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

NINETH EPISODE
(And light came)

Rui and Maya are still standing in the parking lot, in front of the locked car. Each holding his own key.

When Maya places the costmary bunch on the car roof, it sets off the alarm. Rui quickly zaps the car with the remote, halting the siren’s blast. She looks into Rui’s eyes, frozen still. And light came. Without a word, Maya goes round the yellow road line and steps into the passenger’s seat. As if turned to stone, Rui sits next to her and sets the car in motion. They are already speeding out of town, street after street; as if regret could, in that unique moment, be the inauspicious worm which might halt the bizarre adventure already in motion. The mountain ridge looked like a feasible place to go, a place one could trust; and the spontaneous course of the wheel had preceded any decision arranged between the two of them. It was as if fate had awoken with the trip; for the trip.

Up to the last cliff.

It is almost eight in the evening, the last sunrays are spreading out into the liquid sphere of air. And the shadow of the Milky Way climbs out of nowhere. There is howling afar. The sparse branches of the last trees are grooved by the audacious breeze, as the curves and swerves lead to the forbidden belvedere. The red, blood-colored earth by the side of the road. Maya’s fingernails were as if stuck in the costmary bunch, Rui’s fingers tightened up on his knees. Their safety belts encircled an end of the world in motion. And there was still a tale to be told. That Maya had indeed been the true inventor of the AIDS and hepatitis vaccine, and that no one knew, or would know of it. That Rui was, after all, a former lawyer of the renowned Professor Romeo and that not even Maya knew, or was to know of this.

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “Until they reached a stretch of road, approximately 50 meters long. Less than a mile to the belvedere now. The longing.”)

Continues