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

A single well supplied brackish water to the population of fishermen that survived in this out-of-the-way place, turned in on itself, huddled up in its isolation like a decimated tribe.

Moéma’s first concern was to go and see Néoshina in her house at the end of the road, just where the slope down to the beach began. For a few cruzeiros they could sling their hammocks in one of the two huts her son had built not far away, solely for travelers.

“They don’t get a lot of visitors here,” she explained to Roetgen, “but there are people who come from Aracati or farther away to bathe in peace. Us, for example. Néoshina makes a little money like that, fair enough. When I’m by myself I stay with my friend João, he’s a fisherman. But with three of us it’s impossible. We’ll go and see him in a minute, he’s great, you’ll see. I’ve never met anyone so kind.”

“Oh come on,” said Thaïs, “let’s just dump our bags in the hut and go and have a swim. OK?”

“We can do the bags, OK, but then I’d like to go to João’s first. It’ll only take five minutes.”

“If you must,” said Thaïs, slightly irritated, “but I’ve had enough. I’ll see you in the water.”

They left their bags on the sand inside the hut. While Thaïs was changing, Moéma and Roetgen set off back up the lane.

“What’s the matter with her?” Roetgen asked.

“It’ll pass. She’s a bit jealous, that’s all.”

“Jealous! Really? Jealous of whom?”

“Of you, of course. She’s very possessive and you weren’t exactly on the agenda.”

Enjoying this back-handed compliment, Roetgen looked at her with raised eyebrows. A smile formed on his lips which said, “ How stupid! Jealous of me when there’s never been anything between us,” but which at the same time betrayed a certain smugness and the unspoken desire to confirm Thaïs’s suspicions.

“Don’t go imagining things,” Moéma said sharply. “If I invited you yesterday it was because I felt sorry for you with your little-lost-dog look. You looked so out of place among all those stupid lecturers. So sad. You’re not where you belong there. It’s so obvious, I’m surprised they don’t see it. I felt like taking you out and showing you something else, the real Brazil. People who’re alive.”

Roetgen fixed his eyes on her as if he were trying to unravel the true sense of this confidence. For a moment he regretted having come to Canoa.

They had stopped outside a hut like the one they were staying in, although less fresh, as if it had withered. Put out to dry on top of a tiny awning, shark fins gave off a powerful acrid smell. Squatting in the shade, a man was meticulously dismantling a piece of fishing equipment with the composure and nimble fingers of a dressmaker. He only noticed them at the same moment as Moéma hailed him in a clear voice: “ Tudo bem , João?”

Frozen for a moment in a pose with the gravity of a scribe, his face lit up with a gap-toothed smile as touching as that of little girls whose exposed gums disfigure them without making them ugly.

“Miss Moéma!” he said, getting up to embrace her. “What a lovely surprise! Tudo bom , my girl, tudo bom , thanks be to God.”

“And this is …” She stopped and turned to Roetgen. “What is your first name, anyway?”

“Forget it,” he said in an odd tone. “Just Roetgen, I prefer that, if if doesn’t bother you.”

“I couldn’t care less,” said Moéma. “OK, this is Roetgen, just Roetgen … a French friend, he teaches at the university in Fortaleza.”

João tried to say the unusual name, mispronouncing it in a different way each time. “I’ll never manage it, francês , it’s too complicated,” he said with an apologetic gesture, “but hello all the same.”

Moéma handed him the plastic bag she been carrying since they’d dropped their bags in the hut. “There you are,” she said, “I’ve brought you a few things I don’t need. Also some aspirin and antibiotics.”

“God bless you, my dear. Fishing’s not what it used to be, I can’t even feed my children anymore. And Maria’s pregnant again …”

“They’ve got eight already,” said Moéma with an expression mingling irritation with compassion. “Crazy, isn’t it?”

“I’ll give José a banana right away,” said João. “He needs vitamins after his accident.”

“How is he?” Moéma asked as they went into the hut.

“Not too bad. It’s almost healed over, but there are still some abscesses. Néoshina’s making him some cow-dung poultices. She says they kill off infections.”

“You must promise me you’ll stop that and give him the tablets I brought you. Two of each, morning and evening. OK?”

“I promise. Don’t worry.”

A thin partition of woven palm leaves separated the kitchen from the rest of the hut. Roetgen had the time to observe the tiny seats arranged around the stove — a circle of stones on the sand — two or three smoke-blackened earthenware jugs, strips of dried fish hanging from the roof and, standing on the ground, a little rack of shelves with a can of oil and a meager stock of tins.

All there was in the other room was a jumble of mats and hammocks slung from the branches of the framework. João cautiously went up to one of them and looked in. “He’s asleep,” he said in a whisper. “That’s better for him.”

Snotty nosed, his skinny body naked, a baby of one or two was lying on his back, across the canvas sheet. From the elbow down his left arm was bandaged with rags sticky with suppuration.

“You must change that, João, it’s dangerous.”

“I know. Maria’s gone to do the washing, she’ll bring back some clean cloths.

“What happened to him?” Roetgen asked in a low voice.

“A pig,” João said, gently rocking the hammock.

“All the kids play on the landfill,” Moéma explained, “even the little ones. A pig chewed his arm. Hunger makes them fierce, it’s not the first time it’s happened.”

He felt sick, with a lump in his throat as if he’d just eaten a piece of meat his taste buds had suddenly told him was rotten. “ C’est abominable ,” Roetgen said. “And the pig? They didn’t … I mean, what did they do with it?”

“And what would you do in their place?” she asked in harsh tones. “Just think a bit before you speak. Do you really believe they can afford to have qualms? Eat or be eaten, there’s no alternative.”

NOT LONG AFTERWARD they headed back toward their hut to change. Roetgen had withdrawn into a reproachful silence; his expression somber, his eyes fixed on the Atlantic at the bottom of the lane, he abandoned himself to the surrounding desolation.

“I’m sorry,” Moéma suddenly said without looking at him, “that was unfair of me just now, but there are some things I just can’t take. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“What should I understand?” Roetgen mumbled, still ashamed of having reacted in such a stupid way.

“Oh come on, stop sulking … You know very well what I mean, it wasn’t you I was getting at. The fact that such situations can exist at all and no one bats an eyelid, everything goes on as usual, that’s what makes me furious. And then I can’t stop myself being annoyed with João for accepting everything that happens as inevitable. It’s stupid.”

“He has no choice, but you’re right, you can’t do anything on your own. It’s a cliché, but no one seems to want to know nowadays. Everything is geared to make that obvious truth look old hat. It’s the same with the class struggle, resistance, trade unionism … they threw out the baby with the bathwater of Soviet communism. It was perhaps necessary in order to get things back on a sounder basis but until that happens, it stinks … it stinks to high heaven.”