Nonetheless, more than two weeks after being shot, the tiger still
wasn’t able to hunt normally. He was going to need alternative food
sources, and this meant livestock, dogs, or humans. There was no
livestock in the back country so that left only two options, unless he was
able to poach another tiger’s kill.
That evening, Burukhin rode home alone on the snowy road with his
dogs trailing behind, now much subdued. Up above, the stars seemed to
wink and pulse as they often do on particularly cold winter nights. In the
village, smoke rose above the sheet metal chimneys as straight as a
pencil. Further down the road in the graveyard, a few plots over from
Markov’s, a coffin-shaped pile of embers glowed among the snow-
covered graves, as startling as a wound. In the Pochepnyas’ little house,
there was a coffin far too big for what it held, but no container big enough
for the grief that went with it. It filled the place, and Andrei’s father was
being slowly crushed beneath its invisible mass.
The village was in mourning and the danger was real, but even so, some
continued to ignore the warnings from Inspection Tiger and their own
families. Trush had seen the tracks of those who dodged the roadblocks,
tempting fate. On one hand, he was sympathetic: “You have to remember
that these were difficult times,” he said. “People were desperate. Wages
weren’t being paid and, there, money was lying on the road: all you had
to do was bend down and pick it up and sell the cones to China. You’d be
paid right away.”
But at the same time, he was frustrated and deeply hurt. “In a situation
like this, how can you blame Inspection Tiger? How can they accuse us of
not taking any measures? How can we restrain the local population? And
then there were all these negative sensational articles claiming that we
were not doing anything. Where is the logic?”
When confronted, these diehards would inevitably repeat the
tayozhnik’s mantra: “If I don’t touch her ...”