Where Tigers Are at Home

by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

  My master was speaking correctly! I almost threw myself on him to embrace him.

  “The soul of the world is made like that, my friend,” Kircher went on, talking to himself. “I’ve put on my angel’s Sunday best in order to prepare for this return in the appropriate manner. For down there the earth is closer to the origins … And I will guide you, my soul, along these tortuous paths, toward the only refuge there ever was, toward that cradle the angels of the house watch over. Spread out through the veins of the world is an intelligence that makes its entire mass move & mingles it with the great all: I can already make out its ineffable radiance. Courage, my soul, our goal is near. Joy, joy, joy!”

  At this point Father Ampringer burst into the room & since I was slightly behind the door, it was impossible to warn him. Seeing my master, he rushed toward him, calling on God and all the saints. The spell was broken. I distinctly saw Kircher frown and then he started to groan while Father Ampringer helped him to his feet while calling for me to help. I pretended I had just arrived at that moment.

  “How terrible, my God, how terrible!” Father Ampringer kept repeating. “Come, Father Schott, help me to give him a wash. All these feathers, God forgive me, but what can have been going through his mind?! Old age can be so cruel. Our good Father Kircher has gone back to childhood; we’ll have to keep a better eye on him than we have done so far.”

  Father Ampringer had ventured to say out loud what people in the College had been muttering for several weeks, but I refused to accept this apparently obvious fact, especially after the scene I had just witnessed. Kircher could still speak! His intelligence was still intact, even if he made every effort, for obscure reasons, to delude people into thinking the opposite.

  It took us several hours to make my master presentable but nothing in the world would have forced him to allow his hair or his nails to be cut &, although clean after our efforts, he remained unrecognizable. As soon as we were alone once more, I wrote these words on a sheet of paper: “I am with you, Very Reverend Father & I will keep your secret. But, for the love of God, speak! Speak to me as you were speaking to this insect just now.” After having read it, Kircher crumpled up the paper with his trembling hands and looked at me very sadly. “Can’t say … Caspar … Can’t say.”

  He looked truly sorry, like someone who has tried his hardest to fulfil your request, but in vain. And since, indifferent to my presence, he had started to play with his flea again, I plunged into despair & it was a long time before prayer managed to relieve it.

  On the evening of that disastrous September 18 I confessed what I had seen my master doing to Father Ramón & confided to him my doubts as to the real nature of his state.

  “I wish it were not true,” he said gently, “but unfortunately I must dash your hopes, for they have no foundation. As I have observed in other patients, this kind of remission is merely superficial; far from heralding an eventual recovery, it actually indicates a worsening of the illness & is nothing but the patient’s swan song, so to speak. The end is imminent, Father. Come to terms with that thought & your prayers for the soul of our friend will be all the better for it.”

  The further course of events proved Father Ramón right. Kircher did not say another word, apart from the absurd babbling that tormented me right to the end. But even if the voice, as Aristotle maintains, is a luxury in the absence of which life is perfectly possible, my master’s voice during those last few months was still very upsetting. Henceforth he was an infirm and slovenly old man whose clothes were now too big for him; horribly emaciated, with long, greasy hair, he spent his days counting the companies of lice marching up and down his breeches. Although still amiable, he put people off by the repulsive layer of dirt he wore like a second skin. For all that, I loved him no less, knowing as I did that he was no longer responsible for his actions, but it cost me more than I can say to follow the deterioration of his body & mind day after day.

  And the day when my master took to his bed, never to leave it, came sooner than I expected. On November 11 of that same year, 1680, he suddenly became so weak that his legs refused to carry him. His bowels having shrunk & no longer performing their function, he went seven days without eating; this long fast was followed by a burning fever. I realized he was going to die.

  His condition having worsened on St. Severinus’s day, January 8, my master received extreme unction with exemplary piety. And I do not doubt that he was happy for his death to be associated with that of the holy hermit.

  Toward evening the death throes started &, although we had been prepared for this inevitable end for several months, Fathers Ramón, Ampringer and I were in tears at his bedside. About the eleventh hour of the night, when I had lost hope of ever seeing him open his eyes again, my master turned to look at me & spoke to me for the last time: “The scales, Caspar?”

  Taking his hand in mine, I nodded to reassure him: I had not given up obeying his orders, the machine was in equilibrium.

  At that, he sketched a smile, closed his eyes and expired. He had been on this earth for seventy-eight years, ten months & twenty-seven days … At that very moment, as he had predicted, we heard a tiny bell ring indicating a change in the balance! To the amazement of those present in the room, it was established that Kircher’s soul weighed exactly half a scruple.

  The death of my master distressed me more than I would have thought. Although life had become a burden for him & he was dragging it out in pain and grief, his loss left me inconsolable. His vitality, his piety & his wisdom, which made everyone who had the privilege of knowing him look up to him, were the principal reasons that made one love him. Never was there a man more deserving of the admiration of his contemporaries; for he was one of the Ancients worthy of our esteem & who brought honor to science. But given his condition, to wish him a longer life would have been to desire something against his interest. His mind had never deteriorated, but recently he had ceased to be active because he had gradually been deserted by his five senses; no longer, therefore, having any part in the things of this world, he had to go to the other for the salvation & eternal rest of his soul.

  Kircher’s funeral was a magnificent affair. Taken with great pomp to the Ecclesia del Gesù, his body was followed by the innumerable crowd of all those who had loved or admired him. United in their grief were monks from the Trinità dei Monti, Dominicans, priests and monks of all the orders, bishops, cardinals, princes, even Queen Christina of Sweden, who seemed extremely moved by this mourning. But the tribute that doubtless meant most to my master was the one paid him by the cohort of students following his funeral cortege: they came from the German, Scottish, French Colleges, all those who had at one time taken Kircher’s course wept as they saluted the magister they had dubbed “the master of a hundred arts”! The service for the dead, sung by all the Jesuits of the Roman College, was admirable in its spirit of meditation. It was followed by Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres, music the beauty of which perfectly suited a man who for all his life had spoken out against darkness the better to celebrate the glory of light.

  My long task finishes here with the end of the man to whom it was dedicated. According to Kircher’s express wish, his heart is buried at the feet of the Virgin Mary, at Mentorella. Today I have reached my master’s age & the ills I suffer make me hope I will soon join him. Therefore I beg you, dear reader, to join your prayers to mine that God may grant me that grace & to meditate at times on the one my beloved master was not afraid one day to write in his own blood:

  O Great & Admirable Mother of God! O Mary, Immaculate Virgin! I, Thy most unworthy servant, prostrate myself before Thy face, remembering the blessings Thou hast obtained for me from my most tender years, I give myself to Thee entirely, Sweet Mother, I give my life, my body, my soul, all my deeds & all my works. From the bottom of my heart, I express my innermost desires before Thy altar, at the very place where thou didst most miraculously inspire me to restore this place dedicated to Thee & to Saint Eustachius; & may the generations to
come know that, however much learning I have acquired & whatever I have written that is good was achieved not so much through my own studies & work as through the gift of Thy singular grace & the merciful guidance of Eternal Wisdom. And as I lay down my pen, I bequeath this, which I have written with my blood in testimony to what Thou hast done, to all, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, as my sole true possession.

  I, Athanasius Kircher, Thy poor & humble & unworthy servant, pray that Thou mayst hear my prayer, O Jesus, O Mary. Amen.

  To the greater glory of God.

  MATO GROSSO: One of the species is deadly, the other dangerous and the third totally harmless …

  Elaine could not say how many hours had passed since the sight that had overwhelmed her. When she once more became aware of herself and her surroundings she was standing in the middle of the clearing beside the sticky ashes in the hearth. It was daylight, she was hungry, the jungle around her was chirping like the aviary in a zoo. Where things had been, there was now nothing. The earth was littered with the tribe’s bits and pieces: mats, gourds, bundles of feathers and arrows that were already fading, going over, head bowed, to the colors of the forest. Long processions of ants were crisscrossing the campsite, Roman legions bristling with standards and trophies. Perched on a leaf, a red-headed frog looked down its nose at these multitudes.

  Elaine went to the edge of the precipice; the treetops were black with a swarm of vultures, though seen from above they looked like flies regaling themselves painstakingly on a corpse. Mauro, Petersen, all the Indian tribe were lying somewhere down there below her … None could have survived such a fall. She was alone on top of this mountain that was unknown to the rest of the world. Like Robinson Crusoe on his island, she told herself, at the same time vaguely deploring the out-of-place, almost frivolous nature of the thought. Her mind in a whirl, still hovering close to derangement, Elaine asked herself for what obscure reason she hadn’t gone mad.

  Her rumbling stomach took her away from the cliff. Walking unsteadily, she wandered round the camp looking for food. The first thing that caught her attention was Mauro’s Walkman; it was still in the transparent plastic case he used to protect it on the rare occasions when he took it off. Then she saw his clothes and Petersen’s, left in a heap on the sodden ground. Why had they taken the shaman’s powder? Images came back to her, scraps of pictures tinged with red. They had howled as they fell, proof that they had realized what was happening at the last moment. And all the others, my God, all those women and their children … all those feathers beating the air in desperation …

  She regained consciousness a little later, bewildered to find herself holding a tin of beans. I’m cracking up, she told herself, alarmed. There were stretches of time during that her body continued to live and move outside her perception … The contents of the tin made her feel sick but she forced herself to swallow a few mouthfuls. Her eyes were wandering around the clearing, touching on insignificant traces, sliding over them without seeing them. A trickle of saliva oozed down her chin. Arms dangling, she stared at the shapeless object a snake with black and red rings with white edging was slowly embracing in its coils. There are three kinds of coral snake, she recalled with composure, all very similar as far as their colors and their characteristics are concerned; one of the species is deadly, the other dangerous and the third totally inoffensive—which was the first to appear in the order of evolution? The question had been asked her years ago during an examination on mimicry among animals. She hadn’t been able to answer it but clearly recalled the professor’s explanation.

  “Imagine you’re a bird with a taste for reptiles,” he had said, “and you try to eat the first of these three snakes. What ensues? You die on the spot without realizing what’s happened to you and without having time to warn the other birds of the danger. The effect of this, in the shorter or longer term, would be the elimination of the predator-of-reptiles-bird species from the natural world. The same with the third: you eat the snake and, since nothing happens, you deduce that coral snakes are highly comestible. Result—the disappearance of your species when these reptiles eventually become venomous. If you get bitten by the second snake, the one that is poisonous but not deadly, you will suffer for a certain time then you will pass on the information as quickly as possible: eating a snake with black and red rings is very dangerous, it’s best to avoid all snakes that more or less answer to that description. That, therefore, is the snake that will be the first to appear. Of necessity. Left in peace by the birds, its potential enemies, our coral snake can now develop other forms better adapted to its own needs, until eventually you get the Rolls Royce of the species, the one whose bite is terminal. As for the third, indubitably the most cunning, it’s an animal of a species that has nothing to do with the previous two but that decks itself out in the colors of the coral snake to be left in peace, as they are, at very little effort. Having said that, he went on, not without a touch of irony, the natural resistance to the toxins shown by certain predators of reptiles, including several birds, presents an exciting problem, which down to this day is still …

  Elaine wondered which of these three snakes was gliding along in front of her. When it had disappeared, she saw again the shaman place a strange bundle at her feet just before the horror had started to spin its web. Her mind a blank, she went over to it, then with the tips of her fingers, she undid the cover of plant fibers. Despite the greenish swellings distorting its old leather cover, she realized it was a book, a folio volume that she hastened to take out of its envelope and open at the title page. This impulsive action revealed the answer: Athanasii Kircherii è Soc. Jesu Arca Noe, in Tres Libros Digesta …

  Noah’s Ark! THE shaman had had one of Eléazard’s favorite books in his hands. She was less surprised at such a coincidence than to see her husband emerge from the blind spot of chaos, as if to help her, to encourage her from afar to pull herself together. The book affirmed his presence with her and, in an equally mysterious way, justified the bee in his bonnet he had about Athanasius Kircher. It gave off a dubious magic, disproportionate tension. Elaine leafed through the damp pages spotted with brownish marks. Following Arca Noe, all the illustrations from Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae and Mundus Subterraneus had been bound in; manuscript notes on several of the flyleaves formed an embryonic dictionary, a glossary, rather, such as missionaries who were approaching an unknown tribe would create. The fact that the glossary established links between Latin and the natives’ language, that it was written down with a quill pen, the very style of the handwriting, all indicated that Kircher’s book had belonged to one of the first Westerners charged with exploring the New World. Putting together these clues and the course of her own encounter with the Indians, Elaine felt she could reconstruct the story with a certain degree of probability:

  One day a man, probably an ecclesiastic, had set off into the jungle with the scanty gear of all candidates for martyrdom: a Bible, a little collection of trinkets and mirrors, and one of those copiously illustrated manuals in which Kircher demonstrated better than anyone the superiority of the Christian religion. Certain Jesuits, Eléazard had told her, simply sat down in the depths of the forest and played the flute, or even the violin, until the Indians appeared. Like modern Orpheuses, they were lying in wait for souls, alternating music and prayer. By persevering, the Jesuit had managed to remain alive and settled in with a tribe, starting to learn their language. He had to point to earthly creatures, the plants, trees, animals in Kircher’s book, and name them one by one with infinite patience; having done that, he could go on to supernatural matters, dig up the mythology of these savages and set about converting them. A few conjuring tricks, a lot of diplomacy and the Jesuit made a shaman—only too happy to come out of it so well—his ally and disciple. The missionary could speak—or thought he could speak—the language of his flock, he’d managed to baptize the children and even adapt some hymns; as for the shaman, he knew whole speeches in Latin and could jabber along in his instructor’s language in a way that arouse
d great hopes … But then the privations, malaria or some sordid act of revenge put an end to the good Jesuit’s undertaking. The tribe returned to its primitive existence. With the luster of new powers, the shaman took charge of the books and continued on the path that had served his foreign colleague so well. Tirelessly he repeated the Latin he had learned with such difficulty, told all the others that a prophet had come, but that another would come later, that he would have a beard, as in the engraving of Kircher at the beginning of the book, and that he would lead them to some paradise. The shaman died in his turn, after having passed the whole of his knowledge on to his son, and that had continued for four hundred years. At each transfer of the original message, something was lost, with the result that these people had come to worship Kircher himself: Qüyririche was the corresponding word in the glossary. Seeing Dietlev, the Indians had easily identified him as the messiah of the original myths. Even the fossils had played their part in this incredible misunderstanding; several of them were shown in the book, the new arrivals had some in their baggage, a great number lay hidden in the mountain. Signs that the shaman had put together, in one way or another, to reach the conclusion that the end of time was imminent.

  However outrageously improbable it sounded, this explanation was the only one to give a logical shape to the horror she had been through. A misunderstanding, an appalling millenarian misunderstanding that had cost the lives of a whole tribe. Elaine found it tormenting not to have anyone to share this sudden insight with. The Bible had doubtless been lost, but the book open on her knees—the shaman’s aracanóa!—had symbolized the sacred for generations of men to the point where it led their descendants to the abyss. Eléazard and Moéma would have been over the moon! Poor Dietlev as well, moreover, though he would have doubtless have been less interested in the living fossils than in those brought back by the old man from his stay in the mountain.