Wednesday, August 05, 2009

The case of the Bengal Tiger

The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 31

He was a man of about 35, slight, wearing glasses, speaking in English heavily accented by his native German.  He demeanor was downtrodden and timid.  He had dark rings under his eyes revealing that he hardly slept, and he struggled to maintain eye contact during conversation.

“There it is again!” he whispered.

“There what is?” we asked.

“The Bengal tiger!” he said. “It has never stopped following me.”

We glanced around the room.  There was nothing of the sort in this room, which was a parlor dedicated to polite gatherings and light dining.  Guests milled about, chatting and laughing.  There was a mild growl of conversation, and a light twinkling of glasses, but as for Bengal Tigers, precisely none.

“Where is it?” we asked him.

“It hides among crowds,” he told us.  “Its camouflage is flawless.  It is as cunning as it is cruel.  Whenever I leave my house, it stalks me.”

Fascinating.  “How long has it pursued you?” we asked him.

“It has been after me since I came of age,” he said. He began to act increasingly agitated, glancing around the room and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Though, when I was young I could not identify it.  It was a beast of some sort, of that I was sure.  It haunted me so menacingly that its form became ever more apparent with each sighting, until eventually I was able to identify it. It is the Bengal Tiger Panthera tigris tigris, native to India and Bangladesh.”

We asked him how he had discovered this classification, and he told us that he scoured through an illustrated book of natural history at a state library.  Only then could he make a firm identification.

“There are strategies for dealing with Bengal Tigers,” he said, still visibly fearful.  “The natives of the Hindu Kush fashion masks which they wear backwards on their heads. The beast will not pounce headlong onto its prey, so it waits in vain for a chance to attack from the back.”

He motioned for us to come nearer.  He was whispering now. From inside his jacket he pulled a crude mask with an elastic band affixed to either side.

“I bring this with me when I go to places I know will have people.  It looks nothing like me, but it keeps the tiger at bay.”

With that, he excused himself and ducked out of the room, moving quickly down the hall, looking as if he were legitimately being pursued.

“Is he mad?” we asked our host.

“No more so than you or I,” our host said.  “Though perhaps his vision is slightly clearer.”