The tiger woman, Andrés Neuman

The tiger woman

Andrés Neuman

A Bur
He has smelled how I approached and turned around. I try to make him see that I'm not interested in her, but I've always been a corky pretending. She licks her wrists and forearms. He watches me with suspicion. He suddenly gets up, with a blow to the shoulder blades, and walks in circles around me. I would like to take advantage of your movements to take a picture or write a few lines, anything that will make me useful in this scene. Then he gets bored of besieging me and takes a few steps towards the edge. I'm going away from the page. It is restless.

          There is nothing more splendid than the apricot spots on his neck, which stretches and folds when he peeks at the flanks. I've been studying for a while and, for now, the only thing I've found out is that he sleeps in the afternoon, gets lost at night and looks out on this side only at noon, when the sun accentuates the fringes of his back and ignites his pumice stone pupils. Since the day I found her, distracted, with a fang nailed delicately on her lip, I have not stopped imagining the hunt. Who would hunt Who? Of course his mouth promises vertigo, blood, the rite of agile death. My weapon is this pen: enough at least, to succumb with dignity. That trembling of the side, of the stripes of his belly when breathing, splashes my eyes, obsesses me. His sweet roar of small waterfall chases me when I dream. On waking, however, I dream of chasing him.

          She has too much smell to be surprised on a page. It would take a novel, perhaps several, in order to entertain the hope that he would lower his guard for a moment, in the middle of a paragraph. But to do that, I would need to study it for years. After all, it's all about tricking the tiger.

          Hunger, sometimes, forces her to approach with charming dissimulation and smacking. If he has not yet attacked me, it is because, at the moment, he likes this thing that I write, or at least he likes his coquetry. For my part, I am willing to sacrifice: survival is so mediocre ... I know well that I care little, that for her I am, basically, a curious piece of meat. Although I also know that, if a couple of days passes without us seeing each other, she looks for any pretext to return and haunt my story. Even sometimes he does me the honor and decides to sharpen his nails in front of my eyes, rubbing them against a tree with an exquisite slowness. Other times I have noticed how he delayed when leaving, while drawing hypnotic waves with his spotted tail. And even more. I am sure that in her unmovable beast's lair, on clear moonlit nights, she feels alone. And that sometimes, too, makes an effort and reminds me.