Tea Obreht - The Tiger's Wife

“You see, there is my granddaughter,” I heard him say as I approached, his voice the voice of a drowning man. Relief tightened the skin around his temples, a reaction I never would have hoped for considering the circumstances of my return. I stepped onto the curb beside him, and he grabbed my arm. “Here she is,” he said cheerfully. “You see, here she is.”

“Beat it,” I said to the hooker, acutely aware of the fact that my bra was hanging on for dear life, down to one solitary clasp that might give at any moment and render the whole situation even more uncomfortable.

My grandfather gave the prostitute fifty dinars, and I stood behind him while he unlocked the downstairs door, watching her go down the street on cane-thin legs, one heel slightly shorter than the other.

“What did you give her that money for?” I asked him as we went upstairs.

“You shouldn’t be rude like that to anyone,” he said. “We didn’t raise you that way.” Without stopping to look at me when we got to the door: “For shame.”

This had been the general state of affairs for years. My grandfather and I, without acknowledging it, were at a stalemate. His reductions had dropped my allowance to a new low, and I had taken to locking my door and smoking cigarettes in my room, under the covers.

I was thus occupied one spring afternoon when the doorbell rang. A few moments later, it rang again, and then again. I think I probably shouted for someone to get the door, and when no one did, I put my cigarette out on the outer sill of my bedroom window and did it myself.

I remember the shape of the narrow-brimmed black hat that obscured most of the peephole, and I did not see the man’s face, but I was anxious to get back to my room and irritated that no one else in the house had answered.

When I opened the door, the man said that he was there to see the doctor. He had a thin voice, and a doughy face that looked like it had been forcibly stuffed up into his hat, which was probably why he had not removed it in greeting in the first place. I thought I’d seen him before, that he was a hospital official, maybe, and I showed him in and left him in the hall. My mother was on campus, preparing for class; my grandparents sharing a late lunch in the kitchen. My grandfather was eating with one hand, and with the other he held my grandma’s wrist across the table. She was smiling about something, and the moment I came in she pointed at the pot of stuffed peppers on the stove.

“Eat something,” she said.

“Later,” I said. “There’s a man at the door for you,” I said to my grandfather.

“Who the hell is it?” my grandfather said.

“I don’t know,” I told him.

A few more spoonfuls of stuffed pepper while my grandfather thought it over. “Well, what does he think this is? Tell him to wait. I’m eating with my wife.” My grandma handed him the bread.

I showed the hat into the living room, and he sat there for what must have been twenty minutes, looking around. So that no one could accuse me of being inhospitable, I went to get him some water, but when I came back I saw that he had taken a notebook out of his briefcase, and was squinting up at the paintings on our walls, scribbling down some sort of inventory. His eye went over my grandparents’ wedding pictures, my grandma’s old coffee set, the vintage bottles behind the glass door of the liquor cabinet.

He was writing and writing, and I realized what a serious mistake I had made letting him into the house. I was terrified, and then when he took two gulps of water and peered into the glass to see if it was clean all my fear turned into a wash of rage. I went into my room to put my Paul Simon tape in my Walkman and returned to the living room with my headset on, pretending to dust. I had the Walkman clipped to my pocket so he could see it, the angry wheels of my contraband spinning through the plastic window, and he sat there blinking at me while I ran a moist towel over the television and the coffee table and the pictures from my grandparents’ wedding. I thought I was somehow sticking it to him, but he was unfazed by all this, and continued to write in his notebook until my grandfather came out of the kitchen.

“Can I help you?” he said, and the hat got up and shook his hand.

The hat said good afternoon, and that he was there on behalf of the enlistment office. He showed my grandfather his card. I turned down the headset volume and started dusting books one by one.

“Well?” my grandfather said. He did not ask the hat to sit back down.

“I am here to confirm your birth date and your record of service in the army,” the hat said. “On behalf of the enlistment office.” My grandfather stood across the coffee table with his arms folded, looking the hat up and down. “This is standard procedure, Doctor.”

“Then proceed.”

The hat put on a pair of glasses and opened the ledger to the page on which he had been scribbling. He ran a large, white finger down the page, and without looking up, he asked my grandfather: “It is true you were born in 1932?”

My grandfather nodded once.

“Where?”

“In Galina.”

“And where is that?” I didn’t know myself.

“Some four hundred miles northwest of here, I suppose.”

“Brothers or sisters?”

“None.”

“You served in the National Army from ’47 to ’56?”

“That is correct.”

“And why did you leave?”

“To work at the University.”

The hat made a note, and looked up at my grandfather and smiled. My grandfather did not return the expression, and the hat’s grin deflated.

“Children?” the hat said.

“One daughter.”

“Where does she live?”

“Here.”

“Grandchildren?”

“One granddaughter.”

“Are there any young men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five living in the house, or who have cited this house as a residence?”

“None,” my grandfather said.

“Where is your son-in-law?”

My grandfather’s mouth moved as he ran his tongue over a tooth. “There are no other men living here.”

“And—I’m sorry, Doctor, standard procedure—your wife?”

“What about her?”

“Was she born in Galina, too?”

“Why, are you hoping to draft her?”

The hat didn’t reply. He appeared to be going down the page, counting something.

“Your wife’s full name, please, Doctor?”

“Mrs. Doctor,” my grandfather said. He said this in a way that made the hat look up from his notebook.

“Like I said, Doctor, this is standard procedure for the enlistment office.”

“I don’t believe you, and I don’t like your questions. You’re sucking around for something, and you may as well ask me directly so we can get to the point.”

“Where was your wife born?”

“In Sarobor.”

“I see,” the hat said. I had stopped dusting, and was standing there with the moist towel in my hand, looking from my grandfather to the hat. I could imagine my grandma sitting on the other side of the door, in the kitchen, listening to all this. We had heard about this kind of thing happening; I had let it into the house.

“And your wife’s family lives—?”

“My wife’s family lives in this house.”

“Is your wife in touch with anyone in Sarobor?”

“Of course not,” my grandfather said. Only later would I understand what it meant to him to add: “Even if she wanted to be, I should think that would be difficult to manage, considering it’s been razed to the ground.”

“It is my job to ask,” the hat said with a gracious smile. He was clearly trying to backtrack now, to ingratiate himself, and he waved a hand around the room. “You are a man of considerable assets, and if your wife has brothers or sisters still in Sarobor—”