Tiger, Tiger: Chapters 3-5

But this meat was in small pieces. He didn’t realize that it was cut up because his jaws ached too much to chew properly. All he knew was that he couldn’t hold it, he couldn’t rend it…He was no longer whole, no longer what he had been.

She capered about joyfully.

As the days passed he lost condition and became listless with misery.

“Come on, you little pig’s whelp, you miserable mangy little runt! Spring at me! Just try it! You’ll never make the arena, you weakling! Come on, coward, what are you waiting for?”

“Come on, you little pig’s whelp, you miserable mangy little runt! Spring at me! Just try it! You’ll never make the arena, you weakling! Come on, coward, what are you waiting for?”

“Our daughter is as much the child of Caesar as her brothers. She too must be brave and proud. Would you have her play tamely with caged birds and goldfish forever? She must show her mettle. She’ll teach the tiger to be gentle, and he will teach her to be strong.”

He hardly heard her prattle anymore.

He was watching with satisfaction and pride the fearless way the princess was now chasing the cub, trying to wrest the toy back from him.

Seeing him fighting tears, she relented and went to look, taking his hand in hers and examining the indentations that were rapidly turning into bruises.

“He ought to be whipped,” said Marcus sullenly, more humiliated than hurt.

His rank was so far above Julius’s that he felt unassailably superior to him.

Julius was in a quandary.

He had a bad temper and he had been thwarted, but as he lay there he gulped when he thought how lucky it was for him that he had not said what he might have said in the heat of the moment; for example, that she was the daughter of a pig.

Out of delicacy, he forbore to tell her that Boots was no longer exactly male.

But apart from the swiftly fading pain, and a certain lassitude which was new to him, he felt no different.

He didn’t know he would never sire cubs, never have the ferocity and energy that he was born to.

One sultry afternoon, on his way home from the menagerie, he went to the Colosseum and bribed his way into the cellars where the wild beasts were kept.

He passed down flights of stone steps into a foul-smelling dark warren of cavelike, cage-fronted compartments, directly under the arena.

Even Roman women had little squeamishness about the bloodletting in the arena.

Julius had sometimes caught himself having the strange thought that even if (the gods forbid!) he were ever in the arena and about to be mauled to death by a lion or a bear, he might, in the midst of his prayers, spare one for the beast about to tear him to pieces.

He didn’t know which way to go through the labyrinth of narrow, dark passages, and a primitive fear was inevitable in this place, where every corner held a dealer in death.

“Camel,” grunted Caius. “New consignment just in from Arabia. Never seen one before?”

Julius felt the pores opening along his arms and bile came into his mouth, but he said nothing and followed where the man led.

“You like the circus?” Caius grunted as they went.
Julius hesitated. “The fights can be good,” he temporized.

Julius saw a wooden winch attached to pulleys.

“Good looker, eh?”
Julius was surprised. “Maybe once. She’s old now.”
“No older than me,” Caius said gruffly.

He growled and muttered and then lay down on his side, his eyes closed, as if disdaining his tormentors.

He gave Julius a look—whether of contempt or of warning, Julius couldn’t tell.

The air was fetid; it brought him no more than a tantalizing whiff of anything natural and good.

When he loped into the ring on all fours, or was led in on a chain on his hind legs, the crowd would roar their recognition, and throw bits of food to him which he was sometimes allowed to eat.

“I don’t think you’d relish being put up on a stallion, not you, my boy, you’re not enough of a rider. Yet,” he added, as he saw the boy turn pale and realized he had been too scathing.

The master reappeared, stood for a moment in astonishment, then sprang in front of the horse and grabbed the bridle, bringing the animal to such a sudden halt that Marcus came off again.

“Because your father thinks you’ll be safer on a gelding, and so do I. Now remount and let me see a collected canter.”

Meanwhile, his visits to the palace continued and he behaved impeccably.

The people, never sated with sensation and the excitement of bloodshed, demanded more and more.

When he lay at full length on the ground, Aurelia would sometimes sit astride him and dig her hands into the fur along his neck, kneading him to make him purr.

When he lay at full length on the ground, Aurelia would sometimes sit astride him and dig her hands into the fur along his neck, kneading him to make him purr.

The tiger and the man were writhing on the marble floor.

He crouched down, fearful and subdued.

If Caesar had so much as an inkling of this! A raging tiger would be less dangerous then!