...And Dreams Are Dreams

“Our attempts to mate her with a young tiger at the zoo failed miserably. Seeing her always sad and listless, yet of unrivaled beauty, the director of the zoo decided to give her to a circus. Even though she would remain in a cage, she would lead a completely different life, moving from place to place, country to country, train to train, camp to camp. And perhaps someday, during a tour in Africa, I thought to myself, she might manage to escape.

“That was how I ended up losing Rosa, the little tiger, even though I loved her very much. After she went to the circus, I made sure to keep track of how she was getting along. In the beginning, Rosa didn’t do very well at all. Then one day, a new animal tamer arrived, who they say took a strong dislike to her. He would beat her savagely.

“Initially, Rosa took this violence very badly. The animal tamer was the first who had ever dared go against her, fearlessly, even in the face of her fiercest roars. One time, she even tried to attack him from behind and tear him to pieces, but he, quick and supple like a wild cat, evaded her, they say, and then, throwing himself on her, managed to grab her and force open her mouth with his plierlike hands, then blow into her with such force that she almost suffocated. From that day on, Rosa blindly and fearfully obeyed his orders as if they were cracks of a whip. He would always start by looking her deep in the eye, which would make the tigress restless and troubled, something which, because she was a virgin, it seems she had never felt before.

“Rosa’s love for the animal tamer was common knowledge among the people of the circus. Whenever he wasn’t around, she would languish inside her cage and refuse to come out and do her numbers. The first time he went on leave, she went on a hunger strike.

They kept her alive with injections. Then he returned, all tanned after a month by the sea, and Rosa came back to life.

“One night, they say, he went into her cage, coming out the following morning. Nobody knew what happened in there. But after that night, the tigress began turning into a human being. Little by little, she started becoming a woman. The circus employees were horrified each morning to see her changing shape. This transformation lasted a few weeks and was also observed by many doctors. It wasn’t a change of sex.

She had always been female. It was a change of species. At the end of one year, she was a full-fledged woman. All that remained of the old tigress were her nails, which she was unable to hide no matter how red she painted them, and that flame in her eyes that reflected her jungle origins.

“They were married and lived happily. The

animal tamer taught her human speech, and in the street, at the market, everybody desired her: she was a real volcano. A sex bomb, as they say. Rumor had it that they kept her husband’s old whip hanging on the wall above their bed, like a cocked antique rifle. She gave birth to two children, irrepressible and wild like tiger cubs.

“One day, I saw her shopping in Kuhenstrasse. As soon as she saw me she recognized me. She ran to me and hugged and kissed me. We reminisced about old times. I told her how happy I was about her transformation. She said she might stop by the zoo and see me one day, but that she was afraid of how she might react to the place where she had suffered in captivity. What can I say, my good man? I was tempted. I wanted her like crazy. Everybody wanted her.”

“And then what happened?” I asked, as I saw him staring into space, when he stopped at a red light.

“Ah, then, you don’t want to know. A sad tale.

One day, they found her husband dead of a snake bite at the circus, where he still worked as a veteran animal trainer. At that very moment, they say, sweet Rosa started to turn back into the tigress she once had been.

At her husband’s grave, her family and children looked on with amazement as she started to change, to grow smaller and longer, her black clothes becoming fur, her hands dropping to touch the ground, her nails sinking into the soil of the tomb. She became a quadruped again.

“The doctors came running, and so did the TV

cameras. I saw her that evening on the news: she was a regular tigress. When the camera zeroed in on her face, I saw the figure of the animal trainer reflected deep within her gaze. He was still alive in those green eyes, standing upright with his whip in the air, just like when he used to order her to jump through the flaming hoop.

The same way they say it happens with the old, useless TV cameras, on whose cylindrical mirror there remains, indelibly etched, the last shot the camera took before being put away somewhere, never to be used again.” The taxi driver stopped talking, moved by the memory of his story.

“But tell me,” I asked, “have you regretted coming back to Greece?”

“Have I ever!” he said. “At least in Düsseldorf, animals are kept in cages. Here, they roam around the streets free, on wheels.”

— 4-

Where for Different Reasons,