Tiger

The servants said that even the waters of the Orinoco obeyed Misia Schmutter,

the white-haired old lady, so proud of her Prussian ancestry, who treated

the world like her slave. She had seen a glint of her own ruthlessness in her

grandson Lucien''s eye. Worshipping and torturing him by turns she cultivated

in him a terrible understanding of tyranny and the true nature of power. She

passed on to him a love of beauty and science and of roulette.

Even after her death ''the Empress of the Orinoco'' would hold Lucien in a

relentless stranglehold, clinging like a tiger to his back, a demon people could

glimpse through Lucien''s gentleness. Misia Schmutter would be there as he set

out from the plains of San Fernando de Apure for the extraordinary journeys of

his life, first to Caracas where he lived in sumptuous excess in a gothic palace,

crowded with the human vultures who took advantage of his almost demented

generosity. Later, when he was declared a public menace and locked away,

tales of his extravagance would continue to flourish, as would the legend of his

extraordinary luck at gambling.

Like a pilgrim to a shrine, Lucien made his way to the German fatherland which

Misia Schmutter had so passionately described to him, to find the Nazis on

the verge of havoc. He returned to his beloved Venezuela, to be imprisoned for

treason and escape through the forest. Arrested and convicted for a murder he

had not committed.