fiefoe

The 'now' section has its charm:

The parrot, still under the cover of the dishrag, burbled to himself and occasionally shrieked out “O! Hear you thunder? Is that the earth a-shaking?”
unmoved in practice by the things that kids at home reacted against on principle
Every hundred yards or so, Bis would launch backward out of the boat, his jowls flapping into an insane grin of canine pleasure, and disappear under the waves; Barba Ivan would kill the motor and drift until the dog caught up, or turn the boat around and go back for him.
it was not uncommon to see him walking down the main road with dozens of them rising around him like tiny, insane balloons while the film flashed wildly in the sun.
His grin was laced with guilt. “One of the advantages of being a monk is not having to get permission from your mother to carry out holy work.”
... absolved him by confirming that the burden was his.
Then they were breaking the thighbones, sawing through them with a cleaver so that the body could not walk in death to bring sickness to the living.

Strangely, I found the tiger's wife's husband to be the best developed character.

When he turned fourteen, his father, following a tradition of many generations, gave him a knife for cutting bread and locked him into the barn with a young bull whose nose had been filled with pepper.
the adolescent consumed with the smallness of his life
The closeness of that possibility, the reality of it, made it fragile.
the many ways he would have to uncouple his life in order to abandon it again
His songs had moved on without him.
Hitting her didn’t help, either—but it made him feel like he was doing something, interrupting her judgment at the very least. He had allowed himself to think he had found someone to put between himself and the village,

I have a soft spot for the trapper:

Like his quiet manner and his tendency to indulge the morbid curiosity of children, he seemed to bring with him a wilder, more admirable world.
Death squatting in it—a man, just a man, a patient-looking winged man with the unmoving eyes of a thief.
enormous glass cases where the wild things of the world were posed in agitated silence
Then came the painting of the rough spots, the glazing of the nose..
Any business he might have made of it dried up in the coffers and pockets of the rich who fled or died or went broke, assumed other identities, adopted other kingdoms.
... their skin came away from the body if you cut it right, heavy, blood-filled, but as accommodating as a dress pattern.
of possessions over which death had been repeatedly smeared

"Tiger's Wife" [.] (Reply)