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

And the day when my master took to his bed, never to leave it, came sooner than I expected. On November 11 of that same year, 1680, he suddenly became so weak that his legs refused to carry him. His bowels having shrunk & no longer performing their function, he went seven days without eating; this long fast was followed by a burning fever. I realized he was going to die.

His condition having worsened on St. Severinus’s day, January 8, my master received extreme unction with exemplary piety. And I do not doubt that he was happy for his death to be associated with that of the holy hermit.

Toward evening the death throes started &, although we had been prepared for this inevitable end for several months, Fathers Ramón, Ampringer and I were in tears at his bedside. About the eleventh hour of the night, when I had lost hope of ever seeing him open his eyes again, my master turned to look at me & spoke to me for the last time: “The scales, Caspar?”

Taking his hand in mine, I nodded to reassure him: I had not given up obeying his orders, the machine was in equilibrium.

At that, he sketched a smile, closed his eyes and expired. He had been on this earth for seventy-eight years, ten months & twenty-seven days … At that very moment, as he had predicted, we heard a tiny bell ring indicating a change in the balance! To the amazement of those present in the room, it was established that Kircher’s soul weighed exactly half a scruple.

The death of my master distressed me more than I would have thought. Although life had become a burden for him & he was dragging it out in pain and grief, his loss left me inconsolable. His vitality, his piety & his wisdom, which made everyone who had the privilege of knowing him look up to him, were the principal reasons that made one love him. Never was there a man more deserving of the admiration of his contemporaries; for he was one of the Ancients worthy of our esteem & who brought honor to science. But given his condition, to wish him a longer life would have been to desire something against his interest. His mind had never deteriorated, but recently he had ceased to be active because he had gradually been deserted by his five senses; no longer, therefore, having any part in the things of this world, he had to go to the other for the salvation & eternal rest of his soul.

Kircher’s funeral was a magnificent affair. Taken with great pomp to the Ecclesia del Gesù, his body was followed by the innumerable crowd of all those who had loved or admired him. United in their grief were monks from the Trinità dei Monti, Dominicans, priests and monks of all the orders, bishops, cardinals, princes, even Queen Christina of Sweden, who seemed extremely moved by this mourning. But the tribute that doubtless meant most to my master was the one paid him by the cohort of students following his funeral cortege: they came from the German, Scottish, French Colleges, all those who had at one time taken Kircher’s course wept as they saluted the magister they had dubbed “the master of a hundred arts”! The service for the dead, sung by all the Jesuits of the Roman College, was admirable in its spirit of meditation. It was followed by Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres , music the beauty of which perfectly suited a man who for all his life had spoken out against darkness the better to celebrate the glory of light.

My long task finishes here with the end of the man to whom it was dedicated. According to Kircher’s express wish, his heart is buried at the feet of the Virgin Mary, at Mentorella. Today I have reached my master’s age & the ills I suffer make me hope I will soon join him. Therefore I beg you, dear reader, to join your prayers to mine that God may grant me that grace & to meditate at times on the one my beloved master was not afraid one day to write in his own blood:

O Great & Admirable Mother of God! O Mary, Immaculate Virgin! I, Thy most unworthy servant, prostrate myself before Thy face, remembering the blessings Thou hast obtained for me from my most tender years, I give myself to Thee entirely, Sweet Mother, I give my life, my body, my soul, all my deeds & all my works. From the bottom of my heart, I express my innermost desires before Thy altar, at the very place where thou didst most miraculously inspire me to restore this place dedicated to Thee & to Saint Eustachius; & may the generations to come know that, however much learning I have acquired & whatever I have written that is good was achieved not so much through my own studies & work as through the gift of Thy singular grace & the merciful guidance of Eternal Wisdom. And as I lay down my pen, I bequeath this, which I have written with my blood in testimony to what Thou hast done, to all, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, as my sole true possession .

I, Athanasius Kircher, Thy poor & humble & unworthy servant, pray that Thou mayst hear my prayer, O Jesus, O Mary. Amen .

To the greater glory of God .

Elaine could not say how many hours had passed since the sight that had overwhelmed her. When she once more became aware of herself and her surroundings she was standing in the middle of the clearing beside the sticky ashes in the hearth. It was daylight, she was hungry, the jungle around her was chirping like the aviary in a zoo. Where things had been, there was now nothing. The earth was littered with the tribe’s bits and pieces: mats, gourds, bundles of feathers and arrows that were already fading, going over, head bowed, to the colors of the forest. Long processions of ants were crisscrossing the campsite, Roman legions bristling with standards and trophies. Perched on a leaf, a red-headed frog looked down its nose at these multitudes.

Elaine went to the edge of the precipice; the treetops were black with a swarm of vultures, though seen from above they looked like flies regaling themselves painstakingly on a corpse. Mauro, Petersen, all the Indian tribe were lying somewhere down there below her … None could have survived such a fall. She was alone on top of this mountain that was unknown to the rest of the world. Like Robinson Crusoe on his island, she told herself, at the same time vaguely deploring the out-of-place, almost frivolous nature of the thought. Her mind in a whirl, still hovering close to derangement, Elaine asked herself for what obscure reason she hadn’t gone mad.

Her rumbling stomach took her away from the cliff. Walking unsteadily, she wandered round the camp looking for food. The first thing that caught her attention was Mauro’s Walkman; it was still in the transparent plastic case he used to protect it on the rare occasions when he took it off. Then she saw his clothes and Petersen’s, left in a heap on the sodden ground. Why had they taken the shaman’s powder? Images came back to her, scraps of pictures tinged with red. They had howled as they fell, proof that they had realized what was happening at the last moment. And all the others, my God, all those women and their children … all those feathers beating the air in desperation …

She regained consciousness a little later, bewildered to find herself holding a tin of beans. I’m cracking up, she told herself, alarmed. There were stretches of time during that her body continued to live and move outside her perception … The contents of the tin made her feel sick but she forced herself to swallow a few mouthfuls. Her eyes were wandering around the clearing, touching on insignificant traces, sliding over them without seeing them. A trickle of saliva oozed down her chin. Arms dangling, she stared at the shapeless object a snake with black and red rings with white edging was slowly embracing in its coils. There are three kinds of coral snake , she recalled with composure, all very similar as far as their colors and their characteristics are concerned; one of the species is deadly, the other dangerous and the third totally inoffensive — which was the first to appear in the order of evolution? The question had been asked her years ago during an examination on mimicry among animals. She hadn’t been able to answer it but clearly recalled the professor’s explanation.