The High Mountains of Portugal. Yann Martel

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СКАЧАТЬ out what’s what. We should get going. Sabio, are you ready?”

      “Yes, senhor,” replies Sabio with military promptness.

      “Let me get my jacket. I’ll drive you to the edges of Lisbon, Tomás.”

      His uncle returns to the house. Tomás doffs the ludicrous motoring costume and returns it to the cabin. His uncle bounces back into the courtyard, a jacket on his back, gloves upon his hands, his cheeks flushed with excitement, exuding a nearly terrifying joviality.

      “By the way, Tomás,” he bellows, “I forgot to ask: Why on earth do you so badly want to go to the High Mountains of Portugal?”

      “I’m looking for something,” Tomás replies.

      “What?”

      Tomás hesitates. “It’s in a church,” he finally says, “only I’m not sure which one, in which village.”

      His uncle stands next to him and studies him. Tomás wonders whether he should say more. Whenever his uncle comes to the Museum of Ancient Art, he gazes at the exhibits with glazed eyes.

      “Have you heard of Charles Darwin, Uncle?” Tomás asks.

      “Yes, I’ve heard of Darwin,” Lobo replies. “What, is he buried in a church in the High Mountains of Portugal?” He laughs. “You want to bring his body back and give it pride of place in the Museum of Ancient Art?”

      “No. Through my work I came upon a diary written on São Tomé, in the Gulf of Guinea. The island has been a Portuguese colony since the late fifteenth century.”

      “A miserable one. I stopped there once on my way to Angola. I thought I might invest in some cocoa plantations there.”

      “It was an important place during the slave trade.”

      “Well, now it’s a producer of bad chocolate. Beautiful plantations, though.”

      “No doubt. By a process of deduction involving three disparate elements—the diary I’ve just mentioned, the logbook of a ship returning to Lisbon, and a fire in a village church in the High Mountains of Portugal—I have discovered an unsuspected treasure and located it, approximately. I’m on the brink of a great find.”

      “Are you? And what is this treasure, exactly?” his uncle asks, his eyes steady on Tomás.

      Tomás is sorely tempted. All these months he has told no one, especially not his colleagues, about his discovery, nor even about his research. He did it all on his own time, privately. But a secret yearns to be divulged. And in mere days the object will be found. So why not his uncle?

      “It is . . . a religious statuary, a crucifix, I believe,” he replies.

      “Just what this Catholic country needs.”

      “No, you don’t understand. It’s a very odd crucifix. A wondrous crucifix.”

      “Is it? And what does it have to do with Darwin?”

      “You’ll see,” Tomás replies, flushing with zeal. “This Christ on the Cross has something important to say. Of that, I am certain.”

      His uncle waits for more, but more does not come. “Well, I hope it makes your fortune. Off we go,” he says. He climbs into the driver’s seat. “Let me show you how to start the engine.” He claps his hands and roars, “Sabio!”

      Sabio steps forward, his gaze fixed on the automobile, his hands at the ready.

      “Before starting the engine, the moto-naphtha tap has to be turned to open—good man, Sabio—the throttle handle, here under the steerage wheel, has to be placed at half-admission—so—and the change-speed lever set at the neutral point, like this. Next you flick the magneto switch—here on the dashboard—to on. Then you open the lid of the hood—there’s no need to open the whole hood, you see that small lid there at the front?—and you press down once or twice on the float of the carburetor to flood it. See how Sabio does it? You close the lid, and all that’s left after that is turning the starting handle. Then you sit in the driver’s seat, take the hand brake off, get into first gear, and away you go. It’s child’s play. Sabio, are you ready?”

      Sabio faces the engine squarely and sets his legs apart, feet solidly planted on the ground. He bends down and grips the starting handle, a thin rod protruding from the front of the automobile. His arms straight, his back straight, he suddenly snaps the handle upward with great force, pulling himself upright, then, upon the handle completing a half-turn, he shoves down on it, using the full weight of his body, before working the upswing as he did the first time. He performs this circular action with enormous energy, with the result that not only does the whole automobile shake but the handle spins round two, maybe three times. Tomás is about to comment on Sabio’s prowess but for the result attending this spinning of the handle: The automobile roars to life. It starts with a sputtering rumble from deep within its bowels, followed by a succession of piercing explosions. As it begins to judder and shudder, his uncle yells, “Come on, hop aboard. Let me show you what this remarkable invention can do!”

      Tomás unwillingly but speedily clambers up to sit next to his uncle on the padded seat that stretches across the driving compartment. His uncle does a manoeuvre with his hands and feet, pulling this and pressing that. Tomás sees Sabio straddling a motorcycle that is standing next to a wall, then kick-starting it. He will be a good man to have along.

      Then, with a jerk, the machine moves.

      Quickly it gathers speed and swerves out of the courtyard, throwing itself over the threshold of the opened gates of the Lobo estate onto Rua do Pau de Bandeira, where it does a sharp right turn. Tomás slides across the smooth leather of the seat and slams into his uncle.

      He cannot believe the bone-jarring, mind-unhinging quaking he is experiencing, directly related to the noise-making, because such trembling can come only from such noise. The machine will surely shake itself to pieces. He realizes he has misunderstood the point of the suspension springs his uncle mentioned. Clearly their purpose is not to protect the automobile from ruts, but ruts from the automobile.

      Even more upsetting is the extremely fast and independent forward motion of the device. He sticks his head out the side and casts a look backwards, thinking—hoping—that he will see the Lobo household, every family member and employee, pushing the machine and laughing at the joke they are pulling on him. (Would that Dora were among those pushers!) But there are no pushers. It seems unreal to him that no animal should be pulling or pushing the device. It’s an effect without a cause, and therefore disturbingly unnatural.

      Oh, the alpine summits of Lapa! The automobile—coughing, sputtering, rattling, clattering, jouncing, bouncing, chuffing, puffing, whining, roaring—dashes down to the end of Rua do Pau de Bandeira, the cobblestones underfoot making their presence known with a ceaseless, explosive rat-a-tat, then violently lurches leftwards and falls off the street as if from a cliff, such is the steepness of Rua do Prior. Tomás’s guts feel as if they are being squeezed into a funnel. The automobile reaches the bottom of the street with a flattening that sends him crashing to the floor of the driving compartment. The machine has barely stabilized itself—and he regained his seat, if not his composure—before it springs up the last upward part of Rua do Prior onto Rua da Santa Trindade, which in turn descends steeply. The automobile gaily starts to dance over the metallic jaws of Santa Trindade’s tram tracks, sending him sliding to and fro across the seat, alternately smashing into his uncle, СКАЧАТЬ