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

Thus the battle was turned into a pigeon shoot. The machine guns had given the cangaceiros no chance at all. And how could such a rout be justified? Why should Bezerra, the well-known coward, have prevailed over intelligence and bravery on that morning rather than any other? Lampião and his faithful followers had died without fighting. They had simply been executed.

Moved by the scene he was visualizing, Nelson had increased the speed of his file over the iron bar. No, he thought, Lampião would never have allowed himself to get caught so easily on a field of battle, even if he’d been taken by surprise. The story just didn’t stand up. The other version, though, the one that had been rumored abroad almost immediately after the tragedy of Angicos, was much more convincing: fuelled by the revelations of Father José Kehrle and confirmed by the brothers João and David Jurubeba, it declared that Lampião and the ten cangaceiros who had been martyred along with him had been poisoned.

In which Kircher finds himself obliged to tell Queen Christina a scabrous story he wanted to keep to himself …

ON THE NEXT day, December 24, 1655, Queen Christina honored us with her presence, as arranged. Kircher was experienced as a guide; speaking without interruption to his guest, he quickly & amusingly presented large sections of his museum to her, only pausing over objects worthy of the royal interest. Here a robe from China, embroidered with gold and dragons, there an Egyptian intaglio of the most beautiful jasper or an abraxas engraved on jade & mounted on a revolving ring; further on a series of distorting mirrors. One of these made an extraordinary impression on Queen Christina; when you looked at yourself in it, you saw your head stretch more & more into a cone, then four, three, five & eight eyes appeared; at the same time your mouth became like a cave, with your teeth rising up like precipitous rocks. Widthwise you first of all saw yourself without a forehead, then getting donkey’s ears without your mouth & nostrils being modified at all. But I cannot find words to describe the whole variety of these hideous apparitions. My master tirelessly explained the catoptric principles involved in these inventions & in those far more interesting ones that he had worked out in his mind, should some patron one day enable them to be realized.

After the catoptric museum, the finest & most complete in the world, Kircher showed Christina the great python of Brazil & the elephant seal, gigantic animals his fame alone had brought into his possession. After the Queen had gone into raptures at the size of these giants of creation, my master showed her an engraving & asked if she could identify the animal it represented.

“What strange monster is that?!” Christina exclaimed with a laugh. “It looks like a dromedary sitting on a branch.”

“It’s a flea, Your Highness, & its perch a human hair, which the power of my microscope has enlarged like that to offend the eye—& delight the mind. Take a look yourself …”

At once Athanasius handed her one of these instruments & several specimens he had prepared for that purpose. Christina, bending over the eyepiece, gave little cries of astonishment at the sight of these insects transformed into frightening chimeras simply by virtue of the lenses, while my master in his imperturbable way, continued to expound upon the infinitely great & the infinitely small.

From there we went on to the winged dragon Cardinal Barberini had parted with for our museum & that was made to inspire men with terror. But Queen Christina was made of sterner stuff & true to her reputation for subtlety. “A few months ago,” she said, “some German Jesuits told me they had seen dragons priapos suos immanes, in os feminarum intromittentes, ibique urinam fudentes . 1I really gave them a piece of my mind,” she added, “for having permitted such offensive behavior, but they just laughed.”

“I hadn’t heard of that,” Kircher replied, “nevertheless I am disappointed at their thoughtlessness. I wouldn’t have left without capturing these beasts or … ‘converting’ them if you prefer …”

Following this skirmish, there was the lamb with two heads, the bird of paradise with three legs & the stuffed crocodile apparently sleeping under a reconstructed palm tree.

“The crocodile,” my master explained, “is the symbol of divine omniscience, since only its eyes emerge from the water &, although seeing everything, it remains invisible to our mortal senses. It has no tongue and divine reason has no need of words to make itself manifest. And as Plutarch points out, it lays sixty eggs that take that many days to hatch; it also lives for sixty years at the longest. Now sixty is the first number astronomers use in their calculations, so that it was not without reason that the priests of ancient Egypt dedicated a town to them, Crocodilopolis, & that the inhabitants of Nîmes still have this emblem on the walls of their town.”

We were making our way through the rest of the Egyptian section of the museum, heading for the curio with which a visit usually ended — a stone of 10 ounces removed from the gallbladder of Father Leo Sanctius, who unfortunately died during the operation — when Queen Christina stopped by a statuette to which I had never paid much attention: a rather plump figure wearing a hat in the form of a scarab, the rear legs of which hung down like ribbons well below the back of its neck & that appeared to be squatting down while holding its sides.

“And that, Reverend Father?” Christina asked.

“An unimportant Egyptian idol,” Kircher replied, making as if to continue walking.

“I must say it seems extremely odd to me,” the Queen insisted. “What strange deity is it?”

Being perfectly familiar with the least of Athanasius’s expressions, I could tell he would have preferred to talk about something else & his reaction aroused my own curiosity.

“I’m afraid, Your Highness,” my master said, embarrassed, “that it is not something for delicate ears & I would most humbly beg you to permit me, with due reverence for your rank & your sex, to draw a veil over this exhibit.”

“But if I did not permit you …” Christina said, smiling with feigned ingenuousness. “You must realize that my rank allows me to do things that are denied other women & even the majority of men. Do not be misled by my dress; it is not their sex that makes a king or a queen, it is their rule, & that alone, that is decisive.”

“And your reign, Your Majesty, was great & remarkable, one of the most notable. I therefore bow to your wishes & beg you to pardon my untimely reticence. This idol represents the deus Crepitus , the Fart god, of the Egyptians, & that in the comical posture appropriate to his nature.”

Queen Christina remained perfectly impassive, proving that she fully merited her reputation as an enlightened monarch, more interested in increasing her knowledge, even in such a scabrous area, than in making puerile jokes about it. When some of her suite giggled & made ironic comments on the fetid side of this deity, she silenced them with a look that indicated the authority this masterful woman had over them.

“Please go on, Reverend Father. How is it that the builders of the pyramids & the library of Alexandria, the inventors of the hieroglyphs & so many other marvelous secrets, could lower themselves to this shameless cult? I must admit that my curiosity has been aroused by something that, on the face of it, has neither rhyme nor reason.”

“So you wish me to explain to Your Majesty the deified fart of the Egyptians? But would it not be to go against people’s rights to publish abroad the apparently ridiculous side of that wise & learned nation?