valley, it is generally believed that if a tiger has decided to attack you,
you will not be able to see it. With the exception of the polar bear, which
also hunts by stealth, there is no other land mammal this big whose
survival depends on its ability to disappear.
Yuri Trush appreciated and respected these qualities in the tiger. While
investigating the site of the Markov attack, and while writing his report
that weekend, he had made a sincere effort to understand this animal—to
place himself inside the tiger’s umwelt and imagine his world as it
pertained to Markov and those around him. He did the same with Markov,
working hard to reconstruct both his umwelt and his last days. Trush is
generally cautious and disciplined in his thinking and, when he is not
sure, or just guessing, he is not afraid to say so. However, on one
particular point, he was unequivocal: “I am one hundred percent sure,” he
said, “that Markov shot at the tiger from the caravan at close range.”
It would have looked something like this: on December 1 or 2, a day or
two before his death, Markov went out hunting with his dogs. He could
have been alone or with Andrei Onofreychuk; the possibility of other
people being present as well is not out of the question. The dogs would
have been running up ahead, searching for a scent trail, and may well
have been following one when they came upon a freshly killed boar.
Markov is in hunting mode, so he is traveling with a gun, a rucksack, and
perhaps a hatchet. When he catches up to the dogs, he sees the boar, and it
is obvious that it has been killed by a tiger. He looks around, takes note of
the dogs’ behavior, and decides the coast is clear. He can’t take the whole
carcass, and he knows better than to do so, but he takes a haunch—maybe
two, if he can carry that much. Then he hurries back to his cabin, feeling
lucky: in the Panchelaza, this windfall was more fungible than mid-1990s
rubles. Upon his return, Markov stores a portion of the meat in the
beehive wellhead, which doubles as a food cache and is a safe distance
from his cabin. Then he packs the rest of it down to the road workers’