Yann Martel - The High Mountains of Portugal

It is a land more uniform than the sky. A land where the weather is met directly because it’s the only thing happening.

Standing out, both literally and in their effect on them, are the strange boulders they noticed on their way to Tuizelo. They stretch as far as the eye can see. Each boulder reaches three to five times the height of an average person. To walk around one takes a good forty paces. They rise, as elongated as obelisks, or sit, as squat as balls of geologic dough. Each is on its own, with no smaller rocks around it, no cast-off intermediaries. There are only big boulders and short, rough grass. Peter wonders about the origin of these boulders. The frozen ejecta of ancient volcanoes? But how strange the spread, as if a volcano flings chunks of lava like a farmer throws seeds on the ground, with a concern for an even distribution. These boulders are more likely the result of a grinding glacier, he surmises. Being rolled under a glacier might explain their rough surfaces.

He likes the plateau very much. Its openness is breathtaking, intoxicating, exciting. He thinks Clara would enjoy it. They would trek through it hardily. Many years ago, when Ben was small, they went camping in Algonquin Park every summer. The landscape there couldn’t be more different from this one, but the effect was similar, a bathing in light, silence, and solitude.

A flock of sheep appears out of the ether, timid, yet as forward-charging as an invading army. At the sight of him, and even more so of Odo, the ovine battalion splits into two around them, giving them a wide berth. For a few minutes the sheep become an amateur orchestra playing the one instrument they know: the bell. Their distracted conductor strides up, delighted to come upon company. He starts on a long conversation, entirely unbothered by the fact that Peter does not speak his language and is accompanied by a large chimpanzee. After a good chewing of the fat, he leaves them to catch up with his flock, which has disappeared as earnestly as it appeared. The silence and the solitude return.

Then they come upon a stream, a noisy fluvial baby swaddled in grass and granite. The stream babbles and bubbles as if it has just woken up. Once crossed and left behind, it vanishes from their senses. Once again the silence and the solitude return.

Odo is taken by the boulders. He sniffs at them with great interest, then often looks around sharply. Has his nose told his eyes something?

Peter’s preference is to walk between the boulders, midway, at a distance that allows for perspective. Such is not Odo’s impulse. The ape walks from boulder to boulder in a straight line, as if connecting dots in a greater design. A boulder is sniffed, walked around, contemplated, then left behind for the next one, dead ahead. This next boulder might be nearby or far away, at an angle of deflection that is acute or wide. The ape decides with assurance. Peter is not averse to this manner of rambling about the plateau. Each boulder presents its own artistic shapeliness, its own texture, its own civilization of lichen. He wonders only at the lack of variety to the approach. Why not strike out for the open seas, between the shoals? The captain does not brook the suggestion. Unlike in the forest, where each enjoys his liberty, on the plateau the ape inveighs Peter to stay close, grunting and snorting with displeasure if he wanders off. He obediently falls into step.

After one particularly intense sniff at a boulder, Odo decides to conquer it. He scales up its side without effort. Peter is mystified.

“Hey, why this one? What’s special about it?” he cries.

The boulder doesn’t look any different from any other, or, rather, it looks as mundanely different as they all do from each other. Odo looks down at him. He calls out quietly. Peter decides to give climbing the boulder a try. The feat is trickier for him. He doesn’t have the ape’s strength. And though the height does not seem great from the ground, as soon as he has climbed a few feet he becomes afraid that he’ll fall. But he doesn’t fall. The many pockmarks and cracks in the boulder ensure his safety. When he is within reach, Odo grabs him by the shoulder and helps him up.

He scrambles to the middle of the boulder’s crown. He sits and waits for his heart to stop knocking about his chest. Odo acts like a vigil on a ship, scanning the far horizon but also scrutinizing their closer surroundings. Peter can tell from his excited tension that he’s enjoying the activity. Is it the height, with nothing around to block his view? Has some childhood memory of Africa been evoked? Or is he looking for something specific, a signal from the land, from the distance? Peter doesn’t know. He settles down for the duration, remembering Odo’s tree-dwelling escapades in Kentucky. He takes in the view, looks at the clouds, feels the wind, studies the varying light. He attends to simple, domestic tasks, since he brought the camping stove — the making of coffee, the preparing of a meal of macaroni and cheese. They spend a pleasant hour or so on top of the boulder.

The climb down is more harrowing than the climb up for him. For Odo, backpack dangling from his mouth, it is a casual amble down.

When they get back home, Peter is exhausted. Odo makes his nest. Nest-building is a quick, casual affair, whether for a nap or for the night. It involves no greater effort than the spinning of a towel or a blanket into a spiral, with a few items thrown in when it is a nighttime nest. Tonight Odo adds one of Peter’s shirts and the boots he has worn all day. Odo also varies where he sleeps. So far he has slept on top of the wardrobe; on the floor next to Peter’s bed; on top of the chest of drawers; on the living room table; on two chairs brought together; on the kitchen counter. Now he builds his nest on the living room table.

They both go to sleep early.

At dawn the next day Peter tiptoes to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. He settles with the steaming cup in front of Odo, watching him sleep, waiting.

Time passes, like clouds in the sky. Weeks and months go by as if they were a single day. Summer fades to fall, winter yields to spring, different minutes of the same hour.

Contact with Canada lessens. One morning Peter enters the café and Senhor Álvaro hands him a piece of paper. The message is never more than a name, usually Ben’s or Teresa’s. This time it’s the Whip’s. Peter goes to the phone at the end of the counter and dials Canada.

“Finally,” the Whip says. “I’ve left three messages in the past week.”

“Have you? I’m sorry, they didn’t get to me.”

“Don’t worry about it. How’s Portugal?” His voice crackles with distance. A far-off fire on a dark night.

“Good. April is a lovely time here.”

The line suddenly becomes terribly clear, like a hot, urgent whisper. “Well, as you know, we’re not doing well in the polls.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. Peter, I’ve got to be frank. A senator’s most fruitful work may very well take place away from the upper chamber, but a senator is nonetheless expected to sit, at least occasionally, in that chamber.”

“You’re right.”

“You haven’t been here for over nine months.”

“I haven’t.”

“And you haven’t been doing any Senate work.”

“Nope. Neither fruitful nor otherwise.”

“You just vanished. Except your name is still on the Senate roster. And”—the Whip clears his throat—“you’re living with — uh — a monkey.”

“An ape, actually.”

“The story’s made the rounds. It’s been in the papers. Listen, I know it was really hard with Clara. Believe me, I feel for what you went through. But at the same time, it’s hard to justify to Canadian taxpayers paying your salary as a senator to run a zoo in northern Portugal.”