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

One hour later most of the men were lying on the ground alongside each other, like corpses waiting to be dealt with.

“ Guardians of the dream ,” the shaman was saying as he deciphered the symbols on the torsos, “ living shelters of the true soul, your hearts do not lie. On them I can see the anaconda and the jaguar, the terrapin and the hummingbird. You are like arrows fledged with dreams, great birds who are consumed in the sky by their wings of fire. The end of all your woes is near, for soon the Messenger will guide us to that mountain where visions cascade down uninterruptedly. Your torsos tell me much: they tell of the return to the land of our birth, to the smiling happiness of newborn babes …”

The shaman walked along between the bodies, releasing their penises, swollen by the sensual wanderings of the sleepers’ minds, from their thin shackles, spitting magic arrows at invisible enemies swirling round them like flies. Agitated, close to trance, he came back and stood in front of Dietlev. Petersen was the first to understand his gesticulations: “He wants to get you to sniff his rubbish,” he said in mocking tones. “No way out of it, old chap …”

Elaine turned to Dietlev, full of concern: “Don’t do it,” she begged. “You’ve seen what it does to them.”

“Given the state I’ve reached … and then we don’t know what’ll happen if I refuse. It’s the best way of keeping in their good books. So long, Carter — won’t see you again …”

He stuck the wax tip of the tube in one of his nostrils; when the shaman blew down it, he was immediately thrown back on the stretcher. After a few seconds of an intense burning sensation spreading through his sinuses, Dietlev had the very clear impression that the right side of his brain had frozen with no hope of it ever unfreezing. Opening his eyes, he was alarmed to see the sepia tones of the forest: the harmony of an old photo abruptly torn apart by sudden flashes of lightning, revealing incredible perspectives in which amber and mauve shaded into infinity. A Piranesian delirium, architectural tumors ceaselessly proliferating. He could hear the slow grinding of icebergs, the overthrust of continental plates. Distant whirlwinds started to stir up space with their spirals, cracks appeared all over the earth, which opened up like a round loaf under the irresistible force of the mountains. Stones rose in the air! Before he lost consciousness Dietlev was aware he was witnessing something grandiose, an event mingling the beginning of worlds and their apocalypse.

VERY EARLY THE next morning Elaine was woken by the sound of voices punctuated by crying children. First of all she had a quick look at Dietlev — he was still sleeping and appeared to be breathing normally. Then she got our of her hammock to have a look outside the hut. The whole tribe was packing its bags … Woken by Elaine, Mauro and Petersen went to the mat over the entrance.

“It looks as if they’re leaving,” Mauro said, a touch of concern in his voice.

“And taking us with them,” Petersen added, seeing a little group of Indians approaching.

Once in the hut the two men they already knew indicated that they were to pick up their rucksacks and follow them. With great signs of deference, they lifted up the stretcher while other Indians took the various feather ornaments down from the central pillar.

Elaine’s face shone: at last they had understood, they were taking them to some civilized place where Dietlev could receive medical help. Cheered by this prospect, Mauro returned her smile. Petersen’s eyes were sunken, his complexion gray, his expression hard. All he did was shake his head at the other two’s silent joy.

The whole tribe plunged into the forest. The indifference with which the Indians had abandoned their village was disconcerting. They were only taking the strict minimum with them, a monkey-skin bag, twists of chewing tobacco, bows, arrows and blowpipes. In woven baskets held on their back by a strap around their forehead, the women were carrying a few mats, hammocks and various receptacles; they were also taking embers from the hearth with them, but none had paid the least attention to the heaps of food still scattered round the smoking ashes of the bonfire. Curled up in the carrying cloths, the babies were sucking at their mother’s breasts. A population of refugees setting off on their exodus, Elaine thought without dwelling on it. She felt guilty at having allowed herself to hope: however horrible it was, however present in her thoughts, Yurupig’s death was tending to fade as the prospect of reaching safety grew more imminent. Obsessed by the vision of his tortured head, Mauro was making every effort to erase even the unfortunate Indian’s name from his mind. As for Petersen, he didn’t remember him until much later and then to blame himself for not having thought of recovering the compass.

The shaman seemed to know exactly where he was going. The long procession made fairly good progress under the hostile cover of the jungle. Dietlev still hadn’t woken; despite all her efforts, Elaine couldn’t get him to open his eyes. His coma was worrying, though she couldn’t tell whether it was an effect of the gangrene or of the powder blown up his nose by the shaman. The Indians had recovered fairly easily, but the fact that Dietlev had never experienced it before would explain a longer period of recuperation.

“What did he mean, yesterday evening?” Mauro asked as he met her anxious look. “He was talking about someone called Carver or Carter, wasn’t he?”

The reminder made Elaine smile. “Carter,” she said. “It’s an old private joke. I don’t know if you’ve read ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’ by H. P. Lovecraft? The story begins with a guy going to a cemetery, an unknown graveyard he’s discovered. He takes a friend called Carter with him. They lift a slab and discover a flight of stone steps … The guy knows he’s going to have to fight ‘the thing,’ some kind of fiendish entity from the depths of time, et cetera, et cetera — the usual Lovecraft. He leaves Carter on the surface and goes down into the tomb. As they have a field telephone with them, Carter remains in contact with his friend. He hears him panicking, then everything gets more frenzied until the moment comes when it’s clear he’ll never get back to the surface. At the end of the first chapter the guy orders Carter to replace the slab and then manages one last sentence: ‘ Tão longo, Carter .’ I did think it a bit odd, but that was all. What could it be that was so long? But then you’re not surprised at anything in Lovecraft, I just accepted it as an enigma. It was Dietlev who one day pointed out to me that it was a mistake in the translation. The original English text simply said ‘So long, Carter.’ It didn’t make much difference to the rest of the story, but it ought to have been translated by something that meant ‘Goodbye, Carter’ in Portuguese, say ‘ Até logo, Carter .’ You know Dietlev and his twisted sense of humor. He made me laugh at it so much, we got into the habit of using the phrase for saying goodbye. A kind of in-joke between us, at one time …”

“I see,” said Mauro.

AFTER THEY HAD been going for two hours, Petersen broke the sulky silence he had maintained since they left, simply saying, “There’s a snag.”

“What’s wrong?” Elaine said.

“What’s wrong is that we’re going away from the river; look at the moss on the tree trunks.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing all the time,” Mauro said with some irritation. “They generally grow facing the sun, thus indicating south—”

“Well done, sonny, except that you’ve got the wrong hemisphere and it’s the exact opposite. We’ve been heading due northwest since the start. I waited until I was absolutely certain before telling you.”