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

As the date of our departure was approaching, we concentrated on making all the new curiosities the government of the island had given my master in return for his services ready for the journey. When we set off, at the beginning of March 1638, the Grand Duke’s baggage train had been increased by five wagons solely for the carriage of all the various finds & samples we were bringing back from Malta and Sicily.

When we reached Messina, we had to wait three days for the weather to improve, the storm being so great no pilot was prepared to take us across to Calabria. When we got under way the wind & the sea were still so unfavorable the sailors themselves were frightened by the crossing. At Kircher’s request we had to make a detour toward the rocks of Scylla & Charybdis to see what it was that made them so dangerous, but the captain refused to approach close enough. By way of compensation, my master was delighted to see Mount Stromboli throwing its plume of smoke and lava debris up into the stormy sky.

We resumed our journey north &, after several days of forced march, caught up with the equipage of the Duke of Hesse in the little village of Tropea, on the banks of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

“I’ve seen quite a few things in my life, but that … It’s nauseating! It’s disgraceful!”

He had never seen Loredana in such a state. Lips pursed, white with anger, she gave vent to her indignation:

“An American couple with a seventeen-year-old daughter. They arrived at the hotel this morning, with the first boat. I was having breakfast downstairs with Socorró. Three monsters, I can tell you! Fat as pigs, badly brought up, swaggering, a caricature of all that’s worst in that type. Neither a good morning nor a smile, nothing, not even making the effort to say a couple of words in Portuguese. Poor Socorró was petrified. I had to translate what they wanted: “Two rooms and some beer,” just like that. She had to make several journeys to take up their cases without any of them lifting a finger. They started to get sloshed right away, all three of them, father, mother and daughter. You can just see it. When I left they’d already knocked back three cans each. They may be thick, ugly, impolite and like a drink, OK, but Socorró told me how it went on. They spent all the morning there, doing nothing but drinking and pissing; after lunch the two women went upstairs for a siesta but the guy insisted on having a mattress put down under the veranda and — you’ll never believe it — ordered Socorró to fan him while he was asleep.”

“Surely she didn’t agree?” Eléazard said, eyes wide.

“Of course not, at least at the beginning. But he offered her ten then twenty dollars to do it and since she has a grandson at boarding school in São Luís and she’s the one who looks after him …”

“I don’t believe it! And what was Alfredo doing? You can’t let that kind of thing go on!”

“He and his wife had gone to São Luís for the day. I can’t tell you how angry he was when he heard all about it. He wanted to get rid of them right away, kick them out, literally, but Socorró begged him not to make a scene and to let her earn a bit more money this month. To cap it all, the guy’s armed, he’s got a revolver stuck between his trousers and his skin, Socorró saw it when he unbuttoned his shirt. Alfredo couldn’t get over it. It really cooled him down, especially since they pay well, the bastards.”

“We can’t have this,” said Eléazard coolly. “I’ll talk to Socorró. I’ll pay her what she would have got from fanning him, if necessary, but we can’t allow that.”

“If you’d seen her. She can hardly move her arms this evening.”

“I’ll speak to her tomorrow,” said Eléazard, “but just now we’ll have to hurry if we don’t want to miss the boat.”

SITTING IN THE back seat of the vehicle — an old Ford convertible that hadn’t been driven for decades but that looked as if it were straight out of the showroom — Loredana enjoyed the close of the day. Driven smoothly by Eléazard, the car seemed to be heading for the red glow of the setting sun as if to merge with it in a gaudy apotheosis. Hair all disheveled, Dr. Euclides kept turning to her to chat about this and that or to comment, by guesswork, on a landscape he apologized for not being able to see. Though following the dictates of an out-of-date code of behavior, his attentions nevertheless had the unaffected charm of a long habit of courtesy.

“You will see,” he said as they approached the fazenda , “Countess Carlotta is a very refined, very cultured person … quite the opposite of her boor of a husband. I’m still wondering what it was about him that could have attracted her. God knows what chemistry presides over the mystery of affinities, especially in their case! Have you read Goethe’s little book, Elective Affinities ? No? It’s worth making the effort, believe me …”

Dr. Euclides da Cunha took off his glasses. As he wiped them mechanically, he turned even farther around toward Loredana:

“ Es wandelt niemand ungestraft unter Palmen ,” he declaimed in a quiet voice, “ und die Gesinnungen ändern sich gewiß in einem Lande, wo Elefanten und Tiger zu Hause sind! No one can walk beneath palm trees with impunity, one might translate it, and ideas are sure to change in a land where elephants and tigers are at home. We have here, as I’m sure you’ll agree, a good number of those males who combine the heaviness of a pachyderm with the ferocity of a big cat …”

Eléazard broke in: “You’re embroidering, as always, Doctor.” He fell silent for a few seconds, suddenly occupied with the demands of the road. “I would go even farther: you’re misrepresenting what Goethe meant. If I remember rightly, poor Ottilie only writes that to encourage the men to concern themselves with the world around them. To her mind, it is a matter of condemning the unhealthy attractions of the exotic. Or am I wrong?”

“You will never stop amazing me, my friend,” the doctor said, raising his voice in order to be heard. “I should have realized you would have your Goethe at your fingertips. It was only a little quip, but I’m standing by it. No one’s going to stop me making words say a bit more than they appear to allow. But since it’s cropped up, you must remember the whole of the passage in question, and you’ll see that far from misrepresenting, I’m remaining absolutely faithful to it. It all starts out from a reflection on the relationship between man and nature: we ought to know, or seek to know only those living things in our immediate environment. To surround ourselves with monkeys and parrots in a land where they are mere curiosities is to prevent us from seeing our true compatriots , the familiar trees, the animals or persons who have made us what we are. The tree that stops us from seeing the forest, in a way … and the symptom of a serious disturbance. Uprooted from their natural environment, these foreign creatures are carriers of anxiety, of a distress they will transmit to us, as if by infection, and that will transform us profoundly: It takes a gaudy and boisterous life , Goethe says, to be able to put up with monkeys, parrots and Moors around one .”

“He says ‘Moors’?” Loredana broke in.

“Yes, but without racist undertones, as far as I’m aware. Don’t forget that it was very common at the time to have black slaves as servants. He writes about them in the manner of Rousseau, if you see what I mean.”

Loredana smiled tenderly; Dr. Euclides had won her over from his very first words of welcome two hours previously; his hair and goatee flattened by the slipstream, he looked like a terrier, its pointed nose sniffing the wind …