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

We made our way between the columns while my master was talking & came to a little Christian altar: a stone trough, its sole decoration the Chi-Rho symbol on each of its sides. I crossed myself again, full of intense feeling, sensing the presence of God with all my faculties. Although underground and abandoned by for so long, this chancel was inhabited …

“Help me,” Kircher said taking hold of the marble slab covering the trough, “I’m going to show you something.”

We put the lid on the ground & Athanasius told me to look inside the trough. To my great surprise I saw that it had no bottom & opened like a well onto total darkness.

“The sacred chalice, the luminous vase in which the sublime mystery of the transubstantiation takes place, rested above this well of darkness. Here, on the edge of light and dark, the wine turned into blood again, the unleavened bread to flesh, in an ever-renewed sacrifice. Night & day were reconciled in the person of Christ to maintain the balance of the universe. Here, Caspar, in this very place!”

Kircher had raised his voice & as he said these last words he cast his torch into the black hole at the bottom of the trough. After a brief fall it landed a few feet below in a shower of glowing embers, then continued to burn, though less fiercely. My heart missed a beat & my blood ran cold: below the altar, just at its base, the god Mithras seemed to be moving slowly in the glow of the dying flames.

“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Kircher murmured fervently. “Zoroaster, Hermes, Orpheus & the Greek philosophers worthy of the name, I mean the disciples of Egyptian wisdom, all believed in a single god. The very one whose multiple virtues and perfections were represented by the Egyptian priests through Osiris, Isis & Harpocrates, in a way that is a mystery for us.”

“The Trinity?” I ventured, trembling.

“Yes, Caspar: Osiris, the supreme intellect, the archetype of all beings & things; Isis, his guardian angel & his love; their respective virtues give birth to Harpocrates, their child, that is, the world perceived by our senses & this admirable harmony, this perfect concord of the universe, which we ascertain each day all around us. It is, therefore, clear that the sacrosanct & thrice-blessed Trinity, the greatest & thrice-sublime mystery of the Christian faith, has been approached in other times under the veils of esoteric mysteries. For the divine nature likes to remain veiled, it hides from the senses of common & profane men behind similes & parables. It is for that reason that Hermes Trismegistus introduced the hieroglyphs, thus becoming the prince & father of the whole of Egyptian theology and philosophy. He was the first & the most ancient of the Egyptians, the first to think of divine matters correctly, carving his opinions for eternity on immortal cyclopean stones. It is through him that Orpheus, Musaeus, Linus, Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, Parmenides, Plotinus, Melissus, Homer, Euripides & so many others had true knowledge of God & divine matters. He was the first, in his Pimander & his Asclepius , to affirm that God was One & was Goodness; the other philosophers merely followed him &, for most of the time, with less good fortune …”

My head was splitting, I must admit, at the consequences of such a vision of the world. Kircher had hit the nail on the head: there had never been either paganism or polytheism but one single religion, that of the Bible & the Gospels disguised, more or less, by the ignorance & guile of those who have turned it to their own advantage. It was no longer worth the trouble of trying to convince the infidels of the superiority of Christianity over their own belief, since it was enough, on the contrary, to show that they were identical, which until then had remained unclear—& that by logic alone, based on the most ancient texts & the lesson of the hieroglyphs. Intelligence & history could finally come to the aid of the light of the Gospels to support the indefatigable zeal of our missionaries …

“It’s marvelous!” I exclaimed, dazzled by my master & as if I had absorbed by osmosis some of the divine favor he enjoyed.

“I am merely an instrument,” he replied, “it is its creator who should be thanked. But come, let me finish my demonstration.”

Going back up the steps by which we had come, we left the basilica & soon emerged in a building with enough lights to make our torches unnecessary. After a few twists & turns we were in the transept of a church I immediately recognized.

“Yes,” said Athanasius, “Saint Clement’s. It is beneath this unremarkable chapel that the mysteries into which you have been initiated are to be found. And, as I’m sure you’ll have guessed, the altar of this third sanctuary is directly above the other two. It is thus the same god who has been worshipped here without interruption for fifteen hundred years.”

When we left Saint Clement’s the daylight blinded me for a brief moment. I was, however, less dazzled by it than by the far more decisive illumination that had set my soul on fire; I was enraptured, serene, like one who has been blessed. From that point on there was no doubt at all in my mind that in Kircher I was keeping company with a veritable saint!

“That guy’s a headcase,” Elaine said, flopping down beside Mauro. “Do you realize what he’s done? Now there’s no proof Milton was murdered …”

She was still using the familiar ‘tu’ without noticing. Mauro could have said precisely when she had started: in the heat of action, when she was giving orders, magnificent, her breasts exposed, like the figurehead on a ship.

“Calm down,” he said, taking her hand. It was exciting to continue to address her as ‘você,’ to maintain the distance between them that had now become artificial . “Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference now.”

Their voices were hoarse with weariness, the aftereffects of the emotions they had been through in the course of the day.

“What do you think we should do?” Elaine asked, as a way of countering her desire to cry. “Should we wait here?”

“It seems the most logical solution to me. I can’t see us carrying Dietlev through the jungle for days on end.”

“And if Petersen doesn’t come back?”

“He’ll come back, don’t worry, even if only to refloat his boat. And then there’s Yurupig, he won’t leave us in the lurch.”

“You didn’t see, just now, while I was discussing things with that swine, he made a sign to me to say no, as if he didn’t want us to stay on the boat. That’s why I played for time.”

“You must have misunderstood. We’ll talk to him a bit later, once we’ve got Petersen off our backs. And what about Dietlev?” he added, looking at the blood-soaked bandages, “It doesn’t look too good.”

“We need to get him to a hospital as quickly as possible. I’ve done my best, but his knee’s all smashed up.”

“You’ve done everything that could be done. I’d never’ve been able to do that, even if I’d known how. Are you a trained nurse, or what?”

Elaine managed to smile. “I wish I were. If Dietlev hadn’t helped me, I think I’d still be looking for the artery. All I’ve got is a vague memory of things I read when I was pregnant: I was terrified at the idea of being caught up in an accident unprepared. I spent months imagining the worst, it was hell. I even learned to give injections … When my daughter was born the obsession disappeared just like that. Strange, isn’t it?”

“How old is she?”

“Moéma? Eighteen. She’s studying ethnology at Fortaleza. When I think how she envied me this trip!”