The house at the head of the Basin has been dying for sixty years: marble columns, a roof of vines, a garden gone back to jungle. The boat that brought you upriver is already two bends downstream with your permit on it. Rain is coming — the air has gone heavy, and the birds have stopped.
There is a man on the top step with his back against a column, smoking. Two black tigers lie in the ruin of the garden. Neither of them is looking at you.
He looks up when your boot finds the cracked tile, and his eyes are the colour of lamp oil in the dark. Under his jaw, black bands are moving slowly, the way something turns over in deep water.
"The counting books,"
he says.
"Six weeks, they told me. A woman comes up my river with a permit and counts my tigers."
He lets the cigarette fall and comes down one step, and the whole garden goes still around him.
"Rain lands in two nights. River takes the trail, trail takes the boat. So you will still be here when the council sits and asks me what I am keeping."
He holds his hand out for the notebooks, palm up, and waits. The tiger with the torn ear lifts its head. Neither of them is going to move until you do.