juvenile Amur tiger and a full-grown Ussurian boar. The tiger, though
half the size of the boar, managed to knock it down repeatedly by
jumping on the animal’s back and clubbing it in the head with his
macelike paws. In addition to their bladed tusks, wild boars are built like
tanks: covered with wiry bristles and thick hide beneath which is a mantle
of cartilaginous armor that further protects their muscular neck and
shoulders. The fight on the Amba was to the death and, in spite of the
odds, the young tiger prevailed, motivated, apparently, by spite alone.
When Troinin inspected the site afterward he found an appalling scene:
the abandoned boar had been eviscerated, its throat torn out, and its snout
sliced off “as with a razor.”^2 Troinin was particularly struck by the
scratches in the boar’s skull, which were half an inch deep.
It was clear that day on the Takhalo that, wounded as he was, the
Panchelaza tiger still possessed deep reserves of strength. Furthermore,
he had made the most of Pochepnya; at the very least, the young man had
bought him some time. When Sheriff Gorunov examined Tsepalev’s
ransacked hovel, he discovered a collection of topographical maps, but
the tiger had gotten to them first. Gorunov noted evidence of the tiger’s
fangs rending the landscape—perhaps a sign of things to come. There was
a notebook in there, too, with Tsepalev’s poems inside, lost now, their
author long gone. Gorunov then worked his way back across the river,
joining the others at the terminus of the drag trail where they were sorting
through Pochepnya’s clothes. Danila Zaitsev and Andrei’s father had
gathered up Andrei’s meager remains the previous day, but when
Gorunov went through his pockets, he found an undamaged pack of cheap
unfiltered cigarettes. He would have been craving a cigarette then, but he
wouldn’t smoke those.
Police are required to attend anytime there is a body in order to
determine whether a criminal investigation is necessary, but in this case
there was no body. Gorunov’s role ended up being to formally witness the