Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

Outdoors, other organisms besides bacteria play a role in uglifying the body. Any number of birds will peck at dead flesh, gashing the way in for hosts of smaller invaders, among them flies, principally flesh flies and blowflies, with their generous and abundant contribution of maggots, but also beetles, ants, spiders, mites, millipedes, centipedes, wasps, and others. Each mars the body in its own way. And there are still more disfigurers: shrews, voles, mice, rats, foxes, cats, dogs, wolves, lynxes. These eat the face, pull away chunks of flesh, remove entire limbs. All this is done to a body that was, until very recently, living, whole, and standing, walking, smiling, and laughing.

“How terrible,” Maria says.

“Yes. I’m going to avoid that bridge from now on.”

His wife nods. “Faith is the answer to death. Good-bye.”

She tilts her face up and they kiss one last time. To have her lovely face so close to his! To feel her body against his! She pulls away. A little smile and a glance of farewell, and she leaves his office and starts moving down the hallway. He follows her out.

“Good-bye, my angel. Thank you for all your gifts. I love you.”

She disappears around a bend. He gazes down the deserted hallway, then returns to his office and closes the door.

His office now feels empty and too quiet. Perhaps he should pray again, although he is not, as it happens, one who has seen many victories won through prayer, devoted though he is to Jesus of Nazareth. Nor is he of the age when throwing oneself upon one’s knees comes easily. Genuflection proceeds with groaning and the slow working of parts, a precarious balancing act accompanied by moments of sudden giving way. And at the end of it, knees are painfully pressed against a marble floor that is hard and cold (though perfect for mopping up blood and cadaver juices). He begins to work his way down, using the desk for help. Then he remembers: Maria mentioned a gift. He looks at his desk. She must have placed her gift on it while he was bent down, gathering the Agatha Christies off the floor. Sure enough, some papers betray a bump that was not there earlier. He straightens himself and reaches over. A book. He takes it in his hands and turns it over.

Appointment with Death, by Agatha Christie. He searches his memory. The title does not seem familiar, nor does the cover. But there are so many titles, so many covers. He checks the copyright page: 1938, this very year — or this year until a few minutes ago. His heart leaps. It’s a new Agatha Christie! A successor to Death on the Nile . It must have arrived that day from the Círculo Português de Mistério. Bless them. Bless his wife, who graced him with the further gift of letting him read it first.

The reports will wait. He settles in his chair. Or rather, as his wife suggested, he settles in a boat. A voice comes to his ears:

“You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?”

The question floated out into the still night air, seemed to hang there a moment and then drift away down into the darkness towards the Dead Sea.

Hercule Poirot paused a minute with his hand on the window catch. Frowning, he shut it decisively, thereby excluding any injurious night air! Hercule Poirot had been brought up to believe that all outside air was best left outside, and that night air was especially dangerous to the health.

As he pulled the curtains neatly over the window and walked to his bed, he smiled tolerantly to himself.

“You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?”

Curious words for one Hercule Poirot, detective, to overhear on his first night in Jerusalem.

“Decidedly, wherever I go, there is something to remind me of crime!” he murmured to himself.

Eusebio pauses. An Agatha Christie that starts in Jerusalem ? The last one took place on the Nile, there was one set in Mesopotamia — circling around Palestine — but now Jerusalem itself. After all that Maria was saying, the coincidence amazes him. She will take it as confirmation of her theory.

A rap at the door startles him. The book in his hands flies up like a bird. “Maria!” he cries. She has come back! He hurries to the door. He must tell her.

“Maria!” he calls again as he pulls the door open.

A woman stands before him. But it’s not his wife. It is a different woman. This woman is older. A black-dressed widow. A stranger. She eyes him. There is a large beat-up suitcase at her feet. Surely the woman hasn’t been travelling at this late hour? He notes something else. Hidden by wrinkles, blurred by time, hindered by black peasant dress, but shining through nonetheless: The woman is a great beauty. A luminous face, a striking figure, a graceful carriage. She must have been something to behold when she was young.

“How did you know I was coming?” the woman asks, startled.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

“My name is Maria Dores Passos Castro.”

Maria that she is, who is she? She’s not his Maria, his wife, she’s a different Maria. What does she want? What is she doing here?

“How can I be of assistance, Senhora Castro?” he asks stiffly.

Maria Castro answers with a question. “Are you the doctor who deals with bodies?”

That’s one way of putting it. “Yes, I’m head of the department of pathology. My name is Dr. Eusebio Lozora.”

“In that case, I need to talk to you, Senhor doctor, if you have a few minutes to spare.”

He leans out to look down the hallway, searching for his wife. She isn’t there. She and this woman must have crossed paths. He sighs inwardly. Another woman who wants to talk to him. Is she also concerned with his salvation? How many more biblical prophets lie waiting for him in the night? All he wants to do is get a little work done, get caught up. And since when do pathologists have consultations with the public, in the middle of the night at that? He’s starving too. He should have brought something to eat if he was going to work all night.

He will turn this woman away. For whatever ails her, she should see a family doctor, she should go to the emergency room. His hand is set to close the door when he remembers: No men attended Jesus when he was buried. Only women came to his tomb, only women.

Perhaps one of the cases on his desk has to do with her? A relative, a loved one. It’s highly unusual for him to deal with family members. He prides himself on his ability to determine what may cause grief, but grief itself, dealing with it, is neither his medical specialty nor a talent he happens to have. That is why he went into pathology. Pathology is medicine reduced to its pure science, without the draining contact with patients. But before training to track down death, he studied life, and here is a living woman who wants to consult with him. This, he remembers, is what the original calling of the medical arts is about: the alleviating of suffering.

In as gentle a voice as his weary frame can muster, he says, “Please come in, Senhora Castro.”

The old woman picks up her suitcase and enters his office. “Much obliged, Senhor doctor.”

“Here, sit here,” he says, indicating the chair his wife has just vacated. His office is still a mess, his workbench still covered in papers — and what’s that file on the floor in the corner? But it will have to do for now. He sits down in his chair, across the desk from his new visitor. A doctor and his patient. Except for the bottle of red wine standing on the desk and the Agatha Christie murder mystery lying on the floor.

“How can I help you?” he asks.

She hesitates, then makes up her mind. “I’ve come down from the village of Tuizelo, in the High Mountains of Portugal.”

Ah yes. The few people who live in the High Mountains of Portugal trickle down to Bragança because there’s not a hospital in the whole thankless plateau or, indeed, a commercial centre of any size.