“She doesn’t find it amusing at all. She’s still distressed that your relations were severed so abruptly. Of course, she was interested in the story of the Tiger—she collects all sorts of oddities that are ignored by official science, but she enjoyed being in touch with you.”

Erasmus shrugged. Then he muttered: “I found it interesting too . . . she was so delicate in the way she made it clear that she was an Other, and she knew who I was . . . but at the same time she displayed such a deep knowledge of botany. The article she published in that journal was most interesting . . . a most agreeable lady, it was quite surprising that she was from Musco . . . I beg your pardon, of course, Antoine, but I didn’t really like Russian women before that.”

“That’s quite all right, I’m not very taken by the English ones,” I replied vengefully.

“We really ought to have met,” Erasmus went on. “We could have looked into each other’s eyes and understood each other better.”

“Yes, the Internet doesn’t allow for genuine contact,” I said profoundly.

“What Internet, Antoine?” Erasmus laughed. “It was more than thirty years ago! The USSR still existed then! Letters on paper—with just a little spell, so that the censor wouldn’t examine them and they would arrive more quickly . . .”

Yes, I’d really put my foot in it. Sometimes I forget just how recently all these mobile phones and computers appeared.

“So the publication was in a real journal, then?” I said, taking the point. “A scholarly one, on paper? And I thought it was a ‘live’ journal . . .”

Erasmus laughed until he cried, and then he said: “There you are, Antoine. Even you will start feeling like a dinosaur soon, decorating your home with Soviet posters and red banners! Never mind, one can get accustomed to the way time flies . . . Well then, let me tell you about the Tiger. About my Tiger. And then you can explain to me what you’re so agitated about.”

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WAS NOT AN AGE WELL EQUIPPED to ensure a happy childhood. But then, it wasn’t all that great for an active prime of life and a peaceful old age either. It was easy to die; in fact it was very easy. Life was merely the prelude to death and the life after death—the existence of which only very few doubted.

Sometimes this prelude was a long one, but far more often it was short.

Both for humans and for Others.

“Are you listening to me or sleeping, boy?”