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

“Hail, Yemanjá Assabá , you who live in the surf of the beach, clothed in mud and gooseberry-colored seaweed! Make me win the lottery so I can return to the Sertão with my family. I leave you some soap and a pretty bracelet …”

“Hail, Yemanjá Ogunté , you who care for the sick, you who know all the remedies! Cure my husband of cachaça or make him die, we can’t go on living like this. I give you this piece of cloth to make a dress or whatever you like …”

“Hail, Yemanjá Assessu , you who live in the eddies! I give you this postcard with a picture of a duck because I know you like them. Make things change, I beg you. You know what I mean. I also give you my lunch for today and this necklace of shells …”

Others left their requests in little messages folded in four, people threw armfuls of roses or bougainvillea into the basket, ribbons, lace, mirrors, anything that might please the goddess-with-seven-paths and bring down her favors.

From time to time Uncle Zé came to see how Moéma was doing and offer her a lemonade bottle filled with cachaça . He was content; the girl was radiant on her throne, she seemed happy. Since Nelson still hadn’t turned up, he questioned the people around with growing concern. When his back was turned Moéma took little pinches of powder out of her bag and inhaled them as she pretended to blow her nose. With a slightly bitter taste at the back of her throat, she didn’t tire of observing the mass of humanity, of sensing a sort of nervousness arise, an infectious carnal tension. Dadá Cotinha blessed her followers by making them pass under her shoulder; a young man — decked out in a yellow satin shirt and a maharajah’s turban surmounted by an incredible ostrich feather — was dancing on the spot, swaying convulsively. Arms outstretched, palms upward, he was showing the whites of his eyes, like a martyr in ecstasy. A good-luck ribbon tied round their foreheads, their long hair open to the wind, tall women were whirling round, oblivious to everything. Superb bathing beauties displayed thighs smooth and tanned like a Vienna loaf, their minimal bikinis glistening in the sun. Fishermen with faded locks got majestically drunk, old people passed by, their donkey or bicycle at their side, one was praying standing up, head in his hands, in the grip of a vague headache. People fell into trances, like fires breaking out unexpectedly, a Saint George in a red cloak decorated with stars and spangles was trying to see something in the distance, shading his eyes with his hand. A skinny woman was shaking large, two-colored maracas, kids were bathing, playing in the rollers. Languid bodies were getting carried away by the rhythm of the sambas, blacks were stumbling along …

This flood of humanity gave off a pungent stench of wild beast and cheap eau de cologne.

Moéma was suddenly afraid she might see her attackers in the crowd. The thought had not occurred to her when she went back to the favela the previous day, so urgent was her need for coke. Now the possibility filled her with dread. What should she do if it happened? Hand them over to Uncle Zé and the lynching that would probably ensue? That would solve nothing, as she was very well aware. But her desire for vengeance was still there, insistent; despite herself, something inside her was demanding justice and the paradox disturbed her.

The heat had become intolerable, Moéma was dripping with sweat underneath her wig and her costume. Not seeing Uncle Zé, she waved over a man he’d been talking to only a few minutes ago: “Have you seen Zé?”

“He’s just gone.”

“Where to?”

“Don’t really know. Perhaps to the rally with the governor, at the other end of the beach. I told him I’d seen Nelson, this morning. He was hitching a lift to get down there. Senhor Zé said he’d go and look for the lad and that he’d come back.”

Moéma knew all the terms of the problem, but not for a moment could she establish the connection between them that had precipitated Uncle Zé’s departure. She was simply glad she’d see her guardian angel again soon.

Coming from no-one-knows-where, a flotilla of jangadas had started to glide along a parallel course close to the shore. Regularly one of them would detach itself from the group and ride the surf in masterly fashion to land on the beach. The great moment of the festival had arrived. The samba orchestras and violeiros redoubled their efforts on their instruments; corridors opened in the middle of the throng for the procession of the filhas-do-santo carrying the baskets of offerings onto the sailing boats. Escaping from a horrendous crush, Dadá Cotinha managed to clamber aboard the boat she desired: like all the spiritual leaders on the beach, she had to stay with the basket from her terreiro to the very end. Without the signal they were obeying being obvious, all the jangadas set out to sea again as one, accompanied by a delirious crowd in the waves; they were heading for the open sea to meet Yemanjá. There, far out in the swell, they would deposit the pitiful offerings of her followers; if none of them was found on the beach the next morning, they would deduce that they had been accepted by the Princess of the Sea and their wishes would be granted.

Moéma took out the syringe she had prepared that morning: a dose of coke, the last, but a stiff one to celebrate giving up. She couldn’t have chosen a better moment, the crowd had its back to her, watching the jangadas leave. The beach looked like the banks of the Ganges during a ritual period; the sea, the people themselves, nothing had ever been so ablaze with holy energy. To be in agreement with the world, she thought, injecting the contents of the syringe. It must happen, Yemanjá, I must regain my taste for simple things, rediscover the pleasure of just being alive …

She hardly had time to register the impression of plunging naked into a mountain stream, of feeling her veins freeze. The images started to flutter, like an old film with faded colors. A man was drinking seawater and laughing. The waves were rolling up wedding dresses, there were gleams of orange along the edges. Then the film suddenly broke and all she could see was a kind of white sky swarming with swallows more and more quickly streaked by the opening frames of a reel. Nothing was passing through her mind, not a word, not a vision, not a memory, simply the feeling of having missed the boat. For a brief moment she knew she needed help, but an iron fist gripped her jaw tight enough to make it crack.

Something horribly specific came down on her.

Nelson had passed the afternoon at the Bar — the marshy estuary of the River Ceará—on the bank of a lagoon where the women of Pirambú went to do any washing people were prepared to give them. With the water halfway up their thighs, the washerwomen were beating red linen with heavy blows of their paddles. Their bottoms were sticking out toward him, their damp dresses clinging to them. A little farther away naked children were playing football with a tin can. Nelson saw neither the dead pig, swollen to bursting-point on the sand a few yards away from the other women getting water for the kitchen, nor the flies, nor the desolate appearance of the pool teeming with death in all its infinitesimal forms. It was life such as he had always known it and he was sad to have to leave it behind, however worthless it might seem. He was moved, too, by the memory of Moéma. He was madly in love with his Princess who had come from nowhere and never ceased imagining the moment when he would see her again.

When he went back home, at sunset, a word from Uncle Zé or Moéma would have been enough for him to give up the idea. He felt alone and spoke to the soap and the iron bar, hoping for a sign that would tip the scales once and for all. With nothing better to do and to help him weigh up the two sides of his dilemma, he dug up the plastic bag.