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

Shaken by the reference to Lautréamont, Eléazard had lowered his guard. Dr. Euclides strung together a series of comparisons from the fine arts, invoking Aristotle and Winckelmann: Poussin had reproduced a Roman fresco, which had since disappeared, to make the background to one of his paintings, for a long time Turner had desperately tried to rival Poussin, Van Gogh copied Gustave Doré, Delacroix and Japanese prints; as for Max Ernst, he quite logically ended up cutting out others’ engravings to re-compose them in his own style. Picasso, Duchamp, there was no one true artist who had not, at least at the beginning, nurtured his talent with pastiche, parody and plagiarism …

Close to a technical knockout, Eléazard made a desperate attempt to slip Euclides’s punches: ‘You’re not playing fair, Doctor, and you know it. I can see what you’re getting at, but there’s a clear difference between the acknowledged admiration of one artist for another and the fraud of appropriating part of his work. I can’t see what’s wrong with one painter imitating another to learn the craft, we’re in agreement on that. Except that it has nothing to do with plagiarism. Is that even possible in painting? Do you seriously think that nowadays you could paint a glass of water on top of an umbrella without being immediately accused of having plagiarized Magritte?”

“You like Magritte?”

“A lot, yes.”

“All the worse for you …”

Euclides stood up with a haste that had a touch of irritation. Eléazard watched him as he scrutinized his bookshelves, muttering to himself, his face right up against the books. “There you are,” he said, coming back to sit down with a little pile of books he kept on his knees. He put a big catalog of Belgian painting on the table “Find The Man with the Newspaper , please.”

Eléazard knew the painting in question: a man was warming himself beside the stove while reading his newspaper. The same image was repeated in the three other compartments of the painting, the same stove, the same window and the same table, but without the figure.

“Done,” he said with a hint of condescension.

Euclides handed him another volume, clothbound this time. “Now would you be so good as to find the article ‘Stove, Ideal incandescent fuel with flue.’ ”

Smiling at the old man’s eccentricity, Eléazard first of all glanced at the title — Bilz: The Natural Method of Healing — then at the polychrome cover, embossed as on the old Collection Hetzel books. On it a young woman was bathing in her beneficial rays two young children, who were sitting in the middle of nowhere. Eléazard noted the art nouveau style of the decoration and leafed through the book to find the entry suggested by the doctor: SELF-ABUSE; SINGING IS CONDUCIVE TO HEALTH; SPIRITS, LOW; SPITTING BLOOD; STAMMERING, how to cure in children; STAYS, see: “Women diseases of”; STIFF NECK; STOMACH WEAK AND SICKLY; STOVE: (“Ideal”) incandescent fuel stove with flue.

At once his intrigued amusement turned to amazement. Without leaving him time to react, Euclides placed his finger on his lips. “Not now, I beg you,” he said wearily, “we’ll continue this conversation another time. I’m sorry, but I have to lie down for an hour or two.” Nevertheless, he insisted on accompanying him to the door. “Give my best wishes to Kircher,” he said out of the corner of his mouth and putting on the most serious of expressions, a pretense that almost made his friendly mockery disagreeable.

When she woke up early in the afternoon, Loredana had some difficulty gathering her memories. The rhythms of the macumba were still sounding a vague echo behind her headache. What had happened at the end of the ceremony? How had she managed to get back to the hotel? Alfredo’s face had shut off her memory like an iron mask. The grubby light filtering through the venetian blinds seemed to be impregnating her clothes, scattered all over the room, with gray mold. Her will was urging her to get up, to get away from feeling the suffocation and sadness that marked her awakening, but her drowsiness pushed her far back toward the faint swirls of frayed dreams.

When she did finally manage to sit up in bed, the images of the previous night all had a grotesque look. She had thought there would be nothing for her in the experience and now realized, from her heightened feeling of anguish, that she had been wrong. Despite a short loss of consciousness that she put down to the drugs and alcohol, the consolation she had hoped for from the world of the orixas remained inaccessible. This new defeat overwhelmed her; her temples were moist with sweat that was running down her back in hostile trickles. Rather death, she told herself in her feeling of helplessness, than the uncertainty of still being alive, the horror of a constantly renewed reprieve.

A little later she went down to have something to eat. To her great relief, Alfredo was nowhere to be seen. After having grumbled that it wasn’t the right time for lunch, Socorró agreed to give her a plateful of the feijoada that was simmering in the kitchen. She had hardly turned her back than Loredana spat out the first mouthful into her hand. The very idea of having to swallow something made her feel sick. Fearing the worst after a first spasm, she stood up, having decided to go back to her room, when Socorró came back to put a letter on the table. Before even opening it, Loredana knew what it contained.

“It’s not good?” Socorró asked, an inscrutable look on her face as she pointed at the plate.

“It’s not that …” she managed to reply, “but I’m not well. I have to go and lie down … But don’t throw it away, I’ll eat it all this evening. I assure you it’s very good.”

“How can you know? You haven’t even tasted it.”

“I’m sorry Socorró. I have to go upstairs. I feel ill …”

Feeling dizzy, she gripped the back of her chair, making a great effort not to faint.

“You mustn’t play with the god of the cemetery,” the old woman murmured as she took her arm, “it wasn’t a good idea to go down there. Alfredo!” she called out then, “Come over here, the lady’s unwell.”

“It’ll be all right, there’s no need to bother,” Loredana begged, unable to move a step. “It’ll soon pass …”

She let them carry her up to her room. Alfredo looked drawn, but nothing in his attitude or his speech suggested he was embarrassed to see her. He came back to bring her an Alka-Seltzer and behaved toward her as usual. Loredana was convinced he couldn’t remember anything.

Stretched out on her bed, she was still hesitating to open the letter. She mustn’t let herself be influenced, must weigh the pros and cons again until the moment when she was absolutely sure she would not call her decision into question. Scraps of her conversation with Soledade came back to her, images over the surface of which her own death poured a black flood of raw fear.

“Countess?” said Eléazard, looking up from his computer, “I’m delighted to see you.”

“Please, call me Carlotta. I apologize for bursting in on you like this, but the girl insisted I should come up unannounced.”

Eléazard went over to shake the hand she held out to him. “She was quite right. What can I get you? Fruit juice? Tea? Coffee?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

For a brief moment Eléazard had assumed she had come to see Loredana, but her weary expression and the way her fingers gripped her document case suggested she had something else in mind.

“You must be concerned about your son,” he said offering her a seat. “Euclides told me there was no news of the expedition to the Mato Grosso.”