Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

It is indeed a child. A boy. Perhaps five or six years old. Dressed in overlarge clothes. A peasant boy with a large head, surprisingly blond hair, and a lovely, harmonious face marred only by streaks of dirt. And what Portuguese eyes are these— blue ? Some atavism, some trace of the foreign. Their fixed gaze appalls him.

“Boy, are you all right? Boy?”

The last word he says louder, as if death were a hearing problem. The boy’s eyes do not blink. His pale face remains frozen in a grave expression. Tomás kneels and touches the boy’s chest. He feels only stillness. A small river of blood appears from under the body and flows along the ground in the usual way of rivers.

Tomás shudders. He lifts his head. A breeze is blowing. In whatever direction he looks, there is majestic normalcy: wild growth here, tilled fields over there, the road, the sky, the sun. Everything is in its place, and time is moving with its usual discretion. Then, in an instant, without any warning, a little boy tripped everything up. Surely the fields will notice; they will rise, dust themselves, and come closer to take a concerned look. The road will curl up like a snake and make sad pronouncements. The sun will darken with desolation. Gravity itself will be upset and objects will float in existential hesitation. But no. The fields remain still, the road continues to lie hard and fixed, and the morning sun does not stop shining with unblinking coolness.

Tomás thinks back to the last place he stopped. It was just a few kilometres earlier. He had a short nap, his forehead resting against the steerage wheel, the engine left running. Could the child have climbed onto the front of the automobile during that break, while his head was down, unnoticed by him?

Children will play.

This could well be something Gaspar would have done, climbed onto a warm, throbbing machine to see what it was like.

“I’m sorry, little one,” he whispers.

He gets back to his feet. What is there to do but leave?

He walks away in his usual fashion, and so the child remains in his sight. He churns with horror. Then a hand seizes that horror and stuffs it in a box and closes the lid. If he leaves quickly enough, it will not have happened. For the moment this accident is in himself only, a private mark, a notch carved nowhere but upon his sensibility. Outside him, nothing cares. Look for yourself: The wind blows, time flows. Besides, it was an accident. It just happened, with no intent or knowledge on his part.

He turns and runs. Upon arriving at the front of the automobile to pull on the starting handle, he sees that the small lid of the hood is open. This lid is at the very front of the hood, out of sight of the driver in the driving compartment, and is designed to allow access to the engine without the hood having to be lifted. Did the child see it as a door into a little round dollhouse? Why must children be so curious? He notes how the boy would have held on, where his feet might have rested, what his hands must have gripped. The edge of the chassis, the base of the starting handle, the ends of the suspension springs, the thin rods that hold the headlights into place, the rim of the open lid — so many options for a little monkey. Comfortable enough a perch, perhaps even exhilarating when the warm noisy machine jerked into motion — but then fear and fatigue would have set in. So much speed and shaking, the ground disappearing beneath like a watery torrent.

He closes the lid and turns the starting handle. He hastens back to the driving compartment, puts the machine into first gear. He pauses. He considers what lies behind him and what lies ahead. With a shudder, the machine starts to move. He presses harder on the pedal. The automobile gains speed. He puts it into second gear, then third. He looks in the side mirror. The image is shaky, but he can still make out the lump. He turns his eyes to the road ahead.

He does not drive very far. The road snakes and ascends into a forest of pine trees. He stops, he turns the engine off, he sits. Then he lifts his gaze to look out the paneless window. Through the trees he sees the road he was on earlier. He is already far from that road, but nothing catches the eye like movement. He sees a tiny figure, just a speck. The figure is running. He recognizes that it’s a man from the sparks of light that flash through the running legs. The man runs and then he stops. He falls forward. There is no movement for a long time. Then the man gets up, lifts the bundle off the road, and walks back the way he came.

Tomás’s inner being plummets. To be the victim of a theft, and now to have committed a theft. In both cases, a child stolen. In both cases, his goodwill and grieving heart of no consequence. In both cases, mere chance. There is suffering and there is luck, and once again his luck has run out. He suddenly feels swallowed, as if he were a struggling insect floating on water and a great mouth gulped him in.

After a long time he looks away. He gets the automobile into gear and pushes on.

The church of Espinhosela yields no treasure; nor does the church of Mofreita. There is only the church of Santalha left. If Father Ulisses’ crucifix is not there, what will he do next?

On the road to Santalha he begins to feel ill. The pain comes in waves, and at each wave it seems to him that he can feel the exact outline of his stomach. Within that outline he is gripped by cramps. Relief comes — only for another cramp to hit him. Nausea surges through him next. Its onset is violent. Saliva floods his mouth, and the taste of it, its very presence, increases the nausea. He halts the vehicle and hastily exits it, trembling and covered in a cold sweat. He falls to his knees. Vomit erupts out of his mouth, a white torrent that splatters the grass. It reeks of putrid cheese. He is left panting. The urge returns with unstoppable force and he retches again. At the end of it, bile is burning his throat.

He lurches back to the automobile. He examines himself in a side mirror. He is scruffy and wild-eyed. His hair is sticky and matted. His clothes are unrecognizably dirty. He looks like a skewer of roasted meat. He spends a grim, sleepless night haunted by a pair of blue eyes, by a sad solemn little face, his stomach clenching and unclenching. It dawns on him: He is sick because of the child. The child is pushing from within him.

That morning he enters a village named Tuizelo. The day is sunny but the village square is deserted. He gets down from the automobile and drinks from the fountain at the centre of the square. He should clean himself, but he cannot muster the will or the concern. Instead he goes searching for somewhere to buy a little food. In these small villages in the High Mountains of Portugal, where the inhabitants survive largely on a mix of self-sufficiency and barter, he has discovered that sometimes a private house acts as an informal shop — but even this is not to be found in Tuizelo, only large vegetable gardens and wandering animals. The village is in fact full of animals: cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, sheep, goats, cows, donkeys, songbirds. As he is returning to the automobile, another stomach cramp besets him. As he pauses to steady himself, he catches sight of the village church. It is a squat building, plain and simple, though not unattractive for it. Its pale stone glows appealingly in the sunlight. He is of the opinion that architectural modesty best suits the religious sentiment. Only song needs to soar in a church; anything fancier is human arrogance disguised as faith. A church such as Tuizelo’s, with no high pointed arches, no ribbed vaulting, no flying buttresses, more accurately reflects the true humble nature of the seeker who enters its walls. The church is not on his list — but visiting it might distract him from his aching stomach and guilty sorrow.