Where Tigers Are at Home Read Online Free

to relieve the poor neophyte.
    After several days during which Athanasius’s agonies only increased, Von Spee advised his protégé to appeal to the Virgin, who had always watched over him. In the church in Paderborn there was a very old statue of the Virgin Mary, which was said to have miraculous powers. Its fame was widespread among the ordinary folk of the region. Kircher had himself taken to the church & for a whole night he begged the Madonna to look down mercifully on the affliction of her sick child. Toward the twelfth hour he tried out his limbs to see if his supplication had been granted & was filled with a wonderful feeling of satisfaction. No longer doubting that he would be healed, he continued to pray until morning.
    Waking a few hours later from a dreamless sleep, he found that both legs had healed & that his hernia had gone!
    Look as he might through his spectacles, the surgeon was forced to admit the miracle had happened: to his great astonishment he only found scars & no trace of the infection that ought to have utterly destroyed his patient. Thus we can well understand the special devotion Athanasius retained throughout his life for Our Lady, who had succored him in his ordeal, indicating how Kircher was predestined to serve God within the Society.
ON THE WAY TO CORUMBÁ:
“The Death Train”
    Uncomfortable on the hard seat in her compartment, Elaine looked out of the window and watched the landscape passing by. She was a beautiful woman of thirty-five, with long, brown, curly hair that she wore in a loose, artistically tousled chignon. She was wearing alightweight, beige safari jacket and matching skirt; she had crossed her legs in such a way that, without her noticing or perhaps without thinking it important, revealed rather more than she should of the suntanned skin of her left thigh. She was smoking a long menthol cigarette with the touch of affectation that revealed her lack of experience of that kind of thing. On the other seat, almost opposite her, Mauro had made himself comfortable: legs stretched out under the seat across the compartment, hands behind his neck, headset over his ears, he was listening to the cassette of Caetano Veloso, swaying his head in time to the music. Taking advantage of the fact that Elaine was turned to the window, he looked at her thighs with pleasure. It was not every day that one had the opportunity to admire the more intimate anatomy of
Profesora
Von Wogau, and many students at the University of Brazilia would have liked to be in his place. But he was the one she’d chosen to accompany her to the Pantanal because of his brilliant performance in his defense of his doctoral thesis in geology—passed with distinction, if you please!—because he had the handsome looks of an unrepentant Don Juan, and also perhaps, though to his mind it really didn’t come into consideration, because his father was governor of the state of Maranhão. “
Cavaleiro de Jorge, seu chapéu azul, cruzeiro do sul no peito …”
Mauro increased the volume, as he did every time his favorite tune came on. Carried away by the beat of the song, he started humming the words, drawing out the final “oo” sound as Caetano used to. Elaine’s thighs quivered a little every time the train jolted; inwardly he rejoiced.
    Disturbed in her daydream by her companion’s irritating chirping, Elaine suddenly looked over and caught him examining her thighs.
    “You’d do better to show an interest in the landscape we’re passing through,” she said, uncrossing her legs and pulling her skirt down.
    Mauro switched off his Walkman at once and took out his earphones. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear. What did you say?”
    “It’s not important,” she said with a smile, touched by Mauro’s worried expression. He was sweet with his dishevelled hair and the embarrassed look of a child caught in the act. “Look,” she went on, pointing out of the window, “there are geologists who come from all over the