Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

The villagers smile and laugh. The foreigner’s macaco is funny! Peter is pleased. Odo is winning them over.

At the height of the merriment, in an act that Peter senses is meant to show that he is fully participating in the general social relaxation, Odo takes the cup in his hand, stands high on his chair, shrieks, and throws the cup to the ground with terrific force. The cup shatters into small pieces.

The villagers freeze. Peter lifts a placating hand to the server. “Desculpe,” he says.

“Não há problema.”

And to a wider audience Peter adds, “Macaco amigável é feliz, muito feliz.”

Amigável and feliz —but with an edge. He pays, adding a handsome tip, and they take their leave, the crowd carefully parting before them.

When they return to the house on the edge of the village, it is transformed. The windows are fixed; the plumbing works; the gas stove has a new tank; every surface has been thoroughly cleaned; pots, pans, dishes, and cutlery — used, chipped, mismatched, but perfectly functional — are stacked on the shelves of the kitchen; the bed has a new mattress, with clean sheets, two wool blankets, and towels lying folded on it; and Dona Amélia is setting a vase bursting with bright flowers on the living room table.

Peter puts his hand over his heart. “Muito obrigado,” he says.

“De nada,” says Dona Amélia.

The mutual awkwardness of dealing with the cost of things is swiftly dispatched. He rubs his thumb and forefinger together, then points at the gas tank and the kitchenware and towards the bedroom. Next he looks up the word “rent”—it’s a strange one: aluguel . In each case Dona Amélia proposes a sum with evident nervousness, and in each case Peter is convinced she has made a mistake by a factor of three or four. He agrees right away. Dona Amélia makes him understand that she would be willing to do his laundry and come once a week to clean the house. He hesitates. There isn’t much to clean — and what else will he do with his time? But he thinks again. She will be his link to the rest of the village. More importantly, she will be Odo’s link, the ape’s ambassador. And it occurs to him that the villagers of Tuizelo are probably not a wealthy lot. By employing her, he will pump a little more money into the local economy.

“Sim, sim,” he says to her. “Quanto?”

“Amanhã, amanhã,” says Dona Amélia, smiling.

Now the next order of business. He needs to get himself and Odo organized. There is the question of formally opening his bank account and arranging for regular wire transfers from Canada, of getting a permanent licence plate for the car. Where is the closest bank?

“Bragança,” she replies.

“Telephone?” he asks her. “Aqui?”

“Café,” she replies. “Senhor Álvaro.”

She gives him the number.

Bragança is about an hour away. Which should he worry about more: bringing the ape to an urban centre or leaving him here alone? These administrative chores need doing. And either way, whether in the town or in the village, he has no real control over Odo. Whatever he does, he must rely on the ape’s cooperation. He can only hope that Odo will not stray far from the house or get into trouble.

Dona Amélia and her group of helpers leave.

“Stay, stay. I’ll be back soon,” he says to Odo, who at the moment is playing with a crack in the stone floor.

He leaves the house, closing the door, though he knows Odo can easily open it. He gets in the car and drives away. Looking in the rear-view mirror, he sees the ape climbing onto the roof.

In Bragança he buys supplies — candles, lanterns, kerosene; soap; groceries, including cartoned milk that doesn’t need refrigeration; sundry household and personal items — and does his business at the bank. The licence plate he will receive in the mail, at the café.

At the post office in Bragança, he makes two phone calls to Canada. Ben says he’s pleased that his father has arrived safely. “What’s your number?” he asks.

“There’s no phone,” Peter replies, “but I can give you the number of the café in the village. You can leave a message there and I’ll call you back.”

“What do you mean, there’s no phone?”

“I mean just that. There’s no phone in the house. But there’s one in the café. Take the number.”

“Do you have running water?”

“Yep. It’s cold, but it runs.”

“Great. Do you have electricity?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am.”

There’s a pause. He senses that Ben is waiting for explanations, justifications, defences. He offers none. His son therefore continues in the same vein. “How about the roads — are they paved?”

“Cobbled, actually. How’s work? How’s Rachel? How’s good ol’ Ottawa?”

“Why are you doing this, Dad? What are you doing there?”

“It’s a nice place. Your grandparents came from here.”

They end the call with the grace of people learning how to dance on stilts. They promise to talk again soon, a future conversation being a relief from the one they’re having.

He has a bubblier conversation with his sister, Teresa.

“What’s the village like?” she asks. “Does it feel like home?”

“No, not when I don’t speak the language. But it’s quiet, rural, old — pleasantly exotic.”

“Have you discovered the family home?”

“Nope. I’m just settling in. And I wasn’t even three years old when we left. I’m not sure it makes much difference to me whether I was born in this house or that house. It’s just a house.”

“Okay, Mr. Sentimentality — how about scores of long-lost cousins?”

“They’re still hiding, waiting to pounce on me.”

“I think it would help Ben if you built the place up a bit. You know, tell him you’re watering the genealogical tree and tending its roots. He’s totally perplexed by your sudden departure.”

“I’ll try harder.”

“How are you feeling about Clara?” she asks in a soft voice.

“I talk to her in my head. That’s where she lives now.”

“And are you taking care of yourself? How’s your ticker?”

“Ticking away.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

When he returns to Tuizelo, Odo is still on the roof. He hoots loudly upon seeing the car and cascades down. After many hoots of greeting, he drags bags of supplies into the house, walking erect with a side-to-side swaying gait. This helpful intent results in the bags splitting and their contents scattering. Peter gathers everything and brings it into the house.

He sets up the kitchen. He moves the table in the living room to a more pleasing spot, does the same with the bed in the bedroom. Odo watches him the whole time without making a sound. Peter feels slightly nervous. He still has to get used to this, to the ape’s gaze. It sweeps around like the beam from a lighthouse, dazzling him as he bobs in the waters. Odo’s gaze is a threshold beyond which he cannot see. He wonders what the ape is thinking and in what terms. Perhaps Odo has similar questions about him. Perhaps the ape sees him as a threshold too. But he doubts it. More likely, to Odo, he is a curio, an oddity of the natural world, a dressed-up ape that circles around this natural one, hypnotically attracted.

There. Everything is in its place. He looks about. Again he feels that he has come to the end of a sentence. He frets. He stares out the window. It’s late afternoon and the weather looks to be changing for the worse. No matter.

“Let’s go exploring,” he says to Odo. He grabs the backpack and they head out. He doesn’t want to deal with the villagers’ insistent attention, so they turn up the road, towards the plateau, until he finds a path that leads back down into the forest. Odo advances on all fours, his gait plodding but easy, his head slung so low that from behind he looks headless. Once they enter the forest, he becomes excited by the great oaks and chestnuts, the clusters of lindens, elms, and poplars, the pine trees, the many shrubs and bushes, the explosions of ferns. He races ahead.