Which tells how Kircher delivered young Don Luis Camacho of some essential truths of which he had knowledge without knowing it
“I THINK HERE is no better way to start,” Kircher said after a brief moment of reflection, “than by asking you a very simple question: what, according to you, is the task of a teacher? Try to reply simply & not using any faculty other than common sense.”
“I think I would not be wrong,” Don Luis Camacho said earnestly, “if I said his task was to instruct. Is that not the case?”
“Very good; but to instruct in what?”
“Some area of knowledge … or, at least, one he is reputed to have mastered.”
“Of course. And I think we can say that so far you haven’t made the slightest mistake. However, there are thousands of kinds of knowledge & I imagine you will agree that they are not all of equal importance. One man might know the art of making mirrors, another that of tailoring a fine suit or of concocting a sovereign remedy for gout. Which would you say are essential to the student to attain understanding?”
“For anyone who wants to learn a trade, that of apothecary, tailor or mirror-maker, knowledge of each of these arts is essential. However, it is clear that anyone who aspires to universal understanding of things & to acquire the wellspring from which these rivers & their innumerable tributaries flow, so to speak, will have to learn the sciences …”
“Well thought out, Don Luis. But what do we mean by ‘sciences’? Would it be alchemy, magic or the art of predicting the future you were thinking of?”
“Obviously not. What I had in mind was the exact sciences, the ones that can be verified by experiment or by reason & that no one could doubt, as for example mathematics, logic, physics, mechanics …”
“Ah yes, definitely! However, we also need to define what is meant by ‘verify by experiment or reason’ in a way that does not give rise to criticism.”
“It means to go back from the effect to the cause so that we can understand the true principles at work in the world. In this I’m just repeating what I have heard people say, but it seems correct to me.”
“Absolutely correct, my son. It would be impossible to define science better than you have done. By the very act of drawing the world out of chaos, God created the principles necessary to maintain the universe and ensure that it runs harmoniously. Now, would this teacher not be at fault if he stopped halfway & did not go back to the celestial origin of these principles? Should he not, on the contrary, make every effort to show how the laws of physics, as those of the other sciences, ultimately rest on the will of the Creator alone?”
“And what is it that teaches us this holy truth, more essential than all the others? Is it the Mohammedans, the bonzes of the Buddhists or the Brahmins of China?”
“Definitely not! For it is the Bible & the Gospels, that alone contain the word of God, the Church, in that she is the principal support of the Christian religion, & her theologians, who are better equipped than anyone to understand the mysteries …”
“Well, my son, you could not define the task of a teacher more correctly: a master worthy of that name is not simply someone who teaches the true sciences, he must also expound the true religion, which is the foundation on which the laws and natural principles rest. Imagine that you are one of our missionaries. There you are in Peking, charged with both practicing & inculcating that true science which is astronomy. But one of your Chinese students makes a mistake in predicting an eclipse of the moon. What do you need to teach him?”
“The correct way of pursuing astronomy; that is, the laws regulating the movements of the planets & allowing us to calculate their courses.”
“Very good. But is that sufficient? Will your pupil not be mistaken if, predicting a new eclipse accurately, he attributes the ultimate cause of this phenomenon to some occult power of the god Fo-hi?”
“Of course. It would be my duty to get him to see that he was just as mistaken in believing in a false god as he was in his false astronomy.”
“Very good. And how should one proceed if not by using the same rule of returning to the origins, to the first principles of all things? What is valid for the sciences is equally valid for theology. So how would you go about making him see his error?”
“It seems to me that I would go back in time & the history of mankind to stand at the period of the creation of the world in order to show him by logical deduction that his god, Fo-hi, is a later invention & has never existed except in the imagination of ignorant men.”
“True. But are we here talking of history as conceived by Herodotus or Pausanias, that is, of true accounts, and fairly recent ones at that? No. What we need, as you see, is knowledge of the origins or, to put it in Greek, an ‘archaeology.’ And to whom or to what must we turn in order to acquire this science of first principles?”
“To the Holy Bible &, more specifically, to the chapter in Genesis that deals with these questions.”
“Exactly. But we must go further & ask what, in Genesis, are the crucial moments, those that set all the rest in motion?”
Don Luis Camacho concentrated for a long time, counting on his fingers the stages as they came back to mind. “There are five,” he said with the assurance of youth, “the creation of man by God, the Fall, the murder of Abel by Cain, the Flood & the confusion of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel.”
“Well done, my son. Your answer is worthy of a most eminent historian. Having said that, can you not distinguish, among these original moments, any that we could establish with all the marks of certainty, as knowledge with the same degree of assurance as that which persuades us to believe the stories of Herodotus, since we can still see today the animals or the monuments he described four hundred and forty-five years before the birth of Our Lord?”
“I have to admit I can’t. My mind is suddenly a blank & …” Don Luis Camacho’s pretty face turned crimson, such was the distress his inability to answer caused him.
Kircher got up to look for something in the gallery where we were & came back to us with various objects, which he put down on the table. “Here,” my master said, showing Don Luis Camacho the selection he had made from among his collections, “here are several pieces that should help you to solve the problem you have just been set. Do these stone fish and shells not look as if they had been sculpted intaglio by an artist with a wonderful skill at representing this kind of creature?”
“Definitely!” the boy replied admiringly. “I have never seen any so perfectly copied.”
“And with good reason,” Kircher went on with a smile, “for these are genuine marine animals brought back by various missionary friends of mine. They were found, trapped in the rock, on the summits of some of the highest mountains on Earth; in Asia, in Africa & in America. How would you explain their presence so far from their habitual element?”
“I don’t know … They must have been carried up there for some reason or other … or at some very ancient time the sea must have been very high &—oh, my God, I think I’ve got it! Could it be the Flood?”
“Excellent! Did I not say you would find the answer yourself, on condition that you had a subject that would allow full scope to your intellect? Yes, the Flood. For there is no other possible explanation for the presence of so many aquatic animals on the summits. There is in this a clear relationship of cause and effect that verifies not only the text of the Bible but all subsequent writings that recall that terrible cataclysm. I am thinking, of course, of Plato who, in the dialogues of the Critias & the Timaeus, describes how Atlantis was engulfed, but also of a number of other traditions that recount the same flood, though also distorting it. The Brahmins, from what Father Roth says, testify to it in their rituals & the priests of Zoroaster do the same in the Kingdom of Persia; Father Walter Sonnenberg, who is in Manila, says the same of all the tribes of the Asian archipelagos, Saint Francis Xavier of the negroes of Malacca, Valentin Stansel of the Topinambus of Brazil, Alejandro Fabiàn of the Mexicans, Lejeune & Sagard of the Hurons of Canada … For God wanted all these peoples to retain, even in the depths of their idolatry, the memory of the punishment inflicted on them in the past for their disobedience. These proofs are amply sufficient, but if they should not suffice, here is something that would win over the most obdurate of unbelievers.”
Opening a precious casket and unfolding the cloth protecting it with infinite caution, Kircher showed us a very old piece of wood. “This fragment of cedar,” he said, “so uninteresting at first sight, was taken by Father Boym, during his journey in Armenia, from a very old piece of wreckage he discovered on top of a mountain the people of that country call Ararat …”
“Mount Ararat?! Are you suggesting that this is—”
“A genuine fragment from Noah’s Ark. Yes my son. The ark was the miracle of the world, the universe in microcosm, the seedbed of all living, sentient nature, the refuge of a world about to perish & a favorable omen for a world that was reborn. Just remember, its length was ten times that of its height, proportions that are exactly those of a human body with arms outstretched or, rather, a crucified body! The wood of the Ark is comparable to that of the Cross: for Noah as for Christ it was the instrument of salvation, of redemption offered to mankind. And this ark, outside which there is no salvation, is the Church! Tossed to and fro like a fragile ship in the tempest of the centuries & heresies, loaded with men who, truly, have the ferocity of lions, the greed of wolves, the cunning of foxes, who are lustful as swine & as prone to anger as dogs, the Church resists the flood of passions & remains, thanks to God, free, intact and invincible.”
“Magnificent, that is truly magnificent!” Father Nithard exclaimed. “What do you think, your Highness?”
I could not tell whether the Queen Mother had enough Latin to follow the finer points of Kircher’s argumentation, but she gravely nodded her approval.
“I will continue, then. If we can prove, as I have just done, the reality of the Flood, that is to say that all the lands were actually submerged & mankind disappeared completely for a year, apart from Noah & his family, should we not consider the history of the world as beginning again from that moment, that is, according to my calculations, in the 1657th year after the Creation or 2396 years before the birth of Our Lord?”
“It seems to me—”
“We can pursue the same reasoning starting out from the ruins of Babel, of which I have a stone here that Signore Pietro della Valle brought to me as evidence of his discovery. To prove that the Tower of Babel truly existed is to demonstrate the truth of the Bible regarding what came before and what followed it. More than any other science, it is archaeology that will change the face of the world by restoring the lost unity, the original paradise! That is what I came to understand last night when I found myself prey to the most terrible doubt—”
“Excuse my interruption,” Father Nithhard ventured to say, “but how can you prove the reality of Babel with the same certitude as that of the Flood? As you are well aware, a simple stone, however well its provenance is testified would not be sufficient to convince the unbelievers …”
“Of course not, your remark is very perspicacious. But if, starting out from the present diversity of languages and their phenomenal multiplicity—I have counted a thousand and seventy different ones!—I managed to show that they all derive from five roots instilled by the angels after the destruction of the Tower, that is, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German & Illyrian, which themselves derive from the Adamic language that Noah & his descendants spoke, would I not have proved the historical truth of the confusion of tongues? And by the deduction that men were separated in families, because they suddenly found it impossible to understand each other, would I not also have proved the ensuing dispersal of the tribes, which contributed to the debasement of God and the Bible in their minds?”
“Who would doubt it, Reverend Father?”
“Accordingly, & in order to provide a solid foundation for the historical chapters of my book on China, I have decided to devote my latter days to two books of sacred archaeology that will silence the most obstinate of the idolaters: one on Noah’s Ark, the other on the Tower of Babel. These books will be the touchstone of all my work—” Kircher turned to Maria Anna of Austria, “& if your Highness will grant me that signal favor, they will be dedicated to your son, the king.”
In the name of her son, the Queen Mother declared herself honored by this tribute. She thanked my master warmly & promised to finance the publication of said books. Kircher congratulated Don Luis Camacho on his excellence in dialectics. As a souvenir of their dialogue, he gave him one of the fossil fish, whose significance he had appreciated, & enjoined the boy to apply himself to the study of nature.
At the end of that October the proofs of China Monumentis began to arrive in a constant stream. My master devoted his days to them, at the same time preparing the material destined for his Arca Noe & Turris Babel. I had never seen him take so much pleasure in the planning of a work & I was not mistaken in predicting that they would give as much to their readers a few years later.
The following year was remarkable in many respects; at the very moment when China Monumentis, which had finally come off the press, was going from hand to hand to an unfailing chorus of praise, our Holy Father departed this life with laudable acceptance & obedience. His family was greatly afflicted, especially his beloved brother, Cardinal Orlando Chigi. I well remember the beautiful words of consolation my master addressed to him at this sad time: “You have suffered a great loss,” he wrote, “& the Church an even greater one, but what right had you to hope that you would never suffer it? I have heard tell of several people who had received remarkable gifts from heaven, but you cannot say that God gave them the gift of never dying. I beg you, Monsignore, to call to mind all the families of your acquaintance, you will not find one where you have not seen tears shed for the same reason that is causing yours. There are lead lines to sound the abysses of the sea, but none for the secrets of God, so do not question them; accept what has happened to you with reverence & you will calm your troubled mind. I am not telling you anything that you do not know better than I, but the tokens of respect you have always shown me oblige me to make a contribution to the relief of your sorrow & to express the gratitude with which I remain, yours faithfully, etc., etc.”
On June 20, 1667 his Eminence Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi was elected by the conclave under the name of Clement IX, but his advanced age gave rise to fears that he would not stay on St. Peter’s throne for long.
As well as China Monumentis—to which book my master had added the first Latin & Chinese dictionary ever to appear in the West & which was a great help to those of our Society who were preparing to go to China—Kircher presented to the learned world a Magneticum Naturae Regnum that was remarkable despite its brevity. In it he had gathered together, for pedagogical purposes, all possible experiments concerning the attraction between things with the result that the book was a great success for the ease with which it allowed both neophytes and scholars to study these matters with no other guide.
Having worked on his notes until two in the morning, Eléazard got up later than usual, but with the feeling that he had turned a corner: both the person and the works of Athanasius Kircher had been reshaped in his mind with sufficient contrast to make him see the extent to which he had caricatured them up to that point. This adjustment owed much to Dr. Euclides, even more to Loredana’s willingness to say what came into her mind; she had asked good questions, ones that challenged his own attitude to Kircher rather than the German Jesuit’s supposed genius or hypocrisy. He was in a hurry to see her to discuss it, in a hurry to go further with her in this sort of loving intimacy their relationship had entered into.
He breakfasted in the kitchen. The Carneiro affair was still front-page news: one of the two alleged killers had finally admitted to having been in the house at the time of the murder. He was giving evidence against his accomplice in the hope of reducing his sentence, at the same time testifying that they had been sent by Wagner Cascudo to persuade their victim to hand over his property to him. That said, the lawyer had been released on bail and was protesting his innocence. He was standing by his own version of the matter, namely that he didn’t know the two men from Adam and the whole thing had been set up by the police. As for the governor, there were lengthy quotations from his outraged denial on television: this conspiracy against him had been mounted for purely electoral ends, its sole aim was to destabilize the party in power. If the press was going to start suspecting every honest man in the country, they were heading for a catastrophe. He had known Wagner Cascudo for years, he was not only an outstanding lawyer, but a friend, a man whom he knew to be incapable of the least wrongdoing.
And not a single word on his schemes.
Being in the business, Eléazard could sense that there was a kind of turnaround in opinion in process, the result of shrewd manipulation. He tried to reassure himself with the thought that the state prosecutor in Santa Inês wouldn’t give up that easily, especially after the confession implicating Wagner Cascudo. He was getting ready to leave, with the idea of going to see Loredana, when Alfredo clapped his hands to announce himself.
“What’s up? Why the grim look? What’s been going on?”
“She’s left—”
“Who d’you mean, she?” Eléazard broke in, a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“Loredana. She took the first boat this morning. Only Socorró saw her. She paid her bill and left …”
Eléazard sat down. His heart was pounding in his chest. “Without even saying goodbye,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Socorró said that to her. Her reply was that it was better like that and, anyway, she just had time to catch her plane. She left you a letter. Here it is, if you want to read it …”
She’d known she was going to leave today, Eléazard told himself as he looked at the large envelope Alfredo was holding out to him, she knew and she didn’t say anything …
“But what’s got into her, for God’s sake?” he said angrily. “You just can’t do something like that!”
“I don’t know any more than you, Lazardinho. She left me a note saying sorry and that she had to go back to Italy. I’ve a funny feeling about it too.”
Eléazard pointed to the pile of articles he’d cut out in order to file them: “Pour yourself a glass and have a look at those while I’m reading this, OK?”
“I’ve nothing else to do,” Alfredo said, looking downcast. “Anyway, the hotel’s empty, so …”
The envelope contained a voluminous dossier and a letter, in Italian and in a large round hand that seemed determined to cover every last inch of the page …
Doubtless you’ll be surprised, Eléazard, and hurt, I know, to learn of my departure in this way, but I no longer have the courage or the strength to tell you these things face to face. All right then, here I go: it seems that I’m ill, a kind of cancer of the blood that doctors don’t know much about. And it’s a contagious disease that develops so quickly it’s starting to have a devastating effect on me. My life expectancy is only a few months, a year or two if my body resists it more strongly, as it appears can happen sometimes … Oddly enough, it’s not the fact that I have to die that poses most problems—that awareness is so insupportable that my brain switches off after a few seconds. It’s as if it were producing endorphins of hope just to fool us, to allow us to pretend we’re OK until the next low. No, the worst thing about it, and I’ve realized this here more than in Italy, is the delusion that you’re going to survive despite everything. I’ll spare you the details of the soul-searching all that leads to, the nostalgia, the terror, the desperate need to hang on, to continue to exist … Basta!
I’m leaving you my bedside book. That’s where I got everything I know about strategy. The translator’s a good friend of mine, I hope you’ll like his pseudonym.
That’s it. There’s nothing more I can say apart from begging you not to have any hard feelings. Forget Kircher for a bit, give Soledade a kiss from me and drag Moreira through the shit right to the end.
I’ll say goodbye with a kiss, as I did just now, when I left you.
Loredana
“Well?” Alfredo asked; he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off him all the time he was reading. “You knew?”
“What?”
“That she was seriously ill.”
“What are you getting at? I assure you I knew nothing.” Eléazard handed him the letter so he could read it for himself. “I’m sorry,” Alfredo said after a brief glance, “but Italian, you know …”
He smoothed down his hair with both hands. Without realizing, he’d started to chew the inside of his cheek again.
“She didn’t leave a book with the letter?”
“Sorry, I almost forgot,” Alfredo said, taking a black and red book out of his bag. “I don’t know where I am today!”
Eleazard quickly read the front cover:
THE 36 STRATAGEMS
A secret treatise on Chinese strategy translated and annotated by François Kircher
“I think I’ll have a drink too,” he said in a toneless voice.
AFTER ALFREDO HAD left, he continued to fill his glass as quickly as he emptied it. Close to a drunken stupor, he reread Loredana’s letter, scrutinizing each expression, as if one of them might eventually give him the key to her disappearance, but the more he probed the words, the more he felt their lack of substance.
Mechanically he leafed through the little book she’d left him. Some passages here and there were indicated by lines in the margin, but there was nothing to suggest, as he had for a moment hoped, that they had been underlined as a message to him. A difference in color indicated two readings at different times, each revealing separate preoccupations. Without having specifically looked for it, Eléazard came across the principle put forward by Loredana to take on the governor of Maranhão: The tall silhouette of the sophora shields the puny mulberry tree in the shadow of its foliage just as great men surround themselves with a court of clients and protégés. To attack one of the followers as a direct threat to his master is a common practice … The thirty-sixth stratagem was the only one with a box drawn round it; Eléazard was sure it came from the second reading, the one Loredana had done in her hotel room during the last few days. If all else fails, retreat, he read, feeling a pang of anguish. When your side is losing, there are only three choices remaining: surrender, compromise or escape. Surrender is complete defeat, compromise is half defeat, but escape is not defeat.
Tired of going around in circles, he went to find Soledade to ask her. She was sitting on the floor in the farthest corner of the veranda, her legs hanging down outside, through the bars. She replied to his call but didn’t turn around. From the sound of her voice, he could tell she was crying.
“What’s wrong?” he said, sitting down beside her. “You know? It’s about Loredana?” From the side he could see her wipe her eyes with the back of her hand and try to control her breathing.
“I know,” she finally said. “Alfredo told me when he went up to see you.”
“And that’s why you’re crying?”
She shook her head and stuck her face between the bars. “Why, then?” Eléazard said. “What’s making you unhappy? Don’t you like it here?”
“I’m going to leave as well …”
“What’s all this nonsense? You’re not going to leave me all by myself, are you?”
Eléazard was used to these fits of depression. Soledade never carried out her threats, so he never really took them seriously.
“Brazil lost,” she said, making a face. “I’d promised to go if they didn’t reach the final … So I’m going back to Quixadá, to my parents. Say, could I … could I take the TV?”
“Stop it, Soledade. You can take whatever you like, that’s not the problem. What I’m asking is for you to stay with me, you understand?”
“Oh yes,” she said, imitating his accent, “Who’s going to do the washing, the shopping, bring me my caipirinhas? That’s all I’m any use for. She’s the one you love …” She started crying again.
“But what difference does it make? She’s gone now, so … nothing’s changed, everything’s as it was before.”
Soledade started crying again. “Except that she loves you as well,” she managed to say between two sobs. “She told me so.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said, unsure whether that revelation assuaged his sadness a little or actually made it worse. “It’s absurd. What did she say exactly?”
“That you were a filthy exploitative frog, that … that she hated you!” Her pitiful expression contradicted the lie.
“Seriously, Soledade, it’s important for me.”
“She said she loved you, but she was going to die and that there was no point getting worked up about it.” The tears came pouring out as she went on, “And I … I just said that we’re all going to die. But that was just because I was jealous, you see. And now she’s gone and it’s all because of me.”
“No, no,” he said, trying to comfort her, “we never know what’s going on inside other people’s heads: she was afraid of making us suffer”—as he spoke, Eléazard felt he was getting close to the truth at last—“afraid of infecting us with her suffering. She realized she’d tried to negotiate with her illness and then she pulled herself together, out of pride, the better to fight …”
“It’s my fault,” Soledade sobbed. “I took her to the terreiro … The parrot wasn’t afraid of her, you see, it was a sign … And Omulú chose her, her and not me …”
Eléazard had no idea what she was talking about. “What’s all this about a terreiro?”
Soledade put her hand over her mouth, rolling her eyes in fright.
“Tell me,” Eléazard insisted, “please.”
Soledade’s only answer was to stand up swiftly and run off to her room.
Eléazard would have liked to be able to cry like her, to wash out his mind. He stayed on the terrace, dry-eyed, the bottle within reach. A little later he heard, without moving, the telephone ring then the message spoken in a brusque voice by Dr. Euclides on his answering machine.
When the mosquitos appeared he took refuge in the living room; he walked crabwise, with the occasional lurch, which made him snigger to himself.
THE FOLLOWING DAY he woke up much earlier than necessary. The cachaça made his head feel as if it were clamped in a vise and the prospect of having to go to San Luís in response to Dr. Euclides’s appeal was not an attractive one at all. But the old man was unforgiving in such matters: no one who had broken faith with him, even just once, could boast of having seen him again.
He stayed up on deck during the crossing, allowing the sea breeze to relieve his splitting headache a little. Once he arrived in San Luís he bought the Maranhão Courier and treated himself to a coffee. The Carneiro affair was still taking up a good part of page three; a journalist well known for his reactionary views was giving free rein to his venomous pen. The authorities, he wrote, had definite proof that it was a plot intended to blacken the Partido Democratico Social. Waldemar de Oliveira had gone beyond the limits of his jurisdiction: since the matter had taken place in Alcântara, it fell within the competence of the San Luís state prosecutor’s office and not that of the municipality of Santa Inês. The gentleman’s communist sympathies were well known, not to mention his notorious homosexual habits … Certain leaks, from official sources, mentioned a transfer for disciplinary reasons and even a possible indictment for child abuse. The Governor had been vilified in a manner made all the more despicable by the fact that his son had been reported missing in the Mato Grosso, probably having died for the glory of science and his country!
Moreira must have paid a juicy sum, the article was convincing, it would have the expected result. That was that, Eléazard told himself, the whole business would peter out, once again. Moreira would even benefit from it at the elections. When it came to the crunch, the stratagems so dear to Loredana hadn’t worked out that well. The way things were turning out, the sophora was getting ready not only to clear the mulberry tree, but to crush as many silkworms as it could find while it went about it.
“WELL, WELL, YOU’VE been getting up to some fine tricks,” were Dr. Euclides’s welcoming words when he arrived.
Eléazard smelled Carlotta’s perfume even before he saw her in the corner of the drawing room. He bowed and sat down opposite her.
“Have you told him?” he asked. When she nodded, he went on, “For all the effect it’s going to have … Have you read today’s paper? He’s going to manage to hush up the whole business, you can see that a mile off.”
“Defeatist as ever, aren’t we?” Euclides said, pulling at his beard. “Nothing’s been decided yet, believe me. He’s pulling out all the stops, that’s fair enough. But if Carlotta herself accuses him, his career’s finished.”
“But that wouldn’t get us anywhere in court, would it? It’d just be her word against his?”
“Doubtless, but he’d certainly lose the election. His political allies would drop him one after the other.”
“You’d be prepared to do that?” Eléazard asked, turning to the Countess.
Carlotta seemed close to exhaustion, but the firmness of her voice showed her unshakable resolve. “If necessary I will indict him personally. I’ve nothing much left to lose, you know …”
“Still no news of the expedition?” Eléazard asked with a detachment that surprised himself.
“They’re alive,” Euclides explained. “The helicopter flew over their boat—they obviously ran it aground after it was damaged. They think they must have gone into the forest, that’s all we know at the moment. It’ll take weeks to get a search party together.”
“And to think I said you could trust Dietlev. But it’s good news all the same, isn’t it?”
“If you insist,” Carlotta said. “No one can explain why they didn’t stay by the boat and I can’t stop myself seeing the dark side of things. But I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”
Eléazard remained silent for a few moments, long enough for him to realize that Elaine had disappeared from his life long before vanishing in the Mato Grosso. He was convinced he was right in thinking that the announcement of her death would draw nothing but formal expressions of mourning from him.
“Loredana’s gone back to Italy,” he said, without noticing his own boorishness.
“We know,” Euclides replied simply. “That’s why I made you come so early today. Too early, from what I deduce from your sweat; you reek of sugar-cane alcohol, my friend, as bad as a bus.”
“Let him be,” Carlotta broke in. “I assure you it’s not true, you don’t reek, Monsieur Von Wogau …”
“I’m used to it,” Eléazard said, blushing despite everything “But how did you hear?”
“She came to say good-bye before taking the plane. She’s a nice girl. Don’t be too hard on her, sometimes it takes more guts to get out of things than to stay.”
“She told you everything?”
“If by ‘everything’ you mean her illness, yes, she did.”
“And you think—”
Euclides broke in immediately. “No. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s out of the question. We have to accept her decision for what it is, a refusal to harbor delusions about herself and about others. And, consequently, a refusal to see you again. She didn’t act on impulse, you know.”
“I understand,” Eléazard said sadly, “but I don’t approve.”
“Well that’s because you don’t understand anything,” Euclides said bluntly.
“I’ve told him repeatedly, first of all finish your degree, then you can do whatever you like … But you know what it’s like, especially when they’re that age, they don’t give a fuck—pardon my French—about what you tell them … He didn’t even take his final exams! So there we have it! You’re still smoking as much, from what I see … It’s going to take a good half hour … I’d have preferred to do it in two goes, but OK … It could hurt a bit, as we go on, tell me if you need a little rest. Aspirate, please, Katia … The electric guitar, that’s the only thing he’s interested in. Having said that, it seems to me he has a gift for it, and a damned good gift at that … Admittedly I don’t know much about it, but it really gets you going when he plays … I bought him a Gibson and that’s not just any old guitar, you can’t imagine what a thing like that costs. Just between ourselves, I managed to get a friend to buy it for me in Hong Kong. And when I think they refused to have him at the Academy of Music! Can you understand that?”
Lying on his back, hands on his chest, Moreira kept his eyes fixed on the glass and stainless-steel sun above him. This chair was surely the only place in the world where he could get away with not answering an idiot’s questions. The droning voice as much as the patch of luminosity behind the frosted glass was sending the governor into a drowsy state close to hypnosis. He closed his eyes. It was an ideal way of having time for himself.
The day’s good news was summed up in one word: Petrópolis. That’s it, Barbosa had said on the telephone, it wasn’t easy, but he’s been officially taken off the case and transferred to Petrópolis. With promotion as a nice sweetener … Thanks to you I’ve got the state lawyers’ association on my back … I’ve seen them off, Moreira kept repeating to himself with satisfaction, I’ve seen them off once and for all! Biluquinha had been unusually categorical: they hadn’t been able to establish a prima facie case since there had been a procedural error during the arrest. The case was heading straight for a dismissal. Definitely for Wagner and with a good chance for the two others, since one of them had withdrawn his confession on the grounds that it had been given under duress.
Edson, the old fox, had not waited long before asking a return favor. The opinion polls had him in front in Ceará State, but not far enough for it to be a foregone conclusion. So he’d had to agree to his request to go and support him in his territory, trying to pull in the floating voters. The idea of going to Fortaleza didn’t particularly appeal to him but it was a case of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” It was the least he could do after the way Barbosa had saved his bacon.
For a fraction of a second the pain made Moreira freeze. It was as if Carlotta had given his memory a vicious jog. Carlotta … The more things were sorting themselves out, the more determined she was to divorce him. He’d tried to cajole her again, yesterday evening, but she’d refused to give him a hearing. She’d stayed silent, locked in her room, until he’d really seen red. But when he tried to force her door, the jaguar had started growling, arching its spine, as if it were openly taking sides against its master. The son of a bitch! He’d been forced to calm down. He would never have suspected his wife possessed such strength of will. Eventually she had spoken to him, but solely to inform him that a lawyer—“her lawyer”!—would be contacting his shortly. He had been flabbergasted that she had already been to see one of those guys. She who didn’t even known how to fill in a tax return! It was hardly believable.
He was choked by a profound sense of injustice. He hadn’t worked like a nigger all his life to end up here. She’s suffering from severe depression, he thought, it’s Mauro who’s making her act crazy. As soon as he gets back from his stupid trip everything will sort itself out. But a sharp little voice kept reminding him that he’d insisted on marrying with a prenuptial property agreement. A noble gesture that was threatening to send him back to his state of penniless country bumpkin; if Carlotta remained inflexible, that’s when the real problems were going to start. As far as his feelings were concerned, the idea of a divorce seemed painful but bearable, even attractive given the prospect of regaining his freedom; politically it was a nuisance; financially it was unacceptable. There must be some way of getting out of it, he told himself, his fingers clenched over his stomach, some simple, rational means …
“A position as clerk or even a court usher, anything as long as he’s a state official. I’m sure you know what I mean, a small salary but regular. I can vouch for him, he won’t cause you any bother … There, that’s it finished. You can rinse out your mouth.”
Moreira drank the contents of the plastic cup before spitting into the basin. He stretched his jaw then licked his freshly scaled teeth. “Get him to send me a CV,” he said as the chair came up with an electric rumble, “I’ll see what I can do. But don’t expect anything before the elections.”