Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

“And how is this boy related to us again, exactly?”

“He was my mother’s cousin — and therefore my second cousin, or maybe my first cousin once removed, I’m not sure. At any rate, he’s family. Rafael and his wife, Maria, had their son very late, which means my mother was older than her cousin. She’d have been a teenager when he was born — as was Dad. So my parents both knew him. That’s what got Dona Amélia so excited. And I vaguely remember a story my parents told me when I was young, about the death of a child in the family. They would start it but never finish it — like a terrible war story. They always shut up at a particular point. I think they left the village before he was revived, so to speak. I suspect they never knew about that.”

“Or they didn’t care to believe it.”

“Could be that. Like the boy’s mother. It seems the boy’s father and mother stood on different sides of the story, the father believing in the boy’s powers, the mother not.”

“That’s a sad story,” Ben says. “And what was the deal about the chimpanzee in the body?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t bring that up.”

Odo is sitting on a chair next to them, holding a coffee in his hands, looking out the window.

“Well, there’s yours, sipping his cappuccino like a real European.”

When they return to the house, Peter goes from room to room, wondering if he feels differently about it. Will the walls now exude memories? Will he hear the pitter-patter of small bare feet on the floor? Will young parents appear, holding a small child in their arms, his future still shrouded in mystery?

No. This isn’t home. Home is his story with Odo.

That evening, over a simple meal, he and Ben go through the photo album again together and try to make sense of Dr. Lozora’s curious autopsy report on Rafael Miguel Santos Castro. Ben shakes his head in confusion.

The next afternoon they walk across the cobbled square to the little church. The day is as soft as a caress. They return to the candlelit shrine and the picture of the clear-eyed child. Ben mutters something about being related to “religious royalty”. They move to a pew near the front of the church to sit together.

Suddenly Ben looks startled. “Dad!” he says, pointing to the crucifix.

“What?”

“The cross there — it looks like a chimpanzee! I’m not kidding. Look at the face, the arms, the legs.”

Peter studies the crucifix. “You’re right. It does look like one.”

“This is crazy. What’s with all the apes? ” Ben looks around nervously. “Where’s yours, by the way?”

“Over there,” Peter replies. “Stop fretting about him.”

As they leave the church Peter turns to his son. “Ben, you asked me a question. I don’t know what’s with all the apes. All I know is that Odo fills my life. He brings me joy.”

Odo grins and then lifts his hands and claps a few times, producing a muffled sound, as if quietly calling them to attention. Father and son both watch, transfixed.

“That’s a hell of a state of grace,” Ben says.

They wander home but right away Odo makes to strike out on a walk. Ben decides not to come. “I’ll wander around the village, continue reconnecting with my ancestors,” he says. It takes Peter a moment to realize that there is no irony in Ben’s statement. He would gladly join his son, but he is loyal to Odo, so he waves at Ben, grabs the backpack, and follows Odo out.

Odo sets off for the boulders. They walk silently, as usual, across the savannah. Peter trails behind without paying much attention. Abruptly Odo stops in his tracks. He rises on his legs and sniffs, his eyes trained on a boulder just ahead. A bird is standing on top of it, eyeing them. The hairs on Odo’s body rise till they are straight up on end. He sways from side to side. When he returns to all fours, he jerks himself up and down on his arms with great excitement, though he is strangely quiet. The next moment he takes off at a full run for the boulder. In the blink of an eye he has skipped to the top of it. The bird has long since fluttered away. Peter is perplexed. What was it about the bird that so excited him?

He thinks of staying put and letting Odo have his play on the boulder. He would like nothing more than to lie down and have a nap. But Odo turns and waves at him from his high perch. Clearly Peter is expected to follow. He makes his way to the boulder. At its base, he composes himself for the climb, taking a few deep breaths. When he feels ready, he looks up.

He is startled to see Odo directly above him, clinging to the rock fully upside down. Odo is staring at him furiously with his reddish-brown eyes while he beckons him with a hand, the long dark fingers curling and uncurling rhythmically in a manner that Peter finds mesmerizing. At the same time, Odo’s funnel-shaped lips are putting out a silent but urgent hoo, hoo, hoo . Odo has never done anything like this, neither in the boulder fields nor anywhere else. To be so imperatively summoned by the ape, and therefore so forcefully acknowledged — he is shocked. He feels as if he’s just been birthed out of nonexistence. He is an individual being, a unique being, one who has been asked to climb . Energized, he reaches for the first handhold. Though riddled with holes and bulges, the side of the boulder is quite vertical and he strains to pull his weary body up. As he climbs, the ape retreats. When they reach the top, Peter sits down heavily, panting and sweating. He doesn’t feel well. His heart is jumping about his chest.

He and Odo are side by side, their bodies touching. He looks at the way he has come. It is a sheer drop. He looks the other way, in the direction Odo is facing. The view is the same as always, though losing nothing for its familiarity: a great sweep of savannah all the way to the horizon, covered in golden-yellow grass, punctuated by dark boulders, a vista of spare beauty except for the sky, which is in full late-afternoon bloom. The volume of air above them is tremendous. Within it, the sun and the white clouds are playing off each other. The abundant light is unspeakably gorgeous.

He turns to Odo. The ape will be gazing up and away, he thinks. He is not. Odo is looking down and close-by. He is in a frenzy of excitement, but oddly contained, with no riotous pant-hooting or wild gestures, only a bobbing up and down of the head. Odo leans forward to look at the foot of the boulder. Peter cannot see what he is looking at. He nearly cannot be bothered to find out — he needs to rest. Nonetheless he lies on his front and inches forward, making sure his hands have a good grip. A fall from such a height would cause grievous injury. He peeks over the edge of the boulder’s summit to see what is drawing Odo’s attention down below.

What he sees does not make him gasp, because he doesn’t dare make a sound. But his eyes stay fixed and unblinking and his breath is stilled. He now understands Odo’s strategy in navigating the boulder fields, why the ape goes from boulder to boulder in a straight line rather than wandering in the open, why he climbs and observes, why he asks his clumsy human companion to stay close.

Odo has been seeking, and now Odo has found.

Peter stares at the Iberian rhinoceros standing at the foot of the boulder. He feels he is looking at a galleon from the air, the body massive and curved, the two horns rising like masts, the tail fluttering like a flag. The animal is not aware that it is being observed.

Peter and Odo look at each other. They acknowledge their mutual amazement, he with a stunned smile, Odo with a funnelling of the lips, then a wide grin of the lower teeth.

The rhinoceros flicks its tail and occasionally gives its head a little roll.

Peter tries to estimate its size. It is perhaps ten feet in length. A well-built, big-boned beast. The hide grey and tough-looking. The head large, with a long, sloping forehead. The horns as unmistakable as a shark’s fin. The moist eyes surprisingly delicate, with long eyelashes.