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

When the alarm on his wristwatch woke him, the first thing Roetgen did was to look at Moéma’s hammock: it was hanging there, slack and empty as a snake’s slough. Thaïs’s face appeared from hers, puffy and smeared with eyeliner. There was a look of panic in her eyes and she started to spew on the sand with the uncontrollable retching of a dying cat.

Outside the world was bathed in that silvery light the night leaves behind after its initial withdrawal. A slug’s trail, Roetgen thought looking at the sea. The wind could not be felt anymore, it was pushing the blackness, sweeping it into rough piles, out toward the distant horizon. A cock crowed, then broke off right in the middle of a vibrato, as if strangled by the outrage of its own voice.

Roetgen hurried over to João’s hut, wondering where Moéma could have spent the night. Soiled by disgusting objects that had been thrown away — there was even what looked like a sanitary napkin wrapped up in a pair of panties — the street was like a damp beach churned up by some foul storm. As he passed Seu Alcides’s bar, Roetgen felt a twinge of regret and looked away.

João was squatting under his awning, checking his fishing equipment. He seemed pleasantly surprised. “ Bom dia, françès … I was worried you wouldn’t come,” he said with a smile. “You look like death warmed over.”

“Slept badly … The sea air’ll soon put me right.”

“Well off we go, then. There you are,” he said handing him what looked like a red plastic cannonball, the same as the one he had slung over his shoulder, “I’ve got your things ready. Put everything you’ve got in your pockets in there, everything you don’t want to get wet.”

Looking at it more closely, Roetgen realized that it was an old mooring buoy, probably picked up off the beach; at the top a broad cork stopper had been fitted into a circular opening. A cord attached to either side made it into a waterproof bag.

They walked down the road until they came to a little blue house, which they entered without knocking.

“Morning!” said João to the caboclo still half-asleep behind his counter. “Get a move on, the wind’s going to turn.”

Without bothering to reply, the man stood up, muttering indistinctly. With the slowness of an iguana, he gathered together a slab of rapadura , a piece of candle, a box of matches and a paper cone of farinha .

“Who’s he?” he asked, pointing to Roetgen with his chin.

“Luís’s replacement,” said João irritatedly. “Give him his share.”

“You’re sure?”

“Don’t try to understand. We’ve made an agreement with Luís, I tell you … Get on with it, we’re in a hurry.”

The iguana got moving again and, with a suspicious look, placed the same list of objects as before on the counter.

“Put that in your ball, rapaz , we’re off,” João said to Roetgen.

They left without paying, but once they were out in the street, the fisherman explained: the “cooperative” belonged to the owner of the jangadas, a guy who lived in Arcati; for every fishing trip, each of the men was given these paltry supplies free of charge, but on their return their share in the fish was exchanged for credit in the same shop. The system worked without money, increasing the fishermen’s bondage and the owner’s profits.

Appalled, Roetgen wanted to learn more about the owner, but he came up against João’s fatalism: it was the same all along the coast, there was nothing to do but thank God and the guy for giving them the chance to survive.

When they reached the dunes they went along the crest until they came to a place where some scrubby plants grew. Using his machete, João started to chop up the dry brambles.

“It’s for the brazier,” João said, handing Roetgen the first part of his harvest. “There’s already some on board, but it’s better to take a full load. You never know.”

They were going from bush to bush when João pointed out a long trail in the sand, the kind of winding mark you’d leave if you were pulling a garden hose behind you.

“ Cobra de veado ,” he muttered, following its indistinct course. Then he went over to a spiny bush and cautiously pulled the branches aside: coiled up, a fair-sized python was doubtless digesting that night’s catch. The animal didn’t have the time to wake up before João had decapitated it.

“ Matei o bicho! I’ve killed the beast,” he exclaimed with a kind of childish pride.

Dumbfounded by the presence of such a snake in the dunes and by the fisherman’s reaction, Roetgen watched as he picked up the corpse, still twisted in impossible knots, and whirled it around like a sling before sending it flying through the air to crash to the ground several yards away.

Saint George killing the dragon, prouder at having overcome his fear than at having triumphed over evil for a brief moment … Or was it rather a sacrifice, a propitiation come from the depths of time to haunt our self-obsessed century?

From the spot where the dunes were spattered with blood they went down to the beach.

The two other fishermen had just finished pushing a coconut log under the spatula-shaped prow of the jangada. Fairly young, with no teeth — Roetgen could never remember Brazil without visualizing these toothless mouths created by starvation — they didn’t seem very communicative: Paulino, bulging muscles, woolly hair browned by the salt; Isaac, frailer, hollow chest caused by a congenital malformation of the sternum.

João put the wood in a basket, checked the position of the log and the four men braced themselves against the boat until it was balanced on the cylinder of wood, keeping it in that position while Paulino placed a second roller under the prow then hurried back to help the others push. As soon as one roller emerged at the back, he took it around to the prow, continuing to do so all the way to the edge of the water. Once the jangada was afloat, Isaac took all the heavy logs far enough back on the sand to be out of the way of the incoming tide, while they held the boat on the waves, immersed up to the waist. As soon as he returned they all heaved themselves up into the boat together. Grasping the rudder, João immediately hauled on the mainsheet and the jangada started to glide across the sea with the ease and grace of a sailing dinghy.

Behind them the dunes were turning pink as other jangadas, sails unfurled, seemed to be hurrying after them, bumping across the shore like crumpled butterflies.

IN A CROSSWIND the jangada headed straight for the open sea, with the characteristic lapping of the water against the hull and the gentle swaying that forces the body to adjust its balance all the time. Standing at the stern, his buttocks propped on a sort of narrow bench, João was concentrating on steering, both hands glued firmly to the steering oar. Roetgen was sitting with Isaac and Paulino on the windward side; he’d started nibbling his block of rapadura , less from hunger than to fit in with the others. Happy to be at sea, he examined the boat with the keen appreciation of a sailing enthusiast.

About seven yards long and two yards wide, the jangada was of a marvelous technical elegance. Shaped like a decked barge with no handrail or cockpit, the hull narrowed elegantly at either end, making it more like a sailboard than any flat-bottomed vessel. Apart from the thwart, at the stern, and a sort of trestle just in front that was used to wind the sheets around or to lean against when standing up, the only other component was a beam of solid wood supported by rods into which was fitted a detachable, unstayed lateen yard, slender and supple, like the rib of a leaf.