The High Mountains of Portugal. Yann Martel

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СКАЧАТЬ of the steerage wheel. He teaches him the use of the throttle handle, which is needed not only to start the engine but to stop it. And he speaks on matters Uncle Martim said nothing about: the difference between pressing hard or lightly on the accelerator pedal; the usage of the brake pedal; the important hand brake, which he is to pull whenever the automobile is at rest; the use of the side mirrors. Sabio shows him how to turn the starting handle. When Tomás tries it, he feels something heavy turning inside the automobile, like a boar on a spit being rotated in a vat of thick sauce. On his third turn of the spit, the boar explodes.

      He stalls the engine again and again. Each time Sabio gamely returns to the front of the machine, where he gets it to roar to life again. Then he proposes to put the machine into first gear. Tomás slides over to the passenger side of the driving compartment. Sabio does the necessary manoeuvres; the gears sigh consent and the machine inches forward. Sabio points to where he should put his hands and where he should press his foot. Tomás moves into place. Sabio works his way out of the driver’s seat onto the footboard, nods gravely at him, and steps off the automobile.

      Tomás feels cast off, thrown away, abandoned.

      The road ahead is straight and the machine grunts along noisily in first gear. The steerage wheel is a hard, unfriendly thing. It shakes in his hands. He tugs it one way. Is it left? Is it right? He can’t tell. He’s barely able to make it move. How did his uncle do it so easily? And keeping the accelerator pedal pressed down is exceedingly tiresome; his foot is starting to cramp. At the first bend, a slight curve to the right, as the automobile starts to cross over the road and head towards a ditch, alarm pushes him to action and he lifts his foot and stamps on one pedal after another at random. The machine coughs and jolts to a halt. The clanging pandemonium mercifully stops.

      Tomás looks about. His uncle is gone, Sabio is gone, there is no one else in sight—and his beloved Lisbon is gone too, scraped away like the leftovers of a meal off a plate. Into a silence that is more vacuum than repose, his little son vaults into his mind. Gaspar often ventured out to play in the courtyard of his uncle’s house before being shooed away by one servant or another, like a stray cat. He also prowled about the garage, filled as it was with rows of bicycles and motorcycles and automobiles. His uncle would have found a kindred spirit in his son when it came to motoring. Gaspar stared at the automobiles like a hungry mouth eats. Then he died, and the courtyard now contains a silent parcel of emptiness. Other parts of his uncle’s house similarly afflict Tomás with the absence of Dora or of his father, this door, that chair, this window. What are we without the ones we love? Would he ever get over the loss? When he looks in his eyes in the mirror when he shaves, he sees empty rooms. And the way he goes about his days, he is a ghost who haunts his own life.

      Weeping is nothing new to him. He has wept many, many times since death dealt him a triple blow. A remembrance of Dora, Gaspar, or his father is often both the source and the focus of his grief, but there are times when he bursts into tears for no reason that he can discern, an occurrence as random as a sneeze. The situation now is clearly very different in nature. How can a noisy, uncontrollable machine and three coffins be compared in their effect? But strangely he feels upset in the same way, filled with that same acute sense of dread, aching loneliness, and helplessness. So he weeps and he pants, grief in competition with simmering panic. He pulls out the diary from his jacket pocket and presses it to his face. He smells its great age. He closes his eyes. He takes refuge in Africa, in the waters off its western equatorial coast, on the Portuguese island colony of São Tomé. His grief seeks the man who is leading him to the High Mountains of Portugal.

      He tried to find information on Father Ulisses Manuel Rosário Pinto, but history seemed to have forgotten him nearly entirely. There was no trace of him but for two dates that gave his unfinished outlines: his birth on July 14, 1603, as attested by the São Tiago parish registry in Coimbra, and his ordination as a priest in that same city in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on May 1, 1629. No other detail of his life, down to the date of his death, could Tomás find. All that remained of Father Ulisses in the river of time, pushed far downstream, was this floating leaf of a diary.

      He pulls the diary away from his face. His tears have marred its cover. This does not please him. He is professionally annoyed. He dabs at the cover with his shirt. How strange, this habit of weeping. Do animals weep? Surely they feel sadness—but do they express it with tears? He doubts it. He has never heard of a weeping cat or dog, or of a weeping wild animal. It seems to be a uniquely human trait. He doesn’t see what purpose it serves. He weeps hard, even violently, and at the end of it, what? Desolate tiredness. A handkerchief soaked in tears and mucus. Red eyes for everyone to notice. And weeping is undignified. It lies beyond the tutorials of etiquette and remains a personal idiom, individual in its expression. The twist of face, quantity of tears, quality of sob, pitch of voice, volume of clamour, effect on the complexion, the play of hands, the posture taken: One discovers weeping—one’s weeping personality—only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself.

      Resolve surges in him. There is a church in the High Mountains of Portugal waiting for him. He must get to it. This metal box on wheels will help him do that, and so sitting behind its controls is where he should be. Esta é a minha casa. This is home. He looks down at the pedals. He looks at the levers.

      It is a good hour before he heads off. The problem does not lie in starting the automobile. That, after seeing Sabio do it so many times, is manageable. Arms straight, back straight, legs doing the work, he turns the starting handle. The warm engine seems disposed to starting again. The problem lies in getting the machine moving. Whatever permutation of pedals and levers he uses, the end result is always the same: a grinding squeal or an angry barking, often quite violent, with no movement forward. He takes breaks. He sits in the driving compartment. He stands next to the automobile. He goes for short walks. Sitting on the footboard, he eats bread, ham, cheese, dried figs, and he drinks wine. It is a joyless meal. The automobile is always on his mind. It stands there, looking incongruous on the side of the road. The horse and ox traffic going by notice it—and notice him—but so close to Lisbon, either coming or going, the drivers hurry their animals on, only shouting or waving a greeting. He does not have to explain himself.

      At last it happens. After countless fruitless efforts, he presses on the accelerator pedal and the machine advances. He mightily wrenches the steerage wheel in the direction he hopes is the correct one. It is.

      The vehicle is now in the centre of the road and moving ahead. To avoid the ditch on either side, he has to hold his ship to a single fixed course: the narrow, shrunken horizon dead ahead. Maintaining a straight line towards that bottomless dot is exhausting. The machine constantly wants to veer off course, and there are bumps and holes in the road.

      There are people too, who stare harder the farther he gets from Lisbon. Worse, though, are the large drays and carts heavily laden with goods and produce for the city. They appear ahead of him, plugging the horizon. As they get closer, they seem to take up an increasing share of the road. They clip-clop slowly, confidently, stupidly, while he races towards them. He has to calculate his course exactly so that he drives next to them and not into them. His eyes tire from the strain and his hands hurt from gripping the steerage wheel.

      Suddenly, he has had enough. He presses on a pedal. The automobile coughs to a harsh stop, throwing him against the steerage wheel. He steps down, exhausted but relieved. He blinks in astonishment. The application of the brake pedal has unpacked the landscape and it billows out around him, trees, hills, and vineyards to his left, textured fields and the Tagus to his right. He saw none of these while he was driving. There was only the devouring road ahead. What luck to live in a land that so unceasingly agrees to be agreeable. No wonder wine is made here. The road is now empty and he is alone. In the dying light of the day, wispy and opal, he is soothed by the quiet of an early evening in the country. He remembers lines from Father Ulisses’ diary, which he recites under his breath:

      I come not to shepherd the free, but the unfree. The first have their own СКАЧАТЬ