Where Tigers Are at Home (65 page)

When the metal of his spade hit the planks, he completed his awful task with his bare hands, hurrying as if he were exhuming not the mortal remains of his dead wife but a captive impatient to recover her freedom. Fumbling in the slimy soil, Count Karnice finally managed to open the lid of the coffin. What horror was in store for him: his wife’s hand shot up from the grave & slapped his cheek! As had unfortunately happened several times during those days of fear & haste, Count Karnice’s wife had been buried alive … Waking in the darkness of the tomb, the poor woman had scraped the wood with her
fingernails as she attempted to escape a ghastly death. Her horribly dislocated body had stiffened like a bow in her final effort to reach the light.

Count Karnice took to his heels, distraught with terror. When they found him, he was mad.

Dietlev regained consciousness in the evening. His voice, coming from the stretcher beside the fire, made Elaine start.

“Knock, knock!” he said in a perfectly serious voice.

“Dietlev!” Elaine exclaimed, immediately going over to him. “You gave me a fright, you big bad bear.”

“Come on. Knock, knock! Who’s there?”

“I’ve no idea, Dietlev, and I don’t really care, you know.”

“Agee.”

“OK, if you insist. Agee who?”

“A geologist hitting the door with his wooden leg!” he said with a faint smile.

“I’m afraid that’s beyond me,” said Herman, “but how are you,
amigo
?”

Dietlev’s face darkened for a moment. His temples were still moist from the fever but his eyes were open and he seemed to be completely lucid again. “Like Long John Silver.
It was a pretty drastic way of losing weight. Ten pounds, twenty pounds? How much does a leg weigh?
”

“We had to do it,” Elaine said, taking his hand. “The gangrene was starting to spread.”

“I know. Don’t worry, I was thinking that too. Well, almost … How did it happen? Was it you who made the decision?”

“No, it’s Herman who made it clear to me how urgent it was. He was great, he’s the one who saved you, just him …”

Dietlev looked puzzled for a moment, as if he were trying to understand Herman’s motivation. “
Danke
, Herman,” he simply said.

Using German expressed more gratitude than the word itself and Petersen was aware of that. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled, “you’d have done the same in my place.”

“Where’s Mauro?”

“Here I am,” he said, moving into Dietlev’s field of vision. “you gave us all a fright, you know.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily, as my students will tell you. Anyway, I’m thinking of coming back here next year.” He didn’t really believe what he was saying and none of them was stupid enough to take him at his word.

“You all look as if you’re at the end of your tether,” Dietlev said after having scrutinized them. “You need to get some rest, otherwise you’re not going to cope.”

“It’s been a hard day,” Elaine said, staring into space. “We’ve been squelching across the edge of the marsh, it’s not easy. And I don’t have to carry the stretcher …” But as she spoke, all she had in mind was the agonies of the amputation, the anxiety that had twisted her stomach.

“So we’ve reached the marshes?”

“Yeah,
amigo
,” Petersen replied. “You were down for the count, that’s when we realized how bad you were.” He hesitated for a moment, then went on, “We have to talk about this, seriously, you know … We’re never going to get there in these conditions, I mean with you, and then—”

“He’s on about it again!” Mauro said in exasperated tones, “for a long time now—”

“Let him finish, please,” Dietlev said. “Go on, Herman.”

“Listen: I stay with you and we send Yurupig on ahead. He knows the forest, he’ll get to the river three or four times quicker than us. And we can follow him at our own speed. By marking the route, he can help us avoid the dead ends he’ll have to check out himself. That will save us time and effort. If he’s quick, he can bring the rescue team to meet us.”

His suggestion immediately made sense to them. Even Mauro couldn’t find fault with it.

“What do you say, Yurupig?” Dietlev asked.

The Indian turned to look at Petersen, putting his head on one side as if to assess him better. “I agree, but you’ll have to be on your guard. When the snake offers to help the rat, it’s because he’s found a quicker way of eating it …”

“What a load of bullshit! You really can’t stand me, can you?”

“So that’s settled,” Dietlev said after a questioning glance at Elaine and Mauro. “You can take the compass, we won’t need it now. You know how to use it, don’t you?”

Yurupig closed his eyes to indicate agreement.

“Notches in the tree trunks to show the route, a cross to tell us not to go that way. You think you can make it?”

“In the forest that depends on the jaguars …”

THE NEXT MORNING
, at first light, Elaine and Mauro made up a rucksack for Yurupig. They packed his share of the provisions, the compass, a cigarette lighter, a flask of alcohol and a dose of snakebite serum. When the moment came, the Indian took one of their three machetes and turned to the members of the expedition: “Take it easy,” he said, “I’ll be back.”

Cutting short their farewells, he gave them a final wave and left at a jog. Dietlev had decided to give him two hours’ start, so they lingered over breakfast after he left.

When they set off again, Elaine went on ahead. Here and there a notch weeping milky fluid indicated a path that had been freshly made through the vegetation; in fact, Yurupig had made so many marks that the trail was fairly easy to follow. The fact that they didn’t have to wonder what was the best route made everything much simpler. After two hours, Elaine took Petersen’s place carrying the stretcher. Dietlev seemed to be recovering his strength, so that Mauro gave him the Kalashnikov to hold since it hampered his movement.

The day passed without any incidents worthy of note. Once evening came, they sat around the fire again; it was time to assess the situation: as far as they could tell, they had progressed two or three times more quickly that on the previous days, but at the price of greater tiredness. Elaine above all felt the effects. Aching all over, her muscles stiff from carrying the stretcher, she had to force herself to eat and stay sitting with the others.

“My last batteries,” Mauro said, changing the ones in his Walkman. I’m gong to have to ration my music as well. He looked drawn, like a long-distance runner after the race, but he was standing up to the strain quite well. “When I think,” he went on, “that the new semester starts in three days’ time. They aren’t going to be very pleased.”

“You can say that again,” Dietlev said. “Five years ago I got back from an expedition two hours before my first lecture; an airplane hadn’t been able to take off in time, a car broke down, problems with customs … the whole works. When I got to the lecture theater, Milton was just telling my students I was absent; I thought he was going to have an apoplectic fit!”

The thought of their dead colleague cast a veil over his smile.

“Poor guy,” Mauro said. “I didn’t like him, but all the same … he was a big name …”

“A big bastard, you mean,” Elaine said wearily. “If you knew everything he put us through. His death doesn’t change that.”

“True,” Dietlev said, “but if we had to kill all the incompetents, the idiots, the corrupt, there wouldn’t be many people left in the world.”

“You never spoke a truer word,
amigo
,” Petersen said, interrupting his whistling.

“At least we can’t say you’re exhausted by all the walking,” Elaine said, slightly surprised at the German’s verve.

“Matter of being used to it,” he said after sniffing noisily.

“Have you caught a cold?” Elaine asked. “I must have something for it in the medicines.”

“Don’t bother.”

“I wanted to say …” Mauro paused, then went on, “I’ve been a bit hard on you, I misjudged you. It was a good idea to send Yurupig on ahead.”

Petersen made a gesture to say no need for any more apologies.

“You trust him, don’t you, despite the way you treat him?”

“Not at all. He’s doing it for you, not for me. That’s why he’ll come back. He’d have left me to die without giving it a second thought. And I’d have done the same. It’s normal.”

“I’m sure you don’t think the way you talk,” Dietlev said in a tone of mild reproach. “You can’t live without other people, as you perfectly well know —”

“Live? Don’t make me laugh. Staying alive, that’s all that counts, the rest’s not worth bothering with. And I have to say I’d rather be in my place than yours.”

In the ensuing silence, the humidity enveloped them like a blanket that hadn’t been wrung dry. The mosquitos were buzzing around like mad.

“I think we’d best get under shelter before the rain,” Mauro said.

The following day they dragged themselves out of their hammocks feeling they were even more exhausted than the previous evening. While Petersen and Mauro got the fire going again, Elaine went through their rucksacks to prepare breakfast. Since she couldn’t find the one with the pan, she turned to the two men: “There’s a rucksack missing,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Mauro asked, examining the spot where they they put all their luggage together in the evening. “That’s impossible, it must be there somewhere … Perhaps a monkey’s taken it,” he added after having convinced himself it wasn’t there.

“At night the monkeys do the same as us,” Petersen said. “They go to sleep, or at least they try to. What was in it?”

“The coffee, the mess tins, the whetstone …” Elaine said, trying to visualize the contents. “A few tins of food … It was yours, Mauro.”

“The fossil samples,” he went on, “the cutlery … I don’t really know. We’ll have to search around the camp.”

“Search as much as you like,” Petersen said with an air of indifference, “but you’ve no chance of finding anything.”

Despite that, Mauro examined the area around the camp while Herman, on his knees by the fire, was carefully blowing on the twigs.

“I don’t believe it,” Mauro said coming back empty-handed from his search. “What kind of animal could be interested in our mess tins?”

“If there was no food in them,” Petersen said, screwing up his face because of the smoke, “it can’t have been an animal.”

“So who then?” Mauro asked skeptically. “There’s only us in this stinking jungle.”

“You’re forgetting Yurupig, sonny.”

“Yurupig!” Elaine exclaimed. “He’s certainly got better things to do than come back to steal things from us. Anyway, what d’you think he’d do with a bag of mess tins?”

“You never know what’s going on inside an Indian’s head,” Herman replied with a shrug of the shoulders. “Whatever, we’re going to have to find something to heat the water in if we’re going to drink coffee.”

They heard Dietlev’s irritated voice. “Just open a tin. And come and get me out of here, I’m chilled to the bone.”

Elaine could tell at a glance that his condition had worsened. He was sweating copiously again and incapable of making the least effort as they lifted him onto the stretcher. He was stinking of urine.

“I’ll change your dressing,” Elaine said. “It doesn’t look too good this morning—but it’s the same for all of us, believe me. Did you hear all that about the rucksack? What do you think?”

“Not much. I don’t think it could be Yurupig. There are much better ways if he wanted to land us in the shit. Anyway, we’ll just have to manage with what’s left.”

He looked at his leg as Elaine gently washed the stump. “I think the gangrene’s come back.”

“No, no,” she lied, “it’s just a normal reaction after what you’ve been through.”

“Elaine …” he said in a low voice. “If I don’t make it …”

“Stop going on about it, please.”

“I’m not a little boy, as you well know, Elaine.
If
ever I don’t make it, I want you to know …”

He closed his eyes to concentrate better. After such a clumsy start, how could he say what he felt without sounding silly or sentimental? The words jostling each other in his mind obviously wouldn’t express anything of the veneration he had for this woman, of his desire for her ever since the time when she’d landed, almost by mistake, in his arms. She would take his solemn—too solemn—avowal of love as merely an expression of his fear of dying, and she would doubtless be right …

“Dietlev?”

“Too late,” he said with a feigned smile. “I’m exhausted. Just forget it, will you?”

THEY SET OFF
again along the trail marked by Yurupig. Elaine was walking like a machine, every stride had to be torn from the suction of the soil. Her mind was wandering far from the jungle and the little group she was leading. Like a driver fighting against tiredness, she took flight in daydreams that grew longer and longer and revolved around her return to Brazilia. She imagined herself replying to questions from her colleagues, from journalists. The first thing to do would be to telephone Moéma to reassure her, perhaps Eléazard as well, using the pretext of asking how he was getting on … No, it was he who would call her, or there’d be a message on her answering machine. A few concerned words, an invitation to start all over again. Without knowing why, she was convinced nothing would be the same as it was before, that all this—not just what she’d been through during the last few days, but all the rest, her sufferings, her disappointments, her divorce—that all this mess had a hidden meaning, a positive charge that would burst into life sooner or later. What had gone wrong with Eléazard? At what precise moment? Where had it started, where was the point after which they had begun to go their separate ways? She had to get back to that bifurcation in order to deliberately choose the other path, to wind the film back to their initial happiness, back to the still that would repudiate their failure, make it impossible. Once more she saw the terrace of the old house where they had lived, some fifteen years ago, when they were staying in France. The wooden table under the arbor, the wasps around the wine, the splendid torpor of a siesta in the warm shade of the plane tree—