THE STORY I am about to relate is a marvelous example of divine omnipotence & shows how it manifests itself by unfathomable ways in the most virtuous of men.Athanasius’s mystical night: how Father Kircher journeyed through the skies without leaving his room. The vermicelli of the plague & the story of Count Karnice
THE STORY I am about to relate is a marvelous example of divine omnipotence & shows how it manifests itself by unfathomable ways in the most virtuous of men.
After my master had knelt at his prie-dieu, he started to murmur in a plaintive & disjointed manner, as if he were answering someone & commenting, although laboriously, on the images flooding into his mind. I went over with the idea of helping him, but also of hearing what Our Lord had chosen to say to him, so that I could testify to it later. Kircher clutched my hand feverishly; his eyes were wide, moist & clouded, as you see on the pictures of saints, but he nevertheless appeared to recognize me.
“Ah, Cosmiel!” he exclaimed with delight, trembling all over. “I am so grateful to you for condescending to come to me …”
“I am merely obeying the All-powerful,” said a low, rumbling voice, grave, distorted & appearing to come from a metal throat.
I was frightened beyond expression, having in the past seen a man possessed through whom Beelzebub expressed himself in the same way. But I immediately recalled the name of Cosmiel & that calmed my fear somewhat: my master was only possessed by angels or, to be more precise, by the most noble & most learned of the heavenly host.
“Prepare yourself, Athanasius,” Cosmiel went on through Kircher’s mouth, “you have been chosen & you will have to show that you are worthy of this favor. For though the journey for which Virgil was the guide existed in Dante’s imagination alone, I have truly been sent by God to lead you forward in the knowledge of the universe created by His will. Come now, it is time to set off for infinite space. Open that window, Athanasius, and cling on where you can, while I spread my wings.”
“I hear & I obey,” Kircher replied in earnest tones.
He stood up & made his way unsteadily toward the window. I was afraid that he might be going to throw himself out—& that if he had done so I would have not held him back, so sure I was that his faith & the presence of the angel would have prevented him from falling, carrying him through the air much better than my artificial wings had carried me all those years ago—but he did nothing more than contemplate the star-studded night, as if transfixed by the vision of the heavens he was traversing together with Cosmiel.
From his repeated exclamations I soon realized that my master had reached the moon. He described it in the most minute detail, flying over its seas & mountains with exclamations all the time about the new things he was seeing.
After the moon Kircher went to the planet Mercury, to Venus, then the Sun, where I really believed he was going to suffocate, such were his sufferings from the great heat there. After that it was Mars, of which Cosmiel maintained it was an evil planet, responsible for the plague & other epidemics on Earth; Jupiter with its satellites &, finally, Saturn with its rainbow-colored rings.
On each of the planets he visited, something no man had done before, my master was greeted by the angel or archangel governing its influence. Confirming the Scriptures point by point, he met Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raguel, Saraquael & Remiel, who spoke directly to him to tell him about the sphere where he was.
Kircher’s astonishment reached its peak when he came to the Firmament, the region of the fixed stars. Far from being stuck onto a celestial crystal sphere, the innumerable stars moved in the same way as the planets: Aristotle, the prince of philosophers, had been greatly mistaken about the nature of the eighth heaven.
“Yes, Athanasius,” his guardian angel said, “every star has its own governing intelligence, whose task is to keep its movement within its proper orbit, thus preserving the eternal & immutable laws. Like all the creatures of God, the stars are born & die over the centuries. And the Firmament, as you can see, is neither incorruptible, nor solid, nor finite.”
I was trembling at the thought that someone other than I might hear these words. They expressed, without circumlocution, the doctrine of the plurality of worlds and the corruptibility of the heavens, a heresy for which Giordano Bruno had been burned at the stake a few years previously. A horrible torture that old Galileo had only just escaped, & for the same reasons, by agreeing to recant.
Kircher was shaken by long shudders, which even made his beard stand on end, but he did not appear to feel any fear. To be honest, the longer he continued in the company of the angel, the more his face was radiant with intense happiness.
“Look, Athanasius, look carefully. It is at the very heart of this unfathomable abyss that the mystery of the deity is hidden. The soul alone can understand this mystery; for the moment be content with the immense privilege that has been granted you. Praise & worship God in all his blazing glory. Day is breaking, it is time for me to return to the first Choir of the celestial hierarchy. So until we meet again. You will not fail in your mission, for I will be with you.”
Then it was as if Kircher had been struck by lightning. He fainted and slumped down onto the tiles. I hurriedly shut the window before laying him on his bed & making him inhale some spirits of wine.
When he recovered consciousness, my master was in a high fever. Streaming with sweat, he was delirious for several hours without my being able to catch a word he was saying. I did not dare seek assistance for fear he might start upholding some heresy more dangerous for his health than this strange ailment to which he had fallen prey.
But, thanks be to heaven, after a fit of acute euphoria, Athanasius suddenly calmed down. His breathing became normal again, his eyes closed &, clasping his hands on his chest, he muttered a fable, which he assured me was translated from Coptic, stopping after each sentence, as if he were saying a prayer:
Father Gustave listened to his worthy abbot, John Colobos, dictating the new arrangements he had made: “It is with justification & a very great comfort that, as I set out, you will assume my office while I feed on herbage, following with the utmost rigor the example of my venerable forerunners. Soon I will be alone out in the hindmost parts of the desert.”
The heat was enough to cremate him, but Abbot John went on his way out onto the sand, a saintly hermit, a psalm on his lips, chanted in a minor key, while chewing on a kebab, which was nourishing and tasty.
He knelt by the edge of the wadi, and it echoed & echoed to his cry of deepest despair: “Peccavi!” But all at once, e’er the penitent Abbot John had finished his heartfelt confession, a most ghastly, hideous two-horned demon appeared in a blinding light &, with loud, obscene fulminations, proceeded to whip & flay John’s back like a voracious vulture. Thus made aware of his sinful state, his feeble prayers, Abbot John was seized with remorse, knelt down & right urgently began to commend his soul to God, binding himself with vows to extol the Most High by celebrating His great goodness, thus entering that most blessed legion of all the faithful with the noble aim of seeing the conversion of all men.
“Peccavi?” Kircher repeated, just before falling asleep, & that in a tone of quiet astonishment.
The reader will understand my anxiety as I waited for him to wake up. I feared my master would not come out of such a crucial experience unscathed. Even though this vision granted him by God was a great honor, making him even more precious in my eyes than previously, I was still afraid that he might continue talking to the angels for ever.
Fortunately, when he woke, six hours later, his rapture had left no aftereffects. His eyes were slightly more sunken, proof of the physical fatigue caused by his excursion, but he recognized me immediately & spoke to me in a wholly rational manner. He remembered his night with the angel perfectly, at least in its broad lines; as for the detail, he admitted he was unable to remember a single word of what he had said or heard. This made me more than ever glad I had a good memory & he was delighted to hear these revelations again.
Kircher confirmed in every respect the impression I had formed during the night. From the very beginning of Christina’s concert in the Farnese Palace, he had felt overwhelmed by the music, as if he could not only perceive the most subtle harmonies but also discover the profound meaning of the universal rhythm. The music produced by the instruments quickly disappeared, to be replaced by innumerable polyphonies instantly created by his imagination. He counted the buttons on his cassock in his head & that produced a chord; he followed the lines of a piece of furniture or a statue in his mind & he heard a melody, as if all the beings and objects in this world were capable of generating their own music, pleasing or dissonant, depending on the extent to which their structure obeyed the golden rule of proportion.
In the same way, my master had heard the harmony of the celestial spheres as we returned to the College & it was not long before the angel Cosmiel had appeared. Kircher gave me a detailed description of his youthful and surprising beauty; that of the most perfect of da Vinci’s angels would have paled beside him.
As for his voyage to the stars, Athanasius confessed that he had never experienced anything as marvelous. He took it for granted that it had been just as real as our walk in Sicily, although the knowledge he had harvested from it was much more valuable. Immediately he thought of writing an account of it for the edification of mankind, a project I approved of with all my heart & that I urged him to carry out.
After another night of rest, Kircher put aside all the studies on which he was engaged in order to start composing the Iter Extaticum Cœleste in which, he told me, new truths about the structure of the universe would be explained in the form of a dialogue between Cosmiel & Theodidact. And in that pseudonym, behind which my master hid, I once more saw all his natural modesty.
Sixteen fifty-six, alas, was a year that started under very unfavorable auspices: the news came that Naples had been devastated by the plague, which had come from the south. Although it had happened a long time ago, everyone still remembered the epidemic that had carried off three-quarters of the inhabitants of Rome, but such is the frailty of human nature that no one thought the scourge would reach this far again. People were very sorry for the inhabitants of Naples who were dying, but they must have sinned horribly for God to visit such a punishment on them. Protected, they thought, by the presence of the Pope in their city & their presumed virtuousness, the Romans continued to live a life of carefree enjoyment.
The first cases appeared in January, in the poor districts, without really causing alarm among a population used to all sorts of illnesses & whose shameless debauchery made them likely victims of divine anger. In March three hundred deaths were reported … Alone among the nobility Queen Christina took measures to avoid the threat: alerted by the figures & in less time that it takes my pen to write it down, she left a city that had given her such a magnificent welcome, thus removing to Paris, where Cardinal Mazarin had invited her, the appalling conduct which, even today, I cannot help thinking was the sole cause of the misfortunes that struck our beautiful metropolis.
In July we finally had to face up to the fact that the Black Death was in Rome, killing and laying waste worse than the most horrible of wars. People were dropping dead like flies, with the result that they had to be buried at night & by the cartload in the common pits hastily dug out by the surrounding lower-class districts. Profiting from a situation that was so favorable for his natural evil, the devil seized the weakest souls & the most execrable heresies reappeared. The healthy, knowing their death probable, if not close at hand, indulged in orgies to the very gates of the graveyard, blaspheming God & defying death to do its worst. Never were so many crimes committed in so few days. Between July & November the epidemic carried off fifteen thousand inhabitants & people thought the end of the world had come.
During those four months when the world seemed sure to end in madness & torment, Kircher did not spare himself. Volunteering to help the sick, despite his age & our superiors’ desire not to have him exposed unnecessarily, from the very beginning he undertook to work alongside his friend, James Alban Gibbs. We therefore spent most of our time in Christ’s Hospital in the Via Triumphalis.
To my great shame I have to admit that I was not exactly pleased at a decision that placed my life in such great danger, but my master’s devoted application to looking after those stricken with the plague & to seeking the causes of the implacable disease, the kindness he tirelessly showed in giving moral support to those who needed it & the example of his own courage, quickly revived more Christian feelings in me. I took Kircher as my model & never had reason to regret it.
Although he admitted such a calamity could sometimes be the result of God’s designs, my master thought that we should see it simply as the result of natural causes, like any other disease. He therefore put all his efforts into seeking out those causes.
He was fascinated by the speed & effectiveness of the disease. The plague found its way everywhere, striking rich & poor without distinction, without sparing those who thought to defy it by isolating themselves completely in their houses.
“Exactly like those ants,” Kircher said to me one day, “that invade even the most enclosed places without us being able to say by which way they came …” Just as he was finishing that sentence I saw his eyes light up, then shine: “And why not?” he went on. “Why should the cause not be even tinier animalcules, so small they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Some species of spider or miniature snake whose poison leads to death as surely as that of the most venomous of asps … We must hurry, Caspar, hurry. Run quickly to the College and bring a microscope, I must check this hypothesis immediately.”
I went immediately. One hour later my master got down to work. Cutting open the most swollen bubo we could find—that was the only operation we could perform to bring some small relief to the dying who flocked to the hospital—he cautiously collected the blood mixed with pus from it. Then he placed a few drops of this foul fluid under the lenses of his instrument.
“I thank Thee, o Lord!” he exclaimed almost immediately. “I was right, Caspar! There’s an infinite number of vermicules so small I can hardly see them, but they’re milling around like ants in an anthill & pullulating to such an extent that even Lynceus himself would not have been able to count them down to the last one … They’re alive, Caspar! Look yourself & tell me if my eyes are deceiving me.”
To my amazement, I could only confirm what my master had just described so excitedly. We repeated the experiment several times & with humors from different abscesses, but the results were always the same. While marveling at their extreme vigor, we made several drawings of these creatures that were invisible to the naked eye. I called Alban Gibbs and he came to observe Kircher’s discovery himself.
“These little worms,” my master told him, “are what propagate the plague. They are so minuscule, so fine and thin, that they can only be seen with the help of a microscope. They are so imperceptible, we could call them ‘atoms,’ but I prefer the Italian word vermicelli, which better describes their nature and their essence. For like shipworms, those dwarf worms that are, however, like elephants beside them, they nibble away from inside with a speed proportionate to their number & once their ravages are complete, they attack another victim, propagating the pestiferum virus like a mold & destroying the substance of the living organism. It is transmitted by breathing & finds refuge in our most intimate clothing. Even the flies are carriers: they suck at the sick and the corpses, contaminate our food with their excrement & transmit the disease to the humans who eat it.”
Gibbs was in a fever of excitement about what he’d seen & heard. But bearing in mind that the microscope showed us things a thousand times bigger than they were in reality, he argued that the use of the instrument should be restricted to those, such as Kircher, who were competent to make proper use of the results, knowledge of which should be reserved solis principibus, et summis Viris, Amicisque.1
Even if the cause of the contagion could finally be attributed to these vermicelli of the plague—which were certainly produced by the corruption of the air brought about by the corpses & which transmitted their mortiferous power by a sort of magnetism, just as a magnet “infects,” so to speak, any piece of metal with which it comes into contact—there was nothing as yet to suggest anything to counter this pullulating species. We therefore had no choice but to continue to use the old remedies, of which we knew only one thing: they worked for some & not for others, which was as good as saying they were ineffective. Under the direction of Gibbs and Kircher, we used toad poison—on the principle that like should be cured by like—the juice of bugloss & scabious root thinned down with a good theriac & many other preparations recommended by Galen, Discorides or more modern authorities. Unfortunately nothing worked, so that more than once I saw my master so discouraged he was brought to tears.
Dr. Sinibaldus came to work in our hospital at the height of the epidemic. Anxious to atone for his previous errors, he showed admirable zeal in tending the sick & happily God spared him & all his family.
That was not the case with everyone; the plague carried off the volunteers one after the other, so that of all the doctors who came to work with Gibbs, three-quarters did not live to see the end of the epidemic. As for those who survived, they were often left to mourn the loss of their loved ones. An example is what happened to Count Karnice, a physician at the Russian court who was compelled by the situation to stay in Rome & whose pleasure trip ended in distress & affliction.
Once the city had been declared closed, this excellent man left his young wife and their child with some friends & came to offer his services to our hospital, where he displayed unfailing selflessness.
On the evening of August 15, a servant sent by his friends informed him that his wife had died. She had been carried away within a few hours & he would have to hurry if he wanted to see her sweet face one last time. Since there had been an influx of patients & the living took precedence over the dead, Count Karnice, despite his own despair & our advice, decided not to leave immediately. When, two hours later, he reached his friends’ house, his wife was no longer there; she had been put in a coffin—at great expense, coffins having become almost unobtainable —& buried in the nearby graveyard. The young count poured forth his lamentations & was a pitiful sight; he would certainly have killed himself if it hadn’t been for his baby, his sole comfort in his sorrow.
Unfortunately that was only the start of his misfortunes. That very night his dear child showed all the signs of the contagion. His skin became covered in pustules the size of millet seeds, then black buboes rapidly formed in his groin & under his armpits, causing terrible pain. His screams at the bites of the vermicelli infecting his flesh were heartrending. By the early morning they had reached his meninges; he became delirious, while large livid and brown blotches appeared on his skin. Finally, at eight o’clock, God showed mercy & took him to paradise.
There was not enough money for another coffin, but in his distress, Count Karnice did not want his son to be buried in the common grave. Recalling the love his wife bore her child & arguing that they must not be separated in death, he picked up the little corpse, determined to put it in the same coffin as his wife. Abandoned by his friends, who feared the contagion & thought he was out of his mind, he went to the graveyard and got the attendant to show him the still-fresh grave of his beloved wife. Taking a spade he started to disinter her himself, trying to dull his grief by exertion.
When the metal of his spade hit the planks, he completed his awful task with his bare hands, hurrying as if he were exhuming not the mortal remains of his dead wife but a captive impatient to recover her freedom. Fumbling in the slimy soil, Count Karnice finally managed to open the lid of the coffin. What horror was in store for him: his wife’s hand shot up from the grave & slapped his cheek! As had unfortunately happened several times during those days of fear & haste, Count Karnice’s wife had been buried alive … Waking in the darkness of the tomb, the poor woman had scraped the wood with her fingernails as she attempted to escape a ghastly death. Her horribly dislocated body had stiffened like a bow in her final effort to reach the light.
Count Karnice took to his heels, distraught with terror. When they found him, he was mad.
Dietlev regained consciousness in the evening. His voice, coming from the stretcher beside the fire, made Elaine start.
“Knock, knock!” he said in a perfectly serious voice.
“Dietlev!” Elaine exclaimed, immediately going over to him. “You gave me a fright, you big bad bear.”
“Come on. Knock, knock! Who’s there?”
“I’ve no idea, Dietlev, and I don’t really care, you know.”
“Agee.”
“OK, if you insist. Agee who?”
“A geologist hitting the door with his wooden leg!” he said with a faint smile.
“I’m afraid that’s beyond me,” said Herman, “but how are you, amigo?”
Dietlev’s face darkened for a moment. His temples were still moist from the fever but his eyes were open and he seemed to be completely lucid again. “Like Long John Silver. It was a pretty drastic way of losing weight. Ten pounds, twenty pounds? How much does a leg weigh?”
“We had to do it,” Elaine said, taking his hand. “The gangrene was starting to spread.”
“I know. Don’t worry, I was thinking that too. Well, almost … How did it happen? Was it you who made the decision?”
“No, it’s Herman who made it clear to me how urgent it was. He was great, he’s the one who saved you, just him …”
Dietlev looked puzzled for a moment, as if he were trying to understand Herman’s motivation. “Danke, Herman,” he simply said.
Using German expressed more gratitude than the word itself and Petersen was aware of that. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled, “you’d have done the same in my place.”
“Where’s Mauro?”
“Here I am,” he said, moving into Dietlev’s field of vision. “you gave us all a fright, you know.”
“You can’t get rid of me that easily, as my students will tell you. Anyway, I’m thinking of coming back here next year.” He didn’t really believe what he was saying and none of them was stupid enough to take him at his word.
“You all look as if you’re at the end of your tether,” Dietlev said after having scrutinized them. “You need to get some rest, otherwise you’re not going to cope.”
“It’s been a hard day,” Elaine said, staring into space. “We’ve been squelching across the edge of the marsh, it’s not easy. And I don’t have to carry the stretcher …” But as she spoke, all she had in mind was the agonies of the amputation, the anxiety that had twisted her stomach.
“So we’ve reached the marshes?”
“Yeah, amigo,” Petersen replied. “You were down for the count, that’s when we realized how bad you were.” He hesitated for a moment, then went on, “We have to talk about this, seriously, you know … We’re never going to get there in these conditions, I mean with you, and then—”
“He’s on about it again!” Mauro said in exasperated tones, “for a long time now—”
“Let him finish, please,” Dietlev said. “Go on, Herman.”
“Listen: I stay with you and we send Yurupig on ahead. He knows the forest, he’ll get to the river three or four times quicker than us. And we can follow him at our own speed. By marking the route, he can help us avoid the dead ends he’ll have to check out himself. That will save us time and effort. If he’s quick, he can bring the rescue team to meet us.”
His suggestion immediately made sense to them. Even Mauro couldn’t find fault with it.
“What do you say, Yurupig?” Dietlev asked.
The Indian turned to look at Petersen, putting his head on one side as if to assess him better. “I agree, but you’ll have to be on your guard. When the snake offers to help the rat, it’s because he’s found a quicker way of eating it …”
“What a load of bullshit! You really can’t stand me, can you?”
“So that’s settled,” Dietlev said after a questioning glance at Elaine and Mauro. “You can take the compass, we won’t need it now. You know how to use it, don’t you?”
Yurupig closed his eyes to indicate agreement.
“Notches in the tree trunks to show the route, a cross to tell us not to go that way. You think you can make it?”
“In the forest that depends on the jaguars …”
THE NEXT MORNING, at first light, Elaine and Mauro made up a rucksack for Yurupig. They packed his share of the provisions, the compass, a cigarette lighter, a flask of alcohol and a dose of snakebite serum. When the moment came, the Indian took one of their three machetes and turned to the members of the expedition: “Take it easy,” he said, “I’ll be back.”
Cutting short their farewells, he gave them a final wave and left at a jog. Dietlev had decided to give him two hours’ start, so they lingered over breakfast after he left.
When they set off again, Elaine went on ahead. Here and there a notch weeping milky fluid indicated a path that had been freshly made through the vegetation; in fact, Yurupig had made so many marks that the trail was fairly easy to follow. The fact that they didn’t have to wonder what was the best route made everything much simpler. After two hours, Elaine took Petersen’s place carrying the stretcher. Dietlev seemed to be recovering his strength, so that Mauro gave him the Kalashnikov to hold since it hampered his movement.
The day passed without any incidents worthy of note. Once evening came, they sat around the fire again; it was time to assess the situation: as far as they could tell, they had progressed two or three times more quickly that on the previous days, but at the price of greater tiredness. Elaine above all felt the effects. Aching all over, her muscles stiff from carrying the stretcher, she had to force herself to eat and stay sitting with the others.
“My last batteries,” Mauro said, changing the ones in his Walkman. I’m gong to have to ration my music as well. He looked drawn, like a long-distance runner after the race, but he was standing up to the strain quite well. “When I think,” he went on, “that the new semester starts in three days’ time. They aren’t going to be very pleased.”
“You can say that again,” Dietlev said. “Five years ago I got back from an expedition two hours before my first lecture; an airplane hadn’t been able to take off in time, a car broke down, problems with customs … the whole works. When I got to the lecture theater, Milton was just telling my students I was absent; I thought he was going to have an apoplectic fit!”
The thought of their dead colleague cast a veil over his smile.
“Poor guy,” Mauro said. “I didn’t like him, but all the same … he was a big name …”
“A big bastard, you mean,” Elaine said wearily. “If you knew everything he put us through. His death doesn’t change that.”
“True,” Dietlev said, “but if we had to kill all the incompetents, the idiots, the corrupt, there wouldn’t be many people left in the world.”
“You never spoke a truer word, amigo,” Petersen said, interrupting his whistling.
“At least we can’t say you’re exhausted by all the walking,” Elaine said, slightly surprised at the German’s verve.
“Matter of being used to it,” he said after sniffing noisily.
“Have you caught a cold?” Elaine asked. “I must have something for it in the medicines.”
“Don’t bother.”
“I wanted to say …” Mauro paused, then went on, “I’ve been a bit hard on you, I misjudged you. It was a good idea to send Yurupig on ahead.”
Petersen made a gesture to say no need for any more apologies.
“You trust him, don’t you, despite the way you treat him?”
“Not at all. He’s doing it for you, not for me. That’s why he’ll come back. He’d have left me to die without giving it a second thought. And I’d have done the same. It’s normal.”
“I’m sure you don’t think the way you talk,” Dietlev said in a tone of mild reproach. “You can’t live without other people, as you perfectly well know —”
“Live? Don’t make me laugh. Staying alive, that’s all that counts, the rest’s not worth bothering with. And I have to say I’d rather be in my place than yours.”
In the ensuing silence, the humidity enveloped them like a blanket that hadn’t been wrung dry. The mosquitos were buzzing around like mad.
“I think we’d best get under shelter before the rain,” Mauro said.
The following day they dragged themselves out of their hammocks feeling they were even more exhausted than the previous evening. While Petersen and Mauro got the fire going again, Elaine went through their rucksacks to prepare breakfast. Since she couldn’t find the one with the pan, she turned to the two men: “There’s a rucksack missing,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Mauro asked, examining the spot where they they put all their luggage together in the evening. “That’s impossible, it must be there somewhere … Perhaps a monkey’s taken it,” he added after having convinced himself it wasn’t there.
“At night the monkeys do the same as us,” Petersen said. “They go to sleep, or at least they try to. What was in it?”
“The coffee, the mess tins, the whetstone …” Elaine said, trying to visualize the contents. “A few tins of food … It was yours, Mauro.”
“The fossil samples,” he went on, “the cutlery … I don’t really know. We’ll have to search around the camp.”
“Search as much as you like,” Petersen said with an air of indifference, “but you’ve no chance of finding anything.”
Despite that, Mauro examined the area around the camp while Herman, on his knees by the fire, was carefully blowing on the twigs.
“I don’t believe it,” Mauro said coming back empty-handed from his search. “What kind of animal could be interested in our mess tins?”
“If there was no food in them,” Petersen said, screwing up his face because of the smoke, “it can’t have been an animal.”
“So who then?” Mauro asked skeptically. “There’s only us in this stinking jungle.”
“You’re forgetting Yurupig, sonny.”
“Yurupig!” Elaine exclaimed. “He’s certainly got better things to do than come back to steal things from us. Anyway, what d’you think he’d do with a bag of mess tins?”
“You never know what’s going on inside an Indian’s head,” Herman replied with a shrug of the shoulders. “Whatever, we’re going to have to find something to heat the water in if we’re going to drink coffee.”
They heard Dietlev’s irritated voice. “Just open a tin. And come and get me out of here, I’m chilled to the bone.”
Elaine could tell at a glance that his condition had worsened. He was sweating copiously again and incapable of making the least effort as they lifted him onto the stretcher. He was stinking of urine.
“I’ll change your dressing,” Elaine said. “It doesn’t look too good this morning—but it’s the same for all of us, believe me. Did you hear all that about the rucksack? What do you think?”
“Not much. I don’t think it could be Yurupig. There are much better ways if he wanted to land us in the shit. Anyway, we’ll just have to manage with what’s left.”
He looked at his leg as Elaine gently washed the stump. “I think the gangrene’s come back.”
“No, no,” she lied, “it’s just a normal reaction after what you’ve been through.”
“Elaine …” he said in a low voice. “If I don’t make it …”
“Stop going on about it, please.”
“I’m not a little boy, as you well know, Elaine. If ever I don’t make it, I want you to know …”
He closed his eyes to concentrate better. After such a clumsy start, how could he say what he felt without sounding silly or sentimental? The words jostling each other in his mind obviously wouldn’t express anything of the veneration he had for this woman, of his desire for her ever since the time when she’d landed, almost by mistake, in his arms. She would take his solemn—too solemn—avowal of love as merely an expression of his fear of dying, and she would doubtless be right …
“Too late,” he said with a feigned smile. “I’m exhausted. Just forget it, will you?”
THEY SET OFF again along the trail marked by Yurupig. Elaine was walking like a machine, every stride had to be torn from the suction of the soil. Her mind was wandering far from the jungle and the little group she was leading. Like a driver fighting against tiredness, she took flight in daydreams that grew longer and longer and revolved around her return to Brazilia. She imagined herself replying to questions from her colleagues, from journalists. The first thing to do would be to telephone Moéma to reassure her, perhaps Eléazard as well, using the pretext of asking how he was getting on … No, it was he who would call her, or there’d be a message on her answering machine. A few concerned words, an invitation to start all over again. Without knowing why, she was convinced nothing would be the same as it was before, that all this—not just what she’d been through during the last few days, but all the rest, her sufferings, her disappointments, her divorce—that all this mess had a hidden meaning, a positive charge that would burst into life sooner or later. What had gone wrong with Eléazard? At what precise moment? Where had it started, where was the point after which they had begun to go their separate ways? She had to get back to that bifurcation in order to deliberately choose the other path, to wind the film back to their initial happiness, back to the still that would repudiate their failure, make it impossible. Once more she saw the terrace of the old house where they had lived, some fifteen years ago, when they were staying in France. The wooden table under the arbor, the wasps around the wine, the splendid torpor of a siesta in the warm shade of the plane tree—
Her fall woke her up without bringing her back to the present. Something heavy on her back was holding her to the ground; she had a cramp and the pain made her want to scream.
Mauro rushed over to her. “Are you hurt?” he asked, taking off her rucksack so she could sit up.
“It’s nothing … I’m worn out … I …”
He pushed her hair back to clean the mud off her face. “Just rest, we’ll have a break. I’m exhausted too.”
Mauro went back to help Petersen with the stretcher. Dietlev still had a high temperature, despite the aspirin he’d been swallowing. The haggard look on Elaine’s face filled him with concern: “Is there something wrong. What happened?”
“It’s stupid,” Elaine replied, blushing. “I think I must have fallen asleep while I was walking. I’ll suck a couple of sugar lumps, then it’ll be OK.” There were tears in her eyes and she was making a visible effort to look all right.
“This is a nice mess we’re in,” Petersen said sarcastically. “You’ll have sweated your sugar lumps out after a couple of hundred yards. We’ll never get there if we stop every ten minutes, I can tell you that for free.”
“We’ve been sweating our guts out for two hours now,” said Mauro irritatedly, “so cut the crap, OK? We’re exhausted, every one of us …”
Dietlev looked at them apologetically. “You’re wasting your strength for no reason. We have a break because I’m tired, because I need a pee and because this stretcher makes me seasick.”
Petersen fumbled in one of his pockets, took out a film container and tossed it to Elaine. “There you are,” he said, “take a bit, it’ll perk you up no end.”
“What is it?” she asked as she caught the container.
“Cocaína. It’s better than sugar, I can assure you.”
Elaine suddenly understood why Herman sniffed so often. And she had offered to give him something for his cold! Without giving it further thought, she tossed the little container back to him. “Thanks, but I prefer sugar, if that’s all right by you.”
For a brief moment Mauro thought there’d be no harm in trying; the Peruvians of the high plateaus chewed coca leaves to help them keep going … He met Dietlev’s reproving look and kept quiet.
HER SHIRT STICKING to her skin, sweat dripping from her hair, Elaine focused her attention entirely on the jungle. Annoyed at her fall, she determined to anticipate Yurupig’s waymarks so as not to hold up the two struggling along with the stretcher. She had no idea how long they’d been trudging along like that when a movement in the foliage made her stop in her tracks; for the first time since they’d been trekking through the forest, it was the sign not of something fleeing but approaching, so that she instinctively curled her fingers round the short handle of her machete. At the same moment a man appeared in front of her, a naked Indian, with a black hole instead of a mouth; a feathered mummy that silently split into two.
“Don’t move!” It was Petersen who spoke as she stepped back, struck dumb with fear. “Keep facing them.”
Around twenty Indians armed with bows and blowpipes had assembled in front of them. They just stood there waiting, unmoving gods, aware of their power.
“Friends!” said Elaine, stretching out her arms to show her good will. “We’re lost. Do you understand? Lost.”
The simple sound of her voice seemed to disconcert them. Some cries rang out, immediately followed by impressive intimidatory moves. One of them started stamping on the spot while pointing to Elaine’s arm.
“The gun,” Herman said urgently, “give me the gun. Quick!”
“Drop your machete,” Dietlev ordered from his stretcher, “slowly. Friends! Yaudé marangatù, we’re harmless.”
The Indians reacted solely to the dropping of the machete. The one who seemed to be their chief uttered a few words. The one nearest to him picked up the coveted object at Elaine’s feet. Then he took one step forward to speak to Dietlev.
“What’s he saying?” Mauro asked.
“No idea,” Dietlev admitted without ceasing to smile obviously at the man who had spoken. “It sounds a bit like the Guarani I’ve learned, but I can’t understand a blind word of what he’s saying. It could be a variant, but at least they seem to have calmed down. Ma-rupi?” he tried, pointing to the path made by Yurupig. “The river? Where? The white men?”
The Indian put his head on one side, then scratched his thigh to give the impression of composure. Since nothing happened, he gave a brief order and two of them came to pick up the stretcher.
“I think they’ve understood,” Mauro said with relief.
“Fucking savages,” was Petersen’s response. “I don’t know what they’ve understood, but we’ve no choice but to stick to their tail.”
TO HEAR those who are silent from having screamed too much …
AT THE BAR: “Women are like matches, as soon as they get hot they lose their heads.” Mulher é como fósforo: quando esquenta, perda a cabeza.
“WHY do we foresee only catastrophes?” Hervé Le Bras asks. “Why not see that certain consequences of human activities could protect instead of threatening us?” If it is true that we are heading for a new, fairly harsh and brutal ice age, our efforts ought to be directed toward increasing the greenhouse effect with the utmost urgency, instead of trying to reduce it.
THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY will take precise account of our disillusionments; it will be obscurantist.
THEY CAN ALWAYS TURN OUT TO BE USEFUL: bits of string, wood, plastic or rubber, small metal components, broken engines, odd parts, the scattered pieces of a whole, of a dismembered Osiris that can be used to repair, to restore a whole in the universe of things. But they can also create new, unexpected and previously unseen wholes that the reuse brings to life and to which it gives a history. Accumulation and reclamation as the foundations of creativity, the rag-and-bone man as the demiurge of a possible world; the attic as the natural refuge for poetry. And even if these things will never be used, as happens most of the time, it is the perhaps that is important, the acceptance of the potentiality of a possible advent or at the very least of the restoration of a lost unity.
THE DAY WHEN WE TIRE OF HEARING OUR FAVORITE STORY, of demanding, as most children do, a strict word-for-word retelling, is the day we enter the age of desecration. Our astonishment at the mystery is no longer triggered by its repetition, but by its ever-renewed transgression.
“AMONG MAMMALS,” A. Villiers writes, “it is dogs to which crocodiles seem particularly partial. Rose cites the case of a cayman, the stomach of which contained, apart from a woman’s diamond ring, 32 dogs’ ID tags, which, taking the dogs without ID tags into account, represents a considerable figure.”
SCIENCE has this in common with religion, that most of the time it only produces impressions of truth, but it alone has the ability to produce the thing that will dispel them. Where nothing is falsifiable, nothing is provable either.
HIGH ON LSD? Without realising it, Kircher must have ingested some rye ergot (Claviceps purpurea). His ecstatic journey was nothing but a bad trip. That is what Dr. Euclides maintains after analyzing his reactions when he took the tonic sent by Yves d’Évreux. This minuscule fungus, a parasite on rye and rich in lysergic acid, caused communal poisoning when it was inadvertently mixed with flour made from that grain. What used to be called “holy fire” or “St. Anthony’s fire.” Euclides argues very persuasively that partaking of rye ergot was at the basis of the Mysteries of Eleusis.
THE ART OF LIGHT AND SHADE contains a whole chapter on the manufacture of marbled paper. In his Natural Magic (Magia universalis naturæ et artis, sive recondita naturalium et artificalium rerum scientia, Würzburg, 1657) Caspar Schott declares that he learned the method of “painting paper with varied colors in the manner of the Turks” while watching Athanasius Kircher at work: “He made all sorts of designs on paper—people, animals, trees, towns and regions—now as breaking waves, now as various marbles, now as birds’ feathers and as all sorts of other figures.” Specialists in this matter, in particular Einen Miura, recognize Kircher as the first to introduce the art of marbled paper into Europe.
DATES of C. Schott?
ATHANASIUS KIRCHER did not take part in any of the religious controversies by which his times were rocked. An attitude of reserve that can be counted in his favor. He seems to have adopted the exhortation of Muto Vitelleschi, Father General of the Society during the Thirty Years’ War: “Let us not say: my country. Let us stop speaking a barbarous language. Let us not glorify the day on which prayer becomes nationalized …”
FROM GOETHE, in his Theory of Colours: “Thanks to Kircher, the natural sciences present themselves to us in a much livelier and brighter manner than with any of his predecessors. They have left the study and the lecture theatre for a comfortably appointed monastery with ecclesiastics who are in communication with the whole world, have influence on the whole world, who want to teach people, but also to entertain and amuse them. Even if Kircher solves very few problems, at least he brings them up and examines them in his own way. He demonstrates an ease of understanding, facility and unruffled calm in his communications.”
FROM GOETHE, again: “Each one of us has something hidden inside himself, a feeling, a memory, which, if it were known, would make the man hated.” Doubtless the worst of men also has, even more profoundly hidden, something that would make him loved.
THE SUBCONSCIOUS is but one possible strategy of dishonesty.
1 (…) to princes alone, great men and friends.