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

The best place was just behind Juvenal’s hut. From the little pile of almost clean sand beside it, he could watch the train approaching, see it slow down at the signal and go past less than three yards from where he was. Juvenal had eventually become accustomed to it: nothing could wake him apart from the smell of cachaça . He dreamed of earthquakes and would spend the whole night running to avoid the yawning cracks splitting the shantytown apart beneath his feet.

Nelson was going through his own victories in marathons, all those occasions on which he entered the stadium and put on a spurt to the cheers of the crowd, when the train emerged from the ambiguity of the shadows. The engine sputtered out a compact beam of darkness, its two eyes fixed on the track; its wheels chewed away at the rails, spilling out on either side the reddish glow of crackling fountains of hydrogen welding …

That was the moment at which Nelson saw her spring up from the slope and attack the monster. She kicked and hit the moving carapace of the trucks with all her might, in a fit of madness, determined to smash her fists on its crude bulk. Each time she assaulted it, she was thrown back; she swayed to and fro, raised her arms, yelled again and, head lowered, returned to the duel. The train raised its voice, again, and then again, in a deafening outburst of fury. The young princess was going to get herself knocked flat! Nelson crawled toward her as fast as he could, shouting to her to move away.

When she saw this nightmare freak appear, there, in the never-ending infernal racket grinding away at the horizon, Moéma was stricken with panic. She wanted to run away, but collapsed, overwhelmed, exhausted.

Nelson could not believe his eyes, his princess was sobbing, calling for her mother in a plaintive voice, curled up, her hands between her thighs. Apart from her T-shirt, which was ripped right down and only held on by the seams at the neck, she was completely naked, her body was covered in patches of blood and black grease, all over, on her face, on her stomach … her breasts were disfigured by large aubergine-colored bruises.

Lying beside her without touching her, Nelson spoke for a long time, just so she could hear his murmurs of compassion, so she would gradually overcome her fear:

“Don’t cry, things’ll sort themselves out, you’ll see … My name is Nelson, I was born like this, with my legs all crooked … There’s no need to be afraid, at least I can’t do you any harm. Who’s the bastard who put you in this state? I’ll find him, I swear, we’ll make him pay … Look, take my shirt and cover yourself up, princess. Come on, you can stay with me until the morning … You can’t stay here in this state, that’s for sure … I’ll go and tell Uncle Zé and he’ll sort everything out, I promise … come on, don’t stay there … I’ll tell you stories, I know piles of them … John the Bold and the Princess of the Kingdom-where-no-one-goes, Snow White and the Soldier of the Foreign Legion, The Ballad of the Mysterious Peacock …”

He moved away a few yards to encourage her to follow him, then returned to the attack, gabbling all the cordel titles he could remember, baptizing her with all their luminous promise: The Goddess of Maranhão. The Story of the Seven Cities and the King of Magic, Mariana and the Ship’s Captain, Ronaldo and Susana on the River Miramar, The Sufferings of Alzira the Fairy, Rachel and the Dragon, The Unprecedented Fate of Princess Eliza, The Story of Song of Fire and His Will, The Duchess of Sodom, Rose of Milan and Princess Christine, João Mimoso and the Enchanted Castle, Prince Oscar and the Queen of the Waters, Lindalva and Juracy the Indian …

The continuation of Johan Grueber’s report on Chinese medicine

THERE WERE EXCLAMATIONS and grimaces of disgust all around the table. Bernini swore by all the gods that he would never go to China for fear of falling ill & having to be treated there. Kircher nodded, invoking Galen & Discorides; as for myself, I prayed to God that this wonderful evening would never end, so delighted I was by the conversation.

“Bottoms up!” I was slightly surprised to hear myself saying. “To liquid excrement & to the wonderful virtues of diarrhea!”

“Bottoms up!” My companions replied before emptying their glasses.

“Now what would you say,” Father Grueber went on, “to looking at bone disease? A little concentrated urine from a three-year-old girl will get rid of it instantly. Diabetes? Make your patient drink a full cup of the same liquid from a public urinal! Loss of blood? The same, but eight pints! A dead fetus to be expelled? Two pints will suffice. Body odor? Apply to the armpits, several times a day.”

“Good Lord!” said Kircher, pinching his nose.

“Everything can be used, I tell you. And you’ve heard nothing yet. You should know that the Emperor T’ou Tsung used to cut his own whiskers to treat his dear Li Hsün, the ‘Great Scholar for the Exaltation of Poetic Writing,’ for their ashes are good for abscesses … A snake has bitten you & you have no snakestone, what can you do? Do not fear, twelve pubic hairs sucked for a long time will prevent the venom from spreading through your entrails. A wife is having a difficult birth? No matter, make her swallow fourteen other hairs mixed with bacon fat and she will have a swift delivery—”

“What’s all this you’re trying to tell us!” Kircher exclaimed, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. “If you didn’t inspire me with absolute confidence, I wouldn’t believe a single word of what you’re saying.”

“And you would be wrong, for all I am doing here is repeating things that are common knowledge among all Chinese physicians.”

“If Father Roth could hear you!” Kircher chuckled. Then, putting on an angry look, he pointed a threatening finger at Bernini, he said, “Oh, how wise those pagans were who had a law forbidding a man of fifty to consult a doctor, saying it showed too great an attachment to life! Among the Chinese, as among the Christians, you will find some men of eighty who won’t hear a word of the other world, as if they hadn’t had a moment’s leisure to see this one. Do you not know that life was given to Cain, the most evil man that ever there was, as punishment for his crime? And you want it to be a reward for you?!”

“But one has to live, see the world,” Bernini replied, joining in the playacting, like a character who already knew his defense was weak.

“What is living, apart from getting dressed & undressed, getting up, going to bed, drinking, eating & sleeping, playing, jesting, haggling, selling, buying, masoning, joinering, quarreling, quibbling, traveling & roaming in a labyrinth of actions that are constantly retracing their steps & always being the prisoner of a body, be it a child’s, an invalid’s, a madman’s?”

“You’re forgetting something important, Father, something that would on its own justify my existence …”

“ Vade retro, Satanas! ” Kircher bellowed, his eyes sparkling with laughter. “One must see the world, you say, & live among the living. But if you should spend your whole life locked up in a prison & only observe this world through a little grille, you would have seen enough of it! What can one see in the streets apart from men, houses, horses, mules, carriages—”

“And women, Reverend Father … Fine-looking girls, nice little chickens that revive your appetite for meat.”

“Little hussies who stink of rotten fish! And courtesans who walk the streets like drunken fish and whose only virtue is often the pox, which sends you to the other world. O God, how empty our lives are! Is it for this that we are unfaithful to & break with the Lord, that we try to live for all those years that consist of nothing but foolishness, work & misery? Oh, my fellow Christians, be not like those babes that cry when they emerge from the blood and excrement to see the daylight & despite that do not want to return to the place whence they came!”