The High Mountains of Portugal. Yann Martel

It’s good to walk. He kicks his feet back vigorously. He’s practically skipping backwards. But what is this itch that is bothering him? He scratches his scalp, his face, and his chest. It is his body crying to be washed. His armpits are starting to smell, as are his nether regions.

      He enters the town. People stare at him, at his manner of walking. He finds an apothecary to buy moto-naphtha, following his uncle’s advice of resupplying himself as often as he can. He asks the man at the counter if he has the product. He has to use a few names before the implacably serious man nods and produces from a shelf a small glass bottle, barely half a litre.

      “Do you have any more?” Tomás asks.

      The apothecary turns and brings down another two bottles.

      “I’ll have still more, please.”

      “I don’t have any more. That’s my whole stock.”

      Tomás is disheartened. At this rate, he will have to ransack every apothecary between Ponte de Sor and the High Mountains of Portugal.

      “I’ll take these three bottles, then,” he says.

      The apothecary brings them to the till. The transaction is routine, but something in the man’s manner is odd. He wraps the bottles in a sheet of newspaper, then, when two people enter the shop, he hastily slides the package over to him. Tomás notices that the man is staring at him fixedly. Self-consciousness overcomes him. He scratches the side of his head. “Is something wrong?” he asks.

      “No, nothing,” replies the apothecary.

      Tomás is bewildered but says nothing. He leaves the shop and takes a walk around the town, memorizing the route he will take with the automobile.

      When he returns to Ponte de Sor an hour later, it all goes wrong. He gets horribly lost. And the more he drives around the town, the more he attracts the attention of the population. Crowds assail him at every turn. At one sharp corner, as his hands frenetically wrestle with the steerage wheel, he stalls once again.

      The multitude of the curious and the offended descends upon him.

      He starts the automobile well enough, despite the crowd. He even feels that he can get it into first gear. Then he looks at the steerage wheel and has no idea in which direction he is supposed to turn it. In trying to satisfy the fiendish angle of the street he was attempting to get onto, he turned the wheel several times before stalling. He tries to determine the matter logically—this way? that way?—but he cannot come to any conclusion. He notices a plump man in his fifties standing on the sidewalk level with the automobile’s headlights. He’s better dressed than the others. Tomás leans out and calls to him above the din of the engine. “Excuse me, sir! I need your help, if you would be so kind. I’m having a mechanical problem. Something complicated I won’t bore you with. But tell me, is the wheel there, the one right in front of you, is it turning?”

      The man backs away and looks down at the wheel. Tomás grabs the steerage wheel and turns it. With the automobile completely at rest, it takes real effort.

      “Well,” Tomás puffs loudly, “is it turning?”

      The man looks puzzled. “Turning? No. If it were turning, your carriage would be moving.”

      “I mean, is it turning the other way?”

      The man looks to the rear of the automobile. “The other way? No, no, it’s not moving that way, either. It’s not moving at all.”

      Many in the crowd nod in agreement.

      “I’m sorry, I’m not making myself clear. I’m not asking if the wheel turned on itself in a round way, like a cartwheel. Rather, did it”—he searches for the right words—“did it turn on the spot on its tiptoes, like a ballerina, so to speak?”

      The man stares at the wheel doubtfully. He looks to his neighbours left and right, but they don’t venture any opinion, either.

      Tomás turns the steerage wheel again with brutal force. “Is there any movement at all from the wheel, any at all?” he shouts.

      The man shouts in return, with many in the crowd joining in. “Yes! Yes! I see it. There is movement!”

      A voice cries, “Your problem is solved!”

      The crowd bursts into cheers and applause. Tomás wishes they would go away. His helper, the plump man, says it again, pleased with himself. “There was movement, more than the last time.”

      Tomás signals to him with his hand to come closer. The man sidles over only a little.

      “That’s good, that’s good,” says Tomás. “I’m most grateful for your help.”

      The man ventures no reaction beyond a single callisthenic blink and the vaguest nodding. If a broken egg were resting atop his bald head, the yolk might wobble a little.

      “But tell me,” Tomás pursues, leaning forward and speaking emphatically, “which way did the wheel turn?”

      “Which way?” the man repeats.

      “Yes. Did the wheel turn to the left or did it turn to the right?”

      The man lowers his eyes and swallows visibly. A heavy silence spreads through the crowd as it waits for his response.

      “Left or right?” Tomás asks again, leaning closer still, attempting to establish a manner of complicity with the man.

      The egg yolk wobbles. There is a pause in which the whole town holds its breath.

      “I don’t know!” the plump man finally cries in a high-pitched voice, spilling the yolk. He pushes his way through the crowd and bolts. The sight of the ungainly, bandy-legged town notable racing down the street dumbfounds Tomás. He has lost his only ally.

      A man speaks out. “It could have been left, it could have been right. Hard to tell.”

      Murmurs of agreement rise up. The crowd seems cooler now, its indulgence turning to edginess. He has lifted his foot off the pedal and the engine has died. He gets out and turns the starting handle. He pleads with the crowd in front of the machine. “Listen to me, please! This machine will move, it will jump! For the sake of your children, for your own sake, please move away! I beg you! This is a most dangerous device. Step back!”

      A man next to him addresses him quietly. “Oh, here comes Demétrio and his mother. She’s not one you want to cross.”

      “Who’s Demétrio?” Tomás asks.

      “He’s the village idiot. But so nicely dressed by his mother.”

      Tomás looks up the street and sees the town notable returning. He’s weeping, his face covered in glistening tears. Holding his hand, pulling him along, is a very small woman dressed in black. She’s holding a club. Her eyes are fixed on Tomás. The way she’s straining at the end of her son’s arm, she looks like a tiny dog trying to hurry its leisurely owner along. Tomás returns to the driver’s seat and grapples with the machine’s controls.

      He humours the machine into not pouncing forward. As he plies the pedals, it growls but only leans forward, like an enormous boulder that has lost the tiny pebble that holds it back but hasn’t yet gone crashing down the slope to destroy the village below. The crowd gasps and instantly creates a space all around. He presses a touch harder on the accelerator pedal. He prepares to twist the steerage wheel with mania in whatever direction his instincts will choose, hoping it will be the correct direction, when he is confounded to see that the steerage wheel is turning on its own, of its own will. And it proves to be turning the right way: The vehicle creeps forward and finishes clearing the turn onto the cross street. He would continue to stare in wonderment if he didn’t hear the clanging sound of a wooden club striking metal.

      “YOU DARE TO MAKE FUN OF MY SON?” cries the mother of the broken egg. She has clocked one of the headlights with such force that it has cleanly broken off. He is horrified—his uncle’s jewel! “I’M GOING TO SUFFOCATE YOU UP A SHEEP’S