Café Boris and precautions taken for the prevention of tiger attack

It was a normal day in Café Boris up to the point when Sergei tried to leave and found a policeman blocking his exit.

 

“What’s up with you?” he said to the policeman, trying not to sound nervous, though he had just bought a ‘second-hand’ i-pad from Vasyl.  

 

“There is nothing up with me,” the policeman had replied, “but the authorities have declared an emergency curfew. You are not allowed to leave the cafe.”

 

“A curfew? But it’s barely evening. What is this, is there a war? Has the president died?”

 

“No, nothing like that. There’s a tiger on the loose.”

 

“A tiger. In Luhansk?” Sergei laughed. “Now I know this is nothing but a joke. There are no tigers in Luhansk.”

 

“What can I say,” said the policeman, clearly frustrated by repeating the same argument with every house, shop and café in the street, “a tiger’s escaped from a zoo, or a private collection, and the government have announced a curfew until it’s caught. It won’t be long I’m sure, the army are here.”

 

The argument had attracted a certain amount of interest inside the café. The café’s owner, Boris, grabbed a spoon from a nearby table and marched towards the door. “A tiger,” he said, “is that all. I’ll get rid of it for you.”

 

The policeman barred his way, clearly confused by Boris’ behaviour.  “No, no, that’s that whole point of the curfew. The government doesn’t want vigilantes trying to bag a tiger. It’s a valuable beast, we want to catch it alive if possible. Besides, catching a tiger isn’t easy, you need trained people, with specialist equipment, not some madman with a spoon.

 

Another policeman arrived, repeated the same message about the tiger, and helped his colleague force Sergei and Boris back into the café. The second policeman made the announcement so that the whole café could hear. “The outside world is closed to you,” he said, “there is danger on the streets and no man, woman or child may leave the building they are in. It is an official announcement, by the government, nothing to do with me. You must obey, that is all.”

 

Boris translated the message into Russian, English and French, for the non-Ukrainian speaking clients in his café.

 

An American couple, tourists who had somehow ended up in Luhansk, laughed at the news. “We went to India for a month three years ago,” said the man, “and we never saw a single tiger, we come to Luhansk for two days and they’re prowling the streets.”

 

Another family of tourists (French-speaking) were less happy. “But we are only here for a day and have a dozen things to do. We haven’t seen the St Peter and St Paul Cathedral, the Gascoigne monument.”

 

“I have seen them,” Boris said. “They are not worth being dying for, every town in Ukraine has attractions just as good, most have better ones. Even Moscow is better. You stay in Café Boris, take a photo for your holiday album. You never know, if I am able to sneak out I might even catch you a tiger steak.”  He brandished a nearby spoon in way that only served to further confuse the French-speaking family.

Most of the inhabitants of the café reacted to the news with stoical indifference. A nation familiar with invasion and occupations is hardy phased by the threat posed by a mere tiger. Most just continued eating, or drinking. Sergei tweeted about the tiger on his new phone.  Some phoned family or friends to say they would be running late. Symon was surely just about to phone his wife when she rang him first.

 

“Am I still at the café?” he could be heard to say. “Yes, I am still here. Yes I am still drinking, but I have no choice, the police have locked us in the café. There’s a tiger on the loose.”

 

There was a silence as his wife responded to the news, before he spoke again. “A tiger, a big cat, like a stripy lion. Yes, in Luhansk, what you think I’ve moved to India, of course Luhansk. It’s escaped from a private zoo. No, the police aren’t forcing me to drink, but there’s nothing else to do in this lousy café. What do you want me to do, die of boredom?”

 

Dmitri didn’t decided to phone his friend Viktor, a local police Inspector, to find out what was really going on. He didn’t believe in tales of escaped tigers.

 

“Viktor,” he said, “How are you?”

 

“Dmitri. I can’t talk. Everywhere’s crazy, I have a million and seven things to do.”

 

“But what’s happened, Viktor? We’re being told we can’t leave the café.”

 

“That’s good advice, Dmitri. You should stay in the café where it’s safe.”

 

“But why Viktor? I don’t believe this nonsense about a tiger. What has really happened? Is it the nuclear power station, another accident?”

 

“No, not that Dmitri. Nuclear power is completely safe, you have nothing to fear.”

 

“I shall pass your wisdom to my cousins from Chernobyl.”

 

“That’s a cheap shot, Dmitri. Chernobyl was a long time ago, ancient Soviet machinery, a time when the government cared nothing for safety. The modern reactors, they are much safer.”

 

“So what is it?” Dmitri persisted.

 

“An animal has escaped from a private collection. The whole city has been closed. The army has been brought in to catch and it and the police are supposed to ensure that nobody sets foot into the town. It’s a mad job, as you can imagine. Over a thousand troops, every policeman we have.”

 

“An animal, you say. What sort of animal, not a tiger?”   

 

“Officially we’re telling people it’s a tiger.”

“And unofficially?”

 

“Unofficially, it’s something much worse.”

 

“Worse than a tiger? What, two tigers?”

 

“A T Rex.”

 

“A T Rex? You mean the dinosaur, the creature that died out 60 million years ago.”

 

“Yes, well, it’s a big world, Dmitri. There have been rumours for years of an area in Mongolia where there are ‘dead creatures still living’. They say that private collector, a rich, rich man, funded a massive expedition to the area, thousands of scientists and hunters, and caught himself a dozen dinosaurs, still alive and running about. Including a T-Rex.”

 

“That’s crazy, it’s like something off the internet. You don’t believe that surely?”

 

“I’ve met some of these people, Dmitri. The money they have. They have secret underground bunkers twice the size of Luhansk. They have books, ancient texts thought to have been destroyed 3,000 years ago, lying there, never translated, being kept in a vacuum-sealed containers so that they don’t degrade, but they’re never looked at, never mind read.  Lost works, by Aristophanes, Aristotle, getting read less than your students’ poems.

 

“And the animals. Every species of extinct and rare animal. I got called out once, a businessman and his lady friend had been gorged by a rhino, a North African rhino, extinct in the wild now. They licked the rhino’s horn before sex, you see, they say it’s an aphrodisiac. Well, this rhino wasn’t properly chained and they were both severely injured.”

 

“I always said foreplay is dangerous,” Dmitri said.

 

Viktor laughed. “Ah, Dmitri, it’s good to hear a sensible voice. ‘Foreplay is dangerous,’ I will remember that for the next time I tell the story. Today, it has been crazy, like I’m in a movie, you know, one of those B-flicks.”

 

“Where a T-Rex runs riot? I’ve seen those movies Viktor. I’d always hoped our lives would make a better movie than that.”

 

xxx

 

An hour passed, maybe two hours. Meals were eaten, conversations were begun, finished and stalled. More vodka and wine were consumed. Eventually Symon, anxious at the earful he would receive from his wife, tried to leave. He got no further than a few steps from the café before he was bundled back inside by a policeman.

“You cannot leave,” the policeman said, “there is a curfew. Stay inside where you are safe.”

 

“But if I stay I will keep drinking. Usually the police stop me and say I must stop drinking, today you stop me leaving and say I must drink some more.”

 

“I didn’t say you should drink,” the policeman said. “You can sit here and not drink. Engage in chatter, enjoy a good meal. You do not have to drink.”

 

“But this is Café Boris. The food is lousy, the conversation is lousy, the atmosphere is lousy. It says so on the sign.” He pointed to the sign on the window.

 

The policeman shrugged. “Well then, what can I say, today you must drink. You can be sober tomorrow.”

 

News that the curfew was still in effect, and that there was no sign of it being rescinded, provoked the first traces of dissent amongst the clientele of Café Boris.

 

Boris decided to curb this ill feeling by making an announcement, banging a spoon on a vodka bottle to attract attention.

 

“The first vodka is free,” Boris said, “on the house, if any situation ever called for a drink it’s this one.” Vodka bottles were passed round, along with shot glasses, and a toast was drunk to the ‘Tiger that makes us drink’.

Boris is not fool, giving away the first vodka, as any café owner will tell you. The first vodka leads to many more vodkas, especially when there’s a T Rex or a tiger on the loose. It’s why many cafés and bars have happy hours, although there will never be a happy hour in Café Boris, at least not while Boris is alive.

 

xxx

 

About 9.30 p.m. Viktor showed up at the café. There were two policemen behind him carrying piles of blankets and pillows, which they started to distribute to the customers, who looked concerned.

 

“What is this?” asked Boris. “It’s bad enough I have to put up with my customers in the day, you cannot force me to spend the night with these people.”

 

“There’s nothing I can do,” Viktor said. “The tiger is still on the loose, the curfew is extended all night. Besides,” he smiled in the direction of Olyna, “it might be good for you to become more intimate with some of your friends.”

 

“You want me to sleep with the staff and customers,” Boris exclaimed, “what do you think this is, an American bar? Do you think I’m Sam Malone from Cheers? I have no desire to spend a night with a single person that has ever entered my café, let alone sleeping with all of them en masse.”

 

“You have no choice, I’m afraid Boris. Just organise it, take charge, I’m tired.”

 

Boris took charge. “Olyna,” he shouted, “sort out these pillows and blankets, we’ve got to spend the night here.”

 

“I can’t stay the night,” said Olyna, “what if my husband comes back? I have to go home, be there for him if he returns.”

 

“If that swine comes back it’ll teach him a lesson to find you staying out,” Boris said. “Seriously, there is a tiger, you must stay here. It is not safe outside. The government would not say so if it wasn’t true.”

 

The tourists tweeted about their predicament to their families. The American couple filmed the quiet still of Luhank’s streets to evidence the terror of the tiger that meant no man dare set foot outside. The locals phoned their families, those that had them, to explain that they would not be coming home. Symon phoned his wife. “What do you mean you’ve just heard about the tiger,” he could be heard to say, “I’ve been telling you about it all day. Of course I didn’t make it up. You must think I’m a terrible liar – I decide to stay at the café drinking and made up some story about an escaped tiger. My tales are better than that, usually you believe them.”

 

Viktor joined his friend Dmitri, carrying with him a bottle of vodka and a glass, pausing only to fill and swig two shots en route.

 

“Ah, god, I needed that. A whole day chasing dinosaurs and not so much as a whiff of vodka.”

 

If a photo was taken of Viktor at that moment, and you examined the photo in detail at your leisure, underneath the ever-present smile you would detect a certain weariness, a face tired of bureaucracy and tragedy. In his eyes you could just about make out the entire history of the world in all its tedious detail.

 

“A T Rex,” Dmitri said, “that’s just too far-fetched. Can’t the government come up with a better lie?”

 

“What can I say, Dmitri, it is the truth I tell you. A private collector. These people, they have money, more money than you can imagine, they can have anything they want. The world is theirs to take whatever they want from.”

 

“I’m not saying I don’t believe there are rich private collectors with rare specimens. But this is different. If the T Rex isn’t extinct, then we’re still in the age of the dinosaurs. The history books for the last 65 million years will have to be rewritten. The dinosaurs can’t have survived Viktor, it’d change everything we know about the laws of nature.”

 

“These people can afford to buy up the laws of nature, Dmitri, and keep them in a box for their own personal use. Probably the laws of physics are different in their world, they have all the nice physics, like ‘soft gravity’ which doesn’t hurt your feet when you’ve been walking all day.”

 

Dmitri smiled. Viktor may not have been a convincing liar, but who could not smile at his talk of ‘soft gravity’ and sore feet.

 

Viktor stayed for nearly an hour, drinking vodka, talking to Dmitri, answering the hundreds of questions being thrown at him and helping to prepare for the sleepover. At one point, on Olyna’s insistence, he even ate, a dish of potatoes and chicken.

 

xxx

 

By two a.m. the café was asleep. Olyna and the single women were in the kitchen, by unspoken agreement they would not sleep in the same room as the single men.

 

Olyna slept fitfully. This was her first night away from home since the weekend she spent at her sister’s a year previously. Her body twitched in discomfort, wriggling to find a more comfortable position, but however she twisted the floor was cold, hard and unrelenting. Maybe, in her dreams at least, she was somewhere soft, but who can say, who has ever visited a woman’s dreams?

 

In the main café a two-tier sleeping arrangement existed, with some, such as Boris, preferring to sleep on a tabletop, clutching a spoon as if it were a teddy bear. Dmitri copied Boris, and slept above ground, as he assumed Boris has a reason, maybe there are rats sufficiently lacking in self-respect that they come to Café Boris.  

 

The room was heavy with snoring, not just the noise of it, but the vibration. Two couples cuddled together for warmth, the American couple and the French-speaking tourists, the women thus treated to a rare opportunity to experience men sleeping en masse. They barely slept at all.

 

xxx

 

The next morning the inhabitants of the café gradually awoke, many of them with sore heads and all of them with sore backs and bones.

 

Outside, normality had returned. Even without looking they could hear the first tentative sounds of life in the street; people walking to work, cars, gossip.

 

Boris unlocked and opened the door. “It looks like you’re free to go,” he said, “not a policeman in sight. I’m sure you’re sick of this café. I know I am.”

 

Dmitri went for a walk. It was a glorious sunny day and, slowly, the streets filled with people, some going about their day-to-day business, the rest exchanging gossip and rumours about the curfew.

 

He phone Viktor. “What happened?” he asked.

 

Viktor sounded tired and irritable. “It was a false alarm,” he said. “Someone mistook a domestic cat for a tiger. It was all a waste of time.”

 

“What aren’t you telling me, Viktor? There are people who might, under certain unusual conditions, mistake a cat for a tiger. But there isn’t a single person in the entire world who could confuse a kitten for a T-Rex.”

 

“Go away, Dmitri, and take your questions with you. I have to sleep. I was up all night.”

 

Over the course of the next two days, Dmitri walked all over Luhansk, seeking any sign of the havoc caused by a T-Rex, or even a tiger, but there was not a trace of either beast.  Hundreds of people stopped to talk, to share their speculations, but everybody either had some mad conspiracy theory or were simply as confused as he was.

 

Viktor never revealed what had really happened, that is if he actually knew. The incident soon disappeared into the collected folk-myth that comprised Luhansk’s history.