Tea Obreht - The Tiger's Wife

“What do you say to the perch?” the deathless man asks me.

“I am a great lover of John Dory,” I say. “In the absence of lobster.”

“Shall we have the John Dory?”

“Let’s have the John Dory.”

“We’ll have the John Dory,” the deathless man says to the old waiter, looking up at him and smiling. The waiter bows from the waist, like we’ve made a very good choice. Which we have, we’ve really made a very good choice. It is probably the last John Dory the hotel will ever sell.

“Can I entice the sirs with some mezze ?” the old waiter says. “We have an excellent ajvar with garlic, and also an octopus salad. We have wonderful sarma , and cheese with olives.”

“I feel some indulgence is needed,” the deathless man says. “Some indulgence is needed tonight. We’ll have it all. And, to go with the fish, the boiled potatoes with chard.”

“Very good, sir,” the waiter says while he is writing it all down with a stubby pencil.

“And, naturally, the parsley sauce.”

“Naturally, sir,” says the waiter.

He refills our wine glasses and leaves, and I am sitting there looking at the calm, smiling face of the deathless man, and asking myself why, in particular, indulgence is needed tonight. The deathless man takes the pipe of the narghile and begins to puff on it slowly, and big thick clouds of smoke are rising out of his nostrils and mouth and he looks very content, sitting there, with the blasts rocking the valley at Marhan.

I must be looking pretty stupefied at all this, because he asks me: “Is something wrong?” I shake my head, and he smiles. “Do not worry about the price, Doctor. This is my treat. It is important—so important—to indulge in these pleasurable things.”

My God , I say to myself, and now it has come to this. My last meal, and with a deathless man, at that .

“My best meal,” he says out of nowhere, as if we are still on that subject, “was at the Big Boar, about sixty years ago.” I do not know why this happens now, but I do not find myself saying, how? How could you have had a meal like this, when your face says you are thirty, and even that is generous . He says: “The Big Boar was a wonderful tavern in the king’s hunting park, and you would shoot the game yourself and then the chef would prepare it in his special way. The woman I told you about—the woman who died—she and I went there when we first fled. When we fled from here.”

“I didn’t realize she was from Sarobor,” I say.

“Everybody’s from somewhere, Doctor. She used to play the gusla there—” he says, pointing down to the Old Bridge, “just over there.”

The pepper and the octopus salad and the sarma arrive, and the waiter arranges the plates, and the deathless man digs right in. It all smells so wonderful, and he is spooning those cabbage leaves and that red pepper onto his plate, and all those oils are running into each other, and the pink-purple octopus tentacles are shining with oil, and I put some on my plate and I eat, too, but I eat slowly, because who knows, maybe it’s poisoned, maybe the old waiter is working with a vengeance, maybe that is why the deathless man is here. But it is too difficult not to eat with the lights going off in Marhan, and now Gavran Gailé will not stop talking about the meal we are eating. Every time the waiter comes close, Gavo is talking loudly about how wonderful the flavors are, how fresh the oil—and it is true, the food is wonderful, but I am feeling that he is rubbing it in, this business of it being my last meal, and I am thinking, My God, what I have done, coming here?

The waiter brings the John Dory and it is glorious. The fish is dark and crisp on the outside, and it has been grilled whole. He cuts it up slowly with the fish knife, and the flesh goes soft and feathery under the knife, and he serves it to us on our plates and then ladles out the potatoes with the chard. The potatoes are bright yellow and steaming, and the chard is thick and green and clinging to the potatoes, and the deathless man is eating and eating and talking about how glorious the meal is—which is true, really, it is a glorious meal, and even though you can hear the shelling in Marhan, it is all right with the meal on the balcony and the river and the Old Bridge.

Because I have to know, at a certain point I say: “Are you here to tell me that I am going to die?”

He looks up at me with surprise. “I beg your pardon?” he says.

“This meal,” I say. “Indulgence. If you are here to let me indulge in my last meal, I would like to know this. I would like to call my wife, my daughter, my grandchild.”

“I take it, since you ask that question without provocation, that you have accepted what I am—does that mean you are ready to pay your debt to me, Doctor?”

“Certainly not,” I say.

“Still more proof?”

“We’ve not even had coffee yet.”

Gavran Gailé picks up a corner of his napkin and he dabs his mouth with it.

“May I see it?”

“What?”

“Your pledge, Doctor. The book. Let me see it.”

“No,” I say, and I am worried.

“Come now, Doctor. I am only asking to see it.”

“I do not ask to see your cup,” I say. But he is not giving up, not taking up his fork and knife, just sitting there. And after a while, I take out my Jungle Book and I hold it out to him. He wipes the tips of his fingers before he takes it from me, and then he runs his hand over the cover.

“Oh yes,” he says, as if he remembers it well, remembers the story. He opens it and flips through the pictures and the poems. I am afraid he is going to take it, but I am also afraid that it will upset him to know I don’t trust him.

“Rikki Tikki Tavi,” he says to me, handing the book back across the table. “I remember him. I liked him best.”

“How surprising,” I say, “that you should like the weasel.” He does not reproach me for saying this, even though we know I am both rude and incorrect: Rikki Tikki is, of course, a mongoose.

Gavran Gailé watches me put the book back in my pocket. He is smiling at me, and he leans forward across the table and quietly says, “I am here for him,” and he nods at the waiter. He does not say he is not here for me, and I am weary, but suddenly I feel awful for the little old waiter.

“Does he know?”

“How would he know?”

“In the past, you’ve told them.”

“Yes, and I’ve learned a thing or two, haven’t I? You’ve been there, Doctor, while I’ve been learning. If I tell him, he is going to spear me with a kebab stick and I am going to have a difficult recovery, which mustn’t happen because—as you say—I am due to be very busy.” He sits back and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Besides, what good would it do him to know? He is happy, he is serving an enormous meal to two pleasant people on the eve of war. Let him be happy.”

“Happy?” I am dumbfounded. “He could be home—he could be with his family.”

“We are indulging ourselves, and so indulging him,” the deathless man says. “This fellow takes great pride in what he does—and he is serving a glorious and wonderful meal, a memorable one. Tonight, he will go home to his family and talk about serving the last meal of the Hotel Amovarka, and tomorrow when he is gone, those still alive will have this to talk about. They will be talking about it after the war has ended. Do you see?”

The waiter comes and clears away our plates, the big plate with the John Dory on it, the little glass bones all picked clean. He balances the plates on one arm, and still the white napkin is folded over his free arm, and I am filled up with the idea of this memorable meal, which I have not been enjoying for fear.