Where Tigers Are at Home (48 page)

“Are you asleep, Elaine?” Mauro whispered.

“No, I can’t manage to drop off.”

“What’s bothering you?”

“The questions you ask,” she said in ironic tones. “We get shot at by machine guns, one of us gets killed, Dietlev’s seriously wounded, we’re stranded right in the middle of the Pantanal with a bastard who’s doing all he can to leave us here to rot … and you wonder what’s bothering me?”

“There’s something else. I know. Tell me the truth.”

Cut to the quick by this demand, Elaine remained silent. Every time this boy managed to drive her into a corner. The truth … Her new life had not matched up to her hopes. Her other men—a few pale silhouettes were all that came to mind—were not a patch on Eléazard. Even Dietlev, so tender and funny, so brilliant, had not managed to eclipse the man she had fled in a desperate rush, in one last instinctive assertion of freedom. And, God, where had it left her? In this permanent anguish of having to live alongside a shade, in this quiet disgust with herself?

“The truth,” she suddenly said in a low voice, “is that I’m afraid. In a panic about what’s going to happen tomorrow … You don’t feel afraid, do you?”

Mauro did not reply. Elaine closed her eyes with a smile. She matched her breathing to his and finally fell asleep herself.

DAWN RAISED BANDS
of mist over the river, creeping greedily, ready to wrap themselves around the least protuberance, as if they could thus secure their fleeting existence. Nocturnal predators and prey had finally dozed off; their successors were still asleep. A brief moment of equilibrium during which the river noises alone—sudden plops, muffled lapping, brief splashes, languid belchings of the mud—broke the morning calm. The effort of sitting up made Petersen aware of his hangover. The first thing he did was to go and look for Yurupig to order him to make some coffee. He was not in the least surprised to find him squatting on the prow, his gaze fixed on the forest, so accustomed had he become to the Indian’s permanent, almost superhuman wakefulness. You could have sworn he slept standing up, like horses or certain sharks whose need to keep their fragile organs ventilated day and night forced them to keep moving.

Petersen climbed up to the wheelhouse to collect the few instruments that were indispensable for his march thought the forest: the detachable compass, the binoculars, two distress rockets rusting away in a drawer. He put these things by the Kalashnikov, congratulating himself on not having thrown it into the river with Hernando’s body. Satisfied with his preparations, he went back down onto the lower deck, heading for the kitchen. Yurupig wasn’t there.
Never there when you need him, the baboon. Surely he doesn’t expect me to pack the rucksacks. It’s not even properly light and he’s already managed to make me mad … But OK then, there are more urgent things to do
. Seeing a bottle of
cachaça
, he swigged a mouthful, grimaced and went to his cabin. The ceiling light concealed a hiding place. He took out the odd belt Hernando had given him and buckled it around his waist. Then he took a few steps to check the distribution of weight, adjusted the little bags by sliding them along the leather and seemed happy with the result: it wasn’t ideal, but it would do.

Back on deck, he heard voices: his passengers had woken.

“Morning, good people,” he said in placatory tones. But when he saw Yurupig drinking his coffee with Elaine and Dietlev, he gave him a murderous look. “So,” he went on, “how is the wounded man today?”

“Not that bad,” Dietlev said. “We can set off as soon as Yurupig’s made a stretcher for me.”

Petersen froze. “Bullshit,
amigo
. In the state you’re in you won’t last two days. I’ve already told the
professora
it would be better for you to wait here while I go for help.”

“Except that we haven’t enough water to last more than a week—thanks to you, I believe—and that, for some reason that escapes me, you’ve decided not to come back.”

“You’re crazy,” said Petersen. “Whatever makes you think something like that?”

“Stop putting on an act,” said Elaine in contemptuous tones, “you were seen puncturing the jerricans.”

Realizing where the information must have come from. Petersen turned to Yurupig, his face twisted with rage. “You! I swear I’ll have your hide for this!”

And since the Indian gave him a defiant look, he suddenly turned around, determined to fetch the Kalashnikov and put an end to all this palaver. He stopped short: Mauro stood before him, holding the rifle.

“Is this what you were going to look for?” he said in a toneless voice. “I’m not a weapons fanatic, but I’ve learned to use them.” Matching action to words, he fired a brief burst into the air before aiming at Petersen again. “It’s the first time my national service has been any use to me,” he added airily.

“Have you all gone out of your heads?” Petersen cried, gray-faced.

“It’s a preemptive strike, that’s all,” Dietlev said firmly. “Just remain calm and nothing will happen to you. We’re all going to
leave together, but first of all we need a few explanations. Why you punctured the jerricans, for example.”

“What jerricans, for God’s sake?! Surely you’re not going to believe that savage? He’ll tell you anything. He’s a two-faced bastard, he’ll take the lot of you for a ride.”

“For the moment it’s his word against yours, and I have to admit that your protestations don’t count for very much, especially after what’s happened. But as you like: you’ll give your explanations to the police, that’s all. While we’re waiting you can give me your belt.”

“You’ve no right,” Petersen said, turning pale, “they’re personal things.”

“The belt,” said Mauro threateningly.

“Fire if you like, I don’t give a shit.”

“
Cocaína
,” Yurupig said simply. “He’s the one who makes the deliveries.”

“Aha! So that’s it,” said Dietlev, raising his eyebrows. “That explains everything. Now I can understand why this dear fellow didn’t want anyone to go with him.” Seeing Elaine’s nonplussed expression, he added, “At a rough estimate there’ll be five or six kilos there, let’s say 50,000 dollars at the very least, and I’m sure our friend was banking on disappearing without a trace but with that little fortune. Since the Paraguayans certainly wouldn’t be happy with that, he wouldn’t risk setting foot in these parts again. As for taking us with him, that would be going into the lion’s den, since sooner or later he’d have to deal with the authorities …”

“It’s not 50,000 dollars but 500,000, you poor fool!” Petersen exclaimed, his arrogant self again. “And there’s half of it for you, if you let me slip away with it when the time comes. Just think, it’s more than you’ll earn in your whole life.”

Dietlev shook his head, a sorrowful look on his face: “If that’s all you learned in the Waffen SS, I’m not surprised the Germans lost the last war.”

“I’ll throw the lot of the filthy stuff in the river and that’ll be the end of it,” said Elaine firmly.

“Definitely not,” Dietlev said, “it’s the only proof of his complicity. He can keep it on, that’s one thing less you’ll have to carry. Keep an eye on him while Yurupig gets the stretcher finished, we’re leaving in half an hour.”

KIRCHER STILL BELONGS to the world of Archimboldo: if he enjoys anamorphosis, it’s because it shows reality “the way it isn’t.” To truly exist, landscapes, animals, fruits and vegetables or objects of everyday life must be put together to make the face of man, of the divine creature for whom the Earth is intended. With the distorting mirrors or those which, on the contrary, rectify skillfully calculated optical aberrations, Christianity of the Counter-Reformation period takes over the Platonic myth of the cave and turns it into an educational show: during our lives we never see more than the shadows of divine truth. Because it incites lust, this beautiful female face destined for hell is the lesson of the mirrors that distort it horribly; that this blood-colored magma will be of significance one day is the promise of the cylindrical mirrors, which reshape it and change it into the image of paradise.

“FOR NOW WE SEE through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known.” I am submissive, it’s the fault of St. Paul; and I live on illusions, it’s the fault of … a familar tune.

ON EUCLIDES’S REMARK ABOUT GOETHE AND THE
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES
. The doctor appears to be talking to me in
metaphors, but I have difficulty seeing what he’s getting at. That damned parrot’s definitely getting on my nerves. Must get rid of it.

TARTARIN DE TARASCON REVISITED: “Father Jean de Jésus Maria Carme, having become separated for a while from the people who had undertaken the same journey with him, saw a frightful crocodile coming straight toward him, mouth wide open, to devour him, and at the same time an angry tiger emerging from the rushes, equally determined to take him. Alas! How could the poor wretch flee the death that was threatening from all sides? What skill could he use to escape the fury of the two most cruel monsters of nature? There was nothing he could do. Thus exposed to this peril, with no human help, he made vows and prayers, now to the Virgin Mary, now to all the saints. But while he was trying to get Heaven to look favorably on him, the tiger leapt. The man bending down low to the ground to avoid the animal’s jaws, it flew right over him and hit the crocodile which, having its jaws wide open, fastened on the head of the tiger instead of that of the poor man and gripped it so tight in its long teeth that it died immediately. At that, the poor man fled, taking advantage of the opportunity as fast as he could.” (A. Kircher,
China Illustrated
)

KIRCHER’S FAULTS: preferring rhetoric to deductive rigor, commentary to the sources, the apocryphal to the authentic, preferring quasi-artistic expressiveness to the cold realism of geometry.

FROM LOREDANA: Chuang Tsu passing judgment on Moreira: ‘When the Tsin king is ill, he summons a doctor. To the surgeon who lances an abscess or a boil, he gives a chariot. He give five to the one who licks his hemorrhoids. The baser the service performed, the better he pays. I suppose you treated his hemorrhoids—why did he give you so many chariots?”

I REMAIN CONVINCED that our faculty of judgment is sharper, closer to what we truly are, in the negative—that is, in exercising criticism, in everything our very fibers reject before any conscious intervention of the mind. It’s easier to recognize cheap or corked wine than to distinguish the specific qualities of a great one.

KIRCHER is a mystical forger.

“SHE LIVED FOR THE EXQUISITE PLEASURE of remaining silent.” A nice quote, and one that seems to have been made expressly about Loredana. But we must be able to take it further … (Relate it to the
Tractatus
: “Whereof one cannot speak,” etc.)

IN 1647, AT
the age of forty-five, Reverend Father Athanasius Kircher was still a fine figure of a man. His beard had gone white in places, also his hair, but nothing else about him suggested he was that old. He had an iron constitution, much stronger than mine despite the difference in our ages & was only occasionally troubled by hemorrhoids, which he treated with an ointment he had formulated himself.

Summer & winter he rose a little before the sun & attended mass in our chapel, then had a frugal breakfast: a piece of black bread and some soup, which the bursar had sent up to his room. Not that he refused to take his meals with us in the refectory, but his multifarious activities meant he could not afford to waste precious time by devoting it to food alone. Eating at his desk, he could continue to read or write & was very content
with something none of us would have thought of considering a privilege.

Thus from seven o’clock until noon he stayed in his study, fully occupied with his books, working on several different ones at any one time. My task was to help him as best I could.

Normally we would go down to the refectory for our midday meal, but during those years of intense work it happened more than once that we missed lunch without even noticing. “It just means we’ll have an even better appetite this evening,” Kircher would say with a smile, though he would then call the porter by his acoustic tube & and have some confectionery brought up or a cup of that decoction called coffee that was fashionable at the time.

We were also in the habit of having a sleep for an hour or two, immediately after lunch; it was a custom from which my master never departed, but he never lay down, having a leather armchair with a spring that allowed the backrest to to be tilted. After that, Kircher spent his afternoon in various practical activities. He supervised the assembly of the machines he was constantly designing for the amusement of the Pope or the Emperor; several of the priests were occupied with these inventions in the College workshops as well as various outside craftsmen.