Where Tigers Are at Home (75 page)

Laughing all the time, we could not stop uttering exclamations of astonishment as Father Grueber, carried away by his own fluency, poured forth his inventory in one continuous stream:

“The sperm of the whale, or ambergris, drives away neurasthenia, incontinence, eczema of the scrotum & encourages sexual desire in women … China has immense resources—even if all these animals were to disappear, they would still have all the creatures of fur and feathers. Thus for domestic animals they have multiple uses for the least parts, not omitting the most revolting. As for wild beasts, they are not spared either: lions, tigers, leopards, elephants & anteaters are used to make up innumerable remedies. Rhinoceros horn prevents hallucinations, encourages the development of a robust physique, soothes migraines & bleeding from the anus. The palms of bears’ paws fortify one’s health, their parasites cure yellow fever & blindness in the newborn; hartshorn overcomes almost all diseases, including vaginal discharges from little girls;
monkeys’ brains, mixed with chrysanthemum flowers, make you grow; foxes’ lips eliminate pus & the urine of the wildcat, poured into the ear, makes all insects leave it instantly —”

“Would that it could also spare us the buzzing of the innumerable bores who bombard our ears with their stupid chatter!” said Bernini, raising his glass. “A toast to the urine of the wildcat!”

“To the urine of the wildcat,” we chorused as I went to open a second bottle.

They reached Recife at nightfall, after having traveled several thousand miles. In the Rua do Bom Jesus, where Roetgen finally found a parking space, they witnessed an astonishing metamorphosis: banks and shops, housed in the decaying remains of the splendors of the colonial period, emptied with a rapidity that seemed to parallel the setting sun. The workers were in a hurry to get away, the cars to disappear. By dusk the district was deserted, evacuated. Then, from goodness-knows-where, the kings of the night appeared, sailors, thugs, male and female prostitutes, their pupils shining, knives under their shirts … a dark-skinned, gaudily dressed multitude that by daylight the city expelled to the shantytowns on the outskirts, just as in the old days it used to exclude madmen. Scraps of haggling could be heard on all sides, shady propositions came to them. Like those plastic-coated pictures that change as you tilt them, the harbor zone unveiled its secret life. One by one the brothels lit their little red lights, sambas and pasodobles filtered out through the closed shutters. Dilapidated vestibules opened onto old staircases, whose various stopping points the drunks had marked in
their own inimitable manner, but which all took off toward a blaze of neon glory.

They went up to the first floor of the Attila.

The owner welcomed them, a monster with mauve sequins and a chignon larded with black down from which silvery metal tentacles emerged, appendices that terminated in little fluorescent balls. Slow by nature and by necessity—she avoided all contact so as not to spoil the arrangement of her hair—the imposing wall of flesh carefully counted the banknotes Roetgen handed her. He imagined the feverish hours that had preceded the evening, when the woman was still sitting on the third floor of the house with a throng of half-naked whores, twittering with excitement, adorning her like a queen mother before her son’s coronation. Installed in a tall chair, slavering and moaning with excitement, an ageless figure with Down’s syndrome observed the strange opera that was making his eyes boggle. Close by him, behind the counter, a young mulatto girl was swaying on the spot as she served the drinks; the whores twirled round; the 1930s one with a pageboy hairstyle, green miniskirt and reticule slung over her shoulder, the pink Andalusian with white polka dots, the one with rainbow stripes, the one with translucent skin dressed in garbage bags … Moéma danced languorously with a bewigged mummy, all gauzy frills and flounces, that desire made beautiful despite the subtle irony of her smile and her perfect mastery of a game that testified to her long experience in this field. They picked up girls that they handed on to each other, interspersing their love displays with short breaks at the bar for a glass of gin or
cachaça
, launched on a night of pure sensual pleasure in which they saw further proof of their rapport.

Afterward there was a long meander around the docks, chasing rats among the moorings, the squiggles of rope below the wall of cargo boats … At dawn, when its splendor dipped the cranes in
scarlet, they crawled inside a huge pile of pipes, going from one to the other like bees in a cast-iron beehive, amusing themselves by setting off echoes of their Christian names, amplifying their cries.

A military patrol turned up, dumbfounded to find them in the middle of this consciousness of being. They took them back to their car, well outside the prohibited area: they had made love in the naval dockyard of Recife—it was as if they’d won a war.

BACK IN FORTALEZA
the party went on. They slept through the day and went out when night had fallen to quench their thirst for intoxication: the trendy bars where Arrigo Barnabe delivered the very latest chords of a music that was so revolutionary it verged on the inaudible, languorous bossa novas in the gray light of dawn, grass and coke from Pablo. Out of his mind after some wood alcohol, Xavier dived onto the tarmac, convinced it was a swimming pool. Despite the open cut above his eye, the kid refused to go to the hospital, so they patched him up at Thaïs’s place. He only had scratches, but he still had scabs on his face and arms when he left. For he was leaving: “I set sail at eight o’clock on Sunday morning,” he announced, just like that, without giving any particular reason.

It was an irrevocable decision. They’d drunk a large part of his whiskey on board the boat, in the Yacht Club marina; as for the mustard, he hadn’t even tried to sell it, such was the laughter the idea had set off among his friends. A money order from his grandmother had arrived from somewhere or other; he’d immediately turned it into grass, for his personal use. His intention was to go to Belém, or even farther, it wasn’t very clear, not even in his own mind. But he was leaving.

The Saturday before he was due to leave, the
Náutico
was organizing one of its monthly festivities: a tennis tournament,
swimming races, a dinner-dance with orchestra. A member of the club since his arrival in Fortaleza—he had been proposed by the vice-chancellor of the university and paid dearly for the honor of socializing with a caste he didn’t like—Roetgen suggested they go to celebrate Xavier’s
despedida
. A farewell evening, in a way, a fitting end to this fantastic holiday together. Except that Moéma had gotten a tab of acid from Pablo and she and Xavier had half each, which complicated matters before they even set off.

As Andreas was not coming back until the next day, they gathered in his house, by the sea. Of a common accord, though for different reasons, Thaïs and Roetgen had passed on the LSD; Thaïs because she knew the devastating effect of the drug and was determined to keep a clear head to be ready for any eventuality, and Roetgen because he had read somewhere that LSD destroyed some of your neurons and could leave you insane. He made much of his sensible stance and declared he would look after Xavier, without realizing exactly what he was getting himself into. As he was about to swallow the pink tab—it had a Donald Duck printed on it—Xavier confessed it was the first time he’d ever tried it.

“Don’t worry,” Moéma said, sitting down on one of the loungers on the veranda. It’ll be a good half hour before it takes effect. Then it’s all up to you. If you decide you’re going to have a bad trip, then you’ll have a bad trip, if you stay cool, it’ll be cool … The thing is to remain calm and force yourself to think positively.”

“No problem for me,” Xavier said, in cheerful tones. But they could tell that, instead of reducing his apprehension, the little exhortation had increased it.

Thaïs and Roetgen went to sit with them under the green arbor. They brought a tray with some white wine and nibbles. It was early afternoon. On the other side of the road, fifty yards away, they could see the
beira-mar
and, through a gap in the curtain of coconut trees, the blue-green ocean with the sail of a jangada passing.

“I hope your friend has a good supply of wine,” Thaïs said to Roetgen, “because acid makes you thirsty.”

“There’s more than we need,” Roetgen said. “And if not, I’ll go and buy some.”

“You’ll see,” Moéma went on to Xavier, “it comes in waves. You think it’s stopping, but it starts up again, even stronger.”

“How long does it last?” Roetgen asked.

“Twenty-four hours, more or less. Why d’you ask? You’re worried, aren’t you?”

“A bit. It’s Xavier I’m thinking of …”

“Don’t worry,” Xavier said in reassuring tones. “If I don’t set off in the morning, it’ll be in the evening or tomorrow. I never takes risks with the sea, it’s too dangerous.”

Roetgen said nothing. When you saw the wreck in which the guy had crossed the Atlantic, you wondered whether he was as cautious as he claimed.

“You know he went out for two days on a jangada?” Moéma said.

Roetgen could see from her look that she immediately regretted having mentioned the episode. To Xavier, who asked if it hadn’t been pretty difficult, he replied coolly, “Not really. It’s getting back to normal afterward that’s hardest.”

This reply was so obviously addressed to Moéma, that Xavier dropped the subject. If those two had something to sort out between them, that wasn’t his problem. Thaïs gave Roetgen a hard look to tell him it was better to leave it be, given the situation.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a while, taking Moéma’s hand under the armrest of the lounger. “It just came out like that. I’ve no hard feelings, I swear …”

Moéma’s reply was a simple squeeze of the hand. She seemed fascinated by a cargo ship that was scarcely visible on the horizon.

THOSE FIRST HOURS
were peaceful, though ambiguous, listless and ashen, like those you have to spend visiting a patient in the hospital. Thaïs and Roetgen whispered, took little sips of cold white wine, all the while keeping an eye on their companions immured in the isolation of LSD. All around was a feast of light and warmth that kept them glued to their deck chairs.

Their conversation proceeded with the interminable slowness of a drip feed. Fascinated by parapsychology, and more generally by everything that seemed to defy understanding, Thaïs was full of anecdotes illustrating her naive belief in the supernatural, little real-life experiences for the most part, which she recounted in her singsong voice and in the confidential tones of testimony more captivating than their content.

Roetgen was delighted at her wonderment, at the openness with which Thaïs talked to him. It was something new in their relationship. Contrary to Moéma, who would dig her heels in on such occasions and refuse even to contemplate the slightest dent in her beliefs, she showed a flexibility that worked to his advantage. Not that she was convinced by the arguments Roetgen deployed, but she listened, weighed the pros and cons, and tried to defend her position without once asserting the a priori existence of the
supernatural
, or the
powers of the mind
that fascinated her. Their conversation quietly touched on all the standard features of this material—the tarot, clairvoyance, horoscopes, telepathy, flowers responding to being talked to and other contemporary superstitions—without arousing the usual irritation in Roetgen. She confided in him her desire to have a child. He confessed to her that he wrote poems. It was becoming very suggestive when Moéma interrupted them. “What’s the time?” she asked, without taking her eyes off the patch of light quivering by her feet. “I mean do the Indians ever ask that kind of question? How do they manage to have a notion of time. I’m serious,
professor
, I’m not joking …”

Roetgen gave a long reply with many illustrations taken from his lectures. Above all, he talked about the banana calendar, without realizing he was talking to Thaïs and not to the one who had asked for enlightenment on the subject.

Then there was a resplendent sunset over the
beira-mar
, when they all concentrated on trying to see the “green flash.” Finally Xavier stood up, saying he was fed up with sitting down and it was perhaps time to think about having a bite to eat if they weren’t going to wither away, slowly but surely, on these bloody loungers.

“Corpse,” he declaimed bombastically, “that something that has no name in any language! Tertullian quoted by Bossuet: La-garde et Michard, seventeenth century, page 267 …”

“What’s he talking about?” Thaïs asked.

“Some thing he picked up in a school textbook, but it’s too long to explain,” Roetgen said with a laugh. “But to put it briefly, we’re off.”

WITH MOÉMA AND
Xavier behaving like little children attracted by the least colored object on the seaside stalls or falling into interminable fits of wild laughter, it was getting on toward nine by the time they reached the
Náutico
. The pretentious pink edifice was teeming; people around the immense pool were yelling as a swimming final was taking place. Farther away, under the floodlights, some aged blacks were rolling the red shale of the tennis courts.

Moéma insisted she wanted to dance.

“Go easy, please,” Roetgen begged as she dragged Xavier off toward the music, “there’re people who know me around here.”

“I will, and that’s a promise,” Moéma said in a tone that suggested the opposite.

“We’d better follow them,” Thaïs advised.

They found a little table that was free that gave them a view of the dance floor. Roetgen ordered a selection of snacks, a bottle of vodka and some orange juice. After the second glass no one could remember the precise chronology of events. The fact is that there was a moment when all four drank a toast to the departing Xavier, another when Roetgen, completely drunk, made a declaration of love to Thaïs and a final one, much later when they realized there were only three of them left.