“Look, Caspar, what do you think of this one: Morir per no morir? Nothing? Really? You must have forgotten the phoenix, which has to be consumed by fire in order to be reborn from its ashes. That is really quite childish, I would have expected more wit from the Prince. But let us continue: Si me mira, me miran … That’s hardly less elementary, because of the double meaning, a gnomon could say it of the sun or, equally well, a courtier of his sovereign. Ah, here’s a more difficult one, but more amusing as well: Entier nous le mangeons, mais ô prodige étrange, reduit a sa moitié ce coquin nous mange. Come on, my friend, rack your brains a bit, what can we eat when it’s whole but half of which eats us.”
That was precisely what I had been doing for a while with no other result that a growing headache & once more I had to admit defeat.
“A chicken, Caspar, a poulet, a pou-let! Don’t you get it? That’s why the riddle’s in French,” my master said with a smile. When I looked baffled, he pretended to be looking for a flea in his hair. “Well try this one, since it’s written in our own language,” he went on, hardly giving me time to catch my breath: “Ein Neger mit Gazelle zagt im Regen nie … Well?”
I puzzled over this for five minutes but I could not work out why a negro with a gazelle never despaired in the rain or what it might signify.
“This time you’re quite right, the sentence has no hidden meaning; on the other hand, it is a perfect palindrome & can be read equally well from right to left. This kind of frivolity was much in fashion in Rome during the days of her decline & I only wish Egyptian writing was as easy to decipher as these lame riddles.
“When it spotted me it was the one who was spotted …” he went on. “What do you think, Caspar? Is it not a witty way of painting with words the leopard’s coat?”
My master was about to tackle a further puzzle when the valet returned to say that his Highness would soon be there but in the meanwhile he asked us to be patient & to take a seat. As he said that, the servant gestured toward several chairs arranged around a picture showing the Prince in hunting dress.
Hardly had I sat down than I felt a sharp pain in my posterior: the cushion on my armchair was bristling with tiny pins causing unbearable discomfort. I immediately stood up again, in as natural a manner as possible &, following my master’s order, without saying anything. He, I think, immediately realized what the difficulty was.
“Oh, do forgive me, Caspar,” he said, also standing up, “I’d forgotten your hernia and that you shouldn’t sit in chairs that are too comfortable. Take mine, you’ll be better there.”
He immediately sat in the chair I had left without appearing to feel any pain at all. I admired the strength of character through which he could suffer a torment I had not been able to bear for five seconds. The armchair I was sitting in was not lacking an uncomfortable feature: the front legs were shorter than the back ones so that I kept sliding forward & had to tense my leg muscles to stop myself falling. The back sloped forward, aggravating the awkwardness of my posture, but compared with the other chair, it was a bed of roses & I was grateful to Kircher for having suggested this unfair exchange.
“But let’s get back to our puzzles,” my master said. “Legendo metulas imitabere cancros. Oho! Latin now & some of the very best. It’s your turn, Caspar—”
At that moment the lackey reappeared behind us as if by magic; he announced the Prince of Palagonia. I was not in the least unhappy to leave my torture chair. The Prince was already approaching us with his limping gait. He was a small, very dry man, at most fifty but his uncombed wig and several bad teeth made him look as if he had one foot in the grave. His dress, of green silk, was rather austere in style & even somewhat dusty, betokening a man who cared little for his appearance.
“Good, good, good, that is good. My unworthy house is proud of your presence,” he said to Kircher in the bad German he insisted on speaking to the end of our stay.
My master bowed without returning his compliment.
“Good, even better like that. I like men who do not put on false modesty, especially when they possess the means to it. But come, come, I must myself excuse & to see is better than to speak …”
As he said that, he led us out of the room by a concealed door. After going along several corridors, we came to a library, well stocked, as it seemed to me, where he locked the door behind us. Going over to the shelves, he made as if to take out The Golden Ass by Apuleus—I remember the book because I could not see why he should suddenly want to talk to us about that author—but in fact by so doing he released a mechanism which opened a little window in the books, revealing the back of a painting. The Prince invited Kircher to put his eye to a tiny hole. My master did so & let me take his place after a few seconds.
“Amusing but rudimentary,” he commented without a muscle in his face expressing anything other than profound indifference.
I looked in my turn. The aperture gave a view of the room where we had been before.
“You understand,” the Prince went on, “that I show out of sincerity that & to prove to you how much I your worldly wisdom greatly value. I offer you all my excuses for this modest examination. It allows me to judge human honesty & you are first to succeed. Believe me that I great opinion of your abilities have & trust you not to reveal little secret of mine.”
Kircher assured him that we would never reveal the device to anyone, adding that the Prince’s suspicion was fully justified: there was, he said, no limit to human hypocrisy & if one were going to waste one’s time with people, it was best to take precautions in choosing those one was going to deal with.”
“Good, good, good,” said the Prince, nodding. “You permit me congratulate you for decipherment of decorative enigmas. It prove great knowing never before seen. But we speak later. I beg you first visit your habitation and rest you a little your travails. We see each other at lunch if that agree with you.”
Athanasius nodded his agreement & a servant came to take us to our apartments, where we found our luggage. They were extensive and comfortable, with flowers in beautiful arrangements, a bottle of malmsey ready to drink and crystal glasses. In an open box we found a set of surgical instruments with everything we needed to treat the wounds caused during our wait. I encouraged my master to make first use of it, since he had suffered the torture of the armchair longest, but he waved my offer away. I was dumbfounded by such stoicism, but Kircher lifted the back of his cassock &, after having untied a few tapes, revealed a sheet of thick leather so well placed that it remained invisible from outside.
“Yes, my friend,” Kircher said, giving my shoulder a friendly squeeze, “concerned by the rumors about the Prince, I took further advice & … several precautions. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about these preparations but our good faith had to be absolutely convincing. I suspected we would be observed & you, with your innocence & your usual courage, were the one who served that objective. I only intended to inflict the sloping chair on you, but you immediately sat down on the worst one of all. Let me tell you very sincerely how much I admire the way you reacted.”
“But what about the riddles, the pictures?”
“Yes, Caspar, yes, I had done my homework on those as well, so as not to appear unworthy so close to our goal. But don’t ask me any more questions, it’s still too early to explain all that to you. All I ask is a little patience & you’ll see yourself how justified this mystery-mongering was.”
I assured Athanasius I would obey him implicitly & started to put my things away. You can imagine how dumbfounded I was at my master’s cleverness & the way he took all possible steps to achieve his ends! His undertaking must be of some importance, I thought, as I swore to myself to do my best to support him in his projects. My unease regarding the Prince & his house had disappeared & I was full of impatience to take part in this unexpected adventure. My master was resting on his bed, his beard sticking up, his eyes closed, august & majestic, like a statue recumbent on a tomb. I almost knelt down before him, such was the effect of hi
s strength of mind & superhuman intelligence on me.
Toward midday a servant came to take us to the room where luncheon was served. The Prince and his wife were waiting for us, sitting at a table whose setting showed perfect taste. He introduced us to Princess Alexandra, whose splendid beauty & youth were very much at odds with her husband’s decrepit appearance. With her blond hair arranged in a complicated chignon, her blue eyes & her small, red mouth & dressed ravishingly in silk & organdie, she looked like a goddess come straight from Olympus. Unlike her husband, she spoke perfect German, a legacy, we later learned, of her Bavarian roots. Refined even in her movements, she walked & did everything extremely slowly, as if the least abruptness on her part would have brought the villa tumbling down about her ears. But this idiosyncrasy only made her all the more graceful & I blushed, tongue-tied, whenever she cast a glance in my direction.
“Good, good, good …,” said the Prince as the servants busied themselves about us, loading the table with the most exquisite dishes. “Do honor to this meager repast, I beg you.”
Deaf to this invitation, Kircher stood up to say grace &, not content with this piece of impertinence, took a long time consecrating the bread. I could see that our host was not accustomed to such ceremony & that he raised an eyebrow at the liberty my master had taken.
“Since the bread we have before us,” he said with a glint of malice, “could you me tell, Reverend Father, if its weight be lighter, after it taken out of the oven, when warm it is or cold?”
“Nothing easier to prove,” Athanasius replied, starting to eat, “when one has done the experiment oneself. Bread is heavier when it is warm & has just come out of the oven than when it has cooled down. A half pound of risen dough is two and a half ounces lighter cooked than raw & and even lighter when cooled. Which demonstrates that those who maintain that it is lighter raw than cooked are mistaken. One should never write, nor base oneself on anything other than genuine experiments, especially when they are as easy to prove as this one. Even Aristotle is sometimes wrong: in the fifth problem of the twenty-first section of his physics he claims that a salted loaf is lighter cold than warm & an unsalted loaf heavier. A simple experiment showed me however that the two loaves remain the same weight, whether cold or warm, whether they are salted or not.”
“Excellent, my sir, excellent,” the Prince said, sucking a chicken leg. “I did not expect less from you.”
Princess Alexandra turned to me &, matching action to words, said, “These gentlemen are too learned for me. And I have to admit, lighter or heavier, it is a matter of complete indifference: I prefer my bread with butter anyway.”
“Quite right too,” my master agreed, also helping himself.
As for me, I kept my eyes fixed on my plate.
The meal continued on the same bantering tone. Wines & dishes followed each other without interruption & Athanasius did justice to them, much to the satisfaction of our hosts. When large slices of grilled swordfish were served, my master begged me to recount our adventures at Messina. Despite feeling intimidated, I still managed to describe our fishing excursion in detail, though naturally omitting the episode that had led to Kircher’s confession. When I came to the death of the fish, I became so impassioned at the revolting memory that the Prince laughed at my sensitivity. But his wife had turned quite pale … Without a word, she put her hand on mine & I could tell that she shared my feelings. The Prince noticed the gesture, brief though it was, & abruptly stiffened.
After the meal we were served a very bitter liqueur based, so the Prince told us, on herbs from the mountains. He seemed to have become very heated & kept pestering my master with his questions. Then the Prince appeared to hesitate for a moment & after he had whispered a few words in Athanasius’s ear, the two of them went to the other end of the room, where they continued to converse in low voices.
Left alone with the Princess, I did not know how to behave, so moved I was by her beauty. I asked her a few questions about God & the nature of the soul, to which her replies showed intelligence & good sense. Since the subject did not seem to interest her particularly, I brought the conversation to the twisted statues we could see through the windows, asking her to tell me what they meant. She went very pale & appeared to waver before answering.
“I feel you are a young man I can trust & I am happy to tell you a story of which I have no need to be ashamed but which was the cause of both those monsters & my misfortune. As you perhaps noticed during the meal, my husband is of a very jealous nature; a few years ago, not many months after our wedding, despite myself I gave him occasion to feel his suspicions were justified. A cousin of mine, Ödön von Horvath, came to visit me here. He excelled in the art of composing airs for the lute or the spinet & this inestimable gift was only equaled by his beauty. As we were the same age & my interests were closer to his than to those of my husband, I was very happy to see him here & we passed whole days playing music together or discussing all kinds of topics. I enjoyed listening to him talk about the country of my birth & the loved ones I had left there. Alas, under the influence of youth and loneliness, he fell so passionately in love with me & declared his love so sincerely & so sensitively that I was moved by it. All I felt for him was affection & a sister’s love for her brother but I have to admit that I was secretly flattered by his attentions & his insistence might perhaps have eventually borne fruit. Chance, or Providence, if you prefer, saved me from the unfaithfulness without sparing me the shame. One evening after supper, when the Prince pretended to go to bed on the pretext that he had drunk too much during the meal, my cousin, even more aroused than usual because of the wine, abandoned himself to transports he normally managed to repress. He begged me to grant him a kiss & since I refused, threatened to go & kill himself on the spot; he was a man to carry out such a piece of madness, especially given the state he was in, with the result that the idea frightened me. I resisted less … he put his arm around my waist & took advantage of the moment to steal the kiss he seemed to have set his heart on. That was the moment when my husband surprised us. He didn’t say a word, but the coldness & cruelty I saw in his eyes made my blood run cold much more than if he had lost his temper. Ringing for the servants, he had my cousin dragged out of the room & locked me in my bedroom without giving me a chance to explain.
“Since that ill-fated evening, I have been shut away in this house, which my husband has transformed into a prison. As for my cousin, I have not had any news of him, but I know that he has not returned to Bavaria & I cannot stop myself constructing the worst hypotheses about his fate. Three months later workers started raising the walls around our park & installing on them the devilish statues that are intended to remind me ceaselessly of my supposed sin. But that would be nothing without the excessive cruelty with which my husband carried out his undertaking: if you look at these statues closely, you will see that many of them represent musicians; everything about them is grotesque, distorted, monstrous, everything apart from their faces, they are always the same, calm & angelic, as if surprised to find themselves in such company. The face,” the Princess quickly wiped away a large tear from her cheek, “is that of my cousin.”
I sympathized profoundly with this unhappy woman & felt so sorry for her misfortune that I poured out my sighs. I was speechless at her husband’s malevolence. I was trembling as I took her hand & squeezed it firmly as it seemed the only suitable way of consoling her a little.
“Excuse me,” she said, thanking me with a wan smile & withdrawing her hand slowly, “but I must go and rest.”
She gave me her arm & I accompanied her to the door. As she took more precautions than before, I thought she was about to faint and asked whether she felt strong enough to walk by herself.
“You needn’t worry,” she said with an artless smile, “it’s just that the glass harpsichord in my stomach is vibrating a little more than usual. To hurry would risk breaking it & not all the skill of Father Kircher would be able to save me from a horrible death.”
At that she went, leaving me in a state close to stupor.
ALCNTARA: Euclides at his keyboard adjusting the slow motion of the stars …
A few days passed, days entirely devoted to work on Caspar Schott’s text and Loredana’s occasional but regular visits. Despite her initial hostile reaction, Soledade had immediately adopted the Italian, or rather, Eléazard thought, had been won over by her open nature and by the exemplary way she was interested in everything, people as well as things, without distinction. She had refused to come and stay with him—there’s plenty of unoccupied rooms, he’d told her without any ulterior motive, at least it would mean you wouldn’t have to pay for the hotel, it’s up to you—but she had taken him at his word when he’d said she could come to Pelhourinho Square whenever she liked, to use his library or take advantage of a shower that worked more or less properly. He would run into her as she came and went in the house, reading on one of the chaise longues on the veranda or, more often, sitting at the kitchen table with Soledade. He was entirely satisfied with her unobtrusive, unpredictable presence; it was as if Loredana had always been living there and a spontaneous, transparent intimacy had quietly arisen in the course of both their lives.
She seemed to enjoy his guided tour around the town, putting a name, an anecdote to each dilapidated façade, reconstructing against the gray sky every ruined edifice with grand gestures and builder’s jargon. In his enthusiasm he had even taken her to see the moving little church—one of the first the missionaries built in Brazil—hidden on a tiny uninhabited island in São Marcos Bay. An unbelievable number of snakes had taken up residence there and, in a kind of fiendish revenge, subjected every nook and cranny of the battered walls to their interference. He decided, however, not to take her to the island of the short-sighted or to that of the albinos, such was Loredana’s nauseated response to these examples, fairly banal, after all, of the dangers of inbreeding.
Where Tigers Are at Home Page 19