Self

by Yann Martel

  Looking at a map one day in a fish and tackle store -- I was there because I saw the map from outside and went in to look at it more closely -- I was surprised to see how many lakes there were in the Prairies. Hundreds of them strewn across the landscape, many without names and most without any access except by air.

  The land so far away from the sea, the air so dry, yet so many lakes.

  Later, when I was so dried out that my lips were cracked and my skin was like a dried mud-flat, I saw humidifiers on special in the display window of a pharmacy. They were "ultrasonic". The word seemed to promise comfort. I bought the jumbo ten-litre model and hurried home to my latest rooming-house. I read the instructions carefully, filled the two containers with water and set the control to maximum. A cool, evanescent mist came forth from the nozzle. I breathed in this properly humid air, filling my lungs with it, moisturizing my parched interior. I imagined that I felt better already, much better. This was the solution to my problems. Three days later, when the machine clicked off for lack of water, I never filled it again. I left it behind though it cost me over a hundred and twenty dollars.

  It was the same with every other purchase I made with redemption in mind.

  I stayed in the Prairies. Am still here. A roving existential monkey. I bought a battered car and moved from Winnipeg to Banff and back, through every big town and many small ones.

  I taught French in night-school. I did janitorial work in commercial buildings. Mostly I washed dishes. I liked being a dishwasher. I didn't usually talk to anyone in the restaurants where I worked, tried to understand my predicament only in reference to soap, hot water and piles of dirty dishes. I liked the transformation from dirty and splattered to clean and squeaky. I liked the steam and the humidity and the infinite quantities of hot water. I was a good dishwasher. Never received a complaint, never produced a greasy spoon.

  He left me with herpes B. Every birthday it flares up.

  You wouldn't believe the things rape eats up. Your taste buds. Your voice: you're left with a weak, hoarse whisper (while yet your brain agonizes). Your libido, completely, not a twitch, not a twinge of desire. Your imagination: your reality becomes deadened, your dream world a graveyard (except for the nightmares that scream through you). Your ability to sleep, nearly. Your vitality: washing dishes consumes every ounce of mental and physical energy you have.

  Imagine this play:

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

  an OLD WOMAN with a bag of groceries

  a GOOD SAMARITAN

  a straw-filled DUMMY with a painted unhappy face SCENE: a bench along a sidewalk

  (The Dummy is sitting on the bench. The Old Woman

  appears, slowly walking along the sidewalk.)

  OLD WOMAN (nodding her head to the Dummy): Hello. DUMMY: (nothing)

  (Fifteen or so feet past the bench, the Old Woman slips.

  She falls heavily, like an injured dictionary. Her groceries scatter. A grapefruit rolls ... rolls ... rolls ... to between the Dummy's feet.)

  OLD WOMAN: Oh! Oh!

  (The Good Samaritan appears.)

  GOOD SAMARITAN: Oh my God! Are you all right? Can I help you? Are you hurt?

  (The Good Samaritan assists the Old Woman. Helps her get up. Fetches her groceries from here and there. Except for the unseen grapefruit. The Dummy leans forward and stares at the grapefruit. Exit the Old Woman holding onto the Good Samaritan's arm. A long pause. The Dummy places a foot on the grape fruit. Feels its bouncy resistance. The Dummy squashes the grapefruit. The squashing sound is heard amplified over a sound system for thirty seconds after the action is over. After a pause, it is heard again. Then again. Exit the Dummy stage left, shuffling. From stage right the Good Samaritan reappears. Looks about. Sees the squashed grapefruit. Looks to stage left. Exits stage right.)

  GOOD SAMARITAN (from off stage): I couldn't find it.

  OLD WOMAN (from offstage, in a tremulous voice): I guess that young man took it.

  CURTAIN

  There were moments when I thought I had sunk to the very last stage of psychic disintegration. Sometimes I was so distraught that movement, even simple balance, became a source of anguish. I would have to lie down. There, on occasion, I would try to count to ten, a desperate, random symbol of psychological normality. But try as I might -- and I tried, I tried, believe me -- I couldn't. I would hear myself whisper One ... two ... th-three ... f-f-four.... Perhaps five, but never six. I would forget the next number, or my mind would simply lose its bearings and wander onto something else. It was as if I didn't have a will any more. I would just lie there, conscious yet inanimate, only breathing. I can't communicate the pure agony of those moments except to repeat, I could not count to ten.

  The old man pulled on his cigar. A point of red glowed in the dark. He got up. "A harrowing tale, Captain Marlow," he said, and walked away.

  "Who is that?" asked Marlow, who hadn't noticed the old man.

  "It is Dr. Roget," said the Director of Companies. "A good man, Marlow. He has done much good for this Thames of ours. And for many sick, destitute people in town. You've no doubt heard of his Thesaurus?"

  "Is he the one?"

  "Yes. And he's an excellent chess player, possibly your match."

  The chess game on the Nellie between the aged Dr. Roget and lean, hard Marlow has barely begun -- Marlow's king's knight is in a weak position -- when my novel falls silent.

  It became a pile of tattered papers alien to my dumb brain. I looked at it, cradled it in my hands, carried it in my pockets, but my mind was incapable of the least creative impulse.

  I thought of Tito all the time, of our 8008 precious moments together. I supplemented remembered reality by imagining walks with him, talks, restaurant outings, museum excursions, games, love-making. In the feeble realm of my imagination, everything went on as before, the future was still on.

  It's sometimes in small ways that the pain comes. I spread my arms and legs and make angels in the snow. But I stop right away. Spreading my legs makes me miss Tito.

  I began to dream of my parents. I saw them, I heard them, exactly as if they were in front of me. I would begin to weep in my sleep and I would awake in tears.

  I saw him every day, in the street, in restaurants, on buses, at gas stations. I saw his face on every man. I would turn a street corner and quake with fear at the sight of a stranger, who would look at me, startled, and move away quickly.

  There were the nightmares. The exact re-enactments of the whole thing -- I am at my office door, he is approaching -- with only my screams to break the spell of sleep. Or variations on the theme: he's chasing me, he's behind my locked door but it's a Japanese door made of paper. Or variations on the anguish: I've fallen head first into a barrel full of water, I can't get out, I drown till I wake up. Or I'm in bed, I wake up because red smoke is coming into the room from a window opposite me, I start to choke, I hit the wall beside my bed in an appeal for help, I realize that it's not a wall but the enormous palm of his hand, I choke till I wake up.

  I heard my name over the radio once. "Twenty-six-year-old woman. Five foot seven and a half" -- the dial was turned in search of music. This was in a corner store. The dial was turned back. "Bilingual. Last seen in" -- right to the end of the band, but nothing good found so once again the station with the public service message. "If anyone has seen this woman or has any information on her, could they please contact the RCMP at...."

  Only once did I have a nightmare where I directed the violence. Through the dark, limpid air of a street a crossbow arrow travels and strikes him exactly where I aimed it: in the spinal cord. The arrow makes a smacking cracking sound when it hits him. I consider where to send the second arrow. Through his pleading hand and into his begging mouth? Or to burst an eyeball? I will spare his heart, pump of life, symbol of love. Finally my disembodied hands strangle him. I vividly recall the feel of the killing, especially the horror in his face, that glaze of overwhelming fear. He is so afraid that his features begin to melt. I am left strang
ling a blank head of skin. I awake still strangling him.

  Mostly I am too afraid to express my anger, even in my dreamworld. The world is Pandora's box and my eyelids are its lid: every time I blink, evil and horror escape the world and jump in through my eyes.

  The simple truth is, I am afraid of men.

  I was walking down a street in Regina late at night, a commercial sidestreet deserted of its daytime bustle. I walked quickly. I came upon a man lurching along ahead of me, an Indian so drunk that every step forward was a victory against gravity. He looked like a child learning how to walk. He was in such an advanced state of intoxication that I felt he could do me no harm. His reflexes would be slow, his coordination poor. I felt stronger, tougher. If something were to happen, it would be to him, not to me. I slowed down, fell into step behind him. He turned off. I followed. Curiously, he did not make a sound: not a song, shout or mutter, only laboured breathing. Alongside a brick wall, he stopped and lifted a hand and set it against the wall to steady himself. Then he half leaned, half fell against it, his back to it. I too stopped. I examined his silhouette, some twenty feet away.

  "I'd like to kill the whole human race," was what I was thinking. My mouth began to salivate. I had the urge to vomit, which I did. A brief, sudden explosion of whitish vomit. My heart was beating like crazy.

  I moved forward. I kicked the Indian's feet from beneath him. He fell to the ground heavily.

  "Huh?" he said. He had a fat, round face with thick features. He wore a stupid, uncomprehending expression. I was enraged.

  I kicked him again and again. All the while, he said nothing coherent, only a few syllables.

  "Oh! Oh!"

  I felt invincible. I could have picked this Indian off the ground and thrown him clear across the street.

  With one final kick to his head, putting everything into it, I ran off. I nearly wished he had got up to chase me, so that I could run, run, run. But he just lay there.

  He said, "You're a young one. Let me suck your cock. Let me give you a good, good suck. Oh, it's a nice one. Let me put that in my mouth...."

  I leaned against the tree. My knees were trembling. It was a bitterly cold day yet I remained comfortable within my open coat and undone pants. He was a fat, white-bearded man with a high voice and a wet sucking mouth. He looked like Santa Claus. He was of such girth that he leaned against a tree to ease himself to his knees. I rocked my hips until he broke his seal and said, "Don't move. I'll do the sucking." So I remained still and his head began to bob back and forth. My erection grew in his warm mouth.

  After my pleasure climaxed, he said, "Thanks, you've made my day," as he laboured back to his feet. I closed up my clothes and left.

  He was the first of a number. For some, the desire was to have me in their mouths. Others I knelt down and took in. I lost myself in this, awoke only when they ejaculated in my mouth and the illusion was broken. Some fucked me, and I tried to feel in the difficult pleasure of sodomy the pleasure I had felt with Tito.

  Once, only once, I spent an entire night with a man. He had eyes and a way of walking that were heart-stoppingly evocative of Tito. He directed things, went about his lust with total control, fucking me so hard that I bled, and I managed to forget myself in an ecstatic passivity without terror. Until morning.

  I never ate before these encounters, was too nervous, and for a while I resisted going home with anyone. I felt trapped indoors; fear, like a nausea, like an asphixiation, would grip me. A car or a park was a space closed enough for me. I usually went with middle-aged men, figuring that I had a better chance at survival if things went wrong than with a young man.

  I remember a gentle, melancholy man who caressed my ass as he sucked me sweetly and vigorously. He was a quiet man in his mid-fifties with salt-and-pepper hair. I met him in a park and he invited me to his home. But I was overtaken by fear and I didn't want to go farther than the front hall, so we fell into the habit -- the ten or so times I went to his place -- of doing it right there, amidst the winter coats and the boots. After finishing, he would sit back on the floor and say little more than "Thank you," and light up a cigarette, as if we had just made love. I felt he would never hurt me. For the longest time he stayed in my memory as the only person with whom I had a relationship during those hell-times. I felt a sad tenderness for him. It peaked one evening when he gently turned me around and licked my asshole as he masturbated me. When I came against the door, I was in not only a sexual paroxysm, but an emotional one. I felt my entire body was full of tears. The least word, the least motion, would make them spill from my eyes. He smoked without saying a word, considering the space of air in front of him. I carefully brought myself down to the floor and kissed him on the mouth.

  These emotions were so difficult! Loneliness, desire, pleasure, bliss -- then silence, strangeness, fear, loneliness, with a convulsion as the moment at which illusion would shatter. Each time I was left with nothing, with only the terrible loop in my head, "You are not Tito. You are not Tito. You are not Tito." I thought something must break, that it couldn't go on like this. But nothing broke and it went on.

  I had left my car behind and I was walking along a road amidst a sea of wheat-fields. If you've never been, the south of Saskatchewan is so flat the horizon is perceptibly round. Above you, during the day, lords an immense dome of sky so empty it feels like a fullness, with clouds the size of mountains, the sun but a small disk, and a depth of colour that is often chalk blue, oh so chalk blue. At night this reassuring curtain of blue is pulled away and you realize where you really are: at infinity's doorstep. A plain is what a mountain aims to be: the closest you can come to being in outer space while yet having your feet on this planet.

  The language of the plain is the wind. It carries sweetness and fragrance, the wealth of the earth. It is a soothsayer, herald of storm and of change of season. And the wind speaks. When you walk in a plain, gusts of words blow through your head, words that have travelled over the surface of the planet. That night the wind whispered words of doom to me.

  The sun had set. The horizon was a slowly collapsing explosion of red and deep orange. The wheat-fields no longer matched the sun's radiance, but took on a menacing hue; they looked as if sharks might be swimming in them. Soon the fields vanished into blackness. Had it not been for the stars and the sliver of moon, even the bare outline of the road would have disappeared and I would have been blind.

  I lay flat on the gravel beside the road. A car once in a while roared by. Each vehicle was divided in two at the headlights. The larger, front part was pure, blinding white light; the back part was a more humble and compact volume of metal. The roar was divided evenly between the parts. Every car pushed me to the question. I would lift myself off the gravel a few inches and stay suspended, my muscles tense. To be or not to be? I would waver on the edge of life, prey to a mere chemical fluctuation in my brain. I could see how it would go: a sprinter's start ... a lurch into the illuminated threshold of death ... a clash of light, metal and flesh ... mind and memory jostled ... a little pain ... and then the pain gone, all gone.

  I lay there, car after car, the gravel chilling me and pricking me. Now? This one?

  No.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  Then I was over the edge. Suddenly all desire to live was gutted.

  I sprint-started and I stood trembling, blinded by the light. I closed my eyes. A screech tore through the night. At any moment -- now! now! now! now! now! -- I was expecting violent relief. But the screech stopped and there was a sickening silence. I heard the sound, so universally familiar, of a car door opening. I opened my eyes. Everything in me was twisted up. There was a car at an angle to the road. A bull of a man was emerging from the other side of the car. His face was flushed and contorted. In the passenger seat was a woman with her hands on the dashboard and wide-open eyes. "ARE YOU CRAZY! I NEARLY HIT YOU!" shouted the man. He was making his way around the car. I was sudd
enly terrified that he'd do the very thing I wanted -- kill me. Though I could hardly control my legs, I began to run. He shouted after me. I kept running.

  I heard his car. He was coming after me. I was convinced that he wanted to run me down. I plunged into the wheat-fields.

  I stopped only when the dead black silence convinced me that I was alone. In the distance he was still there, in the form of a lit-up car. Was he still shouting? What did he want? What had I done to him?

  I stayed in the field all night, acutely aware of every rustle of life. The wind blew above me, over the wheat, like a spirit haunting the sky. I crept back to my car in the early morning, exhausted and overwrought. I will never forget the sound of my car starting up.

  I was sitting in a cemetery with my head in my hands.

  Sadness was sifting through me, touching every part of me. My feet were sad. My palms were sad. My eyelids were sad.

  I heard a female voice come through my ears. It seemed to come from miles away. She was right in front of me.

  "Do you like cemeteries too?"

  I looked up.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," she continued, "you're grieving. I didn't mean to bother you."

  "No, no. Not at all. Well, yes. But it's all right." My voice was rough and gruff. I cleared my throat several times. "I do like cemeteries."

  "So do I. So peaceful and beautiful, and some of the epitaphs are lovely. Did you see that some over there are in French?"

  "Yes."

  It happened like that. One item of small talk led to another, a little awkwardly at first, then with greater ease as the conversation took on a life of its own. It felt strange to talk. Such an effort. Such a pleasure. She sat down beside me. I told her I was grieving for my twin sister. But she hadn't died here. It was out east. In a car crash.