Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

Tomás turns the page and stares for the thousandth time at the sketch in question. It is this sketch, with its haunting eyes, that set him on his search.

Night has settled on the land and the time has come to drive through Castelo Branco. He lights the remaining sidelight and adjusts its broad wick. The flame that dances up sheds a circle of warm light. The brilliantly white flame of the surviving headlight hisses like an angry snake. Its illumination is focused forward by a crystal-glass encasement. If only the light cast by the headlight weren’t so lopsided. His Cyclops looks rather sorry.

He reviews the route he will take. He has a series of markers in his head. At each point where a decision needs to be made, he has taken note of a detail — a house, a shop, a building, a tree. Because there will be no throngs of people at this time of night, he will have more leisure to guide himself correctly.

Whatever illusion he has that he’s riding a firefly of sorts — and when he moves away from the vehicle’s lit side, its radiance gives that image some credibility — is shattered when he starts up the machine. Its juddering roar rather brings to mind a dragon, although one with puny flames shooting from its mouth.

Not only puny: wholly ineffective. The lights, bright to his eyes close up, are mere pinpricks in the impenetrable night. All the headlight does, and poorly at that, is bring out the rough features of the road immediately under the automobile’s nose. What lies beyond — every rut, every turn — comes as a frightening, ever-changing surprise.

His only recourse — wholly illogical, he knows, but he can’t help himself and does it over and over — is to squeeze the horn, as if the night were a black cow obstructing the road that will jump out of the way with a few honks.

He does not move beyond first gear as he gropes his way towards Castelo Branco.

In Portugal the sunshine is often pearly, lambent, tickling, neighbourly. So too, in its own way, is the dark. There are dense, rich, and nourishing pockets of gloom to be found in the shadows of houses, in the courtyards of modest restaurants, on the hidden sides of large trees. During the night, these pockets spread, taking to the air like birds. The night, in Portugal, is a friend. These are the days and nights that he has mostly known. Only in his distant childhood was the night ever a breeder of terrors. Then he quaked and cried out. His father came to his rescue each time, stumbling half-asleep to his bed, where he would take him in his arms. He would fall asleep against his father’s big, warm chest.

Castelo Branco does not have the streetlights that light up Lisbon’s nights. Every marker on his route, so clear during the day, is now shrouded. Streets rear up like the tentacles of a giant squid. He never finds the road that skirts the city on its northwest. Instead, Castelo Branco is a breeder of terrors. He tries to hold a course in one direction until he reaches the city’s edge, any edge, but every street he takes ends in a T-junction, either way plunging him back into the depths of the city. Worse are the people. Like the houses and buildings that surround him, they appear abruptly out of the darkness, their faces suddenly fixed by the white light of the one-eyed machine. Some shout in fright, spreading their fright to him, and stand frozen, while others turn and run. It’s true that in the silence of the night the automobile is very loud, and he continues to honk the horn incessantly — but only to alert. At first there is hardly anyone about, but as he moves through the city like a blind creature scuttling at the bottom of the ocean, more and more people throw their shutters open, more and more people fling themselves into the streets, dishevelled but sharp-eyed. He moves into second gear and outpaces them. A short while later, on another circuit through the city, he encounters more groups. He sees them, they see him. They run towards him, he turns down another street. He moves into third gear.

If he cannot escape, then he must hide. After a series of turns, halfway down a deserted avenue, he abruptly stops the machine. He hurries to blow out the flames of the sidelight and headlight. Darkness and silence engulf him. He listens. Will the night hordes find him? He ventures out. He peers around corners and stares down streets. Nothing but benign darkness. It seems he has lost them.

He spends the rest of the night walking through Castelo Branco, establishing the route he will take at first light.

During his nocturnal exploration of the city, he comes upon a plain square, with its allotment of trees, benches, and a single statue veiled in darkness in its centre. He sees movement and he jumps, then realizes what it is. There has been a market that day in the square. The vendors’ stalls still stand, and beneath the tables, strewn about, lies the bad produce that the vendors threw away, fruit, vegetables, perhaps even meat. Moving amidst this detritus are dogs. Under the great dome of the night, in the submarine quiet of a city returned to sleep after a brief disturbance, he gazes at these street dogs that are taking in what others have rejected. They go about their business with hopeful pokes and snuffles, occasionally finding and gratefully eating. A few of them look up and stare at him before returning to their rooting. They accept him, as he accepts them.

When he returns to the automobile, he feels the gratitude of a sea creature retreating into its sheltering shell. He lies down for a short nap in the cabin. Alas, the walking and the sleepless night have taxed him greatly. He oversleeps. At the honk of the machine’s horn, pressed by some impertinent bystander, he wakes with a jerk to the sight of faces pressed through the window openings of the cabin, goggling eyes on him, noses sniffing the air. He has to push against the door of the cabin to move the people on the other side enough that he can squeeze out. He stands on the footboard and breathes in the fresh air of the new day. It is good to have escaped the night, but surrounding him now, sloshing and slapping against the automobile like the ocean’s bright blue water, is seemingly the entire population of Castelo Branco, clamouring at him like breaking waves. His escape — involving the usual shouted exhortations, the usual blinkered lack of understanding, the usual surprise when the automobile nudges forward, and the usual race ahead of the mob — drains him utterly. He drives until his nodding head hits the steerage wheel.

He wakes midafternoon and makes a groggy calculation. For each day established by a memory of it — the first day, the bridges, Ponte de Sor, the stagecoach, and so on — he raises a finger. Quickly the fingers of one hand stand erect. Then the fingers of the other, but for one. Nine, if his calculation is correct. Today is his ninth day on the road. His meagre ration of days is nearly expended. In two days, early in the morning, the chief curator at the museum will be expecting his return. He puts his head in his hands. Castelo Branco is not even halfway to his ultimate destination. Should he abandon his mission? But even if he does, he will not be back in Lisbon in time. To return now will be to fail twice, at his job and in his mission. To press on towards the High Mountains of Portugal will be to fail only at his job. And if his mission is crowned with success, he might perhaps get his job back. He will carry on, then, he will persevere. That is the only sensible course. But night is coming. He will persevere tomorrow.

With the changing land comes a changing climate. Winter in the Portuguese hinterland is cold and damp, and its bite is made worse by the metal cage that is the automobile’s cabin and the drafts that blow through its broken windows. Tomás steps out. Beyond the faint gleam of the road, there is only blackness. He wonders: Animals know boredom, but do they know loneliness? He doesn’t think so. Not this kind of loneliness, of the body and the soul. He belongs to a lonely species. He returns to the sofa and wraps himself in the mink coat and three blankets. Perhaps he sleeps at odd moments, but if he does, he dreams that he is in the cabin of an automobile on a cold night, waiting, and so, awake or sleeping, he remains in the same state of misery. Through the hours, a question preoccupies him: When is Christmas? Did he miss it?