Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

He finishes the last of the red wine, clears the driving compartment seat of broken glass, then lies down naked on the blanket on the seat, covering himself with the mink coat. Pain racks his body, his uncle yells at him in his dreams. He is chilled by the night while yet burning from his sores.

In the morning light, he dresses gingerly. However carefully he puts his clothes on, they rake at his tender skin. He sweeps and cleans the cabin as best he can. He opens the trunk again to check the diary. He does not want to lose his connection to Father Ulisses. He has come to see in the priest a man perfected by his suffering. A man to be imitated. Because to suffer and do nothing is to be nothing, while to suffer and do something is to become someone. And that is what he is doing: He is doing something. He must strike onward to the High Mountains of Portugal and fulfil his quest.

But he is confronted with an unexpected problem: the tree right in front of the automobile. There’s not enough space to drive around it. He has not encountered this situation until now. Always there has been space in front of the vehicle to make use of the steerage wheel and move forward. He exclaims and blames and curses. Finally he tries to think of a solution, and there is only one, clearly: to cut down the tree. There’s an axe among the store of essential items in the cabin. He has just seen it, covered in soot. His ever considerate and farsighted uncle no doubt included it for this precise purpose. The grand march of progress apparently includes the unfortunate necessity of chopping down every obstacle in its way. But the tree is so large, the trunk so thick, his body so sore!

He dithers. Finally the sight of his trunk of papers in the breezy cabin focuses his scattered energies. He picks up the axe.

He stands, facing the side of the tree opposite where the automobile is held prisoner. He raises the axe and swings. He chops and chops and chops. The bark flies off well enough, but the pale flesh of the tree is rubbery and resistant. The axe, sharp though it is, bounces back, producing only the smallest indentation each time. Hitting the same spot repeatedly demands a skill that mostly eludes him. And every swing grinds tender flesh against harsh clothing.

Quickly he is bathing in perspiration. He rests, eats, goes at it again. The morning is spent in this fashion. Then the early afternoon slips by.

By late afternoon, he has hacked a large hollow into the side of the trunk. The hollow goes beyond the midway point, but the tree doesn’t seem to feel any inclination to fall. His palms are shredded red and bleeding. The pain in his hands barely masks the pain he feels in his whole body. He is so exhausted he can barely stand.

He can chop no longer. The hindrance has to go away — now. He decides to use the weight of his body to make the tree topple. Placing one foot on the edge of the mudguard and another on the edge of the hood, he reaches for the first branch. It’s torture to grip the bark with his hands, but he manages to hook a leg around another branch and heave himself up. After all his struggles with the axe, the comparative ease with which he climbs the tree cheers him.

He moves out along a bough. He holds on to two separate branches. Of course, when the tree falls, he will fall with it. But the height isn’t great, and he will brace himself.

He begins to swing his body back and forth, ignoring the excruciating pain that is radiating from his palms. The head of the tree dances and dances. He expects to hear at any moment a sharp crack and feel himself drop through the air the short distance to the ground.

Instead, the tree gives up with quiet, rubbery elasticity. It tips over slowly. Tomás turns his head and sees the ground coming up. The landing is soft. But his feet slip off their bough, and where they come to rest on the ground is the precise spot where the tree chooses to press down with its heaviest limb. He yelps with pain.

He wrenches his feet free. He moves his toes. No bones are broken. He turns and looks at the automobile. He sees in an instant from the ground what he didn’t during his long hours of toil standing up: The stump is too high. The automobile, its bottom, will never be able to reach over it. He should have chopped much lower. But even if he had, the tree is still attached to the stump. It has fallen over without breaking off. The point at which tree and stump cling to each other is twisted and will be even more resistant to the axe. And even if he did manage to chop through the rest of the trunk, and supposing the stump were shorter, would he be able to pull the tree away? It seems scarcely imaginable. It’s no bush.

His efforts have been futile. The tree mocks him. Still entangled in the branches, he slumps. He begins to sob awkwardly. He closes his eyes and abandons himself to grief.

He hears the voice just before a hand touches his shoulder.

“My friend, you are hurt.”

He looks up, startled. A peasant has materialized out of the air. Such a bright white shirt he is wearing. Tomás chokes on his last sob and wipes his face with the back of his hand.

“You’ve been thrown so far!” says the man.

“Yes,” replies Tomás.

The man is looking at the automobile and the tree. Tomás understood him to mean how far he was projected from the tree (which, in fact, he hasn’t been at all; he’s in the tree, like a bird in its nest). But the peasant meant from the automobile . He must think that Tomás crashed into the tree and was projected from the vehicle into its branches.

“My hands and feet hurt. And I’m so thirsty!” Tomás says.

The peasant wraps one of his arms around his waist. Though short, he’s a powerful man and he lifts Tomás off the ground. He half-carries him to the automobile, setting him down on the footboard. Tomás massages his ankles.

“Anything broken?” the man asks.

“No. Just bruised.”

“Have some water.”

The man produces a gourd. Tomás drinks from it greedily.

“Thank you. For the water and for your help. I’m most grateful. My name is Tomás.”

“My name is Simão.”

Simão gazes at the fallen tree and the automobile’s broken windows, burned-out cabin, and many dents and scratches. “What a terrible accident! Such a powerful machine!” he exclaims.

Tomás hopes Simão doesn’t notice the axe on the ground.

“Pity about the tree,” Simão adds.

“Is it yours?”

“No. This is Casimiro’s grove.”

For the first time Tomás looks at the tree not as an obstacle in his way but as a being in its own right. “How old was it?”

“By the looks of it, two to three hundred years old. A good one, producing plenty of olives.”

Tomás is aghast. “I’m so sorry. Casimiro will be very angry.”

“No, he’ll understand. Accidents happen to all of us.”

“Tell me, is Casimiro somewhat older, with a round face and greying hair?”

“Yes, that would describe Casimiro.”

As it would the peasant from last night, the one who watched Tomás’s vermin dance. Tomás suspects that Casimiro will see the events in his olive grove in a different, less forgiving light.

“Do you think the machine will still work?” asks Simão.

“I’m sure it will,” replies Tomás. “It’s a solid thing. But I need to move it backwards. That’s my problem.”

“Put it in neutral and we’ll push it.”

That word again. Tomás is not sure why the machine’s neutrality will allow it to move backwards, but Simão seems to know what he’s talking about.

“It’s already in neutral. Only the hand brake needs to be released,” Tomás says.

He puts his shoes back on and climbs into the driving compartment. With a sore hand, he releases the hand brake. Nothing happens. He doubts Simão’s quick fix will yield anything more fruitful than his own tree-chopping solution.