The Second Coming

a relationship.”
    â€œI see.”
    What he saw was Marion holding his hand, laughing and running, half dragged, up the slope from the rocky beach, her gray eyes under the wide unplucked brows full on him, never leaving him, and he: he with the sweet pang at his heart—pang for what? for the pleasure she took in him? for the pleasure he took in giving her pleasure? for the vulnerability of her which he vowed to protect? her: gawky, ungood-looking (Waal now, Will, she ain’t exactly a queen, is she? his fraternity brothers might say) yet handsome and direct through the eyes and mouth. Or was it the bittersweetness of the sudden bargain he struck with himself during this very run up the slope, that he would marry her not because she was rich and decent and he could make her happy, but because his life had come to such a pass that he could at least do this, take an action just for the mystery of it, an action which couldn’t be bad and might even be a great good. Why not marry her? Mightn’t one as well marry as not marry?
    â€œPoppy, with all due respect to you and Mom, I’ve got to have something better. I’ve got to have something better in the way of relationships and I’ve got to have something better in the way of a genuine faith community. Mom lived by ritual. You live by—what do you live by, Poppy?”
    â€œAh, I’m not sure.”
    â€œWell, I know what I live by and I want to thank you and Mom for giving me what you did and for making it possible for me to learn, to learn to level with myself and others.”
    â€œAh, you’re welcome.”
    Once he saw the tiger traveling the highways and byways. But perhaps it was only one of the little explosions of light and color which now and then lit up the fragments of road map, bits of highway, crossroad, dots of towns which drifted across his retina. In the gray watery world, anyhow, no one seemed to notice the tiger. Very well, he thought, neither shall I.
    In New York, below Columbus Circle, on the platform of the downtown Eighth Avenue Express, hundreds of people stood waiting. Each wore a kind of hood not like a hangman’s hood but lopped over at the peak.
    He woke. The tiger was there, standing in the opening. There was nothing bright or fearful or symmetrical about him. His eyes were lackluster and did not burn. His coat was not thrifty. His muzzle looked more like a snout. Otherwise, there was nothing notable about him. He was as commonplace as the tiger in the picture book the child recognizes and points to. “Tiger,” says the child. The tiger’s head turned this way and that. He swayed as he stood. He was too tired even to unlock his legs and let himself lie down. It was clear he had come to die.
    Without fear or even curiosity he watched as the beast lay down heavily, its bones knocking against rock.
    Later when he happened to touch the tiger beside him, which was either dead or dying, he noticed without surprise that the fur and skin had grown as hard as rhinoceros hide.
    That’s unusual, he thought. Moreover, there had been an unusual expression through the eyes of the tiger before he lay down. The eyes were careworn and self-conscious. He felt toward the tiger as he often felt toward the patients at St. Mark’s. Haven’t you troubled yourself and fretted needlessly over the years? Did you ever really know your times and seasons? What a mystery that you should have come here without knowing! Were you ever really a splendid tiger burning in the forests of the night?
    A dry rustle came from the dead tiger like wasps in a gourd. Something was stirring in the carapace of this beast. Perhaps it is a female tiger lying down to whelp. No, this was an old male tiger, a friendly senile child’s-picture-book tiger. It was a death rattle.
    As he absently explored the beast, hide now hardened and chitinous as a locust, his hand felt along the spine as if it were looking for the slit where the creature escaped. There was no slit, but the skin had loosened in preparation for the molt.
    Molt? Tigers don’t molt. Be logical. It can be figured out. Very well. Whatever is alive here is more than a dying tiger. Yet it is not a tiger giving birth or a tiger molting and being transformed like a cicada. It is the same tiger but different.
    He watched curiously until he saw the joke. Then he grew sleepy and lay down beside the beast.
    The joke was that for the first time in the