Where Tigers Are at Home

by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

  “In that case,” Kircher said, a joyful look on his face, “there is no doubt at all; I am delighted at your good fortune as well as at the trust the Holy Father has shown us. But let me introduce Father Roth & Father Grueber to you, they have just returned from China & I cannot hear enough of their adventures there …”

  MATO GROSSO: In the dead mouth

  They’d been trotting along for two hours, escorted by the Indians who were following the trail marked by Yurupig. Elaine forced herself to talk to Dietlev; she sensed he was worried because of his continuing high temperature and tried to reassure him: “It’s almost over now, they must know the forest inside out, they’ll get us back much more quickly than we could by ourselves. There might even be a mission somewhere around here.”

  Dietlev looked skeptical. “I’d give my right hand …” He paused, confused by the unintended relevance of the expression. “Well, perhaps not,” he went on with an apologetic smile. “Let’s say I would swear these people have never had contact with Whites.”

  “Oh come on, that’s just not possible. Not round here, at least. What makes you say that?”

  “In the reservations, and even in the forest, there are always some the missionaries have persuaded to wear shorts. But above all it’s the way they behave, the way they look at us … Did you see the way the machete caught their eye?”

  Elaine was shaken by his argument. “You think they’re the ones who stole the rucksack?”

  “There’s a strong chance they were,” Dietlev agreed. “They must have been watching us for a good while. Herman, have you any idea what tribe they might belong to?”

  Petersen shook his head. “Not the least, amigo. They don’t look like anything I’ve seen in this part of Amazonia. I don’t know where they might’ve come from; if they’ve already seen a white man it’s so long ago they’ve forgotten.”

  “When I think what some ethnologists would pay to be in our place!” Mauro said. “And your daughter would be one of the first, wouldn’t she?”

  “That’s for sure,” said Elaine, turning toward him. “I wonder how she would have reacted? They scared the pants off me. Did you see the color of their mouths?”

  “They chew tobacco.” Petersen said, “even the kids. It’s general among the Indians.”

  “Well at least they seem to know where they’re going,” Mauro said. “That’s something to be grateful for.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Herman grunted, “it’s ages since I saw one of Yurupig’s marks.”

  Carried away by the conviction that everything would be all right now, Elaine had paid no attention to the way they were going. She realized, at the same time as Mauro and Dietlev, that none of them could have said whether they were still going in the right direction.

  “And it’s not even worth bothering trying to get our bearings,” said Dietlev in disgust.

  “We should have kept the compass,” Petersen said in vaguely reproachful tones. “They’re taking us for a walk, that’s all.”

  “You always look on the dark side,” Mauro said. “At least things can’t be any worse than before they turned up. They could have killed us ten times over if they’d wanted …”

  That idea had never occurred to Elaine, even during the first moments of their encounter with the Indians. Now, when even Dietlev fully agreed with Mauro, pointing out how quickly they’d taken charge of the stretcher, Elaine was suddenly seized with retrospective fear that she could not overcome.

  Ignoring their conversation, the Indians continued at a rapid pace, gathering herbs as they passed or collecting a handful of caterpillars, which they ate belching copiously and clicking their tongues.

  No one had spoken for an hour when they entered a clearing where smoke was rising from a few huts made of palm leaves and branches. There were women, children and other Indians there who froze at the sight of the strangers, mouth open, their wad of tobacco almost falling out. They looked, unable to believe their eyes, at these unnatural animals the hunters had brought back from their expedition in the forest. A long murmuring was heard, then an imperious yap that made all eyes turn to one of the huts: the emaciated body of a very old man appeared in the entrance. A feathered maraca in one hand, his wad of tobacco stuck between his teeth and his lower lip, he walked in dignified fashion over to the stretcher, while the warriors made a circle around him. Once there, he pulled at Dietlev’s beard, as if to make sure it wasn’t false, and stepped back with clear signs of satisfaction: his scouts had not lied, God’s Messenger had come, as his father had told him, as the father of his father had always affirmed, as had been predicted since time immemorial. The prophecy was fulfilled at last. Why did the Messenger only have one leg? Why did he say incomprehensible things instead of using the language of the gods, those ageless words he sang to his son as his father had sung them to him all those years ago? It was something he was not yet allowed to understand. But it did have meaning.

  The shaman shook his gourd filled with seeds, breathed on the Messenger to drive away evil spirits and spoke the words of fire, “Deusine adjutori mintende,” he said, pointing to his head, his stomach and his arms. “dominad juvano mefestine!”

  “There’s an answer to our questions,” Elaine said as she recognized the imitation of the sign of the cross in his gestures. “The White Fathers have been this way—”

  “It’s even better than that,” Mauro broke in excitedly. “Deus in adjutorium meum intendo; Domine ad adjuvandum me festina: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord make haste to help me.” Psalm 69, I repeated it often enough when I was an altar boy. This guy can speak Latin!”

  When he heard Mauro, the shaman started turning round and round. His wad of tobacco kept poking out between his smiling lips like a parrot’s tongue.

  “We are going to the river,” Dietlev said, gathering together what scraps of Latin he could remember. “The white men … The town!”

  “Gloria patri!” the shaman said, delighted to hear the sounds of the sacred language. “Domine Qüyririche, Quiriri-cherub!” He was enraptured. The father had come, the silent one, the royal falcon! Nothing now could stop them taking off for the Land-with-no-evil.

  “Quiriri quiriri!” Petersen muttered, mimicking the old Indian. “All these grimaces are starting to get on my nerves. This macaque’s half crazy, he can’t understand a single word of what you’re saying. The way he’s going on, we’re in for something, I can tell you.”

  It was at that moment that Elaine saw a second machete in the hands of one of the warriors. It could be a coincidence, but she was sure it was one of theirs, the one Yurupig had taken, to be precise. Petersen had followed her glance.

  “Amigo,” he said through his teeth to Dietlev, “you’d do better to give me the gun. They’re not a nice lot, they’ve done in Yurupig …”

  “No they haven’t,” Elaine said without thinking. “What proof do you have that—”

  “It’s Yurupig’s,” Petersen said firmly. “There’s no getting around it, look at the way he’s holding the machete—it’s the first time that guy’s had one in his hand. I’m ready to bet he’s the one that bumped him off.”

  “Stop being paranoid, will you!” Dietlev said, wiping his forehead. “You can see that they mean us no harm. You can have the gun, if you like, I threw the cartridge clip away en route.”

  “You idiot, you fucking idiot! Tell me you didn’t do it.”

  “I’m tired, Herman. I’m absolutely whacked, so you try and find some way of communicating with them. I’m not going to be able to hold out much longer.”

  Elaine was close to tears. Every time things got a bit more complicated. Despite what Dietlev had said—admirable as it was, his courage was distressing to see—she was sure something had happened to Yurupig.

  “He must know how to treat you,” Mauro said with no great conviction in his voice. “Look,” he went on to the shaman, “he’s ill. Do you understand?” And pointing to the stump of Dietlev’s leg, “He n
eeds treatment. Water? Drink?” he said, making as if to put a cup to his lips.

  The shaman’s eyes lit up. Me, Raypoty, distant grandson of Guyraypoty, I’m going to lead my people to the Land-of-eternal-youth. That had just been clearly confirmed: Qüyririche, the Messenger, the One-with-pubic-hair-on-his-face, would give them all the water of youth to drink. They had to give him a fitting welcome, honor him with a festival that would delight both him and his companions.

  He gave a few orders to those around; two young warriors picked up the stretcher and the crowd parted to let them through toward the largest of the huts. Seeing Elaine follow her companions in, the men of the tribe let out a murmur of disapproval. Raypoty immediately silenced them; this woman was Nandeçy, the mother of the Creator, his mate, his daughter. An immortal spirit, like the other strangers. She could enter the men’s house without fear and contemplate herself the sacred objects she had handed down to the Apapoçuva people. They would dance to draw her favor down on them, to thank her for having come with Qüyririche, then they would all set off for the Land-with-no-evil …

  The men’s house was simply a large hut where the males of the tribe gathered for various ritual occasions. There wasn’t much in it apart from a few mats, a hearth, gourds of different sizes, some small benches and several ornamental feather garments hanging from the central pillar. The walls of crudely woven palm leaves let in a dim light with moving shadows. The heat was stifling.

  As soon as the Indians had left, Elaine attended to Dietlev. After having dissolved two aspirins and their last sulfonamide tablet in the bottom of a gourd, she forced the neck between his lips. She wanted to talk to him, reassure him, but nothing came to mind, such was her own need of comfort. Petersen watched her ministrations with a doubtful expression, every wrinkle in his face saying, “He’s a goner for sure.”

  “I just can’t believe it,” Mauro said in a low voice. “What’re we going to do?”

  Elaine made an effort to throw off the despondency that had gripped her. The words came mechanically from her lips: “We’ll wait a bit before leaving …” With a glance she indicated Dietlev, who had fallen asleep and was breathing with difficulty, his eyelids flickering, his jaw clenched. “We must manage to get them to understand what we want.”

  “That could take some time,” Mauro said bleakly.

  “You’ve got a better idea?” It had come out a bit sharply and Elaine immediately apologized. “Just ignore that, please. My head’s in a whirl …”

  “One of us—I mean Petersen or me—” he went on, “could perhaps go on alone?”

  “Without Yurupig to guide you? You haven’t a hope in hell.”

  Mauro’s face darkened. “You really think that … that they’ve …”

  “I sincerely hope not—and not just for our sakes. He was a decent guy and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him. At the moment there’s no way of knowing.”

  The mat over the entrance was lifted and two Indians slipped in. As if hypnotized by Elaine, they put a bowl of fruit down in front of her, another filled with an indefinable brown broth and a waterskin. One of them spoke rapidly, pointing to the food, while the other put the rucksack they’d stolen from them on the floor with the rest. He grabbed the arm of his companion, who seemed rooted to the spot by the sight of the strangers, and dragged him out.

  “It looks as if they like us,” Petersen said, having been roused from his somnolence by the appearance of the Indians.

  “It’s obvious,” said Elaine, quickly opening the rucksack to check the contents. “They’ve taken nothing … apart from the fossils. Now that is odd.”

  Mauro had knelt down at the entrance to the hut. He peered out through the gaps in the mat for a moment.

  “What are they doing?” Elaine asked.

  “They’re very busy. Some are sweeping, others building a kind of pyre … The women are pounding something for all they’re worth. It’s as if they were preparing a celebration or something like that.”

  “You can’t see the cooking pot where they’re going to boil us, by any chance?” Herman joked. As the only response was a reproachful silence, he turned over muttering, “You all piss me off. If you only knew … Youpissmeoff!”

  THE INDIANS WERE painting each other; each painted on the other’s face a blood-red variant of motifs that had probably come down through the ages. Bowls of urucu paste were passing from hand to hand; squatting down in a long line, the children were delousing each other, eager to nibble the tidbits taken from their neighbor’s head. They decorated their shoulders with macaw or toucan feathers, white down was dribbled on their their mud-smeared hair, all the men seemed to dress up as quickly as possible as birds of the forest. However closely Mauro observed them, he could see no sign of contact with civilization. The women and children were completely naked; as for the men and adolescent boys, a simple bark strap around their hips kept their foreskin tight against their belly. Apart from the two machetes from the expedition, there was no other metal object to be seen: stone axes, knives made of bamboo cut to a point, gourds or crude pottery of clay coils. Preserved by some historical or geographical chance, this tribe had never known anything other than the solitude of the forest and it was as moving as seeing a live coelacanth. Mauro was in the same situation as the first explorers of the New World, the mercenaries fascinated by Eldorado. Or, rather, in that of the first white men to make the effort of approaching the Indians—for other purposes than to massacre them. How had the Westerners managed to communicate with them? How did they make a start?

  “Elaine,” he said all at once, an earnest look on his face, “I’m going to see the village chief. I must get him to understand what we want. You stay here with Dietlev.” With that he walked out without giving her time to get a word in.

  His appearance brought all the tribe’s activity to an immediate halt. His forehead beaded with sweat, Mauro set off for the hut from which they’d seen the shaman emerge an hour ago. While the women and children stayed where they were, the men came over to him, gradually surrounding him as he progressed. The silence must have alerted the shaman, for Mauro was still twenty yards away from the hut when he slipped out under the mat and came to meet him.

  “I’m called Mauro,” he said, pointing to himself. “And you?” he added, pointing to him.

  “Aymacalado maro? Andu?” the old man repeated, raising his eyebrows. The young god obviously wanted to teach him some new words of power; he concentrated to engrave them on his memory.

  Mauro tried once more, instinctively simplifying his language: “Mauro,” he said with the same gesture, forcing himself to enunciate clearly. “You?”

  “Maro-uu!” the shaman immediately exclaimed.

  Mauro gave a weary sigh. Perhaps they had to start with something simpler. He looked round for something basic to name, and with sudden inspiration, pointed to his own nose: ‘My nose,” he said, placing his finger on the said organ, “My nose.”

  “Mainos!” The shaman repeated as best he could. He was wondering why it was suddenly so important to smell, and which smell would be meaningful.

  Mauro repeated his gesture, this time without saying a word.

  “Mainos?” the shaman said again, sniffing the air around. “Mainos, mainos, mainos?”

  The result was scarcely conclusive. Mauro gnawed his lip in irritation. Seeing a mat with unknown fruits piled up on it, he went over to it, followed by the shaman and the crowd of Indians. He picked up one of the fruits and simply held it out to the shaman without saying a word.

  “Jamacaru Nde,” the shaman said gravely, “This jamacaru is yours.”

  “Jamacaruende?” Mauro repeated, trying as hard as he could to reproduce the sounds he had just heard precisely.

  “Naàni! Jamacaru Nde!” No, it’s yours, the old man insisted. If the young god wanted the fruit, he was welcome to it, it belonged to him, just as did everything that belonged to him and to the people of the tribe.

  “Nana, jamcaruende,” Mauro r
epeated automatically, though realising that it didn’t get him any farther. Was the fruit called jamacaruende or nani? Not to mention that they could also mean yellow, ripe, eat … or something else that hadn’t occurred to him.

  The shaman shook his head at such insistence. Disconcerted, he accepted the fruit Mauro was holding out to him, but hastily handed him two or three others. “I’m sorry, old chap, but I’m fed up with this,” Mauro said in friendly tones, aware he’d got nowhere. “Ciao! I think I’ll just go and have a sleep.”

  He was turning round when he saw, quite close to him, one of the Indians with a machete. As he stopped to check that it was indeed one of the expedition’s implements, he notice the gleaming object round his neck: the compass! The compass they’d given Yurupig before he set off …

  “Where did you get that?” he exclaimed, grabbing the object on the chest of the dumbfounded Indian. “Our compass, for fuck’s sake!”

  There was movement in the crowd and murmurs of indignation, but the shaman calmed them with a word. Nambipaia had behaved wrongly, he explained. He should not have taken that thing; the young god regarded it unfavorably. It had to be returned to its owner immediately.

  Pushing the Indian by his shoulder, he invited Mauro to follow them. They all trooped to the edge of the village and gathered round a post stuck in the ground. On the top of the post was Yurupig’s head, mouth open, eyes closed, like someone taking communion.

  At a brief command from the shaman, Nambipaia took the compass from round his neck and pushed it into the dead mouth.

  Eléazard’s notebooks

  AN ARABIC PROVERB used by Kircher as an epigraph to his Polygraphia: “If you have a secret, hide it, if not, reveal it.” (Si secretum tibi sit, tege illud, vel revela.)

  VILLIERS DE L’ISLE ADAM, like an echo: “And none among them is capable, in advance, of reaching the thought that a secret, however terrible it might be, is the same as nothing if it is never told.”