heavily weighted toward animals. “Perhaps,” speculated Martin, “this
was the origin of mythology ... in which human beings and animals
mingle and merge into each other.”*^20
Considering that it took a German-born urban academic only two years
to (re)discover this connection at an impressively deep level (in an
African canyon, no less), one can only imagine the profound sense of
intimacy and understanding an indigenous hunter like Ivan or Mikhail
Dunkai would possess after a lifetime in his native taiga. When one adds
to this the fact that the Dunkais are drawing on centuries of communal
memory and experience with local animals, their interpretation of
human-tiger dynamics takes on a certain weight. “The tiger is strong,
powerful and fair,” Mikhail Dunkai declared. “You have to respect him.
You think he doesn’t understand the language, but he understands
everything; he can read a person’s mind. So, if you start thinking, ‘He’s a
bad tiger; I am not afraid of him,’ well, something bad will happen to
you, and you’ll have only yourself to blame. The tiger will warn you first,
but if you still don’t understand, then he will seriously punish you.”
Mikhail had an interesting take on the sharing of prey in the forest, and
things might have gone better for Markov if he had known about it.
“Once, a tiger killed a wild boar about ten yards from my cabin,” Mikhail
began. “In the morning, I saw the dead boar and the tiger sitting nearby.
So, I started talking to him: ‘The taiga is big,’ I said. ‘Why would you
kill a boar right here? Go, enjoy the rest of the taiga, but don’t do this
near my cabin.’ The tiger was sitting, listening, and then he left.
Afterward, I saw that a part of the boar—the haunch—had been left for
me; the rest of the boar was eaten and everything was cleaned by the
tiger.
“But I didn’t take the meat,” said Mikhail, “because, if you take it, then
you are in debt and have to give something back. So I said, ‘Thank you,
but I have meat now. Don’t be insulted that I don’t take it. It was good of
you to share with me.’ If you take meat from the tiger,” Mikhail
explained, “you will feel that you owe him, and then you will be afraid of
the tiger.”