by Katy Yocom
Quinn feels her body still. “I think it will help.”
“I hope so. For your sake.” Mother takes a breath, tucks her hair behind her ear. “Your father should have married someone adventurous. I wasn’t cut out for that life.” She squares herself to Quinn, but her eyes drop.
“You had an affair,” Quinn guesses. “With the pastor,” she adds on a hunch.
Mother’s mouth sags. “No. I found out he had gotten involved with someone. One of the nurses.”
Quinn squints at her. “Pastor Mark had an affair with one of the nurses?”
Mother gives her a look. “I’m talking about your father, Quinn.”
“Daddy?”
“A few days before the twins got sick, I caught him on the phone talking with her. They worked together at the clinic. The old cliché.”
Quinn thinks back. “I remember a party at our house.”
Mother nods. “I found out about it not an hour before the guests arrived. I was too upset to be hosting a houseful of people, but it was too late to cancel. So I put on a big smile, and I pulled it off.”
“But I saw you crying,” Quinn says. “On the stairs, with Pastor Mark.”
Her mother pauses. “I’d forgotten about that,” she says quietly. “But I recovered, well enough to play hostess for the rest of the night. I remember standing in the doorway with your father, waving goodbye to the last guests. The next morning, he went to the clinic, and I sat by myself in our bedroom and—” She looks up. “I couldn’t bear it, Quinn. I’d stayed in India for him. I’d kept you kids in India. He knew I couldn’t take it. He should have let us go.”
Quinn is silent, taking it all in. “You sent all the servants home that day. And then what? Where did you go?”
The furnace kicks on. Mother keeps her eyes on her hands. “I went to church.”
“To church?”
“To talk to Pastor Mark.”
“You couldn’t have just called him?”
Mother’s body goes still. When she speaks, her voice is small and weary. “I was scared.”
“Of what?”
She keeps her eyes lowered. “Of what I might do.”
Quinn stares, wanting to ask Mother what she means but afraid she couldn’t bear the answer. “You didn’t tell me you were leaving,” she says gently. “You left me in charge, and you never told me.”
“There’s no excuse. I’m sorry, Quinn. I told you this story wouldn’t make you happy. But you asked for the truth, and now it’s yours. I’m sorry.”
Quinn stands, goes to the counter. So here is her answer, and it feels meaningless, no better or worse than any other answer. This is how people’s lives grow uglier. Like the fact that Mandeep killed Sarah: That feels meaningless, too. He was an angry, frustrated, violent man, and in a moment of chaos he vented his rage, and Sarah died for it. She died pregnant and hopeful and just about to cross the threshold into real happiness at last, and those things were not enough to save her. And why should they be? The world has never worked that way.
Outside, the snowflakes fly.
Sarah once told Quinn that on the train to Sawai, when she’d first arrived in India, a spiritualist from Mumbai had asked her why she was so passionate about tigers. She tried to explain it—how she’d been fascinated when she was young, how the experience of touching a tigress at a rescue center had been important to her at a vulnerable moment. She said those things, and then she stopped because all of those facts were true, but none of them really explained anything. The man saw her hesitate, and he said to her, “Passion. You can explain to yourself how you came to be passionate about something, but you can never explain why.” And then he said, “It’s just as good to go chasing after tigers as it is to go chasing after God.”
How strange that he said those words to Sarah, and that a tigress watched over her body in the hour of her death. Quinn would like to believe that in her sister’s last moments, she looked up into those wild gold eyes and saw them transformed. That she found herself gazing into the face of God, or into the young blue eyes of her beloved lost Marcus. She would like to believe those eyes greeted Sarah and welcomed her home. That she reached out to the face of her beloved and felt its softness at the center of her palm.
Quinn prepares a pot of coffee, braces her hands on the counter, and lets her head drop as the water begins to grumble and sigh. Heat condenses on the window. Outside, the flakes come down bigger and faster. Reflected in the window, Mother sits, shoulders bowed, like a crumbling statue. The snow passes through her as if she’s not even there.
In her memory Quinn sees her mother back on Cornwallis Road, young and lonely and living the wrong life. She sees her as a grieving mother in a stale pink nightgown, haunting the hallways, smelling of dirty hair.
And now she sees something she almost doesn’t recognize, an indistinct haze of black and gray. Her ultrasound. A boy and a girl, just like Marcus and Sarah. She hasn’t thought of this in years, but now she remembers that she apologized, weeping, to Mother when she told her the news.
And Mother held her and whispered, Don’t be sorry. I’m happy for you.
Epilogue
Machli’s daughters are grown now. Since the last full moon, they have left her, each dispersing to a new territory she has granted them, small in size but rich with game.
Left alone, she grows discontented. One early morning, she rises. The birds have woken and are singing in the trees. The black lake dimly reflects stars. On this patrol, the scent she leaves is an invitation. When she is done, she settles into a glade near the lake and waits.
Toward late morning, she feels the vibration in her chest. He calls to her and she answers: aaooongggh.
He appears at the edge of her glade, his nose crisscrossed with old scratches, evidence of his couplings with other females. His body has grown heavier. A ruff of fur rings his face.
She rises and walks to him. They greet each other with rubs of the head. He circles her, and she drops to her belly and shifts her tail to one side.
He covers her with his body. He bites the back of her neck.
Author’s Note
The plight of the tiger has been closely watched in India since the 1970s, when the decimation of a once-thriving population was recognized. In recent years, India and other countries have experienced a rebound in numbers thanks to a global conservation initiative known as Tx2, which in 2010 announced its intent to double the world population of tigers by 2022. As of this writing, World Wildlife Fund estimates the global tiger population at about 4,000. More than half of those tigers are found in India. The rebound, however, seems to be self-limiting. There can only be as many tigers as there is territory and food to support them and corridors they can use to disperse to new territory. Bringing back tiger numbers without increasing the amount of wilderness available to them is an impossible task. And, as tiger numbers grow, human-tiger conflict increases as well.
More worrisome yet, in October 2018, the Chinese government rescinded a decades-old ban on tiger body parts. While the new policy applies only to farmed tigers, it is effectively impossible to tell the body parts of a farmed tiger from those of a poached wild tiger—and poached tigers potentially offer far more profit for dealers than do farmed cats. Conservationists fear the lifting of the ban will prove catastrophic to the world’s remaining wild tigers. While China temporarily reinstated the ban in November 2018 due to pressure from environmental organizations, conservationists concerned about the world’s remaining wild tigers are fighting fiercely to have the ban permanently reinstated.
Machli is based upon a real tigress by the same name, born in 1996 or 1997, who ruled the lakes region of Ranthambore in her prime. She was glorious. I was privileged to witness her there during a trip I took with my mother to Ranthambore and the Sawai Madhopur district in January of 2006, during what we were told was the deepest cold snap in seventy
years. When I encountered Machli, she was accompanied by two subadults, somewhere around fifteen months old. She died of old age in 2016 after having raised five litters of cubs. Her body was strewn with flowers, given a funeral procession, and cremated in observance of Hindu rituals.
The village of Vinyal is based partly on villages I visited in the Sawai Madhopur district, and partly on secondhand accounts, though the name of the village is invented. When I traveled to India, my guide, Vipul Jain, and several other people I interviewed mentioned an uprising in which villagers drove thousands of head of livestock into the park during a water crisis. Everyone who mentioned the uprising told me, in effect, “It didn’t happen the way you heard.” They said this without asking what I’d heard. Presumably, they knew the version of the story that had gone public. I took that as permission to write about the episode the way I imagined.
Organizations such as WWF-India, the Indian arm of the World Wildlife Fund, have led the effort to protect tiger populations for decades. You can read more about the efforts of WWF-India at www.wwfindia.org/about_wwf/priority_species, or visit the World Wildlife Fund’s U.S. website, which maintains a tiger page at www.worldwildlife.org/species/tiger. The U.S.-based organization Panthera focuses on saving wild cats of all types; its tiger page is at www.panthera.org/cat/tiger.
Some of the incidents described in the book sprang from my imagination (notably the river rescue). The text that Sarah reads during her first visit to the park, which begins, “The Aravalli Hills are the oldest in the world,” is credited to an unnamed natural history book, but I actually wrote this passage based on the history I learned during my visit to Ranthambore.
Many other descriptions and incidents in these pages are based upon my observations of tigers at Ranthambore, Kanha, and the Sundarbans, and on stories I heard while interviewing naturalists, wildlife veterinarians, and others involved in conservation and ecotourism. Other incidents are based on events related in natural history books and are credited below. Those books have educated and enlightened me and have informed my work, though any errors are my own.
Although tigresses are sometimes forced to kill their offspring or let them die, to my knowledge, the real Machli never killed any of her cubs.
The scene of the aftermath of a tiger accident was inspired by the book Of Tigers and Men: Entering the Age of Extinction, by Richard Ives, which is also where I first encountered the myth of human-tiger hybrids, or were-tigers. William tells Sarah the story of Sundarbans tigers and the masks local fishermen and honey hunters use to protect themselves from tiger attack; I read many accounts of the Sundarbans tigers and these masks, including in Sy Montgomery’s haunting book Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans. The phenomenon of forest animals broadcasting the movements of a tiger is colorfully described in Stephen Mills’s excellent book Tiger.
Noted tiger expert Valmik Thapar recorded instances of a Ranthambore male cooling himself at a water hole with a tigress and their cubs in his book The Secret Life of Tigers. An instance of a tiger eating so much it apparently couldn’t move is documented in Stephen Mills’s Tiger.
“No one asked them whether there should be a park here … all our lives will be destroyed, as well” is a quote from Valmik Thapar, quoted in Geoffrey C. Ward and Diane Raines Ward’s book Tiger-Wallahs: Saving the Greatest of the Great Cats.
The text that Sarah recites—“For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness … For he can spraggle upon waggle”—is from “Jubilate Agno,” by Christopher Smart, originally published in 1759. The story of the real Machli mating with an intruder, presumably in order to convince him to spare her cubs, is recounted in Tiger, by Stephen Mills. Finally, in one of Sarah’s journal entries, she includes a quote from the Bible: “Weeping for her children, and refusing consolation, because they are no more” (Matthew 2:18).
Acknowledgments
Early on in the first draft of this novel, I realized I needed to go to India in order to have the faintest hope of writing authentically. Without hesitation, my husband, Jeff, encouraged me to do so, sending along an audio player loaded with daily messages to keep me company during my travels. In the years that followed, he graciously supported my absences from home, sometimes for weeks at a time, as I researched and revised this book. He has also been the best sounding board I could hope for. Among the great pleasures of writing this novel have been the evenings spent sitting with him, utterly absorbed in conversation about imaginary people and events and the truths that might emerge from the fiction. Jeff, you are my large-hearted human, and my gratitude is boundless.
For financial help, I thank the Elizabeth George Foundation, which funded my trip to India; Louanda McClure Kynhoff and the Juanita McClure Scholarship for generous support; the Kentucky Foundation for Women; and the Kentucky Arts Council, whose Al Smith Fellowship Award for artistic excellence helped fund the final stages of revision. Special thanks to Ashland Creek Press and JoeAnn Hart for awarding this manuscript the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature.
For invaluable space and time to write, I owe thanks first and foremost to the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which offered me a literary home at Hopscotch House, an airy, art-filled farmhouse, over the years I worked on this novel. I’m also grateful to the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts; the Mary Anderson Center; Crosshatch, for a snow-filled writing residency in the North Woods of Michigan; and Playa, for the gift of quiet and community in a vast and magical landscape.
Beyond the obvious boons they granted, the individuals and organizations mentioned above gave me the heart to keep writing when it would have been far easier to stop.
My deepest thanks to Vipul Jain, my guide at Ranthambore, who introduced me to the flora, fauna (notably Machli), geography, history, and people of that awe-inducing place. Thanks to Allan and Kristy Blanchard at Tiger Trails, who arranged my trip to India and who connected me with Vipul. Without the help and guidance of these three people, this book could not have been written.
Thanks to fellow traveler Alan Ivens for stories around the fire, and to Tarun and Dimple Bhati of the Kanha Jungle Lodge for warm hospitality. For patiently and thoughtfully answering questions that arrived by email from a total stranger, I thank conservation workers Debbie Martyr and Neil Franklin. Thanks to poet and professor Satyapriya Mukhopadhyay for introducing me to Calcutta, and to Glenny Brock for introducing me to Professor Mukhopadhyay.
Loving thanks to my mother, Laura Kahl, for raising me to be an animal lover, a traveler, and a reader, curious about the world. Thank you for traveling to India with me despite your initial misgivings, Mom. I am so happy we got to share those experiences.
Numerous readers gave me invaluable feedback on these pages. Much gratitude to these smart and talented friends. For notes and advice on early drafts, love and gratitude to Beverly Bartlett, Julie Brickman, Megan McKenzie Conca, K.L. (Kenny) Cook, Charlotte Rains Dixon, Laura Kahl, Katrina Kittle, Karen Mann, Linda Busby Parker, and Deidre Woollard. For reading and providing feedback on later revisions, love and thanks to Cindy Corpier, Kristin Matly Dennis, Lia Eastep, Carolyn Flynn, Marjetta Geerling, Jacquelin Gorman, Bridgett Jensen, Maryann Lesert, Sena Jeter Naslund, Elaine Neil Orr, Lori Reisenbichler, Julie Stewart, and Jeff Yocom. Thanks to Mimi Mondal for offering invaluable insights and advice. Surekha Kulkarni of the Beaded Treasures Project helped me understand the workings of a women’s collective. Dorian Karchmar and Wendi Gu provided helpful notes along the way.
Lesléa Newman told me the story of a deer who lay next to Matthew Shepard along the Wyoming fence line where he had been left to die. That image inspired an important moment in this novel.
For particular kindness and encouragement, I’m grateful to Kenny Cook, Elizabeth George, Richard Goodman, Leah Henderson, Silas House, Cathleen Medwick, Sy Montgomery, Lesléa Newman, Elaine Neil Orr, Molly Peacock, and Keith Reddin, who told me I had to keep going. For encouragement and help in a v
ariety of forms, a big thank-you to Susan Campbell Bartoletti; I’ll keep the particulars just between us. For always believing and for helping me celebrate, thanks to Renée Croket and Sherry Hurley. For making a home for me in their hearts, love to Cindy Corpier, Lia Eastep, Marjetta Geerling, Jackie Gorman, Bridgett Jensen, Maryann Lesert, Terry Price, Lori Reisenbichler, and Julie Stewart. Much love and gratitude to Brady Yocom, who cheered me on from the start, and to Kiki Briggs, Kristy Urman, and Kassie Fedrick, who believed in this book and in me. And lifetime love and thanks to Hester George, who was the first person in my life to tell me that someday I’d write a book.
Heartfelt thanks to Sena Jeter Naslund, who first made me believe I could be a creative writer, and to Karen Mann, who, along with Sena, created a literary home for me and hundreds of other writers in the Spalding low-residency MFA in Writing program. Much gratitude to my colleagues in the Spalding program over the years: Sena and Karen, Kathleen Driskell, Ellyn Lichvar, Jason Hill, Gayle Hanratty, and Lynnell Edwards, for support and encouragement, and for graciously allowing and putting up with my absences. And warm thanks to the rest of my Spalding MFA family—students, faculty, and alumni—for their kindness over the years in inquiring, “How’s the tiger novel going?”
Awestruck gratitude to my literary agent, Lisa Gallagher, for championing this book with a magnificent tenacity and expertise. I can’t imagine a better guide and partner on this journey. Thank you, Lisa. Your belief in this book was a life raft.
Giddy thanks to JoeAnn Hart, who selected my manuscript for the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature. And joyful appreciation to Midge Raymond and John Yunker of Ashland Creek Press, who have dedicated themselves to publishing literature that grapples with humanity’s relationship to the animals with whom we share this fragile planet. They saw in these pages a story they thought deserved a place in the world, and they offered this novel a home. Thanks also to Midge Raymond for a smart, clear-eyed copyedit that made this book better; to Jackie Dever for her expert proofreading; and to Matt Smith for creating a knockout book cover that thrills me every time I see it.