Where Tigers Are at Home

by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

  They went up to the first floor of the Attila.

  The owner welcomed them, a monster with mauve sequins and a chignon larded with black down from which silvery metal tentacles emerged, appendices that terminated in little fluorescent balls. Slow by nature and by necessity—she avoided all contact so as not to spoil the arrangement of her hair—the imposing wall of flesh carefully counted the banknotes Roetgen handed her. He imagined the feverish hours that had preceded the evening, when the woman was still sitting on the third floor of the house with a throng of half-naked whores, twittering with excitement, adorning her like a queen mother before her son’s coronation. Installed in a tall chair, slavering and moaning with excitement, an ageless figure with Down’s syndrome observed the strange opera that was making his eyes boggle. Close by him, behind the counter, a young mulatto girl was swaying on the spot as she served the drinks; the whores twirled round; the 1930s one with a pageboy hairstyle, green miniskirt and reticule slung over her shoulder, the pink Andalusian with white polka dots, the one with rainbow stripes, the one with translucent skin dressed in garbage bags … Moéma danced languorously with a bewigged mummy, all gauzy frills and flounces, that desire made beautiful despite the subtle irony of her smile and her perfect mastery of a game that testified to her long experience in this field. They picked up girls that they handed on to each other, interspersing their love displays with short breaks at the bar for a glass of gin or cachaça, launched on a night of pure sensual pleasure in which they saw further proof of their rapport.

  Afterward there was a long meander around the docks, chasing rats among the moorings, the squiggles of rope below the wall of cargo boats … At dawn, when its splendor dipped the cranes in scarlet, they crawled inside a huge pile of pipes, going from one to the other like bees in a cast-iron beehive, amusing themselves by setting off echoes of their Christian names, amplifying their cries.

  A military patrol turned up, dumbfounded to find them in the middle of this consciousness of being. They took them back to their car, well outside the prohibited area: they had made love in the naval dockyard of Recife—it was as if they’d won a war.

  BACK IN FORTALEZA the party went on. They slept through the day and went out when night had fallen to quench their thirst for intoxication: the trendy bars where Arrigo Barnabe delivered the very latest chords of a music that was so revolutionary it verged on the inaudible, languorous bossa novas in the gray light of dawn, grass and coke from Pablo. Out of his mind after some wood alcohol, Xavier dived onto the tarmac, convinced it was a swimming pool. Despite the open cut above his eye, the kid refused to go to the hospital, so they patched him up at Thaïs’s place. He only had scratches, but he still had scabs on his face and arms when he left. For he was leaving: “I set sail at eight o’clock on Sunday morning,” he announced, just like that, without giving any particular reason.

  It was an irrevocable decision. They’d drunk a large part of his whiskey on board the boat, in the Yacht Club marina; as for the mustard, he hadn’t even tried to sell it, such was the laughter the idea had set off among his friends. A money order from his grandmother had arrived from somewhere or other; he’d immediately turned it into grass, for his personal use. His intention was to go to Belém, or even farther, it wasn’t very clear, not even in his own mind. But he was leaving.

  The Saturday before he was due to leave, the Náutico was organizing one of its monthly festivities: a tennis tournament, swimming races, a dinner-dance with orchestra. A member of the club since his arrival in Fortaleza—he had been proposed by the vice-chancellor of the university and paid dearly for the honor of socializing with a caste he didn’t like—Roetgen suggested they go to celebrate Xavier’s despedida. A farewell evening, in a way, a fitting end to this fantastic holiday together. Except that Moéma had gotten a tab of acid from Pablo and she and Xavier had half each, which complicated matters before they even set off.

  As Andreas was not coming back until the next day, they gathered in his house, by the sea. Of a common accord, though for different reasons, Thaïs and Roetgen had passed on the LSD; Thaïs because she knew the devastating effect of the drug and was determined to keep a clear head to be ready for any eventuality, and Roetgen because he had read somewhere that LSD destroyed some of your neurons and could leave you insane. He made much of his sensible stance and declared he would look after Xavier, without realizing exactly what he was getting himself into. As he was about to swallow the pink tab—it had a Donald Duck printed on it—Xavier confessed it was the first time he’d ever tried it.

  “Don’t worry,” Moéma said, sitting down on one of the loungers on the veranda. It’ll be a good half hour before it takes effect. Then it’s all up to you. If you decide you’re going to have a bad trip, then you’ll have a bad trip, if you stay cool, it’ll be cool … The thing is to remain calm and force yourself to think positively.”

  “No problem for me,” Xavier said, in cheerful tones. But they could tell that, instead of reducing his apprehension, the little exhortation had increased it.

  Thaïs and Roetgen went to sit with them under the green arbor. They brought a tray with some white wine and nibbles. It was early afternoon. On the other side of the road, fifty yards away, they could see the beira-mar and, through a gap in the curtain of coconut trees, the blue-green ocean with the sail of a jangada passing.

  “I hope your friend has a good supply of wine,” Thaïs said to Roetgen, “because acid makes you thirsty.”

  “There’s more than we need,” Roetgen said. “And if not, I’ll go and buy some.”

  “You’ll see,” Moéma went on to Xavier, “it comes in waves. You think it’s stopping, but it starts up again, even stronger.”

  “How long does it last?” Roetgen asked.

  “Twenty-four hours, more or less. Why d’you ask? You’re worried, aren’t you?”

  “A bit. It’s Xavier I’m thinking of …”

  “Don’t worry,” Xavier said in reassuring tones. “If I don’t set off in the morning, it’ll be in the evening or tomorrow. I never takes risks with the sea, it’s too dangerous.”

  Roetgen said nothing. When you saw the wreck in which the guy had crossed the Atlantic, you wondered whether he was as cautious as he claimed.

  “You know he went out for two days on a jangada?” Moéma said.

  Roetgen could see from her look that she immediately regretted having mentioned the episode. To Xavier, who asked if it hadn’t been pretty difficult, he replied coolly, “Not really. It’s getting back to normal afterward that’s hardest.”

  This reply was so obviously addressed to Moéma, that Xavier dropped the subject. If those two had something to sort out between them, that wasn’t his problem. Thaïs gave Roetgen a hard look to tell him it was better to leave it be, given the situation.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a while, taking Moéma’s hand under the armrest of the lounger. “It just came out like that. I’ve no hard feelings, I swear …”

  Moéma’s reply was a simple squeeze of the hand. She seemed fascinated by a cargo ship that was scarcely visible on the horizon.

  THOSE FIRST HOURS were peaceful, though ambiguous, listless and ashen, like those you have to spend visiting a patient in the hospital. Thaïs and Roetgen whispered, took little sips of cold white wine, all the while keeping an eye on their companions immured in the isolation of LSD. All around was a feast of light and warmth that kept them glued to their deck chairs.

  Their conversation proceeded with the interminable slowness of a drip feed. Fascinated by parapsychology, and more generally by everything that seemed to defy understanding, Thaïs was full of anecdotes illustrating her naive belief in the supernatural, little real-life experiences for the most part, which she recounted in her singsong voice and in the confidential tones of testimony more captivating than their content.

  Roetgen was delighted at her wonderment, at the openness with which Thaïs talked to him. It was something new in their relationship. Contrary to M
oéma, who would dig her heels in on such occasions and refuse even to contemplate the slightest dent in her beliefs, she showed a flexibility that worked to his advantage. Not that she was convinced by the arguments Roetgen deployed, but she listened, weighed the pros and cons, and tried to defend her position without once asserting the a priori existence of the supernatural, or the powers of the mind that fascinated her. Their conversation quietly touched on all the standard features of this material—the tarot, clairvoyance, horoscopes, telepathy, flowers responding to being talked to and other contemporary superstitions—without arousing the usual irritation in Roetgen. She confided in him her desire to have a child. He confessed to her that he wrote poems. It was becoming very suggestive when Moéma interrupted them. “What’s the time?” she asked, without taking her eyes off the patch of light quivering by her feet. “I mean do the Indians ever ask that kind of question? How do they manage to have a notion of time. I’m serious, professor, I’m not joking …”

  Roetgen gave a long reply with many illustrations taken from his lectures. Above all, he talked about the banana calendar, without realizing he was talking to Thaïs and not to the one who had asked for enlightenment on the subject.

  Then there was a resplendent sunset over the beira-mar, when they all concentrated on trying to see the “green flash.” Finally Xavier stood up, saying he was fed up with sitting down and it was perhaps time to think about having a bite to eat if they weren’t going to wither away, slowly but surely, on these bloody loungers.

  “Corpse,” he declaimed bombastically, “that something that has no name in any language! Tertullian quoted by Bossuet: La-garde et Michard, seventeenth century, page 267 …”

  “What’s he talking about?” Thaïs asked.

  “Some thing he picked up in a school textbook, but it’s too long to explain,” Roetgen said with a laugh. “But to put it briefly, we’re off.”

  WITH MOÉMA AND Xavier behaving like little children attracted by the least colored object on the seaside stalls or falling into interminable fits of wild laughter, it was getting on toward nine by the time they reached the Náutico. The pretentious pink edifice was teeming; people around the immense pool were yelling as a swimming final was taking place. Farther away, under the floodlights, some aged blacks were rolling the red shale of the tennis courts.

  Moéma insisted she wanted to dance.

  “Go easy, please,” Roetgen begged as she dragged Xavier off toward the music, “there’re people who know me around here.”

  “I will, and that’s a promise,” Moéma said in a tone that suggested the opposite.

  “We’d better follow them,” Thaïs advised.

  They found a little table that was free that gave them a view of the dance floor. Roetgen ordered a selection of snacks, a bottle of vodka and some orange juice. After the second glass no one could remember the precise chronology of events. The fact is that there was a moment when all four drank a toast to the departing Xavier, another when Roetgen, completely drunk, made a declaration of love to Thaïs and a final one, much later when they realized there were only three of them left.

  LYING ON HER back at the end of a jetty stretching far out into the sea on its metal supports, Moéma was looking at the sky. Exaggerated by the acid, the ocean swell was making the rickety structure vibrate. She could feel it rolling in underneath her like the spine of a voluptuous tiger. The Southern Cross started to sway from one side to the other, then to come closer, pulling the whole of the zodiac behind it in its train. Struck with fear, Moéma headed back. The wind off the sea was scourging her with stars.

  Avoid the metal struts, step between the gaps over the foaming Atlantic, get out of this scene full of pitfalls … Thaïs and the others must still be dancing in that shitty club … Náutico Atlético Cearense … Athletic my ass! Roetgen had renounced her, for good. She’d heard him making a declaration to Thaïs … The professor … It was as if he’d been kissing her with words. There wouldn’t have been anything worth making a song and dance about if she hadn’t seen the same abandonment in Thaïs’s eyes that she kept for their own intimate moments … Nothing to do with the way she looked when the three of them slept together. Let them dance, let them screw themselves silly, she no longer cared. Was this what was meant by “hitting rock bottom”? Wanting and no longer wanting, dying and not dying? The guardrail of direct, immediate perception of appearances was missing. This permanent suspicion, this way she had of never taking things literally, of suspecting other levels of meaning! When a door was opened, there was always another one, then another, an infinitude of doors pushing farther and farther away the serene correspondence between a being and its name. All at once she felt sure an Indian never saw himself thinking, that he would open a door, just the one, and see the thing naked before him, without a further skin to peel off. What had Aynoré done but open her eyes wide to that obvious fact? Be more cool about things … accept anything that wasn’t prohibited by any law … As long as an individual’s actions didn’t endanger the world order, they were allowed: why couldn’t the relaxed moral attitudes of the Amazonian tribes apply to our society? The way we experienced love, with suffering, jealousy and resentment, derived from Judeo-Christian emotionalism. It was just as pointless as a Romantic devotion to ruins and the patina on statues …

  Back at the beira-mar, deserted at this late hour, Moéma strode along under the yellow streetlights. Scattered all along the pavement, going about their rodent business, the rats hardly moved out of her way at all.

  To plant the sequoia … To walk along, pockets full of seeds, casually sowing the tarmac until the day when the young shoots dislocated the town with the force of a cataclysm … To create innumerable openings bursting with sap in the concrete of the metropolises … The gaps between the stones, between people, that empty space between bones that allows the butcher to cut up the carcass without blunting the edge of his knife. Salvation lying in the interstices … Come on, Jesus, put an end to all this internationalist Western bullshit! Restore a jungle virginity to these coasts polluted by the tumescent cross of the Jesuits and the conquistadors. Look what they’d made of this new, improbable, unconsidered world! It was as if they’d crapped on the lawn as soon as they arrived in paradise …

  A big rat didn’t move out of her way quickly enough, she made to step on it, as people usually did with pigeons, knowing they would fly away before being touched. But her foot caught the animal on the back of its neck; she watched it in its death throes right there in front of her, sickened by the twitching of its paws. The coconut trees were twisting as well, seized with reptilian convulsions. Her head spinning from the return in force of the hallucinations, she lay down on the pavement for a few moments, amused by the idea that she might be found there, in the gutter. Then she got up again and continued her forced march toward the northern end of the avenue.

  Get out of the town, turn toward the jungle of the favelas … Aynoré had told her he was a regular at the Terra e Mar, that was where she’d go. It was a goal like any other, a reason for living that was, if anything, better than the others. Go back to Aynoré, make love with the handsome Indian who was so natural in the way he used his freedom, take up her dream again where she’d left off.

  She felt as if she’d been walking for hours. Little streets lined with houses, waste ground … the tarmac replaced by sand and dust, a proliferation of shacks with no order in the middle of refuse, the rats becoming arrogant.

  “It’s not the place for you, Snow White.”

  “What the fuck’s it got to do with you? Tell me where it is and I’ll give you my lighter. Look, it’s almost new.”

  “You haven’t got the cigarettes to go with it, have you, my lovely?… OK. You follow the railway and it’s to the left of the signal. A green signal, you’ll see, perhaps red, whatever …”

  Fights between stray cats, the stench of sewers and rotting fish. Walled in but open to the sky. Where I live is a cursed place, she told herself, which locusts dark
en with swarms like iron filings. Cold sweat made her T-shirt stick to her skin … From what even blacker underground abode did this anguish come? Thaïs had moved away from her too quickly, from her and from what they had been through together … She saw herself raising a glass to her lips and breaking it with her teeth, like biting into half a chocolate egg. The shard of glass made a kind of sparkling dagger. Thaïs, naked under her silk dress, a nacreous gleam covering her forehead … Escaped eagles were running, clumsily, after her shadow.

  Blown along by the breeze, a piece of paper stuck to her ankle. Instinctively she bent down and picked it up. An election pamphlet. The bluish light the moon cast over the favela made the letters bob up and down before her eyes:

  Partido do Movimento Democrático Brazileiro

  THE STATE OF CEARÁ DESERVES

  A DEPUTY WHO IS:

  AN ARMED ROBBER

  (SEARS store, Rio de Janeiro)

  A TERRORIST

  (Guarapes Airport, Pernambuco)

  A HIJACKER

  (Cruzeiro do Sul plane bound for Cuba)

  ANGELO SISOES RIBIERA

  It was like a letter sent by the dark. There was a motif across the page, hammers and sickles on a red background. A guarantee that the guy didn’t lie, never had lied. He displayed his crimes like stripes to the world at large … She folded the leaflet and smiled as she slipped it into the back pocket of her shorts. There was still hope for this country.

  Then all at once she saw him coming out of Terra e Mar, clearly tipsy, with a group of his pals. When they saw the young woman, three of them immediately approached her; they had the muscles and supple movement of men who practised capoeira.

  “Hey, look what’s turned up, a little darling looking for a hunk …”