Where Tigers Are at Home (89 page)

I was stunned by my master’s contagious enthusiasm & by the success that promised. In a hurry to start work on revising Ramon Lull’s
Ars Magna
, Kircher entrusted the final putting together of his
Arca Noe
and
Archetypon Politicum
to me in order to concentrate entirely on writing this new book. He had to organize the whole range of human knowledge according to a certain system, derived from the divine order, before setting up the analogical rules & the system of combination that would allow anyone to avail themselves of it for their own use. As arduous an undertaking as one could imagine, but one that my master accomplished with disconcerting ease, without his resolution weakening for one single moment.

At the very beginning of 1669, while Athanasius was having the pages of his
Ars Magna Sciendi
taken to the printer’s as he completed them, a controversy arose that was as nasty as it was brazen. Two works were sent to Kircher by Father Francisco Travigno, a colleague and friend from Padua: one was a book by Valeriano Bonvicino, Professor of Physics at the same university as Father Travigno, & the other a copy of a pamphlet, published with the support of several members of the Royal Society of London & written by—Salomon Blauenstein!

In his
Lanx Peripatetica
¹
Bonvicino strongly criticized Chapter XI of
Mundus Subterraneus
—in which, as you will recall, Kircher publicly denounced transmutational alchemy—claiming he had been making gold for decades in his house in Padua. As for Blauenstein, that arrant knave who had almost ruined the too-naive Sinibaldus years ago, he repeated the same criticism of my master, but with a biting irony & spite unworthy of any man of science.

However unfair they were, Kircher was deeply wounded in his pride by these these attacks. His anger did not subside for several days, until one of his detractors was struck down by divine justice & many letters of support from the most eminent scholars started to arrive. Kircher did not let up in his work, however, so that his
Ars Magna Sciendi
& his
Archetypon Politicum
appeared simultaneously in the autumn of that year, setting off a wave of admiration among the decent gentlemen of Europe.

However, the incomparable success of his books was spoiled by a double misfortune that resounded throughout Christendom, like a divine warning not to underestimate for one moment the devilish machinations of the idolators …

Having lost all sense of the passing of the days, the nights, of everything apart from the mechanical resumption of their movements, they penetrated farther and farther into the green depths of the forest. Dietlev’s death was largely responsible for their resignation; it had deprived them of a leader, of a friend for some of them, but equally of the sole grounds for continuing to resist despair. Elaine in particular could not get over it. For some reason none of them could understand, the shaman had refused to bury the body and persisted in addressing long, passionate speeches to it. Adding horror to mental aberration, he continued to have it carried on the stretcher, despite the stench it quickly started to give off. Elaine felt haunted by this ever-present reminder of his death, definitive yet denied. Pursued by the dead man who was no longer the man she loved, but not yet the one whose memory she would one day cherish, she came to understand the haste we have
to get the corpses out of our sight; the purpose of the funeral is to get rid of the decay, to prevent this tangible, inhuman anguish from coming to pollute the world of the living. Without a tomb to place these unattached beings firmly in a state of absence, the dead would return.

At dawn on that morning, when they’d all been walking for an hour, wrapped in freezing mist and in sleep, a murmuring ran through the column, swelling as it progressed. They stopped. Puzzled, Mauro went to the head of the line and saw the wall of black stone blocking the track hacked through the forest. Facing it, the shaman uttered loud invocations then set off again. He followed the cliff until he came to the gap he knew; although vegetation had taken over again, a steep way up could be made out; it had even been improved in places to make it easier to climb. The column entered it, following the shaman who was hurrying, showing clear signs of impatience.

After a wearying initial climb, they were above the tops of the taller trees and were rewarded with a sight that took their breath away. The mountain rose like a sugarloaf into the clear sky like the background to a Flemish painting: a bare, blackish mass with streaks of white but surmounted by a crown of greenery that seeped down into the smallest rifts in the rock. Below them the jungle they had been making their way through for days stretched out as far as the eye could see, a dark swell flecked with white horses, infinite, as impenetrable as the surface of the oceans.

“An inselberg,” Elaine murmured, amazed at the contrast between the barren sides and the luxuriance of the summit.

“That’s right, it is like an island,” Petersen said, a bit surprised to have understood what she had said. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

She sighed, her eyes screwed up, her mind elsewhere. “You can’t even see the river.”

“But at least we can get our bearings at last,” Herman said, his eyes fixed on his watch. Turning his wrist so that the 12 was pointing toward the sun, he drew an imaginary line between that and the hour hand: “North’s over there, which means the River Paraguay must be more or less in that direction.”

He pointed to a line of foliage that was just a little darker, very far away to the southeast. “At a rough guess, I’d say we’re to the east of Cáceres. I’m not even sure we’re still in Brazil …”

“You’re right,” said Mauro after having scrutinized the landscape all around. “If there was a mission in the area we’d at least see smoke or something … God knows where they’re taking us.”

It was a statement, not a question, and there was no answer, but he could read the unavoidable conclusion in Petersen’s blue eyes: God Himself had no idea.

They continued to climb the steep slope of the mountain. The line proceeded in zigzags, as if they were ascending the ramps of a Tower of Babel. Elaine remained fascinated by the sea of vegetation spreading wider and wider below them. Truly, they were on an island in the middle of the forest, a geographical anomaly that had perhaps been located by satellite but which, she was convinced, no Westerner had ever explored.

After three exhausting hours of climb, they entered the summit jungle, which once more made them lose their bearings. Elaine felt frustrated at having enjoyed the open air and the sun for such a short time. It was Mauro who first noticed the change in the composition of the forest; the surrounding flora was unusual, a veritable botanical garden with a considerable number of strange insects and animals. Scarlet mushrooms, frogs with gaudy colors like fish in an aquarium, tree ferns with their bishop’s croziers unfurling aggressively above their heads—almost nothing of what they could see corresponded to what they had been seeing up to
that point. Gathering her memories out loud, Elaine explained the curious phenomenon:

“There’s the same thing in French Guyana, a peak that’s sufficiently isolated to have its own ecosystem. The sort of thing Darwin used to confirm his theory. Natural selection has taken place, but it has developed in isolation, rather as it would on an atoll. Certain rainforest species have evolved differently in this bubble, away from the upheavals affecting the plains.”

She told them to imagine a Noah’s Ark continuing to float for thousands of years without ever reaching dry land. The species on this biological Flying Dutchman would be more or less similar to those that had gone on board at the beginning; some would have changed to adapt to life on the ship while others would not have survived …

“It’s wonderful!” said Mauro, picking up a huge beetle bristling with horns. “It’s like an earthly paradise.”

“You’re going to have plenty of time to admire all this shit,” said Petersen contemptuously. “We’ve arrived.”

INDEED, THE WHOLE
tribe was settling down on the edge of the bush, on a bare plateau that was attached to one side of the sugarloaf hill and ended, on the other, in a precipitous cliff. Unlike the last few days, the Indians took great care over setting up their camp. After a supply of water had been collected and the usual harvest of grubs, palm marrow and other products of the forest gathered, the women started to soak manioc in the large oiled baskets in which the beer was brewed. A band of young men cheerfully set off to hunt; stacks of firewood piled up … Everything suggested that this stop on the summit of the inselberg was not a simple halt, but the end of the journey.

“Surely we’re not going to stay here?” Mauro asked in a tone of voice that gave a hint of his fear.

“You can go and ask them, if you like,” Petersen replied, undoing his cocaine belt.

Elaine had sat down on her hammock. One clear thought emerged from the depths of her exhaustion: nothing, not even passive expectation, was going to influence the course things would take. She couldn’t stop herself thinking of Dietlev’s body as it had appeared to her, haloed in light, in majesty. His death was gradually taking root in that part of herself where, one wound after another, life unhurriedly weaves its own disappearance. She was no longer afraid.

The shaman had waited, motionless, facing the mountain, for the Indians to build him a hut. He disappeared into it for a few minutes, just long enough to hide the instruments of his office from sight. Having done that, he gave the tribe a long sermon then set off alone toward the peak. The Indians watched him leave until he was out of sight, then returned to their various activities.

“They’re preparing another celebration for when he comes back,” Petersen said.

His remark, which later turned out to be relevant, did not elicit a single comment.
Professora
Von Wogau was lying down, exhausted, staring into space. As for Mauro, he couldn’t stop going into raptures about the bugs he was unearthing all over the place. Herman sniffed a pinch of powder and stretched out to think things over. A warning siren was wailing inside his head, telling him to clear off as quickly as possible, get away from these unpredictable savages; but even if he did manage to slip away during the night and to put enough distance between the Indians and himself, his chances of survival in the jungle were close to nil. The rainy season was approaching; the more time passed, the more difficult it would be to feed himself in the forest. And
even allowing that he could get his bearings without a compass, it would take days, even weeks, of walking and the painful cramp in his weary legs was enough to make him scream … He was angry with himself, blaming himself for having, like the others, given way to hope; they should have made off as soon as the Indians appeared instead of counting on the cannibals to take them back to civilization. He clenched his fists in fury at the memory of Dietlev and the rifle rendered unusable.

HAVING REACHED THE
highest point of the mountain, the shaman of the Apapoçuvas sat down cross-legged on a flat rock and waited. Nothing in the surroundings, neither the source of sacred stones—the womb known only to him, the secret belly in which grew the embryos of everything that would one day come into existence—nor the beauty of the panoramic view could drive away his anguish. The soul of Qüyririche was flying around him, filling the air with the heavy beat of its wings, but it obstinately refused to speak to him.
I have gathered your people together where the signs commanded, I have shunned women, the flesh of the agouti and of the great anteater; every night since you left it I have kept company with your body without sparing either my chants or my saliva … Qüyririche, Qüriri cherub! Why do you deprive me of the help of your words?
He had obeyed and the god with the white skin remained silent! The invisible armadillo had taken advantage of that to slip into his stomach, as if into its burrow, and now the shaman felt ill, weakened. The animal was eating him up from inside, it was freezing his blood.

Years ago, when he was just a youth, he had almost died from the same illness. His father had passed away and the invisible armadillo had gone into his son’s entrails. They had put his father in his usual place in the house, sitting up, with his bow
and arrow, his beer gourd and his toucan whistle. And then the men had built a second house around him, a very close palisade of young heveas, leaving an aperture opposite his navel, after which they had pushed his father’s blowpipe in through the hole until it went into his stomach. And he, Raypoty, had stayed in the forest, all alone, without drinking, without eating, without daring to approach. In the middle of the night the invisible armadillo had bitten his heart, so hard he thought he was on the point of dying. And he had submitted. Terrified by the deep darkness, begging the mercy of the wandering souls that were breathing in his ears, he had set off toward his father’s house. He had gone into his father’s house, even though he could not see his hand in front of his face. And, by feeling his way, he had eventually found the blowpipe and had followed it until his finger touched the navel where it was stuck. At the same moment he had said, “Father, I am your son,” and his heart had started to pound, as if he had been running after a wounded jaguar, and a ball of fire had rolled into his head and the invisible armadillo had rushed out of his entrails.

After the time it takes for a bunch of bananas to ripen, the surucucu snake had bitten him on the heel without managing to take his life, proof that he himself was
pajé
, the heir to his father’s occult power, worthy to succeed him.

Raypoty knew what he must do: fast, chew datura and wait there, on that rock for the ball of fire to appear. Qüyririche would speak to him once more, would tell him how to find the “Land-with-no-evil.” He would rather die than admit to the members of his tribe that his whole life had been a failure. Qüyririche, Qüriricherub! The messenger of Tupan, the Great Vulture.