Where Tigers Are at Home

by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

  As we lit the torches, I saw that the shrine was the largest of the six or seven rooms in an underground dwelling. These other rooms were paved in rudimentary opus sectile & one could still make out patches of crude decoration on the walls. In a recess, which must have been the kitchen, clear water was still running into a granite trough. We went back to sit opposite the altar of Mithras, on one of the stone benches running along the sides of the temple.

  “The worshippers of this god,” my master went on, “used to sit here, just as we are sitting, after having placed the consecrated offerings on a table. Then they would start praying, while the priest, doubtless the master of the house, would chant the ritual hymns. That was the point at which assistants would cut the throat of a bull in a room above this one; the blood poured in through the openings you can see in the vault in a warm, sickly rain toward which the proselytes turned their hands & faces in humility …”

  “Are they …” I stammered, pointing at the brownish-red stains on the stone.

  “No, no,” said Kircher, amused, “those are the remains of paint. Everything was decorated, walls & bas-reliefs, & it’s the murex dye that resists the ravages of time best.”

  I was glad of the correction but still could not repress a certain feeling of disgust at the sight of the ambiguous stains.

  “Once this ritual & purifying shower were finished, men & women in their bloodstained robes, hair sticky with clots, started to eat & drink in honor of the god. Then an unbridled orgy brought this ‘liturgy,’ worthy of the most barbaric of mankind, to a fittingly appalling end.”

  The scene evoked by Athanasius having revived my remorse at certain doings of which the reader will be aware, you will understand how distressed I was at this account. Fortunately he was already explaining to me the symbolism of the stele before us:

  “It represents the scene of the taurobolium, the ritual sacrifice of the bull. It shows light & darkness, that is, Ormuzd & Ahriman in their endless struggle against each other. These two enemy brothers from the Persian cosmology would destroy each other were it not for the harmonizing action of Mithras. Uniting hot & cold, wet & dry, good & evil, generation & decay, dawn & dusk, he brings about essential harmony, just as a heptachord tempers the low sounds with the high ones, the high sounds with the middle ones, the middle sounds with the lower ones & the latter with the higher ones again. A doctrine that illustrates perfectly Zoroaster’s egg, such as I have managed to piece it together from the works of Iamblicus & Plutarch of Chaeronea.”

  Taking a pointed stone, on a patch of plaster Kircher drew an ellipse filled with long, black & white intersecting triangles, with the Sun in the middle & the southern and northern constellations all around.

  “But Zoroaster,” I asked, “what exactly was he?”

  “Zoroaster was not a man but a title, the one given anyone who concerned himself with knowledge of the arcana & magic. The famous Zoroaster, the inventor of magic, is no other than Ham, the son of Noah. The second Zoroaster is Cush, the son of Ham & faithful interpreter of his father’s knowledge. Cush, in his turn, is the father of Nimrod, who built the Tower of Babel. It is probable, as I could easily prove, that Ham learned from Enoch not only the doctrine of the angels & the mysteries of nature but also the black arts concerning the strange & esoteric arguments of the descendants of Cain. Mixing the lawful & unlawful arts, he established a rule that was degenerate in all respects compared to that of his father. In a second age, Trismegistus, a descendant of the Canaanite branch of Ham—& the son of that Mizraim who had chosen Egypt as his country—separated that which was lawful from that which was not & created a rule that conformed more closely to divine religion. And he proceeded like a pagan philosopher, supported solely by the light of nature amid the depravation of the world. And he, in truth, is the only Zoroaster, the Hermes Trismegistus praised by so many writers of Antiquity. But it’s time we moved on to the second premise of my stone syllogism; there are more surprises in store for you.”

  Without giving me time to respond, Kircher grasped a torch & led me along the narrow corridors of this subterranean dwelling. Lit by the reddish light of the flame, he looked like a Virgil guiding his Dante Alighieri to hell, si parva licet componere magnis.1 Soon we saw some steps carved in the rock. After having climbed them carefully, we came into a vast subterranean hall supported by a multitude of heterogeneous columns.

  “Cross yourself,” said Athanasius, as he did so himself, “for we are in a basilica. This church dates from the fourth century after the death of Our Lord; it was constructed by the first Christians out of the scattered materials of the devastated city. Never have faith & love reached such a high point as in this place. It was the beginning of a new era, built on the ruins & doubts of a collapsed civilization. Here there is no display of wealth, no frivolous ornament, but simplicity alone, as befits the nakedness of man before the grandeur of God.

  We made our way between the columns while my master was talking & came to a little Christian altar: a stone trough, its sole decoration the Chi-Rho symbol on each of its sides. I crossed myself again, full of intense feeling, sensing the presence of God with all my faculties. Although underground and abandoned by for so long, this chancel was inhabited …

  “Help me,” Kircher said taking hold of the marble slab covering the trough, “I’m going to show you something.”

  We put the lid on the ground & Athanasius told me to look inside the trough. To my great surprise I saw that it had no bottom & opened like a well onto total darkness.

  “The sacred chalice, the luminous vase in which the sublime mystery of the transubstantiation takes place, rested above this well of darkness. Here, on the edge of light and dark, the wine turned into blood again, the unleavened bread to flesh, in an ever-renewed sacrifice. Night & day were reconciled in the person of Christ to maintain the balance of the universe. Here, Caspar, in this very place!”

  Kircher had raised his voice & as he said these last words he cast his torch into the black hole at the bottom of the trough. After a brief fall it landed a few feet below in a shower of glowing embers, then continued to burn, though less fiercely. My heart missed a beat & my blood ran cold: below the altar, just at its base, the god Mithras seemed to be moving slowly in the glow of the dying flames.

  “Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Kircher murmured fervently. “Zoroaster, Hermes, Orpheus & the Greek philosophers worthy of the name, I mean the disciples of Egyptian wisdom, all believed in a single god. The very one whose multiple virtues and perfections were represented by the Egyptian priests through Osiris, Isis & Harpocrates, in a way that is a mystery for us.”

  “The Trinity?” I ventured, trembling.

  “Yes, Caspar: Osiris, the supreme intellect, the archetype of all beings & things; Isis, his guardian angel & his love; their respective virtues give birth to Harpocrates, their child, that is, the world perceived by our senses & this admirable harmony, this perfect concord of the universe, which we ascertain each day all around us. It is, therefore, clear that the sacrosanct & thrice-blessed Trinity, the greatest & thrice-sublime mystery of the Christian faith, has been approached in other times under the veils of esoteric mysteries. For the divine nature likes to remain veiled, it hides from the senses of common & profane men behind similes & parables. It is for that reason that Hermes Trismegistus introduced the hieroglyphs, thus becoming the prince & father of the whole of Egyptian theology and philosophy. He was the first & the most ancient of the Egyptians, the first to think of divine matters correctly, carving his opinions for eternity on immortal cyclopean stones. It is through him that Orpheus, Musaeus, Linus, Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, Parmenides, Plotinus, Melissus, Homer, Euripides & so many others had true knowledge of God & divine matters. He was the first, in his Pimander & his Asclepius, to affirm that God was One & was Goodness; the other philosophers merely followed him &, for most of the time, with less good fortune …”

  My head was splitting, I must admit, at the consequences of such a vision of th
e world. Kircher had hit the nail on the head: there had never been either paganism or polytheism but one single religion, that of the Bible & the Gospels disguised, more or less, by the ignorance & guile of those who have turned it to their own advantage. It was no longer worth the trouble of trying to convince the infidels of the superiority of Christianity over their own belief, since it was enough, on the contrary, to show that they were identical, which until then had remained unclear—& that by logic alone, based on the most ancient texts & the lesson of the hieroglyphs. Intelligence & history could finally come to the aid of the light of the Gospels to support the indefatigable zeal of our missionaries …

  “It’s marvelous!” I exclaimed, dazzled by my master & as if I had absorbed by osmosis some of the divine favor he enjoyed.

  “I am merely an instrument,” he replied, “it is its creator who should be thanked. But come, let me finish my demonstration.”

  Going back up the steps by which we had come, we left the basilica & soon emerged in a building with enough lights to make our torches unnecessary. After a few twists & turns we were in the transept of a church I immediately recognized.

  “Yes,” said Athanasius, “Saint Clement’s. It is beneath this unremarkable chapel that the mysteries into which you have been initiated are to be found. And, as I’m sure you’ll have guessed, the altar of this third sanctuary is directly above the other two. It is thus the same god who has been worshipped here without interruption for fifteen hundred years.”

  When we left Saint Clement’s the daylight blinded me for a brief moment. I was, however, less dazzled by it than by the far more decisive illumination that had set my soul on fire; I was enraptured, serene, like one who has been blessed. From that point on there was no doubt at all in my mind that in Kircher I was keeping company with a veritable saint!

  ON THE RIVER PARAGUAY: sudden plops, muffled lapping, brief splashes, languid belches of the mud

  “That guy’s a headcase,” Elaine said, flopping down beside Mauro. “Do you realize what he’s done? Now there’s no proof Milton was murdered …”

  She was still using the familiar ‘tu’ without noticing. Mauro could have said precisely when she had started: in the heat of action, when she was giving orders, magnificent, her breasts exposed, like the figurehead on a ship.

  “Calm down,” he said, taking her hand. It was exciting to continue to address her as ‘você,’ to maintain the distance between them that had now become artificial. “Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference now.”

  Their voices were hoarse with weariness, the aftereffects of the emotions they had been through in the course of the day.

  “What do you think we should do?” Elaine asked, as a way of countering her desire to cry. “Should we wait here?”

  “It seems the most logical solution to me. I can’t see us carrying Dietlev through the jungle for days on end.”

  “And if Petersen doesn’t come back?”

  “He’ll come back, don’t worry, even if only to refloat his boat. And then there’s Yurupig, he won’t leave us in the lurch.”

  “You didn’t see, just now, while I was discussing things with that swine, he made a sign to me to say no, as if he didn’t want us to stay on the boat. That’s why I played for time.”

  “You must have misunderstood. We’ll talk to him a bit later, once we’ve got Petersen off our backs. And what about Dietlev?” he added, looking at the blood-soaked bandages, “It doesn’t look too good.”

  “We need to get him to a hospital as quickly as possible. I’ve done my best, but his knee’s all smashed up.”

  “You’ve done everything that could be done. I’d never’ve been able to do that, even if I’d known how. Are you a trained nurse, or what?”

  Elaine managed to smile. “I wish I were. If Dietlev hadn’t helped me, I think I’d still be looking for the artery. All I’ve got is a vague memory of things I read when I was pregnant: I was terrified at the idea of being caught up in an accident unprepared. I spent months imagining the worst, it was hell. I even learned to give injections … When my daughter was born the obsession disappeared just like that. Strange, isn’t it?”

  “How old is she?”

  “Moéma? Eighteen. She’s studying ethnology at Fortaleza. When I think how she envied me this trip!”

  Mauro felt a twinge of disappointment: he was in love with a woman who could be his mother. That thought threw him back into the uncertainties of youth worse than a rebuff would have.

  “At Fortaleza!” he exclaimed, despite himself. “Why so far away?”

  “It’s complicated,” Elaine replied after a second’s hesitation. “How shall I put it? In retaliation, I suppose. She was disoriented when I left; she didn’t want to live either with me or with her father.”

  “You’re divorced?”

  “Not yet,” she said pensively. “It’s in progress.”

  Night was beginning to fall, hiding her face.

  “Right,” said Mauro, “I’ll go and find a lamp and open a couple of tins. All this has given me an appetite …”

  “You stay here, I’ll see to it. It’ll give me a chance to have a quick wash too.”

  “As you wish. I’ll call you if he wakes up at all.”

  “Thanks,” she said, getting onto her knees before standing up. “I mean thanks for standing by me back there. I was pathetic.”

  “Forget it, please. Without Yurupig it wouldn’t have got us anywhere.”

  Mechanically she ran her fingertips over his swollen face. “I’ll have a look at that when I come back, when I’ve got some light. Try and get some rest.”

  THE BOAT’S BATTERIES gave a feeble light. The pale yellow flickering exaggerated the wreckage in the saloon; the jumbled objects gave off an intense feeling of distress. Going into the kitchen, Elaine suddenly found herself face to face with Yurupig.

  “You mustn’t stay here,” he said in a low voice, placing a finger on his lips to tell her to be quiet. “You must come with us, into the forest …”

  “But why?” she asked, also in a whisper.

  “He’s a bad man. He knows you have no chance. You’ll wait for days and days, and he won’t come back.” Since she still seemed to doubt him, he added, “The water. I saw him, he’s the one who punctured the jerricans.”

  AFTER A PERFUNCTORY wash, Elaine put on a clean but damp shirt and jeans and went back up on deck. She took a paraffin lamp and a mess tin of black beans Yurupig had prepared for them. Dietlev had just woken up.

  “I can understand drug addicts better now,” he said with a smile that emphasized his cheekbones. “The dreams I’ve had! X-rated stuff!”

  “He didn’t want me to tell you,” Mauro said in answer to Elaine’s glance.

  “How d’you feel?” she asked, sitting down beside him.

  “Oh, never better, it’s as if I’d drunk a whole bottle of schnapps. I only hope I don’t get the hangover to go with it.”

  “You must take some anti-inflammatory pills. I’ll get you some.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s seen to. I swallowed a small handful when I woke up.”

  “Here,” she said, handing Mauro the mess tin, “start eating. It’s Yurupig who made it. I must tell you what I’ve just heard. You won’t believe your ears.” In a few words she explained to Dietlev what had happened while he was asleep, then reported what Yurupig had told her. Mauro could not hold back a few choice words of abuse regarding Petersen.

  Dietlev’s face had darkened. “That changes the whole situation,” he said after a brief pause for reflection. “We’ll have to see to it that we do the opposite of what he wants. Yurupig’s on our side, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. But we’ll have to be on our guard, the guy’s capable of anything. Mauro, you’d better get the satellite maps, it looks as if they’re going to be even more useful than I thought.”

  Mauro shook his head as he hurriedly swallowed the food he was chewing. “You can forget them, they’re nothing but papier-mâché.”<
br />
  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure. They were the first things I looked for when I went down.”

  “Get something to write with, then. I’ve still got some details in my head, I’d better tell you them while I can still remember.”

  When Mauro had gone, he took Elaine’s hand. “And how are you?”

  “I’m surviving, you might say. It’s your leg I’m worried about. It’s all my fault … But I think I would have thrown myself in the water rather than go with that guy.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Mauro beat me to it by a few seconds, but I wouldn’t have abandoned you either. The lad did well. As for my leg, it’ll hold out till I get to a hospital, won’t it?”

  Elaine looked at him without finding a single word of reassurance.

  “If not,” he went on with a smile, “we’ll just have to cut it off and we can forget about it. I’ve always dreamt of having a wooden leg, like Long John Silver. It’ll make me stand out, so to speak.”

  “Stop it! I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “This is all I could find,” Mauro said reappearing in the light of the lamp. He handed Dietlev two flyleaves torn out of a book and a pencil.

  “That’ll do. Help me sit up a bit. Right,” he went on, drawing as he spoke, “let’s recapitulate: there’s the river with the junction and here’s where we were the last time I looked at the map, not long before we reached the crocodile hunters’ camp. You won’t get very far with that,” he said when he’d completed his map, “but this sketch should be enough to stop you going seriously wrong. If you skirt the marshy area you should be able to get back to the river in two or three days, though you may have to double that time because of the difficulties of making your way across this terrain. I’ll make a list of what you have to take.”

  “What we have to take,” said Elaine.

  “No. I’m staying here, quietly waiting while you’re getting eaten up by mosquitos …”

  “Out of the question! We’re taking you with us whether you like it or not.”