jingle. I would be running along the walls in my socks, trying to step
as softly as I could—like a tiger. But one time, the rôle proved too
much for me: I stumbled and got a bullet in my arm. I was lucky it
wasn’t my heart.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “Listen,” I said, “this is not a game. It’s
murder! To cover the windows, turn out the lights and shoot at a
human being? You could have been killed.”
“Not exactly. As you can see, I’m still alive. Anyhow, we saw it
differently: it was amusing, in its way. Of course, with the lamps lit,
death was a real possibility, but, in the dark, the Tiger could become
‘the Tiger!’ Besides, according to the rules, you could only shoot at
the legs.”
“But you were shot in the elbow.”
“It was an accident—I fell down.”
“How could you agree to participate—forgive me for saying so—in
such an insane game?”
“How? Now, of course, I can’t think about it without feeling
terrified. But back then, it was nothing. Back then, life was cheap.”
“And were your other pastimes so ... amusing?”
“No, they were more what you’d expect.”At the same time that members of the Lancepupov Club were hunting
human tigers, the Yankovsky family were after the real thing. Mikhail
Yankovsky was a descendant of Polish nobility who had fought on the
wrong side of the Polish Rebellion of 1863. For his crimes, he was
sentenced to eight years in Siberia, the first eighteen months of which
were spent walking to prison. At that time, the railroad was still forty
years away, and the road was barely passable—at any time of year. It was
essentially a caravan route, only with fewer camels and none of the
romance. Processions of exhausted, lice-infested exiles could be seen
slogging eastward, while wagon trains bearing Chinese tea trundled west,
wheels often buried to the hubs in mud, the horses and drivers alike
besieged by mosquitoes and biting flies. During the winter, it was so cold
that the horses’ nostrils would become clogged with ice from their own