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

Returning to the laboratory with another meal at dinner time, he was so surprised to find the morning’s tray untouched that he could not resist taking a glance inside the chamber: only dimly lit by the reddish light from a little stained-glass lamp, Mei-li was lying at the foot of the altar. Was she ill? Perhaps dying?! Locking the door behind him, Sinibaldus dashed over to the young Chinese woman …

He had hardly shaken her than she opened eyes full of tears. Clinging to his neck with her head between his arms, she started to sob. Although reassured about her state of health, Sinibaldus was concerned by these irresistible tears. For a moment he thought she had committed some irreparable fault in keeping watch over the Great Work & turned to look at the crucible: the furnace was roaring as it ought to, nothing needed to keep it going seemed to have been omitted. His fears on that point calmed, he set about comforting this magnificent creature, who was leaning against his shoulder giving rein to the most intense sorrow. After many friendly words and chaste caresses he managed to get Mei-li to dry her tears & give him an explanation of her despair.

“Oh, signore,” she said, her voice still broken by sobs, “how can I tell you that without earning your contempt? You who are so good & have shown us such trust. I’d rather die a thousand deaths … Why must I be the one to suffer such shame and misfortune?”

She spoke Italian fluently but with an accent that made her even more adorable. Sinibaldus did everything he could to get her to speak, assuring her that he would pardon her whatever she said. He had loved this young woman in silence for so many days & here she was huddling up to him in a most delightful state of abandon. The kind of oriental gown she always wore had become undone, revealing a warm, firm bosom he could feel throbbing against his chest. Her thick, jet-black hair gave off an intoxicating perfume; her imploring lips seemed to beg the tenderest of kisses & the ardor of her look expressed transports of love rather than deep distress. Beside himself with desire, Sinibaldus would have consigned the Great Work itself to the rubbish bin at the slightest sign from Mei-li.

When she saw that he had reached that state, the wily woman finally agreed to explain the reason for her despair: Salomon Blauenstein was a saintly man, a gentle, considerate husband, an alchemist unique in his knowledge & experience, but he would never manage to produce the elixir of life without one requirement she alone knew about. She had never had the courage to tell her husband about it, so certain she was that he would have renounced his quest rather than obey it. To bring about the true transformation, not that of gold, which presented no difficulty at all, but that of the elixir of youth, something other than inert matter was necessary.

“How could something without life,” the bewitching Chinese said, “produce immortality? You will clearly see that that is impossible & that is the reason why all alchemists had failed up to now. All, that is, apart from certain masters in my country who were aware of the truth & made use of it for their great good fortune.”

“But this ingredient, signora? Tell me, I beg you.”

“This secret ingredient, signore, the true materia prima , without which no transformation can be completed, is human seed, that metaphysical concentrate of divine power thanks to which life is created & renewed. Even that is not of itself sufficient, it also requires love, the passion whose heat alone indissolubly unites man’s seed to woman’s & allows the Stone to coagulate at the last stage of the Great Work. That is the cause, the sole cause of my despair.”

Once more Mei-li burst out sobbing & it was only with the greatest of difficulty that Sinibaldus managed to draw these final words, punctuated by hiccups, out of her: ‘I respect my husband, my feelings for him are those of infinite friendship & gratitude, but … I do not love him. That essential ardor, that inclination, I have not felt until now … until now that … now that you have aroused it in me, monsieur. To my misfortune, to yours & that of my husband, I can see, alas, that you are far from sharing that emotion & that henceforward nothing can save our joint enterprise. It was for you that I was crying, imagining your disappointment after so many hopes, so many illusions; as for myself, I will not survive this calamity …”

This sent the bashful lover that Sieur Sinibaldus had so far been into a frenzy. Mei-li’s declaration not only assured him of an unhoped-for joy but also of the success of the Great Work. Beside himself, forgetting his wife & his children, he covered Mei-li in kisses, laughing & crying at the same time, declaring the passion he had kept hidden for so many months in the most extravagant terms. He had never loved anyone but her, it was as if the goddess Isis had finally found her Osiris & there could no longer be any doubt that they were blessed by God.

The little hussy feigned surprise, then the most unbridled passion & it was there, on the stone floor, that they disported themselves in their lewd Cyprian acts.

During the two weeks in which they remained locked in the laboratory the emissions of their lust poured out constantly. Mei-li carefully scooped up this disgusting mixture in a porcelain vase, then poured it into little wax figurines they made themselves to represent various Chinese gods, but also Christ & the apostles. They then threw these blasphemous idols into the crucible with all sorts of ceremonies & the orgy started up again. Blinded by passion & pride, Sinibaldus obeyed her in everything without for one moment seeing the abyss into which he was sinking.

At the time he had previously fixed, Salomon Blauenstein returned from his supposed retreat. Sinibaldus, who had gone up to his room a little earlier to allay suspicion, came down to meet him. He was surprised at how pale the alchemist looked & at the evidence of privations written all over his face. As for Blauenstein, who had actually spent the time in a brothel in Travestere, he saw the same signs of exhaustion in his host’s face, although without deceiving himself as to their true origin; from that point on he was in no doubt about the success of his scheme. They greeted each other warmly &, after the alchemist pretended to set his mind at rest concerning the strict obedience to his orders, they went into the laboratory.

In the beginning the world did not exist. Neither darkness, nor light, nor anything that could have taken their place. But there were six invisible things: little benches, pot stands, gourds, manioc, ipadu leaves that make you dream when you chew them and plugs of tobacco. A woman made herself out of these things, that were floating around, and appeared, all decked out in finery, in her splendid quartz dwelling. Yebá Beló was her name, the ancestral mother, she who was not begotten … In the time it takes to say “Ugh!” she started to think up the world the way it ought to be. And while she was thinking, she chewed ipadu and smoked a magic cigar .

When the Indian dragged her out of the Forró da Zefa , Moéma was under no illusion about what would happen between them that night. Worried by Roetgen’s absence, she spent a few seconds looking for him in the crowd. Not that she felt obliged to explain what she was doing, but she had insisted on bringing him here and felt bad about abandoning him in such cavalier fashion in a world he wasn’t yet familiar with. As for Thaïs, that was both simpler and more awkward: their liaison being based on absolute sexual liberty, Moéma was not committed to anything in that respect. They believed that the love they had for each other — a topic that reappeared in crucial fashion every time one suffered at the other’s escapades — went far beyond physical vagaries. Instead of undermining their relationship, this independence “fertilized” it, enlarged it … Since, however, this naive generosity of spirit could not prevent either jealousy or the anguish of feeling abandoned, they had come to the point where they observed maximum discretion when they went off with someone else. Moéma was therefore hurrying to avoid running into her friend when she saw her dancing with Marlene. Caught out, she replied to Thaïs’ look by fanning herself with her hand, as if to say the heat was too much for her and she was going out for a breath of fresh air. When the response to her bit of playacting was a sad, disbelieving smile, Moéma turned away in irritation.