Where Tigers Are at Home

by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

  He handed Nelson two little booklets of literatura de cordel, those long popular poems that could be found almost everywhere in the Sertão. Written and illustrated by the violeiros, wandering guitarists who printed them themselves on poor-quality paper, they were sung by their authors at markets, in the streets or cheap restaurants. To display them to potential customers, the violeiros were in the habit of tying them around the middle, like any old cloth, and hanging them from a cord strung between two trees. Thus the name “cord literature” for all such chapbooks.

  Nelson could manage to decipher a text word by word, but it demanded too intense an effort for him to read normally.

  “There’s The cow that started talking about the present crisis and João Peitudo, the son of Lampião and Maria Bonita,” Zé went on. Would you like us to sing them together in a while?”

  Nothing gave Nelson more pleasure. He had a guitar and he’d learned to play the monotonous rhythm needed to chant these poems; he only needed to hear them once or twice for them to be imprinted on his memory for good.

  “Why not right away?” he asked, twisting around to get his instrument. “Shall we start with the Son of Lampião?”

  “There’s something I have to tell you first. You know,” he said, lowering his eyes and fixing them on his large, scarred hands, “a few years ago all the truck drivers had a dog in their truck but today any dog can have a truck … It’s getting harder and harder to get a load, so I couldn’t pay the installments on my Berliet … Well, I’ve been forced … I really have been, I assure you. I’ve … the Willis, you understand. I’ve sold the Willis.”

  Not far away, behind Nelson’s shack, a dustcart could be heard tipping a load of refuse on the rubbish dump.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Italian journey: of Morgan le Fay, of Atlantis & of the fumes of Mount Etna

  WE WERE ONE day’s journey away from the Straits of Messina, riding slowly in the oppressive heat of Calabria, when Athanasius opened a missive with green wax seals that were unknown to me. Drawing my attention with a smile and a little gesture, he read out the letter to me, now and then absentmindedly wiping away the sweat dripping down his forehead with a handkerchief:

  On the morning of the Assumption of the most Blessed Virgin, standing alone at my window, I saw such numerous and such new things that I cannot—nor will not—stop thinking about them because the most Blessed Virgin caused a vestige of the paradise that she entered on this very day centuries ago to appear in the lighthouse where I was. And if the eye up above possesses, like the intellect, a mirror in which, of its own volition, it can make anything it wishes appear, then I can call the one that I saw the mirror of that mirror! In an instant the sea that bathes Sicily swelled up and became, over a distance of about ten miles, like the spine of a black mountain. Then there appeared a very clear & transparent crystal; it resembled a mirror, the top of which was resting against the mountain and the foot on the Calabrian shore. This mirror suddenly showed a succession of more than ten thousand pilasters of equal height; & the bases between pilaster & pilaster were of the same bright clarity, of the same shadow. One moment later the said pilasters lost height and curved to form arches, such as the aqueducts in Rome or the foundations of Solomon have; & the rest of the water remained a simple mirror, even to the mountain pools of Sicily. But after a short while a large cornice formed above the arches & on it there appeared a number of veritable castles, all set out in this immense glass & all of the same form & the same workmanship. Then the towers turned into a colonnaded theatre; then the theatre split along a double vanishing point; then the alignment of the columns became a very long façade with ten rows of windows; the façade changed into a forest of pines & cypresses of equal height, then into other species of trees … At that everything disappeared & the sea, hardly rougher than before, became its former self. That is this famous Fata Morgana, which for twenty-six years I had believed improbable & which I have now seen, more beautiful & and more real than what had been described to me. Since that hour I believe it is real, I believe in this way various fleeting colors have of appearing, more beautiful and more vivid than those of art or of nature. I desire Your Reverence, who live surrounded by the glories of Rome and contemplate from close to the divine verities, to tell me who the architect or the craftsman is & with what art & what material he gathered together these varied and numerous glories in one place. While waiting, I pray God may ever look favorably on me and I commend myself to His most holy sacrifices.

  Reverend Father Ignazio Angelucci of Reggio. S. J.

  This letter, dated August 22, 1633, had been given to Athanasius by Father Riccioli who had admitted he couldn’t understand a word of it. Concerned about Father Angelucci’s mental health & because Reggio was one of the places where we had to stop, he had asked my master to clarify this enigma.

  “Well, Caspar,” Kircher said, handing me the letter, “what do you think of it? Madness? Mystical visions? Authenticated miracle? Is our Ignazio a gentle simpleton or a holy man the Lord has touched with his finger?”

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” I replied without hesitation. “The chosen ones of God have often been seen as fools or madmen in the eyes of their fellow men. However, the things that Father Angelucci describes with such sincerity seem to me to be so far beyond understanding that I believe he has been fortunate enough to witness a true miracle.”

  “A correct reply,” said Athanasius, “but wrong. Correct in logic, but wrong in truth. The author of this letter is neither mad nor one of the elect; he is, like you my dear Caspar, simply a victim of his own ignorance. What Father Angelucci witnessed, the famous Morgan le Fay, over which so much ink has been spilt, is not a miracle but a mirage. The columns this fellow from Reggio saw were doubtless those of the Greek temples of Agrigento or Selinunte, infinitely multiplied and pleasingly distorted by progressive transformation through the vapors rising from the sea. Having said that,” he added with a smile, “I would give anything to be able to witness such a fantasmagoria & above all … to be able to verify what I have just put forward.”

  He wiped his forehead & immersed himself once more in his notes, without making anything of my defeat, for which I was grateful: once again a few words had been enough for him to resolve a mystery that had ever thwarted the most learned scholars & to make me aware, by comparison, of my own immeasurable ignorance.

  As soon as we reached Reggio, we went with Father Angelucci to the lighthouse from which he had seen the Fata Morgana. He confirmed the details of his letter point by point & and we found him to be of perfectly sound mind, if a little rustic. Kircher explained the agencies of the spectacle he had witnessed, but even though the reverend father pretended to accept them, we could see that he didn’t believe a word of it & by far preferred miraculous explanations to those of physics.

  During the week we spent in that town we went to the lighthouse every day without being granted a sight of the mirage. And, to be honest, it would have been rather unfair if a privilege that had cost our host twenty-six years of his life should have been granted us after so little effort. As the marine landscape we saw from that window was charming, it at least gave rise to pleasant conversations.

  From Reggio we put out to sea &, skirting the coast of Sicily, reached the port of Valletta. Together with Frederick of Hesse we were given rooms in the palace of the Knights of the Order of Malta. The government of the island was seriously concerned about the presence of Turcoman pirates in the Tyrrhenian Sea & there was much disquiet. But Kircher, unaffected by all that, immediately set about organizing a tour of the island in order to carry out his program of observations. He started to study the plants & animals, also collecting a quantity of geological specimens.

  From information supplied by one of the knights of the Order, we went to the east coast to view a cliff that had been sculpted by nature into a gigantic human figure. It was a woman’s face, which fascinated both of us by its beauty. I knew that nature, by definition, was capable of
such marvels, but it is quite a different matter to contemplate the product of this magnificent art de visu. Kircher ran this way and that to vary his viewpoint, lifting up his cassock to climb the rocks more easily. He pointed out to me a very precise spot where the face could be seen but disappeared at the slightest change in the angle of observation, merging once more into the surrounding rock. He was talking to himself, laughing out loud, in one of those transports of delight that were customary with him every time he discovered something new.

  “Jesus Maria! Only a few cable-lengths away from Africa, from Egypt! It’s proof. All the pharaohs and their wives in this emblematic figure! Natura pictrix, Caspar, natura pictrix! I’m on the right road, no doubt about that. Natural anamorphosis is only one of the forms of the universal analogy! I’ve never been so close to the goal …”

  I had too often seen Athanasius in these states close to ecstasy to be particularly worried, but it was always amazing to see a man normally so level-headed in such a fever of excitement. When he had finished prancing around, my master sat down in the shade of the rock in question & started to write. I passed the time patiently cutting his quills, knowing that sooner or later he would tell me the result of his meditations.

  Never having been so close to Egypt, Kircher confessed to me that he regretted that the Grand Duke had not asked to visit that land that in his eyes was so important for the understanding of the universe. In Valletta Athanasius was often absent for hours on end, sitting by the sea, his eyes fixed on the southeast, in the direction of the Nile, travelling in thought through those cities that are almost as old as the world. He would spend whole mornings wandering round the harbor, talking to sailors returning from Africa, avidly gathering all the information or curios these people might possess. But the time came when we had to leave Malta & start the return journey, which promised so many marvels.

  After a calm passage, we disembarked at Palermo where we lodged in the Jesuit college. Frederick of Hesse having numerous official obligations to fulfill, we were free for several weeks, but before starting out on our planned tour of Sicily, Kircher had to demonstrate his talents to the teachers at the college and to the local notables, who already knew him by reputation. For several days, in this library where I am at the moment, he answered his colleagues’ questions with consummate ease, developing all the topics as they were submitted to him. He had a prodigious memory & could quote most of his sources in extenso or do extremely complex calculations without referring to a single note. His lectures were so successful that they were the talk of the town & soon he had to receive a number of aristocrats attracted by a man whose erudition was such a contrast with his youth & attractive features. The Prince of Palagonia, who prided himself on his knowledge of the sciences & astrology, attended several of these lessons & eventually invited us to go and stay at his palace on the outskirts of the town. Kircher accepted this gracious invitation, but he was so keen to begin his studies on the land of Sicily that he put it off until near the end of our stay. And that was what was agreed.

  Finally the moment came when the two of us set off for Mount Etna, an expedition Athanasius had made a priority in memory of Peiresc, though it was also his own. Despite my fear of the Sicilian bandits who infested the roads, we reached Caeta Abbey unmolested. In the library Kircher and I set about making a complete inventory of the manuscripts. We were fortunate enough to find several extremely rare items such as the Hieroglyphica of Horapollon, the Pimander, the Asclepius or Book of Perfect Speech, the Arabic text of Picatrix dealing with talismans and sympathetic magic & a number of papyri that Kircher had me copy. It was an unexpected harvest & it was with light hearts that, a few days later, we undertook the ascent of Etna.

  As night was falling after a long day’s walk, we came to a dilapidated cottage that was a stopping place for travelers. We had a bed for the night there & a meal as well as a guide for the last part of our venture. After supper, a frugal meal but accompanied by a good red wine from Selinunte, from the very same hills where the ancient Greeks used to grow vines, we sat down by the hearth & Kircher, a little mellow from the wine, happily agreed to explain his ideas on geology to me. Like Monsieur Descartes, he accepted the presence of a fire at the center of the terrestrial globe, miners at the coal face testifying that the heat increased with depth.

  We went on talking until late into the night. Stimulated by my questions, Kircher dealt one after the other with the biggest problems set by the formation of the Earth, confiding in me that what I was hearing were the premises of a book he was preparing in secret—having been officially instructed to devote himself to Egyptology—& which he would doubtless call The Subterranean World. When we thought about getting some sleep, it was already four o’clock in the morning & since we had to rise at dawn to continue on our way to the summit, we decided to stay up. Our conversation turned to volcanoes again. Athanasius never tired of describing the fantastic upheavals the central fire could cause when it escaped by those chimneys.

  “According to my calculations, Atlantis was somewhere between the New World & North Africa. When its highest peaks started spewing out fire, when the ground started trembling & caving in, spreading terror & death, the Atlantic submerged the whole land. But when it reached the volcanoes it succeeded in cooling their heat & consequently in arresting the progressive collapse of the land. The few peaks that were thus spared are the islands that today we call the Canaries & the Azores. And such was the power of these volcanoes, which must assuredly have been some of the major chimneys of the central fire, that even today they still display a certain amount of activity: all those islands smell of sulphur, & from what I have been told one can see numerous little craters & geysers where the water that escapes is boiling. It is therefore not impossible that one day the same phenomenon that made a whole world disappear could suddenly make it reappear, with all its ruined cities & and its millions of skeletons …”

  Even though imaginary, this vision made my blood freeze. Kircher fell silent, the fire was dying out in the hearth & I shut my eyes in order to see with my mind’s eye the emergence of the terrible graveyard from those far-off times. I saw the alabaster palaces slowly rise from the depths, the towers truncated, the huge statues broken, lying on their sides, decapitated, & I seemed to hear the sinister creaking noises accompanying this nightmare apparition. But suddenly the sound took on a quite different quality, it became so real that I made an effort to throw off my drowsy imaginings; I woke at the very moment when a terrible explosion made the walls of our lodging tremble & cast a red light over the room where we were.

  “Up you get, Caspar, up you get! Quick!” Kircher yelled, a transformed man. “The volcano has woken! The central fire! Quick!”

  As I stood up, terrified, I saw Athanasius rushing toward our luggage as one explosion followed the other. “The instruments! The instruments!” he shouted to me.

  Taking that to mean he was urging me to help him save our precious equipment before fleeing, I did my best, despite my shaking legs, to help him gather up our things. The innkeeper, who was to be our guide, & his wife did not take such precautions; they cleared off, not without having advised us to join them at the foot of the mountain as quickly as possible.

  We soon came out; even though it was night, the sky was ablaze & we could see as if it were daylight. My spirits revived somewhat when I saw that the track by which we had arrived had not been affected by the eruption. But my terror returned when I saw my master setting off in the opposite direction, the one that led toward the crater the color of incandescent embers.

  “This way! This way!” I screamed to Kircher, thinking his agitation had made him go the wrong way.

  “Stupid ass!” was his reply. “It’s an unexpected chance, a present from heaven. Come on, hurry up! We’re going to learn a lot more today than we could by reading all the books ever written on the question.”

  “But our guide!” I exclaimed, “we haven’t got a guide! We’re going to certain death!”

&
nbsp; “We’ve got the best guide possible,” said Kircher, pointing to the skies, “we’re in His hands. If you’re too frightened, go down & get yourself another master. Or follow me & if we must die that’s just too bad, but at least we’ll have seen.”

  “By the grace of God,” I said, crossing myself, & ran to catch up to Kircher, who had already turned away & set off for the summit.

  ALCNTARA: A bird flies off, leaving its call behind it

  “What do you think of Kircher from the point of view of Sinology?” Eléazard asked. “Do you think he can be considered a precursor, in one way or another?”

  “I don’t know,” Loredana replied, “it’s odd. And then it all depends on what you mean by a ‘precursor.’ If you mean someone who put forward, before anyone else, some basic principles for understanding Chinese culture that were sufficiently penetrating to open the way to the understanding we have today, then the answer is definitely no. On that level his book is nothing more than an intelligent—and often dishonest—compilation of the work of Ricci and other missionaries. And every time he takes it upon himself to interpret these facts, he gets it badly wrong, just as with the Egyptian hieroglyphs. His theories on the way Asia was peopled or on the influence of Egypt on the development of Chinese religions are completely crack-brained. And it’s the same with his approach to the formation of ideograms … On the other hand, his book has been a fantastic tool, the first of its kind, for the understanding of the Chinese world in the West: he’s never prejudiced, except in religion of course, and all things considered presents a pretty objective vision of a world that until then simply didn’t exist for Europeans. And that, despite everything, is not bad at all.”

  “That is what I think too,” said Eléazard, “but in my opinion it goes even farther. In his way he does more or less the same as Antoine Galland did for Arab culture when he produced the first translation of A Thousand and One Nights: he creates a myth, a mysterious China, supernatural, inhabited by wealthy aesthetes and scholars, a baroque exoticism that Baudelaire, or even Segalen, will recall in their fantasies of the Orient.