Where Tigers Are at Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles Page A

his hand to thank him for his decision. “The day after tomorrow, that OK?”
    “The day after tomorrow’s OK,
amigo
,” Herman said, shaking his hand warmly over the bar. His insistent look said: we’re in agreement on the conditions, aren’t we? Reading a positive reply in Dietlev’s wink, he added, “I think it’s your turn to buy me a beer.”
    “To buy
us all
a beer,” said Dietlev. “That calls for a celebration.”
    “Excellent!” Milton exclaimed. “I’m keen to get on to the serious business.”
    Without mentioning their negotiations or the crocodile hunters, Dietlev introduced Herman as a member of the team. The next day would be devoted to stocking the boat and making their final preparations.
    “What kind of boat will we be going on?” Mauro asked.
    “The finest boat in the whole of the Pantanal! Come and have a look, it’s moored just outside,” said Herman setting off for the door. “Look, it’s the
Mensageiro da Fé
. The one next to the Customs launch.”
    “That one!” Mauro exclaimed, recognizing the old gunship he’d seen from his bedroom window.
    “That one,” said Petersen, ignoring the disparaging tone. “It’s not much to look at, true, but it’s a marvelous little boat. And with me at the helm you’ll be quite safe, trust me.”
    “The
Messenger of the Faith …
it’s a nice name,” said Elaine with a smile.
    “I wanted to call it the
Siegfried
but my wife was against it. Oh, and that reminds me, I must warn her—you’re staying to eat here, aren’t you? You’ll see, she cooks piranhas like no one else.”
    Dietlev having indicated his agreement, they went back in and sat down at the bar again while Herman shouted for Theresa at the top of his voice.
Eléazard’s notebooks
    WITTGENSTEIN: “In philosophy a question is treated like a disease.” Which means starting out by looking for all the symptoms that would allow diagnosis. Use this framework to deal with the “Kircher” question?
    ONE COULD SAY of his books what Rivarol said of Court de Gébelin’s
Monde primitif
: “It is a work that is out of proportion with the shortness of life and that demands a summary from the very first page.”
    MOÉMA’S LETTER … The magnificent arrogance of youth, the beautiful, hip-swaying, unconcerned freedom of those whose future still lies ahead. Something so obvious it makes, as if inadvertently, the old ones get off the pavement, where they no longer have a place.
    REGARDING THE TRACKS OF FOSSIL FOOTPRINTS overlapping each other that have been found on the Eyasi Plateau in Tanzania: they show that in the Pliocene, three million years ago, a young woman amused herself by walking in the footsteps of the male who was going in front of her. Elaine saw it as reassuring proof that the hominids of the distant period already resembled us. The fact that I, on the contrary, saw it as a sign of a depressing sameness of our species, was something she found irritating.
    NEVER, PERHAPS, has the transition from one century to the next been so lackluster, so drearily full of its own self-importance.
    LOREDANA … When she speaks she makes the pleasant murmuring of an onion roux in the frying pan.
    TRUTH is neither a path through the fields nor even the clearing where the light mingles with the darkness. It is the jungle itself with its murky profusion, its impenetrability. For a long time now I haven’t been looking for a way out of the forest anymore but rather trying not to get lost in its depths.
    NOTHING IS SACRED that managed, if only once, to breed intolerance.
    WRITE A SENTENCE with sugar water on a white sheet of paper, put it down by an ant-hill and film it as it appears, with the deviations in form and perhaps in meaning the insects make it undergo.
    FOR THE INFORMATION OF ELAINE, last night, from a deep sleep: “You are requested never to speak to me, not even in my dreams.”
    PIRANHA:
etymologically “gate of the clitoris.” In Amazonia its teeth are used to