Where Tigers Are at Home Read Online Free Page A

world to see that.”
    Mauro glanced at the lunar landscape moving almost imperceptibly across the window frame; bizarre lumps of red sandstone looking as if they’d been dropped there, haphazardly, by some gigantic creature. “Precambrian ruiniform reliefs, highly eroded,” he said with a slight frown, as if reciting a lesson.
    “Not bad … But you could have added, ‘A magnificent prospect with a savage beauty that gives humans a sense of their fragility here on Earth.’ Unfortunately that’s never in the geology manuals, not even in another form.”
    “You’re just making fun of me, as usual,” Mauro sighed. “You know very well that I’m sensitive to that aspect of landscape; otherwise I’d have chosen history or math. To tell the truth, I’m starting to get tired.”
    “Me too, I have to admit. This journey’s interminable, but remember that we’re going back to Brazilia by plane. The Department hasn’t a lot of money, so we had to come to a compromise. Having said that, I’m not at all unhappy that we’re taking this train, it’s something I’ve been dreaming about for ages. A bit in the same way as I dream of going on the Trans-Siberian Railway some day.”
    “The Death Train!” said Mauro in funereal tones. “The only train in the world where you never know if it’s going to arrive …”
    “Oh, don’t start that, Mauro,” Elaine said with a laugh. “You’ll bring us bad luck.”
    The Death Train, so called because there were always accidents happening or an armed attack, linked Campo Grande with SantaCruz in Bolivia. Just before the border it stopped at Corumbá, the small town where the two travellers were to meet up with the rest of the team, two professors from the University of Brazilia: Dietlev H. G. Walde, a specialist in palaeozoology, and Milton Tavares, Jr., head of the Department of Geology. To economize on cost, Elaine and Mauro had gone by van to Campo Grande, the last town accessible by road before the Mato Grosso. They had left the van in a garage—Dietlev and Milton, who had done the first stage by plane, were to pick it up on the way back—and waited at the station until dawn. The train was a veritable antique on wheels, with a steam engine worthy of the Far West, slatted-wood carriages in faded colors and arched windows. The compartments resembled ships’ cabins with their mahogany veneer and a tiny cubicle with a little washbasin in pink marble. In one corner there was even a nickel-plated steel fan mounted on a universal joint, which at the time it was built must have been the height of luxury. Now the tap, eaten away by rust, merely managed a hint of moisture, the handle for opening the window went round and round without engaging, the wires of the fan seemed to have been torn off years ago and there was so much grime everywhere, and the felt of the seats was so badly torn it was impossible to imagine at what distant time in the past all this could have been the very latest in up-to-date comfort.
    The heat was starting to get uncomfortable; Elaine wiped her forehead and unscrewed her water bottle. Under Mauro’s amiable gaze she was trying to avoid spilling water over herself every time the train jolted when they heard angry shouts from the corridor. Drowning out the racket from the axles, a woman’s voice seemed to be trying to rouse the whole world. They saw several people rush toward the rear of the train, followed by an obese conductor, uniform unbuttoned, cap askew, who stopped for a moment, panting,by the open door of their compartment. The shouts continued even louder, until they were cut off abruptly by two dull thuds that shook the partition and made the window and the fan vibrate.
    “I’ll go and have a look,” Mauro said, getting up.
    He pushed his way through the luggage blocking the corridor and came to a small group of people around the conductor. Armed with a little ax—“only to be used in case of fire”—he was trying to wreck the