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

Nelson didn’t even try to get a cap in the throng that formed around the political huckster. He had fled back to his hut, quivering with emotion. Moreira da Rocha … The almanac hadn’t lied … Laudato seja Deus! His wheel of destiny had suddenly engaged like the cogs in a gearbox. He felt drunk with a terrible joy, it was like a boiler roaring inside his head as he tried to calm himself down by slashing the pictures of the governor.

“Should we reject Marxism, abandon the struggle against oppression, our hope of the Great Day, just because the Communists fell in Russia?” Uncle Zé had said only yesterday. “No, Princess, that would suit too many people down to the ground. It’s not clear at all. They strut about today, but all they’ve managed to develop is underdevelopment, if you want my opinion. Even the aid to third-world countries, you know how that works? They take the dough from the poor of rich countries to give it to the rich of the poor countries … It’s just going round in circles … I’m not a Communist, but the only political action for a fly is to get off the flypaper and no one will persuade me any different …”

I’m not a Communist either, Nelson said to himself, I’m not much at all … I’m not even a fly, I’m just a cockroach. But I’m going to show them what a cockroach can do! What it can do to get out of the insect trap.

The words of the only song ever composed by Lampião came back to mind: Olé, Mulher Rendeira, olé Mulher renda! Tu me ensinas a fazer renda, que eu te ensino a namorar …

The Future Beach. He’d be there for sure!

Which tells how Kircher delivered young Don Luis Camacho of some essential truths of which he had knowledge without knowing it

“I THINK HERE is no better way to start,” Kircher said after a brief moment of reflection, “than by asking you a very simple question: what, according to you, is the task of a teacher? Try to reply simply & not using any faculty other than common sense.”

“I think I would not be wrong,” Don Luis Camacho said earnestly, “if I said his task was to instruct. Is that not the case?”

“Very good; but to instruct in what?”

“Some area of knowledge … or, at least, one he is reputed to have mastered.”

“Of course. And I think we can say that so far you haven’t made the slightest mistake. However, there are thousands of kinds of knowledge & I imagine you will agree that they are not all of equal importance. One man might know the art of making mirrors, another that of tailoring a fine suit or of concocting a sovereign remedy for gout. Which would you say are essential to the student to attain understanding?”

“For anyone who wants to learn a trade, that of apothecary, tailor or mirror-maker, knowledge of each of these arts is essential. However, it is clear that anyone who aspires to universal understanding of things & to acquire the wellspring from which these rivers & their innumerable tributaries flow, so to speak, will have to learn the sciences …”

“Well thought out, Don Luis. But what do we mean by ‘sciences’? Would it be alchemy, magic or the art of predicting the future you were thinking of?”

“Obviously not. What I had in mind was the exact sciences, the ones that can be verified by experiment or by reason & that no one could doubt, as for example mathematics, logic, physics, mechanics …”

“Ah yes, definitely! However, we also need to define what is meant by ‘verify by experiment or reason’ in a way that does not give rise to criticism.”

“It means to go back from the effect to the cause so that we can understand the true principles at work in the world. In this I’m just repeating what I have heard people say, but it seems correct to me.”

“Absolutely correct, my son. It would be impossible to define science better than you have done. By the very act of drawing the world out of chaos, God created the principles necessary to maintain the universe and ensure that it runs harmoniously. Now, would this teacher not be at fault if he stopped halfway & did not go back to the celestial origin of these principles? Should he not, on the contrary, make every effort to show how the laws of physics, as those of the other sciences, ultimately rest on the will of the Creator alone?”

“Indeed—”

“And what is it that teaches us this holy truth, more essential than all the others? Is it the Mohammedans, the bonzes of the Buddhists or the Brahmins of China?”

“Definitely not! For it is the Bible & the Gospels, that alone contain the word of God, the Church, in that she is the principal support of the Christian religion, & her theologians, who are better equipped than anyone to understand the mysteries …”

“Well, my son, you could not define the task of a teacher more correctly: a master worthy of that name is not simply someone who teaches the true sciences, he must also expound the true religion, which is the foundation on which the laws and natural principles rest. Imagine that you are one of our missionaries. There you are in Peking, charged with both practicing & inculcating that true science which is astronomy. But one of your Chinese students makes a mistake in predicting an eclipse of the moon. What do you need to teach him?”

“The correct way of pursuing astronomy; that is, the laws regulating the movements of the planets & allowing us to calculate their courses.”

“Very good. But is that sufficient? Will your pupil not be mistaken if, predicting a new eclipse accurately, he attributes the ultimate cause of this phenomenon to some occult power of the god Fo-hi?”

“Of course. It would be my duty to get him to see that he was just as mistaken in believing in a false god as he was in his false astronomy.”

“Very good. And how should one proceed if not by using the same rule of returning to the origins, to the first principles of all things? What is valid for the sciences is equally valid for theology. So how would you go about making him see his error?”

“It seems to me that I would go back in time & the history of mankind to stand at the period of the creation of the world in order to show him by logical deduction that his god, Fo-hi, is a later invention & has never existed except in the imagination of ignorant men.”

“True. But are we here talking of history as conceived by Herodotus or Pausanias, that is, of true accounts, and fairly recent ones at that? No. What we need, as you see, is knowledge of the origins or, to put it in Greek, an ‘archaeology.’ And to whom or to what must we turn in order to acquire this science of first principles?”

“To the Holy Bible &, more specifically, to the chapter in Genesis that deals with these questions.”

“Exactly. But we must go further & ask what, in Genesis, are the crucial moments, those that set all the rest in motion?”

Don Luis Camacho concentrated for a long time, counting on his fingers the stages as they came back to mind. “There are five,” he said with the assurance of youth, “the creation of man by God, the Fall, the murder of Abel by Cain, the Flood & the confusion of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel.”

“Well done, my son. Your answer is worthy of a most eminent historian. Having said that, can you not distinguish, among these original moments, any that we could establish with all the marks of certainty, as knowledge with the same degree of assurance as that which persuades us to believe the stories of Herodotus, since we can still see today the animals or the monuments he described four hundred and forty-five years before the birth of Our Lord?”