The Gobi Desert (21 page)

‘Well?' said Streep, his hands on his hips, ‘What do you make of that? What did I tell you?'

‘Kublai!' I yelled at the top of my voice. ‘Kublai, where is he?'

Streep burst out into demented laughter.

‘Where is he? But what do you mean? That's him in front of you! So you don't recognise him either?'

Kublai! How could I have recognised him?
He was no longer white!

*

He continued to look at the two of us, without so much as a murmur, nodding his enormous head. Between their narrow eyelids, there was a sarcastic expression in his eyes. You could have said that he thought he had made an excellent joke.

He was still the same splendid creature, a wild animal of the size you wouldn't see again in a long time. Yes, but all the stripes, which up until then had only been visible transparently, so to speak, on his magnificent and immaculate coat, had now turned black, against a fur which itself had suddenly become fawn. Kublai was still the most beautiful of tigers, but now he was a tiger like all the others. Clearly I could only feel an ambivalent sort of rapture towards him.

Streep, however, as if he was alone, was delivering a sort of rambling and senseless monologue. The explanations which he tried to come up with could only serve to exasperate me.

‘Unheard of! Completely unheard of! But not as rare as one might think, however. It's a phenomenon well noted among stoats, for example. In winter their fur is completely white, and in summer a reddish brown. Yes, but a tiger! A tiger! And to top it all, in less than two or three hours! It's unheard of, absolutely unheard of! They only happen to me, such stories . . . !'

‘That's enough!' I cried. ‘And how does this concern you, may I ask?'

Suddenly, no longer knowing what I was doing and overwhelmed by rage, I shook my fist at Kublai.

‘To have lost everything in one night, in a single night! Look at that filthy creature! He seems to be taunting us, and now he's only worth a twentieth of what he was worth before. If only I had a revolver, a good revolver, and right now you would me see me get rid of him, him also . . . !'

I stopped . . . but too late perhaps! Now it was Streep who was looking at me, with a strange, curious expression. He seemed to have recovered his presence of mind.

‘Him also? Why him
also
? Really, this whole adventure is beyond me. I had imagined that all this was just the terrible consequence of chance. But now there has been one death, or rather two deaths, which have not been natural, according to you?'

I was silent. He made a gesture as if to brush aside an unwelcome thought. Then he smiled.

‘Let's not talk any more about it! Never again! But there's just one last thing: you know, I think I can see what you're saying. Do you doubt it? It's strange, that these two mechanisms, lock and pulley, pulley and lock, should have both worked so badly!'