Where Tigers Are at Home (6 page)

In reply to his letter, Malbois had sent him a fine copy of the only book ever written by Robert-Houdin plus a
Fundamental Techniques for Conjurers
, which had so many illustrations of hands and palming maneuvers that it looked like a manual for the language of the deaf and dumb. The two authors emphasized that the only way to achieve true mastery was by a long period of exercises to make the fingers supple and their movements automatic. Eléazard, therefore, was training himself according to these principles, repeating conscientiously every little exercise of a system that, for him, was quite close to martial arts.

He was annoyed by Moéma’s letter. Not that the money she was asking for was a problem—he spent hardly anything on himself—but he objected to his daughter’s casual attitude. To write just when she wanted something from him was OK, even if it hurt him; after all, it was a father’s function to help a child he’d been selfish enough to bring into the world. But for a bar! She who wasn’t even able to manage a simple student’s budget! He would have preferred it if Moéma wheedled money out of him to go off on a trip or to buy new clothes. Why not? That was the way of things, especially at her
age, but every time she had to invent some new project even more unreasonable than the previous one. The worst thing was that she seemed to believe in her idea of a bar as firmly as she had been enthusiastic, two months ago, about the career of a model that was “beckoning her” and of which he had heard nothing since. Three thousand dollars for a portfolio and incidental expenses … Just a kid, really! he thought with a smile, suddenly touched by her ingenuousness. Or perhaps it’s me crossing the threshold: once you start noticing the follies of youth, whether to be offended by them or simply to forgive them, it means you’re already old. So bear with her. He’d sent the check that morning and he would continue to give in to his daughter’s whims until she found her vocation. It was the only way of ensuring she never had the feeling she’d missed out on something because of others or lack of money, of allowing her at some point to develop her own sense of responsibility in the course of her life. Was that not the way one
became
?

At this point in his disenchanted reflections he was overcome with hunger. He felt like seeing, talking to people, so he decided to go out for dinner. Soledade was annoyed when he told her. She’d already prepared his evening meal and immediately made a face. Eléazard tried to cheer her up, but to no effect; her only response was a scornful pout before flouncing out of the kitchen. Glancing at the stove, he saw an omelette swimming in oil; she had gone to the trouble of making a dish that Raffanel had taught her. Not a great teacher, he thought, as he surveyed the contents of the frying pan, unless it’s just that she’s not up to it. He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

Evening was falling over Alcântara, a sort of disturbing grayness, thicker and blacker than the overcast sky that had darkened the afternoon. There was a threat of rain for the night. Eléazard hurried on, taking care to avoid the zebu droppings that booby-trapped the poorly paved alleyways in places. He turned left, behind Sâo
Matías church, and was soon in the
Rua da Amargura
, the street of sorrow, so called because Viscount Antônio de Albuquerque, the former owner of the palace he was walking past, had been in the habit of making his slaves lie down in the mud so that his wife and daughters could cross with dry feet when going to mass on Sundays. Moth-eaten fabric hung in the wide windows, which destructive weeds were doing their best to take apart stone by stone; there were only scattered and cracked fragments left of the elegant blue-and-white
azulejos
that used to decorate one of the most beautiful residences in the town. Let the leprosy of time finish its work, Eléazard thought, let it peel off the façade of this obscene testimony to the barbarity of man to the very last tile.

When he reached the
Rua Silva Maia
, he glanced at the Church of the Rosário. It stood out in its white and green against the leaden sky. Placed there, right in the middle of a strip of ground reclaimed from the forest—but invaded by weeds because it hadn’t been paved—it seemed to be trying to suck up all the humidity of the soil, as could be seen from the spreading patches of red ochre that soiled the lower half of the façade. Shutters closed, a blind pediment, it oozed fear and neglect. Behind it the fur coat of the mango trees swayed heavily, disturbed by audible quivering that shook the foliage from one end to the other.

Eléazard pushed open the door of the Caravela Hotel
—Clean and comfortable. Seven well-appointed rooms—
making the lengths of bamboo hanging from the ceiling clatter against each other. A young creole immediately came to greet him, arms stretched out toward him, his face radiant with a broad, happy smile.

“Lazardinho! What a lovely surprise … 
Tudo bem
?”

“
Tudo bom
.”

Eléazard felt real enjoyment offering these ritual words of welcome; afterward, as if soothed by their magic, life immediately seemed more attractive.

“So how’s things?” Alfredo asked after having given him a friendly embrace. “If you want to stay and eat I’ve got some fresh prawns. I went to get them from the boat myself.”

“Prawns are OK …”

“Take a seat. I’ll tell Socorró.”

Eléazard went into the interior courtyard of the hotel. A few tables spread around under the vast roof of the veranda constituted the restaurant. Three immense banana trees and an unknown bush on the patio partly concealed the stairs to the rooms. A naked bulb was already lit, casting a yellow glow over the bare courtyard.

Once he had sat down, Eléazard checked the brief typed menu lying on the table; unchanged for months, it was very simple:

Alfredo’s whole charm was contained in the basic level of catering. Three dishes with fish or prawns, tarts and salads. Even the plural was a harmless exaggeration since apart from exceptional cases
booking advised!
there was nothing but the
plat du jour
, that is, what Alfredo himself and his young wife were having. As for the prices—
The best
, the cheapest
possible—
they simply depended on inflation (300 percent per year) and what Alfredo felt about the customer.

After a meager inheritance had left them with this dilapidated house, Alfredo and Eunice had decided to transform it into a hotel. They were motivated not so much by the idea of making a fortune, though that was an illusion they had harbored during the first euphoric days, than by the love of a simple way of life
and a desire to bring back some life to Alcântara. Proponents of an
alternative
solution—the word came to their lips frequently as a panacea for
bourgeois self-interest
and
American imperialism’s hold on the planet—they
managed to get by in their haven of peace and humanity. During the season a few tourists, whose passion for colonial architecture was such that they forgot the time of the last boat, would end up in their hotel, the only one in Alcântara, and that brought in enough to allow Eunice and Alfredo to struggle through with the restaurant for the rest of the year. Out of the goodness of their hearts rather than necessity, this likeable couple employed old Socorró as cook and to help do the rooms.

Alfredo reappeared carrying two glasses and two large bottles of beer. “Ice-cold! Just the way you like it,” he said, joining him at the table. He cautiously filled the glasses then raised his to Eléazard:

“
Saúde
.”

“
Santé
,” Eléazard replied, clinking glasses with him.

“By the way, have you heard the news? We’ve let a room!”

It was remarkable enough, right in the middle of the rainy season, for Eléazard to show his surprise.

“It’s true, I swear it is,” Alfredo assured him. “An Italian woman. She’s a journalist like you, and …”

“I’m not a journalist,” Eléazard insisted, “I’m a correspondent. It’s not the same thing.” To his mind, at least, it was different, but he was annoyed with himself for instinctively putting on this air and immediately qualified it. “Although both are a similar species of vulture …”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Alfredo went on, “and on your profession. Without you, without journalists, who would know what’s going on here? Anyway, she’s called Loredana, and she’s quite a girl, I can assure you. If I wasn’t married … phew.” This was accompanied by a wink and a burst of finger-clicking.

“You’ll have to teach me how you do that one day.”

“You just have to get the knack,” Alfredo replied. “Look: you let your hand go quite limp—that’s the secret—then shake it as if you wanted to get rid of it. Your fingers knock against each other and that’s what makes the noise of castanets.”

As Alfredo looked on with an amused air, Eléazard tried to imitate him without success. He admitted defeat when Eunice appeared with a tray.

“Good evening, Lazardinho,” she said, putting a plate of breaded prawns on the table. She leaned down and gave him a friendly embrace on both cheeks. “It’s ages since we saw you, you rascal.”

“Two weeks,” said Eléazard in his defense, “not even that, twelve days, to be precise.”

“Love doesn’t count the days. But you’re forgiven. Now tell me what you think of these little beauties,” she said, pointing at the prawns.

“Succulent, as usual,” said Eléazard, his mouth full.

“Good. I’ll let you get on with it.”

“Me too,” said Alfredo, getting up at a brief sign from his wife.

“No, no, you stay. Go on, keep me company. Eunice, bring us another plate of prawns, please, and a bottle of white wine.”

Alfredo sat down again with an evident air of satisfaction and he didn’t need to be asked twice when Eléazard offered to share his prawns. Peeled and fried in breadcrumbs with just the tail fin sticking out, you could use your fingers to dip them in a kind of very spicy red mayonnaise then pop them in your mouth. They were delicious.

At Alfredo’s instigation the conversation soon came around to the government project of setting up a rocket-launching site somewhere in the surrounding forest. So far the information they had was sketchy, gleaned with difficulty by a Communist newspaper
in São Luís,
Defense of Maranhão
, but it looked as if Brazil was preparing to sacrifice the Alcântara peninsula to the
higher interests of the nation
, as the newspaper editorial put it with a forest of ironic quotation marks.

“Rockets! I ask you!” Alfredo said in disgust. “People are starving to death in the streets, the national debt’s strangling the country to such an extent that we’re only working for the bloodsuckers of the IMF—and they want to send rockets into space! It’s the Americans again. But we’ll fight, you can be sure of that. If not, it’s the end of Alcântara …”

Eléazard loved the ease with which Alfredo fell into a rebellious attitude. He appreciated it in his daughter as well, although secretly and in a more selective way, without managing to find the core of innocence that would have allowed him to embrace their optimism. True, he shared the sense of the absurdity of the project that had brought a quiver to the Brazilian’s voice, he approved of his anger and his determination, but not for one moment did he feel able to believe in the possibility of holding up the course of events in any way. Not that he had become fatalistic, at least not in his own eyes, nor reactionary or conservative; he had simply lost the hope that alone can move mountains, or at least let you believe it’s worth trying. Even if he didn’t see it as such, his outward resignation worried him. But how can we call into question our feeling of being clear-sighted when, unfortunately, we are so taken with it? Humanity, he believed, was an indifferent species and anyone unfortunate enough to have sensed that obvious fact can do nothing about the innumerable mass of those who provide the evidence. Alfredo wasn’t a friend and would probably never become one, with the result that Eléazard kept to himself that extreme and contagious despair that must only—can only—be acknowledged within the protective sanctuary of friendship.

To get back to the “rockets,” Alfredo didn’t know whether they were talking about strategic missiles or a civilian base for launching satellites. Not that it mattered much for in either case the forest would be destroyed, the inhabitants expelled from their homes, the ecosystem endangered; this vague project had provided a focus for all his disapproval, as if it were an imminent threat to the world, and that, in its very excessiveness, was admirable.

The veranda bulb suddenly started to flicker and crackle. “The storm won’t be long coming,” Alfredo said. “I’d better go and find some candles.”

STRETCHED OUT ON
her bed in bra and panties, Loredana watched the unsettling fluctuations of the electric light on the ceiling medallion. She found its slow and constantly postponed death fascinating. In the humid, stifling atmosphere of the room, her hair was releasing the water of her body drop by drop. She wondered how long it would take before she liquefied completely, leaving nothing below the death rattle of the bulb but a large dark patch on the sheets.

Tormented by an increasing irritation in her crotch, she got off the bed and undressed. As they fell to the floor, her underclothes almost captured a large, honey-colored cockroach, which scuttled behind the skirting board. The folds in her groin were smarting in a very unpleasant way. One foot on the washbasin, she rinsed herself down with her facecloth, taking great care and grimacing with pain, before smearing cream over her raw skin. Standing in front of the mirror, she spent a long time fondling her breasts while she waited for the burning sensation, which was forcing her to maintain that uncomfortable posture, to subside. God knows how long she would have to spend moldering away here … Moldering, that was the word, she thought, brooding
over the fungal infection that was starting. And could she trust her go-between? Nothing was less certain. The guy had seemed odd to her, those sidelong glances he’d been giving her all the time she’d been negotiating with him. That he’d wanted to be paid in advance was understandable, but what she found difficult to accept was the fact that he’d revealed so little of the process that was under way, simply making her wait in this hotel. Two to three weeks, he’d said, perhaps a bit longer, but it would all be done by the end of the month. She might as well go and have something to eat, it would take her mind off things. Having failed to find any clean underwear in her suitcase, with sigh of exasperation she put on a skirt and T-shirt over her bare skin.