The Tiger, then the Lady. (page 80)
When
“The tiger-cages of the kingdom were searched for the most savage and relentless beasts, from which the fiercest monster might be selected for the arena”
The magnificently giant Amur tiger Laohu was selected. For the stories are all connected of course. Frank R. Stockton’s semibarbaric kingdom of the arena and his la belle dame sans merci, and the poet John Keats’s beautiful lady without mercy, and
the semibarbaric (or wholly barbaric) tigers in Frank R. Stockton’s captivity, and Bree the talking horse and his boy Shasta in C. S. Lewis’s Calormenes’ captivity. My friend, just as you and I are connected, so are these worlds we jump into hand in hand, from one pool to another in that wood between the worlds, the written word connecting us, which is strong and delicate as Soochow silk, strong enough for the wartime parachute and delicate enough for the war widow’s gossamer gown.
Sometimes it happens that a hero of ours is in the enemy’s hands, and to survive our hero plays dumb. So Bree the talking horse of C. S. Lewis’s world did, literally, by pretending to not be able to talk. Well, Laohu did that too the time he found himself in the semibarbaric kingdom.
Laohu had been traveling to find other talking tigers, and one of his trips took him into treacherous lands with treacherous people, and he fell into a trap dug into the ground, and was injured and captured. Thinking he was better off not revealing his speech (and he was correct), he waited for an opportunity. But one never came, for he was drugged, until he was sold into the tiger cages of the semibarbaric kingdom (which had a continual need of tigers, as did the other arena-entertainment-fond kingdoms neighboring it).
Here is the way Laohu told the story to Janosch A. Prufrock, who had traveled those lands*:
“It happened twice of course. Most of us only have one life to live, and no matter how much we rue our mistakes, we do not get to live them over again, and make different choices than those we did in our naïve ignorance. That is our tragedy.
But the semibarbaric princess had two chances at life, for which she had sacrificed her soul. For of what worth is the metaphysical soul, if in exchange we can get that lover back again, that life relived, those sleepless nights gnashing teeth soothed? Which of us wouldn’t make that trade were it offered to us? It’s like those silly ‘Would you do this or that for a million dollars’ hypotheticals we entertain each other by asking. If only someone would make me that offer! But I am only a talking tiger. Perhaps you wouldn’t. Very well, then we speak on of me and the semibarbaric princess.
In her first life, she chose, naturally, me, the tiger for her lover. I came out of the gate, from behind the heavy doors, and tore the youth limb to limb, his sinews and guts in my maw. For I am a real tiger, you know, talking or not talking.
She regretted it immediately. Have you not, regretted something terrible, something irreversible, something that keeps you up nights still, something you can’t ever undo, which leaves you undone? Undine has, Emil Hering’s mother, and so felt the semibarbaric princess at seeing her lover actually torn to pieces. It’s one thing to imagine it, it’s another to see just how quickly that life goes, just how quickly that person whom you loved, fought with, even hated in moments becomes just a pale body, terribly still, bringing forth the irrepressible urge to vomit your soul out. So she did. She vomited all over her rich robe, her bright sash, the spittle stringing along her hair like yellow beads, the smell of bile covering her sticky fingers and burning into her eyes.
In the crowd of the arena some pretended not to see it, some jeered, some felt sorry for her.
You and I would have lived with that the rest of our lives, the private nightmare made public. But the semibarbaric princess wiped the bile from her lips, washed herself off, burned her robes, and vowed to make a different choice the next day.
So the night came, and she reset her life. The next morning, there she was, up on the high seats watching her lover enter the arena and look to her for a sign. There I was behind one of the gates. And this time she signaled the lady.
Immediately the nuptial priests were called, and the garland girls were brought in, the wedding took place right inside the arena, and before the whirl was all over the youth and the lady had been sent home.
Then the semibarbaric princess was alone, imagining their embrace, their relief, their new love. And she regretted, again.”
*Janosch A. Prufrock mentioned it to Wilhelmina Wang and Emil Hering on page 4 of our tale:
I was in Histria once. In the port of Pula, where I was securing a procurement of olive oil, at the arena, I watched twenty gladiators fight to the death, until one man emerged, for the prize of a single Startaler. Because with it, the winner could have lived in ease for the rest of his life.”