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

Day after day Eléazard kept sending this prognosis of disaster to his news agency but the old world was too preoccupied with the symptoms of its own breakdown to feel sympathy for the misfortunes of a nation that neither the media nor international travel had managed to bring close to it. Without being pessimistic by nature, Eléazard was starting to have his doubts about the future. Following successive breakups, Europe was becoming volatile to the extent that it was beginning to resemble the continent that had been torn apart by the Thirty Years’ War. Even worse, actually, since in those days the religious dissension was limited to Catholics against Protestants. And even if the current upheavals should be interpreted as announcing a radical metamorphosis of the West, what could be seen of it at the moment was hardly something to get enthusiastic about.

Eléazard was feeling depressed. He lit a cigarette and was about to read his mail when a voice made him start.

“Eléazard?”

It was Loredana.

“My apologies,” she said, blushing, “the front door was open wide and since no one answered, I took the liberty of coming up.”

“And quite right too,” he said, disturbed by her sudden appearance. “I … I’ve gone native. What the locals do is to clap their hands to announce their presence. It’s more effective than knocking on the door, especially when they’re always open. But please sit down.”

“Isn’t he beautiful!” she said, noticing the parrot. “What’s his name?”

“Heidegger …”

“Heidegger?!” she said with a laugh. “You don’t do things by halves, do you! Hi, Heidegger. Wie geht’s dir, schräger Vogel? ”

Reacting to its name, the parrot shook its feathers, puffing out its crop, and uttered the only words it knew.

“What’s he saying?”

“Nonsense. The man who gave him to me, a German friend, had tried to teach him a line by Hölderlin: ‘Man’s dwelling is poetic’ or something like that, but it didn’t work. The stupid bird insists on repeating that ‘Man’s swelling his pointed dick,’ and there’s no way of making him correct it.”

“But why would you want to correct him?” she asked with a glint of irony in her eyes. “He’s only telling the truth. Aren’t you, Heidegger?”

As she spoke, she went over to the animal and now she was scratching its neck in a gentle friendly fashion, something Eléazard had never managed to do in the five years they’d been living together. More than anything else, he found this quiet feat alluring.

When the Colonel’s limousine appeared at the entrance to the fazenda , the guard acknowledged it with a nod of the head as it went through and hurried to close the heavy wrought-iron gate behind it. Then he telephoned the butler to tell him the master was about to arrive home.

The Buick drove silently along the newly asphalted three-mile drive leading to the Governor’s private residence. Through the smoked-glass windows Moreira watched the green expanse of the fields of sugar cane pass, darkly gleaming in the twilight. The long stalks had benefited from the rain and grown even more — twice the height of a man, he thought proudly — and it promised to be a fine harvest, even if it only brought in a supplementary income. He kept this crop out of sentimentality, in memory of a time that had made the reputation and fortune of his family, and enjoyed watching the canes grow to maturity every year. They could reach a height of as much as sixteen feet and he never looked at them without seeing them as the jungle of giant beans they had represented when he was a child. But the days of fairy tales and of agriculture were long gone. He had preferred to invest his money in mines and prawn fishing, while pursuing the political career his ambition demanded. Of the huge stretches of arable land bequeathed him by his father he had agreed to lease a few plots to some ignorant matutos , still in thrall to their out-of-date customs, less for the rent they paid — those peasants were more cunning than foxes and stole from him without batting an eyelid! — than for the sight of them, when he was out on his horse, bent over in his father’s fields. The rest of his property was left lying fallow or used for raising cattle. Like the country squires who were his ancestors, he prided himself on not eating anything that did not come from his own estate.

The Governor closed his eyes. The vision of his land worked like an analgesic, dispelling the tiredness of the day as he came closer to the fazenda . His sense of well-being would have been complete were it not for the prospect of seeing his wife’s sullen face and having to deal with her regular hysterical fits brought on by alcohol. She hadn’t been the same since Mauro had gone off to university in Brazilia. Or perhaps since Manchete had published that photo of a tipsy “Governor Moreira,” shirt undone, nibbling the breast of a second-rate dancer? Carnival fever, the cocktails at the education offices and the stupid challenge of Sílvio Romero, the minister of public works … Yet he had explained the circumstances that had led to his behavior to his wife. At the time she had pretended to understand, to pardon his infidelity and the humiliating scandal that had ensued, but that same evening she swallowed a whole tube of Gardenal with her whiskey. They’d just managed to save her. Menopause problems, it happens more often than you think. Be patient with her, Governor, it’ll only last a few months … Too optimistic, as always, Dr. Euclides, the business had been going on for three years now and the annoying thing was that it was getting worse. Recently Euclides da Cunha had had the idea of advising them to undergo psychoanalytic couples therapy! Not a bad idea for her, certainly, but what was it to do with him?! The doctor was getting old, he’d have to think about consulting someone else. Discreetly, of course.

The Buick had stopped by the flight of steps leading up to the fazenda . The liveried chauffeur came around the car to open the door but the Colonel stayed on the seat for a few moments, contemplating the white façade of the family home, a dreamy look on his face. In the classical style — Moriera maintained, without a shred of evidence, that it had been built to a plan by the French architect, Louis Léger Vauthier — the house was like a little palace. Flanked by two symmetrical wings linked by a covered gallery, the main building had a balustraded upper floor and a triangular pediment. Coming out toward the steps, an imposing portico with three arches emphasized the seigniorial aspect of the building. Lengthened by the setting sun, the shadows of the royal palms were slanting across the pale pink roughcast of the walls, creating a harmonious geometrical network with the semicircular arches of the windows.

On the wide grass borders with their elegant groves of hibiscus, acanthus and laurels, the sprinklers suddenly started their staccato operation, sending out their fine, swirling spray over them. The Colonel checked his watch: seven thirty precisely. Order and progress! The Fazenda do Boi looked good, an image of the opportunities offered by Brazil, the symbol of a success that was open, as in North America, to the lowliest of its citizens, provided they believed in their country more than in their gods and worked to combat Nature’s irrepressible tendency to disorder. What his father had done and his father before him, and what he was doing, in his own way, even more than his forefathers.

“Tell the gardener to mow the grass,” he suddenly said to the chauffeur, who had remained standing stiff, his cap in his hand, beside the portal. “I want a proper lawn, not a meadow.”