The High Mountains of Portugal (36 page)

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.

The rhinoceros scratches itself against the rock. It lowers its head and sniffs at the grass but does not eat. It twitches its ears. Then, with a grunt, it sets off. The ground shakes. Despite its heft, the animal moves swiftly, heading straight for another boulder, then another, then another, until it has disappeared.

Peter and Odo don't move for the longest time, not for fear of the rhinoceros, but because they don't want to lose anything of what they've just seen, and to move might bring on forgetfulness. The sky is a blaze of blues and reds and oranges. Peter finds himself weeping silently.

Finally he pushes himself back onto the top of the boulder. It is an effort to sit up. His heart is battering within him. He sits with his eyes closed, his head hung low, trying to breathe evenly. It's the worst heartburn he's ever had. He groans.

Odo, to his hazy surprise, turns and hugs him, one long arm wrapping around his back, supporting him, the other enveloping his raised knees, on which his arms are resting. It's a firm full-circle embrace. Peter finds it comforting and relaxes into it. The ape's body is warm. He places a trembling hand on Odo's hairy forearm. He feels Odo's breathing against the side of his face. He raises his head and opens his eyes to cast a sideways glance at his friend. Odo is looking straight at him.
Puff, puff, puff,
softly, go the ape's breaths against his face. Peter struggles a little, but not to get away, more an involuntary action.

He stops moving, lifeless, his heart clogged to stillness. Odo does nothing for several minutes, then moves back, gently laying him flat on the boulder. Odo stares at Peter's body and coughs mournfully. He stays next to him for a half hour or so.

The ape rises and drops off the rock, barely breaking his fall with his hands and feet. On the ground he moves out into the open. He stops and looks back at the boulder.

Then he turns and runs off in the direction of the Iberian rhinoceros.

To Alice, and to Theo, Lola, Felix, and Jasper: the story of my life

The High Mountains of Portugal

Beatrice and Virgil

Life of Pi

Self

The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

101 Letters to a Prime Minister: The Complete Letters to Stephen Harper

Y
ANN
M
ARTEL
is the author of
Life of Pi,
the global bestseller that won the 2002 Man Booker Prize (among other honours) and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. He is also the award-winning author of
The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios,
the novels
Self
and
Beatrice and Virgil,
and the nonfiction work
101 Letters to a Prime Minister.
Born in Spain in 1963, he studied philosophy at Trent University, worked at odd jobs—tree planter, dishwasher, security guard—and travelled widely before turning to writing. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada, with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.