Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

“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? Why 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. José 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 José 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?