Where Tigers Are at Home (47 page)

We put the lid on the ground & Athanasius told me to look inside the trough. To my great surprise I saw that it had no bottom & opened like a well onto total darkness.

“The sacred chalice, the luminous vase in which the sublime mystery of the transubstantiation takes place, rested above this well of darkness. Here, on the edge of light and dark, the wine turned into blood again, the unleavened bread to flesh, in an ever-renewed sacrifice. Night & day were reconciled in the person of Christ to maintain the balance of the universe. Here, Caspar, in this very place!”

Kircher had raised his voice & as he said these last words he cast his torch into the black hole at the bottom of the trough. After a brief fall it landed a few feet below in a shower of glowing embers, then continued to burn, though less fiercely. My heart missed a beat & my blood ran cold: below the altar, just at its base, the god Mithras seemed to be moving slowly in the glow of the dying flames.

“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Kircher murmured fervently. “Zoroaster, Hermes, Orpheus & the Greek philosophers worthy of the name, I mean the disciples of Egyptian wisdom, all believed in a single god. The very one whose multiple virtues and perfections were represented by the Egyptian priests through Osiris, Isis & Harpocrates, in a way that is a mystery for us.”

“The Trinity?” I ventured, trembling.

“Yes, Caspar: Osiris, the supreme intellect, the archetype of all beings & things; Isis, his guardian angel & his love; their respective virtues give birth to Harpocrates, their child, that is, the world perceived by our senses & this admirable harmony, this perfect concord of the universe, which we ascertain each day all around us. It is, therefore, clear that the sacrosanct & thrice-blessed Trinity, the greatest & thrice-sublime mystery of the Christian faith, has been approached in other times under the veils of esoteric mysteries. For the divine nature likes to remain veiled, it hides from the senses of common & profane men behind similes & parables. It is for that reason
that Hermes Trismegistus introduced the hieroglyphs, thus becoming the prince & father of the whole of Egyptian theology and philosophy. He was the first & the most ancient of the Egyptians, the first to think of divine matters correctly, carving his opinions for eternity on immortal cyclopean stones. It is through him that Orpheus, Musaeus, Linus, Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, Parmenides, Plotinus, Melissus, Homer, Euripides & so many others had true knowledge of God & divine matters. He was the first, in his
Pimander
& his
Asclepius
, to affirm that God was One & was Goodness; the other philosophers merely followed him &, for most of the time, with less good fortune …”

My head was splitting, I must admit, at the consequences of such a vision of the world. Kircher had hit the nail on the head: there had never been either paganism or polytheism but one single religion, that of the Bible & the Gospels disguised, more or less, by the ignorance & guile of those who have turned it to their own advantage. It was no longer worth the trouble of trying to convince the infidels of the superiority of Christianity over their own belief, since it was enough, on the contrary, to show that they were identical, which until then had remained unclear—& that by logic alone, based on the most ancient texts & the lesson of the hieroglyphs. Intelligence & history could finally come to the aid of the light of the Gospels to support the indefatigable zeal of our missionaries …

“It’s marvelous!” I exclaimed, dazzled by my master & as if I had absorbed by osmosis some of the divine favor he enjoyed.

“I am merely an instrument,” he replied, “it is its creator who should be thanked. But come, let me finish my demonstration.”

Going back up the steps by which we had come, we left the basilica & soon emerged in a building with enough lights to make our torches unnecessary. After a few twists & turns we were in the transept of a church I immediately recognized.

“Yes,” said Athanasius, “Saint Clement’s. It is beneath this unremarkable chapel that the mysteries into which you have been initiated are to be found. And, as I’m sure you’ll have guessed, the altar of this third sanctuary is directly above the other two. It is thus the same god who has been worshipped here without interruption for fifteen hundred years.”

When we left Saint Clement’s the daylight blinded me for a brief moment. I was, however, less dazzled by it than by the far more decisive illumination that had set my soul on fire; I was enraptured, serene, like one who has been blessed. From that point on there was no doubt at all in my mind that in Kircher I was keeping company with a veritable saint!

“That guy’s a headcase,” Elaine said, flopping down beside Mauro. “Do you realize what he’s done? Now there’s no proof Milton was murdered …”

She was still using the familiar ‘tu’ without noticing. Mauro could have said precisely when she had started: in the heat of action, when she was giving orders, magnificent, her breasts exposed, like the figurehead on a ship.

“Calm down,” he said, taking her hand.
It was exciting to continue to address her as
‘você,’
to maintain the distance between them that had now become artificial
. “Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference now.”

Their voices were hoarse with weariness, the aftereffects of the emotions they had been through in the course of the day.

“What do you think we should do?” Elaine asked, as a way of countering her desire to cry. “Should we wait here?”

“It seems the most logical solution to me. I can’t see us carrying Dietlev through the jungle for days on end.”

“And if Petersen doesn’t come back?”

“He’ll come back, don’t worry, even if only to refloat his boat. And then there’s Yurupig, he won’t leave us in the lurch.”

“You didn’t see, just now, while I was discussing things with that swine, he made a sign to me to say no, as if he didn’t want us to stay on the boat. That’s why I played for time.”

“You must have misunderstood. We’ll talk to him a bit later, once we’ve got Petersen off our backs. And what about Dietlev?” he added, looking at the blood-soaked bandages, “It doesn’t look too good.”

“We need to get him to a hospital as quickly as possible. I’ve done my best, but his knee’s all smashed up.”

“You’ve done everything that could be done. I’d never’ve been able to do that, even if I’d known how. Are you a trained nurse, or what?”

Elaine managed to smile. “I wish I were. If Dietlev hadn’t helped me, I think I’d still be looking for the artery. All I’ve got is a vague memory of things I read when I was pregnant: I was terrified at the idea of being caught up in an accident unprepared. I spent months imagining the worst, it was hell. I even learned to give injections … When my daughter was born the obsession disappeared just like that. Strange, isn’t it?”

“How old is she?”

“Moéma? Eighteen. She’s studying ethnology at Fortaleza. When I think how she envied me this trip!”

Mauro felt a twinge of disappointment: he was in love with a woman who could be his mother. That thought threw him back into the uncertainties of youth worse than a rebuff would have.

“At Fortaleza!” he exclaimed, despite himself. “Why so far away?”

“It’s complicated,” Elaine replied after a second’s hesitation. “How shall I put it? In retaliation, I suppose. She was disoriented when I left; she didn’t want to live either with me or with her father.”

“You’re divorced?”

“Not yet,” she said pensively. “It’s in progress.”

Night was beginning to fall, hiding her face.

“Right,” said Mauro, “I’ll go and find a lamp and open a couple of tins. All this has given me an appetite …”

“You stay here, I’ll see to it. It’ll give me a chance to have a quick wash too.”

“As you wish. I’ll call you if he wakes up at all.”

“Thanks,” she said, getting onto her knees before standing up. “I mean thanks for standing by me back there. I was pathetic.”

“Forget it, please. Without Yurupig it wouldn’t have got us anywhere.”

Mechanically she ran her fingertips over his swollen face. “I’ll have a look at that when I come back, when I’ve got some light. Try and get some rest.”

THE BOAT
’
S BATTERIES
gave a feeble light. The pale yellow flickering exaggerated the wreckage in the saloon; the jumbled objects gave off an intense feeling of distress. Going into the kitchen, Elaine suddenly found herself face to face with Yurupig.

“You mustn’t stay here,” he said in a low voice, placing a finger on his lips to tell her to be quiet. “You must come with us, into the forest …”

“But why?” she asked, also in a whisper.

“He’s a bad man. He knows you have no chance. You’ll wait for days and days, and he won’t come back.” Since she still seemed
to doubt him, he added, “The water. I saw him, he’s the one who punctured the jerricans.”

AFTER A PERFUNCTORY
wash, Elaine put on a clean but damp shirt and jeans and went back up on deck. She took a paraffin lamp and a mess tin of black beans Yurupig had prepared for them. Dietlev had just woken up.

“I can understand drug addicts better now,” he said with a smile that emphasized his cheekbones. “The dreams I’ve had! X-rated stuff!”

“He didn’t want me to tell you,” Mauro said in answer to Elaine’s glance.

“How d’you feel?” she asked, sitting down beside him.

“Oh, never better, it’s as if I’d drunk a whole bottle of schnapps. I only hope I don’t get the hangover to go with it.”

“You must take some anti-inflammatory pills. I’ll get you some.”

“Don’t worry, it’s seen to. I swallowed a small handful when I woke up.”

“Here,” she said, handing Mauro the mess tin, “start eating. It’s Yurupig who made it. I must tell you what I’ve just heard. You won’t believe your ears.” In a few words she explained to Dietlev what had happened while he was asleep, then reported what Yurupig had told her. Mauro could not hold back a few choice words of abuse regarding Petersen.

Dietlev’s face had darkened. “That changes the whole situation,” he said after a brief pause for reflection. “We’ll have to see to it that we do the opposite of what he wants. Yurupig’s on our side, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. But we’ll have to be on our guard, the guy’s capable of anything. Mauro, you’d better get the satellite maps, it looks as if they’re going to be even more useful than I thought.”

Mauro shook his head as he hurriedly swallowed the food he was chewing. “You can forget them, they’re nothing but papier-mâché.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure. They were the first things I looked for when I went down.”

“Get something to write with, then. I’ve still got some details in my head, I’d better tell you them while I can still remember.”

When Mauro had gone, he took Elaine’s hand. “And how are you?”

“I’m surviving, you might say. It’s your leg I’m worried about. It’s all my fault … But I think I would have thrown myself in the water rather than go with that guy.”

“Don’t be stupid. Mauro beat me to it by a few seconds, but I wouldn’t have abandoned you either. The lad did well. As for my leg, it’ll hold out till I get to a hospital, won’t it?”

Elaine looked at him without finding a single word of reassurance.

“If not,” he went on with a smile, “we’ll just have to cut it off and we can forget about it. I’ve always dreamt of having a wooden leg, like Long John Silver. It’ll make me stand out, so to speak.”

“Stop it! I don’t even want to think about it.”

“This is all I could find,” Mauro said reappearing in the light of the lamp. He handed Dietlev two flyleaves torn out of a book and a pencil.

“That’ll do. Help me sit up a bit. Right,” he went on, drawing as he spoke, “let’s recapitulate: there’s the river with the junction and here’s where we were the last time I looked at the map, not long before we reached the crocodile hunters’ camp. You won’t get very far with that,” he said when he’d completed his map, “but this sketch should be enough to stop you going seriously wrong. If you skirt the marshy area you should be able to get back to the
river in two or three days, though you may have to double that time because of the difficulties of making your way across this terrain. I’ll make a list of what you have to take.”

“What
we
have to take,” said Elaine.

“No. I’m staying here, quietly waiting while you’re getting eaten up by mosquitos …”

“Out of the question! We’re taking you with us whether you like it or not.”

“She’s right,” said Mauro. “It’s out of the question.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Dietlev calmly. “I’ve worked everything out, I’m well able to manage on my own, as you’ll see.”

“We’ve said no,” Elaine insisted. “It would be madness.”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” said Dietlev, putting an end to the discussion. “In the meantime you’ll pack your rucksacks according to my instructions. And no slipping in anything else at all, OK?”

AFTER THEY
’
D GOT
their things together as Dietlev had ordered, Elaine and Mauro went back on deck. A further morphine injection allowed her to clean Dietlev’s wound and change the dressing. After that she forced herself to try and eat a little, but when the first mouthful turned her stomach, she told Mauro she wanted to get some sleep and stretched out alongside Dietlev.

For what seemed a long half hour she lay there, motionless, her mind fixed on the conviction that she would never get to sleep; once she had accepted this fact, she suddenly woke to the nocturnal din of the forest: still the same guttural cries, closer to or farther from the river, the same overexcited polyphony from the buffalo frogs, the same indistinct calls rendered even more oppressive by their resemblance to familiar noises—castanets, water
dripping or a reed pipe. And during the brief islands of silence, Dietlev’s convulsive snores and Mauro’s slow breathing.

The howl of some animal having its throat ripped open made her start. Tomorrow, she thought, they’d be making their way toward these specters with nothing but a compass to guide them. Something deep down inside was making her hope Petersen would force them to stay on the boat. Dietlev shifted in his sleep with the groans of a feverish child.