“And who doesn’t look as if she really knows how far gone she is … I’m sure she’d like to smoke one last joint before going to bed …”
“And where’s Little Red Riding Hood heading for? In the middle of Pirambú with those tits that’re likely to cause an accident …”
They had surrounded her. Hands were placed on her shoulders, stroked the curve of her back. One of the guys touched his penis as he stared at her.
“Aynoré!” she begged, unable to find a way out of her despair.
“You know her, Indio?”
“A real pain in the ass,” the Indian said, spitting on the ground. “Go ahead, I’ll leave her to you.”
The silhouettes that picked up Moéma left long luminous trails behind them. The spaces between their bodies had started to vibrate, she could feel it, like a magnetic aura, a shield it was impossible to get past.
On the slope where they laid her, a white heron seemed to be pacing up and down the rubbish as cautiously as an Egyptian hieroglyph.
FAVELA DE PIRAMBÚ: the Princess of the Kingdom-where-no-one-goes
A good day … It was no use people having bearskin wallets, they always opened them eventually. It was all a matter of patience and know-how. Nelson counted the banknotes again, divided the little bundle into two equal parts and dug up the iron box where he kept his savings. Having checked that his nest egg in its plastic bag hadn’t been spoiled by dampness, he added that day’s haul, then quickly buried the lot again. A hundred and fifty-three thousand cruzeiros … He needed another three hundred thousand to buy the wheelchair he dreamt of. A splendid machine he’d seen in the town, in the wealthy districts, three years ago. Chrome hubcaps, indicators, four-cylinder Honda engine … a little jewel that could be steered with one hand and do up to twenty-five miles an hour. Nelson had made every effort to find the shop that sold this marvel and went there from time to time to admire it in the window and check the price: when he’d started saving up, almost immediately after he’d seen it for the first time, it cost 145 thousand cruzeiros. Now it cost three times as much. The thought that he could have bought it with the money he had in his box now, made him feel sick. It was almost as if it were being done deliberately: the more he saved, the more the price rose. It made you think someone was doing their utmost to keep it inaccessible. However, against all reason Nelson did not lose heart; one day he’d stick his ass on that chair and go off to beg like a young lord. Zé would help him soup up the engine, he might be able to hit thirty-five, or even forty! Everything would be so much easier. With a blanket, no one would see he had the legs of a stillborn calf instead of proper human ones.
This glorious vision upset him. He decided to go and watch the freight train pass; the sight of the engine splashing sparks and flickering lights all over the darkness was something that always calmed him down.
He went out of his shack, without replacing the sheet of cardboard that blocked the doorway. He lived in a world where even the poor stole from each other; it was better to leave it open, with the lamp lit to make it look as if someone was inside. The railway was three hundred yards away and he dragged himself there quickly, unconcerned about the rats that his deformity seemed to frighten off almost as much as humans.
The best place was just behind Juvenal’s hut. From the little pile of almost clean sand beside it, he could watch the train approaching, see it slow down at the signal and go past less than three yards from where he was. Juvenal had eventually become accustomed to it: nothing could wake him apart from the smell of cachaça. He dreamed of earthquakes and would spend the whole night running to avoid the yawning cracks splitting the shantytown apart beneath his feet.
Nelson was going through his own victories in marathons, all those occasions on which he entered the stadium and put on a spurt to the cheers of the crowd, when the train emerged from the ambiguity of the shadows. The engine sputtered out a compact beam of darkness, its two eyes fixed on the track; its wheels chewed away at the rails, spilling out on either side the reddish glow of crackling fountains of hydrogen welding …
That was the moment at which Nelson saw her spring up from the slope and attack the monster. She kicked and hit the moving carapace of the trucks with all her might, in a fit of madness, determined to smash her fists on its crude bulk. Each time she assaulted it, she was thrown back; she swayed to and fro, raised her arms, yelled again and, head lowered, returned to the duel. The train raised its voice, again, and then again, in a deafening outburst of fury. The young princess was going to get herself knocked flat! Nelson crawled toward her as fast as he could, shouting to her to move away.
When she saw this nightmare freak appear, there, in the never-ending infernal racket grinding away at the horizon, Moéma was stricken with panic. She wanted to run away, but collapsed, overwhelmed, exhausted.
Nelson could not believe his eyes, his princess was sobbing, calling for her mother in a plaintive voice, curled up, her hands between her thighs. Apart from her T-shirt, which was ripped right down and only held on by the seams at the neck, she was completely naked, her body was covered in patches of blood and black grease, all over, on her face, on her stomach … her breasts were disfigured by large aubergine-colored bruises.
Lying beside her without touching her, Nelson spoke for a long time, just so she could hear his murmurs of compassion, so she would gradually overcome her fear:
“Don’t cry, things’ll sort themselves out, you’ll see … My name is Nelson, I was born like this, with my legs all crooked … There’s no need to be afraid, at least I can’t do you any harm. Who’s the bastard who put you in this state? I’ll find him, I swear, we’ll make him pay … Look, take my shirt and cover yourself up, princess. Come on, you can stay with me until the morning … You can’t stay here in this state, that’s for sure … I’ll go and tell Uncle Zé and he’ll sort everything out, I promise … come on, don’t stay there … I’ll tell you stories, I know piles of them … John the Bold and the Princess of the Kingdom-where-no-one-goes, Snow White and the Soldier of the Foreign Legion, The Ballad of the Mysterious Peacock …”
He moved away a few yards to encourage her to follow him, then returned to the attack, gabbling all the cordel titles he could remember, baptizing her with all their luminous promise: The Goddess of Maranhão. The Story of the Seven Cities and the King of Magic, Mariana and the Ship’s Captain, Ronaldo and Susana on the River Miramar, The Sufferings of Alzira the Fairy, Rachel and the Dragon, The Unprecedented Fate of Princess Eliza, The Story of Song of Fire and His Will, The Duchess of Sodom, Rose of Milan and Princess Christine, João Mimoso and the Enchanted Castle, Prince Oscar and the Queen of the Waters, Lindalva and Juracy the Indian …
CHAPTER 26
The continuation of Johan Grueber’s report on Chinese medicine
THERE WERE EXCLAMATIONS and grimaces of disgust all around the table. Bernini swore by all the gods that he would never go to China for fear of falling ill & having to be treated there. Kircher nodded, invoking Galen & Discorides; as for myself, I prayed to God that this wonderful evening would never end, so delighted I was by the conversation.
“Bottoms up!” I was slightly surprised to hear myself saying. “To liquid excrement & to the wonderful virtues of diarrhea!”
“Bottoms up!” My companions replied before emptying their glasses.
“Now what would you say,” Father Grueber went on, “to looking at bone disease? A little concentrated urine from a three-year-old girl will get rid of it instantly. Diabetes? Make your patient drink a full cup of the same liquid from a public urinal! Loss of blood? The same, but eight pints! A dead fetus to be expelled? Two pints will suffice. Body odor? Apply to the armpits, several times a day.”
“Good Lord!” said Kircher, pinching his nose.
“Everything can be used, I tell you. And you’ve heard nothing yet. You should know that the Emperor T’ou Tsung used to cut his own whiskers to treat his dear Li Hsün, the ‘Great Scholar for the Exaltation of Poetic Writi
ng,’ for their ashes are good for abscesses … A snake has bitten you & you have no snakestone, what can you do? Do not fear, twelve pubic hairs sucked for a long time will prevent the venom from spreading through your entrails. A wife is having a difficult birth? No matter, make her swallow fourteen other hairs mixed with bacon fat and she will have a swift delivery—”
“What’s all this you’re trying to tell us!” Kircher exclaimed, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. “If you didn’t inspire me with absolute confidence, I wouldn’t believe a single word of what you’re saying.”
“And you would be wrong, for all I am doing here is repeating things that are common knowledge among all Chinese physicians.”
“If Father Roth could hear you!” Kircher chuckled. Then, putting on an angry look, he pointed a threatening finger at Bernini, he said, “Oh, how wise those pagans were who had a law forbidding a man of fifty to consult a doctor, saying it showed too great an attachment to life! Among the Chinese, as among the Christians, you will find some men of eighty who won’t hear a word of the other world, as if they hadn’t had a moment’s leisure to see this one. Do you not know that life was given to Cain, the most evil man that ever there was, as punishment for his crime? And you want it to be a reward for you?!”
“But one has to live, see the world,” Bernini replied, joining in the playacting, like a character who already knew his defense was weak.
“What is living, apart from getting dressed & undressed, getting up, going to bed, drinking, eating & sleeping, playing, jesting, haggling, selling, buying, masoning, joinering, quarreling, quibbling, traveling & roaming in a labyrinth of actions that are constantly retracing their steps & always being the prisoner of a body, be it a child’s, an invalid’s, a madman’s?”
“You’re forgetting something important, Father, something that would on its own justify my existence …”
“Vade retro, Satanas!” Kircher bellowed, his eyes sparkling with laughter. “One must see the world, you say, & live among the living. But if you should spend your whole life locked up in a prison & only observe this world through a little grille, you would have seen enough of it! What can one see in the streets apart from men, houses, horses, mules, carriages—”
“And women, Reverend Father … Fine-looking girls, nice little chickens that revive your appetite for meat.”
“Little hussies who stink of rotten fish! And courtesans who walk the streets like drunken fish and whose only virtue is often the pox, which sends you to the other world. O God, how empty our lives are! Is it for this that we are unfaithful to & break with the Lord, that we try to live for all those years that consist of nothing but foolishness, work & misery? Oh, my fellow Christians, be not like those babes that cry when they emerge from the blood and excrement to see the daylight & despite that do not want to return to the place whence they came!”
“Although—” Bernini murmured in ribald tones.
“Please!” I begged, red with embarrassment.
My three companions gave me mocking but affectionate looks. “Come on, Caspar,” my master said, “we’re only joking & I can assure you there’s nothing wrong in that. If we scoff at everything, poor Scarron said, it’s because there’s another side to everything. Laugh in the devil’s face & you’ll see him turn tail at once, for he knows very well he has no hold over those who can see the grotesque side of his nature.”
“But since the subject has cropped up,” Grueber whispered, turning to Bernini, “I will make no secret of the fact that there is a proven method of combating old age, at least from what my Chinese informant said. Man is in the air, he told me, & the air is in man, thus expressing the prime importance of the breath of life. Since this principle dwindles with age, it is, according to him, advisable to regenerate it by the addition of breath that is still young. To that end he regularly hired the services of a maiden or a youth to insufflate their surplus vitality into his nostrils, navel and male organ!”
“Good Lord!” Bernini exclaimed, highly amused, “if that’s all that’s needed, I can assure you that I have been obeying his prescription for a long time & without having noticed any other effect than an excess of weakness …”
The conversation between Grueber & Bernini continued in that tone, but I paid less attention; my master had a faraway look in his eye & appeared to be gathering his thoughts. I presumed he was a little weary, which would have been quite natural at that late hour. His attitude seemed to confirm this, since he soon left the table and went to a neighboring room. After some time, since he did not return, I went to him, walking with care so as not to give way to the dizziness that had seized me as I stood up. My master was standing by a bookshelf, apparently putting some books away, but when I came closer, I saw that he was aligning the spines meticulously. Despite my own confused state, it was something so unusual in him that I was immediately worried; a quick glance around the room only served to confirm my concern: in the grip of a strange obsession, Kircher had carefully grouped in decreasing order of size all the objects amenable to that kind of classification. Goose feathers, inkwells, sticks of wax, manuscripts—in a word, everything that could be found in a study—had been arranged in that order, an oddity that caused me profound uneasiness. You will understand my real anxiety, dear reader, when I tell you that my master, turning round slowly, looked at me glassy-eyed!
“The mind, Caspar,” he said in a toneless, faraway voice, “will always be superior to matter. That has to be the way things are, whether we like it or not, until the end of the world. You do understand, don’t you? Tell me you understand …”
To be honest, I was in such a state I would have understood much more difficult statements, so I hastened to reassure Kircher, while encouraging him to get some sleep. He allowed himself to be put to bed without resisting & I went back to join our two visitors in the other room.
“… that the Incas, the emperors of Peru,” I heard Grueber saying, “conferred the order of knighthood by piercing the men’s ears. I will say nothing of the women’s, since at all times & in all places that has been one of their greatest vanities. Which explains Seneca’s complaint that they had two or three times their inheritance hanging from each ear. But what invective would he have aimed at the Lolo women of Yunnan province, who pierce the extremities of their most intimate parts to attach gold rings, which they can remove or replace as they see fit?! And the truth is that the men do not show greater modesty, for they wear little bells, made of different metals, tied to their male organ or stuck between the flesh and the foreskin, and make them ring in the streets when they see a woman they like. Some take this invention as cure for sodomy, which is common in all areas, but I fail to see how it could prevent them from indulging in it.”
I took advantage of the pause to inform Cavaliere Bernini & his drinking companion of what had happened to my master. Grueber was not surprised for one moment; with a smile on his lips, he explained that the Quey herb sometimes produced this kind of confused state, but that it was not at all serious, it would have disappeared by the next day. The two of them apologized for having kept me up so late and left, wishing me a good night.
Their wishes, alas, had no effect. I had such nightmares that the harshness of my hair shirt was powerless to stop the succubae from paying me their shameful visits.
The next day, as Grueber had predicted, my master woke refreshed & full of energy. Mentioning the Quey herb, he assured me it had had no effect on him. Anyway, he told me, this remedy & those like it dispelled less our low spirits than our reason; that being the case, he could see no excuse for using them, neither for healthy minds, which ought to endeavor to increase the divine clarity within themselves rather than to reduce it, nor for madmen who already lacked it. Recalling the hellish dreams of the night that had just passed, I concurred in this condemnation with all my heart.
We returned to our studies while continuing to see fathers Roth & Grueber in order to collect their thoughts about China.
In the app
earance of the comet, which we observed with the astronomers Lana-Terzi & Riccioli, we had cause to see an auspicious sign for the destiny of my master’s works and an ill omen for the infidels & other peoples of the Levant: the Mundus Subterraneus had just arrived from Amsterdam. This book, which scholars had been waiting for with as much impatience as they had in the past his Œdipus Ægyptiacus, prompted an extraordinarily enthusiastic response.
This thunderbolt was followed in June by the printing of his Arithmologia, the work my master had started immediately after his Polygraphia. Apart from an immense historical section devoted to the significance of numbers & their use in Greece & Egypt, it contained a clear and definitive account of the Jewish Cabbala, which he had learned from Rabbi Naphtali Herz ben Jacob, with whom he had assiduously studied the Sefer Yetzirah & the Zohar, the books containing that knowledge. His perfect knowledge of Hebrew & Aramaic had rendered easy for him a task that was well beyond my feeble abilities & I was pleased finally to understand what was concealed within that magnificent body of knowledge.
Finally, when the effect produced by those two books had not yet abated, the Historia Eustachio Mariana also appeared, in which my master recounted the circumstances under which we had discovered the Church of Our Lady of Mentorella & proved, step by step, that this church was indeed a place of miracles. Thanks to the contributions of numerous patrons who had interested themselves in the project, the work of restoring & refurbishing the church was completed in the same month. Desiring a worthy inauguration for this new place of pilgrimage, Kircher decided it should take place on Whitsunday with all due pomp and reverence. Pope Alexander VII having promised to go there to consecrate the church & give his blessing to the congregation, the whole of Roman society was feverishly preparing to accompany him on the journey.
ALCNTARA: Stuff floating on the sea …
Where Tigers Are at Home Page 59