Jean-Marie Blas De Robles - Where Tigers Are at Home

With a weary smile, João slapped him on the shoulder: they were going to drink a cachaça or two together, perhaps even three, assuming they didn’t collapse first. With a little wave to Moéma, the two men picked up their things and left, staggering with fatigue, against the light in the red of twilight.

For a few seconds Moéma watched them go as they climbed the dune. Roetgen’s looks had made her feel ugly and she had to hold back the tears.

If I’ve become addicted to drink ,

… the violeiro said, sitting on a beer crate, his voice husky, his guitar cracked. The mug of a Haitian sorcerer … the guy was falling apart at the seams …

The reason’s just the despair I’m in .

… José Costa Leite, the real one, with his little piggy eyes and his baseball cap stiff with grease.

No need to tell me what you think ,

… me neither, thought Roetgen, nor João, nor anyone else either. Fill that up, will you?

Drinking isn’t such a sin .

… definitely not, eh João? Anything you want, but not a sin. A duty, a moral law, even. A categorical imperative!

No job, no dough, I’m on the street ,

Nothing in my bag to eat …

… my God, the poor guys! To be listening to that while millions of others are getting all worked up over the Montignac diet or liposuction …

Why not make your home the inn?

Drinking isn’t such a sin .

… a medieval minstrel’s voice, a Sardinian voice, an Andalusian voice, a lonesome voice on the Blues railroad …

Alcohol soaks up the sadness ,

Drown your memories in gin ,

That’ll shut out all the badness —

Drinking isn’t such a sin …

… mass for the downtrodden, and educational! Verses poured forth at top speed and without taking a breath, the last line descending to the quavering line of the refrain. “Hell!” João suddenly says, his eyes glassy, his face ashen, “Come on, cantador , what about hell?”

Sozzled kidneys or a stroke?

Drunk or sober, you’ll still croak .

’s my own choice, this hell I’m in —

Drinking isn’t such a sin …

… an African song, the song of a visionary praise singer. The lament without joy of the man without hope. “Freedom!” Roetgen says, and he says it again because he feels as if he’s got a hot potato in his mouth, and he’s annoyed with himself because all at once the word seems as strange, as devoid of meaning as methoxypsoralen or retinol mononitrate … Two chords and the improvisation starts up again:

Freedom to which a donkey’s bred?

Endless traipsing ’round its shed .

… José Costa Leita looks at the wall, his singing gets hoarse, akin to a cry, finds new paths …

The rich man’s lapdog gets to guzzle ,

The poor Brazilian gets a muzzle—

Your heart is free to pound and race

When the cops take up the chase …

So I maintain, through thick and thin:

Drinking isn’t such a sin …

… whistles round the bar, appreciation expressed in grunts and spitting … “Que bom! Where does he find these things?” the barman says. “A cachaça for the poet, and well filled!” Then suddenly there are two angels, two apparitions suffused with light against the darkness of the doorway. My word, it’s enough to make you believe in God! Prince-Valiant-style hair, sides and crown glittering with gold powder, long satin robes, pink for one, azure for the other, two young angels, wide-eyed, hands clasped high on their chests in a gesture of prayer. They’ve stopped to have a glance at hell, just as two real little girls might have done, letting their curiosity get the better of them on the way to church. Roetgen, however, didn’t think the angels had that grave look, the look of an entomologist intrigued by the sudden, inexplicable turmoil in an anthill. He waved them in — and they were gone: it was as if a stultifying wind had blown its peace over the bar. Costa Leite picked up his guitar again …

The factory bosses, in the main ,

Have got a nice, poetic vein;

The workers veins are varicose

And they shit worms, to add to their woes .

I’ll sell my soul to the devil too ,

If it’ll save some pretty girl’s

Let God save all the filthy curs

Since he has nothing better to do .

My only friend’s the pot I piss in—

Drinking isn’t such a sin .

… another cachaça , and another, to the very confines of this night. “You mustn’t hold it against her,” João says, his eyes fixed on a packet of Omo, “it’s not her fault. A mulher e capaz de quase tudo, o homem de resto …” Ready to drop from drunkenness and fatigue, they cling to each other, shoulders together, arms groping the bar, each holding the other up on the edge of the abyss.

When Thaïs found him, late in the evening, Roetgen was asleep on the billiard table, a nasty gash on his forehead, dried blood over his face. The barman told her he’d had to smash a bottle over his head, he was a decent guy and there was no real harm done, neither to his skull — just a bit of a cut on his scalp, nothing serious — nor in the damage he’d caused. João had been forcibly taken home a little earlier, griping about his wife at the top of his voice.

Nelson had been filing down his iron bar for hours. His mind released by the repetitive nature of the work, he was once more reliving the death of Lampião. There was something that bothered him about the way it had happened, his end was too prosaic, at odds with the qualities of cunning and intelligence attributed to his hero. Angicos, 1938 … The tragic end of the famous cangaceiro was well known: proud of their deed, the men of the flying squad commanded by Lieutenant João Bezerra had reported every last detail.

When the pale light of dawn rose over that part of Brazil on July 28, 1938, the police were so close to the cangaceiros that they could hear them talking or watch those already stretching in the doorway of their shack. Dressed in the only uniform the caatinga allowed, the men on both sides looked disconcertingly similar: a leather jerkin held tight over the chest by the crossed cartridge belts, gaiters, leggings jointed at the knees, a wide cocked hat in fawn leather, stuck with stars and gilded rosettes — a bit like the hats of the dandies of the Directoire period but with a headband and chin strap. Designed to resist the thorny vegetation, this bronze armor united hunters and hunted like knights and their reflection. Dull sounds emerged from time to time beneath the patter of the driving rain: the clatter of mess tins, a horse snorting, a dry cough … They were only to open fire on Bezerra’s command, but the lieutenant’s jaws were welded so tightly together by fear that his pulse was visible on his cheek; far from being ready to pounce, he was trying to disappear into the puddle where he was crouching. The sudden rattle of a sewing machine sent the coward’s face plunging into the mud … A sudden movement in the scrub? The metallic glint of a carbine? An unusually deep silence round the encampment? Without anyone being able to say why, one of the cangaceiros gave the alarm. A second later Maria Bonita thought she saw her sewing machine spitting bullets.

Rushing out when his companion called, Lampião was one of the first to fall under the hail of machine-gun fire. While a good number of the cangaceiros scattered into the hills, Maria Bonita, Luís Pedro and the most faithful of the outlaws entrenched themselves in the huts. The attack only lasted about twenty minutes, but long after the last rifle facing them had fallen silent, the machine guns continued to pepper the shelters of canvas and branches.