Where Tigers Are at Home (39 page)

Blushing to her ears, she clumsily tried to close her blouse. His eyes fixed on her chest, Mauro was smiling, a stupid look on his face, like a child who’s just seen Father Christmas.

PETERSEN WAITED UNTIL
the last moment before disengaging the clutch. Its impetus took the gunboat three or four yards onto the sandbank, where it listed slightly to starboard before coming to a standstill.

“A neat piece of work,” the old German said, proud of his maneuver. Then he cut out the engine and switched on the electric pumps. “Go forward,” he said to Yurupig, “and try to find these blasted leaks.”

When he came back down to the gangway, Elaine was just finishing binding Dietlev’s artery with the ligature. “How is he?” he asked.

“He’ll pull through,” she said coldly, “but it was less a …”

She took a syringe out of its case, pierced the rubber stopper of a little vial with the needle and started to draw up the contents. Dietlev had noted the nature and method of administering the medicines on all the labels so that she’d had no difficulty finding what she needed.

“What about Milton?” Dietlev asked as Elaine injected the morphine in his arm.

“Dead,” Petersen replied curtly. “I’ve just been to have a look.”

Elaine paused for the fraction of a second. A painful silence took hold of the little group in which the feeling of guilt at having forgotten Milton mingled with the sudden awareness of his tragic death.

“Mauro, could you boil some water for me please? I’ve got to finish cleaning this. Then we’ll have to take him down and make him more comfortable.”

“Right,” said Herman, “I’ll go and have a look around to check the damage before night falls.”

“One moment!” said Elaine. “That guy … I mean the Paraguayan?”

Petersen indicated his fate with an extremely expressive gesture. “Yurupig … He didn’t have a chance.”

FOLLOWING THE INDIAN
, Herman went around the holds with a torch. He was furious when he emerged: the machine guns had made an unbelievable number of holes and tears that were
impossible to plug. It was a miracle they’d stayed afloat for so long. Even with welding equipment it would take several days to patch up the boat. Herman hurried to the stern, but once he saw the condition of the rubber dinghy—a shapeless mass three-quarters submerged—he immediately sized up their situation. “Help me,” he said to Yurupig, “we’ll haul it aboard.”

It was like a sieve, beyond repair as well. As for the outboard motor, it had not only been stuck under water, a direct hit had torn it apart. Yurupig shook his head. “Nothing we can do. The cylinder head’s split.”

“A fine mess you’ve got us into!” Petersen exclaimed. “Stupid fucking
indio
! What are we going to do now, eh? You tell me that.”

Mauro’s calm voice was heard behind them: “Stop your bickering and come and help us. We need a piece of wood or something rigid to immobilize his leg.”

“I’ll see to it,” said Yurupig. “Start bringing the mattresses up to dry them out. The hammocks too …”

“And what else?” Herman said, beside himself. “I’m the one who gives the orders on this boat.”

“Stop shouting, for God’s sake,” said Mauro, taking him by the arm. “He’s right. As for giving orders, that’s all over. I’d say you’ve shown us what you can do …”

Taken aback by his firmness, Petersen followed him down into the interior. There was no water left in the saloon, but everything was higgledy-piggledy: books and papers transformed into revolting sponges, splinters of glass, soaking cushions … countless objects swept away by the flooding were scattered around in the most unlikely places. The cabins hadn’t been spared either, but on the top bunks they found three foam-rubber mattresses and a few blankets that were almost dry. The rest they spread out on the rail.

Meanwhile Yurupig had brought two small planks cut out of a crate lid and one of the webbing straps used to keep the tin
trunks tightly closed. Once she had the splints, Elaine set about seeing to Dietlev’s leg. As a result of the morphine he was so fast asleep that she had no difficulty immobilizing it satisfactorily. Then Yurupig made arrangements to move him: after having tied both ends of the strap together, he pushed it under Dietlev’s buttocks, leaving a broad loop on either side; then he lay on his back between Dietlev’s legs, slipped his arms through the loops, as if he were putting on a rucksack, and turned over onto his front. Once in that position, with all the weight of Dietlev’s body on his shoulders, he used one knee to lever himself up and got slowly to his feet. Not long after, he performed the same maneuver in reverse to put Dietlev down on a makeshift bed at the rear of the boat.

Elaine flopped down beside Dietlev. She had started to tremble and felt she was going to be sick. For a moment it seemed as if the forest were crying for her.

Under a blazing sky, the evening breeze began to raise little waves on the river.

“
WE HAVE TO TALK
,” said Herman with a somber air. “The boat is beyond repair, the same goes for the Zodiac. We’re all of us up shit creek, I can tell you. It’s no use waiting here, no one’ll come … It would be possible to build a raft to go back down to Corumbá, but you know what’s waiting for us a bit downstream. Those guys would shoot us like rabbits, that you can be sure of. That leaves the forest, which is at least as dangerous … but it’s the only solution if we want to get out of here.”

“Why not continue upstream on a raft?” Mauro asked.

Petersen gave a contemptuous shrug. “The current’s too strong. Even if we did manage to build a raft that would more or less float, we’d never be able to go upstream on it.”

“But they will eventually get worried,” Mauro went on. “They can always send someone in from the north, from Cáceres, for example, or even from Cuiabá, can’t they?”

“Who are ‘they’? Here it’s every man for himself. And my wife won’t get worried, sometimes I’m away for several weeks on business. By the time she does, we’ll all be long since dead.”

“But we’ve enough provisions for quite a length of time,” Elaine broke in, “and afterward we can always get by with fishing, or even hunting …”

“Oh, that’s no problem, missie. It’s not the grub I’m worried about, it’s the water. When the jerricans are empty—and quite a few have bullet holes—all that’ll be left will be river water, which leaves us the choice: die of thirst or of dysentery. That’s for certain.”

Elaine had read enough about tropical diseases to see that he was right. “And what are our chances of getting through the forest?”

“For you, none at all. It would be too hard, you’re not used to it; him either,” he said with a glance at Mauro. “Not to mention our friend; disabled as he is, it’s unthinkable. No, what I suggest is that I go with Yurupig to find help. The fork in the river isn’t that far, three or four days on foot, perhaps less, and once we’re there I’m sure there’ll be no problem finding someone to come and fetch you. At the very worst we’ll have to go up as far as Pôrto Aterradinho.”

Elaine hadn’t even started to consider the disaster from this angle, but the arguments Petersen put forward seemed irrefutable. Relieved at not having to face the jungle, she was about to accept this solution, when her eye met Yurupig’s. Slightly behind Petersen and without moving a muscle of his face, he was shaking his head rapidly to tell her to refuse.

“You keep out of this, I warn you,” Herman immediately said, turning to the Indian. “Well,” he said to Elaine, “what do you think?”

“It’s not a decision I can make alone. I’ll have to discuss it with Dietlev first, once he’s woken up. And Mauro will have his say too, of course.”

“As you wish,” Petersen said with a suspicious look. “But there’s nothing to discuss, believe me. I’m off tomorrow morning, anyway.”

“You’ll do what you’re told to do and that’s that,” Elaine said in a steady voice. “That’s what you’ve been paid for, and pretty generously paid too, from what I understand.”

A flash of anger appeared in Petersen’s eyes, but he merely gave a silent laugh, as if he’d glimpsed a comic sequel to the discussion. “I’m going to have a bite to eat and then get some sleep,” he said, controlling his temper. “And you’d be well advised to do the same,
senhora …
Oh, by the way, I’ve put Milton’s things in your trunk.”

“What things?”

“What he had on him. I chucked them both in the water, him and the other bastard. A matter of hygiene, you understand.”

Necrosis, the stench of corpses, caymans and piranhas falling on a naked body …
She felt a quiver of disgust run across the back of her neck. “How could you!” she burst out indignantly. “Who authorized you to do a thing like that?”

“No one,
senhora
,” Petersen said in honeyed tones and as if he were talking to a madwoman, “no one at all, I assure you …”

KIRCHER’s a common manipulator. He tampers with facts until they make sense. His clear conscience is no excuse. The propagation of the faith, propaganda, distortion of history, etc.—the sequence is only too well known. The certainty of being in the right is always a sign of a secret vocation for fascism.

I ASKED SOLEDADE IF, out of the goodness of her heart, she could give the library shelves a quick dusting: a categorical refusal. Even though it’s dead she’s terrified of the bird-eating spider I brought back from Quixadá.

A STORY FROM LOREDANA: A young Italian, on holiday in London, being taken home by car after a boozy night. It’s summer and he opens his window and sticks his arm out to drum his fingers on the roof of the vehicle. The car goes into a spin, overturns. After the accident, there’s nothing wrong with him apart from a bit of blood on his sleeves; he feels no pain, his pals are unharmed. Relieved, he shakes his hand in the gesture of a person who’s got off lightly and his fingers fly off onto the tarmac.

KIRCHER’S COLLECTION as an anamorphosis of Kircher himself. Less of a museum than a curiosity shop, like that of Dr. Azoux with his papier-mâché models.

LETTER TO MALBOIS: add confirmation of details on La Mothe Le Vayer.

A HISTORIAN, historians say, is at least capable of grasping the style of an age, something that could only arise at a certain time and in a certain place. But that is an illusion; a historian can only grasp the difference from the reflection of his own times. He holds up a bronze mirror to the past, eagerly looking for distortions.

“COPULATION with animals,” Albert Camus notes, “eliminates our awareness of the other. It is ‘freedom.’ That’s why it is attractive to lots of minds, even including Balzac.”

THE VERY END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: “In consideration of the criminal proceedings, charges and information, the interrogations, replies and confessions of the accused, confrontations with witnesses, conclusions of the aforesaid prosecutor; of the replies and confessions of the accused made in the presence of his lawyer and everything that has been placed before us, we declare the aforesaid Legaigneux guilty in fact and in law of copulation with a female donkey belonging to the same. As public atonement for this crime we condemn him to be hanged and strangled by the executioner, from a gallows that will be erected in such and such a place; and before this death sentence is carried out, the aforesaid female donkey will be stunned and killed by the aforesaid executioner at the aforesaid place, in the presence of the accused.”

If the animal is punished it is because it shares responsibility for the act with the man: the man guilty of sodomy has stooped to the level of brute beasts, but the donkey committed the unpardonable crime of raising itself to the level of thinking beings. They are both “against nature.” By betraying the laws of their species, they equally endanger the order of the world.

THE VERY END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: “Accused of attempted sodomy with a dolphin called Freddie, Alan Cooper, 38, justified the act by saying that he was only masturbating the animal to gain its friendship. His lawyers based his defense on the fact that dolphins are notoriously licentious and are some of the rare animals who indulge in the sex act purely for pleasure. Alan Cooper risks ten years in prison if the charge of
clear intention of rectal or vaginal penetration
is accepted and life if sodomy is
proved beyond reasonable doubt
.” (Newcastle upon Tyne, England.)

WHY DOES SCHOTT use Latin for the lewd passages when the language was understood by the majority of readers of his time? This false sense of decency is indecent.

IN GENERAL THE PROBLEM of the labyrinth is posed in terms of escaping: once one is in it, one has to find the way out. The labyrinth designed by Kircher seems to invert the question in that it doesn’t lead anywhere. The heart is inaccessible. The pointlessness of Ariadne’s thread: a true labyrinth should be devised from the center, it is a space that is totally cut off from the outside; an allegory of the brain, of its convolutions, of its impenetrable solitude. It takes a Daedalus to fly away from the labyrinth, but it also takes a Daedalus to kill the Minotaur in it.

THE XIAN STELE: For Kircher it’s absolute proof that China was Christian before becoming Buddhist or Confucian. The remains of an Atlantis of the true faith suddenly appearing on the surface of the earth, it’s enough just to point at them and the idolators will remember their lost paradise. The utopia of the perfect city is not situated in the future, as it is for More or Campanella, but in the most distant past.

TO BRING THE INVISIBLE INTO EXISTENCE: Euclides asking me to imagine an unfathomable abyss between us and finishing up crossing it with one great stride to join me. “You never know, do you …”

“
NATU RA/NATU RA/GAU DET/H/
,
natura natura gaudet!
” the Cardinal read out in great surprise, “ ‘nature rejoices in nature’ … That is truly marvelous & I beg you to forgive me the irony I permitted myself just now. Send your machine to the supreme pontiff within the hour, he will be charmed by it, of that I’m sure. As for myself, I can only beg you to make another one of the same ilk for me. You can rest assured I will not be ungrateful …”