Tea Obreht - The Tiger's Wife

“Well, tell me about it,” I say.

“Well,” says Marek. “There is blood on our pillows. And … there was blood on the lapels of Gavo’s coat.”

“Because you shot him.”

Marek almost falls out of his seat. “I didn’t shoot him, Doctor, he was already dead!”

I am scribbling again, mostly just to look official. Dominic is sweating in frustration. I say: “I will need to speak with his family.”

“He has no family. He’s not from around here.”

“Then why was he buried here?”

“He was some sort of peddler from far away, we didn’t know anything about him. We wanted to do right by him.”

To me, this is becoming more and more frustrating—but I think: maybe that is why they are all suddenly coming down with tuberculosis, maybe he was infected and brought it in, even though he seemed perfectly healthy to them . But then, he has only been here for a short time, certainly not enough time to get the whole village sick—but obviously long enough for them to shoot him in the back of the head. “Who will give me permission to dig up the body?”

“You don’t need it.” Marek is wringing his hands. “We nailed the coffin shut, and then we put him in the church. He’s still in there.”

I look through the door again, and, sure enough, there is Aran Darić, standing at the church door, pistol in hand. Just in case. “I see.”

“No,” Marek says. He is almost crying, and he is wringing his hat furiously in his hands. Dominic has all but given up. Marek says: “No, you don’t see. People with blood on their clothes are sitting up in coffins and then there is blood on our pillows in the morning. I don’t believe you see at all.”

So there we are, Dominic and I, standing in the little stone church at Bistrina, and the coffin of the man called Gavo is there, lying at an angle from the door, as if it’s been shoved in pretty quickly. It’s a dusty wooden coffin. The church is stone, and quiet. It smells of sandalwood and wax, and there is an icon of the Virgin above the door. The windows are blue glass. It is a beautiful church, but it is obvious that no one has been in it for a long time—the candles are all out, and this fellow Gavo’s coffin is covered with a few spatters of white, which the doves that live in the belfry have been dropping down on him. It is a sad thing to see, because as far as I know, this man Gavo has done nothing to deserve being shot in the back of the head at his own funeral. Twice.

After we come in, Aran Darić closes the door behind us quickly and suddenly, and for a long time everything is quiet in the little church. We’ve come in with our satchels, and we’ve also brought a crowbar to open the coffin, and we begin to realize that perhaps we should have brought in more than just the crowbar—a team of oxen, for example, because the coffin has not only been nailed shut, but also crisscrossed with extra boards across the lid, and chained around and around with what looks like a bicycle chain. Someone, probably as an afterthought, has thrown a string of garlic onto the coffin, and the heads are lying there in their paper shells.

Dominic manages to say to me, “Shame, awful shame.” Then he spits and says, “Peasants.”

And then we hear something that is altogether incredible, something you cannot even begin to appreciate because, without hearing for yourself the way it sounded in the quiet church, you won’t believe it happened. It is the sound of shuffling movement, and then, all of a sudden, a voice from the coffin, a frank, polite, slightly muffled voice that says: “Water.”

We are, of course, completely paralyzed. Dominic Lazlo stands beside me, gripping the crowbar in a white fist. His breathing is slow and shallow, and his mustache is beginning to sweat, and he is swearing quietly again and again in Hungarian. I am on the verge of saying something when the voice—same tone, very passive, just asking—says: “Pardon me: water, please.”

And then quick, quick, he’s alive, open the coffin! Dominic Lazlo is thrusting the edge of the crowbar under the lid, and I am on my knees trying to yank off the bicycle chain. We’re hammering away at the coffin like we’re trying to pry the whole thing to pieces, and Dominic has his foot against the side and he’s heaving down on the length of the crowbar like a madman, and I am not helping by saying, push push push . And then the lid, creaking like bone, snaps off and there he is, the man Gavo lying back against the cushions with his folded purple napkin, looking slightly dusty but otherwise unharmed.

We grab him by the arms and pull him into a sitting position, which, in retrospect, isn’t something I recommend you ever do with someone who’s been shot in the back of the head, because who knows what’s kept him alive. But I think, how extraordinary. I have been expecting this man to look older, white hair, maybe a mustache.

But Gavo is young, thirty at most, and he has a fine head of dark hair and a pleased expression on his face. It is hard to believe that a man who has just been pulled out of a coffin where he has spent several days can look anything short of exuberant; but that’s the extraordinary thing, he just looks very pleased, sitting there, with his hands in his lap.

“Do you know your name?” I ask him. There is still a lot of urgency for me, and so I widen his eyes with my fingers and peer inside. He looks at me with interest.

“Oh yes,” he says. “Gavo.” He sits there patiently while I feel his forehead and take his pulse. Then he says: “I’m sorry, but I would really like some water.”

Half a minute later, Dominic takes off running through the village to the well, and allegedly passes Marek, who shouts, “I told you, didn’t I?” after him. In the meantime, I am opening my medical bag and taking out my things and listening to Gavo’s heart, which still beats firmly under the thin rib bones of his chest. He asks me who I am, and I tell him I’m Dr. Leandro from such and such battalion, and not to worry. Dominic comes back with the water, and, as Gavo tips the bucket to drink, I notice the drops of blood on the coffin pillow, and Dominic and I both look around the side of Gavo’s head. And sure enough, there they are, two bullets, sitting like metal eyes in the nest of Gavo’s hair. Now there is the question of, shall we risk moving him or perform the excision right here—and, should we perform the excision at all, because what if we pull the bullets out and his brains come running after them like undercooked eggs? And then we have a funeral after all, and have to try the whole village for murder, or else we get implicated somehow, and then the whole thing ends in disaster for everybody.

So I ask him: “How do you feel, Gavo?”

He has finished the bucket and he puts it down on his knees. He looks suddenly refreshed, and he says: “Much better, thank you.” Then he looks at Dominic and thanks him in Hungarian and commends him on his masterful handling of the crowbar.

I am careful about what I say next. “You have been shot in the head twice,” I say. “I need to take you to the hospital so we can decide how best to treat you.”

But Gavo is cheerful. “No, thank you,” he says. “It is very late already, I should be on my way.” And he grips the sides of the coffin and pulls himself out, just like that. A small cloud of dust lifts off him and falls to the ground, and he stands there in the little church, looking up at the stained glass windows and the light drifting in as if it is breaking through water.

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.”