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

On the dark brown sail, spotted with holes and patches, was an advert in large black letters: Industria de Extração de Aracati .

The most astonishing aspect for Roetgen, however, was the exemplary absence of all metal on the sailing boat. Not a shackle, not a nail in the construction … everything was tied or pegged; even the lateen yard and the boom, each made of several pieces were simply whipped together with fishing line!

The ultimate praise of vegetable matter, an out-of-date hymn to that age of gold that came before the sword, the arquebus, the helmet and armor. There was a time when the Indians of this coast begged forgiveness of the trees before felling them with no other cutting edge than fire and flint .

As João explained afterward, however fragile the whole might be, it did mean they could repair any damage very quickly with the means on board. This was especially the case since any ruptures always came at the weak points created by the joints and as the rope always gave way before the wood, all they had to do was to lash the pieces that had come apart together again and the boat was as good as new. The same was true of the hull, its simple construction meaning it could be repaired without the need of a carpenter. Nothing escaped this disregard of things metal, not even the anchor, the tauaçu , the stone nucleus in a framework of wood hardened by fire: four branches tied together at one end with two others forming a cross to secure the cage and grip the sand or seaweed. Always the same principle — was it economy or did it derive from something unconscious and more decisive? — governing the least of their technical productions: three branches would not have been enough to hold the stone, a fifth would have been superfluous … A theorem to explain why the principal proportions of timber had not changed an inch for thousands of years: a Roman villa or a Provençal farmhouse, a Cathar castle or a Venetian palazzo , for comparable buildings the same size of beams and rafters would be found, too thin and the wood gives way, too thick, it’s wasted. Thus the rules of these builders were founded, before all the mathematics of the resistance of materials, on a happy medium that a certain number of lost moorings or collapsed roofs had helped to establish.

A SUDDEN BURST of activity interrupted Roetgen’s reflections. At an order from João, who immediately unhitched the clew of the mainsail, the two fishermen handed the sail, then quickly spilled the wind by bundling the sail around the mast with the topping lift. Once that was done, João came to help them unstep the lateen yard and lay it down with the boom along the center of the boat. Its wings clipped, the jangada came to a halt on the green water, nothing more than a frail raft encumbered with spars, a piece of flotsam hardly fitted to brave the rigors of the Atlantic. They cast anchor. The sun was rising; all the land around had disappeared.

Paulino and Isaac were sitting on the same side, feet dangling over the edge of the platform; instinctively Roetgen went to the other side, two yards from João. He was wondering what kind of bait they were going to use when he saw him unwind his line without bothering about his hooks at all. The line having quickly reached the bottom — there could only have been about twenty yards of depth — João took it in his fingers and pulled it up and down, as if fishing with a jigger.

“You’ve nothing to use as bait?” Roetgen asked, amazed.

João was surprised anyone could even ask the question. That’s the way it was, no one did it any other way. Attracted by the jerks and the glitter of the hooks, some creature always took it eventually; once they’d hauled it up, it was used as bait for larger catches.

Hours passed, silent, somnolent hours during which the four men pursued the same quest beneath the sun. It was like the summary of an avant-garde play, Roetgen thought, reflecting on the absurdity of their situation: all alone on the Atlantic, four shipwrecked sailors dip their unbaited hooks in the water.

A slack sea, the sun burning their necks, the creak of wood, marionnette-like contortions, out of sync, abrupt at times, like sleeping bodies twitching …

Toward noon they regretted having eaten their supply of sugar so quickly. Imitating the others, Roetgen put pinches of manioc flour in his mouth, just enough to stave off the pangs of hunger and to increase his desire for another drink from the jerrican. As time passed, the expressions on their faces became more feverish, their gestures more febrile, furtive, as if the better to conjure up hope from the depths. They changed arms more often, their muscles growing numb from repeating the same action.

Racked by hunger, four shipwrecked sailors beg the god of the oceans to take pity on them, but in vain … Twitching with nervous tics, four schizophrenics try to trap flies with vinegar … Petrified, four seamen insult God, the sea and fish before deciding to eat the cabin boy …

“ Put that over your head,” João said, handing him a piece of damp sacking, “you’ll get sunstroke.” Only then did he notice the straw hats the three of them were wearing.

Toward three in the afternoon, João let out an oath and pulled in his line as quickly as possible. He’d finally managed to spear a silvery fish hardly bigger than a sprat by the tail. Eight hours, eight hours for this small fry! Immediately there was an amazing bustle of activity on the deck: while João cut his catch up into thin slivers, careful to skim the backbone, Paulino and Isaac lit a fire in an oil can that they placed on the lee side. As soon as the wood was burning, they placed an old billycan filled with seawater on this improvized brazier. You would have sworn the men were going to cook their anchovy to eat it right away. Roetgen would have swallowed it raw, so tormenting were the pangs of hunger he felt. But João shared out the strips of fish he had prepared, so that they could all now bait their lines.

Scarcely five minutes later, a strong bite tugged at his arm. Striking the fish, he started to pull in his line cautiously, terrified he might make a wrong move. João came rushing over, bellowing advice, ready to take the line out of his hands. Mortified by this lack of confidence in him, Roetgen almost yielded to the fisherman’s mute command, but his instinct took over and he started to talk to the fish in French, mixing insults and cajolery, going along with its attempts to escape, all the better to halt them smoothly after a while, oblivious to everything beyond the living tension at his fingertips.

“ Cavala ,” said João when he saw the flash zigzagging up toward the surface. “And a fine one!”

One last jerk and a sort of long bonito landed on the deck with a dull slap. Paralyzed for a moment at this change of environment, it opened its mouth before struggling blindly. If paradise or hell existed, that would be the way the dead would wriggle when they arrived in those murky nightmare regions … João disembowelled it live, chucked its entrails overboard and chopped it up into large quivering slices. Keeping back a few for renewing the bait, he put the rest in the pot to boil.

They all watched it cooking. Once it was done, Paulino took out the slices with a piece of wood and placed them in front of him. The three fishermen fell on the food, burning their fingers to roll pieces in their bag of farofa , spitting out the bones into the sea with obvious pleasure, constantly congratulating the francês on such an excellent first catch. Roetgen did the same, appreciating each mouthful, convinced he had never tasted anything so delicious.

When they were full, they could finally start fishing. It was four in the afternoon.