Philosophy Made Simple

by Robert Hellenga

  “South American Indian,” Rudy explained. “Nahuatl.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, anyway,” Rudy said, “Norma Jean certainly likes them. Did I tell you her Indian name is Narmada-Jai?”

  “Yes, I believe she must be coming from Kerala. You see her long trunk and her big ears and the two domes on her head, and her nice round shape, like a barrel. Her back is making a perfect arc. Or maybe from Bihar. Do you know that the festival of Lord Ganesh will be coming soon? Ganesh Chaturthi, the birth anniversary of Ganesh, the son of Shiva and Parvathi. We don’t celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi in Assam, but I have seen pictures that my uncle brought from Bombay one time, of boats and clay images that they are sending into the river. I think it would be very nice, don’t you? We could do it right here.” She nodded at the river.

  “Yes, why not? The pandit suggested something like that. Clay images. You know,” he went on, “I had a kind of vision when I decided to buy this place. I was standing right here.” And he told her about the radio show about the end of the world. “They thought the Second Coming—that’s when Christ comes back at the end of the world—was going to be the next morning. I was talking to the Realtor and the widow of the owner. I seized up inside. I had to get away It was supposed to happen at ten seventeen, when the sun went down in Jerusalem. I didn’t believe it, of course, but I wanted to be by myself anyway. I climbed up on the rise and saw the river. I hadn’t even realized it was here. This is where I waited, right where we’re standing, for the end of the world.”

  “I know about this Second Coming,” she said, “because there are many missionaries in Assam, among the tribal peoples. But it didn’t happen, did it?”

  “No.” Rudy laughed. “We’re here, aren’t we? They must have got their calculations wrong.” He didn’t mention that he’d taken a leak, hadn’t wanted to be blown into Kingdom Come with a full bladder. “I knew then that I was going to buy this place. Maybe that wasn’t really a vision. I mean, I didn’t see anything. But I had a sense of understanding something. Seeing in that sense. Understanding.”

  “And what did you understand?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know. I was hoping your brother could explain it to me, but probably it was nothing at all.”

  “Perhaps a sign from Kshipra Ganapathi. It is very beautiful. I can understand how pleased you were when you saw the river.”

  “You have a big river near you, don’t you.”

  “Yes, the Brahmaputra. In places, you cannot see the far shore.”

  “I told my daughters I was thinking of selling the house in Chicago. I was trying to scare them, but they thought it was a good idea. So I put it up for sale, and then they changed their minds. But I was too stubborn. I had this idea of starting a new life.”

  “Molly is telling me this story.”

  “There was something else too. That night in the motel, the people on the radio were encouraging listeners to call in and leave a message for someone they loved if they were separated or estranged. People were calling in. And I called in too. I had a message for my wife.”

  “Your wife?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. ‘She’s been dead for seven years. I shouldn’t be telling you these things. It’s embarrassing. I hardly know you.”

  “It’s quite all right, Mr. arrington.”

  “I’ll try to pull myself together,” he said. “We’d better get back.”

  In the afternoon, Molly and Nandini went into McAllen to do some shopping. When they got back Nandini wanted to take Norma Jean to the river. There was a certain amount of stomping around and trumpeting as they brought her out of the barn. Nandini commanded her to kneel so that Molly, in a very revealing bikini, almost nothing at all, and TJ could ride on her back. While they were mounting the elephant, Rudy walked on ahead with the chain saw to widen the opening in the chaparral along the bank of the river. The saw roared and the blade dug down into the dirt to cut the tough brush close to the ground. He’d just sharpened the chain, and now he’d have to sharpen it again, but he didn’t care. A pair of snowy egrets, who sometimes wandered up from Bentsen, flapped their wings and moved to the ducks-bill end of the cove and resumed feeding. Looking up, he saw Uncle Siva walking next to his sister, who was leading Norma Jean. She was wearing her green sari and TJ’s dark blue and gold University of Michigan baseball cap to protect her face from the sun.

  Rudy pulled the trigger on the saw and cut into the heart of a horse-crippler cactus with nasty red spikes. He didn’t want Norma Jean to step on it. The saw caught hold of the cactus roots and fired dirt and blue smoke into the air. When he released the trigger he heard Nandini shouting at him. “Please, you are going to upset Norma Jean. She does not like this noise.”

  It was hot. Rudy was sweating, and Norma Jean, who had stopped at the last row of trees to eat a few avocados, was flapping her ears like fans. The bumps on her head had swelled up, but she didn’t look upset to Rudy. As she approached the river she started coiling and uncoiling her trunk and squealing, as if she were returning to a favorite swimming hole of her childhood. Nandini held her back, shouting “Dhuth, dhuth.” Norma Jean’s whole body began to vibrate with excitement, and Rudy thought she might charge ahead, but instead she began to kick at the short grass along the riverbank, uprooting it with her toes before gathering it up with her trunk. It was only when Nandini released her that she stepped down into the water.

  The egrets took off but then circled back to watch. Norma Jean kept moving forward till the water almost reached her stomach and then stopped. TJ and Molly jumped feetfirst into the water.

  Rudy took the chain saw back to the barn. He went up to the house to put on his swimming suit. When he returned, Norma Jean was squirting everyone with trunkful after trunkful of water. Nandini’s sari was completely soaked and he could see the outline of her new American bathing suit underneath it. He had brought the Russians bucket of scrub brushes and sponges from the barn and now passed them around. Nandini spoke to Norma Jean, and the elephant lay down on her side in the shallows, trunk up, while they scrubbed one side. At a word from Nandini, she turned over so they could scrub the other side. The Russian had hosed her down every night, but even so, the cracks in her skin were caked with dirt. Rudy patted her head.

  When they’d finished scrubbing Norma Jeans sides and her head, Nandini removed her pleated sari—one end of which was draped over her left shoulder, the other knotted just above her waist—and tossed it on the bank, along with her U of M baseball cap, and began to wade out of the cove into the main channel of the river. Rudy thought for a moment that she’d been pulled under by the current, and a fantasy in which he swam to her rescue took him by surprise. This fantasy was as vivid as any he’d ever experienced, but then he realized that she was swimming, that she was in fact a strong swimmer. He swam after her but couldn’t catch her before she reached the opposite shore, where the bank was steeper. They steadied themselves by hanging on to a low branch of a live oak tree that provided a little shade.

  “Now you can say you’ve been to Mexico,” Rudy said. “Like your brother.” Looking back, he could see Uncle Siva standing by himself, the sun gleaming on his Humpty Dumpty forehead. Was he looking at them? He was shading his eyes, but he had his sunglasses on, so Rudy couldn’t tell.

  Nandini reached out and touched the steep bank. “Who lives here?”

  “Mexicans.”

  “No, I mean here.” She touched the bank again.

  “No one. It’s just desert—creosote, mesquite, cholla, prickly pear. But wildflowers too.”

  “I’m sorry for scolding at you, Mr. ‘arrington. My brother is explaining to me about the cactus, how it could hurt Norma Jeans foot.”

  “Your brother knows everything, doesn’t he?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, “he is quite a know-every thing.” She looked at Rudy and smiled. “But he has reminded me,” she said, “that elephants are quite extraordinary in this country I know that. I mean, I have
seen many books, I am not a village person. I have seen American films and television programs. I have visited in Paris and London, but I am tired from the trip. I am forgetting that not every American is so fortunate to have an elephant, especially such a good elephant as Norma Jean.”

  “She’s not mine,” Rudy said. “She’ll only be staying for a few more weeks.”

  “Elephants have always been important in my whole life, since I was a little girl, and my grandfather have elephants.”

  “But you married and moved to the city?”

  “That’s true. Yes. For three years. I am twenty-nine and TJ is only three when my husband is killed.”

  “What was it like after living out in the country?”

  “Oh, it is very nice in Guwahati. There are so many things to see. And my husband was a lovely man. From Punjab. There are no elephants in Punjab.” She laughed. “My grandfather give us a lovely house near the Fancy Bazaar, and we are very happy in Guwahati. We have a baby and want to have another baby. Then my husband is killed in an accident at refinery, and I take my son and go back to my home. By this time my father have his own generator for electricity and we have running water. My grandfather is still alive and my mother is needing help to take care of him, and my father is needing help with tea garden. I understand the elephants. I know all the mahouts, Punchi and Mohammed and Ali. There’s a special tribe where the men become mahouts.

  “My father is wanting to expand, to anticipate independence. He is wanting to buy more land, two thousand hectares of new land that has never been planted, but he knows it has good tea soil. The British people are leaving. We clear two thousand hectares with just elephants. My grandfather is supervising all the clearing.”

  “And now you have just the one?”

  “Just the one, yes—Champaa, and she is very old. My grandfather, long ago, is having four at one time. They work very hard, but they enjoy life too. He is operating a kind of postal office for the British tea planters. Only elephants can go through when the rains come. He is like a king.”

  “What do you do with Champaa?”

  “We still do some logging, and I rent her out to nearby towns and villages for weddings and festivals, like a temple elephant, and for clearing land sometimes.” She looked up and shaded her eyes. “My brother is watching us,” she said.

  “Then we’d better be careful,” Rudy said.

  “Oh, I do not think my brother is caring,” she said, laughing. She waved at her brother and then pushed off against the steep bank. Rudy followed her.

  Norma Jean was reluctant to leave the river, but Nandini spoke to her firmly and she climbed up the bank and everyone else followed. Rudy went with Nandini, who had wrapped her wet sari around her, to get Norma Jean settled in her stall. Siva went up to the house with Molly and TJ. Nandini was starting to shiver. Rudy poured some of the Russians vodka into a paper cup and handed it to her before pouring a cup for himself.

  “You should put on some dry clothes,” Rudy said.

  “I will in a moment, please.”

  Norma Jean kept shifting around, reaching out to touch Nandini’s hair with her trunk. She was starting to get hungry, and Rudy was becoming increasingly anxious about the Russian.

  “Elephants are very fond of alcohol, you know,” Nandini said.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “They raid the villages,” she said, “if they are brewing beer. And when my grandfathers favorite elephant is dying, Khush, we give him bottles of Old Monk rum, and we mix his oats and gur with rum too.”

  “What’s gur?” Rudy asked.

  “I don’t know the English word. Maybe molasses.”

  They walked up to the house, sipping from their paper cups.

  Molly and Siva and TJ were sitting at a card table on the veranda, working on a jigsaw puzzle Molly had brought from India.

  Siva rose to greet them, holding a glass of red wine. He raised his glass in a mock toast. Rudy and Nandini raised their cups. Siva said something in Hindi that made Nandini blush, but she didn’t explain what her brother had said.

  Rudy served leftovers for supper. The Russian had not returned yet, and Rudy was worried.

  “Where does his sister live?” Siva asked.

  “Somewhere in Mexico.”

  “You don’t know where?”

  “No. It can’t be too far, because he’s never been gone more than one night before.”

  “That narrows it down some.”

  “But not a lot.”

  “I think I’ll drive over to his place,” Rudy said, hoping that Siva would offer to join him, which he did.

  The weather was hot but not unbearable. They drove with the windows down in the pickup. There was no sign of the Russian’s truck, and the little house he rented from Medardo was dark. Rudy caught a glimpse, in the headlights, of something white taped to the door, and he knew what it was without getting any closer. It was a letter addressed to him, and he didn’t have to open it to know what it said. They sat in the pickup and Rudy turned on the cab light. Siva read the letter aloud: “Dear Rudy, I am very sorry to leave you without saying good-bye, but I have too many years to be making repairs on my old barn. I leave my oldest and best friend in your care because I know she love you, and I know you take good care of her. I leave many paintings in the barn for you to buy food for Norma Jean.”

  It was signed, “Your friend, Vasily Vsevolodovich Czutzimir.”

  Rudy was stunned. His chest constricted. He had trouble breathing. He took a nitroglycerin tablet out of the little bottle in his shirt pocket and swallowed it without water. The taste was bitter.

  “Do you want to look in the barn?” Siva asked.

  Rudy couldn’t talk. He could only shake his head. He handed Siva the keys to the pickup and they traded places so Siva could drive. Rudy tried to breathe deeply on the way home. Siva parked the truck in the drive.

  “I need to be alone for a while,” Rudy said. “You go on up to the house.” Siva nodded.

  Rudy sat in the barn with Norma Jean for a few minutes and then opened the door of her stall and started shoveling her big turds into the wheelbarrow. About fifteen minutes later Nandini joined him. “My brother is telling me you are upset because this Russian is going away.”

  It was dark in the barn, but he could see her standing in the doorway. She was still wearing TJ’s University of Michigan baseball cap. He could make out the gold letters. She walked to the door of the stall and put her hand on Norma Jeans trunk.

  “One thing is clear for Norma Jean,” Nandini said. “She is excellently disposed, all good things an elephant can be: kind, friendly big-hearted, barrel-shaped, very fragrant, like sandalwood. And I can see that this Russian he is taking good care of her. And she is very smart too. You see how she lays down all her leed in one corner to make it easy to clean up after her.’

  “Very smart,” Rudy said, dumping another shovelful of turds into a wheelbarrow. “The Russian sells these to a local citrus grower for fertilizer,” he said. “I’m thinking they might be good for avocados too. I’ve started a pile in the northeast corner of the lower grove.”

  Nandini laughed. “You see how she listens to us now?” Norma Jean, her head cocked to one side, flapped an ear and began to massage Rudy’s shoulder with her trunk while Nandini poked around in her mouth. Nandini talked to her all the while, telling her to please hold her trunk still.

  Rudy turned on the lights.

  “She has good strong teeth,” Nandini said, “and you see how pink her tongue is, no black spots, and good strong toenails, just the right length on all eighteen toes.” Rudy looked at her feet. He hadn’t counted her toes before. She had five on her front feet, four on her back. “And she is very fond of you,” Nandini went on. “I am thinking more than just fond of you. She loves you. Is very unusual. I think it is because she is saving your life.”

  “I haven’t forgotten that,” Rudy said. “But I can’t take care of an elephant. If the Russian doesn’t change his
mind and come back by tomorrow, I’m going to call the zoo in Brownsville.”

  “I don’t think Norma Jean is going to be happy in a zoo, Mr. Rudy.” She shook her head. “And I am thinking that you might consider about this in a different way. I am thinking it is a stroke of maximum good fortune for you if this Russian does not come back.”

  “Looking after hers a full-time job,” Rudy said. “It was one thing to have her around for a few weeks, but now the harvest is coming up.”

  “She can help you pick your avocados. This is clearly a shubhkaal for you, an auspicious time.”

  “Of course,” Rudy said, “and I suppose she can pull the wagon when this old tractor gives out.”

  “All the tea gardens,” Nandini said, “used to have elephants instead of tractors.”

  The tractor, an old Case 500 diesel that needed a new clutch, was parked in the back corner of the barn, next to the door that opened onto the paddock. Rudy needed this tractor to get him through his first season, because he couldn’t afford a new one. But replacing it with an elephant?

  “You remember how I am explaining to you about Lord Ganesh,” Nandini went on, “our elephant-headed god. There is also Rina Vimochaka Ganapathi, who aids people who are in debt. And Durga Ganapathi, who helps us through in our difficulties. This form has eight hands with ankusha, tusk, ak-shamaala, arrow, bow, kalpalatha, jambhuphala, and paasha respectively in each hand. This form of Ganapathi is adorned in red cloth. I think Durga Ganapathi will come to your aid in this time.”

  “He’s got his work cut out for him.”

  He heard a car in the driveway and thought for a moment that the Russian had come back after all. But when he went to the door he saw it was Father Russell’s Pontiac. Rudy watched without saying anything as the priest got out of the car and walked up to the house.

  “Now I am showing you something you must learn very soon,” Nandini said. “There are four ways to mount an elephant, but this is the way you must learn, so you will be more expert even than your expert daughter. This is such a way that is most comfortable for the elephant.”