Claw

Figure 1.

The house is small, square, and white. The roof's flat. The door, centered on the eastern side, is just a curtain with red and yellow flowers. The other sides have one square window, also centered. There's no glass in the windows, just yellowing, loosely woven cotton rags nailed to the wood like mosquito netting. The house sits on a slight rise in the middle of the plain, and anyone looking out the windows could see a long way. Down the slope from the door, there's a water pump. A leather razor strop hangs from a couple of nails in the pump's wooden handle. A small washboard rests against the pump. The house has just one room. A hundred feet to the west, there's a small shack for bodily functions. The house has a packed dirt floor. Two feet off the floor, a built-in shelf or bench runs along all four walls, broken only by the doorway. At the center of the room, there's a wooden table, a single chair. A few things sit on the shelf: a bowl with a set of flatware, one fork, one knife, one spoon; a covered metal bucket with a curved handle and inside, a thick soup or mash; a basin with a few soap chips and a brush; a tiny, round mirror in a metal frame, a straight-edge razor resting on the mirror; a small rectangular basket with the lid on, probably for linen or clothing; a rolled-up mat. On the table, there's a white enamel pitcher with a blue rim and next to it, a slightly flared drinking glass, the bottom thick, rounded. The glass is cloudy, tinted pink. In one corner of the table, there's a lighter and a canister of cigarettes. There's a white man sitting on the chair. He has on khaki trousers and a light, collarless jacket, also khaki, but faded nearly white. He's extremely thin: those clothes were meant for someone more muscular. The man's face has a few deep lines. He doesn't have a hair on his head. He could be fifty, someone who's spent his life outdoors, but you can tell he's extremely old because he's so unnaturally thin. Another way you can tell his age: he barely moves. The man sits, facing the door, smoking. He's not looking at anything in particular, or maybe he's staring at the red-and-yellow curtain rippling slightly in the air currents. The man sits rigid on the chair, left hand in his lap, right hand resting on the table, holding the cigarette, bringing it to his lips now and then. This man is Yanez, the Tiger's white brother, and this ground where his house stands is far, far from any sea, in a part of India that appears on British maps as just a milk spot scratched with a few uncertain paths that could be swallowed up at any time by thriving forests or flooding rivers.

Once a day, in the morning, a woman comes from the village (which is close, just past the line of trees to the south), and she carries the bucket of food, and once a day, in the evening, she takes the empty bucket back again. Yanez has lost his teeth and his sense of taste; the bucket holds a milky broth with small bits of meat, boiled vegetables, rice. When he started eating only from the bowl, he gave the woman his metal plate but kept the fork and knife in case a large piece of meat needed cutting. Over the years, his throat has nearly closed. The woman also brings him soap and cigarettes when he runs out and sometimes a lantern wick or a piece of flint for the lighter. Sometimes the woman brings Yanez a shirt or a pair of pants, used, but still good enough to wear. She's the only one who goes inside his house. Anyone could, but no one...