Despite the crowded streets, I arrived ten minutes earlier. The alleys of the Zoo were deserted. The animals were sleeping, some in the sun, others in the cement igloos that mimicked dens or burrows. I stopped in front of one of the cages − Panthera tigris altaica.
The Siberian tiger did not like the midday heat. It preferred the shadows of the evening, the nighttime breeze and the chunks of meat the zookeepers tossed over the fence from a distance. Born in the wilds of Siberia, the striped big cat had not come to Nova Scotia of its own accord. Caught in a poacher’s trap, it had endured a Trans-Siberian odyssey, starvation and beatings at the hands of Russian circus masters and the agonizing seasickness of a voyage to Dartmouth.
Here, it rested apathetically. Or maybe it was dreaming. Did it still remember the taiga, the snow, the air that smelled of resin – or the hunt, the warm meat, the blood dripping away with the life of its fallen prey?
I suddenly heard Lorena’s voice. “Am I late?”
She had approached silently like she wasn’t walking on high heels but on feline paws. And I couldn’t hear her thoughts either, save when she wanted me to.
“I was actually early,” I said, but she already knew that.
Lorena didn’t pay me any attention. She passed by the fence, opened the doors to the cage and stepped inside. Then she turned towards me: “Come!”
I followed her, breathless, with blood pulsating madly in my veins, and with my temples thundering deafeningly. What will she teach me this time? I chose not to think of an answer because I didn’t like the possibilities.
The tiger got up, lazily stretched and came nearer. Once in front of us it stopped undecided, licked its paw and whipped the air with its tail, while its green, luminescent eyes remained fixed in Lorena’s. He took another step, hesitantly.
“Did you ever get into the mind of an animal?”
My eyes had become as wide as those of the cat that was captive under Lorena’s spell. That intense, overwhelming power was leaving me speechless!
“Couldn’t I try with something a bit smaller, a Chihuahua, a hamster maybe?” I managed to whisper.
The tiger snarled, showing me the white luster of its fangs. Lorena laughed.
“It’s only a three hundred kilo tomcat. Are you ready?”
Lorena closed her eyes, in the tiger’s I saw confusion. I couldn’t let it become anger, death.
I got in.
It was like a jump into an alien world, completely unexpected and amazing, so much so that I forgot my fear. The tiger thought in colors, a succession of dizzying and apparently chaotic colors. But it wasn’t like that at all. Every sound, smell, and image called a shade, one of infinity, a sensorial kaleidoscope which would have taken me a lifetime to decipher. I didn’t even have a minute, so I reduced everything to the essence.
Red meant blood, meat, and prey; blue meant unknown; yellow meant threat, danger, and imminent confrontation; green meant female, pleasure, and peace. He saw me sometimes yellow, sometimes red. I was for him both a threat and a prey? No, I was green, green! I thought of the taiga after the rain, of the rustling of the tall grasses and of me, swaying among them radiating tranquility, safety, and abandon.
The tiger opened its jaws, showing me its fangs, its rosy tongue, the black bottom of its mouth. It yawned again, and then lay down at our feet with its muzzle on his paws; in a moment it fell into a deep sleep.
Lorena bent down, scratching its forehead, then behind its ears.
“Would you like to pet him?”
“Maybe next time,” I smiled at her, solemnly promising myself never to set foot there again.
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