Where Tigers Are at Home (61 page)

It was at this time that my master caught a stomach chill, from having eaten too much fruit, as he thought, during Lent. This indisposition was unfortunate, Christina having invited us, along with various other ecclesiastics, to a concert she had arranged as a sign of contrition. Having, since the early morning, tried all known remedies with no improvement, Kircher was in despair. Fortunately, just as he was coming to a decision to decline such a prestigious invitation, my master remembered a vial he had recently been sent by a missionary in Brazil, Father Yves d’Évreux. This vial, the Jesuit had said in his letter, contained a sovereign powder for all ailments that, in addition, helped to restore the vigor of a mind exhausted by study; he had, he said, often observed its effects both on the Tupinamba Indians, from whom he had obtained it, & on himself. As far as he had been able to ascertain, this remedy
came from a certain liana they called
Guaraná
; it was mixed with rye flour, the sole purpose of which was to make it into little balls that were easier to swallow.

In this dire situation, Kircher did not hesitate for one moment; following Father d’Évreux’s instructions to the letter, he ate one of the pastilles I made up for him with a little holy water. And where all the secrets of our pharmacopoeia had failed, the savages’ medicine produced a miraculous result: less than an hour after he had taken it, my master felt better. His stomachache and the fluxion disappeared, the color returned to his cheeks & he found he was humming a cheerful tune. He felt he had recovered not only his health but also the energy & sharpness of mind of his younger days. There was never anything so surprising as this metamorphosis & we were grateful to the Indians for the gift of this providential cure from so far away.

Kircher was making jokes all the way to the Farnese palace. His good humor was so infectious that we both fell about laughing several times at trifles that weren’t really that funny.

As usual Michele Angelo Rossi, Laelius Chorista & Salvatore Mazelli, the three musicians who were performing Frescobaldi at Queen Christina’s concert that evening, played impeccably, but their music struck an unexpected chord in my master. Hardly had they started to play, than I saw him close his eyes & fall into a reverie that lasted the whole concert. Sometimes he gave little exclamations of joy, which told me he was not asleep but plunged in the most marvelous rapture.

When Athanasius looked at me, long after the last note had been played, I thought his illness had returned, so strangely fixed was his look. His eyes, moist with tears, went through me without seeing me … From the few incoherent phrases he managed to utter, I realized my master was immersed in
the most absolute voluptuous delight, but words seemed to have extreme difficulty passing his lips, which made me very apprehensive.

“
Abgeschiedenheit!
” he murmured with a singular smile. “I am naked, I am blind & I am no longer alone … 
Schau
, Caspar,
diese Welt vergeht. Was? Sie vergeht auch nicht, es ist nur Finsternis, was Gott in ihr zerbricht!
⁴
Yes, burn! Burn me with your love!”

As he said this, he moved his hands & feet involuntarily, just as if they were touching burning coals. By these signs I recognized the divine presence & the immense privilege accorded Kircher at that moment. But I could also see that he was in such a state of ecstatic beatitude that he would be incapable of social intercourse, so I thought it my duty to take him back to the College at once.

In his room, to which I had to lead him like a little child, Kircher knelt down at his prie-dieu: far from fading, his rapture took a remarkable &, in many respects, frightening turn …

Loredana did not regret having confided in Soledade, but the soul searching her admission had forced on her had left her not knowing where to turn.

Two days later, when Soledade told her Mariazinha was expecting them that same evening, it took her a while to remember where she had heard the name. She was no longer at all attracted by the idea of meeting this woman who was supposed to be able to cure her of all her ills, but she accepted it out of consideration
for Soledade, who had gone to great lengths to get Mariazinha to agree to the meeting and seemed very proud of her efforts as a go-between.

She came for her in the late afternoon and they left right away, without having been seen by anyone in the hotel. As they walked, Loredana got dribs and drabs of information from the vague replies to the questions that were going through her mind: they were heading for the
terreiro
of Sakpata, where there was to be a gathering that evening, a
macumba
; they would see the ‘mother of saints’ before that, because it wasn’t certain that, as a stranger, she would be able to attend the ceremony. As to learning what exactly a
terreiro
or a
macumba
was, what sort of cult was being celebrated, Loredana had to give up on that since Soledade confessed that she was forbidden to reveal such details. Since, in contrast to her usual affability, she had assumed an air of obstinacy, Loredana left her in peace.

They left the main street, then the last permanent houses, and plunged into the peninsula on a footpath bordered by the occasional shack surrounded by
babaçus
. Despite the lack of rain over the last few days, the red soil still stuck to their sandals, making walking an effort. A zebu standing still, its ribs sticking out; a dog, nothing but skin and bones, too weak to bark as they passed; half-starved figures dressed in colorless rags, looking lost, with big, shining eyes focused on nothing … It was a vision of impoverishment beyond anything Loredana had previously seen, oppressive destitution, a storm ready to break, more visible here than in the streets of Alcântara or San Luís. The path grew narrower and narrower, the darkness was beginning to make the dark-green coat of the tall trees quiver: for a moment Loredana had the feeling they were somehow going to meet the night.

After three-quarters of an hour they found themselves beneath a huge mango tree, its bloated trunk, enlarged by its own shoots,
twisting like Laocoön assailed by snakes. A fairy-tale tree, greenish, shining, sprawling and large enough to serve as a hiding place for a whole tribe of witches.

“We’re almost there,” Soledade said, taking a little track hidden by the roots.

Mariazinha’s house appeared among the trees in the hollow of a perfectly leveled clearing that was so well maintained it looked unreal after the postwar landscape they had just come through. The façade was white, turning to dirty ochre, and Loredana was struck by the lack of windows and, as she approached, the remains of a stone cross above the door.

Hardly had they crossed the threshold than a little girl came to meet them. She showed them into a room that gave Loredana the shivers, so much did the furnishings recall the jumble of red and gold in Tibetan temples. Lit by a multitude of oil lamps, the place was crammed with fetishes in painted plaster: Indian chiefs, laughing demons, sirens, dogs barking at the moon. The walls were covered with sorry-looking lithographs indicating an ill-considered enthusiasm for the spiritualist Allan Kardec. Hanging from the ceiling was a whole network of scraps of red paper, prayer ribbons and banknotes. Surmounted by a statue of St. Roc—his name was written on the base so no one could miss it—and surrounded by plastic flowers, a large wicker chair seemed to form the heart of the sanctuary. Ensconced in it was an old woman.

Mariazinha was small, plump and of an ugliness that her great age had almost turned into an advantage. Her cast-iron complexion clashed with her frizzy white hair done up in a bun on top of her head; her goat’s eyes only seemed to look at people or things to see through them; her artificial voice, the rictus, caused by the paralysis of one side, which twisted her lips when she spoke, everything about her appearance gave her the frightening attraction
that hideousness sometimes arouses in us. Very skeptical as to the supposed powers of the woman, Loredana was playing along out of politeness. Mariazinha just stared at her, straight in the eye, while muttering some incomprehensible litany, a flood of words completely separate, dissociated from her look, a little like when playing a piano the right and left hands can manage to break the natural symmetry there is at work in the body. She was scrutinizing the stranger, reading her, like a sculptor studying the faults in the unworked stone, so that for a moment Loredana felt as if she were being divested of her own image.

“You’re ill, very ill,” the old woman eventually said, her look softening.

Oh, fantastic! Loredana thought, disappointed by the charlatanism of this oracle. It was obvious Soledade must have informed her of her condition.

“And I knew nothing of your affliction,” Mariazinha went on, as if in response to Loredana’s visible mistrust. “All the girl said to me was, ‘She needs you.’ Omulú wishes you well, he will save you if you are willing to receive him.”

“Should I go back to my country?” Loredana asked abruptly, as a challenge, the way skeptics will sometimes look at a chance cut of the cards or the conjunction of the stars to back up a decision.

“Your country? We all return to our point of departure one day … That is not what is important, which is to know where it is. If Omulú can help you, he will, he is the doctor of the poor, the lord of the earth and the graveyards.
Eu seu caboclinha, eu só visto pena, eu só vim en terra prá beber jurema …”
She drank straight from a large bottle she handed to Loredana: “There, you have a drink as well. May the spirit of
jurema
purify you.”

Overcoming her revulsion at the sight of the dirty bottle and the small quantity of thick, red liquid left in it, she forced herself to swallow a mouthful. It was acrid, very high in alcohol, with
an indefinable taste of green leaves and cough syrup. Mariazinha must be completely inebriated to drink something like that.

It was at that moment that she heard the drums, very close, beating out the rhythm of the samba.

“Go and sit down,” Mariazinha said, taking them out of the room. “And you,” she added to Loredana, “try to do as the others do, don’t resist anything the night will bring.”

“Come on, it’s this way,” Soledade said, once they were alone, “I didn’t think she was going to let you attend the
macumba
, it’s super! You’ll see, you haven’t got anything like this in Italy …”

Loredana followed her to a door leading out behind the house. She stared, open-mouthed, at the sight that greeted her: there were about fifty people there, men and women, sitting on the ground or on low benches around a wide rectangle of swept earth. An old telegraph pole had been placed at the intersection of the diagonals; several strings of fairy lights spread out from it, making a canopy of light above the audience. Standing behind their instruments, three young drummers seemed to be getting a kick out of their own virtuosity.

To Loredana’s great relief, the people paid no attention to them. They moved aside quite naturally to let them sit down on the edge of the
terreiro
. The crowd was buzzing: the dispossessed, marked by privation and fate, ghostly beings, their swarthy skin shining in the many-colored lights. Certain mulatto women were wearing long white dresses that made them look like Tahitians in their Sunday best. On the other side of the area Loredana saw Socorró. Their eyes met without her showing any reaction at all. She was more saddened than surprised by this disdain; the old woman must find the presence of a stranger unseemly in that place. Even Soledade’s attitude to her had changed. She sensed that she was distant, reserved, despite the occasional whispered remark:

“The silent queen,” she said, pointing to a slatternly adolescent who was holding out a calabash filled with
jurema
to them.

It was Mariazinha’s niece, a mute girl whose job it was to serve the gathered crowd. She drew the drink from a large bucket with a tin jug eaten away with rust that dribbled the red liquid over her calves. Equally silent, and resigned, was the cluster of black hens tied by their legs to the central post. Crude pipes were being passed round; they were filled with a mixture of tobacco and pot which made your head spin with every puff. Kept at ground level by the nocturnal humidity, the smoke hung around like mist, giving off a scent of eucalyptus.

The rhythm of the drums quickened as some men placed Mariazinha’s wicker throne, with its back to the darkness, between two pyres on the side of the yard that had been left free. Then they brought in a little table, on which the silent queen placed a white cloth and a covered object, which she handled with an indefinable look of fear. Bowls of popcorn and manioc also appeared, the traditional offerings to Omulú, as well as the array of his attributes: a kind of loincloth with an openwork bonnet and the
xaxará
, the bundle of reeds tied by rings made of cowrie shells, which Soledade explained as a kind of scepter imbued with magic power. The fires on either side of this altar were lit, the drums fell silent, and all eyes turned toward the house.

Her bottle of
jurema
in her hand, Mariazinha went to the middle of the
terreiro
; she walked in a bizarre manner, taking little hurried steps, as if her ankles were hobbled with invisible chains. Close to the central post, she stopped to take a mouthful of
jurema
, which she sprayed over the hens. After having put her bottle down, she took a bag of ash from beside the altar, made a hole in it and started to draw large figures on the ground. In a loud voice she uttered invocations that the crowd immediately took up with fervor:

Behind her she left geometrical figures, stars and black-headed snakes.

Then she went to the edge of the arena and had another drink and puffed a pipe, blowing the smoke into the faces of the onlookers. She was reeling now, but in an artificial way, imitating the confused walk of drunks. Back at the altar, not far from where Soledade and Loredana were sitting, she put a tremulous hand toward the covered object that drew wild-eyed stares. With one movement, she lifted off the cloth and stepped back, as if repelled by a magnetic force; the drums started up again louder than ever.