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

When the metal of his spade hit the planks, he completed his awful task with his bare hands, hurrying as if he were exhuming not the mortal remains of his dead wife but a captive impatient to recover her freedom. Fumbling in the slimy soil, Count Karnice finally managed to open the lid of the coffin. What horror was in store for him: his wife’s hand shot up from the grave & slapped his cheek! As had unfortunately happened several times during those days of fear & haste, Count Karnice’s wife had been buried alive … Waking in the darkness of the tomb, the poor woman had scraped the wood with her fingernails as she attempted to escape a ghastly death. Her horribly dislocated body had stiffened like a bow in her final effort to reach the light.

Count Karnice took to his heels, distraught with terror. When they found him, he was mad.

Dietlev regained consciousness in the evening. His voice, coming from the stretcher beside the fire, made Elaine start.

“Knock, knock!” he said in a perfectly serious voice.

“Dietlev!” Elaine exclaimed, immediately going over to him. “You gave me a fright, you big bad bear.”

“Come on. Knock, knock! Who’s there?”

“I’ve no idea, Dietlev, and I don’t really care, you know.”

“Agee.”

“OK, if you insist. Agee who?”

“A geologist hitting the door with his wooden leg!” he said with a faint smile.

“I’m afraid that’s beyond me,” said Herman, “but how are you, amigo ?”

Dietlev’s face darkened for a moment. His temples were still moist from the fever but his eyes were open and he seemed to be completely lucid again. “Like Long John Silver. It was a pretty drastic way of losing weight. Ten pounds, twenty pounds? How much does a leg weigh? ”

“We had to do it,” Elaine said, taking his hand. “The gangrene was starting to spread.”

“I know. Don’t worry, I was thinking that too. Well, almost … How did it happen? Was it you who made the decision?”

“No, it’s Herman who made it clear to me how urgent it was. He was great, he’s the one who saved you, just him …”

Dietlev looked puzzled for a moment, as if he were trying to understand Herman’s motivation. “ Danke , Herman,” he simply said.

Using German expressed more gratitude than the word itself and Petersen was aware of that. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled, “you’d have done the same in my place.”

“Where’s Mauro?”

“Here I am,” he said, moving into Dietlev’s field of vision. “you gave us all a fright, you know.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily, as my students will tell you. Anyway, I’m thinking of coming back here next year.” He didn’t really believe what he was saying and none of them was stupid enough to take him at his word.

“You all look as if you’re at the end of your tether,” Dietlev said after having scrutinized them. “You need to get some rest, otherwise you’re not going to cope.”

“It’s been a hard day,” Elaine said, staring into space. “We’ve been squelching across the edge of the marsh, it’s not easy. And I don’t have to carry the stretcher …” But as she spoke, all she had in mind was the agonies of the amputation, the anxiety that had twisted her stomach.

“So we’ve reached the marshes?”

“Yeah, amigo ,” Petersen replied. “You were down for the count, that’s when we realized how bad you were.” He hesitated for a moment, then went on, “We have to talk about this, seriously, you know … We’re never going to get there in these conditions, I mean with you, and then—”

“He’s on about it again!” Mauro said in exasperated tones, “for a long time now—”

“Let him finish, please,” Dietlev said. “Go on, Herman.”

“Listen: I stay with you and we send Yurupig on ahead. He knows the forest, he’ll get to the river three or four times quicker than us. And we can follow him at our own speed. By marking the route, he can help us avoid the dead ends he’ll have to check out himself. That will save us time and effort. If he’s quick, he can bring the rescue team to meet us.”

His suggestion immediately made sense to them. Even Mauro couldn’t find fault with it.

“What do you say, Yurupig?” Dietlev asked.

The Indian turned to look at Petersen, putting his head on one side as if to assess him better. “I agree, but you’ll have to be on your guard. When the snake offers to help the rat, it’s because he’s found a quicker way of eating it …”

“What a load of bullshit! You really can’t stand me, can you?”

“So that’s settled,” Dietlev said after a questioning glance at Elaine and Mauro. “You can take the compass, we won’t need it now. You know how to use it, don’t you?”

Yurupig closed his eyes to indicate agreement.

“Notches in the tree trunks to show the route, a cross to tell us not to go that way. You think you can make it?”

“In the forest that depends on the jaguars …”

THE NEXT MORNING, at first light, Elaine and Mauro made up a rucksack for Yurupig. They packed his share of the provisions, the compass, a cigarette lighter, a flask of alcohol and a dose of snakebite serum. When the moment came, the Indian took one of their three machetes and turned to the members of the expedition: “Take it easy,” he said, “I’ll be back.”

Cutting short their farewells, he gave them a final wave and left at a jog. Dietlev had decided to give him two hours’ start, so they lingered over breakfast after he left.

When they set off again, Elaine went on ahead. Here and there a notch weeping milky fluid indicated a path that had been freshly made through the vegetation; in fact, Yurupig had made so many marks that the trail was fairly easy to follow. The fact that they didn’t have to wonder what was the best route made everything much simpler. After two hours, Elaine took Petersen’s place carrying the stretcher. Dietlev seemed to be recovering his strength, so that Mauro gave him the Kalashnikov to hold since it hampered his movement.

The day passed without any incidents worthy of note. Once evening came, they sat around the fire again; it was time to assess the situation: as far as they could tell, they had progressed two or three times more quickly that on the previous days, but at the price of greater tiredness. Elaine above all felt the effects. Aching all over, her muscles stiff from carrying the stretcher, she had to force herself to eat and stay sitting with the others.

“My last batteries,” Mauro said, changing the ones in his Walkman. I’m gong to have to ration my music as well. He looked drawn, like a long-distance runner after the race, but he was standing up to the strain quite well. “When I think,” he went on, “that the new semester starts in three days’ time. They aren’t going to be very pleased.”

“You can say that again,” Dietlev said. “Five years ago I got back from an expedition two hours before my first lecture; an airplane hadn’t been able to take off in time, a car broke down, problems with customs … the whole works. When I got to the lecture theater, Milton was just telling my students I was absent; I thought he was going to have an apoplectic fit!”

The thought of their dead colleague cast a veil over his smile.

“Poor guy,” Mauro said. “I didn’t like him, but all the same … he was a big name …”

“A big bastard, you mean,” Elaine said wearily. “If you knew everything he put us through. His death doesn’t change that.”

“True,” Dietlev said, “but if we had to kill all the incompetents, the idiots, the corrupt, there wouldn’t be many people left in the world.”