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

None of them could have said how long the inspection lasted, so petrified were they by the man’s very physical arrogance. All Elaine could remember afterward was his powerful smell like that of a wild beast.

“And the Indian?” he asked in Spanish.

“At the wheel,” Herman replied, clearly concerned to reassure him. “Don’t worry, amigo , there’s no one else.”

“OK, lead the way,” he said, taking hold of his rifle, “you’re going to show me around.” He followed Herman inside with disdainful self-assurance.

Milton was completely demoralized. Eyes wide, he sought a comforting word or look. Dietlev was desperately but vainly making an effort to think. He tried to analyze the situation, to see the data as if it were a problem in science, without managing to get rid of the stupid images that kept getting in the way of his reasoning; the most insistent was an obsessive one of an overfull mug of beer with the foam constantly trickling down onto the bar. Elaine, suddenly struck with the irrepressible desire to go to the lavatory but equally paralyzed by her refusal to confess to the need and her fear of having to pee where she was, concentrated on her bladder, entirely taken up with her dilemma.

Out of bravado more than unconcern, Mauro had switched on his Walkman; leaning against the rail, his eyes fixed on Milton, he was humming away assiduously.

Herman reappeared on deck and hurried across to Dietlev. “I assure you it’s not my fault,” he said right away. Their plane’s broken down, there’s no way they can repair it. They want us to take their mechanic to Cáceres to buy some replacement parts; there’s an airport there.”

“To Cáceres!” Dietlev exclaimed. He immediately saw in his mind’s eye the two branches of the river a few miles upstream. “But that’s not our route, it’s even the opposite way.”

“I know,” Herman said, putting on a dismayed look. “Don’t complicate things. I swear I’ve tried everything. I even proposed to leave you where you want to go first and pick you up on my way back. But they won’t listen. They’re in a hurry, a great hurry, if you see what I mean.”

Dietlev realized they’d have to bring the mechanic back here, which dashed any hope he still had of completing their mission. At best, counting just three days in Cáceres to find the parts — and that was a minimum — they could only get back to this point at the end of their scheduled time in the Mato Grosso. “It’s piracy!” he muttered. “Do you realize what that means? A whole year of preparations down the drain because of these bastards.”

“I couldn’t foresee this, amigo , I swear it.”

“And there’s nothing we can do about it? I don’t know, what if we offer them money if they agree to leave us on the deposit with the fossils?”

“Money?” Petersen said genuinely amazed. “But these guys have a thousand times more than you, they’re literally wallowing in dollars. You don’t realize, Dietlev, you’re lucky still to be alive. They don’t care a fuck about the lot of you, about your mission or your bloody fossils.”

“We just have to do what they say, and that’s that,” said Milton, still terrified. “I’ve had enough of … of all this. I’m canceling the mission, d’you hear. We’ll take the plane from Cáceres. I’m cancelling everything.”

“What plane?” the Paraguayan asked in mocking tones, putting down a large cardboard box full of tins of food and bottles. “And the little lady, is she ready? You haven’t told her the news yet, eh, yellow belly? Come on, get on with it, I’ve got to take the Zod’ to collect the mechanic.”

“Please, Hernando,” said Petersen in a tearful voice. “There’s no point, I’ve given you my word. I’ll bring your guy back, whatever happens. I’ve got to come back by this route anyway.”

“Herman?!” Dietlev growled. His voice had deepened a tone, as if he had a premonition of what the old German’s reply would be.

“They want to keep Professora Von Wogau until we come back. As security.”

“No question!” Dietlev exclaimed without a moment’s pause for reflection. Turning to Hernando, he said, “We’ll take your mechanic to Cáceres, or even to Cuiabá if necessary, we’ll do everything you want, but she stays with us, understood?

“All right, that’s enough,” the man said, pointing his gun at Dietlev. “Herman, you put the supplies in the dinghy and you, guapa , you get on board double quick. We won’t do anything to harm you, believe me.”

There was a lecherous glint in his eye that said everything about what he had in mind for her.

Elaine was sitting on the deck, her legs tight together, shaking her head from side to side, unable in her panic to express her refusal to go with him in any other way.

Mauro faced up to the Paraguayan. “She’s not going,” he said in a tremulous voice. “ No venga, non viene! What language do we have to say it in? I’ll stay here, if that’s what you want.”

“Well he’s got balls, the little cockerel,” Hernando said with a smile, “I like that …” And with a swift blow with the rifle butt he hit him in the face. Mauro collapsed like a rag doll.

Dietlev was already coming forward, fists clenched.

“But he says they won’t harm her,” Milton yelped, pulling him back. “There’s nothing for it but to leave her with them. Is there, Elaine? Tell him you’ll stay. As you can see, he’s not joking.”

“Pansy!” Dietlev said, spitting on his mouth.

Hernando stuck the barrel of the Kalashnikov in Dietlev’s throat. “You’re getting to be a pain in the ass, you idiot. Come on, little lady, in the dinghy or I blow his head off.”

Despite all her efforts, Elaine just could not stand up. She’d started crawling toward them, when the engine, suddenly put on full speed, made the gunboat leap forward.

Off-balance for a moment, Hernando realized what Yurupig was doing. “He’s going to kill the lot of us, the stupid cunt,” he screamed, rushing toward the wheelhouse.

At the same moment Dietlev saw the boat set off on a slanting course toward the bank. Without bothering about the others, he ran for the upper deck as well. He was just climbing the accommodation ladder when the gunboat changed course and boldly made its way back into the middle of the river. Then there was a sort of orange flash, on the extreme edge of his field of vision and, above the din of the engine, a kind of simultaneous discharge in which the white noise of war mingled with the screaming of the monkeys. Dietlev threw himself to the floor, covering his head with his hands. He felt his leg slap against the metal by itself, becoming one with it. Instinctively he tried to pull it back into a more natural position and, astonished at its lack of reaction, lost consciousness.

Staggered at Yurupig’s reaction, Petersen had dropped onto the deck as soon as he saw that the boat was continuing its course and, despite Hernando’s efforts, would pass the invisible limit set by the crocodile hunters. Dumbfounded, sucked into his deepest fears, he observed the ensuing events with a hypnotic sense of déjà vu: Milton, waving his arms and shouting demands for a cease-fire, the jig that the repeated impact of the bullets made him dance on the spot, the red gashes in his linen suit; Elaine on all fours relieving herself on the deck, eyes closed, with the expression of a saint undergoing a visitation.

Imperturbable under the hail of bullets, the Messenger of the Faith continued to glide up the river, forcing its way, with a kind of dogged voluptuousness, between the Nile-green palisades of the jungle.

METAPHYSICIANS OF TLÖN: Kircher is like them, he is not looking for the truth, nor even the probable, he’s looking for the amazing. It never occurred to him that metaphysics is a branch of literature of the fantastic, but his work belongs entirely to fiction and therefore also to Jorge Luis Borges.