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

Their conversation was cut short by the Countess’s voice behind them: ‘Here I am again. You must excuse me for having monopolized Euclides for so long … He’s waiting for you in the garage.” With a grimace of contempt and looking up at the heavens, she explained, “My husband absolutely insists on showing his collection of cars to anyone who hasn’t seen it before. It’s tedious, but he does it every time. I’ll take you there, if you don’t mind.”

As they stood up to follow her, Carlotta gave the bottle of champagne a quick glance and smiled at Eléazard. “You’re French, I believe?”

While congratulating himself on having hidden the first bottle in the bushes, Eléazard felt a sudden itching sensation in his scalp.

“Don’t worry,” she assured him, taking his arm, “the champagne’s there to be drunk. I’m just glad it’s appreciated.” Her breath stank of alcohol, showing that she, like them, had drunk more than was sensible.

“Tell me, Monsieur Von … Wogau — I hope I’ve got it right?” And after he had confirmed she had not mispronounced his name, she went on, “Would you be related to Elaine von Wogau, a professor at the University of Brazilia?”

Eléazard felt his heart start to pound. A sour taste came up into his mouth. Making an effort to control his voice, he replied in an offhand way, “We’re in the middle of a divorce. If we ever were a ‘family’ it’s in a pretty bad way now.”

He saw the amused look in Loredana’s eyes.

“Oh, do forgive me,” the Countess said looking seriously embarrassed. “It’s … I just thought … Oh my God, I really am sorry.”

“No harm done, I assure you,” he said, smiling at her consternation as if it had surprised him. “It’s ancient history by now, or at least well on its way. You know her?”

“Not personally, no. It’s my son who spoke about her, he works with her, at the university. But if I’d known, really …”

“There’s no need to apologize, it’s not important, believe me. So you’ve a son who’s a geologist?”

“Yes, and a brilliant one, from what people say. He was chosen to take part in an expedition to the Mato Grosso with your … I mean with his professor — Oh, God, I really am confused! — and we’ve had no news from him since they left. I know there’s nothing to fear, but you know how it is, you can’t stop yourself worrying.”

“I hadn’t heard about it. My daughter doesn’t tell me anything about her mother. Doubtless she thinks she’s being diplomatic, at least that’s what I tell myself. But there’s no need to worry, my wife — after all, she is still my wife—” he added in a bantering tone, “my wife is very competent, your boy’s in safe hands with her …”

Loredana observed all this as if she were watching a drawing room comedy. She followed in their wake as a path opened up for the Countess and Eléazard through the crowd of guests. The atmosphere had relaxed: stimulated by the wine, the penguins of both sexes — she clearly recalled their affected airs behind the misted glass in Milan Zoo — seemed less stiff. Having established a sort of territory, they cackled and prattled away with gay abandon, chests puffed out, beaks half-open. They strutted around, they choked with laughter, subject to quiverings and sudden flushes, they confronted each other, crop against crop; under the impassive gaze of the waiters, they revealed important penguin secrets, enjoying a delightful feeling, a mixture of the sense of their own superiority and the pleasure of cornering others in the sad servility of gratitude. The ladies were talking breeding, hatching and nestlings, preening their feathers with knowing looks. A glass accidentally dropped opened up a crater in the throng from which shrill cries flew out but which closed up again almost immediately, like a viscous bubble on the surface of the magma. They discussed strategies for the ice floes, while quaking at the thought of the invisible proximity of killer whales, they worked themselves up into fears as great as the hole in the ozone layer, as torrid as the greenhouse effect, as drenching as global warming. Some were up in arms against the policies of the bears, others, flapping their wings in argument-clinching fashion, denounced the fishes’ unreasonable demands or expressed paternal sympathy with the distant and pathetic caricature of the species on the other pole. But they were unanimous in their admiration for the gulls’ fantastic ability to fly, not without hinting that there was no doubt that with a little more order, morality and conscientiousness the penguins themselves would have taken flight … Everywhere there was the glint of little stupid eyes inside dark rings.

Leaving the entrance hall by a side door, they walked along under the arcades of a gallery covered in the pink effervescence of bougainvillea. With the servants keeping people out, this part of the fazenda was deserted and hardly lit, so that the Southern Cross could be clearly seen, isolated amid myriads of less bright stars.

The Countess stopped for a moment to look at the sky. “All these people make me feel sick,” she said to Loredana, taking a deep breath of the night air, as if to clear her mind and body of the fumes of the party. “I wouldn’t mind a glass of champagne … I don’t imagine you’re in a hurry to see those bloody cars?”

Eléazard offered to go and get a glass and the two women sat on the little wall between the columns. “He’s nice,” the Countess said when they were alone. “I’m annoyed with myself for saying the wrong thing back there.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think he was offended. Having said that, he never talks about it, which shows it must still touch a raw nerve.”

“Are you an item?”

Surprised by such a direct question, Loredana put her head on one side slightly. “You don’t beat about the bush, do you?” she smiled, knitting her brows. After a short pause for thought, she went on, “No, at least not at the moment … but to tell the truth, I like him well enough for that to be conceivable …”

This declaration left her speechless. She had just expressed, out loud and to someone who was more or less a stranger, a desire she had never admitted so directly to herself yet. While recognizing the reality of her attraction to Eléazard, she was annoyed with herself for having forgotten, if only for a moment, the impossibility of a liaison with him.

“I must be more drunk than I thought to say things like that,” she admitted with an embarrassed laugh.

“Don’t worry, you’re still less drunk than I am,” the Countess said, taking her hand. “that’s one of the advantages of champagne, it loosens your tongue, or rather, it frees it from the bars imposed on it by convention. I like you, both of you, you’d make a lovely couple.”

Almost completely cloaked in the bougainvillea, the governor’s wife seemed like a pagan idol, a calm and thoughtful prophetess whose words had the force of an oracle. She must have been very beautiful, Loredana thought, scrutinizing the lines of her face.

“If you knew how weary I am, sick and tired of everything,” the Countess suddenly said in a tone of profound helplessness. “I’ve only met you this evening, but these are things one can only admit in the combined intoxication and miracle of a meeting of minds. My husband doesn’t love me anymore, or not enough to stop me from hating him, my son’s far away and I’m getting old”—she gave a smile of self-deprecation—“like a pot in a corner of the dresser.”

Guessed, other people’s distress is almost always moving, even if the emotion only results in purely formal compassion; brazenly expressed, it inevitably provokes irritation. How feeble, Loredana thought, how self-indulgent! What was the bitterness of a grand lady compared with the threat that had been hanging over her for months? Did we have to be irrevocably deprived of our freedom before we could finally see its workings, before we could discover the value of the simple fact of being alive, of still existing?