The High Mountains of Portugal

by Yann Martel

  The rain stops and the sky clears. While waiting for the wintry sunshine to dry the road, he lubricates the machine with drops of oil. Then, impatiently, he sets off. When he reaches the edge of the small town of Arez, he enters it on foot. He is pleased to find a proper apothecary.

  "I'll buy your whole stock. I have horses that are badly infested with lice," he informs the man behind the counter once he has produced the usual small bottle of moto-naphtha.

  "You might want to try Hipolito, the blacksmith," the apothecary says.

  "Why would he have any of the stuff?"

  "Horses are his concern, including horses badly infested with lice, I would think. And what about your feet?"

  "My feet?"

  "Yes. What's wrong with them?"

  "Nothing's wrong with my feet. Why would anything be wrong with them?"

  "I saw the way you were walking."

  "My feet are perfectly healthy."

  Walking backwards through the village on his perfectly healthy feet, Tomas finds Hipolito's smithy down a lane. He is astonished to discover that the blacksmith has an enormous barrel of moto-naphtha. Tomas is dizzy with joy. The supply will not only glut the automobile with fuel but will also soothe his ravaged body.

  "My good man, I'll buy lots of it. I have twelve horses that are badly infested with lice."

  "Oh, you don't want to use this stuff on horses. That would be doing them a great disservice. It's very harsh on the skin. You need a powder that you'll mix with water."

  "Why then do you have so much moto-naphtha? What's it for?"

  "For automobiles. They're a new device."

  "Perfect! I have one of those too, and as it happens it desperately needs to be fed."

  "Why didn't you say so?" says the jovial rustic.

  "My horses were on my mind. The poor beasts."

  Hipolito the blacksmith is moved by the drama of Tomas's twelve afflicted horses and goes into tender, lengthy details about how the lice powder should be mixed with warm water, applied topically, allowed to dry, then carefully brushed and combed out, starting at the top of the head and working one's way back and down across the horse's body. It's a task that takes much time, but a horse deserves nothing less than the best treatment.

  "Bring your horses and I'll help you do it," Hipolito adds in a burst of fellow equine love.

  "I'm not from these parts. I only have my automobile here."

  "Then you've come a long way searching for the wrong remedy for your horses. I have the powder right here. Twelve horses, you say? Six cans should do you, eight to be safe. And you'll need this comb-and-brush kit. The highest quality."

  "Thank you. You can't imagine how relieved I am. Tell me, how long have you been selling moto-naphtha?"

  "Oh, about six months."

  "How's business?"

  "You're my first customer! I've never seen an automobile in my life. But it's the carriage of the future, I'm told. And I'm a smart businessman, I am. I understand commerce. It's important to be up to date. No one wants to buy what's old. You want to be the first to spread the word and show off the product. That's how you corner the market."

  "How did you get this enormous barrel all the way up here?"

  "By stagecoach."

  At the word Tomas's heart skips a beat.

  "But you know," Hipolito adds, "I didn't tell them it was for automobiles. I told them it was to treat horses with lice. They're funny about automobiles, those stagecoach drivers."

  "Are they? Any stagecoaches coming soon?"

  "Oh, in the next hour or so."

  Not only does Tomas run back to the automobile, he runs forward to it.

  When he roars up to the smithy in his uncle's Renault with the alarm of a bank robber, Hipolito is surprised, stunned, aghast, and delighted at the throbbing, clanging invention Tomas has brought to his shop.

  "So this is it? What a big, noisy thing! Quite ugly in a beautiful sort of way, I'd say. Reminds me of my wife," yells Hipolito.

  Tomas turns the machine off. "I completely agree. I mean about the automobile. To be honest with you, I find it ugly in an ugly sort of way."

  "Hmmm, you may be right," the blacksmith muses, perhaps pondering how the automobile will wreck his commerce and way of life. His forehead wrinkles. "Oh well, business is business. Where does the moto-naphtha go? Show me."

  Tomas points eagerly. "Here, here, here, and here."

  He has Hipolito fill the fuel tank, the barrel, and all the glass bottles of vermin lotion. He eyes the bottles hungrily. He sorely wants to empty one all over his body.

  "Come again!" cries Hipolito after Tomas has paid for the fuel, the eight cans of lice powder for horses, and the comb-and-brush kit of the highest quality. "Remember, from back to front, starting at the top of the head and working your way back and down. Poor creatures!"

  "Thank you, thank you!" shouts Tomas as he speeds away.

  After Arez, he turns off the road onto a well-marked track. He trusts that his map, with its faint markings for secondary roads, will lead him back to the road beyond the larger town of Nisa, which he is hoping to circumvent by this deviation. From that track he turns onto another, then another. The quality of the tracks goes from bad to worse. There are rocks everywhere. He navigates the terrain as best he can. The land, meanwhile, rises and falls like heaving swells so that he can never see very far around him. Is this how Father Ulisses felt sailing to the island, closed in while in the wide open?

  In the midst of his oceanic meanderings, the track simply vanishes. The directed smoothness of a pathway is replaced by a rockiness that is uniform and undefined, as if the track were a river that opened onto a delta, casting him adrift. He navigates on, but eventually he hears the voice of prudence and it urgently suggests he reverse his course.

  He turns the machine around, but facing one way looks no different from facing another. He becomes confused. Surrounding him in all directions is the same countryside, rocky, dry, silent, with silver-green olive trees as far as the eye can see and bulbous white clouds boiling up high in the sky. He's lost, a castaway. And night is coming.

  Finally it is not this predicament, of being lost, that leads him to drop anchor for the night. It is another, more personal one: Great armies of tiny vermin are rampaging over his body, and he cannot stand it any longer.

  He reaches a rise in the land and halts the vehicle, tapping its front against a tree. The air, fragrant with the fertile labour of trees, is extraordinarily soft. There is not a sound around him, not from insects, not from birds, not from the wind. All that registers upon his ears are the few sounds he himself makes. In the absence of sound, he notices more with his eyes, in particular the delicate winter flowers that here and there brave the stony ground. Pink, light blue, red, white--he doesn't know what kind of flowers they are, only that they are beautiful. He breathes in deeply. He can well imagine that this land was once the last outpost of the storied Iberian rhinoceros, roaming free and wild.

  In every direction he walks, he finds no trace of human presence. He wanted to wait until he reached a private spot to take care of his problem, and now he has found it. The moment has come. He returns to the automobile. No human being--no being of any kind--could stand such itchiness. But before slaying his enemies with his magic potions, he gives in one last time to the gratifying indulgence of scratching an itch.

  He raises his ten fingers in the air. His blackened fingernails gleam. With a warlike cry, he throws himself into the fray. He rakes his fingernails over his head--the top, the sides, the nape--and over his bearded cheeks and neck. It is quick, hard, spirited work. Why do we make animal sounds in moments of pain or pleasure? He does not know, but he makes animal sounds and he makes animal faces. He goes AAAAHHHHH! and he goes OOOOHHHHH! He throws off his jacket, unbuttons and removes his shirt, tears off his undershirt. He attacks the enemies on his torso and in his armpits. His crotch is a cataclysm of itchiness. He unbuckles his belt and pulls his trousers and his underpants down to his an
kles. He scratches his hairy sexual patch vigorously, his fingers like claws. Has he ever felt such relief? He pauses to bask in it. Then he starts over again. He moves down to his legs. There is blood under his fingernails. No matter. But the vandals have regrouped in the crack of his ass. Because there too he is hairy. He is hairy all over. It has always been a source of acute embarrassment to him, the forests of thick black hair that sprout from his pale white skin all over his body. That Dora liked to run her fingers through his chest hair always comforted him, because otherwise he finds his hairiness repulsive. He is an ape. Hence the care with which he has his hair cut, with which he shaves. He is normally a clean and neat man, and modest and reserved. But right now he is unhinged with itchiness. His ankles are constrained by his trousers. He kicks his shoes off, pulls his socks off, tears one pant leg off, then the other. That's better--now he can lift his legs. He attacks the crack of his ass with both hands. On he battles: His hands fly about and he hops from one foot to the other, he makes animal sounds and he makes animal faces, he goes AAAAHHHHH! and he goes OOOHHHHH!

  It's as he's working his pubic patch, his hands vibrating like the wings of a hummingbird, his face displaying a particularly simian grin of satisfaction, that he sees the peasant. Just a short way off. Looking at him. Looking at the man hopping about naked, scratching himself madly, making animal sounds next to the strange horseless cart. Tomas freezes on the spot. How long has the man been watching him?

  What is there to do at such a moment? What can he do to salvage his dignity, his very humanity? He removes the animal expression from his face. He stands upright. As solemnly as he can--with quick dips to gather his clothes--he walks to the automobile and disappears inside the cabin. Profound mortification brings on complete immobility.

  When the sun has set and the sky is inky black, the darkness and the isolation begin to weigh on him. And full-out, unqualified, comprehensive humiliation is not a remedy against vermin. He is still covered in rioting insect life. He can practically hear them. He cautiously opens the automobile door. He peers out. He looks about. There is no one. The peasant has gone. Tomas lights a candle stub. He has nowhere to place the candle where it will not risk damaging the plush interior, so he unplugs one of the bottles of moto-naphtha and corks it with the lit candle. The effect is attractive. The cabin looks cosy, truly a very small living room.

  Still fully naked, he steps out. He takes out the tin of horse lice powder and two bottles of moto-naphtha lotion. He will do better than what Hipolito suggested. He will mix the lice powder with moto-naphtha rather than with water, doubling the lethalness of the concoction. Besides, he has no water left. The water from the barrel in the cabin went into either him or the automobile. He has only a skin of wine left. He mixes moto-naphtha and horse lice powder in a pot until the paste is neither too runny nor too thick. It smells awful. He starts to apply it to his body, working it in with his fingers. He winces. His skin is tender from all the scratching. The paste burns. But he endures it because of the death blow it is striking against the vermin. Apply liberally, says the label on the bottle. He does, he does. After caking his head and face, he applies the mixture to his armpits and over his chest and stomach, on his legs and feet. He covers his pubic mound in a thick layer. Where the paste falls off his body, he applies double the quantity. For his rear, he places a great dollop on the footboard and sits in it. There. His head upright, his arms tight against his body, his hands spread out over his torso, he sits very still. Any movement, even breathing, not only loosens the paste but increases the burning.

  This burning is infernal. He tries to get used to it, but he can't. It's as if the paste has consumed his skin and now is working through his flesh. He is being roasted alive. But so are the vermin. They and their eggs are dying by the thousands. He needs to endure the agony only a little longer, until they are all dead. After that, he will be well on the road to recovery. He continues to wait, slowly sizzling.

  Then it happens: a shattering BOOM! He is projected from the footboard, as much by surprise and fright as by the force of the explosion. He turns and stares, the vermin and the pain all forgotten. The automobile is on fire! Where before there was only a single wavering flame atop the bottle of moto-naphtha, now there are great patches of fire all over the inside of the cabin. And upon feeling a prickling at the back of his head, he realizes that the fire has leapt from the cabin onto his head. In a moment it spreads to his beard, his chest, his entire body. POUF! goes his pubic mound, now an orange forest of flames. He screams. Luckily for him, the lice powder is not flammable. But there are stabs of pain coming from his head, from his chest, from his penis--wherever the moto-naphtha-fuelled fire has worked its way through lice powder and hair and reached bare skin. He hops about, slapping his hands all over his body, stamping the fires out. When he is done, he stands, smoke rising off him in a column.

  The automobile is still burning. He runs to it. On the way he picks up off the ground the wet blanket that he used the previous day to cover the broken cabin window and keep the rain out. He dives into the cabin. Throwing the blanket around and flinging horse lice powder about, he manages to extinguish the fires.

  He pulls the trunk out from the cabin and opens it. Father Ulisses' diary, for being inside it, is undamaged. He nearly cries with relief. But the cabin--the state of it! The leather of the sofa--charred and crispy. The side panels--scorched. The ceiling--black with soot. All the windows except the one in front of the driving compartment--blown out, shards of glass everywhere. The food, the motoring supplies, his clothes--all singed and burned. Everything covered in ashes and carbonized horse lice powder. And the reek!

  He finishes the last of the red wine, clears the driving compartment seat of broken glass, then lies down naked on the blanket on the seat, covering himself with the mink coat. Pain racks his body, his uncle yells at him in his dreams. He is chilled by the night while yet burning from his sores.

  In the morning light, he dresses gingerly. However carefully he puts his clothes on, they rake at his tender skin. He sweeps and cleans the cabin as best he can. He opens the trunk again to check the diary. He does not want to lose his connection to Father Ulisses. He has come to see in the priest a man perfected by his suffering. A man to be imitated. Because to suffer and do nothing is to be nothing, while to suffer and do something is to become someone. And that is what he is doing: He is doing something. He must strike onward to the High Mountains of Portugal and fulfil his quest.

  But he is confronted with an unexpected problem: the tree right in front of the automobile. There's not enough space to drive around it. He has not encountered this situation until now. Always there has been space in front of the vehicle to make use of the steerage wheel and move forward. He exclaims and blames and curses. Finally he tries to think of a solution, and there is only one, clearly: to cut down the tree. There's an axe among the store of essential items in the cabin. He has just seen it, covered in soot. His ever considerate and farsighted uncle no doubt included it for this precise purpose. The grand march of progress apparently includes the unfortunate necessity of chopping down every obstacle in its way. But the tree is so large, the trunk so thick, his body so sore!

  He dithers. Finally the sight of his trunk of papers in the breezy cabin focuses his scattered energies. He picks up the axe.

  He stands, facing the side of the tree opposite where the automobile is held prisoner. He raises the axe and swings. He chops and chops and chops. The bark flies off well enough, but the pale flesh of the tree is rubbery and resistant. The axe, sharp though it is, bounces back, producing only the smallest indentation each time. Hitting the same spot repeatedly demands a skill that mostly eludes him. And every swing grinds tender flesh against harsh clothing.

  Quickly he is bathing in perspiration. He rests, eats, goes at it again. The morning is spent in this fashion. Then the early afternoon slips by.

  By late afternoon, he has hacked a large hollow into the side of the trunk. The hollow goes beyond
the midway point, but the tree doesn't seem to feel any inclination to fall. His palms are shredded red and bleeding. The pain in his hands barely masks the pain he feels in his whole body. He is so exhausted he can barely stand.

  He can chop no longer. The hindrance has to go away--now. He decides to use the weight of his body to make the tree topple. Placing one foot on the edge of the mudguard and another on the edge of the hood, he reaches for the first branch. It's torture to grip the bark with his hands, but he manages to hook a leg around another branch and heave himself up. After all his struggles with the axe, the comparative ease with which he climbs the tree cheers him.

  He moves out along a bough. He holds on to two separate branches. Of course, when the tree falls, he will fall with it. But the height isn't great, and he will brace himself.

  He begins to swing his body back and forth, ignoring the excruciating pain that is radiating from his palms. The head of the tree dances and dances. He expects to hear at any moment a sharp crack and feel himself drop through the air the short distance to the ground.

  Instead, the tree gives up with quiet, rubbery elasticity. It tips over slowly. Tomas turns his head and sees the ground coming up. The landing is soft. But his feet slip off their bough, and where they come to rest on the ground is the precise spot where the tree chooses to press down with its heaviest limb. He yelps with pain.

  He wrenches his feet free. He moves his toes. No bones are broken. He turns and looks at the automobile. He sees in an instant from the ground what he didn't during his long hours of toil standing up: The stump is too high. The automobile, its bottom, will never be able to reach over it. He should have chopped much lower. But even if he had, the tree is still attached to the stump. It has fallen over without breaking off. The point at which tree and stump cling to each other is twisted and will be even more resistant to the axe. And even if he did manage to chop through the rest of the trunk, and supposing the stump were shorter, would he be able to pull the tree away? It seems scarcely imaginable. It's no bush.