Where Tigers Are at Home (87 page)

She’d known she was going to leave today, Eléazard told himself as he looked at the large envelope Alfredo was holding out to him, she knew and she didn’t say anything …

“But what’s got into her, for God’s sake?” he said angrily. “You just can’t do something like that!”

“I don’t know any more than you, Lazardinho. She left me a note saying sorry and that she had to go back to Italy. I’ve a funny feeling about it too.”

Eléazard pointed to the pile of articles he’d cut out in order to file them: “Pour yourself a glass and have a look at those while I’m reading this, OK?”

“I’ve nothing else to do,” Alfredo said, looking downcast. “Anyway, the hotel’s empty, so …”

The envelope contained a voluminous dossier and a letter, in Italian and in a large round hand that seemed determined to cover every last inch of the page …

“Well?” Alfredo asked; he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off him all the time he was reading. “You knew?”

“What?”

“That she was seriously ill.”

“What are you getting at? I assure you I knew nothing.” Eléazard handed him the letter so he could read it for himself. “I’m sorry,” Alfredo said after a brief glance, “but Italian, you know …”

He smoothed down his hair with both hands. Without realizing, he’d started to chew the inside of his cheek again.

“She didn’t leave a book with the letter?”

“Sorry, I almost forgot,” Alfredo said, taking a black and red book out of his bag. “I don’t know where I am today!”

Eleazard quickly read the front cover:

THE 36 STRATAGEMS
A secret treatise on Chinese strategy translated and annotated by François Kircher

“I think I’ll have a drink too,” he said in a toneless voice.

AFTER ALFREDO HAD
left, he continued to fill his glass as quickly as he emptied it. Close to a drunken stupor, he reread
Loredana’s letter, scrutinizing each expression, as if one of them might eventually give him the key to her disappearance, but the more he probed the words, the more he felt their lack of substance.

Mechanically he leafed through the little book she’d left him. Some passages here and there were indicated by lines in the margin, but there was nothing to suggest, as he had for a moment hoped, that they had been underlined as a message to him. A difference in color indicated two readings at different times, each revealing separate preoccupations. Without having specifically looked for it, Eléazard came across the principle put forward by Loredana to take on the governor of Maranhão:
The tall silhouette of the sophora shields the puny mulberry tree in the shadow of its foliage just as great men surround themselves with a court of clients and protégés. To attack one of the followers as a direct threat to his master is a common practice …
The thirty-sixth stratagem was the only one with a box drawn round it; Eléazard was sure it came from the second reading, the one Loredana had done in her hotel room during the last few days.
If all else fails, retreat
, he read, feeling a pang of anguish.
When your side is losing, there are only three choices remaining: surrender, compromise or escape. Surrender is complete defeat, compromise is half defeat, but escape is not defeat
.

Tired of going around in circles, he went to find Soledade to ask her. She was sitting on the floor in the farthest corner of the veranda, her legs hanging down outside, through the bars. She replied to his call but didn’t turn around. From the sound of her voice, he could tell she was crying.

“What’s wrong?” he said, sitting down beside her. “You know? It’s about Loredana?” From the side he could see her wipe her eyes with the back of her hand and try to control her breathing.

“I know,” she finally said. “Alfredo told me when he went up to see you.”

“And that’s why you’re crying?”

She shook her head and stuck her face between the bars. “Why, then?” Eléazard said. “What’s making you unhappy? Don’t you like it here?”

“I’m going to leave as well …”

“What’s all this nonsense? You’re not going to leave me all by myself, are you?”

Eléazard was used to these fits of depression. Soledade never carried out her threats, so he never really took them seriously.

“Brazil lost,” she said, making a face. “I’d promised to go if they didn’t reach the final … So I’m going back to Quixadá, to my parents. Say, could I … could I take the TV?”

“Stop it, Soledade. You can take whatever you like, that’s not the problem. What I’m asking is for you to stay with me, you understand?”

“Oh yes,” she said, imitating his accent, “Who’s going to do the washing, the shopping, bring me my
caipirinhas
? That’s all I’m any use for. She’s the one you love …” She started crying again.

“But what difference does it make? She’s gone now, so … nothing’s changed, everything’s as it was before.”

Soledade started crying again. “Except that she loves you as well,” she managed to say between two sobs. “She told me so.”

“I don’t believe it,” he said, unsure whether that revelation assuaged his sadness a little or actually made it worse. “It’s absurd. What did she say exactly?”

“That you were a filthy exploitative frog, that … that she hated you!” Her pitiful expression contradicted the lie.

“Seriously, Soledade, it’s important for me.”

“She said she loved you, but she was going to die and that there was no point getting worked up about it.” The tears came pouring out as she went on, “And I … I just said that we’re all going to die. But that was just because I was jealous, you see. And now she’s gone and it’s all because of me.”

“No, no,” he said, trying to comfort her, “we never know what’s going on inside other people’s heads: she was afraid of making us suffer”—as he spoke, Eléazard felt he was getting close to the truth at last—“afraid of infecting us with her suffering. She realized she’d tried to negotiate with her illness and then she pulled herself together, out of pride, the better to fight …”

“It’s my fault,” Soledade sobbed. “I took her to the
terreiro …
The parrot wasn’t afraid of her, you see, it was a sign … And Omulú chose her, her and not me …”

Eléazard had no idea what she was talking about. “What’s all this about a
terreiro
?”

Soledade put her hand over her mouth, rolling her eyes in fright.

“Tell me,” Eléazard insisted, “please.”

Soledade’s only answer was to stand up swiftly and run off to her room.

Eléazard would have liked to be able to cry like her, to wash out his mind. He stayed on the terrace, dry-eyed, the bottle within reach. A little later he heard, without moving, the telephone ring then the message spoken in a brusque voice by Dr. Euclides on his answering machine.

When the mosquitos appeared he took refuge in the living room; he walked crabwise, with the occasional lurch, which made him snigger to himself.

THE FOLLOWING DAY
he woke up much earlier than necessary. The
cachaça
made his head feel as if it were clamped in a vise and the prospect of having to go to San Luís in response to Dr. Euclides’s appeal was not an attractive one at all. But the old man was unforgiving in such matters: no one who had broken faith with him, even just once, could boast of having seen him again.

He stayed up on deck during the crossing, allowing the sea breeze to relieve his splitting headache a little. Once he arrived in San Luís he bought the
Maranhão Courier
and treated himself to a coffee. The Carneiro affair was still taking up a good part of page three; a journalist well known for his reactionary views was giving free rein to his venomous pen. The authorities, he wrote, had definite proof that it was a plot intended to blacken the
Partido Democratico Social
. Waldemar de Oliveira had gone beyond the limits of his jurisdiction: since the matter had taken place in Alcântara, it fell within the competence of the San Luís state prosecutor’s office and not that of the municipality of Santa Inês. The gentleman’s communist sympathies were well known, not to mention his notorious homosexual habits … Certain leaks, from official sources, mentioned a transfer for disciplinary reasons and even a possible indictment for child abuse. The Governor had been vilified in a manner made all the more despicable by the fact that his son had been reported missing in the Mato Grosso, probably having died for the glory of science and his country!

Moreira must have paid a juicy sum, the article was convincing, it would have the expected result. That was that, Eléazard told himself, the whole business would peter out, once again. Moreira would even benefit from it at the elections. When it came to the crunch, the stratagems so dear to Loredana hadn’t worked out that well. The way things were turning out, the sophora was getting ready not only to clear the mulberry tree, but to crush as many silkworms as it could find while it went about it.

“
WELL, WELL, YOU
’
VE
been getting up to some fine tricks,” were Dr. Euclides’s welcoming words when he arrived.

Eléazard smelled Carlotta’s perfume even before he saw her in the corner of the drawing room. He bowed and sat down opposite her.

“Have you told him?” he asked. When she nodded, he went on, “For all the effect it’s going to have … Have you read today’s paper? He’s going to manage to hush up the whole business, you can see that a mile off.”

“Defeatist as ever, aren’t we?” Euclides said, pulling at his beard. “Nothing’s been decided yet, believe me. He’s pulling out all the stops, that’s fair enough. But if Carlotta herself accuses him, his career’s finished.”

“But that wouldn’t get us anywhere in court, would it? It’d just be her word against his?”

“Doubtless, but he’d certainly lose the election. His political allies would drop him one after the other.”

“You’d be prepared to do that?” Eléazard asked, turning to the Countess.

Carlotta seemed close to exhaustion, but the firmness of her voice showed her unshakable resolve. “If necessary I will indict him personally. I’ve nothing much left to lose, you know …”

“Still no news of the expedition?” Eléazard asked with a detachment that surprised himself.

“They’re alive,” Euclides explained. “The helicopter flew over their boat—they obviously ran it aground after it was damaged. They think they must have gone into the forest, that’s all we know at the moment. It’ll take weeks to get a search party together.”

“And to think I said you could trust Dietlev. But it’s good news all the same, isn’t it?”

“If you insist,” Carlotta said. “No one can explain why they didn’t stay by the boat and I can’t stop myself seeing the dark side of things. But I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

Eléazard remained silent for a few moments, long enough for him to realize that Elaine had disappeared from his life long before vanishing in the Mato Grosso. He was convinced he was
right in thinking that the announcement of her death would draw nothing but formal expressions of mourning from him.

“Loredana’s gone back to Italy,” he said, without noticing his own boorishness.

“We know,” Euclides replied simply. “That’s why I made you come so early today. Too early, from what I deduce from your sweat; you reek of sugar-cane alcohol, my friend, as bad as a bus.”

“Let him be,” Carlotta broke in. “I assure you it’s not true, you don’t reek, Monsieur Von Wogau …”

“I’m used to it,” Eléazard said, blushing despite everything “But how did you hear?”

“She came to say good-bye before taking the plane. She’s a nice girl. Don’t be too hard on her, sometimes it takes more guts to get out of things than to stay.”

“She told you everything?”

“If by ‘everything’ you mean her illness, yes, she did.”

“And you think—”

Euclides broke in immediately. “No. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s out of the question. We have to accept her decision for what it is, a refusal to harbor delusions about herself and about others. And, consequently, a refusal to see you again. She didn’t act on impulse, you know.”

“I understand,” Eléazard said sadly, “but I don’t approve.”

“Well that’s because you don’t understand anything,” Euclides said bluntly.

“I’ve told him repeatedly, first of all finish your degree, then you can do whatever you like … But you know what it’s like, especially when they’re that age, they don’t give a fuck—pardon my
French—about what you tell them … He didn’t even take his final exams! So there we have it! You’re still smoking as much, from what I see … It’s going to take a good half hour … I’d have preferred to do it in two goes, but OK … It could hurt a bit, as we go on, tell me if you need a little rest. Aspirate, please, Katia … The electric guitar, that’s the only thing he’s interested in. Having said that, it seems to me he has a gift for it, and a damned good gift at that … Admittedly I don’t know much about it, but it really gets you going when he plays … I bought him a Gibson and that’s not just any old guitar, you can’t imagine what a thing like that costs. Just between ourselves, I managed to get a friend to buy it for me in Hong Kong. And when I think they refused to have him at the Academy of Music! Can you understand that?”