States. Snow globes as weapons of war. It is hard to comprehend. At any rate, I am relieved that no pickle jars will be traveling with me. Though in my checked bags, a sign informs me, I can carry dry ice, a mercury barometer, and a camping stove.

  The sun is rising over India. I am tired and hungry, having forgotten to eat before leaving. I am also trying to ignore the fact that my throat seems worse and so is my cough. Still, I’m excited to be on my way at last, looking for tigers. On the two-hour flight I don’t sleep or even read. I stare out the window all the way.

  In the waiting area in Nagpur I am immediately greeted by a young man who says to me, “Hello, Miss Morris.” Since there are a lot of people milling about, I ask him how he knew it was me. He said, “Oh, I was just looking for a woman who was about the same age as my mother.” I guess that’s what I get for asking, but I wouldn’t have minded a more gracious reply.

  This young man is only here to meet me at the airport. It is my driver who will take me where I need to go. But first we must have some chai. The young man takes me out into the street, where men stand before a boiling cauldron of milky tea. “It’s fine,” the young man says. “You can drink this.” I suppose he wouldn’t bring his mother here if he didn’t think it was all right, and, after all, the tea is boiling. I take a cup in my hands. It is hot and sweet and delicious. As I’m sipping it, a car pulls up.

  “So you’ve come to look for tigers” are the first words my driver, Dinesh, says. He’s a handsome and fit middle-aged man in an impeccably clean white shirt and a spotless car.

  “Yes, I’m hoping to.” He gives an odd little nod that is hard to interpret but I don’t think I’m the first person he’s driven who has this goal in mind.

  “Oh, you will. You will. I can promise you.” As Dinesh is putting my bag into the trunk, he motions for me to get in. I’m not sure whether I am expected to sit in the front or the back. For Dinesh it is whatever I want, but he has a bottle of cold water, hand towelettes, and Kleenex waiting for me in the back. I climb in and already I’m coughing and sneezing. I apologize and tell him that I believe it is a sinus problem (from which I’ve suffered for years) and I am not infectious. I half believe this. I have had upper respiratory infections before, but I’m not a doctor and really I have no idea. I am only hoping it is true.

  Before leaving Nagpur, Dinesh wants to take me on a short sightseeing tour. Something I don’t really want to do, but there are some army barracks he wants to show me, and a temple. Then he takes me to a strange spot. It is the exact geographical center of India. Zero mile. It was declared so in 1847. For a few moments I stand before a pillar of stone and four rearing horses. It is sort of an intriguing thought that I am standing in the dead center of this large, fraught, complex nation. And clearly Dinesh is proud to show this to me.

  After viewing the navel of India, I decide to sit in the front seat. It is a long drive and I don’t feel very comfortable being chauffeured. Also I can barely hear what he has to say. I crawl into the front. On the dashboard is the photograph of a handsome boy. “Is that your son?” I ask and Dinesh nods in that Indian way where it is hard to tell if they are saying yes or no or maybe.

  “Yes, he is my son.”

  “Well, he’s a handsome boy,” I tell him, trying to make conversation. “I have a daughter.”

  “Just one?” Dinesh holds up one finger.

  “Yes, that’s plenty.” I laugh, but he doesn’t.

  * * *

>   —

  We set out along the road to Pench. A long, chaotic industrial strip, filled with tire outlets, packs of wild dogs, sacred cows, feral pigs devouring trash. Women in bright-colored saris balance water jugs on their heads. Girls on mopeds, their heads and faces completely covered, dark glasses on, zip by. Women crouch, weaving garlands of flowers.

  We drive through towns packed with marketplaces, teeming with rickshaws. From beneath piles of tires men peer. Cows walk down the main highway. India is a good place to be a cow. They are everywhere. In the middle of roads, lying down on median strips. They are sacred to the Hindus, who, despite the fact that many humans are literally starving, will never eat them. The sacredness of the Indian cow, however, comes more or less from the same place as the celibacy of priests. That is, a practical rather than spiritual one. In the case of priests it was decided that descendants would present a problem when it came to the division of church property. In a similar way the number of cows Indians once possessed represented wealth and power. Only afterward did the divine enter into these concerns and cows became more matters of faith than real estate. Lord Shiva never sanctified cows. Regardless, they roam freely and Dinesh is careful not to hit one on the road.

  A highway sign reads “Danger Creeps While Safety Sleeps.” We cross the Kanhan River, passing thatched-roof villages. All along this road more highways are being built. Trucks dump gravel, others haul rocks, all with the name Backbone Enterprises. It seems to me the perfect name for all of India. It is this expansion of roads that impinges the most on the tiger’s habitat, and I can see why. Everywhere I look there is nothing but miles and miles of roads. And more are being built every day.