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

His finger poised over the left-hand button of his mouse, Eléazard hesitated for a moment at the abrupt irrevocability behind this exhortation to prudence. There was no copy of his work, everything would be irremediably lost. Forget Kircher , Loredana had said to him … And now he understood what she was saying: Look after your daughter, beware of going back, avoid going back like the plague. Get on with life! His heart had started to beat more quickly. Are you sure you want to eat mussels? You wish for the delights of amnesia so badly? Shrugging his shoulders, with the foreboding that afterward he would be spared nothing, he answered “Yes” to the question. The cursor immediately turned into a countdown to death, an empty clock face with a single hand sweeping round at top speed. Deleting track after track of information that was of no interest whatever to it, the hard disk recorded his choice with a series of mild hiccups. At the end of the process a new window replaced the preceding one:

“Do you want to delete another file? Yes. No.”

Hypnotized by the screen, Eléazard had started to play with his ping-pong balls again. Gravely they turned, those little blind planets. Milky, bulging.

Nelson had put his election T-shirt on over his center-forward’s jersey; he was sweating as much from the heat as from anxiety. He’d been waiting at the side of the platform for two hours now, a hundred good reasons had made him give up his action, a hundred others had encouraged him to go ahead. Deafened by the closeness of the speakers, he was drifting along in a distressing and impatient daydream. His position off to the side limited his field of vision to the slanting lines of planks on the rostrum and the vertical infinity of the shore. Far away, sitting over the horizon, a line of clouds delineated the contours of an unknown coast, a world to discover.

As he did every time a piece of music came to the end, the campaign organizer came to test the mike and keep up the suspense. Walkie-talkie on his belt, he immediately plunged into a verbose harangue in which the names of Barbosa, Jr., and Moreira appeared again and again; they were on their way, they were about to arrive! While he was speaking, his assistants took turns throwing T-shirts by the dozen to the crowd. In the scramble that ensued, the area surrounding the platform became a sea of white.

All at once several sirens drowned out the hullaballoo on the beach. Right at the top of the hillock three black limousines flanked by police cars stopped above the platform. A swarm of policemen poured out of the vehicles to take up position along the slope and protect the officials as they got out. Masked by their bodyguards, the two governors began to walk down the dune, filmed all the way by a small TV team. At the bottom, the national anthem came over the loudspeakers, making all those who could hear it automatically stiffen and fall silent.

Nelson’s mind had shut down. His lips quietly repeated the words of the anthem. To stop his right hand from trembling, he gripped the butt of the pistol underneath his soccer jersey, forcing himself to visualize Lampião. He was close to fainting.

Jaunty in their lightweight cream suits, Barbosa, Jr., and Moreira put on the act of men whom the security guards were stopping from joining the crowd. The closer they came to the platform, the more they pretended to push their way through the ranks of police to shake a held-out hand or kiss the grubby cheek of a child. From the moment Nelson identified Moreira, his eyes never left him. The governor seemed to have aged compared with his face in the photos, but it was definitely the man he had hated for years: the man who had murdered his father, the bastard who had stolen Uncle Zé’s Willis.

Nelson released the safety catch of the revolver. A profound silence had fallen all round him; he heard neither the music starting up again, nor the campaign organizer at the mike, warming up the crowd. “Closer,” he repeated to himself obsessively, “wait until he’s really close.”

When they reached the bottom of the steps, Nelson lost sight of the two men again. They had stopped one last time to face the cameras and put on a show of love of the people that would encourage a certain segment of the electorate to vote for them. None of these beggars would ever put a ballot paper in the box but they knew from experience that the charade would appeal to soft-hearted people watching the television news.

One of the cameramen climbed up onto the platform, followed by a sound engineer. The campaign organizer gestured to them to stand back a little so that they could include Nelson in the picture. Used to these media stratagems, Oswald understood what was wanted and positioned himself accordingly. The sun was behind him, the shot would be perfect.

Nelson saw nothing of this. Hypnotized by going over one single act in his mind again and again, he kept his eyes fixed on the patch of sky where the man he intended to assassinate would appear.

The police took up position around the platform and, while the bodyguards blocked access to the rostrum, the two governors mounted the steps. Barbosa, Jr., was the first to appear. A glance from the cameraman told him what was expected of him so that he headed straight for Nelson in a movement that appeared completely spontaneous.

Behind his lens, Oswald immediately centered the scene, going down on his knees so as not to miss the initial contact. The disabled lad seemed terrified and it took several seconds before he held out his left hand to the governor. One of his arms was paralysed as well! It was good, very good. Barbosa muttered some words of comfort to him and moved across to the mike. OK, the second camera had taken over there. Zoom in on the Governor of Maranhão: his expression relaxed, sideburns triumphant, José Moreira da Rocha made his way in his turn toward the young cripple. Then suddenly his smile vanished and his jaw dropped. Instinctively Oswald changed the focus and saw the young lad, his gun held out at arm’s length, then the other hand gripping the butt to help hold it steady. Unable to believe his eyes, he looked up from his viewfinder and threw himself down flat.

The sound of the shots, a clock rapidly striking six, brought Uncle Zé to an abrupt halt. In the seconds that followed, he registered the howling of the crowd and the wave of panic sweeping back toward him. Two brief bursts of machine-gun fire set him running toward the platform again. He’s done it, he thought, as he made his way forward, looking stunned.

The sound system, switched back on, sent out the latest samba:

Bri-gi-te Bardot

Bar-dooo!

Bri-gi-te Beijo

Bei-jooo!

Uncle Zé’s lips went white with fury, a rage that had nothing human about it and that swelled in proportion to the absurdity beneath which the criminal stupidity of men generally hides.

1 They did not take the city, but hope revealed misfortunes. [If the Greek sounds are read as a French sentence, it gives: Où qu’est la bonne Pauline? À la gare, elle pisse et fait caca (Where is dear Pauline? At the station. She’s peeing and doing a poo), a sentence that is said to have amused countless generations of French schoolboys learning Greek. — Translator’s note.]

JEAN-MARIE BLAS DE ROBLÈSis a former lecturer in French literature and philosophy at universities in Brazil, China, Italy, and finally, for the Alliance Française in Taiwan. His first literary publication was a volume of short stories in 1982, followed by two novels; soon after he turned to writing full-time. An avid traveler, Blas de Roblès also edits a series of books on archaeology and is a member of the French Archaeological Mission in Libya. In 2008 he was awarded the prestigious Prix Médicis for his novel Where Tigers Are at Home .