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

They’d reached the hut and, inviting him to go in, Moéma placed her hand on his shoulder. She increased the pressure of her fingers until he looked at her in acknowledgment of her gesture of complicity.

“We’ll have to talk about all that some time. For now we’ll go and have a caipirinha on the beach. That’ll help us to think, won’t it?”

A sudden twist of the head brought a whole shock of hair tumbling down and she started to rummage in her bag. “OK,” she said, taking out her swimsuit, “you’d better turn around, it’s not a sight for a teacher.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Roetgen, tantalized, “but since that’s the way things are, you turn around too and we can get changed together?”

“OK.”

They got undressed back-to-back. Less sure of himself than his jokey tone had suggested, Roetgen hurried up as if — as he noticed with amusement — he were afraid of being caught in the act. Once naked, however, he stopped, deliberately prolonging the erotic sensation of being naked back-to-back with a young woman who was also undressed. His tacit promise not to turn around gave way beneath the growing weightlessness of his penis and its untimely twitching; without moving his chest, he took a quick glance and was surprised to see his reflection caught in the mirror of a symmetrical movement. Moéma’s mocking eyes left his and slowly went down, lingered. “Not bad, for a teacher,” she said with a smile. “What about me?”

With both hands, she gathered up her mane, uncovering the back of her neck. The pose brought out her small, white breasts, with the pallor of flesh , he thought, that has been too long compressed , and the contrast with her skin, tanned everywhere else, made her even more desirable. Her frail, gauche body — you could almost call it prepubescent — had the gracile curves of an Eve by Van der Goes.

“It’ll do,” said Roetgen, making every effort to maintain the relative propriety of his posture, “for a student, of course.”

PUTTING ON THEIR swimming things was the work of a moment.

“You didn’t bring any sandals?” Moéma said in concerned tones when they were ready to go out.

“No. I like walking barefoot.”

“It’s my fault, I should have told you. It’s not really advisable here because of the filth all around the village. And then there’s the bicho-do-pé …”

“What’s that when it’s at home?” Roetgen laughed.

“A minuscule worm, a parasite, if you prefer. The female gets under your skin, through the pores on your toes, and digs tunnels as it goes deeper. If you don’t spot them right away it can be very difficult to get them out; especially since they lay eggs and—”

“Stop!” said Roetgen, with a look of revulsion. “And does this thing hurt?”

“Sometimes it itches a bit, that’s all. But they can pass on an awful lot of diseases.’ Seeing genuine uncertainty in his expression, she hastened to reassure him: ‘Don’t worry, I get some every time I come here and I’ve never caught anything. The important thing is to pick them off as quickly as possible and you can trust me, I’m a real expert. Try not to walk in the crap too much and it should be OK …”

“I don’t intend to walk in the crap at all .”

“You’ll tell me how you do, OK? All right, let’s go.”

Towels over their shoulders, they set off in the sun. The blazing heat made them hurry toward the steep path through the sand leading down to the shore. They’d hardly reached it when Roetgen started to cry out and hop up and down: “The sand! It’s burning my feet.”

With a sudden idea he threw his towel down and immediately jumped onto it. “It’s unbelievable,” he said after a “Whew!” of relief, “I’ve never come across that before. The sand’s sizzling, I’m sure you could cook an egg on it.”

“It does happen sometimes,” Moéma said, bursting out laughing.

He looked ridiculous, stuck on his towel. A fisherman walked past, a cluster of sparkling bonitos at either end of the rod he was balancing on his shoulder.

“So what now?”

“I’ve no choice,” he said with a shrug. “Everyone ought to have to cross a desert at least once. See you in the water, if I haven’t been barbecued first. Would you look after my towel, please?”

Without waiting for a reply, he plunged off toward the sea, elbows tucked in, back arched. Moéma watched him go; graceful as he set off, his descent quickly started to look like flight as he went down, yelling and taking irregular leaps and bounds.

Mad, he’s stark, staring mad!

She laughed.

The sale of the Willis left Nelson feeling he’d been robbed. It was as if his hero had been assassinated a second time, as if injustice had triumphed over the whole of the Earth.

“Talk to me, son,” Zé said after a long silence. “Tell me you’re not angry with me.”

“It’s not your fault,” Nelson replied. “I know you’d have kept it if you could. But I want to know who you’ve sold it to.”

“A collector from São Luís. It seems he already has a dozen vintage cars, Jaguars, Bentleys … The guy at the garage refused to tell me his name.”

“I’ll find out, I promise you I’ll find out. It was Lampião’s car, don’t you see? Our car. He doesn’t have the right!”

“Oh, come on, you know people have every right when they’re rich. As for me, it lets me keep my truck. I’ll buy it back one day and give it to you. I swear I will, on the head of padre Cícero.”

“How much did you get for it?”

“Three hundred thousand cruzeiros. Peanuts!”

“That’s the problem … And when you can buy it back — if that ever happens — it’ll be worth three million, perhaps even more. If only they’d all just fucking drop dead. I really wish they’d all just die and good riddance!”

“Don’t say things like that, son. You’re the one they might bring bad luck. Have a drink instead. To the Willis!”

“To the Willis,” Nelson said sadly.

They drained their cachaça and spat the last mouthful on the floor.

“For the saints,” said Zé.

“For my sainted aunt!” said Nelson, refilling the glasses. “Don’t mock. You know I don’t like it. The saints have nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, yes?” said Nelson with tart irony. “And what do they do, apart from drinking cachaça? I shouldn’t think they’ve been sober for centuries. They don’t care, your saints, they’re not interested in us.”

Zé shook his head with a look of exasperation, but he couldn’t find an answer to the boy’s bitterness. Eventually he said quietly, “When the sea’s fighting the sand, the crab’s the one that gets the worst of it.”

The expression just came to him — all at once he could see the Super Convair DC-6 that displayed it in yellow letters in the dust of Piauí—but it contained something of what he would have liked to express more clearly. Looking at Nelson’s atrophied legs and his scabby arms, it suddenly occurred to him that the image of the crab might have been hurtful. “I’m not saying that about you, of course … the crab, that’s me, that’s all of us. Just like the crab, all men are in God’s hand. You see what I’m getting at?”

Nelson didn’t reply. They continued to get drunk in silence. Later in the night at the request of the aleijadinho , who, however, refused to accompany him on the guitar, Zé started to chant João Peitudo, the Son of Lampião and Maria Bonita: