THE TALE OF A TIGER

by Dario Fo
translated by Ed Emery
[This file was scanned from the printed text. It
may contain typographical errors still to be
sorted.]
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For performance rights, please contact:
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Please be aware that this translation can only be
performed with explicit permission in writing from
the agency representing Dario Fo and Franca
Rame, the Danese-Tolnay agency in Rome.
Original text copyright Dario Fo
Translation copyright Ed Emery

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THE TALE OF A TIGER

by Dario Fo
translated by Ed Emery

INTRODUCTION
The first part of tonight's show has a positive
theme. It's a hopeful piece, just at a time when
negativity and a general collapse of ideals seem
to be the dominant forces in our everyday lives.
It's called "The Tale of a Tiger", and the
message is conveyed by allegory.
In fact the first time I performed this piece was
right here in Florence, and for me that night was
sort of try-out. On that particular evening, the
audience's involvement in the piece proved very
important to me. They gave me a number of
clear and precise pointers which enabled me to
see where the weak points were and which
sections needed to be cut or altered.

So, this enabled me to trim the story down. At

first it ran for a quarter of an hour. Now, after a
process of polishing, correcting, cutting,
tightening up, the piece runs to 45 minutes! I'm
not joking. In theatre, tightening a piece up
doesn't necessarily mean shredding it into little
bits.
I first heard this story told actually, performed,
rather than told four years ago, in China. To be
precise, in Shanghai. In that period, there were
many stories like this being told in China.
Leaving aside the official theatre, the most lively
form of theatre was a theatre completely
unknown to passing tourists: the popular theatre
fringe theatre, I suppose you could call it
which was a real hothouse of imagination,
creativity and humour.
I doubt that nowadays this story is still
performed in public in the way that I saw it told,
before an audience of thousands of people,
men, women, children.... in a park.... in the
Shanghai countryside.
The storyteller told his tale in the dialect of the
Shanghai countryside, a dialect which is spoken
by a minority. A minority of around 60 million
inhabitants! In China 60 million really is a
minority, when you think that around half a billion
people speak the national language.
Now, the vowel sounds and the consonants
which this peasant-actor was producing in his
dialect fascinated me: his sounds and vocal
tonalities had little relation with the spoken
Chinese that I had encountered up until then His
language was broader, the sounds were harder,
with a tendency to slide into deep, throaty
rambling phrasings which, for me, brought to
mind the "keenings" of the peasants of the Po
Valley and the dialect stories of the mountains
and upper valleys of Lombardy. In other words, I
was on familiar territory.
And when, in addition to the sounds, I saw this
extraordinary travelling player using hand
gestures, arm movements, and moving his
whole body as an accompaniment and
counterpoint to the sounds [roars, silence,
words.... .], the words at first coming thick and
fast and then more leisurely, and then silence
in short, true pantomime I realised that I was
face to face with a theatre of great importance.
And the principal player in this piece was a shetiger, a tigress.

The Tigress was the leading lady, and her

supporting cast were a tiger cub and a soldier.
Unfortunately, I had some difficulties in getting
the story explained to me. You see, our
interpreter was from Peking, and didn't
understand a word of the local dialect!
Luckily, we were able to find a local person who
spoke the national language well, and so we
were able to get a complete translation of the
piece. That is the translation which I shall now
perform for you. I had already heard of the
theme of this piece, from Ms Colotti-Pischel, a
notable researcher and analyst of Chinese
politics and culture. But from her I knew only the
broad outlines. I did not know the entire story, as
I was to discover it in Shanghai.
This is the story of a soldier. It is the soldier
himself who speaks, through the performer. He
tells about his experiences in the army.... coming
down from the Manchuria border at the start of
Mao's Long March.
As I am sure you know, the army in question
was made up of the Fourth Army, the Seventh
Army, and several regiments of the Eighth. They
came down in their thousands, from the North of
China, down towards Canton, covering
thousands of miles on their march.
They reach Canton, and move on to Shanghai.
Then they turn off towards the West, and cross
the whole of China from East to West, to arrive
at the foothills of the Himalayas. They have to
cross the Himalayas in order to reach the Green
Sea, the famous green-blue desert that runs
along the Mongolian border, and then head
north again, so that they can finally muster their
forces to embark on the Chinese Revolution.
However, our soldier is not destined to reach the
Green Sea. He is wounded by a bullet fired by
the soldiers of Chiang Kai Shek, as the
marchers are in the process of crossing the
Himalayas. He is badly wounded. His wound
begins to putrefy. Gangrene sets in, and the
poor soldier is about to die. He is suffering. His
comrades know that he is unlikely to survive
more than another couple of days.
One of the soldiers, a comrade from his own
village, suggests that he should shoot him, in
order to put him out of his terrible agony. But our
soldier turns down his offer: "I'm going to fight to
live," he shouts. Here lies the first allegory:
resist, fight on, even in the face of death.
He insists that his comrades leave him there. He
asks them to leav him a gun, a blanket and a bit

of rice. He's left on his own. He falls asleep. But

as they say, it never rains but it pours. He is
suddenly awakened by a crash of thunder: a
tremendous storm breaks all around him. An
avalanche of water falls from the skies, and a
raging river roars up at his feet.
On all fours, with agonising efforts, he succeeds
in scrambling up one of the mountain ridges. He
reaches a kind of plateau. He swims across a
raging torrent in order to reach an enormous
cave which he sees on the other side of the
stream, up in the rockface. Finally, safe and
sound in the cave, he meets.... the tigress.
The tigress. And her tiger cub. In China, the shetiger has a very specific allegorical reference:
you say that a woman, or a man, or a nation
"has the tigress" when they make a stand, at a
time when most people are running away, giving
up, taking to their heels, ditching the struggle,
copping out, in short, coming to the point where
they run down both themselves, and everything
in sight.
People are said to "have the tigress" when they
don't do this, when they hold firm, when
they resist. And the peasants of Shanghai have
another saying: they take their resistance so far
as even to hold burning embers in the palm of
their hands so that when those who had
panicked and fled later pluck up courage and
return, they find someone there, someone who
has kept the embers burning, so that they can
begin to organise again and rejoin the struggle.
The tiger also has another allegorical meaning
and this is perhaps the most important. A person
"has the tiger" when they never delegate
anything to anyone else, when they never
expect other people to solve their problems for
them even when the person to whom those
problems might be delegated is the most valued
of leaders, a leader who has shown his
capacities on countless occasions, perhaps the
most honest and trusted of Party secretaries...
No! Never! People who "have the tiger" are
those who undertake to be inside the situation,
to play their parts, to monitor and watch, to be
present and resposible to the ultimate degree.
Not out of any sense of suspicion, but in order to
avoid that blind fidelity which is a cancer, a
stupid and negative element of the class
struggle, the enemy of both reason and
revoution.
That, then, is the allegory of the tiger. I am now
going to tell this story... in Chinese... because I
have discovered that this particular Chinese
dialect is fairly simple and easy for people to

understand, since a lot of the words it uses are

very onomatopoeic... and also the story is full of
incidents which can be conveyed very
adequately by gesture... All I need do is disguise
the words by adding here and there a word or
two of our own dialect the dialect of the Po
Valley and you will be absolutely amazed to
discover that you understand virtually everything
I say. You will imagine that the story is being told
in the dialect of the peasants of the Veneto of
Lombardy, of Emilia and Piedmont... but in fact it
will be pure Chinese!
The wonder of theatre! Let's begin.
******* The Tale of a Tiger *******
The soldier speaks:
When we came down from Manchuria with the
Fourth Army, the Eighth Army and virtually the
whole of the Seventh Army, there were
thousands and thousands of us, shuffling along,
moving by day and by night. We marched,
loaded with packs and baggage. We were dirty
and we were tired. And we pressed on, and our
horses couldn't stand the pace, and the horses
died, and we used to eat them, and we used to
eat the donkeys too, when they died, and we
used to eat dogs, and, when we ran out of
anything else to eat, we also used to eat cats,
lizards and rats! You can imagine the dysentery
afterwards! We had the shits so bad that along
that road, I'd say that for centuries to come you'll
find the tallest, greenest grass of anywhere in
the world!
Some of us were dying, because Chiang Kai
Shek's soldiers, the white bandits, were shooting
at us.... from all sides.... every day.... We were
caught in a trap.... we'd find them lying in wait for
us in the villages, and they'd poison the wellwater, and we were dying, dying, dying.
Well, we got to Shanghai, and we continued out
the other side. Before long we saw the
enormous Himalaya Mountains in front of us.
And our leaders told us: "Stop here. There might
be an ambush here.... Up the mountainside,
there might be some of Chiang Kai Shek's white
bandits, waiting to ambush us as we go up the
gorge. So, all of you in the rearguard, climb up,
and guard our rear while we're going through."
So, we scrambled up, right up to the top of the
ridge, so as to make sure that nobody up there
started shooting up our backsides! And our
comrades marched, and marched and marched,
filing past, and we cheered them on:

"Don't worry, we're here. We'll look after you....

Move along, move along, move along!"
It took almost a whole day for all the soldiers to
pass. Finally it was our turn to go up the gorge.
We come down from our look-outs.
"But now who's going to guard our rears?"
We came down from our sentry-posts, very
nervous. We took a careful look down the valley
floor. Then, all of a sudden, just as we were
entering the mouth of the gorge, those bandits
suddenly popped out, up above, and started
shooting at us: Blim, blam, blam....! I saw two
big rocks. I dived in between them, under cover,
and started shooting: blam! I looked out.... and
realised that my left leg was still sticking out
from behind the rock.
"Hell, let's hope they don't notice my leg."
BLAM!
"Nyaaah!" They noticed! I copped a bullet right in
the leg.... The bullet went in one side and out the
other. It grazed one testicle, almost hit the
second, and if I'd had a third one, it would have
blown it to hell! Ooouch, the pain!
"Oh hell," I said, "they've hit the bone!" But no,
the bone was untouched.
"They've hit the artery.... " But no, the blood's not
spurting.
I grabbed my leg and squeezed and squeezed
and stopped the blood running. Then I got up
and tried to carry on. Gently, gently. But then,
two days later I started to get a fever, a fever
that set my heart pounding so hard that I could
feel it down in my big toe: boom, boom, boom.
My knee puffed up like a balloon, and I had a big
swelling here in my groin. "It's gangrene! Damn
and damn again, it's gangrene!"
The putrfying flesh began to give off a bad smell
all around me, and my comrades told me: "Hey,
do you think you could keep back a bit; you stink
pretty bad, you know...."
They cut two long, thick bamboo canes, maybe
8 or 10 metres long. Two of my comrades
decided to march, one in front of the other,
holding the bamboo canes on their shoulders,
while I went between the two of them, with the
poles supporting my armpits, so that I could
walk, without putting too much weight on my leg.
They marched with their faces turned away, and

their noses blocked so as not to smell the

stench.
One night, we were within reach of what they
call the "Great Green Sea", and all night I'd been
screaming, swearing and shouting for my
mother. In the morning, one of the soldiers, my
comrade, who was as dear to me as my brother,
pulled out an enormous pistol. He pointed it
here. [He points to his forehead.] "You're in too
much pain, it's too much to see you suffering like
this, let me do it.... just one bullet, and it'll all be
over."
"Thank you for your solidarity and your
understanding," I said. "I realise that it's said
with the best of intenions, but I think we'll leave
that for another time. Don't go worrying yourself.
I'll kill myself, myself, when the time comes. I
want to fight, fight to live! Go ahead, leave me,
because I can see that you can't go on carrying
me like this. Go on, go on! Just leave me a gun,
a blanket and a bit of rice in a mess tin!"
And so off they went. They left me. And as they
struggled through the mud of that "green sea", I
began to shout after them:
"Hey, comrades, comrades.... Hell....! Don't tell
my mother that I died putrefied. Tell her that it
was a bullet, and that I was laughing when it hit
me! Ha, ha! Hey!"
But they didn't turn round. They pretended that
they hadn't heard me, so that they wouldn't have
to turn round and let me see. And I knew the
reason: their faces were all streaked with
tears....
I dropped to the ground. I wrapped myself in the
blanket, and I fell asleep.
I don't know why, but as I slept, I had a
nightmare. I dreamt that the sky was full of
clouds, and they suddenly split open, and a
great sea of water came gushing down.
Whoomf! A huge, frightening crash of thunder! I
woke up. It really was a sea! I was in the middle
of storm, and all the rivers and streams were
breaking their banks, and flooding the valley.
The water was rising fast: splish, splash,
splish.... And before I knew it, it was up to my
knees.
"Hell, instead of dying from gangrene, I'm going
to end up drownded!"
Slowly, slowly, slowly, I clambered up a steep
slope covered in scree. I had to hang on to
branches with my teeth, just to get a hold. I

broke all my nails. Once I was up on the ridge, I

started running, dragging my useless leg behind
me, so as to get across the plateau. I dived into
a raging stream, and swam and swam till I
reached the other side. I clambered up the bank,
and all of a sudden, right in front of me.... Hey! A
big cave! A cavern. I threw myself inside:
"Saved! I'm not going to die drowned.... I'm
going to die of gangrene!"
I look around. It's dark. My eyes get used to the
dark.... and I see bones, a carcase of an animal
that has been eaten, an enormous carcase.... an
excessive carcase!
"But what kind of animal eats like this?! Let's
hope it's moved out.... and taken its family with
it! Let's hope they've all drowned in the flood!"
Anyway, I go to the back of the cave.... I lie down
on the ground. Once again, I start to feel my
heart beating, boom, boom, throbbing right down
in my big toe.
"I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm going to die."
All of a sudden, I see a shadow in the cave
entrance. A figure, picked out against the light.
An enormous head. What a head! Two yellow
eyes, with two black stripes for pupils.... eyes as
big as lanterns. What an enormous beast! A
tiger!! A tigress the size of an elephant! Oh hell!
In her mouth she's got a tiger cub. Its belly is all
swollen up with water. It looks like a sausage,
like a soggy little football. She tosses it onto the
cave floor.... Thud.... She starts pressing with
her paw.... on its belly.... Water comes out....
Schplock.... from its mouth: it's stone dead,
drowned.
There's another tiger cub too, wobbling around
its mother's legs, looking like it's got a melon in
its belly. This one is dragging a bellyful of water
too. The tigress raises her head. She takes a
sniff: sniff, sniff.... Sniffing the air in the cave....
"Hell, if she likes high meat, I'm done for!"
She fixes on me.... she comes towards me....
Here she comes.... That head, getting bigger,
and bigger.... ! I feel my hair beginning to stand
on end, so stiff that it makes a noise....!
Creeeak.... Then my other hairs start bristling
too.... in my ears, in my nose.... and other hairs
as well! A brush!
"She's coming, she's coming, here she is.... next
to me.... She sniffs me all over."

"Roooar!"
And off she went, slinking off to the back of the
cave, where she lay down. Then she grabbed
her son, the cub, and pulled him against her
belly. I looked: her teats were full of milk, almost
full to bursting, beause it must have been days
and days that nobody had sucked milk from
them, with all that water flooding down outside.
In addition to which, one of her children, the
other tiger cub, was dead, drowned.... So, the
mother shoved the little one's head next to her
teat and said:
"Roooar!"
And the tiger cub:
"Rooar!"
"Roooar!"
"Roooar!"
"Rooar!"
"Roooar!"
A family row! That poor kid of a tiger cub was
right: he was like a little barrel, filled to the brim
with water.... what do you expect.... ? Anyway,
the tiger cub ran off to the back of the cave....
and started making a fuss.
"Rooar!"
The tigress is furious! She gets up, turns round,
and fixes her beady eye.... on me! On me??!!
Oh hell, she gets angry at her son, and then she
comes to take it out one me?! What's it got to do
with me? Hey, now look, I'm not even one of the
family! Creeeak! Creeeak! [He imitates the
sound of his hairs standing on end again.] The
brush!
She comes over to me, with her great big
headlamp eyes. She turns sideways on, and,
smack! I get a teat in my face.
"What kind of way is that to kill people, hitting
them with your teat?"
She turns her head to look at me, and says:
"Rooar!"
As if to say: "Suck!"
With two fingers I take her teat, and go to put it
in my mouth.

"Thank you. If it makes you any happier..." [He

mimes taking a little sip from the teat.]
I should never have done it! She turned round,
with a mean look on her face:
"Rooar!"
God help anyone who spurns the hospitality of
lady tigers! They go wild! Animals, they are! So I
took her teat and... schloop schloop, schloop...
[He mimes drinking fast and greedily from her
teat.] Marvellous! Tiger milk... marvellous! A bit
bitter, but, my dear boy... so creamy: it went
slithering down, and rolled around in my empty
stomach... Slither, slither, slither. Then it found
my first intestine... Splosh: it spread through all
my other empty intestines... Fifteen days that I
hadn't eaten. Schloop, schloop, schloop. The
milk swilled around and began to revitalise my
intestine! Then, when I finished, schloop,
schloop, schloop, I folded it neatly away. [He
mimes the action of tucking up the empty teat,
like a salt wrapper.]
I don't remember how or when, but I fell asleep,
calm and peaceful as a baby. In the morning I
woke up. I'd already emptied out a bit.... I don't
know what happened, but the ground was all
soaked in milk....
I look round for the tigress. She's not there.
Neither is the cub. They've gone off... Maybe
they've gone out for a wee. I wait for a while... I
was worried. Every time I heard a noise outside,
I was scared that maybe some wild animal was
coming to pay a visit. Some wild animal, which
would come into the cave. I could hardly say:
"I'm sorry, the lady of the house isn't in. She's
gone out. Could you come back later? Maybe
you'd like to leave a message... "
I worried and waited. Finally, that evening, the
tigress returned. All smooth and slinky. Her
nipples were a bit swollen again with milk, but
not like the day before, when they were almost
bursting: this time they were about half full, just
about right, and behind her came the tiger cub.
No sooner had the tigress entered the cave than
she gives a sniff. She takes a look around, sees
me, and says:
"Roooar."
As if to say: "What? You still here?"
And the tiger cub passes comment too:

"Roooar."
And off they went to the back of the cave. The
tigress lay down. By now, the cub's belly was a
little less swollen with water, but every now and
then: Buurp! He sicked up a drop or two, and
then laid himself down next to his mum. His
mum gently took hold of his head, and pushed it
close to her teat:
"Roooar!" [He mimes the tiger-cub refusing to
drink.]
The tigress:
"Roooar!"
"Roooar!"
The tiger cub went scuttling off. He'd had
enough of liquid refreshment! [He mimes the
tigress turning and looking at the soldier. And
the soldier, resignedly, goes over to drink his
milk.]
"Schloop, schloop, schloop". What a life! And
while I was sucking on her teats, all of a sudden
she began licking my wound:
"Oh hell, she's trying me for taste! If she decides
she likes me, while I'm sucking her at one end,
she'll be eating me from the other!"
But no, she was licking. Licking. She was seeing
to my wound.
She started sucking out all the poison in the
swelling. Screeek... Splosh! She spat it out! She
spat it all out! Bliyaa! Hell, what a splendid tiger!
She was spreading her saliva, that special tiger
saliva, all over the wound. And all of a sudden I
remembered that tiger balm is a wonderful,
miraculous healing agent, a medicine. I
remembered that when I was a kid, in my
village, we used to have little old men coming
round, folk doctors, medicine men, who would
turn up with little pots full of tiger balm. And
they'd go round saying:
"Come on, ladies! Can't you produce milk? Then
smear your breasts with this balm, and, presto!
You'll get two big breasts, full to bursting! And
you old folk, are your teeth falling out? One wipe
over the gums... and your teeth will stay put like
fangs! Any of you got boils, warts, scabs... an
infection? One drop, and away they go! Cures
every illness!"

It's true, that balm really was miraculous! And it

really was tiger balm, it wasn't a trick. They went
looking for it themselves. Just think of the
courage of those old fellows, those doctors; off
they went, all by themselves, to take tigers'
saliva, from inside the tiger's mouth, while she
was sleeping, with her mouth wide open.
Schplook...! Schplook! [He mimes rapidly
gathering the saliva.] And off they went. You
could always recognise one of these doctors,
because they usually had one arm slightly
shorter than the other! [He mimes a person with
one arm shorter than the other.] Industrial
injuries!
Anyway, maybe it was my imagination, but, as
she was licking and sucking at me, I felt my
blood thinning out all over again, and my big toe
began to feel like it felt before, and my knee
began to loosen up... My knee was moving! Hell,
this is the life! I was so happy that I began to
sing while I was sucking: whistling and blowing.
Oh what a mistake! Instead of sucking on her
teat, I blew into it: whoosh... whoosh... whoosh,
a balloon as big as this! [He mimes quickly
deflating the teat before the tigress notices.]
...All gone! And the tigress was happy as
anything, with a face like this.... [He mimes the
tigress's expression of satisfaction.] She gave
me the usual lick, and off to the back of the
cave. Now, I should mention that while the
mother was licking me, the tiger cub was there,
looking on, very curious. And when his mother
had finished, he came over to me, with his little
tongue hanging out, as if to say:
"Can I have a lick too?"
Tiger cubs are like children. Everything that they
see their mothers do, they want to do too.
"You want a lick? Well, watch out for those little
itsy-bitsy sharp teeth of yours." [He threatens
the tiger cub with his fist.] "Watch out that you
don't bite me, eh!"
So he came over to me... Tickle, tickle... tickle...
He gave me a lick with that little tongue of his,
which tickled like anything. Then, after a bit:
Oooch! A bite! He had his testicles right there,
close to me. Bam! [He mimes giving a punch.] A
right-hander! Screeech! Like a scalded cat! The
cub began running round the cave wall, like a
trick motor cyclist at a circus!
One should always ensure respect from tigers,
starting when they're young!
And in fact, from that moment on, my friend,
every time the cub came close to me, he didn't

just walk by. Oh no, he was very careful! He

walked by like this.
[With his arms and legs rigid, moving one in
front of the other alternately, he mimes the tiger
walking sideways-on, careful to keep a safe
distance, and covering himself from any further
blows to the testicles.]
So, the tigress was asleep. The tiger cub fell
asleep too, and I followed soon after. That night,
I slept a deep, deep sleep. I wasn't in pain any
more. I dreamt that I was at home, with my wife,
dancing, and with my mother, singing. In the
morning, when I woke, there was no sign either
of the tigress or of her cub. They'd already gone
out.
"But what kind of family is this? They don't stay
at home for a moment! And now who's going to
look after my wound? Those two are capable of
staying out and about for days on end".
I waited. Night came. Still they didn't return.
"What kind of mother do you call that? A child as
young as that, and she's taking him out, walking
the streets all night! What's going to become of
him when he grows up?! A little animal!"
The following day, they returned, at dawn. At
dawn! Just like that, as if nothing had happened.
The tigress had an enormous animal in her
mouth. I don't know what it was. A huge goat
that she'd killed, about the size of a cow... with
huge great horns! The tiger came into the cave:
slam, she tossed it to the ground. The cub
parades in front of me, and says:
"Rooar!"
As if to say: "It was me that killed it!"
[He shows his fist threateningly, and mimes the
reaction of the tiger cub, who is terrified and
starts walking sideways-on.]
Anyway, back to the goat. The tigress whips out
a huge claw. She tosses the goat on its back,
with its feet up in the air. Scritch... a deep gash.
Scriitch again. She tears open its whole
stomach, its belly. She pulls out its innards, all its
intestines, its heart, its spleen... Scriitch...
scratch... she scrapes it clean as a whistle... and
the tiger cub... plip, plop... leapt right inside! And
the tigress... a flaming fury! Rooar!"
You see, you should never climb into a tiger's
lunch... They get terribly upset!

Then the tigress buried her whole head in the

animal's belly, in the empty stomach... And the
tiger cub was in there too... What a terrible
din... ! Yum... Yum... Slurp.... Scrick... Enough to
burst your eardrums!
Within an hour they had eaten everything in
sight! All the bones gnawed clean. All that was
left was part of the animal's rear end its tail, its
thigh, its knee, and the great big hoof at the end.
The tigress turned round and said:
"Roooar."
As if to say: "Are you hungry?"
She picked up the leg, and tossed it over in my
direction:
"Rooar..."
As if to say: "Try this little snack."
[He mimes being unable to handle the situation.]
"Yuk... ! Me, eat that?! But that stuff's tough as
old boots. I don't have teeth like yours... Look at
it! It's so hard, it's more like leather! And what
about all that fat, with the hide... all these lumps
of gristle... Now, if we had a fire here, so that we
could put it on to roast for a couple of hours... !
Hell, a fire! That's right, the flood has washed
down a whole lot of roots and stumps.
So, I went out, since I was already able to walk
again, even though I was still limping a bit: I
went out in front of the cave, where there were
some tree stumps and trunks. I started dragging
some good big bits inside, and then some
branches, and then I made a pile about so-high.
Then I took some dry grass, and some leaves
that were lying around. Then I put the two horns
in the shape of a cross, along with another
couple of bones, at the other end, and between
them I put the goat-leg, spit-style. Then I went
out looking for some round stones, sulphur
stones, which make sparks when you knock
them against each other. I found two good big
ones, and started to rub them together.
Scritch... scritch... [He mimes rubbing the two
stones together.] Hey presto! A shower of
sparks... Tigers are scared of fire. Ha! I hear the
tiger at the back of the cave:
"Roooar!" [He mimes bristling menacingly.]
"Well, what's up? You've eaten your dirty
disgusting meat, haven't you? All raw and
dripping with blood? Well, if you don't mind, I

prefer mine cooked. So scram!" [He mimes the

tigress, cowering, frightened.]
One should always get the upper hand over the
female of the pecies! Even if she is wild! So I sat
myself down with my two stones.. Scritch...
Scritch... and once again, hey presto... Fire! The
fire caught the grass, then the leaves, and the
flames started rising: niiice... ! And all the fat
began to roast, and the melted fat went down
into the fire... And a thick cloud of black smoke
rose to the cave roof... and drifted towards the
back of the cave. And as the cloud of smoke
reached the tiger, she went:
"Atchoo!" [A roar which suggests a sneeze.]
"Is the smoke bothering you? Well scram, then!
And you, Tiggles!" [He threatens the tiger cub
with his fist, and mimes the frightened cub
walking out, sideways on.] "Out!"
And I roast and roast and baste and baste and
turn and turn. Schloop... Screeek... Pssss... But
then I think it doesn't quite smell right.
"If only I could find something to flavour it with!"
Hey, that's right! Outside I remember seeing
some wild garlic.
I go out. In the clearing there, yes, right in front
of the cave... I pick a good handful of wild garlic.
Scrick... Then I see a green shoot I pull it up:
"Wild onion!"
And I find some hot peppers... I take a flake of
bone. I make some cuts in the thigh, and I stuff
the cloves of garlic inside, together with the
onion, and the peppers. Then I go looking for
some salt, because sometimes you find rock salt
in cave. I find saltpetre.
"Well, that will have to do, although saltpetre's a
bit bitter sometimes. What's more, there's the
problem that it might explode with the fire. But
never mind. I'll just have to watch out."
I stuff some pieces of saltpetre into the cuts. And
in fact, after a while, the flames... Blim... blam...
crackle... And the tigress:
"Roooar." [He mimes the tigress getting
frightened.]
"This is men's business! Get out, out of my
kitchen!"

Round and round and round goes the meat... By

now it's giving off a lovely clean smoke. And
what an aroma! After an hour, my friend, the
smell that came off that meat was divine.
"Haha, what a meal!"
Screeek: I pull off a strip of meat. [He mimes
tasting it.] Schloop, schloop.
"Hey, that's good!"
It's been years and years since I last ate as well
as this. It's really tasty, delicate, sweet.
I looked round, and there was the tiger cub... He
had just come in. And he stood there, licking his
whiskers.
"Oh I see... so you want a taste too? But you're
not going to like this stuff. Do you really want
some? Look. [He mimes cutting a piece of meat
and throwing it to the tiger, who gulps it down.]
Hopla!"
The tiger cub had a taste, swallowed it, and then
said:
"Roooar."
"Was that good? Do you like it... ? You badmannered thing!! Here, take this, hopla!" [Again
he mimes cutting off some meat and throwing it,
and the tiger cub stuffing it down.]
"Roooar... Swallow... Yum... Oooh... !"
"Thank you, thank you... Yes, all my own
cooking. Would you like some more? Watch out,
because if your mother finds out that you've
been eating this stuff...!"
I cut off a nice piece of fillet:
"I'll keep this bit for myself, but I'm going to leave
the rest, because there's too much for me. Here
you are, you can have the leg." [He mimes
throwing the goat's leg to the tiger cub.]
Blam... He got it full in the face, and it sent him
flying. He picked it up, and started dragging it
around, like a drunkard. Then his mother turned
up: what a row!
"Roooar... What are you eating there... that
disgusting burnt meat? Come here, give it
here... Roooar."
"Roooar. Oooh. Rooar."

A piece of the meat happens to end up in the

mother's mouth. She swallows it. She likes it.
"Roooar... Yum... Rooar!" said the mother.
"Roooar... Yum!" answered the tiger cub. [He
mimes the mother and the cub fighting over the
meat.] A quarrel!!
"Screek... Schloop... Nyum..."
I ask you! The bone! Stripped bare! Then the
tigress turns towards me, and says:
"Roooar, isn't there any more?"
"Hey, this is mine!" [Pointing to the piece of meat
that he had cut off shortly before.]
As I was eating, the tigress came close to me... I
thought that she wanted to eat my meat, but
instead she was coming over to lick my wound
to make it better. What a wonderful person! She
licked me, and then she went over to her part of
the cave. She sprawled out on the ground. Her
kid was already asleep, and I soon fell asleep
myself.
When I woke up in the morning, the tigers had
already gone out. This was getting to be a habit!
I waited all day, and there was still no sign of
them. They didn't even turn up for supper. I was
getting a bit nervous! The day after, thy still
hadn't come back!
"Who's going to lick me? Who's going to look
after my wound? You can't go off leaving people
on their own at home like this!"
They finally turned up three days later.
"Now I'm going to have a showdown!"
Instead I stood there, struck speechless: the
tigress came in, and in her mouth she had a
whole animal, double the size of the last one! A
wild bison, or something, I don't know what it
was! And the tiger cub was helping her to carry
it, too. Both of them came into the cave...
Whoomf, sideways on... as if drunk with the
effort... Whoomf.. they came over to me. Thud...
[He mimes the tigers putting the dead animal in
front of him.]
The tigress says:
"Pant... Pant... " [He imitates the panting of the
tigress.] And then:
"Roooar."

As if to say: "Cook that!"

[He makes as if to tear his hair, in desperation.]
What a terrible thing! You should never let tigers
develop bad habits!
"But, excuse me, tiger, I'm afraid you've
misunderstood. You don't think that I'm going to
stand here, getting scorched, slaving over a hot
stove, while you go out enjoying yourself, eh?
What do you think I've become? A housewife?!"
[He mimes the tiger rearing up as if to attack
him.]
"Roooar!"
"Stop! Hey, hey... Hey! At least we can talk about
it, can't we? What's the matter, don't we talk
about things any more? Let's have a bit of
dialectics... ! Alright, alright... Hey... ! Don't get all
worked up about it! Alright, I'll be the cook... I'll
do the cooking. But you're going to have to go
and get the wood."
"Roooar?" [He mimes the tigress pretending not
to understand.]
"Don't play dumb with me. You know what wood
is, don't you! Look, come outside here. You see
those things sticking up? That's wood. Bring all
those bits in here. "
She had indeed understood. She set to straight
away, gathering wood, all the stumps and trunks,
going to and fro, so that after an hour, the cave
was half full.
"And hey, you, tiger cub! A lovely life, eh? With
your hands in your pockets?" [Turning to the
audience.]
He really did have his hands in his pockets! He
had his claws tucked in, and, arms akimbo, he
was standing with his paws on two black tiger
stripes, one here and one here. [He puts his
hands on his hips.] Just as if he had his hands in
his pockets!
"Come on! Work! I'll tell you what you're going to
have to do: onion, wild garlic, wild pepper, all the
trimmings."
"Roooar??"
"You don't know what I'm talking about? Alright
then, I'll show you. Look, over there, that is
onion, and this is a pepper."

The poor thing spent ages going to and fro, with

his mouth full of garlic, pepper and onions...
Ha... ! And after two or three days, his breath
smelt so overpowering that you couldn't get near
him. What a stink!
And there I was, all day long, over the fire,
roasting. I was getting burnt to a frazzle... My
knees singed, my testicles shrivelled. I had my
face all scorched; my eyes were watering; my
hair was scorched too, red in front and white
behind! After all, I could hardly cook with my
backside to the fire, could I! What a life! And the
tigers they would eat, then go for a piss, and
then come back to sleep. I ask you: what kind of
a life was that?!
Anyway, one night when I was feeling scorched
all over, I told myself:
"That's enough... ! I've had enough. I'm leaving."
While the two of them were sleeping, fed to
bursting, half drunk with food, which I had done
on purpose, I crept off on all fours towards the
cave exit. I was just about to go out, I was
almost out... when the tiger cub woke up and
started yelling:
"Roooar... Mummy, he's running away!"
Rotten little spy of a tiger cub! One of these days
I'm going to tear your bollocks off with my bare
hands, roast them and serve them up to your
mum for supper!"
But it's raining! All of a sudden, it started to rain.
I remembered that tigers have this terrible fear
of water. So I dived out of the cave and began
running down the side of the mountain towards
the river... I hurled myself into the river... and
started swimming... swimming... swimming! The
tigers came to the mouth of the cave:
"Roooar!"
And I answered:
"Roooar!" [He transforms the mimed action of
swimming into a rude gesture.]
I reached the other bank of the river. I started
running. I walked for days, weeks, a month, two
months... I don't remember how long I walked. I
found not one house or hut, not a single village. I
was in forest all the time. Finally, I ended up on a
little hill, looking out, down into the valley below.
It was farmland. I saw houses down there, a
village... A village! With a village square, where
there were women, children and men!

"Hey... People!"
I ran tumbling down the hillside.
"I'm safe, people! I'm alive! I'm a soldier of the
Fourth Army, that's what I am... "
No sooner did they see me arrive than they
began shouting:
"It's Death! A ghost!"
And they all ran off into their little houses. And
they locked themselves in, barring and chaining
their doors.
"But why... what do you mean, a ghost... No,
people... "
I passed in front of a glass window, and
happened to catch sight of my reflection. I
scared myself silly: my hair was all white and
standing on end. My face was all scorched, red
and black. My eyes looked like burning coals! I
really did look like Death! I ran to a fountain, and
jumped in... I washed myself; I rubbed myself
down with sand, all over. Then I came out, all
clean.
"People, come out! Touch me... I'm a real man.
Flesh and blood. Warm... Come and feel me...
I'm not a ghost."
They came out, a bit scared at first. Some of the
men, some of the women, and the children,
touched me...
And as they touched me, I told my story: [He
runs through his story again, very fast, semigrammelot.]
"Im in the Fourth Army. I've come down from
Manchuria. They shot me up in the Himalayas.
They got me in the leg, and grazed my first
testicle, my second testicle, and if I'd had a third
they would have blown it clean away... Then,
three days, gangrene... He points the pistol at
me: "Thanks, save it for another time". Boom. I
fell asleep. Boom, it's raining, and water, water.
Boom, I'm in a cave, and a tigress turns up... .
drowned tiger cub... And she came towards me.
All my hairs stood on end... A brush! Ha!
Breast-feeding. And I suck, suck, just to keep
her happy, and she turns round, and there's
another tittery... ! Then the other one comes
over: blam! A punch in the testicles... And then,
the next time: whoomf, a huge animal. And I
roast, roast, red in front, white behind! Wham!

Mummy, he's running away! I'll pull your bollocks

off, you! Roooar! And that's how I got away!"
While I was telling my story, they stood there,
giving each other meaningful looks, as if to say:
"Poor fellow, he's brain's gone for a walk... He
must have had a terrible fright, the poor devil's
gone mad... "
And I replied:
"Don't you believe me?"
"But yes, yes, of course we do. It's normal to
drink milk from tigers' teats... Everyone drinks
milk from tigers' teats! Round these parts there
are people who grew up drinking milk from
tigers. Every now and then you see them going
off. "Where are you going?" "To drink milk from a
tiger's tits". Not to mention cooked meat! Oh...
How they love it! Oh yes, tigers are real gluttons
for their cooked meat!! In fact, we've set up a
canteen, specially for tigers... They come down,
specially, every week, so as to eat with us!"
I got the impression that they were taking the
mickey, a bit.
At that moment, we heard a tiger, roaring:
"Rooar". A mighty roar! Up on the mountainside
you could see the profile of two tigers. The
tigress, and the tiger cub. The tiger cub by now
was almost as big as his mother. Months had
gone by... Just imagine it, after so much time,
they had managed to find me! It must have been
the stink that I left in my wake... !
"Roooar."
All the people of the village started shouting and
screaming:
"Help! The tigers!"
And there they went, running off into their
houses and bolting themselves in.
"Stop, don't run away... Those are my friends.
Those are the ones I told you about. The tiger
cub and the tigress that suckled me. Come out,
don't be afraid."
Both the tigers came down. Pad... pad... pad...
And when they were twenty yards away, the
mother tigress started her row with me! What a
row!
"Roooar! There's a fine reward, after everything
I've done for you, after I saved your life. Roooar.

And I even licked you! Roooar. Which is

something that I wouldn't even have done for my
own man... for one of my own family... Roooar.
And you walked out and left me. Roooar. And
you taught us how to eat cooked meat, so that
now every time... Roooar... that we eat raw
meat, we want to throw up... and we get
dysentery... and we're sick for weeks... Rooar!"
And to this, I replied:
"Roooar. Well, so what? Don't forget that I saved
you too, by drinking your milk, because
otherwise you would have burst... Roooar! And
what about when I stood there, cooking and
slaving, with my balls getting all scorched and
dried up, eh? Roooar! And you, there, behave
yourself, because, even if you are grown up
now... " [He threatens the tiger cub with his fist.]
Then, you know how these things are, when a
family loves each other... We made our peace. I
gave her a little tickle under the chin... The
tigress gave me a lick... and the tiger cub gave
me his paw... And I gave him a wallop.. And I
pulled his mother's tail a bit... And then I gave
her a whack on the tits, which she likes... and a
kick in the bollocks for the tiger cub, and he was
pleased too. [Turning to the people locked in
their houses.] Alright! Row's over. We've made
peace again... Don't be afraid, don't be afraid!"
[To the tigers.]
"Hey, you'd better keep all your teeth in, like this.
Ummm. [He completely covers his own teeth
with his lips.] Don't let them see them. Ummm.
And keep your claws in your paws. Hide your
claws, under your armpits... Walk on your
elbows, like this." [He indicates how.]
The people began to come out... A couple of
them stroked the tigress's head...
"Oh, isn't she lovely... !" "Ooochy coochy
coochy... And look at the little one... Coochycoo..."
Endless lickings, little tickles, head-scratchings,
and for the tiger cub too. Then the children, four
of the children, got up on the tigress's back. The
our of them got up there, and, schloop, schloop,
schloop... the tigress walked to and fro, like a
horse. Then she lay down, and stretched out.
Then four other young lads grabbed the tiger
cub's tail, and started dragging him off. [He
mimes the tiger cub being dragged backwards,
and trying to stop himself by digging his claws
into the ground.]
"Roooar."

And I was there, walking behind, to keep an eye

on him. [Waving his fist.] Because tigers have
long memories!
Then they began to play, rolling around and
doing somersaults. You should have seen them:
they played all day, with the women, and with
the children, and with the dogs, and with the
cats, although every now and then one of the
cats disappeared, but nobody noticed, because
there were so many of them anyway!
One day, while they were there romping around,
we heard the voice of one of the peasants, a
little old fellow, coming down from the
mountains, yelling:
"Help, people, help! The white bandits have
arrived at my village! They're killing all our
horses, they're killing our cows. They're carrying
off our pigs... and they're carrying off our women
too. Come and help us... bring your rifles..."
And the people replied:
"But we haven't got any rifles!"
"But we do have the tigers!" said I.
So we take the tigers... Plod... plod... pod...
scramble... scramble... We go up the hill, and we
go down the other side, to the other village.
There were the soldiers of Chiang Kai Shek,
shooting, stealing, looting and killing.
"The tigers!"
"Roooar!"
The minute they saw these two beasts and
heard them roaring, the soldiers of Chiang Kai
Shek dropped their trousers, shat on their
shoes... and off hey ran!
And from that day on, every time that Chiang Kai
Shek's men arrived in one of the nearby villages,
they used to come and call us:
"The tigers!"
And off we'd go. Sometimes they used to turn up
from two different places at the same time. They
wanted us all over the region. They even used to
come and book us a week in advance. One
time, twelve villages turned up all at once...
What were we going to do?
"We've only got two tigers... We can't be
everywhere at once... What are we going to do?"

"Fake ones! We'll make fake tigers!" I said

"What do you mean, fake?"
"Simple. We've got the model here. Well, we
make heads out of a mixture of glue and paper,
papier mach. We make a mask. We make
holes for the eyes, just the same as the tiger and
the tiger cub, and then we make a hinged jaw.
One person goes inside, like this, in the head,
and goes: Squink... squink... squink... moving
their arms... Then another one gets in behind
the first one, and then a third one, behind, with
his arm out behind, to be the tail, like this. Then,
to end up with, we need a piece of cloth to go
over the top, a yellow cloth. All yellow, with black
stripes. And we'd better make sure to cover their
legs, because six legs for one tiger is a bit
excessive. Then we're going to have to roar. So,
now we're going to have roaring lessons. Let's
have you, over here. All those who are going to
be fake tigers, over here. We're going to start
lessons, and the tigers will be our teachers.
Come on. Let's hear how well you can roar!!
"Roar!" There you are. Now, you, repeat. [He
turns to one of the peasants.]
"Rooar!"
"Again."
"Rooar."
"Louder. Listen to the tiger cub."
"Roooar!"
"Again."
"Roooar."
"Again. Louder!"
"Roooar."
"In chorus!" [He begins conducting like the
conductor of an orchestra.]
"Rooooarrr!"
All day long there was such a racket in the
village that a poor old man who was passing by,
a traveller, was found stone dead, behind a wall.
He died from fright. [He mimes someone frozen
stiff, like a statue.]
But this time, when Chiang Kai Shek's soldiers
came back again they saw, they heard, and they
screamed:

"The tigers!!!"
"Roooarrr!"
Off they ran, and they didn't stop till they got to
the sea. And then, one of the Partys political
commissars came to see us, and applauded us,
and said:
"Well done, well done! This invention of the tiger
is extraordinary. The people has a degree of
inventiveness and imagination, a creativity that
you'll not find anywhere else in the world. Well
done! Well done! However, from now on, you
really can't keep the tigers with you. You're going
to have to send them back to the forest, as they
were before."
"But why? We like our tigers... we're friends...
we're comrades... They protect us, and there's
no need... "
"We cannot allow it. Tigers are anarchistically
inclined. They lack dialectics. We cannot assign
a role in the Party to tigers, and if they have no
place in the Party, then they have no place at the
base either. They have no dialectics. Obey the
Party. Take the tigers back to the forest."
So we agreed:
"Ok, then, we'll take them back to the forest."
But we didn't. Instead, we put them in a chicken
coop. We took out the chickens, and put the
tigers in instead. The tigers on the chickens'
perch, like this... [He mimes tigers swinging to
and fro on a perch.] And when the Party
bureaucrats came by, we had already taught the
tigers what they had to do:
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" [He imitates the crowing
of a cockerel.]
The Party bureaucrat took one look, scratched
his head, and said: "Obviously a tiger cock," and
away he went.
And just as well that we had kept the tigers,
because, a short while after, the Japanese
arrived! Thousands of them, little fellows, really
mean, with bandy legs, their bums trailing along
the ground, with great big swords and enormous
long rifles. With white flags, with a red circle in
the middle, on their rifles, and another flag on
their helmets, and another flag up their bums,
with another red circle and the rays of the rising
sun!

"The tigers!!!"
"Rooarr!!!"
They chucked the flags from their rifles, and they
chucked the flags from their helmets! All that
was left was the one up their bums. Zoom...
whoosh... they ran off, like a load of chickens!
This time a new Party leader turned up, and he
told us:
"Well done, you did well to disobey that other
Party commissar, the last time, because, apart
from anything else, he was a revisionist, a
counter-revolutionary. You did well... ! You must
always keep the tigers present, when the enemy
is around. But as from now on, you won't need
them any more. The enemy has gone... Take the
tigers back into the forest now!"
"What, again?"
"Obey the Party!"
"Is this because of the dialectics?"
"Yes indeed!"
"Alright, fair enough!
But we didn't. We still kept them in their chicken
coop. And just as well, because once again
Chiang Kai Shek's men turned up, armed by the
Americans: with their artillery and their tanks.
They came pouring down. Thousands,
thousands of them.
"The tigers!!!"
"Roooarr!"
And off they ran, like the wind! We chased them
off to the other side of the sea. And now there
were no more enemies. No more at all. And
once again all the party leaders arrived. All the
leadership, with their flags in their hands... And
the flags were waving... and they were
applauding us! The fellows from the Party, and
those from the Army. And the higher
coordinating intermediary cadres. And the
higher, higher intermediary central coordinating
cadres. All of them, applauding and shouting:
"Well done! Well done! Well done! You were
right to disobey. The tiger must always remain
with the people, because it is part of the people,
an invention of the people. The tiger will always
be of the people... In a museum... No. In a zoo...
It can live there!"

"What do you mean, in a zoo?"

"Obey! You don't need them now, any more.
There's no need for the tigress now, because we
don't have any more enemies. There's just the
People, the Party, and the Army. And the People
and the Party and the Army are one and the
same thing. Naturally, we have a leadership,
because if you don't have a leadership, you
don't have a head, and if there's no head, then
one is missing that dimension of expressive
dialectic which determines a line of conduct
which naturally begins from the top, but then
develops at the base, where it gathers and
debates the propositions put forward by the top,
not as an inequality of power, but as a sort of
series of determinate and invariate equations,
because they are applied in a factive
coordinative horizontal mode which is also
vertical of those actions which are posed in the
positions taken up in the theses, and which are
then developed from the base, in order to return
from the base to the leadership, but as between
the base and the leadership there is always a
positive and reciprocal relationship of
democracy... ."
"THE TIIIIGERS!" [He mimes the people
attacking the Party leaders.]
"Aaaaaargh!"
Ends