Read Online Self by Yann Martel - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Yann Martel
Tags: General Fiction
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more visual than aural, the merest shimmer. This heartbeat brings no words to your mind, but you feel an expansion; doors open in your head onto immense empty rooms and your mind exclaims, “Heavens, this place is bigger than I realized!” So while the furniture is the same as the moment before, the house of your mind has suddenly expanded fourfold. This is what I mean by tinkle, by shimmer, by heartbeat: a vague awareness during adolescence that vitality is outstripping comprehension.
I monitored the growth of my body hair. These tokens of maturity first appeared on my lower legs, anklets of manhood on a child’s body. It seemed that the hormones triggering this growth had to battle gravity, for it was only after these dark shoots had crept some distance up my legs that they appeared on my pubis. Then they sprouted on my chest, three, four hairs in the centre of my sternum. Next, the benign blond hairs that I had in my armpits were supplanted. Only after this did my cheeks join in. Lastly, the hormonal elixir touched the top of my head. Throughout my childhood my hair had been thick but easy enough to manage. I have memories of my father working me over with a comb, with tugs that eventually overcame knots, one “Ow!” for every jerk. The jerks weren’t really painful; it was just another way to bug my father. But with puberty, by slow degrees, my hair began to curl and wave and kink. It became an unruly mess.
I took pleasure in my developing hirsuteness. Hairiness was beautiful, it would suit me. The hair on my chest delighted methe most. I wanted my chest to be thick with hair, so thick that I had to comb it. I remember an ad I saw in comic books, next to the mail-order sea-horses, for a soap that was claimed to promote hair growth. I dreamed of sending for it, and never did only because I didn’t know how to pay for it through the mail and I was afraid my parents would catch me. In time my chest did grow hairy, though it never achieved the thickness I yearned for. But my stomach, at least, gave me satisfaction.
Starting at age fourteen, I began to shave. It was more preemptive than necessary; the hair growth on my face has never been spectacular. Not for me the flowing beard of Charles Darwin or Karl Marx, or the magnificent moustache of the mad Friedrich Nietzsche. My upper lip and my cheeks produced many trees but never a forest, and I needed to change my axe only every few months. But I enjoyed shaving — this manly ritual of splashing warm water on the face, lathering the shaving cream to a frothy white sea and then scraping it off in short, clean strokes with a gingerly held razor. It was a form of recollection, and had a soothing effect on me. I shaved one to four times a week, depending on my mood.
Acne. The word belongs to adolescence. Like the anxiety of virginity, it is something most adults hardly remember.
I remember.
Acne was the lowest circle of hell that I visited during my adolescence. Large, flaky pustules that were at first no more than external curiosities — a little mould on the surface of a fresh cheese — persisted, and then multiplied like hydras till they invaded me on the inside, like gangrene in the body of a young soldier, like bubonic plague in a sunny town. The horror of acne was what it did to my image of myself. It was a rotof ugliness that attacked a boy who had till then thought himself beautiful.
The disease seemed to have favourite areas. My cheeks were nearly always spared, my forehead not. The rot seemed to prefer my right temple over my left. My nose suffered. My chin. The edge of my upper lip. The area below my jawline was a real battlefield. To add further humiliation, my skin was terribly oily, with a glowing film. Throughout my adolescence, two, three times a day, I cleaned, rubbed, scrubbed my face with a pumiceous, highly abrasive soap product. Away oil, away dead skin, away acne! I would pat my face dry with a towel. For a brief hour or so, until my skin began
I monitored the growth of my body hair. These tokens of maturity first appeared on my lower legs, anklets of manhood on a child’s body. It seemed that the hormones triggering this growth had to battle gravity, for it was only after these dark shoots had crept some distance up my legs that they appeared on my pubis. Then they sprouted on my chest, three, four hairs in the centre of my sternum. Next, the benign blond hairs that I had in my armpits were supplanted. Only after this did my cheeks join in. Lastly, the hormonal elixir touched the top of my head. Throughout my childhood my hair had been thick but easy enough to manage. I have memories of my father working me over with a comb, with tugs that eventually overcame knots, one “Ow!” for every jerk. The jerks weren’t really painful; it was just another way to bug my father. But with puberty, by slow degrees, my hair began to curl and wave and kink. It became an unruly mess.
I took pleasure in my developing hirsuteness. Hairiness was beautiful, it would suit me. The hair on my chest delighted methe most. I wanted my chest to be thick with hair, so thick that I had to comb it. I remember an ad I saw in comic books, next to the mail-order sea-horses, for a soap that was claimed to promote hair growth. I dreamed of sending for it, and never did only because I didn’t know how to pay for it through the mail and I was afraid my parents would catch me. In time my chest did grow hairy, though it never achieved the thickness I yearned for. But my stomach, at least, gave me satisfaction.
Starting at age fourteen, I began to shave. It was more preemptive than necessary; the hair growth on my face has never been spectacular. Not for me the flowing beard of Charles Darwin or Karl Marx, or the magnificent moustache of the mad Friedrich Nietzsche. My upper lip and my cheeks produced many trees but never a forest, and I needed to change my axe only every few months. But I enjoyed shaving — this manly ritual of splashing warm water on the face, lathering the shaving cream to a frothy white sea and then scraping it off in short, clean strokes with a gingerly held razor. It was a form of recollection, and had a soothing effect on me. I shaved one to four times a week, depending on my mood.
Acne. The word belongs to adolescence. Like the anxiety of virginity, it is something most adults hardly remember.
I remember.
Acne was the lowest circle of hell that I visited during my adolescence. Large, flaky pustules that were at first no more than external curiosities — a little mould on the surface of a fresh cheese — persisted, and then multiplied like hydras till they invaded me on the inside, like gangrene in the body of a young soldier, like bubonic plague in a sunny town. The horror of acne was what it did to my image of myself. It was a rotof ugliness that attacked a boy who had till then thought himself beautiful.
The disease seemed to have favourite areas. My cheeks were nearly always spared, my forehead not. The rot seemed to prefer my right temple over my left. My nose suffered. My chin. The edge of my upper lip. The area below my jawline was a real battlefield. To add further humiliation, my skin was terribly oily, with a glowing film. Throughout my adolescence, two, three times a day, I cleaned, rubbed, scrubbed my face with a pumiceous, highly abrasive soap product. Away oil, away dead skin, away acne! I would pat my face dry with a towel. For a brief hour or so, until my skin began
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