Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

Bob and he go for a walk with Odo, much to the ape’s delight. Odo forages for berries, climbs trees, asks (with a grunt and his arms raised, like a child) to be carried by Peter, who obliges, lurching and stumbling about until he’s ready to drop. The way Odo holds on to him with his arms and legs, he feels he has a hundred-pound octopus on his back.

“I can give you his collar and his twenty-foot leash if you want, but they’re pointless,” Bob says. “If he’s in a tree, he’ll just pull you up like you’re a yo-yo. And if you happen to be on a horse, he’ll pull your horse up too. Chimpanzees are unbelievably strong.”

“So how do I restrain him?”

Bob thinks for a few seconds before answering. “I don’t mean to get personal, sir, but are you married?”

“I was,” Peter replies soberly.

“And how did you restrain your wife?”

Restrain Clara? “I didn’t.”

“Right. You got along. And when you didn’t, you argued and you coped. It’s the same here. There’s very little you can do to control him. You’ll just have to cope. Odo likes figs. Placate him with figs.”

During this exchange, Odo has been poking around a bush. He comes out and sits right next to Peter, on his foot. Brazenly, he feels, Peter reaches down and pats Odo’s head.

“You gotta get physical,” Bob says. He squats in front of the chimpanzee. “Odo, tickle-fest, tickle-fest?” he says, his eyes open wide. He begins to tickle the ape’s sides. Soon the two are wildly rolling about the ground, Bob laughing and Odo hooting and shrieking with delight.

“Join in, join in!” Bob shouts. The next moment Peter and Odo are thrashing about. The ape does indeed possess Herculean strength. There are times when he lifts Peter clear off the ground with arms and legs before crashing him back down.

When their roughhousing is over, Peter staggers to his feet. He’s dishevelled, one of his shoes has come off, his shirt has lost two buttons, the front pocket is torn, and he’s covered in grass, twigs, and soil stains. It was an embarrassingly juvenile episode, unbecoming of a man of sixty-two years — and utterly thrilling. He can feel his fear of the ape draining away.

Bob looks at him. “You’ll do fine,” he says.

Peter smiles and nods. He declines the collar and leash.

When Lemnon appears, there is only the commercial transaction that needs to be completed. Peter hands over the bank draft, which Lemnon inspects carefully. In return, he gives Peter various papers. One form states that he, Peter Tovy, is the legal owner of the male chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes, Odo. It is notarized by a lawyer in Oklahoma City. Another form is from a wildlife veterinarian; it gives the ape a clean bill of health and guarantees that Odo is up to date on all vaccinations. Yet another is an export permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They all look properly official, with signatures and embossed stamps. “All right, I guess that’s it,” Peter says. Lemnon and he don’t shake hands, and Peter walks away without saying another word.

Bob places a folded towel on the front passenger seat. He bends down and hugs Odo. Then he stands and motions to him to get into the car. Odo does so without hesitation, making himself comfortable in the seat.

Bob takes hold of the ape’s hand and holds it to his face. “Good-bye, Odo,” he says, his voice strained by sadness.

Peter gets in the driver’s seat and starts the engine. “Should we put his seatbelt on?” he asks.

“Why not,” Bob replies. He reaches over and works it across Odo’s waist. He snaps the buckle in. The shoulder strap is too high, running across Odo’s face. Bob puts it behind his head. Odo does not mind the arrangement.

Peter feels panic simmering within him. I can’t do this. I should just call the whole thing off. He lowers his window and waves at Bob. “Good-bye, Bob. Thanks again. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

The drive from Oklahoma City takes longer than the drive to it. He goes at a moderate speed so as not to alarm Odo. And whereas from Ottawa to Oklahoma City he jumped from human colony to human colony — Toronto, Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Tulsa — on the way to New York City he avoids as many urban centres as he can, once again to spare the ape.

He would like to sleep in a proper bed and enjoy a shower, but he is quite certain that no motel owner will rent a room to a half-simian couple. On the first night, he turns off the road and stops the car next to an abandoned farmhouse. He assembles the cage, but he isn’t sure where to place it. On the roof of the car? Sticking out of the trunk? A little ways off, in the ape’s “own” territory? Finally he puts the cage, its door ajar, next to the car and leaves the front passenger window rolled open. He gives Odo a blanket, then he lies down on the back seat. When night falls, the ape comes in and out, making considerable noise, leaping into the back seat a few times, practically landing on Peter, until he settles in the foot well of the back seat, next to him. Odo doesn’t snore, but his breathing is powerful. Peter does not sleep well, not only because he is overtly disturbed by the ape but because of nagging worries. This is a large, powerful animal, unrestrained and uncontrollable. What have I got myself into?

Other nights they sleep on the edge of a field, at the end of a dead-end road, wherever it’s quiet and isolated.

One evening he has a closer look at the papers Lemnon gave him. Included among them is a report that gives an overview of Odo’s life. He was “wild-caught as a baby” in Africa. No mention is made of the Peace Corps volunteer, only that Odo next spent time with NASA, at a place called Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Then he went to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, in Atlanta, Georgia, then to the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, LEMSIP for short, in Tuxedo, New York, before being sent to Lemnon’s Institute for Primate Research. What an odyssey. No wonder Bob said Odo was a rolling stone.

Peter lingers on certain words: “medical”…“biology”…“laboratory”…“research”—and especially “experimental medicine and surgery.” Experimental? Odo was shunted from one medical Auschwitz to another, and this after being taken from his mother as a baby. Peter wonders what happened to Odo’s mother. Earlier in the day, while grooming the ape, he noticed a tattoo on his chest. Only in that area can the dark skin be made out beneath the thick coat, and there, in the upper-right-hand corner, he found two wrinkled digits — the number 65—inscribed on unacceptable paper.

He turns to Odo. “What have they done to you?”

He moves over and grooms him.

One afternoon in lush Kentucky, after filling up, he drives to the far end of the recreation area behind the gas station so they can eat. Odo gets out of the car and climbs a tree. At first Peter is relieved; the ape is out of the way. But then he can’t get him to come down. He’s afraid that Odo will reach over into another tree and then another and be gone. But the ape stays put. He only gazes at the forest on whose edge he is hovering. He seems drunk with joy at being in such a leafy haven. A chimpanzee afloat in a sea of green.

Peter waits. Time goes by. He has nothing to read and he doesn’t feel like listening to the radio. He has a nap in the back seat. He reflects on Clara, on his disenchanted son, on the life he is leaving behind. He walks to the gas station to get food and water. He sits in the car and contemplates the layout of the gas station, its main building that was once brightly coloured but is now faded, the expanse of asphalt, the coming and going of cars and trucks and people, the recreation area, the edge of the forest, the tree in which Odo has ensconced himself, and then he sits there and just watches Odo.