Where Tigers Are at Home

by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

  The female part of the company cried out in indignation at these customs, objecting that humanity would quickly die out if such vile practices should spread excessively; love was really only to be found in the difference between the sexes & not in the androgyny vaunted by that debauchee Plato to justify his vices.

  The Prince took up the argument in his own language. “If we are to believe you, mesdames,” he said, “it is only among animals that true love is to be found, for they have the advantage over you of a greater difference & of not philosophizing …”

  The Prince said that in such a tone that it was difficult to say whether he was joking or talking seriously. Since he started to smile, however, the assembled company chose to regard it as a witticism & roared with laughter, while the Princess, with tears in her eyes, dug her nails in my hand under the table.

  “In that too,” her husband said, “Greek mythology provides us with many examples of this zoophilia, of which I will only mention Pasiphae with her bull, Leda with her swan & Apuleius’s matron with her ass. Which is nothing compared with reality. Any of our shepherds will prefer his nanny goats to the fair sex & in the town of Mendes in Egypt, where the god Pan was revered, the billy goats commonly coupled with the women. It is so widespread in Muscovy that Cyril of Novgorod, when asked if one could drink the milk & eat the flesh of a cow that had been known by a man replied that everyone could, apart from the one who had had commerce with it. In the East Indies the Portuguese enjoy dugongs as if they were women & the negroes of Mozambique are said to find great relief in abusing them even when they are dead. One cannot say that such copulation is simply a result of human depravity, for other animals have the same feelings toward us & the same combinations among themselves. Remember what Pliny has to say about the gosling from Argos that conceived a passion for a girl called Glauce who played the guitar and who was at the same time wooed by a ram that had fallen in love with her. We could also mention the trouble caused by an elephant for the woman who kept a shop in Antioch & that caused by a great ape of Borneo for a priest. As for lions, being in season at the beginning of winter & at their most dangerous then, everyone knows they will spare a woman if she hitches up her skirt & shows them her private parts …”

  There were more roars of laughter. Whipped up by the Prince, the badinage became a hubbub of erudite obscenities. Incest was added to the stories of illicit love & for a long time all they would talk about was the demands of Caligula, Nero or Chrysippus, who thought it did not matter if he lay with his mother, his sister or his daughter. Strabo was quoted, who insisted that the magi of Persia & the Egyptians did the same in their temples; Amerigo Vespucci, who maintained that in all the West Indies there was no degree of kinship that forbade fornication; the Emperor Claudius who, having married his niece Agrippina, made the senate authorize incest … Then they set about sullying lawful love & modesty itself, saying they were nothing but an invention of weary nations, since they did not exist in the New World or the Far North, where the tribes willingly lent their wives or daughters to visitors without showing the least shame & copulated in public, just as the Cynic Crates used to screw his Hipparchia right in the middle of the Agora …

  Faced with this flood of filth, which made me blush as much as the Princess, I kept giving my master imploring looks, unable to understand how he could retain such regal calm. Not a muscle in his face moved; he wore a good-natured smile, as if he happened to be listening to mere childish prattle. The parish priest had not stayed that long & had made his excuses some time ago on the pretext of his great age & the lateness of the hour. Finally, when I was despairing of ever hearing Kircher speak out against this catalogue of loathsomeness, his voice was suddenly heard:

  “I have myself read everything to which you have alluded but, while recognizing your knowledge, I am saddened that no voice has been raised against all these vices, which, even though they exist & continue to proliferate, are no less reprehensible. I would report you all to the Holy Inquisition, as is my duty”—he paused for a moment surveying the company with an icy look. The blue of his eyes had gone pale & I saw several of the guests among those who had previously been most voluble wipe their brows, filled with irrepressible fear—“if I thought for a moment you all held those opinions. But it is, perhaps, worth making certain points clear. The more I extend my knowledge of new things, the more I find confirmed what the wisest of mortals says in Ecclesiastes: ‘There is no new thing under the sun.’ What has happened? The same as will happen again. Persistence in evil, that is, the Fiend, is the cause of all this licentiousness because his sole aim is to fill the world with his vileness. The Evil Architect is still building the house of ancient wickedness. He uses all means, he tempts all persons & all ages. His principal way of deceiving souls & taking them for himself has always been to use their curiosity to attract them & to bring about their downfall with tricks full of superstition and lechery. What can be said is that if the Fiend has captured so many men, it is because he has always used the same means, since the very beginning of time: I am talking about magic & enchantment. Our experience shows that all the gods venerated by the Egyptians & their heirs are still those of the modern barbarians, among whom we can see the signs of the transformation of Isis & Osiris into the Sun & the Moon, & we can still find Bacchus, Hercules & Aesculapius, Serapis & Anubis & monsters similar to those of the Egyptians, although worshipped under other names. Even in China we see children burned alive as an offering to Moloch, blood spilt in disgusting sacrifices & that obscene part of the body the Greeks called the “–øαλλο”1 held in particular veneration. These barbarians of the Orient worship certain animals as if they were gods & the example of the Egyptians has been so important for the outlook of those people that they filled their lands with idols similar to theirs. All the examples you were discussing just now are the fruit of idolatry, the horrible product of the Enemy of human nature. The Fiend is God’s monkey, his serpent’s tail trailing everywhere his spirit of diabolical perversion appears. And although we should not close our eyes to the distorted reflections his mirrors permanently present to us, we must be careful not to take them for reality & to expose his evil snares, which lead straight to eternal damnation …”

  ONCE MORE I admired the calm & simple manner in which my master defended our religion & its holy principles. I despaired of ever acquiring such moral strength, which, if truth be told, is that of the chosen ones of God.

  Held in restraint for a while by Kircher’s speech, the guests soon let their tongues, loosened by the wine, run free once more. But since we had long since finished eating, the Prince invited us to rise from the table & the company dispersed in small groups in the salons while the servants cleared away.

  Princess Alexandra took me to a sofa somewhat apart from the rest. After having discussed the evening’s conversation & expressed in words the disapproval we had conveyed to each other by gestures, we spoke once more of music & harmony. Unaccustomed as I was to drinking that amount of wine, my mind was confused & all I can remember of our conversation was a feeling of sweet communion & the perfect accord of our opinions. Later, when we were once more comparing the respective merits of William Byrd & Gesualdo, the Princess wanted to show me the score of a motet I was unacquainted with & which one could not read, she said, without hearing the most marvelous music there ever was. I therefore followed her eagerly to an alcove not far away, where she kept her music. Hardly were we there than she double-locked the door to stop us being disturbed. I acquiesced in this, flattered by her preference for my company. She quickly found the score & we sat down side by side.

  The score did indeed have an extraordinary grace & ardor, so that I was soon humming in a low voice, conquered by the delightful emotion it stirred within me. After a few minutes I felt as if my cheek on the side where the Princess was sitting was on fire. I looked up at her & immediately stopped singing: it was the fixed look in her shining eyes, burning like a glowing ember, that had pierced my skin. Without taking this f
righteningly adoring gaze off me, she slowly brought her hand to my face and caressed my lips tremblingly.

  “Caspar,” she murmured, “Caspar …”

  Her breathing had become irregular, her nostrils were quivering, her lips parted, as if she were trying to moisten her dry throat. Assuming she was about to faint, I half rose to assist her. With a gesture, she indicated she needed air, urging me to unlace her. Since she appeared to be suffering from the stuffy air, I started to open her dress, becoming irritated at all the ribbons I was not used to. No sooner had I undone her bodice a little than she finished loosening her dress herself. But she did not stop where decency & the demands of her faintness would have required, continuing to open her clothes in a kind of frenzy until she displayed her chest to me completely naked! I was stunned by the sight. Never having seen a woman’s breast other than on the corpses we dissected with my master, it seemed to me I had never seen anything so beautiful in my whole life. To my alarm, however, the Princess molliter incepit pectus permulcere. Papillae horruere, et ego sub tunica turgescere mentulam sensi.2 The Archenemy! This woman was possessed by the Fiend & I was within an inch of being dragged into the abyss. I crossed myself while reciting an exorcism, but the Princess, no longer herself, divaricata stolam adeo collegit ut madida feminum caro adspici posset.3 Both my mind & my senses were in turmoil. On the one hand I was horrified at the transformation of this woman, to whom I had until then ascribed the virtues & modesty of a saint, & on the other I felt more attracted to her than I had before. With one last spurt of conscience, I moved away from her &, trembling, quaking at the knees, I begged her to return to her senses.

  “Stop it, my lady, for pity’s sake,” I said with all the conviction I could muster. “You are risking damnation! You are dragging me to damnation!”

  But this reaction seemed to arouse her even more, for she passed her tongue over her lips in an obscene manner. Realizing the door was locked, I rushed over to the bell pull, threatening to call for assistance.

  CANOA QUEBRADA: Like a bastion against the madness of the world …

  After a long swim, Moéma, Thaïs and Roetgen met on the beach again in the shade of a straw hut where Seu Juju, an ex-fisherman, served stuffed crabs and a cachaça with lime that was so warm it was almost undrinkable. No one had managed to explain to him why young city folk had started visiting this out-of-the-way place, but he accepted his good fortune all the more philosophically in that it enabled him to earn a living without too much effort. Leaning back on palm logs, three young men in swimming trunks were teasing each other amid great bursts of laughter. Wrestlers at leisure, their bodies gleaming with suntan lotion and drops of water, they were playing at anointing their shining skin with sand. Roetgen met the eye of the most voluble of them, a mestizo with perfect teeth who had his hands gracefully draped around the necks or shoulders of his companions and laughed in a shrill voice.

  “Eita, mulherzinha!” he exclaimed, standing up immediately to embrace Moéma. Then, taking a step back as if to get a better view of Roetgen, “Where did you find this pretty boy? I’m already getting quite moist …”

  “Calm down, and don’t be coarse,” said Moéma, slightly embarrassed. “He’s my professor, so go easy.”

  “At least you could introduce me, can’t you? I’m not going to eat him, although …”

  “OK … Roetgen, this is Marlene,” Moéma said with a smile. “Just ignore him or he won’t let go of you.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” the young man said, holding the hand Roetgen held out to him for longer than necessary. “I’m as gentle and obedient as a little pet lamb. Isn’t that so, girls?”

  The two boys he spoke to said nothing but gave him black looks.

  “Anaïs and Doralice,” he said with an icy smile. “They’re just jealous and that makes them impolite. It’s always the same old story, not enough hormones …”

  It was the first time Roetgen had heard a man speak of himself and his friends in the feminine form. Despite his openness of mind, he felt it as a provocation and didn’t know whether to go along with the game or pretend to ignore it. Despite that, he had a kind of naive admiration for a person who dared to express his sexual preferences so openly. However, in a stupid automatic reaction, a mixture of panic and an old remnant of male pride, he felt the need to differentiate himself.

  “I must be a bit odd,” he said, “but I prefer girls … Having said that, it needn’t stop us from having a drink together.”

  He immediately bit his tongue, furious with himself for having given way to such easy condescension, surely more offensive than a real insult.

  “Pity … You can’t recognize a good thing when you see it,” Marlene said with a touch of contempt in his voice. “If you make the change, come and see me first, I’ll open up a whole universe for you … Come on, girls. Last one in the water’s a woman-fucker.”

  As one the three young men immediately set off for the sea.

  “I meant no offense,” said Roetgen, dismayed.

  “You were quite right,” Moéma assured him, “if you’d given him the least encouragement he’d have been unbearable. He’ll get over it. He’ll do anything for a free drink … Talking of drinks, a glass for each of us, please, Juju.”

  After one glass all three were tipsy.

  WITH JUST A touch of pink in the distance, the beach disappeared on either side of their field of vision in a vast, dazzling haze. On the washed-out blue of the Atlantic, long rollers broke slowly with the sound of a torrential stream. A few jangadas drawn up high on the shore, a sparse scattering of bathers—there was nothing to impinge on their sense of being away from it all, at the back of beyond, in one of those moments outside time when the mind, at peace and with memory miraculously erased, is suddenly at one with itself.

  “You know,” said Moéma, “I could spend the whole of my life like this. It’s true, all my sodding life watching the waves, a cachaça in my hand …”

  Thaïs had cheered up. Stretched out, with her head on Moéma’s stomach, she told Roetgen about their project for a literary bar, getting worked up about the ignorance of the age and the contempt the Brazilian middle classes had for poetry. She got carried away, almost slipping into a condemnation of the whole universe—O que é isso, companheiro? Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Fernando Gabeira?—then, brought back by Moéma’s hand, which was stroking her hair, sang in a low voice the bossa novas of João Gilberto and Vinicius, wallowing in the notable melancholy of the lines. Tristeza não tem fin, felicidade sim … Had he read, not just listened to, but properly read the poems of Vinicius de Moraes, Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso? He had to make the effort. And Mário de Andrade? And Guimarães Rosa? He would never understand their world at all if he hadn’t read Grande Sertão: Veredas …

  Roetgen mentally noted the titles, despite the instinctive reserve the presence of singers on the list aroused in him.

  Marlene returned with his friends and some new faces as well. Not a man to bear a grudge, he demanded the promised drink, bombarded them with quips and smutty insinuations then told Roetgen that three or four hundred yards away there was a secluded part of the beach where the true lovers of Canoa met to practise nudism, play the guitar, smoke joints—a genuine liberty zone! Talking of which, he could supply him with maconha if he wanted. Good stuff, no problem. The cachaças followed one after the other until eventually he climbed up onto the table of the hut and, wrapped in several bathing towels, performed a striptease which sent all those who formed the audience of the improvised show into shrieks of laughter.

  When, at the end of the afternoon, Roetgen woke in his hammock, on the floor of their hut, his memory seemed to have disintegrated after that scene. He had a vague recollection of having made love to Moéma, but he couldn’t swear to it. All the rest had been swallowed up in a black hole from which all that managed to escape was a few hazy images and an incomprehensible feeling of resentment toward the young girl. Just as he was wondering about his strange po
sition, he saw the grotesque slanting branch hanging down from the roof to the tangle of rope spread over his toes.

  Then he heard a voice from a little above him: “Had a good sleep, Dionysus?”

  Thaïs’s beaming face appeared from her hammock, followed almost immediately by Moéma’s. Curled up lovingly against her friend, she also appeared to be in a joival mood.

  “WHEN WE DECIDED to have a siesta, you marched up the dune like a robot without faltering or hurrying up. And the sand was twice as hot as going down. You immediately commandeered my hammock and started to talk about Dionysus … Everything came out, Nietzsche, myth and cult, ‘sacred violence,’ you just went on and on!”

  “I hope at least it was interesting?” Roetgen asked, with a doubtful look.

  “Super, I assure you,” Thaïs said. “And you were speaking perfect Portuguese, without an accent or anything. Crazy, isn’t it?”

  “It was unbelievable,” Moéma said. “It was as if you’d been hypnotized.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we smoked a joint and … You’re not trying to tell me you can’t recall anything of all this?”

  “I swear,” Roetgen lied. “Everything stops with Marlene’s striptease.”