Where Tigers Are at Home (66 page)

Her fall woke her up without bringing her back to the present. Something heavy on her back was holding her to the ground; she had a cramp and the pain made her want to scream.

Mauro rushed over to her. “Are you hurt?” he asked, taking off her rucksack so she could sit up.

“It’s nothing … I’m worn out … I …”

He pushed her hair back to clean the mud off her face. “Just rest, we’ll have a break. I’m exhausted too.”

Mauro went back to help Petersen with the stretcher. Dietlev still had a high temperature, despite the aspirin he’d been swallowing. The haggard look on Elaine’s face filled him with concern: “Is there something wrong. What happened?”

“It’s stupid,” Elaine replied, blushing. “I think I must have fallen asleep while I was walking. I’ll suck a couple of sugar lumps, then it’ll be OK.” There were tears in her eyes and she was making a visible effort to look all right.

“This is a nice mess we’re in,” Petersen said sarcastically. “You’ll have sweated your sugar lumps out after a couple of hundred yards. We’ll never get there if we stop every ten minutes, I can tell you that for free.”

“We’ve been sweating our guts out for two hours now,” said Mauro irritatedly, “so cut the crap, OK? We’re exhausted, every one of us …”

Dietlev looked at them apologetically. “You’re wasting your strength for no reason. We have a break because
I’m
tired, because
I
need a pee and because this stretcher makes
me
seasick.”

Petersen fumbled in one of his pockets, took out a film container and tossed it to Elaine. “There you are,” he said, “take a bit, it’ll perk you up no end.”

“What is it?” she asked as she caught the container.

“
Cocaína
. It’s better than sugar, I can assure you.”

Elaine suddenly understood why Herman sniffed so often. And she had offered to give him something for his cold! Without giving it further thought, she tossed the little container back to him. “Thanks, but I prefer sugar, if that’s all right by you.”

For a brief moment Mauro thought there’d be no harm in trying; the Peruvians of the high plateaus chewed coca leaves to help them keep going … He met Dietlev’s reproving look and kept quiet.

HER SHIRT STICKING
to her skin, sweat dripping from her hair, Elaine focused her attention entirely on the jungle. Annoyed at her fall, she determined to anticipate Yurupig’s waymarks so as not to hold up the two struggling along with the stretcher. She had no idea how long they’d been trudging along like that when a movement in the foliage made her stop in her tracks; for the first time since they’d been trekking through the forest, it was the sign not of something fleeing but approaching, so that she instinctively curled her fingers round the short handle of her machete. At the same moment a man appeared in front of her, a naked Indian, with a black hole instead of a mouth; a feathered mummy that silently split into two.

“Don’t move!” It was Petersen who spoke as she stepped back, struck dumb with fear. “Keep facing them.”

Around twenty Indians armed with bows and blowpipes had assembled in front of them. They just stood there waiting, unmoving gods, aware of their power.

“Friends!” said Elaine, stretching out her arms to show her good will. “We’re lost. Do you understand? Lost.”

The simple sound of her voice seemed to disconcert them. Some cries rang out, immediately followed by impressive intimidatory moves. One of them started stamping on the spot while pointing to Elaine’s arm.

“The gun,” Herman said urgently, “give me the gun. Quick!”

“Drop your machete,” Dietlev ordered from his stretcher, “slowly. Friends!
Yaudé marangatù
, we’re harmless.”

The Indians reacted solely to the dropping of the machete. The one who seemed to be their chief uttered a few words. The one nearest to him picked up the coveted object at Elaine’s feet. Then he took one step forward to speak to Dietlev.

“What’s he saying?” Mauro asked.

“No idea,” Dietlev admitted without ceasing to smile obviously at the man who had spoken. “It sounds a bit like the Guarani I’ve learned, but I can’t understand a blind word of what he’s saying. It could be a variant, but at least they seem to have calmed down.
Ma-rupi?”
he tried, pointing to the path made by Yurupig. “The river? Where? The white men?”

The Indian put his head on one side, then scratched his thigh to give the impression of composure. Since nothing happened, he gave a brief order and two of them came to pick up the stretcher.

“I think they’ve understood,” Mauro said with relief.

“Fucking savages,” was Petersen’s response. “I don’t know what they’ve understood, but we’ve no choice but to stick to their tail.”

TO HEAR those who are silent from having screamed too much …

AT THE BAR: “Women are like matches, as soon as they get hot they lose their heads.”
Mulher é como fósforo: quando esquenta, perda a cabeza
.

“WHY do we foresee only catastrophes?” Hervé Le Bras asks. “Why not see that certain consequences of human activities could
protect instead of threatening us?” If it is true that we are heading for a new, fairly harsh and brutal ice age, our efforts ought to be directed toward increasing the greenhouse effect with the utmost urgency, instead of trying to reduce it.

THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY will take precise account of our disillusionments; it will be obscurantist.

THEY CAN ALWAYS TURN OUT TO BE USEFUL: bits of string, wood, plastic or rubber, small metal components, broken engines, odd parts, the scattered pieces of a whole, of a dismembered Osiris that can be used to repair, to restore a whole in the universe of things. But they can also create new, unexpected and previously unseen wholes that the reuse brings to life and to which it gives a history. Accumulation and reclamation as the foundations of creativity, the rag-and-bone man as the demiurge of a possible world; the attic as the natural refuge for poetry. And even if these things will never be used, as happens most of the time, it is the
perhaps
that is important, the acceptance of the potentiality of a possible advent or at the very least of the restoration of a lost unity.

THE DAY WHEN WE TIRE OF HEARING OUR FAVORITE STORY, of demanding, as most children do, a strict word-for-word retelling, is the day we enter the age of desecration. Our astonishment at the mystery is no longer triggered by its repetition, but by its ever-renewed transgression.

“AMONG MAMMALS,” A. Villiers writes, “it is dogs to which crocodiles seem particularly partial. Rose cites the case of a cayman, the stomach of which contained, apart from a woman’s diamond ring, 32 dogs’ ID tags, which, taking the dogs without ID tags into account, represents a considerable figure.”

SCIENCE has this in common with religion, that most of the time it only produces
impressions of truth
, but it alone has the ability to produce the thing that will dispel them. Where nothing is falsifiable, nothing is provable either.

HIGH ON LSD? Without realising it, Kircher must have ingested some rye ergot (
Claviceps purpurea
). His ecstatic journey was nothing but a bad trip. That is what Dr. Euclides maintains after analyzing his reactions when he took the tonic sent by Yves d’Évreux. This minuscule fungus, a parasite on rye and rich in lysergic acid, caused communal poisoning when it was inadvertently mixed with flour made from that grain. What used to be called “holy fire” or “St. Anthony’s fire.” Euclides argues very persuasively that partaking of rye ergot was at the basis of the Mysteries of Eleusis.

THE ART OF LIGHT AND SHADE contains a whole chapter on the manufacture of marbled paper. In his
Natural Magic
(
Magia universalis naturæ et artis, sive recondita naturalium et artificalium rerum scientia
, Würzburg, 1657) Caspar Schott declares that he learned the method of “painting paper with varied colors in the manner of the Turks” while watching Athanasius Kircher at work: “He made all sorts of designs on paper—people, animals, trees, towns and regions—now as breaking waves, now as various marbles, now as birds’ feathers and as all sorts of other figures.” Specialists in this matter, in particular Einen Miura, recognize Kircher as the first to introduce the art of marbled paper into Europe.

DATES of C. Schott?

ATHANASIUS KIRCHER did not take part in any of the religious controversies by which his times were rocked. An attitude
of reserve that can be counted in his favor. He seems to have adopted the exhortation of Muto Vitelleschi, Father General of the Society during the Thirty Years’ War: “Let us not say: my country. Let us stop speaking a barbarous language. Let us not glorify the day on which prayer becomes nationalized …”

FROM GOETHE, in his
Theory of Colours:
“Thanks to Kircher, the natural sciences present themselves to us in a much livelier and brighter manner than with any of his predecessors. They have left the study and the lecture theatre for a comfortably appointed monastery with ecclesiastics who are in communication with the whole world, have influence on the whole world, who want to teach people, but also to entertain and amuse them. Even if Kircher solves very few problems, at least he brings them up and examines them in his own way. He demonstrates an ease of understanding, facility and unruffled calm in his communications.”

FROM GOETHE, again: “Each one of us has something hidden inside himself, a feeling, a memory, which, if it were known, would make the man hated.” Doubtless the worst of men also has, even more profoundly hidden, something that would make him loved.

THE SUBCONSCIOUS is but one possible strategy of dishonesty.

ATHANASIUS KIRCHER COULD
not hear the story of Count Karnice without shuddering. The horror of his wife’s awakening in the darkness of the tomb, which he could clearly imagine, spurred on his genius to such an extent that only two days after that terrible event, he showed me his designs for a “tactile recaller,” a machine to prevent such dreadful mistakes ever happening again.

It consisted of a metal tube, six foot long & about six inches in diameter, to be inserted into the casket at the time of interment through a circular opening, which carpenters would have no problem incorporating in their coffins as a standard feature. The upper section of the tube, that which would be above ground, would terminate in a hermetically sealed box containing the works necessary for the functioning of the mechanism. My master explained its ingenious simplicity with a cross-section drawing. A rod attached to a very sensitive spring
went down the tube into the coffin; screwed to the end was a brass sphere, arranged in such a way as to touch the chest of the presumed corpse: the least movement, even a breath taken before recovering consciousness, & the sphere would set the rescue in motion. The box would open at once, letting air & light flood into the coffin; at the same time a flag would be raised, a loud bell would sound, while a rocket would shoot up into the sky before exploding noisily, spreading the dazzling light of the resurrection over the graveyard.

If the box remained closed for two weeks, a sufficient lapse of time for all hope to disappear, all one had to do was to pull up the tube; a valve would automatically close the opening, so that one could finally fill in the grave. Once the “recaller,” or at least the part that had touched the corpse, had been disinfected, it was immediately ready for use in another interment.

I warmly commended Kircher’s latest invention. As it cost only a modest sum & was a model of simplicity, it would be easy to supply the cemeteries with them to avoid the risk of premature burials.

As I mentioned above, it was impossible to find a single coffin in Rome, but Cardinal Barberini, when he heard of this machine, put four of his own at our disposal. Working day & night, we made the tubes in less than a week. They worked perfectly & it was not long, alas, before they were put to use. Six of our Jesuit brothers were carried off by the plague in less time that it took to mourn them. Two of them, whose bodies were in such a state of decay there was no doubt they were dead, were sent to the communal grave, but the other four were interred in the College cemetery, each grave equipped with a “tactile recaller.”

Nothing happened during the first two nights & we went to bed on the third with our minds at rest concerning the fate of
our unfortunate friends—they were resting in peace. Around three in the morning, however, a terrifying explosion woke us with a start. Realising immediately what it meant, Athanasius threw on his shirt as he hurried down the stairs, calling for help. I followed him, accompanied by several fathers.

We reached the cemetery almost as soon as he did, but he was already beside a grave with a raised flag, digging furiously with his mattock & shouting words of comfort to the one whose return to life had set off this commotion. Grasping other implements, we joined him to disinter the unfortunate man as quickly as possible.