The High Mountains of Portugal

by Yann Martel

  Never has he worked on a body that ended up having so many incisions. Professional ethic compels him to close every single one: across the head, along the arms, in the neck, on the legs and hands, through the penis and the tongue. The fingers are painstaking labour. The eyes are unsatisfying in the final result--he spends much time contriving to shut the eyelids over his botched job. He finishes with the soles of the feet.

  Finally only a body remains on the autopsy table, and a suitcase on the floor, loosely packed with random objects.

  He looks on dumbly for a long while. When he turns away, he notices something on a side table: the tuft of chimpanzee hairs. Maria Castro forgot them--or did she leave them behind deliberately? He takes hold of them and does what she did: He sniffs them and touches them to his lips.

  He is utterly spent. He goes back to his office, the chimpanzee hairs in one hand, the suitcase in the other. He sets the suitcase on his desk and settles heavily into his chair. He opens the suitcase and stares at its contents. He opens a drawer, finds an envelope, places the chimpanzee hairs in it, and drops the envelope into the suitcase. He notices on the floor the Agatha Christie novel. He picks it up.

  Senhora Melo arrives early, as is her habit. She is surprised to find Dr. Lozora collapsed on his desk. Her heart flutters. Is he dead? A dead pathologist--the notion strikes her as professionally unbecoming. She steps in. He is only sleeping. She can hear his breathing and see the gentle rising and falling of his shoulders. And his colour is good. He has drooled on his desk. She will not share with anyone this embarrassing detail, the shiny river from his mouth, the small puddle. Nor will she mention the empty bottle of red wine. She lifts it and quietly places it on the floor behind the desk, out of sight. There is a large scuffed suitcase on the desk. Is it the doctor's? Is he going somewhere? Would he have such a shabby suitcase?

  He is sleeping on top of a file. It is mostly concealed by a hand, but she can still read the first line:

  Rafael Miguel Santos Castro, 83 anos, da aldeia de Tuizelo,

  as Altas Montanhas de Portugal

  Odd--she doesn't recall the name or the locality. She is the guardian of names, the one who links with certitude each person with his or her fatality. And it's written in the doctor's hand, transiently, rather than set for eternity with her typewriter. Could it be an emergency case that arrived after she left last night? That would be highly unusual. In passing she notes the patient's age. Eighty-three is a sound age to live to. That reassures her. In spite of the tragedies of life, the world can still be a good place.

  She notices that the clasps of the suitcase are undone. Though she knows she shouldn't, she quietly opens it, to see if it belongs to the doctor. Such a strange assortment of things--a flute, a knife and a fork, a candle, a plain black dress, a book, a square of red cloth, an envelope, among other bits and pieces--would not likely be Dr. Lozora's. She closes the suitcase.

  She leaves the office quietly, not wanting to embarrass the doctor by being there when he wakes up. She walks to her tiny work alcove. She likes to be properly set up before the day's work starts. The typewriter ribbon needs to be checked, the carbon paper restocked, her water carafe filled. The door to the autopsy room is open, which it shouldn't be. She glances in. She catches her breath. There is a body on the table! A shudder goes through her. What is it doing there? How long has it been out of the cold room? This is most improper. Normally there is a good hour of dictation of final reports before the autopsies start. Normally the bodies come and go shrouded, invisible to everyone except the doctors.

  She enters the room. It will be like a living body, she tells herself, only dead.

  It isn't at all like a living body. The corpse is that of a man, an old man. Yellow and sagging. Bony. His hairy pubic mound and large penis exposed with unspeakable obscenity. But far worse are the crude seams all over his body, ragged sutures of red, grey, and yellow that make him look like a cloth doll. His hands look like the underside of a starfish. Even his penis is marred by ghastly stitching. Senhora Melo gulps, thinks she might faint, steadies herself. She forces herself to look at the man's face. But there is nothing to be read upon his face, only age. She is aghast at how a dead body is such a--she searches for the word--such a relic. When she leaves the autopsy room on tiptoes, as if the relic might be disturbed by her presence, she wonders: Where's the gurney? How did he get here?

  She closes the door of the autopsy room and takes a few deep breaths. Clearly the doctor needs help. He has not been well lately. Sometimes he arrives late for work, sometimes he doesn't show up at all, sometimes he works all night. Poor man. The death of his wife has been very hard on him. He waved away the concerns of the other doctors, of the director of the hospital himself. He would do it, he said, he would do it. But what a thing to do! Dr. Otavio, his colleague, was away on holiday, but even if he had been here he would have refused to work on her on account of having known her. That's standard procedure. In the normal course of things, her body should have gone to the hospital in Vila Real. But Dr. Lozora couldn't bear the thought of anyone else doing it. And she was decomposing; it needed to be done right away. And so he performed the autopsy of his own wife.

  In a state of shock, her eyes sheltered by the panel of straw weave, Senhora Melo witnessed the whole thing from her alcove. She did her best to record the report that came intermittently from the autopsy room. Periods of silence were followed by periods of weeping, then bursts of resolve, which was when Dr. Lozora spoke. But how do you record pain, how do you record wreckage? They recorded themselves in her, while she dutifully typed his words.

  She knew many people thought of Maria Lozora as an eccentric woman. Lately, for example, she had taken to walking around town carrying a bag full of books. She could have a sharp tongue. Her silences were ominous. Father Cecilio was terrified of her. He submitted to her extemporaneous lectures on religion without a quibble, and didn't say a word when she started reading from her bag of books in plain sight of everyone during his sermons. But she was at heart a very kind woman, always willing to help at any time of day or night. She never seemed to sleep. How many times had she appeared during the night at her friends' houses when their children were sick, with a pot of soup and her good doctor husband at her side? Lives had been comforted, and in some cases even saved, by their intervention. They were an inseparable pair, those two. Quite odd. She didn't know any other couple who took such pleasure in each other's company.

  And then that this should happen to her! She had gone out walking alone one evening, as was her wont. She was not home when Dr. Lozora returned from the hospital. Increasingly worried, he had reported her missing to the police later that night. He had no idea where she might be. She had a mind of her own, he said, and perhaps she had decided to visit someone without telling him. Yes, he had been working late that evening.

  A few days later, a book was found on the shore under the bridge. It was a novel, Peril at End House, by the English writer Agatha Christie. There was a bloated book stamp. Dr. Lozora positively identified the book as belonging to him and his wife. The river and its rocky banks were searched. Other books by Agatha Christie were discovered downstream. Eventually Maria Lozora's body was found. It had unfortunately become wedged among the rocks in a spot that made it very hard to detect.

  Who but Maria Lozora would be wandering about in such foul weather? And how had she fallen off the bridge?

  It was entirely inexplicable--in fact, every possible explanation seemed more unbelievable than the next. Suicide? She was a happy, fulfilled woman with a network of family and friends who gave no sign of any mental or moral distress. And would a woman who was so comfortable with words not leave a suicide note? Furthermore, she was a thoughtful, devout Christian; such Christians do not take their lives. No one--not her husband or children, not her priest, not the police--found the explanation of suicide convincing. An accident, then? She plummeted to her death from a bridge that was safeguarded by thick solid stone balustrades whose height p
recluded anyone slipping or toppling over them. One might plausibly climb atop one, but why would any sensible soul do that except with the intent of jumping off? And since suicide was ruled out as a likely explanation for her death, so was the idea that she had willingly climbed the balustrade. If both suicide and accident were excluded, what was left? Murder. But this seemed the most improbable of all explanations. Who would want to murder Maria Lozora? She had no enemies. She was liked--even loved--by all who knew her. And this was Braganca, not Chicago. Murders were unknown in these parts. This was not a town where innocent women were randomly hoisted up in the air and thrown off bridges. The idea was preposterous. So it had to be either suicide or an accident. Round and round it went. The police pleaded for witnesses to step forward, but no one had seen anything. Forensic experts came all the way from Lisbon; they brought nothing to light. People adopted the explanation that seemed most plausible to them. Dr. Lozora espoused the theory of murder, while having no idea who would do that to his wife.

  It distressed Senhora Melo that Maria Lozora's death would not have the neat resolution of the murder mysteries of which Maria and the doctor were so fond.

  Senhora Melo hears a gasp. Dr. Lozora is awake. She hears him begin to weep. He doesn't know that she's arrived, that he isn't alone. The volume increases. Great cracking sobs. The poor man, the poor man. What is she to do? If he realizes that she's there, he will be mortified. She doesn't want that. Perhaps she should make a noise to alert him to her presence. He continues to weep. She stands very still and quiet. Then Senhora Melo becomes annoyed with herself. Can it be any more plain that the man needs help? Didn't she just think that a moment ago?

  She turns and heads for Dr. Lozora's office.

  Home

  When Peter Tovy is appointed to the Senate in the summer of 1981 from the House of Commons to make way in his safe Toronto riding for a star candidate, there is no longer any need for him to spend much time in his constituency. He and his wife, Clara, buy a larger, nicer apartment in Ottawa, with a lovely view of the river. They prefer the quieter pace of the capital, and they're happy to be near their son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter, who live in the city.

  Then one morning he enters the bedroom and finds Clara sitting on their bed, holding her left side with both hands, crying.

  "What's wrong?" he asks.

  Clara only shakes her head. Fear grips him. They go to the hospital. Clara is sick, seriously so.

  At the same time that his wife is fighting for her life, their son's marriage falls apart. He paints the rosiest picture possible of the breakdown for his wife. "It's best for all of them," he says. "They never got along. Away from each other they'll blossom. It's what people do these days."

  She smiles in agreement. Her horizons are shrinking. But it isn't best, or even good. It's terrible. He watches conjugal partners become bitter enemies, he sees a child become war loot. His son, Ben, spends inordinate amounts of time, money, and energy fighting with his former wife, Dina, who fights back just as hard, to the delight of their lawyers and to his stupefaction. He tries to talk to Dina and play the mediator, but however civil her tone and open her heart at the start of each conversation, inevitably she loses her cool and boils up in anger. Being the father of, he can only be an abettor and a co-conspirator. "You're just like your son," she spat out once. Except, he pointed out, that he has lived in loving harmony with his wife for over four decades. She hung up on him. His granddaughter, Rachel, a cheerful sprite when she was a small child, turns sour on both her parents and walls herself in a teenage tower of caustic resentment. On a few occasions he takes her out for a walk and a restaurant meal to cheer her up--and to cheer himself up, he hopes--but he can never get past her sullenness. Then she moves to Vancouver with her mother, who has "won" her in the custody battle. He drives them to the airport. When they walk through security, already bickering, he does not see an adult woman and her growing daughter but two black scorpions, their venomous stingers raised, goading each other on.

  As for Ben, who remains in Ottawa, he is hopeless. As far as Peter can tell, his son is incredibly brightly stupid. A medical researcher, Ben at one point studied why people accidentally bite their tongue. This painful breakdown in the tongue's ability to work around teeth, like a sheet worker operating heavy machinery, has surprisingly complex roots. Now Peter sees his son as a tongue blindly throwing itself under gnashing teeth, coming out bloody, but throwing itself under again the very next day, over and over, without an ounce of self-understanding or any realization of the costs or consequences. Instead Ben is always chafing with exasperation. Conversations between them end in stony silence, with the son rolling his eyes and the father at a loss for words.

  Amidst a swirl of medical terms, after the waxing and waning of hope over every treatment, after the twisting, groaning, and sobbing, after the incontinence and the vanishing of all flesh, his beautiful Clara lies in a hospital bed, wearing a horrible green hospital gown, her eyes glazed and half-shut, her mouth open. She convulses, a rattle comes from her chest, and she dies.

  He becomes a spectre on Parliament Hill.

  One day he's speaking in the Senate. A fellow senator has turned and is looking up at him with a scrutiny that is more intense than simple interest should warrant. Why are you looking at me like that? he thinks. What's the matter with you? If he leans forward and blows into his colleague's face, his breath will have the effect of a blowtorch and the skin of his face will peel off. It'll be a grinning skull that will be looking up at him. That will deal with your stupid expression.

  His reverie is interrupted by the Speaker of the Senate, who says, "Will the honourable member continue on the topic at hand, or...?"

  The trailing off of the Speaker's voice is significant. Peter looks down at his papers and realizes that he has no idea what he's been talking about--no idea, and no interest in going on even if he did remember. He has nothing to say. He looks at the Speaker, shakes his head, and sits down. His colleague, after another second of staring, turns away.

  The Whip comes round to his desk. They are friends. "How's it going, Peter?" he asks.

  Peter shrugs.

  "Maybe you should take a break. Bust loose for a while. You've been through a lot."

  He sighs. Yes, he needs to get out. He can't take it anymore. The speeches, the endless posturing, the cynical scheming, the swollen egos, the arrogant aides, the merciless media, the stifling minutiae, the scientific bureaucracy, the microscopic betterment of humanity--all are hallmarks of democracy, he recognizes. Democracy is such a crazy, wonderful thing. But he's had enough.

  "I'll see if I can't find something for you," the Whip says. He pats him on the shoulder. "Hang in there. You'll make it."

  A few days later the Whip comes back to him with a proposal. A trip.

  "To Oklahoma?" Peter responds.

  "Hey, great things come from remote places. Who'd ever heard of Nazareth before Jesus showed up?"

  "Or of Saskatchewan before Tommy Douglas."

  The Whip smiles. He's from Saskatchewan. "And it's what came up. Someone bailed out at the last minute. The State Legislature down there has invited Canadian Members of Parliament to visit. You know, the knitting and maintaining of relations, that sort of thing. You won't have much to do."

  Peter isn't even sure where Oklahoma is, exactly. A marginal state of the American empire, somewhere in the middle of it.

  "Just a change of air, Peter. A little four-day holiday. Why not?"

  He agrees. Sure, why not. Two weeks later he flies to Oklahoma with three Members of Parliament.

  Oklahoma City is warm and pleasant in May, and their hosts display gracious hospitality. The Canadian delegation meets the governor of the state, state legislators, and businesspeople. They are shown around the State Capitol, they visit a factory. Each day ends with a dinner. The hotel where they are lodged is grand. Throughout the visit, Peter talks about Canada and hears about Oklahoma in a relaxed fog. The change of scenery, the cha
nge of air, even--soft and moist--is soothing, as the Whip predicted.

  On the eve of their last full day, a day that has been left open for the recreation of the Canadian guests, he notices a tourist brochure about the Oklahoma City Zoo. He has a fondness for zoos, not because he's particularly interested in animals, but because Clara was. She was on the Board of Management of the Toronto Zoo at one time. He expresses the wish to visit the Oklahoma City Zoo. The legislative assistant who is their go-to person at the State Capitol looks into it and comes back to him with profuse apologies.

  "I'm so sorry," she says. "Usually the zoo is open every day, but it's closed at the moment because of major renovations. I could check to see if they'd let you in anyway, if you're interested."

  "No, no, I don't want to be a bother."

  "There is a chimpanzee sanctuary south of town, in Norman, at the university," she suggests.

  "A chimpanzee sanctuary?"

  "Yes, it's an institute for the study of--of monkeys, I guess. It's not normally open to the public, but I'm sure we can make that happen."

  She does make it happen. The word "senator" works wonders on American ears.

  The next morning a car is waiting for him in front of the hotel. No one else in his delegation is interested in joining him, so he goes alone. The car drives him to the Institute for Primate Research, as the place is called, an outpost of the University of Oklahoma in the middle of empty, brushy countryside ten or so kilometres east of Norman. The sky is blue, the land is green.

  At the institute, at the end of a winding gravel driveway, he sees a large, vaguely menacing-looking man with a beard and a big belly. Next to him stands a lanky younger man with long hair and bulging eyes; clearly, from his body language, he is a subordinate.