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

6 I accompanied the song of the swallow!

7 If you insist … Even a madman knows you mustn’t shit in a mosque.

8 Hey, a hyena! From whose hands did you buy that?

9 One day a hyena happened to find itself face to face with some people slaughtering an ox. It said to them,

10 “Give me a piece.”

11 They replied to him, “We will give you one if you can count up to ten for us without saying one.”

12 I’ve not finished talking to you!

13 Don’t look at the beginning, look at the end.

14 The hyena thought for a moment, then said to them, “And if I manage to count to ten without saying one, will I get some meat?” “You will.” “All right then: two goats and a hen. Now if that doesn’t make ten …” “You’re right,” they said, “that certainly comes to ten,” and they gave some meat to the hyena, who went away.

15 A man of wit can get out of anything.

16 It’s raining slowly, slowly.

17 What do you want?

18 I prayed to you, Mohammed!

19 All those who have seen that face will be protected. My thirst will be quenched by the water of the lakes; I will mingle with, I will be proud to count myself among the faithful of Mohammed!

What happened to Chus, the negro

THE NEXT DAY, Ulrich Calixtus told us afterward, when the guards went in to Chus’s cell it was to find him hanging from the bars of his window. From a cut he had made in his arm with the buckle of his belt, the unfortunate man had managed to squeeze out enough blood to scribble on the wall one final message in his enigmatic language.

Kircher was furious at the news. “Through the fault of your incredible negligence, Signor Calixtus, not only a man has disappeared, but a language — what am I saying, language itself. For the sake of your salvation & that of mankind, may Heaven grant that there is another of these primitive people in the world! If that is not so, we will never be able to restore the link with our origins & we must see that as a sure sign of our general damnation.”

Calixtus did not even try to justify himself & just shamefacedly handed Kircher the piece of paper on which he had copied the two lines written by Chus,

“ Tyerno aliou fougoumba. Gorko mo waru don … ” 1Athanasius read out with interest, suddenly succumbing to his passion for deciphering again. “Odd, very odd.

He concentrated on the text for a long time, while the professor gave me beseeching looks, hoping I would intercede on his behalf with Kircher. I was extremely sorry for the unfortunate position in which his negligence had placed him & would willingly have done so, but there was no point, for Kircher’s face suddenly lit up with a reassuring smile.

“Now, now, pull yourself together my friend. These lines tell me that you are not at all to blame & that a decision from on high alone is responsible for that which for a moment struck me as the most disastrous of misfortunes. The time had not yet come, that was the decision made by the One who governs our destinies in such a merciful manner. These words that He, in His infinite kindness, intended to come into our hands speak of hope & urge us to be patient. Be patient, then. And without fear, for the day of reconciliation is not far off. That which is scattered & varied will in a short while return to its original cohesion. God has ordained it so. Just like the negro, in His hands we are nothing but passive instruments of His divine will.”

These encouraging words concluded this surprising episode without my master losing his conviction that he would restore in full that “Adamic language” of which he had had a mere foretaste.

The year 1676 saw the appearance of his Sphynx Mystagoga , the final work Kircher devoted to Egypt & its hieroglyphs. In it he provided for the first time a faithful representation of the pyramids & the underground graveyards that can be seen in the region of Memphis.

Hampered by severe impairment of his hearing, tormented by insomnia and more & more frequent headaches, Athanasius Kircher saw, not without some annoyance, that his strength was declining. His hand had started trembling so badly that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could still write, forming misshapen or incomplete letters & ruining the formerly perfect layout of his manuscripts with irregular lines, crossings-out or even ink blots. But he bore his ills with exemplary patience & thanked Our Savior for having granted him enough time to finish his work.

At the approach of summer we went, as we did every year, to make our retreat in Mentorella. Kircher had great hopes of the beneficial effect of this stay in the country on his health but the extreme heat beating down on the land only aggravated his problems. Prostrate with his migraines & an attack of gout that lasted several months, my master could not take any of those country walks that revived his body as well as his mind. His forehead on fire, his legs horribly swollen, he would spend his nights in prayer until weariness & opium, which he took in stronger & stronger doses, finally granted him a few hours rest. And whenever his illness gave him some respite, he devoted his time to the pilgrims & the visitors, receiving them with a good humor and joviality that seemed to increase with every day, as if in defiance of the aggravation of his physical woes.

In the autumn of 1677, just after we had returned to Rome, my master told me about an invention he had imagined while lying awake with insomnia. Determined to fight against his physical deterioration, he had worked out plans for an ingenious chair designed to move his members without the aid of his muscles. Mounted on spiral springs intended to agitate his hardened nerves vertically, this machine, or “jiggler,” was propelled by a clockwork movement that made you lift your legs & arms in the rhythm of a forced march. I set to work straightaway & as soon as it was finished, a few weeks later, Kircher could take some exercise without having to leave his room. Truly it was a very odd sight to see him wriggling about, though with a serious look on his face, while sitting down & with a young novice reading St. Augustine to him. Nevertheless, these gymnastics were extremely good for his headaches & toward Christmas he could walk normally again.

Kircher was too astute, however, not to know that physical health, however important, was nothing compared with the state of one’s soul. Faithful to St. Ignatius & the precepts of our Society, he threw himself with all his heart—& for what he assumed would be the last time — into the practice of the Spiritual Exercises . By way of a general examination & so as to prepare his soul to appear before God, he judged it necessary to go over the smallest details of his past life, asking his soul to give an account, hour by hour, period by period since the day of his birth, of his thoughts, then of his words & deeds. To assist this holy enterprise he started, despite the great difficulty he had in writing, to put the story of his life down on paper himself, giving me once again cause to admire his magnificent strength of will.

On the first day of 1678 he put on his hair shirt & subjected himself to a regular fast, then let his hair & beard grow as a sign of contrition. It was no use warning him about the dangers of an austerity that was incompatible with his great age; he stuck to this regime without flinching, alternating his sessions of discipline with those in the jiggler, humbling himself every night in cold & prayer without, for all that, ceasing to receive visitors and friends with a selflessness & cordiality that drew tears of wonder from even the hardest of hearts.