The High Mountains of Portugal

by Yann Martel

  "Does it? Not in Tuizelo. I'd say it's quite rare there."

  Eusebio's eyebrows knit. Does the woman live in a village of immortals where only a few are rudely visited by death? His wife often tells him that he spends so much time with the dead that he sometimes misses the social cues of the living. Did he not hear right? Did she not just ask him if he was the doctor who deals with bodies?

  "Senhora Castro, death is universal. We must all go through it."

  "Death? Who's talking about death? I'm talking about sex."

  Now that the dreaded word has been said, Maria Castro moves forward comfortably. "Love came into my life in the disguise I least expected. That of a man. I was as surprised as a flower that sees for the first time a bee coming towards it. It was my mother who suggested I marry Rafael. She consulted with my father and they decided it was a good match. It wasn't an arranged marriage, then, not exactly, but I would have had to come up with a good, solid excuse not to want to marry Rafael. I couldn't think of one. All we had to do was get along, and how difficult could that be? I had known him my whole life. He was one of the boys in the village. He'd always been there, like a rock in a field. I must have first set eyes on him when I was a toddler, and he, being older, perhaps gazed at me when I was a baby. He was a slim, pleasant-faced boy, quieter and more retiring than the others in the village. I don't know if I had ever spent more than twenty minutes with him before it was suggested that we spend the rest of our lives together.

  "We did have one moment, when I think back. It must have been a year or two earlier. I was running an errand and I came upon him on a path. He was fixing a gate. He asked me to hold something. I bent down and so brought my head close to his. Just then a gust of wind lifted a mass of my hair and threw it in his face. I felt it, the gentle lashing, and I pulled my head back, catching the last strands as they flowed off his face. He was smiling and looking straight at me.

  "I remember too that he played the sweet flute, a little wooden thing. I liked the sound of it, its springtime bird-like tweeting.

  "So the suggestion of marriage was made and I thought, Why not? I had to marry at some point. You don't want to live your whole life alone. He would no doubt be useful to me and I would try my best to be useful to him. I looked at him in a new light and the idea of being married to him pleased me.

  "His father had died when he was young, so it was his mother who was consulted. She thought the same thing and he presumably thought the same thing. Everyone thought, Why not? So we married under the banner of Why not? Everything happened swiftly. The ceremony was businesslike. The priest went through his pieties. No money was wasted on any celebration. We were moved into a shack of a house that Rafael's uncle Valerio gave us until we found better.

  "We were alone for the first time since the ceremony. The door had barely closed when Rafael turned to me and said, 'Take your clothes off.' I looked at him askance and said, 'No, you take yours off.' 'All right,' he replied, and he stripped down quickly and completely. It was impressive. I had never seen a naked man before. He came up to me and put his hand on my breast and squeezed. 'Is this nice?' he asked. I shrugged and said, 'It's all right.' 'How about this?' he asked, squeezing again in a softer way, pinching the nipple. 'It's all right,' I replied, but this time I didn't shrug.

  "Next, he was very forward. He came round behind me and pressed me to him. I could feel his cucumber against me. He ran his hand under my dress, all the way under, until it rested there. I didn't fight him off. I guessed that this was what it meant to be married, that I had to put up with this.

  " 'Is this nice?' he asked.

  " 'I'm not sure,' I replied.

  " 'And this?' he asked as he prodded around some more.

  " 'I'm not sure,' I replied.

  " 'And this?'

  " 'Not...sure.'

  " 'And this?'

  "Suddenly I couldn't answer. A feeling began to overcome me. He had touched a spot that shrivelled my tongue. Oh, it was so good. What was it?

  " 'And this?' he asked again.

  "I nodded. He kept at it. I bent forward and he bent with me. I lost my balance and we stumbled around the room, overturning a chair, hitting a wall, shoving the table. Rafael held on to me firmly and brought us to the ground, onto the small carpet from his brother Batista. All the while he kept it up with his hand, and I stayed with the feeling. I had no idea what it was, but it rumbled through me like a train, and then there was an explosion of sorts, as if the train had suddenly come out of a tunnel into the light. I let it rumble through me. I was left breathless. I turned to Rafael. 'I'll take my clothes off now,' I said.

  "He was twenty-one, I was seventeen. Desire was a discovery. Where would I have found it earlier? My parents expressed desire like a desert. I was the one hardy plant they had produced. Otherwise, theirs was a sour and hardworking life. Did the Church teach me desire? The thought would be worth a laugh, if I had time to waste. The Church taught me to shame something I didn't even know. As for those around me, young and old, perhaps there were innuendos, hints, slippages when I was growing up--but I missed their meaning.

  "So there you have it: I had never desired. I had a body ready for it and a mind willing to learn, but it all lay asleep, unused, unsuspected. Then Rafael and I came together. Beneath plain clothing and shy manners we discovered our beautiful bodies, like gold hidden under the land. We were entirely ignorant in these matters. I didn't know what a cucumber was or what it was for. I didn't know what it could do for me or what I could do for it. And he was as ignorant about my nest. He stared at it, astonished. What a strange thing, his eyes said. Have you seen your thing? my eyes replied. Yes, yes, his eyes panted back, it's all so very strange.

  "Strangest of all, we knew what to do. It all fell into place. We touched, we asked, we did, all in one go. What pleased him pleased me, what pleased me pleased him. It works out like that in life sometimes, doesn't it? A stamp takes pleasure in being licked and stuck to an envelope, and an envelope takes pleasure in the stick of that stamp. Each takes to the other without ever having suspected that the other existed. So Rafael and I were stamp and envelope.

  "And to our astonishment, under the cover of marriage, our deportment was all good and proper. I had never imagined it could feel so good to be Portuguese.

  "I used to hurry home along the crest of the hill from the neighbouring village, where I assisted the schoolteacher. There was no path to speak of, but it was the quickest route to get to our small house. I scrambled over large rocks, I plunged through hedges. There were stone walls, but they had gates. From the third-to-last gate, I often caught sight of him, down below in our second field, where the sheep grazed. It happened regularly that he noticed me too, just as I reached this particular gate. Every time I thought, What an extraordinary coincidence! I have just crossed this gate and he has seen me. He couldn't hear me--too far--but sensing the deepening colour of the sky, aware of the time of day, he knew I would be coming along soon, and constantly he turned and looked up, creating the conditions for the coincidence. He would see me and redouble his efforts in the field, hustling and pushing the sheep into their pen, to the yapping delight of the dog, who saw his master taking over his job.

  "Often, before he had even properly finished the task, he started to run, as did I. He was ahead of me, but he had much to do. He charged into the yard and screamed after the chickens. As I got closer, I could hear their frantic clucking. They were hurled into the coop. Then there were the pigs, who needed their slop for the night. And more. The endless tasks of a farm. From the top of the hill, I raced down to the back of the house. I would laugh and shout, 'I'll get there first!' The front door would be the closest for him, the back door for me. When I was metres away, he would give up--to hell with the farm--and make a break for it. The doors would be torn open, sometimes his first, sometimes mine. Either way, they were slammed shut, shaking our hovel to its foundations, and we would be face to face, breathless, giddy, drunk with happiness. And why this rush? Wh
y this unseemly race across the countryside? Why this neglect of farm duties? Because we were so eager to be naked with each other. We tore our clothes off as if they were on fire.

  "One day my mother and I were working on preserves, a few months after my marriage. She asked me if Rafael and I had been 'intimate' yet. That was her language. She wasn't touched by her husband, my father, for eighteen months after they got married. I don't know what they did for those eighteen months. Lie in bed, back to back, waiting to fall asleep in dead silence, their eyes wide open? My mother's concern was grandchildren. Her lineage was not a richly reproductive lot. She herself was an only child, and fifty-four years of marriage resulted in a single daughter. She was worried that I would be afflicted with the family's barrenness. I told my mother that Rafael and I were intimate every night, and sometimes during the day too, if we happened both to be at home, on a Sunday, for example. Sometimes in the morning also, before we had to rush off to work. Sometimes we were intimate two times in a row.

  "My mother looked at me. 'I mean the act, the act,' she whispered, though we were alone.

  "Did my mother think I was referring to naps? That we went to bed early every night and that sometimes we napped during the day too? That sometimes in the morning we woke up and right away had a nap? That sometimes we had two naps in a row? Did she think we were as lazy and dozy as cats?

  " 'Yes, yes, Mother,' I replied, 'we do the act all the time. Perhaps if I see him in the next half hour, we'll do it then.'

  "My mother's eyes expressed surprise, consternation, horror. Every night? On Sundays? This was last century, mind you. Much has changed since. Everything is so modern these days. I could see in my mother's mind the pages of a Bible being speedily flipped. The preserving of fruit was done with. I could go now.

  " 'He is my husband,' I told her, pushing the door open with a bump of my hip.

  "She never brought up the subject again. At least now she hoped to be blessed with a dozen grandchildren. She would show them around the village like fine jewellery. And my answer was good for gossip. That was my mother, a prude who lived through gossip, like every prude. After that, the men in the village looked at me with lingering smiles--the older they were, the greater the twinkle in their eyes--while the women, the young ones and the old hens, were a muddled mix of envy, disdain, and curiosity. And from then onward my mother announced her arrival at our house a hundred metres away with a great fanfare of noise.

  "On the count of grandchildren, her hopes were dashed. I proved to be as unreproductive as she was. Considering how often stamp was brought to envelope, it's surprising that there weren't more letters. But only one letter came, a delightful one, late, late, late, a darling boy who tore out of me not with a cry but with a burst of laughter. By the time I presented our little bear cub to my mother, her mind was gone. I could have been handing her a clucking chicken, the vacant smile would have been the same."

  A vague smile comes to the old woman's lips, though not a vacant one.

  "Now that I'm old, sleep has become a mystery to me. I can remember sleep, I just can't remember how to do it. Why has sleep betrayed me? Rafael and I used to give to it so generously when we were young. Despite our poverty, we had a comfortable bed, we had curtains, we obeyed the call of the night. Our sleep was as deep as a well. Every morning we awoke and wondered at this refreshing event that so knocked us out. Now my nights are plagued by worries and sadness. I lie down tired, and nothing happens. I just lie there with my thoughts coiling around me like a snake."

  Eusebio speaks quietly. "Ageing is not easy, Senhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. It starts well. It's a most desirable disease. One wouldn't want to do without it. It's like the yeast that corrupts the juice of grapes. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving--the incubation period can be very long--and then, with death, comes the heartbreak. Love must always meet its unwanted end."

  But where's the body? That is the pressing question that he leaves unstated. And whose body? Perhaps it is not her husband's. She's wearing black, but so does every woman over forty in rural Portugal who has lost some relative somewhere. The apparel of mourning is a permanent dress for rural women. Perhaps she has come to inquire about someone younger. If that's the case, any one of the files at his feet under the desk might contain the information she wants. It could also be that hers is a case that Dr. Otavio, his colleague, dealt with. Jose has been gone now for close to three weeks, off on his month-long holiday to England to visit his daughter. Hence all of the extra work right now. But Jose signed off on all his cases, so if Maria Castro is inquiring about one of those, he will be able to find it in the filing cabinets next door.

  At any rate, there needs to be a body, because he's a pathologist. Those who have sleep problems go elsewhere, to a family doctor who will prescribe a sleep potion, or to a priest who will absolve their sins. Those who are unhappy about getting old, who suffer from heartbreak, they too go elsewhere, to a priest again, or to a friend, or to a taverna, or even to a brothel. But not to a pathologist.

  "I'm glad to hear about your joys and sad to hear about your troubles," he continues. "But why exactly have you come to see me? Are you here to inquire about a particular case?"

  "I want to know how he lived."

  How he lived? She means how he died. A slip-up due to age.

  "Who?"

  "Rafael, of course."

  "What's his full name?"

  "Rafael Miguel Santos Castro, from the village of Tuizelo."

  "Your husband, then. Just a moment, please."

  He bends over and pulls the files out from under his desk. Where is the master list? He finds the sheet of paper. He looks it over carefully. There is no Rafael Miguel Santos Castro among the cases pending.

  "I don't see that name on my list. Your husband must have been dealt with by my colleague, Dr. Otavio. I must get his file. It will just take me a moment. "

  "What file?" asks Maria.

  "Your husband's, of course. Every patient has a file."

  "But you haven't even seen him yet."

  "Oh. You didn't tell me that. In that case, you'll have to come back in a few days, after he's come through."

  "But he's here."

  "Where?"

  He can't be in the cold room. Eusebio is well aware of the bodies currently stored there. Does she mean that her husband is here in a spiritual sense? He wonders about her state of mind from a medical point of view. A bit of delusional dementia?

  Maria Castro looks at him with an expression of clear good sense and replies in a matter-of-fact tone, "Right here."

  She leans over and undoes the clasps of the suitcase. The lid falls open and the sole content of the suitcase slips out like a baby being born: the dead and shoeless body of Rafael Castro.

  Eusebio peers at the body. Bodies come to their deaths in many ways, but they always come to him in the hospital in the same way: on a gurney and properly prepared, with an accompanying clinical report. They don't tumble out of suitcases in their Sunday best. But peasants have their own customs, he knows. They live with death in ways that urban people left behind long ago. Sometimes in rural Portugal they bury their dead in old tree trunks, for example. In his long professional life he has examined a few such bodies for the purpose of determining that they died of natural causes and were buried, not murdered and disposed of. (In every instance it was a proper burial.) He has also worked on the bodies of peasants who had pins stuck under their fingernails. No cruelty, this; just a primitive method to ensure that someone was actually dead. And here was another practical peasant way of dealing with death: doing one's own ambulance work. That must have been a lot of work for the old woman, hauling the suitcase down from the High Mountains of Portugal.

  "How long has he been dead?" he asks.

  "Three days," Maria replies.

  That seems about right. The winter cold of the road has done a good job of preserving the body.

  "How did
he die?" he asks. "I mean, was he sick?"

  "Not that he told me. He was having a cup of coffee in the kitchen. I went out. When I came back, he was on the floor and I couldn't wake him."

  "I see." Acute myocardial infarction, cerebral aneurysm, something like that, he thinks. "And what do you want me to do with him, Senhora Castro?"

  "Open him up, tell me how he lived."

  That mistake again. Perhaps an aversion to the actual word. Although, come to think of it, her way of putting it is not inaccurate. In showing how a person died, an autopsy often indicates how that person lived. Still, it's odd. Perhaps a regional locution, born of superstition.

  "You want me to perform an autopsy on your husband?"

  "Yes. Isn't that what you do?"

  "It is. But you don't order up an autopsy the way you order a meal in a restaurant."

  "What's the problem?"

  "There are procedures to follow."

  "He's dead. What else is necessary?"

  She has a point. Proper protocol or not, the body will be the same. Send her away with her suitcase, and Maria and Rafael Castro will be back the next day. In the meantime, an inn in Braganca will be displeased to find that one of its guests was a dead body. And overnight, in the warmth of a room, that body may reach the spillover point of decomposition, which will merely inconvenience him but will scandalize the innkeepers. If the couple even go to an inn. Since when have peasants had money to spend on paying accommodation? More likely she will spend the night at the train station, sitting on a bench, or, worse, outdoors in a park, sitting on her suitcase. Old Rafael Castro will not mind the cold, nor, for that matter, will his faithful wife--these ancient peasants are as rugged as the Iberian rhinoceros of yore. It's he, Eusebio, who will mind. A piece of paper is not worth such bodily ache, not after so much heartache. And better this fresh body than the body he will otherwise have to reckon with, the woman who was thrown off the bridge.

  Maria Castro looks at him, waiting for his reply. Her patience weighs on him.

  He is practical in his own way. How did she put it? She got married "under the banner of Why not?" Well, why not? This will be one to tell Jose about.