Self

by Yann Martel

  My choice of university, ironically, had come down to the one closest to Mount Athos, half an hour away, but where the fewest of its new Old Boys were heading: small, congenial Ellis University. So my September was certain, and I was looking forward to it. But on that graduation day it gave me little comfort. The intervening summer opened up at my feet like a chasm. What to do with it reminded me of the question of what to do with my life.

  I stepped into my aunt's car and saw Mount Athos School disappear in the rear window.

  I felt totally ill-prepared for life.

  My aunt lived in a Portuguese neighbourhood of Montreal, with Portuguese restaurants, stores and travel agencies. A few days after arriving, I happened to stop and look at one such agency. It was much like every other one I had seen: it looked run down and cluttered, the back wall was a kitsch stucco composition meant to convey the spirit of Portugal, the furniture and promotional posters seemed to date from the sixties, and the three people at the desks had that overworked appearance the underemployed sometimes have. In the window was displayed a large, colourful map of Portugal, with photos and drawings of attractions linked by black lines to their geographical locations.

  What I think decided me was the rectangularity of Portugal. I like rectangular countries, where human will imposes itself on topography. I imagine that if I had been looking at a map of Spain, France or Australia, I would have spent the summer in Montreal. As it was, not needing to work, not wanting to stay with my aunt, without any notion of "finding" myself but simply because of pleasing geometry, a week later I was on a TAP flight to Lisbon.

  At first I hated it. Travelling; and alone. In every new town there was a pit of anxiety in my stomach until I found a place to stay, especially if the day was ending (that is, as soon as it was past noon). The idea of arriving in a strange town at night terrified me. It happened once, in Tomar. I walked tensely and quickly, as if I were breaking curfew. After some searching I found what looked like a cheap hotel. I thought that from the desperate expression on my face the manager would charge me a king's ransom, but he surprised me with a reasonable price, and the room was fine. I discovered shortly that the corridor went fully around it, a square corridor around a square room, and that all the room's windows gave on to it; the stuffiness was hot and permanent. But it was shelter. I was safe at last.

  In time I became more adept at handling the inevitable practical details of travelling. The pleasures of the day began to push back the anxieties of the night. Portugal is a magnificent little country, the north especially. I have nothing but fond memories of it. As on subsequent trips to other countries, I brought back a rich, redolent knowledge of the place, a masala mix of sights, sounds and tastes, literature, history and politics, personal and public experiences, that I would slowly forget, though talking of it now, it comes back to me -- the strange Pessoa, the Alfama, Coimbra, Nazare, Henry the Navigator, Sagres, Camoens -- like a savoury aftertaste. Travelling alone is like an extended daydream. You catch the sights, you watch the people, you admire the scenery, all the while inventing your own company and your own scenarios, on your own time and at your own pace. It's the only way to travel, if you can stand the regular loneliness, which often I couldn't. But thank God there were the easy friendships of fellow travellers, friendships that lasted an hour or three days, a meal or a train ride, that were a gold-mine of travel lore and useful information, that always started with "Where are you from?" and ended, when you felt like turning left, not right, with a simple, honest "Bye."

  Then she was looking at me with an intent, open expression. There were no words, but the situation was all the clearer for it. Inexplicably our heads moved towards each other and our mouths collided. Lips adjusted themselves in a somewhat graceless way, tongues sallied forth and touched, then she pulled away and I ran to catch my bus.

  Contact had been made. It was my first kiss. Between two buses ... a walk ... a small, deserted public garden ... a girl who smiled at me from a second-floor window ... who came down ... a conversation more smiles and charades than words ... then....

  Extraordinary. Like a meteorite.

  The smaller my erect penis, the more intense my pleasure. Every morning my chest was itchy. When I scratched it, hairs cascaded onto the bed-sheet.

  In Batalha there is a magnificent Dominican abbey founded in 1388 by King Joao I to commemorate his victory over the Spanish at the Battle of Aljubarrota, which secured Portugal's independence. Nearly in its shadow, I got a room. I had entered a restaurant to ask for directions and the girl at the counter had asked me if I was looking for a room. We crossed the street to a two-storey whitewashed building. The room she showed me was on the second floor at the very end of a corridor and, though it was small and didn't have a view of the abbey, its proportions were pleasing and it was neat and clean and nicely furnished. I also seemed to have the building to myself. I was spared the discomfort of bargaining, for right away her price was good.

  I stayed in that room for three weeks, longer than I stayed anywhere else in Portugal.

  The room was soothing in its monastic simplicity. It was rectangular, like the country. The door and the window faced each other on the narrow sides of the rectangle, the door dead centre, the window a little to the left. There were precisely four salient features to the room: to the left as one entered, a narrow metal-frame bed with a bearably lumpy mattress that did not shelter a colony of bedbugs; farther along, in the corner, a sink single-minded in its supply of very cold water, from which one could look out the window as one washed; facing the sink, on the opposite side of the room, a creaky cupboard with a speckled mirror whose ripples distorted one's reflection; and lastly, facing the bed and diagonally opposite the sink, a drawerless table with a plain chair. The walls were of such an austerity that I can't even remember what they looked like. The stone floor was cold except for the small faded patch of carpet, which I moved around depending on where and what I was doing.

  I loved this bare room. I would have been perfectly content to live there for the rest of my life.

  I spent a good part of my days in quiet domesticity, dividing my hours between the bed, on which I read, slept and masturbated; the desk, on which I wrote in my diary (the only time I kept a travel diary. I would throw it out within the year -- can't keep track of every moment); the sink, in which I brushed my teeth and splashed water on my face; and the cupboard, on whose shelves I carefully arranged the too many clothes I had brought and in front of whose mirror I stood naked and gazed. My only expeditions beyond my room were to use the toilet; to relish the very little hot water that the shower mustered every morning; to eat; and to visit the abbey, which I did every day. I spent my afternoons in its beautiful cloister, walking around the arcade or sitting under one of the arches, alternately reading my book (Camoens' Lusiads) or resting my eyes on the quadrangle with its neatly wild assortment of flowers, shrubs and small trees. Bumblebees buzzed about in the golden light with the serenity of monks. The hours passed, marked out by the shifting lines of shadow -- free-floating, intangible clock hands that changed the nature of the cloister with each silent tick.

  If I had to think back in terms of symptoms, if that's the right word, as if it were an illness, four stand out in my mind:

  (1) The creeping up of my voice.

  (2) A slight ache in my hips. Walking around the cloister and stretching made it better.

  (3) The clearing up of my acne. It got very bad, worse than it had ever been -- I got a headache from all the pustules on my forehead, and my throat looked like a turkey's -- and then, in a day or two, it vanished completely. Acne, that cursed disease, and its attendant oiliness, disappeared from my life while I was in Portugal, leaving me with a normal, satiny skin. I remember looking in the mirror and gliding my fingers over my new face. Hell was over, hell was over. I could finally look people in the eye. I could finally smile. I was doubly a new person.

  (4) A passion for sweet potatoes. Funny how the great transformations of life come
with dietary quirks. The restaurant across the street was a small place of no pretence, with a staff of two: the girl who had showed me my room, who acted as waitress and bartender; and her father, who was the cook. Sometimes I saw the mother, but I believe she worked elsewhere. On the menu was whatever the father found at the market that day and felt like cooking. I quickly fell into the habit of having my meals there, and the three of us developed a friendship of smiles and sign language. I peppered my gesticulations with Spanish. When he found out that I was Canadian, the father decided to have a try at what he thought was North American cuisine.

  It was an evening or two after this, as a mere garnish -- only for the colour, really -- that the sweet potato came. It lay there in a corner of my plate, soft and orange, beside the neat slabs of pork with their dark sauce and the white mounds of mashed potatoes. Had it not been for the friendly, expectant attentions of the two, I might even have left the sweet potato untouched. I had eaten the vegetable before, but I couldn't remember when, and I assumed this was because I hadn't liked it -- and wouldn't like it now. But not at all. As soon as I tasted a tiny helping, I burst forth with a loud, spontaneous and wide-eyed "Hmmmmmmmm!" In an instant the sweet potato on my plate had vanished. I had never tasted anything so good in my life. I still think of this explosion of savour in my mouth as the apogee in the career of my taste-buds. I complimented the father effusively, emphasizing his deft treatment of the sweet potato. I asked for more the next day, for lunch. I spent the evening dwelling on this darling potato, its bright orange, its creamy texture, its divine taste. I regretted not having asked for it for breakfast. The noontime tolling of the cathedral bell the following day had me salivating like Pavlov's dogs. I asked to have it again for dinner, in greater quantity, please. And then for breakfast.

  I ate Batalha out of sweet potatoes. No hors-d'oeuvres, no entrees, no side dishes, no sauces, no desserts -- for close to two weeks they were all I had. The locals thought I was bonkers, of course. But I was a foreigner and therefore bemusedly indulged. Some of the most significant, enduring myths -- and problems -- of this late twentieth century are the misconceptions people have of foreigners and their countries. In this case, I contributed significantly to the misrepresentation of my country. In the minds of Messiao Do Campo and his daughter, Gabriele, Canada and the sweet potato will be for ever linked.

  Cela s'est termine au cours d'une nuit. Je me suis reveillee soudainement. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, ni a quoi je revais. Je me suis dressee. Tout etait confus. Je ne me souvenais de rien, ni de mon nom, ni de mon age, ni ou j'etais. L'amnesie totale. Je savais que je pensais en francais, ca au moins, c'etait sur. Mon identite etait liee a la langue francaise. Et je savais aussi que j'etais une femme. Francophone et femme, c'etait le coeur de mon identite. Je me suis souvenue du reste, les accessoires de mon identite, seulement apres un bon moment d'hesitation. Ce dont je me rappelle le plus clairement de cet etat de confusion, c'est le sentiment qui m'est venu apres, que tout allait bien. J'ai regarde la chambre autour de moi. Un sentiment de quietude m'envahit, profond, si profond, a en perdre conscience. J'etais en train de me rendormir. Je me suis allongee sur le cote, j'ai tire le drap jusqu'a ma joue, et je suis retournee dans les bras de Morphee, le sourire aux levres. Tout allait bien, tout allait bien. It was over the course of a night that things came to completion. I awoke suddenly. I don't know what I was dreaming, why I should have awakened. I sat up. I was confused. I couldn't remember anything -- my name, my age, where I was -- complete amnesia. I knew that I was thinking in English, that much I knew right away. My identity was tied to the English language. And I knew that I was a woman, that also. English-speaking and a woman. That was the core of my being. The rest, the ornaments of identity, came several seconds later, after some mental groping. What I remember most clearly of this confusion is the feeling that came upon me afterwards, the feeling that everything was all right. I looked about the dark room. A deep sense of peace sifted through me, so deep that it felt like a dissolution. I was falling asleep again. I lay on my side, brought the sheet up to my cheek and returned, smiling, into the arms of Morpheus. Everything was all right, everything was all right.

  This happened on a special night. I got up in the morning, stood naked in front of the mirror looking at myself and thought, "I'm a Canadian, a woman -- and a voter."

  It was my birthday. I was now eighteen years old. A full citizen.

  LAST MEMORIES OF PORTUGAL:

  (1) Fatima. On May 13, 1917, three children, shepherds, claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. She would come back to speak to them the next month on the same day, she told them. They returned to the spot on the appointed day. She appeared again, spoke to them and told them to come again the following month. This went on for four more months. On October 13, the day of her last apparition, the children were accompanied by seventy thousand people, who witnessed a "miraculous solar phenomenon". A Marian cult became established. Fatima is a major Catholic pilgrimage site, like Lourdes, like Saint James of Compostela. In its essential part, at the centre of the circles of stores selling religious kitsch, Fatima is an unappealing white basilica on the edge of the largest expanse of asphalt I have ever seen. This vast carpet lies unmarked by lines, arrows or directions of any sort. It glistens in the sun, pure and charcoal-black. I found it strikingly beautiful (and if I were a modern artist of means, I would use asphalt as my medium, exploiting its rich blackness, its beguiling friction, its interplay with the sun. Imagine in a rolling plain of Saskatchewan a splendid circle of asphalt. Not a blight of civilization, not nihilism, but the dot of an exclamation point, the other part of which, the upright stroke, would be whoever is standing on the dot -- you). The shape is concave, so that there is a rise to the salvation of the white basilica. Into this enormous bowl of asphalt come those who are wanting in a Catholic way. They walk, they shuffle, they hobble, they wheel themselves, they crawl. I saw one aged woman crawl towards the basilica from the very lip of the bowl at the other end, a distance of a good three hundred metres, with two distressed-looking children -- her grandchildren, I presume -- on her back and the rest of her family walking along beside her. With her gloves and knee-pads she looked like a mountain climber, which, in a way, is what she was -- a Catholic mountain climber scaling a summit that my atheist senses couldn't even perceive. As she inched along, she begged and prayed aloud. When she collapsed, which she did at regular intervals, the children toppled over and burst into hysterics and the family fell to their knees in prayer. After a few minutes' rest, declining all offers of help, turning down all requests to desist, she carried on.

  Below the basilica, to the left, is a small chapel, the supposed site of the Virgin Mary's apparition. The chapel has a crematorium of sorts into which the devout throw life-size wax effigies of those parts of their loved ones that are a source of suffering. What you see is a gleaming mountain of yellowish body parts of all sizes, all ages, sharply delineated, down to details of wrinkles and hairs, slowly melting and, in melting, moving. A head tumbles and melds at the neck with a leg to form a freakish creature, until the leg buckles. A young boy's chest has three ears. A knee bends to smell a footed hand. Breasts lactate to oblivion. Two male heads are approaching, perhaps for a kiss, until one is crushed by the stamp of a foot. An entire baby lands face down with a loud plop and vanishes in moments, except for his small bum with its cleft, which floats for the longest time. A serious head stands upright and alone and seems to say, "What is happening here will not happen to me," until fate forces itself upon it and it weeps to death. Everything turns to river.

  Facing this scene is a discordant choir of true believers, most of them dressed in black, most of them women, who wail, supplicate, cry, pray, harangue, whisper, whimper, sing and move their lips as they continually toss in fresh body parts. Meanwhile, the overseers of the place, the priests, mill about with expressions of comatose impassivity. The last thing I remember before I pulled myself away was a kneeling woman who produced a minuscule ear from her corset, whi
spered into it and then tossed it into the crematorium, bursting into loud sobs as she did so. Had her baby died of an ear infection? It was Fellini in hell.

  (2) Jack, a friendly Californian I met at the Coimbra Youth Hostel and spent three days with. He was a few years older than I, twenty or twenty-one, and bright and shy. He was studying violin and composition somewhere very famous in California, Berkeley or Stanford or something. That's what he wanted to be, that's what he was: a composer. We talked about music. At the train station -- he was heading south to Lisbon to fly back home, I north to Porto -- he was more bashful than usual. Goodbyes sometimes compress emotions until they burst out in uncontrolled ways, like juice from a squashed orange: Jack hugged me and then made an awkward, halted attempt to kiss me.

  (3) Lisbon again, before my return home. I hated arriving in Portugal, I hated leaving it. In the meantime nearly three months had passed. Travelling is like an acceleration: it's hard to stop, you don't want to stop. Change becomes a habit and habits are hard to change. I walked about, exploring the ordinary neighbourhoods of an old European capital. I bought new clothes, figuring that they would be cheaper in Portugal than in Canada. I tanned myself lobster-red on the endless beach across the Tagus. I got a new passport, which turned out to be an easy matter thanks to a not-too-punctilious, locally engaged consular officer, all smiles and befuddlement ("They made a mistake. Do I look like a man to you?" Thank God for my androgynous name. Would that my hair would grow faster). As I climbed the metal gangway of the TAP plane, I turned for a last look at the Portuguese blue sky and I thought, "I'll be back, though not here, somewhere else. China? India? South America?"