The High Mountains of Portugal (28 page)

An hour after all the other passengers have picked up their luggage and moved on, he is still waiting in the arrivals area. He spends most of that hour in a cubicle of a restroom near the luggage carousel, weeping quietly. If only Clara were with him! She would steady him. But if she were around, he wouldn't be in this ridiculous predicament.

Eventually a man in a uniform finds him. “O senhor é o homem com o macaco?” he asks.

Peter stares at him dumbly.

“Macaco?” the man says, making to scratch his armpits while going
oo, oo, oo, oo
.

“Yes, yes!” Peter nods.

As they walk through secured doors, the man chats amiably in Portuguese to him. Peter nods, though he doesn't understand a word. He remembers from long-ago conversations between his parents that this is what Portuguese sounds like, a slurred mournful whisper.

In the middle of a hangar, the cage is resting on a luggage cart. Some airport workers are standing around it. Again Peter's heart jumps in his chest, but this time with gladness. The men are chatting about the
macaco
with evident interest. Odo is still unconscious. The men ask questions, to which Peter can only shake his head apologetically.

“Ele não fala português,” says the man who brought him in.

Sign language takes over.

“O que o senhor vai fazer com ele?” says another man, his hands waving in front of him, palms up.

“I'm going to the High Mountains of Portugal,” Peter replies. He cuts a rectangle in the air with a finger, says, “Portugal,” and points to the top right of the rectangle.

“Ah, as Altas Montanhas de Portugal. Lá em cima com os rinocerontes,” responds the man.

The others laugh. Peter nods, though he doesn't know what has amused them.
Rinocerontes?

Eventually their work duties call. His passport is examined and stamped; Odo's papers are signed, stamped, and separated, one set for Peter, one set for them. There. A man leans against the luggage cart. The foreigner and his
macaco
are good to go.

Peter blanches. In the frenzy of the last two weeks, there is one detail he has forgotten to address: how he and Odo will get from Lisbon to the High Mountains of Portugal. They need a car, but he has made no arrangements for buying one.

He puts his palms face out.
Stop
. “I need to buy a car.” He shakes his fists up and down, mimicking hands on a steering wheel.

“Um carro?”

“Yes. Where can I buy one, where?” He rubs thumb and forefinger together.

“O senhor quer comprar um carro?”

Comprar
—that sounds right.

“Yes, yes, comprar um carro, where?”

The man calls over another and they discuss. They write on a piece of paper, which they hand to Peter.
Citroën,
it says, with an address. He knows
citron
is French for lemon. He hopes this isn't an omen.

“Near, near?” he asks, cupping his fingers towards him.

“Sim, é muito perto. Táxi.”

He points to himself, then away and back. “I'm going and then I'm coming back.”

“Sim, sim.” The men nod.

He hurries away. He has brought with him substantial Canadian and American cash, in addition to traveller's cheques. And he has his credit card, for extra surety. He changes all his money into escudos and hops into a taxi.

The Citroën dealership is not very far from the airport. The cars are strange, roly-poly things. One has lovely lines, but it's expensive and too big for his needs. Finally, he decides on a very basic model, a dorky grey contraption that looks like it was made from tuna cans. It has no frills at all, no radio, no air conditioning, no armrests, no automatic transmission. It doesn't even have roll-down windows. The windows are cut in two horizontally and the lower half hinges up to rest against the top half, like a flap, held up by a clip. Nor is there a hardtop roof, or a glass rear window, only a piece of sturdy fabric that can be detached and rolled back, flexible transparent plastic window included. He opens and closes a door. The car feels rickety and rudimentary, but the salesman expresses great enthusiasm for it, praising it to the sky with his hands. Peter wonders at the name, which isn't a name at all, only an alphanumeric code: 2CV. He would prefer an American car. But he needs a car right away, before Odo wakes up.

He interrupts the salesman with a nod—he will take it. The man breaks into smiles and directs him to his office. Peter's international driver's licence is inspected, papers are filled out, money is taken, calls are made to his credit card company.

An hour later he drives up to the airport, a temporary licence plate taped to the inside of the car's rear window. The transmission on the car is clunky, with the gear stick poking straight out of the dashboard, the engine is noisy, and the ride is bouncy. He parks the car and makes his way back to the hangar.

Odo is still sleeping. Peter and the airport employee wheel the cage out to the car. They transfer the ape to the back seat. Right then, a problem arises. The cage, even folded up, doesn't fit in the tiny trunk of the 2CV. There's no question of strapping it onto the soft roof. It has to be left behind. Peter is not bothered. The thing is a nuisance, and besides, Odo hasn't used it at all. The airport man is amenable to taking it.

Peter checks one last time that he hasn't forgotten anything. He has his passport and papers, he's pulled out the map of Portugal, his luggage is jammed into the trunk, the ape is in the back seat—he's ready to set off. Only he's exhausted and thirsty and hungry. He steadies himself.

“How far to the Altas Montanhas de Portugal?” he asks.

“Para as Altas Montanhas de Portugal? Cerca de dez horas,” the man answers.

Peter uses his fingers to make sure he has understood. Ten fingers. Ten hours. The man nods. Peter sighs.

He consults the map. As he did in the United States, he decides to avoid large cities. That means turning away from the coast and driving through the interior. Past a town called Alhandra, there is a bridge across the Tagus. After that, the map promises settlements that are so small they receive the minimal cartographic designation, a tiny black circle with a blank centre.

A couple of hours later, after only a quick stop at a café in a place called Porto Alto to eat and drink and buy supplies, he can keep his eyes open no longer. They come upon Ponte de Sor. It's a pleasantly bustling town. He eyes a hotel longingly; he would happily stop there. Instead he drives on. Back in the countryside, he turns off onto a quiet side road and parks next to an olive grove. The car looks like a grey bubble about to be blown across the landscape. He leaves food next to Odo. He thinks to lay his sleeping bag across the front seats, but the seats are too far apart. Nor do they recline to any extent. He looks at the ground next to the car. Too rocky. Finally he gets in the back and works Odo's heavy body onto the floor of the car. He lies across the back seat in a fetal position and promptly falls into a deep sleep.

When Peter awakes late that afternoon, Odo is sitting right next to his head, practically on it. He's looking around. No doubt he's wondering what new trick the humans have pulled on him. Where is he now? Where have the big buildings gone? Peter can feel the warmth of Odo's body against his head. He's still tired, but anxiety revives him. Will Odo be angry and aggressive? If he is, there's no way Peter can escape him. He lifts himself slowly.

Odo embraces him with both arms. Peter embraces the ape back. They remain interlocked for several seconds. He gives Odo some water to drink and feeds him apples, bread, cheese, ham, all of which disappear in quick, full mouthfuls.

Peter notices a group of men a ways off, walking in their direction along the road. They're carrying shovels and hoes on their shoulders. He moves to the driver's seat. Odo hops into the passenger seat next to him. He starts the car. Odo hoots at the rumble of the engine but otherwise stays put. He turns the car around and returns to the road.

Like most emigrants, his parents departed the High Mountains of Portugal in a state of want, and they were determined that their children would have different, better lives in Canada. As if stanching a wound, they turned their backs on their origins. In Toronto, they deliberately avoided fellow Portuguese immigrants. They forced themselves to learn English well and passed on neither their native language nor their native culture to their son and daughter. Instead, they encouraged them to move in wider circles and were delighted when each married a non-Portuguese.

Only in their last years, once their identity engineering had succeeded, did his parents relent a little and did he and his sister, Teresa, on occasion get a glimpse into their long-ago former lives. It came in the form of brief stories, supported by family photos. A few names were floated and a hazy geography was sketched, centred on one place name: Tuizelo. That was where his parents came from, and that is where he and Odo will settle.

But he knows nothing of the country. He is Canadian through and through. As they drive in the fading light of day, he notes how pretty the landscape is, how busy the rurality. Everywhere there are flocks and herds, beehives and grapevines, ploughed fields and tended groves. He sees people carrying firewood on their backs and donkeys carrying loaded baskets on theirs.

The night stops them and sends them to sleep. He moves to the cramped back seat. At a late hour, he is vaguely aware of Odo exiting the car through the door, but he is too knocked out by sleep to check on him.

In the morning he finds the ape sleeping on top of the car, on its fabric roof. Peter does not rouse him. Instead he reads the guidebook. He learns from it that the peculiar tree he keeps seeing—stocky, thick-limbed, the trunk dark brown except where the precious bark has been neatly removed—is the cork tree. The parts of the trees that have been stripped glow a rich reddish brown. He vows from then on to drink only from wine bottles that have been cork-stoppered.

Visigoths, Francs, Romans, Moors—all were here. Some did no more than kick over furniture before moving on. Others stayed long enough to build a bridge or a castle. Then, in a sidebar, he discovers that “faunal anomaly of northern Portugal”: the Iberian rhinoceros. Was that what the man at the airport meant? This biological relic, descended from the woolly rhinoceros of earlier glacial ages, existed in Portugal in shrinking pockets right up into the modern era, with the confirmed death of the last known specimen taking place in 1641. Hardy and fierce-looking but mostly benign—a herbivore, after all, slow to anger and quick to forgive—it fell out of step with the times, unable to adapt to the shrinking space given it, and so it vanished, though with occasional claims of sightings to this day. In 1515 King Manuel I of Portugal offered an Iberian rhinoceros as a gift to Pope Leo X. The guidebook has a reproduction of the Dürer woodcut of that rhinoceros, “incorrectly single-horned.” He peers at the image. The animal looks grand, ancient, unlikely, appealing.

Odo awakes as Peter is preparing breakfast on the camping stove. When Odo sits up, and even more so when he stands on the roof of the car, taking in his surroundings, Peter is again struck by his situation. If he were in this foreign land alone, it would be unbearable; he would die of loneliness. But because of his strange companion, loneliness is pushed away. For that he is deeply grateful. Even so, he can't ignore the other feeling troubling him at the moment, which seems to liquefy his innards: fear. He can't explain the sudden onset of the emotion. He's never been subject to panic attacks, but perhaps this is what they feel like. Fear melts through him, opening his every pore, causing his breaths to shorten and quicken. Then Odo climbs down from the car, ambles over on all fours to sit and stare at the camping stove, amiably disposed, and the fear goes away.

After breakfast, they hit the road again. They cross villages with stone houses, cobbled streets, sleeping dogs, and observant donkeys. Places of stillness, with few men and the women dressed in black, all of them older. He senses that the future comes like the night in these settlements, quietly and without surprise, each generation much like the previous one and the next, only shrinking in numbers.

In the early afternoon they reach—according to the map—the High Mountains of Portugal. The air is cooler. He is puzzled. Where are the mountains? He wasn't expecting soaring, winter-clad Alps, but he didn't expect an undulating barren savannah either, its forests hidden away in valleys, without any peaks anywhere. He and Odo cross plains of enormous grey boulders, each sitting on its own in the grassland. Some of these rocks reach past what would be the second floor of a house. Perhaps to a man standing next to one, there is something mountain-like about them, but it's a stretch. Odo is as intrigued by the boulders as he is.

Tuizelo appears at the end of a winding road, on the edge of a forest, tucked in a valley. The narrow, sloping, cobbled streets wend their way to a small square with a humble, gurgling fountain at its centre. On one side of the square is a church, on the other, a café, which also appears to be a small grocery store and bakery. These two institutions, each plying its own wares, are set amidst modest stone houses with wooden balconies. Only the many vegetable gardens are large, as large as fields, and neat. Here, there, everywhere, chickens, goats, sheep, lazing dogs.

Right away he is taken by the tranquility and isolation of the village. And his parents came from here. In fact, he was born here. He can hardly believe it. The distance between this place and the house in the heart of Toronto, in Cabbagetown, where he grew up, seems immeasurable. He has no memories of Tuizelo. His parents left when he was a toddler. Nonetheless, he will give the place a try.

“We've arrived,” he announces. Odo looks around with a blank expression.

They eat sandwiches and drink water. Peter notices a small group of people in a vegetable garden. He reaches for the dictionary. He practices a phrase a few times.