Self by Yann Martel

Author:Yann Martel [Martel, Yann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780571219766
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1996-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

We met him on one of those endless bus trips Ruth and I endured. Perhaps it was between Kayseri and Malatya. A gleaming black snake of a road that meandered across the undulating green and treeless plains of Eastern Anatolia. One bus, no traffic. A farmer, I guess he was. A man of the land, wed to the black earth. He got on seemingly from nowhere and got off in a place not much different. In between the two, we met, our parallel lives touched. He looked to be in his late twenties and he had the rugged, very masculine good looks characteristic of handsome Turkish men: clean, classical features, perfect white teeth, clear eyes, a thick black moustache and a body packed with muscles and hair. His arms and torso strained at the clothes he wore and his forearms were so hairy I could barely see his skin. Hair burst out from the top of his shirt like flames from the window of a burning house.

I don’t remember how the three of us got to speaking. I suppose the usual: eyes becoming aware of each other because of his looking, nods and smiles, his first tentative word. He had fewer English words at his disposal than he had fingers, words that he must have learned in schooldays long past. Yet he was so eager and determined to communicate with us that it was nearly a miracle of Jesus: he transformed his drops of English into decanters of rich meaning. He pronounced my country’s name with such solemn, serious emphasis — Kah-nah-dah — that I did what I hadn’t done in a long time: I considered it from the outside, as if for the first time. What a curious name it is, sounding so much like a nonsense word, the babble of a child, with the giant C and the three syllables like three dance steps.

We communicated in broad emotions, something like waving at someone from a distance. He smiled and tilted his head a lot. When he was touched, which was often, he slapped both his hands against his chest, which made a booming sound. He was a sweet man, as decent as a nineteenth-century novel. We lavishly praised his country. This nearly brought tears to his eyes. I said, “Atatürk!” and shook my fist, signifying “Great leader!” He slap-boomed his chest and exclaimed, “Atatürk!”, signifying I’m not sure what, but it was positive. In fact, “Atatürk!” “Atatürk!” were the last words we exchanged as we shook hands before he got off, as if we were members of an Atatürk revivalist society.

When he was no more than a dot on the horizon and we could no longer see his waving, we sat back.

“Wasn’t he a nice man,” said Ruth.

“Yes,” I replied dreamily. I dwelt on his niceness, his integrity. It took some long minutes before my ambiguous thoughts resolved themselves into focus. He was a sweet man — and one I lusted after. This thought, the popping of the word “lust” into my head, shocked me.

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