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

Elaine gave Herman a look of contempt, her eyes flashing angrily. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

“So what? What does it matter? Don’t give me all that crap for a lousy fucking piranha! You’ll have to calm down a bit, the whole lot of you … Otherwise …”

“Otherwise what?” Dietlev asked, looking him straight in the eye. “I must point out that you’ve already been paid, so it’s you who’re going to calm down, and pretty quick too.”

Herman’s eyes seemed to clear under the impact of his rage. He said nothing, just shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on them. The saloon door slammed shut behind him.

“I DIDN’T KNOW you could speak Tupí,” Elaine said to Dietlev after this outburst. “Where did you learn it?”

“I can’t really speak it properly,” Dietlev said, “just enough to deal with any situation with the Indians. I did some courses at the university in Brazilia, it’s often helped me to locate a deposit or collect fossils in the back of beyond. You should think about learning it too.”

“You’re right. I’ll see about it when we get back.”

Yurupig’s attitude had made a deep impression on her. She only realized now that it was the first time since they’d left that she’d heard his voice. In her mind’s eye she could see a sharp image of his profile as he confronted Petersen: his copper complexion, almond eyes, slightly slanting under the bulge of his lids, a very flat nose, without any obvious cartilage but which made you feel like kneading the flesh to give it shape, and thick lips that he hardly moved when he spoke. Dressed in overalls thick with dirt and grease, he never seemed to be without a baseball cap worn back to front with a quiff of hair sticking out like a tuft of black feathers over his forehead. Elaine thought he was utterly beautiful, especially when he made his moving prayer to the piranhas.

“What’s happened?” Mauro asked, intrigued by Herman’s abrupt departure and the look of annoyance on his teachers’ faces. Elaine told him briefly what had happened.

“Hmm, not the best of starts, then?” he said, scratching his head. “The swine deserves to be thrown in the water himself and we’ll carry on without him.”

“I don’t really trust him …” said Elaine, as if talking to herself. And turning to Dietlev: ‘You know what? He’s hanging around me all the time and it’s obvious why. I get suggestive remarks every couple of minutes.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Mauro, in a blaze of anger. “That drunkard! That … that Nazi bastard!”

“Be careful what you say,” Dietlev said firmly. “It’s only a rumor, I really ought to have held my tongue. Anyway, don’t forget that our expedition depends on him and on his boat. That goes for you too, Elaine. We’re going to be together for the next two or three weeks so we’ll have to soft-pedal a bit, all of us. I don’t know what there is between him and that Indian, but it’s none of our business.”

“You saw how he humiliated him!” Elaine objected, outraged.

“Yes, I did, and it’s not to his credit, but for the moment let’s not exaggerate: it was just a piranha put back in the water.”

“That’s worst of all!” said Mauro, clenching his fists.

“That’s enough! I don’t want to hear any more about the incident. And not a word to Milton, understood?”

“What’s this, what’s this? Hiding things from me, from what I hear.” Milton’s voice was suddenly heard behind them. “I don’t like that, you know …”

During a couple of seconds of guilty silence, Dietlev desperately looked for a way out of the situation, then Elaine came to the rescue. “OK, OK,” she said, with a disappointed look, “that’s our surprise down the drain. It’s a pity, but since you heard everything …”

“What surprise?” He stifled a yawn. “Pardon me, I slept like a log. Too much wine at lunch, it’s never a good idea. So what is it you’re not to tell old Milton, guys?”

“That we’re having piranha soup for dinner …” said Elaine, not knowing how she was going to get out of it.

“…?!”

“Yes,” she went on, seized with consternation at the difficulty of thinking up anything convincing, “… and, well, Petersen maintains that piranha soup has a certain … aphrodisiac quality …”

Mauro leapt in. “And we’d decided to do a ‘blind’ experiment, as they say,” he said, putting on an embarrassed look. “A student joke, it was my idea. We’d have come clean about it tomorrow …”

“I see you’re enjoying yourselves behind my back,” said Milton with a chuckle. “But I can assure you I’ve no need of that kind of thing, thank God; despite my age, I’m still perfectly capable in that respect.”

A little later, when Milton had gone off with Dietlev, Elaine thanked Mauro for his contribution. “I’d no idea how to extricate myself from the lie,” she said with a laugh. “I’m really very grateful.”

“It wasn’t much,” said Mauro, blushing. “I surprised myself, I’m not usually known for my quick-wittedness. I’m still wondering how he managed to swallow it.”

“The brilliant idea was to take everything on yourself. I have the impression he’d forgive you anything.”

Mauro thought over the comment for a moment. Put like that, it seemed obvious. “I don’t like him very much, you know,” he said.

“Don’t worry, neither do I,” she replied in confidential tones. “He’s not a bad guy, but his career comes before everything and for me that’s not worthy of a scientist.”

Mauro contemplated the river. The sun, having gone down, had set the whole sky ablaze: the giant trees stood out against docile cumulus clouds with fiery outlines. The louder and louder chirring of insects was gradually replacing the wailing of stray birds, expressing one last time their apprehension of the night. On the bank, only a few yards from the boat, furtive rustlings in the bushes kept exciting his alert senses. A burst of exultation, inexplicably combined with a feeling of sadness, loosened his tongue. “On the other hand, I like you very much,” he said to Elaine, without daring to look at her. “Well, a lot, I mean …”

Moved by this disguised avowal, Elaine ruffled his hair, as she would have done to Moéma in similar circumstances. And at the very moment when, both delighted and offended by this disconcerting response, he felt her hand in his hair, they heard for the first time the hoarse double cry of the caymans.

HALF-STRETCHED-OUT on his bunk, his back against the metal wall of the cabin, Herman Petersen tried to grab the bottle of cachaça he’d been making every effort to finish for what would soon be two hours; just the attempt set a dizzying rotation of his field of vision in motion and, seeing the storm lantern swirling around him for no good reason, he accepted that he was drunk. Resisting the desire, irrepressible though it was, for another swig, he closed his eyes in the vague hope it might stop his head spinning. The images continued to harass him.

He’d started drinking with Dietlev and Milton, some time before the meal when the two came down to join him in the saloon. Relaxed, smiling, a glass of aperitif in his hand, Dietlev had inquired about the piranha soup. Herman had noted their submission. Without showing the ill feeling he still harbored, nor his pride in having made them submit so quickly, he’d ordered the stupid Indian to prepare their meager catch then amused himself by explaining the supposed virtues of the soup to Milton. When she came with Mauro, Elaine had asked him nicely for a caipirinha , signalling that she too was determined to forget their recent altercation. In the course of the meal she had even consented to take a sip of the much-vaunted soup and even went so far as to make a complimentary remark about its taste. This ultimate sign of goodwill would almost have mollified him if it hadn’t been for Mauro’s sympathetic look: the snotty-nosed kid was sorry for her because she had to swallow such an affront. Comedia, comediante! They were all mocking him … Seething with rage, he dreamt of the nasty things in his vengeance he would mete out to these shits one by one.