WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SEVENTH EPISODE
(On the edge of wonder)

Maya gripped the wheel, accompanying the wide curves. And darkness is moving in the travel’s tale, as the destination of our occult itinerary retracted before the aridness and a limitless abandonment. On the edge of wonder, as Rui lifted his eyes to the summits and granitic spikes foamed with night, a huge bird of prey glided in. In a green ray along the ridge’s top, it traversed the skies from side to side and ended up crossing over the safety of the Midnight Blue Mobilin 2000. Maya confessed:

“This thing about the papers still puzzles me.”
Rui smiled as if he held, almost by magic, the solution in his hands: “Look - the registration papers I took to the bureau were already copies, which is normal. Now, what I have here are these… receipts. There’s always a waiting period in this bureaucratic stuff. Yours are the originals… the very same he must have declared to have lost at the time. Obviously a lie.”
“And the keys?”
“What he told me was that he only had a copy left, which can also happen. Besides, that’s happened to me once. And moreover… he suggested that I should go to the place where he got the car and order two new keys… and that he would even pay for them himself. But that’s something that takes its time, I called to check, you know, and that’s why I hadn’t really begun to take care of it. As you can see, by a process of exclusion, the supposedly misplaced key is precisely the one that he gave to you.”
“But why on earth would he have done that?”
“I’ve got a hunch.”
“What?”
“Think about it, if he managed to keep you away from the lab, if he stole your authority, even threatened you and got you working in some corner, it’s only likely that he should…”
“What?”
“… want to go a step further.”
“Are you suggesting he wanted to…”
“Yes, he wanted to get rid of you… and so, for now at least, to get you into some kind of trouble. To… upset you, enclose you, I don’t know. Something of the sort. This was no distraction of his. You can be sure of that, I feel it.”
“Actually, it wasn’t me who was supposed to transport the blood samples today. It isn’t my day. And seldom is an office car unavailable. Why did he give me this car?”
“Common knowledge says that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That something doesn’t quite add up here... Do you want me to take over driving? Night’s falling. It’s getting hard to see well...”
“We’ll stop at eight and then see. We’re almost there anyway. I’ll try to reach the top of the out-of-bounds belvedere.”
“Ok, sure.”

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “Light had come out and the mountain, by a remarkable gift, accompanied it.”)

Continues