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

When, at the end of the afternoon, Roetgen woke in his hammock, on the floor of their hut, his memory seemed to have disintegrated after that scene. He had a vague recollection of having made love to Moéma, but he couldn’t swear to it. All the rest had been swallowed up in a black hole from which all that managed to escape was a few hazy images and an incomprehensible feeling of resentment toward the young girl. Just as he was wondering about his strange position, he saw the grotesque slanting branch hanging down from the roof to the tangle of rope spread over his toes.

Then he heard a voice from a little above him: “Had a good sleep, Dionysus?”

Thaïs’s beaming face appeared from her hammock, followed almost immediately by Moéma’s. Curled up lovingly against her friend, she also appeared to be in a joival mood.

“WHEN WE DECIDED to have a siesta, you marched up the dune like a robot without faltering or hurrying up. And the sand was twice as hot as going down. You immediately commandeered my hammock and started to talk about Dionysus … Everything came out, Nietzsche, myth and cult, ‘sacred violence,’ you just went on and on!”

“I hope at least it was interesting?” Roetgen asked, with a doubtful look.

“Super, I assure you,” Thaïs said. “And you were speaking perfect Portuguese, without an accent or anything. Crazy, isn’t it?”

“It was unbelievable,” Moéma said. “It was as if you’d been hypnotized.”

“And then?”

“Then we smoked a joint and … You’re not trying to tell me you can’t recall anything of all this?”

“I swear,” Roetgen lied. “Everything stops with Marlene’s striptease.”

“Well, you jumped me while Thaïs was still talking to you …”

“I did that?!”

“And how!” Thaïs muttered with a laugh. “The worst thing was, she seemed to be enjoying it!”

“Oh, my God, the shame,” said Roetgen, genuinely conscience-stricken. “I would never have thought I was capable of doing something like that, even blind drunk as I was.”

“Don’t take it to heart,” Thaïs said in affectionate tones. “I’ve seen plenty of others with her. She’s one hell of a girl, you know. I did try to sleep, but it was impossible, you were making the hut shake with all your humping and grinding, a real earthquake. So then I went to join you and that’s when the branch gave way …”

“We all fell on top of each other … and you just dropped straight off to sleep. For a moment we thought you’d fainted, but then you started snoring. We almost died laughing.”

“So we left you on the floor and got into my hammock …”

“You have to be careful with cachaça , Professor,” Moéma joked. “Especially here, with the sun.”

“I should have eaten something,” Roetgen said, “that’s the real reason. I didn’t drink all that much.”

“Fourteen caipirinhas …”

“Fourteen?!”

“Exactly. You can trust Seu Juju; he’s well capable of serving a few free drinks but he never forgets a single one of those you ordered.”

THEIR CLOTHES UNDER their arms, they went to Neosinha’s. She hired out her well and a shack used for ablutions. Roetgen was disappointed by a procedure that clashed with Moéma’s much vaunted “natural hospitality” of the fishing community, never mind having to queue with a dozen other young people. It was like being in a children’s holiday camp or, worse still, a campsite. Since Moéma and Thaïs seemed perfectly at home in these surroundings, he spared them his thoughts.

To save time, they showered together, each in turn filling an old food tin from the oil drum one of Neosinha’s sons had brought them. Still somewhat under the influence, Roetgen felt no embarrassment in joining in the game that suddenly brought them all together, naked and close enough to brush against each other, as if it were something quite natural.

Moéma, long legs and muscular buttocks, slim, animal, with her boy’s body and bronze bush; Thaïs with her heavy breasts, more than plump but just as attractive with the luxuriant black triangle emphasizing the creamy skin of her belly …

Teasing like children in the bath; he never knew whether he was the only one to see its very subtle depravity.

Moéma having suggested they invite themselves to João’s for dinner, they bought some fish, fizzy drinks and flat bread before going back through the village. The sky was turning black and a wind off the sea was raising swirls of sand as they walked. On either side of the street little lights swayed in the dark holes of the windows.

“Oh, sugar!” Thaïs exclaimed, “we forgot to buy a lampadinha …”

Turning back, they bought a liter of paraffin and a tin oil lamp marked with the red and gold logo of a brand of butter.

“These basic lamps are made from old tins,” Moéma explained, “they’re all different. In the Interior you can unearth some very beautiful ones, really.”

They found João and his wife swinging idly, each in their own hammock, their children playing in a cluster below them. Maria welcomed the little group effusively and hastened to get the fire in the kitchen going. João came to join them by the hearth a little later. He had a long face: one of the four sailors of the jangada was ill with the result that the fishing trip planned for the next day had been canceled. Roetgen was surprised at the decision. Why not go out all the same?

“It’s not possible with just three,” the fisherman replied. “It’s a question of the balance of the boat, there’d be a risk of capsizing.”

“No one can take his place?”

“The young men don’t want to go out fishing anymore and the others are busy, either on land or on their boats. That’s the way things are, there’s nothing that can be done. In the meantime we’ll continue to go hungry.”

“I could go in his place, if you want …”

Moved by the desire to help the family, Roetgen had spoken without thinking. At João’s disbelieving look, he insisted he had plenty of experience of regattas and sea fishing.

“There’s nothing in the world I like better,” he concluded, as if that were one more argument.

“We go out for one night and two days, francês , it’s not a pleasure trip.”

“I’m used to it. Take me and you’ll see. At the very least I can be a counterweight, since that’s the problem.”

Moéma joined in. “You can trust him,” she said, “I know him. If he offers to come it’s because he’s able to do it.”

“OK, then, we’ll try it,” João said, suddenly offering him his hand across the hearth. “I’ll have to go and tell the others, I’ll just be two minutes.”

When he came back a little later, his face was wreathed in smiles. “It’s on,” he said, sitting down again. “We meet here, five o’clock in the morning.”

They ate the fish with their fingers out of battered aluminium bowls. Every time Roetgen met Moéma’s eye during the meal, while João was telling the latest news of the village, he saw in her look the respect and admiration his gesture inspired.

“YOU DON’T REMEMBER that either?” Moéma said as they left João’s. “You really are incredible. You even asked him to teach you to dance! I’m sure he’ll be getting ideas …”

Weary from the all the drink, Roetgen would have preferred to go straight back to their hut, but from what the girls said, he’d promised Marlene and the others he’d meet them at the forró , behind Seu Alcides’ bar.

“I managed to say a lot of totally stupid things,” he groaned, furious with himself. He found the prospect of having to face Marlene revolting.

“Don’t worry,” Thaïs said, seeing he was in such a bad mood, “he’ll have sobered up as well.”