Where Tigers Are at Home (60 page)

Thus the battle was turned into a pigeon shoot. The machine guns had given the
cangaceiros
no chance at all. And how could such a rout be justified? Why should Bezerra, the well-known coward, have prevailed over intelligence and bravery on that morning rather than any other? Lampião and his faithful followers had died without fighting. They had simply been executed.

Moved by the scene he was visualizing, Nelson had increased the speed of his file over the iron bar. No, he thought, Lampião would never have allowed himself to get caught so easily on a field of battle, even if he’d been taken by surprise. The story just didn’t stand up. The other version, though, the one that had been rumored abroad almost immediately after the tragedy of Angicos, was much more convincing: fuelled by the revelations of Father José Kehrle and confirmed by the brothers João and David Jurubeba, it declared that Lampião and the ten
cangaceiros
who had been martyred along with him had been poisoned.

ON THE NEXT
day, December 24, 1655, Queen Christina honored us with her presence, as arranged. Kircher was experienced as a guide; speaking without interruption to his guest, he quickly & amusingly presented large sections of his museum to her, only pausing over objects worthy of the royal interest. Here a robe from China, embroidered with gold and dragons, there an Egyptian intaglio of the most beautiful jasper or an abraxas engraved on jade & mounted on a revolving ring; further on a series of distorting mirrors. One of these made an extraordinary impression on Queen Christina; when you looked at yourself in it, you saw your head stretch more & more into a cone, then four, three, five & eight eyes appeared; at the same time your mouth became like a cave, with your teeth rising up like precipitous rocks. Widthwise you first of all saw yourself without a
forehead, then getting donkey’s ears without your mouth & nostrils being modified at all. But I cannot find words to describe the whole variety of these hideous apparitions. My master tirelessly explained the catoptric principles involved in these inventions & in those far more interesting ones that he had worked out in his mind, should some patron one day enable them to be realized.

After the catoptric museum, the finest & most complete in the world, Kircher showed Christina the great python of Brazil & the elephant seal, gigantic animals his fame alone had brought into his possession. After the Queen had gone into raptures at the size of these giants of creation, my master showed her an engraving & asked if she could identify the animal it represented.

“What strange monster is that?!” Christina exclaimed with a laugh. “It looks like a dromedary sitting on a branch.”

“It’s a flea, Your Highness, & its perch a human hair, which the power of my microscope has enlarged like that to offend the eye—& delight the mind. Take a look yourself …”

At once Athanasius handed her one of these instruments & several specimens he had prepared for that purpose. Christina, bending over the eyepiece, gave little cries of astonishment at the sight of these insects transformed into frightening chimeras simply by virtue of the lenses, while my master in his imperturbable way, continued to expound upon the infinitely great & the infinitely small.

From there we went on to the winged dragon Cardinal Barberini had parted with for our museum & that was made to inspire men with terror. But Queen Christina was made of sterner stuff & true to her reputation for subtlety. “A few months ago,” she said, “some German Jesuits told me they had seen dragons
priapos suos immanes, in os feminarum
intromittentes, ibique urinam fudentes
.
¹
I really gave them a piece of my mind,” she added, “for having permitted such offensive behavior, but they just laughed.”

“I hadn’t heard of that,” Kircher replied, “nevertheless I am disappointed at their thoughtlessness. I wouldn’t have left without capturing these beasts or … ‘converting’ them if you prefer …”

Following this skirmish, there was the lamb with two heads, the bird of paradise with three legs & the stuffed crocodile apparently sleeping under a reconstructed palm tree.

“The crocodile,” my master explained, “is the symbol of divine omniscience, since only its eyes emerge from the water &, although seeing everything, it remains invisible to our mortal senses. It has no tongue and divine reason has no need of words to make itself manifest. And as Plutarch points out, it lays sixty eggs that take that many days to hatch; it also lives for sixty years at the longest. Now sixty is the first number astronomers use in their calculations, so that it was not without reason that the priests of ancient Egypt dedicated a town to them, Crocodilopolis, & that the inhabitants of Nîmes still have this emblem on the walls of their town.”

We were making our way through the rest of the Egyptian section of the museum, heading for the curio with which a visit usually ended—a stone of 10 ounces removed from the gallbladder of Father Leo Sanctius, who unfortunately died during the operation—when Queen Christina stopped by a statuette to which I had never paid much attention: a rather plump figure wearing a hat in the form of a scarab, the rear legs of which hung down like ribbons well below the back of its
neck & that appeared to be squatting down while holding its sides.

“And that, Reverend Father?” Christina asked.

“An unimportant Egyptian idol,” Kircher replied, making as if to continue walking.

“I must say it seems extremely odd to me,” the Queen insisted. “What strange deity is it?”

Being perfectly familiar with the least of Athanasius’s expressions, I could tell he would have preferred to talk about something else & his reaction aroused my own curiosity.

“I’m afraid, Your Highness,” my master said, embarrassed, “that it is not something for delicate ears & I would most humbly beg you to permit me, with due reverence for your rank & your sex, to draw a veil over this exhibit.”

“But if I did not permit you …” Christina said, smiling with feigned ingenuousness. “You must realize that my rank allows me to do things that are denied other women & even the majority of men. Do not be misled by my dress; it is not their sex that makes a king or a queen, it is their rule, & that alone, that is decisive.”

“And your reign, Your Majesty, was great & remarkable, one of the most notable. I therefore bow to your wishes & beg you to pardon my untimely reticence. This idol represents the
deus Crepitus
, the Fart god, of the Egyptians, & that in the comical posture appropriate to his nature.”

Queen Christina remained perfectly impassive, proving that she fully merited her reputation as an enlightened monarch, more interested in increasing her knowledge, even in such a scabrous area, than in making puerile jokes about it. When some of her suite giggled & made ironic comments on the fetid side of this deity, she silenced them with a look that indicated the authority this masterful woman had over them.

“Please go on, Reverend Father. How is it that the builders of the pyramids & the library of Alexandria, the inventors of the hieroglyphs & so many other marvelous secrets, could lower themselves to this shameless cult? I must admit that my curiosity has been aroused by something that, on the face of it, has neither rhyme nor reason.”

“So you wish me to explain to Your Majesty the deified fart of the Egyptians? But would it not be to go against people’s rights to publish abroad the apparently ridiculous side of that wise & learned nation?

“Among those nations that have granted divine rights to sentient creatures I see none more excusable than those who worshipped the winds; they are invisible, like the grand master of the universe, & their source is unknown, like that of the deity. We should, therefore, not be surprised if the winds have been worshipped by the majority of nations as terrible & unfathomable forces, as marvelous workers of the storms & of the calm of the world & as the masters of nature; you will know what Petronius said:
primus in orbe Deos fecit timor …
²
The Phoenicians, as vouched for by Eusebius, who gives an account of the theology of these nations, dedicated a temple to the winds. The Persians followed their example:
Sacrificant persæ
, Herodotus says,
soli & lunae & telluri & aquæ & ventis
.
³
Strabo confirms that in almost the same words.

“The Greeks imitated one or the other of the nations I have just cited. When Greece was threatened by the expedition of Xerxes, they consulted the oracle at Delphi, who replied that they needed to make the winds favorable to them to get their
aid, so they made sacrifice on an altar dedicated to them & Xerxes’s fleet was scattered by a furious storm. Plato, in the
Phaedrus
, reports that in his day there was an altar consecrated to the wind Boreas in Athens. And Pausanias tells us that there was an altar at Sycion for the sacrifices that were made to soothe the anger of the winds.

“The Romans fell into the same dreams, according to Virgil they sacrificed a black sheep to the winter winds & a white one to the Zephyrs. And the Emperor Augustus, despite his enlightened outlook, being in Gallia Narbonensis & dismayed at the violence of the Circius wind, which is still called the wind of Cers in Narbonne & which blew down houses & the biggest trees & yet made the air marvelously salubrious, made a vow to consecrate a temple to it & did indeed build it. It is Seneca who tells us that in his
Naturales Quaestiones
.

“Finally the Scythians, according to Lucian, swore by the wind & by their sword, which they thus recognized as their god.

“And man, who has always been regarded as a microcosm, that is, as a small world, has his winds like the great world. And these winds, in the three regions of our body as if in three different climates, set off tempests and storms when they are too abundant & too swift, & give refreshment to the blood, to our animal spirits & to our solid parts, & health to our whole body when they are gentle and regular in their movements; but it only takes a pressing abundance of these enclosed winds to create an incurable colic, a windy dropsy or a knotting of the bowels, all of which are fatal ailments. The Egyptians, therefore, awarded divine status to these winds of the small world as the originators of sickness & health in the human body. And Job seems to confirm their view when he says,
O remember my life is wind …
However, they prefer the fart to all the other winds of this small world, perhaps because it is the cleanest of all or
because it makes a loud noise as it escapes from its prison, thus imitating the sound of thunder & this meant that it could be regarded by that nation as a small Jupiter the Thunderer who deserved their worship.

“Let us, however, thank the Lord for rescuing us from all these aberrations by the light of faith; whatever the power we admire in these natural agencies to do us good or ill, let us regard them solely as steps on a mysterious ladder by which we must ascend to the adoration of the Creator who afflicts or favors us by the ministrations of the greatest or least of his creatures, following the unfathomable commands of His providence.”

Christina of Sweden was delighted with this learned dissertation. She promised my master her support in maintaining & enhancing his museum, then left. My master was exhausted, but pleased to have withstood this little storm so well; he slept solidly for eight hours, something that hadn’t happened for a long time.

Kircher had acquitted himself well & returned to his studies without delay. He continued to be inundated by the wave of celebrity unleashed by the publication of
Œdipus Ægyptiacus
, with the result that there were not enough hours in the day for him to reply to all the questions & honors that came flooding in from all over the world. It was during this period, if I remember rightly, that a certain Marcus, a native of Prague, paid tribute by sending him a manuscript that was extremely rare but indecipherable, since it was written in a language that was entirely made up. Athanasius recognized it as the missing part of the
Opus Tertium
by the philosopher Roger Bacon; he put off the translation until later &, unfortunately, never found the opportunity to complete it.

The next year, 1656, flew by like a dream. There was nothing to disturb my master’s good humor, apart from the most disquieting
rumors from the Farnese palace. Christina was living in grand style, with no regard for Roman sensitivities, & this set the tongues wagging. The sole woman among the hundred or so men of which her court consisted, she threw herself unreservedly into any fancy her imagination suggested. On her orders, the fig leaves had been removed from the statues in her palace, the pictures lent her by the Pope—all with devout or instructive subjects—had been replaced by mythological scenes more fitting for a brothel than the residence of a new convert, & her courtiers did not hesitate, to the despair of the majordomo Giandemaria, to strip bare the palace of the unfortunate Duke of Parma, even removing the trimmings from chairs & brocade curtains to sell to wealthy commoners in the city. Cardinal Colonna had become so infatuated with the young Queen that he had to be sent to his house in the country & a young nun, to whom she had taken such a fancy she wanted to remove her from Our Lord’s service, had to change convents!