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

One day she couldn’t bear these cracks in the blind wall of certainties any longer. Alcântara had come to seem like the exact reflection of Eléazard: a heap of contagious ruins she had to get away from at all cost. She felt herself threatened by her husband’s morbid interest in that sad failure, Athanasius Kircher. That was what she had fled from, that insidious sense of abandonment. Divorce had doubtless been going too far, but it had been a necessary step on the way to breaking once and for all the spells that kept her captive, to be alone, in tune with life, with the very ordinary happiness at being alive.

The noise of the engine stopped abruptly. As the boat continued to drift along in silence, Elaine could hear the clamor from the aviary of the jungle. From her post she watched Yurupig go to the prow and release the anchor chain. For a moment the clatter of the links halted the chatter of the invisible monkeys on the bank. Herman Petersen appeared on deck, carrying a bucket and a basket.

“What’s up?” Dietlev asked, a look of concern on his face. “Some problem with the engine?”

“Nothing to get worried about, amigo . It’s just that night falls quickly and round here it’s not a good idea to keep going in the dark. We could have gone for maybe an hour, but we wouldn’t have been sure of being able to anchor. And anyway, there isn’t a better place for dourados on the whole river.”

“What are they, dourados ?” Mauro asked.

“ Salmidus brevidens ,” Dietlev replied immediately, as if it was obvious. “A kind of golden salmon that can weigh up to forty-five pounds. I had some last year, it’s delicious.”

“To work, then,” said Herman, taking several lines out of his basket. “If you want some for supper, now’s the time to show what you can do.”

“Can I try?” Elaine said from up on her perch.

“But of course, senhora . I was wondering where you’d got to.”

“I have to tell you,” she said as she came down on deck, “I’ve never fished before.”

“It’s easy, I’ll show you,” said Herman. “That’s the bait,” he added, pointing at the bucket. “ Piramboias , there’s nothing better.”

Elaine came to look. She shrank back slightly when she saw the short, compact creatures it was teeming with. “Snakes?” she said with a look of disgust.

“Almost. But you’d better not stick your hands in,” he said, wrapping a cloth round his hand to grasp one of the eels.

With one slash of his knife he cut it in two and stuck one of the wriggling pieces on a hook. After having thrown it in the river, just a few yards from the boat, he handed the line to Elaine. “There you are. All you need now is patience. If there’s a tug, you pull it in; there’s nothing more to it than that.”

“Do these things stay alive for long,” she asked, pointing with her chin at the pool of blood where the piramboia tail was still writhing.

“For hours. They’re indestructible, that’s what makes them so attractive — no fish can resist a bit of meat like that. Especially the females …”

He said it in suggestive tones, his dull, watery eyes fixed on Elaine’s breasts. She pretended not to hear and turned to look at the river.

“What about you, Mauro? D’you feel like a go?”

“Why not? I’ll try anything once.”

“Come and get your line, then.”

Dietlev having declined the same offer, Petersen went to fish with the others.

They only had a few minutes to wait. Elaine suddenly had a violent bite but when she pulled in her line, it was empty — it had been cut off just above the hook. The same thing happened almost immediately to Herman and Mauro.

“Shit!” Herman exclaimed in disgust. “Piranhas. The fishing’s over, guys. When they’re about it’s no good for catching anything else. Too greedy, the little bastards … But just a minute, my dears. Since that’s the way things are we’ll get a few for the soup. I’ll put some steel hook lengths on the lines, that’ll give them something to think about.”

The first to have one of these, Elaine was soon struggling with a catch; the line was stretched almost to breaking point, zigzagging unpredictably through the yellow water.

“Go on, pull,” Herman shouted, also busy trying to land a fish. “It won’t break, pull, dammit! But be careful when it’s on the deck. Let Yurupig deal with it, they can cut off your fingers, no problem.”

Flashes of gold appeared in the disturbingly opaque river. With a great heave into which she put all her strength, Elaine brought a gleaming piranha flying onto the deck. The Indian rushed forward: two powerful blows with his club and that was the end of its convulsive twitchings she was trying awkwardly to avoid.

“Look, belleza ,” Herman said. He had just landed a piranha and had managed to get it on his left hand, still alive, so that Elaine couldn’t tell whether he was taking a liberty in the way he addressed her or talking about the fish. She watched as Petersen inserted the point of his knife into its prognathous jaw; the two rows of triangular teeth — truly monstrous fangs — quickly closed on the blade, several times in succession, like a little stapler. With a cracking of bone that sent shivers down her spine, and with the help of Herman levering with his knife, the piranha broke its teeth one by one on the metal.

“After that he won’t have to go to the dentist again,” Herman guffawed, proud of his demonstration. “Just imagine what they can do under water … A shoal of them can eat up an ox in no time at all. D’you know what piranha means in Tupi-Guarani? It means ‘scissors fish.’ Not bad, eh?”

Despite the fish’s repulsiveness, Elaine was appalled at the pointless torture Petersen was inflicting on it. She corrected herself immediately: it was oafish, obnoxious or anything you like from the catalog of human stupidity, but certainly not “pointless,” given that the word suggested there were tortures that were sometimes justified. She was about to tell Herman to stop his cruel sport when Yurupig went up to him.

“Let go of it,” he said calmly, but in a threatening tone. “At once!”

The two men stared at each other for a moment. Herman decided to smile as if it were nothing. “I’ll do even more than that,” he said, turning to Elaine, “I’ll let it go free. Just to please the fair lady …” And with an affected gesture, he threw the bleeding piranha back into the river.

Yurupig turned toward the concentric circles on the surface of the water that were already becoming less distinct and, holding up the palms of his hands to the sky, muttered a few incomprehensible phrases. Having done that, he went back inside without a word.

“I’ve got one, I’ve got one!” came a sudden shout from Mauro, who had missed the whole incident. Herman took the opportunity to turn his attention to him. When the fish was on the deck, he simply clubbed it without further ado.

“Come on then,” he said cheerfully, “two or three more and that’ll be our soup.”

While he was baiting more lines, Elaine went to him. “What did he say?”

“Who?”

“Stop acting stupid. Yurupig, of course!”

“A load of nonsense. Indian stuff … It’s not important.”

“He was praying for the fish,” Dietlev suddenly said solemnly. “I couldn’t understand everything, but he invoked the law of the river and asked to be forgiven the death of the poor animal.”

“But it was still alive,” Elaine said. “I saw it swim off.”

“That’s the worst thing about it. It was alive, but injured from the hook and incapable of catching its prey thanks to this … to this ‘gentleman.’ We can only hope the others ate it at once, otherwise it’ll spend days dying.”