16

Amba,   the tiger,  said    to  the father, “Old    man,    leave   me  your    son here;

don’t   take    him with    you.    If  you take    him with    you I   will    come    and kill

you both.”

“The    Boy and the Tiger,”

NINA    VASILIEVNA  MUNINA^1

BY SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14, LEONID LOPATIN COULD STAND

IT NO LONGER.

“One, two, three days passed. Andrei is not back, but nobody is doing
anything. So I said to my son, ‘Let’s go to the apiary.’ I had a car so we
went. Vasily went to look in the cabin, came back to the car and said,
‘Something is wrong. Come take a look.’ I saw a pot filled with frozen
water in the kitchen; the rest of the bread was on the shelf, mostly eaten
by a mouse, and I saw pieces of spaghetti eaten by the mouse as well. So
everything was telling me: there’s trouble. We drove back and I went to
Andrei’s mother. I asked her, ‘How much food did Andrei have? How
long was he planning to stay in the forest?’ She said, ‘He only had a loaf
of bread and a package of macaroni—he only left for a day.’ I asked her,
‘Why aren’t you worrying? It’s been four days, and the tiger is in the
taiga. Where’s his father?’ She said, ‘He is working at the school; he’s on
the night shift.’ I said, ‘Tell him to come and see me as soon as he gets
off, I need to talk to him.’
“So in the morning, after his shift, Alexander Pochepnya came to see
me. And when he came, I told him man-to-man: ‘It is your own son, what
the hell are you doing? He is not a dog. He’s out there somewhere for
four days and you’re not worried about him? If it was me, I would fly
over there.’ He said, ‘I am worried. Something inside tells me that