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

“Don’t think that or you could come in for some unpleasant surprises.” Then, with a glance at the clock on the bank, “Oh là, là , I’m going to be late, I must be off. By the way, there’s an event at the German Cultural Institute this evening, d’you feel like coming? We could have a chat …”

“All this organized stuff’s just a pain in the ass, nothing but speeches and youth-club entertainment.”

“This time it’ll be different. You don’t know Andreas, he really wants to get things moving. But if the students don’t come, there’s no point.”

“I’ll see.”

“Great. See you this evening then, I hope.”

Roetgen was what in Brazil is called a profesor visitante , that is, a lecturer on a fixed-term contract within an exchange with a foreign university. A recent graduate — he was almost the same age as his students — with a passionate enthusiasm for the ethnology of the Nordeste , he had come to Fortaleza during the year to give a series of seminars on the “methodology of observation in rural areas.” Somewhat shy and reserved, he had made friends with Andreas Haekner, the director of the German Cultural Institute. And since they were always seen together, the rumor had gone around that they had unmentionable feelings for each other. Moéma laughed with the others at the stream of innuendo the sight of Roetgen could set off, without, however, having seen any signs that would indicate a tendency to homosexuality. He wasn’t one of the family , as she put it, and if by some unlikely chance she was wrong, it was truly a pity for Brazilian women.

GETTING OFF THE bus at the sea front, just opposite the side street where Thaïs lived, Moéma stopped for a moment. Transformed by her tinted glasses, the Atlantic looked like a lake of molten gold fringed with coconut trees made of tin and leather.

“They should force people to wear dark glasses,” she said, parting the bead curtain that led directly into Thaïs’s main room. “It might help them use their imagination properly …”

From the mattress and the cushions they were lounging on, Virgilio, Pablo and Thaïs applauded her assertion. As she joined them Thaïs gave her a querying look. Moéma reassured her with a wink: she’d got the money.

“ Maconheiros! ” Moéma said, making a deliberate show of sniffing the air. “You’ve been smoking, you bastards.”

“We were smoking,” Pablo said with a roguish grin. He turned his right hand so that the palm was facing her and showed her the joint he was holding between his thumb and forefinger. “Would you like some?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” Moéma said, delicately taking the spliff from him.

When she’d finished inhaling the smoke from inside her hands cupped around her face, Virgilio couldn’t wait to show her the first issue of the journal he’d been boring them with for several weeks. Its title, with its Shakespearean allusion— Tupí or not Tupí— referred to the Tupí-Guaraní, natives “unsuitable for work” whom the conquistadores had systematically massacred then replaced with slaves brought from Africa. The pamphlet was not particularly large, but it was properly printed and had numerous black-and-white illustrations. In his editorial entitled O indio não é bicho (“The Indian isn’t an animal”), Virgilio set out the aims of the little group around him: to protect the Indians of Brazil — those of Amazonia as well as those of the Mato Grosso — from extermination; to defend their culture, their customs and their territories from invasion by the industrialized world; to assert their history as the best way for Brazilians to resist the takeover of their country by the great powers. This wide-ranging program embraced all the popular cultures of the interior, which had inherited, according to Virgilio, the customs of the indigenous tribes and also included an active defense of the language and oral traditions of Brazil.

“So what do you think of it?” Virgilio asked, a little anxiously. His thin face covered in acne did him no favors, but he had doelike eyes behind the lenses of his little gold-rimmed glasses. Moéma had a very high opinion of him.

“Fantastic! I never thought you’d actually get it out. It’s brilliant, Virgilio, something to be proud of.”

“You must write an article for the next issue. I’ve already got ten subscriptions, not bad for the first day, eh?”

“And I make eleven. You must tell me how much I owe you.” Then, leafing through the journal, she went on, “The paper on the Xingu tattoos is great. Who is this Sanchez Labrador?”

“Me,” said Virgilio in apologetic tones. “Also Ignacio Valladolid, Angel Perralta, et cetera. I did everything, including the drawings. You know how it is, you get promised lots of articles, but when the time comes, no one’s to be found. Of course, now the first issue’s out, I’m snowed under with offers. It makes me sick. People really are unreliable.”

“That’s true,” said Thaïs as she burned her fingers on the tiny butt from which she was trying to take one last puff.

“If you want,” Moéma said, “I could do something on the Kadiwéu. We took them as an example this year to study the concept of endorsement. Did you know that they feel responsible for everything, even the sun rising?”

“Christ, the fools!” said Pablo, bursting into laughter. “I don’t envy them …” Then, seeing Moéma’s furious look, “OK, OK. If you can’t even take a joke! I know nothing about all that old stuff.”

“Well you ought to make an effort. It’s the present that’s at stake, your present. Every time a tree disappears, an Indian dies; and every time an Indian dies it’s the whole of Brazil that becomes a bit more ignorant, that is, a bit more American. And it’s precisely because there are thousands like you, who couldn’t care less, that the process continues.”

“Oh, come on, I was only joking …”

“So was I,” Moéma snapped.

“You always have to get on your high horse whenever we start talking about Indians. You’re getting tedious, sweetheart, you really are.”

“OK, that’s enough you two,” said Virgilio in conciliatory tones. “That doesn’t get us anywhere. While you’re getting in each other’s hair our dear president has sold a part of Amazonia the size of the Netherlands to a Texas mining company.”

“How big is the Netherlands?” Thaïs asked, her speech slurred by the cannabis.

“Roughly the size of Ceará.”

“A mining company!” Moéma said in disgust, her whole body racked by a wave of anger.

“I heard it this morning. On the radio, so it must be official.”

In the profound silence that followed Moéma felt terribly impotent. She felt like being sick.

“Right,” said Pablo, “then we’ll have to get up our strength for the fight. Can I have this thing, Thaïs?” Without waiting for a reply, he took a little clip-frame with a picture of Saint Sebastian bristling with arrows off the wall.

“What are you doing?” Thaïs asked, uneasy. Without being religious herself, she didn’t like people playing with religious objects. Such color prints could be found in all the shops selling religious bric-a-brac, but she was fond of this Saint Sebastian because of his sad smile and beautiful androgynous face. Less innocent was the way the drops of crimson blood dripping down from his wounds secretly excited her to the extent that she always saw this image at a particular moment of pleasure during lovemaking.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” said Pablo, carefully opening a film-roll box and pouring the contents onto the clip-frame, “it’s on the house.”

“Wow!” Thaïs exclaimed, seeing the large lumps of cocaine rolling a cross the glass. “It’s Christmas, Mãe de Deus! ”