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

“Excuse me,” she said, thanking me with a wan smile & withdrawing her hand slowly, “but I must go and rest.”

She gave me her arm & I accompanied her to the door. As she took more precautions than before, I thought she was about to faint and asked whether she felt strong enough to walk by herself.

“You needn’t worry,” she said with an artless smile, “it’s just that the glass harpsichord in my stomach is vibrating a little more than usual. To hurry would risk breaking it & not all the skill of Father Kircher would be able to save me from a horrible death.”

At that she went, leaving me in a state close to stupor.

A few days passed, days entirely devoted to work on Caspar Schott’s text and Loredana’s occasional but regular visits. Despite her initial hostile reaction, Soledade had immediately adopted the Italian, or rather, Eléazard thought, had been won over by her open nature and by the exemplary way she was interested in everything, people as well as things, without distinction. She had refused to come and stay with him —there’s plenty of unoccupied rooms , he’d told her without any ulterior motive, at least it would mean you wouldn’t have to pay for the hotel, it’s up to you— but she had taken him at his word when he’d said she could come to Pelhourinho Square whenever she liked, to use his library or take advantage of a shower that worked more or less properly. He would run into her as she came and went in the house, reading on one of the chaise longues on the veranda or, more often, sitting at the kitchen table with Soledade. He was entirely satisfied with her unobtrusive, unpredictable presence; it was as if Loredana had always been living there and a spontaneous, transparent intimacy had quietly arisen in the course of both their lives.

She seemed to enjoy his guided tour around the town, putting a name, an anecdote to each dilapidated façade, reconstructing against the gray sky every ruined edifice with grand gestures and builder’s jargon. In his enthusiasm he had even taken her to see the moving little church — one of the first the missionaries built in Brazil — hidden on a tiny uninhabited island in São Marcos Bay. An unbelievable number of snakes had taken up residence there and, in a kind of fiendish revenge, subjected every nook and cranny of the battered walls to their interference. He decided, however, not to take her to the island of the short-sighted or to that of the albinos , such was Loredana’s nauseated response to these examples, fairly banal, after all, of the dangers of inbreeding.

She still refused to go into detail about her own life and her reasons for being in Alcântara — and he had no desire to know more than she wanted to tell him — but proved to be inexhaustible on everything concerning China, a subject on which she had profound and first-hand knowledge. She had conscientiously set about reading Schott’s manuscript, in small doses and, as he understood it, more to satisfy her curiosity about him than about Athanasius Kircher. She told him her thoughts about it and emphasized the difficulties she came across, which allowed Eléazard to refine his notes or even to add a comment on certain passages he had not considered worth dwelling on. Without her he would never have thought it necessary to explain to a potential reader the scourge the Thirty Years’ War had been nor how exotic the simple discovery of Italy had been in the seventeenth century. It came to the point where he was writing his notes purely for her, not giving the matter final approval until it had been tempered by her comments.

For all that their rapport was something of a miracle, it still remained a provisional pact. Eléazard refused to see the problem from that point of view; he made sparing use of it, with the happiness it brought, as if it would last forever. Afterward he was to reproach himself for not having taken full advantage of what he knew from the start was to be a short-lived encounter.

He had told her so much about Euclides, his only friend in the area, that she had agreed in principle to meet him. That morning, however, when he wanted to take Loredana to lunch at the doctor’s, neither Alfredo nor Soledade knew where she was. Eléazard had taken the ferry to São Luís with a feeling of irritation that even he eventually saw as both absurd and excessive.

“I ASSURE YOU the man’s perfectly well mannered. A touch rustic, perhaps. Lacking good taste for certain, but that’s more widespread than anything throughout the world and I would say you couldn’t pride yourself on being the opposite without demonstrating a smugness that is even worse.”

Eléazard looked doubtful.

“Yes, I know, I know,” Dr. Euclides went on with a smile. “He’s not really a left-winger, that’s what’s putting you off, isn’t it?”

“That’s going beyond euphemism, doctor, it’s sarcasm,” Eléazard said, smiling too. “And you’re probably right, I can’t see what I could do if I visited a man like that except insult him right in the middle of the party.”

“Oh, come now … You’re far too well brought up to indulge in anything so foolish. Just remember I’m asking you as a favor. You can believe me when I say from experience that you won’t regret it; it’s a very instructive milieu, especially for a journalist. And if my company alone isn’t enough, bring your fair Italian, at least it’ll give me the opportunity of meeting her …”

Eléazard watched the doctor as he took off his pince-nez and cleaned them meticulously on an immaculate handkerchief. Without the magnifying lenses, which made them look unnaturally large, grotesque, like some joke spectacles, his almond-green eyes suddenly revealed their great humanity once more. They had a cheerful look without showing any sign of the amaurosis— Ah, morose is he! Amoroso … a nice name, don’t you think, for the atrophy of the optic nerve— that would soon dim their light entirely. Euclides never combed his hair except with his hand; his thick, unruly gray hair, in a fairly short crew cut, stuck out in all directions, giving the impression of being constantly blown about by invisible gusts of wind. His perfectly straight nose contrasted with a tousled mustache and goatee, yellowed by the tar from his Egyptian cigarettes; the whiskers concealed his mouth and moved mechanically when he spoke, as on a puppet’s face. Chubby without being fat, he always wore dark suits, made to measure, a starched white shirt and a sort of four-leaved bow tie; Eléazard wondered where he managed to get such an old-fashioned item of neckwear. The only extravagance he allowed himself in his dress was in his choice of vests, luxurious accessories with facings embroidered in silk or gold thread, with buttons of mother-of-pearl, marcasite or even delicate enameled miniatures; he had an impressive collection of them. For the rest he possessed an affability à la Flaubert— at least such as his devotees ascribe to him — combined with an unfailing calmness and courtesy. His encyclopedic and perceptive erudition was fascinating.

“You will be my eyes,” he said, replacing his pince-nez on the hollow the glasses had dug out on the bridge of his nose. “The young eyes of an aging Milton on the decrepitude of this world. O loss of sight, worse than chains, or beggary, or decrepit age!” he said in impeccable English. “ A living death, myself my sepulchre .” Or something like that, isn’t it? You must find me very pretentious, comparing myself with such a great poet, but at least we share the same disease and that’s something, you must agree.”

“How is your sight doing at the moment?” Eléazard said, with a smile at the roguish twinkle in his eye.