Where Tigers Are at Home (9 page)

Peiresc, now completely won over by Athanasius, finally revealed his two human mummies of which one, notable for its size and state of conservation, was the corpse of a prince, as was proved by its richness of ornamentation. It was at the feet of this mummy that the little book in Egyptian hieroglyphs had been found that Peiresc had mentioned in his letter to Athanasius. The book was made up of pages of old papyrus written in hieroglyphic characters like those on the obelisks. There were bulls & other animals & even human figures together with other smaller characters, like those in the
Bembine Table
, but no Greek letters.

Kircher’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. He had never held a genuine example of this mysterious writing in his hands & could not stop himself immediately starting to study it. Peiresc asked him as a special favor to think out loud & Kircher obliged without batting an eyelid. Thus it was that once more I had the opportunity to observe my revered master’s singular genius & his wealth of knowledge.

It was at this juncture that we heard the news of the condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Holy Office. Peiresc, who was a close friend of the astronomer & had sure information from his contacts in Rome, asked Kircher to come & see him in Aix to discuss the matter. We went at once, though my master remained so silent and seemed so morose that it was impossible for me to tell what he thought about it.

Peiresc was aghast at all this; he was foaming with rage & railing against the horrendous ignorance of the inquisitors. In the argument that followed, Athanasius employed all his rhetorical skill to defend the verdict of the Holy Office & to advocate blind obedience to its authority, especially during that grievous period of schism & religious discord.

However, given Pereisc’s manifest disappointment & the proofs cited in support of the movement of the Earth, Kircher eventually admitted that he regarded the opinion of Galileo & Copernicus as true, as, moreover, did Galileo’s accusers, Fathers Malapertuis, Clavius & Scheiner, though they had been put under pressure & compelled to write in support of Aristotle’s assumptions & were only following the Church’s directions by force & out of obedience.

When he heard him express these views, Peiresc embraced my master, overjoyed to see him return to the path of reason. As for myself, until then educated to respect Aristotle absolutely, I did not conceal my disagreement with the result that the two of them made great efforts to show me where the infallible philosopher was mistaken. I was easily convinced—young people are malleable—but this abjuration left me with the uncomfortable feeling of belonging to a secret brotherhood that favored heresy. On the way back I was quaking in my shoes, so convinced I was that people would recognize my seditious opinions & deliver me up to the Inquisition. Kircher was amused at my disquiet, but calmed me a little by suggesting I outwardly adopt, as he did himself, the system of Tycho Brahe, which was recognized by the Church & was intellectually satisfying insofar as it constituted a neat compromise between the
unmoving paradise
of Aristotle & the universal movement of the Italian.

A few days later an order came that we were to go immediately to Vienna & we had to make hasty preparation to leave Avignon.

Dietlev and Milton were there to meet them when their train arrived at Corumbá station. Elaine was glad to see the cheerful face of her German colleague. Small and tubby, he sported a bushy salt-and-pepper beard, as if to compensate for the sparse crown of hair that was still resisting the encroachment of baldness. Known for his good nature, his hearty appetite and his love of puns, he hardly ever seemed to lose his infectious good humor. He laughed so easily that Elaine could not imagine him without seeing the gleam of his teeth behind his tousled mustache. His scalp, badly burned by the sun and brick red, proved that he had not been inactive while waiting for them.

Much more reserved than Dietlev and therefore less accessible, Milton’s severity was legendary and made him an imposing figure. Despite his lack of experience of the terrain, or more probably because of that, he made a point of showing reserve and punctilious formality in all things. His political connections and the great favor in which he was held in the upper echelons of the university gave him hope of being appointed rector the following year. Anxious to show how much he merited the position, he was already cultivating a cold and pretentious façade. All in all he was something of a pain in the neck and Dietlev would have been happy to do without him but had been forced to yield to his prerogative as head of department and his power as a member of the commission allocating research funds.

During the taxi ride Mauro was the object of much solicitous attention on the part of Milton. Questioned more assiduously than Elaine about the events of their journey, he was forced to recount the episode of the wallet-thief in detail, which he did with a light, humorous touch.

Once they reached the Beira Rio Hotel, Dietlev left the new arrivals to settle in, arranging to meet on the terrace for lunch. Elaine’s first concern was to take a shower. She was exhausted from the train journey and felt dirty from head to toe. She had never realized there were still steam locomotives in the country, even less that the smoke was so grimy! Brand new when she had left Campo Grande eight hours previously, her clothes were ready for a thorough cleaning.

She was just coming out of the shower when there was a knock at the door. It was Dietlev. Since she was on familiar terms with him, she just wrapped the bath towel around her before going to open the door. He seemed worried.

“You’re not ashamed to let someone into your room when you’re half-naked?” he joked.

“Not if it’s an old friend,” she replied with a laugh, “and one who’s seen me without a stitch more than once, if I remember rightly.”

“You just be careful, my girl. One day the devil slumbering inside me might well wake up. Especially when lured by such charms …”

“What is it you want, you nincompoop?”

“I wanted to see you alone. Without Milton, that is. You know that he gets shit-scared as soon as he feels obliged to leave his office. He’s only come with us so he can reap the glory of my discovery and flatter Mauro’s father by looking after his son personally. If he hears what I’ve got to tell you he’d be quite capable of cancelling everything on the spot.”

“There’s a problem?”

“There is. The simple fact is that the guy I’d made an agreement with to go upriver has changed his mind. He won’t hear of hiring out his boat to us anymore. And do you know why? You’ll never guess. They say there’s some crazy guys blocking the river above Cuiabá. Even the police won’t go there—they fire machine guns at anything that moves …”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Traffic in crocodile skins, it appears. A whole gang of them from Paraguay. They’ve even got a little landing-strip in the forest. And since it’s a pretty lucrative business, they don’t hesitate to use any means to make sure they’re left in peace.”

“You believe all this, do you?”

“I don’t know. Everything’s possible out here.”

“But the police, dammit?”

“Simple—they’ll get a slice of the cake.”

“And there’s no way of going around the area? Really, it’s beyond belief.”

“None at all. I’ve studied the maps with Ayrton, the fisherman who brought me the fossil last year. The arm of the river with the deposit starts twelve miles higher up and it doesn’t connect with anything negotiable. The only way of getting there would be to disembark downstream and walk through the jungle for forty or forty-five miles … It’s out of the question.”

Elaine was devastated. Knowing Milton, it would be the next plane back to Brazilia. “What are we going to do, then?” she asked, stunned.

“For the moment nothing. But we keep quiet. Not a word to Milton; nor to Mauro, either. You never know. I’ve made some other contacts and I’ll have a reply this afternoon. OK?”

“OK,” Elaine said with a disappointed expression.

“Go and get dressed. We’re meeting on the terrace in ten minutes.”

LEANING ON HIS
elbows at the window of his room, Mauro was drinking in the unfamiliar landscape he was seeing for the first time. The Beira Rio Hotel stood beside the river, on the short strip of old structures bordering the bank at that point. From his lookout post the student could see the Pantanal marshes stretching out forever to the east. Twittering flocks of unfamiliar birds flew across a sky that was cloudless, but of a hazy blue. The silty and perfectly smooth water of the Rio Paraguay looked like a yellowing mirror, tainted in places with rust or suspicious patches of mold. It was difficult to believe that this loop of still water could be part of the great river by which the lumberjacks sent their huge rafts of timber down to Buenos Aires or Montevideo. Floating as if by some miracle were small craft made up of bits and pieces, an old two-decker gunboat and the patrol boat of the river police, all moored to trees or worm-eaten posts driven into the bank. Long aluminum barges turned over on the grass among dugout canoes and ropes threw off a dazzling light.

Like every geology student, Mauro had taken part in numerous field studies during his course but this was the first time he was part of a real research project, and, what is more, with the cream of the university. Dietlev Walde had become famous two years ago by discovering, together with Professor Leonardos and other German geologists, an unexpected fossil in a Cormubá quarry: a polyp comparable to
Stephanocyphus
, which had already been identified in certain regions of the world, but distinguished from it by important structural differences, notably by the presence of secondary polyps. After analyses carried out by various specialists—of whom Elaine von Wogau was one—on the samples brought back to Brazilia, it had been dated back to 600 million years ago and they had shown that the fossil belonged to a primitive branch in the evolution of the
Scyphozoa
: it was not only the first Pre-Cambrian fossil ever to be found in South America but
also one of the most archaic. Named
Corumbella wernerii, hahn, hahn, leonardos & walde
, it immediately gave Dietlev and his team an international reputation.

The previous year Dietlev had returned to the Mato Grosso to collect further samples. The rumor having gotten around that there was a mad German who was looking for rocks with impressions and was prepared to give a good price for them, a fisherman had brought him a stone he had picked up by chance high in the north of the Pantanal. Analysis had confirmed that it was a Pre-Cambrian fossil that predated the
Corumbella
and, what was even better, of an echinoderm that had never been found before, not even in the rich deposits of the Ediacara Hills in Australia! This had led to the idea of the expedition, which promised excellent results.

If the prospect of having their name associated with an animal species gets most scientists worked up, it had turned Milton into a veritable wild beast: obsessed with the idea of promotion, he had intrigued to take the place of Othon Leonardos on this expedition. Like Dietlev and Elaine, Mauro despised him for this attitude, unworthy of a true scientist, but his influence was such that one had to put up with him or give up the very idea of working at the university.

After all, the only thing that was really important was to advance our knowledge of the world. This fossil, coming in a direct line from “primordial fauna” promised a fantastic advance in our understanding of our origins and Mauro too was seething with impatience—why be ashamed of it?—to be part of this triumph.

Not counting the fact that it would shut his father up, shut him up for good, he hoped.

At the agreed time, the four of them met on the terrace on the top floor of the hotel. Dietlev went over their objectives again and the role each would play on the expedition. From the logistical point of view everything had gone as planned apart from the
problem of obtaining a supply of petrol for the boat. He’d only managed to get half the necessary fuel, but the problem was solvable if they would accept a slight additional cost. Milton having told them that they had sufficient funds to buy up all the reserves of Corumbá, they enjoyed an untroubled lunch.

Toward three Dietlev took them to the quarry so that they could familiarize themselves with the geological layers associated with
Corumbella wernerii
and, if possible, collect further samples. After having shown them the thin stratum of gray-green clay on which they were to concentrate their efforts, he left them, saying he would see them at the Ester at the end of the afternoon.

Before he got into the taxi, he turned around and saw Elaine and Mauro on their knees, using their hammers on the slope. Hands in his pockets, panama pulled well down over his ears, Milton was watching them work in the white dust.

WHEN DIETLEV ENTERED
the Ester, the café-restaurant where he had arranged to meet the man who represented his last opportunity of finding a boat, the owner dropped his brush to greet him with a great show of friendship. “
Holà, amigo
,” he said, embracing Dietlev, “it’s a pleasure to see you again. What have you been doing all this time?”

“Hi, Herman,” Dietlev said, without a reply to a question that didn’t expect one, “still painting, then?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m just giving these old walls a bit of decoration, but this time it’s going to be a portrait. Look what I unearthed,” he said, picking up a postcard that was lying on the table: “Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck. Not bad, eh? I’m just making a copy of it, it’s going to be fantastic!”

Dietlev turned toward the large niche where Herman had started to color in an amateurish sketch of the photo. “Indeed …”
he said. He felt ill at ease: as always at some point this individual would suddenly make him feel violently sick. Herman Petersen spoke German and behaved like a German but he was … Bolivian. If one expressed surprise, he would produce the remnants of a passport to prove it. Having married an obese mulatto, who was horribly marked with smallpox (he can’t have found her disgusting since he had given her three kids), he claimed to have Brazilian nationality as well. When he was drunk, which happened every day after a certain time in the evening, he would become voluble and go on about his nostalgia for order and even his sympathy for the great
Reich
. “True, he overdid it toward the end,” he would say, without ever mentioning Hitler by name, “but all the same! The ideas are still there and they weren’t all bad, far from it, believe me!” The only information Dietlev had been able to extract from him during his two previous visits to Corumbá was that Petersen had arrived in Bolivia in 1945, after the defeat—“But I was just a simple soldier, a little fish, a tiny little fish.”