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

Herman sipped at his beer, a vacant look on his face. He was about to reply when Elaine came in, followed by Mauro and Milton.

Dietlev made the introductions as the little group settled at the bar. Captivated by the charms of Elaine, Herman’s smile returned. She had been back to the hotel to shower and change. In a plain, almond-green cotton dress, her hair still damp, she exuded freshness.

“What are you drinking?” Dietlev asked.

“I don’t like beer,” Elaine said, seeing the empty mugs. “Would it be possible to have some wine?”

“But of course! Herman Petersen has everything, especially for a pretty girl like you. Here, try this, you’ll like it,” he said, taking a bottle from under the bar. “Valderrobles red. It’s Bolivian and, just between ourselves, a cut above the stuff you find in Brazil.”

Mauro having asked for wine as well, Milton decided he would join them.

“How did it go?” Dietlev asked Elaine.

“Not bad. Mauro and I found three excellent examples of Corumbella . The impression is very clear, we’ll get some nice casts.”

“But it was Mauro who found the most interesting one,” Milton interrupted in a sugary voice. “The boy has talent.”

Turning his back on Milton, Mauro raised his eyes heavenward to show Dietlev how irritating he found this obsequious solicitude.

“A truly auspicious start to our expedition!” Milton added, rubbing his hands. “So when do we leave, Dietlev?”

Elaine saw a glint of panic in her colleague’s eyes. He turned to Petersen, who had just finished pouring the wine. He put down the bottle and said, smiling at Elaine, “Whenever you want.” He spoke slowly, as if replying to a question from her. “I’m at your service.”

Relieved, Dietlev held out his hand to thank him for his decision. “The day after tomorrow, that OK?”

“The day after tomorrow’s OK, amigo ,” Herman said, shaking his hand warmly over the bar. His insistent look said: we’re in agreement on the conditions, aren’t we? Reading a positive reply in Dietlev’s wink, he added, “I think it’s your turn to buy me a beer.”

“To buy us all a beer,” said Dietlev. “That calls for a celebration.”

“Excellent!” Milton exclaimed. “I’m keen to get on to the serious business.”

Without mentioning their negotiations or the crocodile hunters, Dietlev introduced Herman as a member of the team. The next day would be devoted to stocking the boat and making their final preparations.

“What kind of boat will we be going on?” Mauro asked.

“The finest boat in the whole of the Pantanal! Come and have a look, it’s moored just outside,” said Herman setting off for the door. “Look, it’s the Mensageiro da Fé . The one next to the Customs launch.”

“That one!” Mauro exclaimed, recognizing the old gunship he’d seen from his bedroom window.

“That one,” said Petersen, ignoring the disparaging tone. “It’s not much to look at, true, but it’s a marvelous little boat. And with me at the helm you’ll be quite safe, trust me.”

“The Messenger of the Faith … it’s a nice name,” said Elaine with a smile.

“I wanted to call it the Siegfried but my wife was against it. Oh, and that reminds me, I must warn her — you’re staying to eat here, aren’t you? You’ll see, she cooks piranhas like no one else.”

Dietlev having indicated his agreement, they went back in and sat down at the bar again while Herman shouted for Theresa at the top of his voice.

WITTGENSTEIN: “In philosophy a question is treated like a disease.” Which means starting out by looking for all the symptoms that would allow diagnosis. Use this framework to deal with the “Kircher” question?

ONE COULD SAY of his books what Rivarol said of Court de Gébelin’s Monde primitif : “It is a work that is out of proportion with the shortness of life and that demands a summary from the very first page.”

MOÉMA’S LETTER … The magnificent arrogance of youth, the beautiful, hip-swaying, unconcerned freedom of those whose future still lies ahead. Something so obvious it makes, as if inadvertently, the old ones get off the pavement, where they no longer have a place.

REGARDING THE TRACKS OF FOSSIL FOOTPRINTS overlapping each other that have been found on the Eyasi Plateau in Tanzania: they show that in the Pliocene, three million years ago, a young woman amused herself by walking in the footsteps of the male who was going in front of her. Elaine saw it as reassuring proof that the hominids of the distant period already resembled us. The fact that I, on the contrary, saw it as a sign of a depressing sameness of our species, was something she found irritating.

NEVER, PERHAPS, has the transition from one century to the next been so lackluster, so drearily full of its own self-importance.

LOREDANA … When she speaks she makes the pleasant murmuring of an onion roux in the frying pan.

TRUTH is neither a path through the fields nor even the clearing where the light mingles with the darkness. It is the jungle itself with its murky profusion, its impenetrability. For a long time now I haven’t been looking for a way out of the forest anymore but rather trying not to get lost in its depths.

NOTHING IS SACRED that managed, if only once, to breed intolerance.

WRITE A SENTENCE with sugar water on a white sheet of paper, put it down by an ant-hill and film it as it appears, with the deviations in form and perhaps in meaning the insects make it undergo.

FOR THE INFORMATION OF ELAINE, last night, from a deep sleep: “You are requested never to speak to me, not even in my dreams.”

PIRANHA: etymologically “gate of the clitoris.” In Amazonia its teeth are used to make scissors . Doubtless that would have struck a chord with Dr. Sigmund, but I cannot believe for one moment that such images can be explained by the “castration anxiety.” I prefer to think that when it came to naming things, mankind instinctively chose the most bizarre, the most poetic expressions.

THE WAY I SEE HIM, Kircher is fairly close to the character of that name in Heimito von Doderer’s novel Ein Umweg: a mandarin imprisoned within his own indiscriminate erudition, a mere compiler full of his own importance and his authority, a man still believing in the existence of dragons … in short, a kind of dinosaur whose disciple the young hero of the novel quite rightly refuses to become.

KIRCHER FASCINATES ME because he’s a crank, a veritable artist at failure, at sham. His curiosity was exemplary but it took him to the very edge of fraud … How could Peiresc continue to trust him? (Write to Malbois to check details on Mersenne, etc.)

ST. AUGUSTINE’S VORTEX: “I do not fear the arguments of the philosophers of the Academy who say, ‘But what if you are mistaken?’ If I am mistaken, I exist. Anyone who does not exist cannot be mistaken, therefore if I am mistaken, I must exist. And since being mistaken proves that I exist, how can I be mistaken in believing that I exist, since it is certain that I exist if I am mistaken … Since, therefore, I must exist in order to be mistaken, then even if I am mistaken, I am not mistaken in knowing that I exist.” (Saint Augustine: The City of God ) As complicated, Soledade would put it, as making love standing up in a hammock …

In which we hear how Kircher made the acquaintance of an Italian who carried his wife’s corpse around for four years …

AS GERMANY WAS too risky for people of our order, it was decided we should go to Austria via northern Italy. We therefore set off for Marseilles where we embarked on a fragile vessel that hugged the coast as it sailed for Genoa. Having been blown off course by storms, we only managed to reach Civita Vecchia. Since we felt sick at the very idea of going back to sea, we did the sixty leagues to Rome on foot.