Where Tigers Are at Home (21 page)

IF KIRCHER CLAIMS TO BELIEVE IN the existence of giants, it’s solely so as not to contradict Saint Augustine: one couldn’t cast doubt on the words of one of the fathers of the Church without casting doubt on the Church herself, etc. Willful blindness and lies, comparable on all points with those of Marr or Lysenko in other fields. It’s this kind of terrorism that religions or ideologies lead to that makes me want to puke. Take up the question with Loredana …

REPEATING SIMPLE FACTS: that religion is the opium of the people, the hard drug that for six thousand years has stopped all the pricks from rising up and confronting heaven; that Jesus, the
man with the nails—
that criminal from a Western kingdom during the Han period
as Chinese scholars of the seventeenth century called him, outraged at seeing such a scoundrel deified—has laced our drinks with bromide forever and ever; that our civilization is dying from having learned to feel sorry for itself, to give positive value to defeat and its victims.

THAT WE MUST RETURN to the sources of the sacrifice, to the perception of the right moment and of a balanced relationship with the world. Reinvent the crudest paganism and deny the
defixio
that nails our penises to the lead curse tablets of the graveyards. That a religion founded on the decaying carcass of a crucified man will inevitably have a worm-eaten view of the world.

A GOLIATH COMPLEX: the giant of Holy Scripture only exists in relationship to David, he is only strong and gigantic so he can die at the hand of the small, weak man. Merely to name any being or object Goliath will of necessity bring the David into the world who will do away with him or it. By its name alone the Titanic was destined to go down with all hands.

FROM A TRIBUTE TO JOËL SCHERK: “How could a beautiful theory be false?” The danger of symmetry and simplicity as arbiters of elegance. Since it’s beautiful, it’s true: a theory of everything or a metaphysical ragbag? If beauty consists of economizing on concepts, why should asymmetry or complexity be incapable of that? The fact that we find economy of means more satisfying than profusion doesn’t mean it has a greater truth value.

ALL THAT REMAINS of the astronomical observations made by Kircher is the crater that bears his name today. A rut on the surface of the Moon.

LOREDANA TALKING TO HEIDEGGER: “How’s things, you funny old bird?” Her eyes, her Ferdinand Knopff smile. My conjuring tricks seem to work.

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE nineteenth century, at the moment when Egypt became a target for conquest, Buonaparte’s scholars recalled Kircher’s fanciful conjectures. “For the first time, I entered the
archives of science and the arts
,” Vivant Denon wrote after the discovery of the temple of Dendera. With hindsight, it looks as if the sole purpose of the Egyptian expedition was to unearth the Rosetta Stone and with it the supposed origin of Western Christian wisdom.

“AMONG THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF OCCULTISM” wrote Dr. Papus, “a very special mention is due to Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit who was clever enough to get his works printed by the Vatican; on the pretext of attacking occultism, he gave a very full account of it.” Off the mark, but symptomatic—one charlatan recognizing another. Kircher’s outdated hermeticism, his assertions on the initiatory meaning of the hieroglyphs, his taste for the fantastic, the extraordinary, the mysterious establish esotericism well before Court de Gébelin or Eliphas Levi.

CREDULITY: Against religion, astrology, spiritualism and other twaddle, those varieties of stupidity in which the minds of our contemporaries continue to take refuge.

ARREST OF FRANÇOIS DE SUS: “Condemned to have his hand cut off, then his head, for having, with evil intent, struck a paper crucifix with a dagger two or three times … The same for a Jew for having poured a pot full of piss on a cross that a Christian was carrying in a procession.”

THE ARREST OF ESTIENNE ROCHETTE: “Condemned to the strappado then strangulation and then his body to be burned and his ashes scattered outside said church, for having broken the arms of two or three statues of saints in the church of Saint Julian in Pommiers en Forez.”

IF A BELIEVER FEELS INSULTED because the statue of his god has been mocked, it is at best because he still has doubts about whether his god exists, at worst because he’s stupid enough to identify with him. But when he finds weapons to avenge this offense in the laws of a society, or in going against them, that makes him into a sworn enemy, a wild beast to be locked in a cage.

KIRCHER IS A PERVERSE POLYMATH … He devotes himself to the encyclopedia. An attempt to enumerate the universe. Analogical technique: the whole is contained in each part, as in holograms.

FLYING VISIT TO QUIXADÁ: The night in the monastery of São Esteban, the room where President Castello Branco spent his last night before the airplane accident that wiped him off the surface of the earth once and for all. The pretty nun who showed me all the objects that had been faithfully kept, his sandals, the candle, the bar of soap, the last chair he sat in, the last sheets, covered in transparent plastic, etc. Without having any idea that there was only one thing I wanted: to screw her there, beneath the portrait of Saint Ignatius.

SPALLANZANI: he put trousers on frogs and proved that they had to copulate together to reproduce …

THE WIT OF HINDSIGHT: What I ought to have said to Loredana: “Liu Ling often gave himself up to wine. Free and in high
spirits, he would get undressed and walk around his house naked. To those who came to see him and rebuked him for it, he would reply, “I take the sky and the earth for my house and my house for my trousers. What do you think you are doing, Mademoiselle, coming into my trousers like that?”

WE FINALLY RETURNED
to Palermo, where Kircher was received with great honor. His feat at Syracuse was on everyone’s lips, with the result that all the academies in the town were vying with each other to have him speak to them. He took up his courses at the university again, tackling all subjects as they were suggested to him. In particular he showed how many hairs each man could have on his head—not more than 186,624 for the most fortunate, less than half that for the majority—& that if it was easy to imagine an infinite number by using addition, it was much more difficult, on the other hand, to imagine a similar number using division, for if one accepted that a hair could be divided infinitely, then one would also have to accept that the whole was less than the sum of its parts …

When an old Sicilian scholar rebuked Kircher for his propensity to count hairs & to divide them by four, Athanasius
shut him up by reminding him that a good Christian should not be afraid to imitate Divine Providence & that there was nothing on earth or in the heavens that was so tiny or so vile that it did not merit profound speculation. And if the gentleman would like to come to Rome, he would show him, thanks to a magnifying glass of his own invention, how one could enlarge a hair until it looked like a tree, with branches & roots, & how understanding this phenomenon alone merited several whole books. Kircher had won over his audience & the old scholar was left without a leg to stand on.

My master also commented on the assertion of Father Pétau & others that God had started to create the world on October 27 of the year 3488 before Christ, at eight hours and forty-seven seconds after midnight, demonstrating with ease by examining radically different theories about the day & the year that it was presumptuous to decide on that date &, by extension, on that of the Apocalypse.

The Prince of Palagonia had come to attend my master’s lessons again, together with the Duke of Hesse & people of standing in the town. There were various rumors circulating about him & scandalmongers wasted no time in accusing him of the seven deadly sins. They claimed the prince, being of a very jealous nature, kept his wife captive & that his palace was more like a castle inhabited by demons than a true Christian residence. We were also told of various fads that made him sound brain damaged but we paid no heed to them. The prince, like my master, was courtesy itself &, indeed, appeared to be more intelligent and cultivated than most of his fellow citizens. It was, therefore, with pleasure that Athanasius agreed to go & stay with him when he repeated his invitation for Christmas 1637.

There were a few days left before the date appointed by the Prince of Palagonia, when my master, in his insatiable curiosity,
decided to cross the sea to Messina. The rector of the university having told him that the fishermen of the district used a certain song to tame the swordfish & thus lead them toward the net, Kircher was absolutely determined to verify this marvel for himself. My reservations, dictated by my fear of seasickness & of Turcoman pirates, had no effect whatsoever; there was nothing for it but to yield to his whim.

I will pass over the details of our crossing to get to the moment when we reached the fishing grounds, marked out by some buoys. Once our boat had anchored, we transferred to one of the six small boats we had been towing, the one belonging to the
raïs
or captain. He was the only one, we later established, who had the ability to formulate the magic words that attract the fish. The sailors began to row & we had not gone a quarter of a mile when the
raïs
started to sing. It was an uninterrupted melodic line, sad & haunting, following the cadences of the oars & the rowers’ responses. As soon as the song started, Kircher leant over the gunwale to observe the depths & soon he grasped my arm insistently to force me to look: under the water, which was clear & transparent as crystal, I saw a number of large, silvery fish, moving along slowly, keeping up with our boat. It was such a magnificent spectacle that I did not tire of watching it … As for my master, he feverishly started to note down the marvelous song. After some time, silence suddenly fell. Looking up—Kircher from his notebook, I from the depths of the sea—we were surprised to see that all the little vessels were gathered in a wide circle. The sailors had stopped rowing, they were drawing in a vast net rhythmically, pulling it up foot by foot. The captain began a new song to encourage the fishermen in their exertions & from the way the nets sloped toward the center of the circle, I realized it was a huge pocket in which the fish were now caught.

The bottom of the net was soon horizontal below the surface: tuna and swordfish, half out of their element, were making the sea boil with their wild thrashing. I was wondering how the fishermen would get them on board, when they secured the net, to keep it in place, & grasped strong pikes that ended in broad hooks. The
raïs
intoned a third song, the solemn poignancy of which, chanted like a
Dies irae
, accorded fully with the slaughter that ensued.

Retching with revulsion, I observed Kircher. His eyes bulging, his hair dishevelled, spattered with blood & water, he was deeply affected by the carnage. I could sense that his every nerve was tingling, & looking at his broad hands gripping the side of the boat, I saw the knuckles go white.

“Pray for my soul, Caspar,” he murmured abruptly, “& stop me if I ever pick up one of those pikes.”

Convinced my master was tempted to berate the men for their cruelty, I gathered all my strength to beg the Lord to protect him &, thanks be to Heaven & perhaps to my prayers, Kircher did not yield to the impulse. Fortunately, for I would hardly have been able to hold him back & save him from eternal damnation given the wretched state I was in.

When all the fish down to the very last one were on board, we climbed back onto the ship & set sail for Messina. Once there, we embarked again almost immediately & it was only when we saw the splendid cliffs above Palermo that my master finally unclenched his teeth.

“Caspar, my friend, you have seen me in a very delicate situation & I will make confession about it to my superiors as soon as we are back in Rome, but before that I am anxious to explain to you what happened. That will perhaps help me to dissipate the shadows clouding my mind …”

Every time Roetgen felt overtaken by circumstances he would, as he put it himself, “go cataleptic.” After a period of intense concentration he would manage, without great difficulty, to paralyze his faculty of judgment and keep himself in a state close to complete detachment. Having put himself, by his own decree, in a position where anything could happen without him consenting to appear affected by it, nothing did actually affect him anymore. The worst worries simply slid off the invisible walls of his apparent serenity. He could have been in a Boeing in free fall or facing a raging lunatic armed with a gun and not a muscle in his body would have twitched; he would have died, if that should happen, with a lemming-like indifference.

Standing in the aisle, toward the back of the bus, his arms fused in a cross to the tarnished steel bars, squashed on all sides by the passengers clustering around him, jostled and jolted, dazed by the heat and the noise, Roetgen held his course like a sailing ship heading into a storm. Each time the driver was forced to suddenly slow down to avoid animals, kids or objects that appeared in front of his vehicle, as if on the screen of a video game, he sent a battering ram of the flesh and sweat of fifty people thumping into Roetgen. The desert landscape of the Sertão, occasionally glimpsed through the heaving mass, filled him with a sense of its desolation.