Bathing the Lion

by Jonathan Carroll

  He did not dream again of Muba during his successful treatment, but that was all right. He was convinced if he really needed the elephant’s help, it would appear.

  Years later he sat by his mother’s bedside watching her succumb to the same disease. He fell asleep and again he saw Muba in a dream. It was standing in the middle of a mall parking lot. Dean came out of the building pushing a shopping cart. He saw the elephant and walked right over to it.

  As before, the animal spoke to him without opening its mouth. It told Dean his mother would die today. Only that and then the dream ended. When he awoke, his mother was staring at him with rheumy eyes full of love and good-bye. Then she farted. Both mother and son opened their mouths in surprise. Dean chuckled. His mother had no energy left but she laughed too and then died. In the middle of her laugh, she passed away. It was the most astonishing, wonderful thing.

  Dean was crying by the time he got to this part of his story, but they were not sad tears. Vanessa had never seen him cry before. Not knowing what to say, she scootched over on the bed, snuggled up close, and threw one of her legs over his. They remained that way for a long time. After a while Dean looked over and saw she had fallen asleep. He sighed contentedly. He liked the fact he had grown comfortable enough with this new woman to tell her the story of his cancer, his mother’s death, and the spooky red elephant that appeared twice in his dreams to tell him momentous things that later happened.

  A week later he was shaken awake in the middle of the night by Vanessa. “What? What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

  “What does it look like, Dean? What does it look like?”

  “What? What are you talking about?” He’d been so deep asleep it took a moment for him to even recognize his girlfriend’s voice.

  “The elephant—Muba. What does it look like?”

  Turning to the clock next to the bed, he tried to get it into focus. The glowing yellow numbers there took some moments to make sense. He grimaced on grasping it was 4:17 A.M. “Umm, it’s red. It’s big and red. It’s an elephant. Why do you want to know this at four o’clock in the morning?”

  Vanessa was naked, sitting up on her knees. Her arms were crossed over her breasts and her luminous black hair jutted out in all directions. “I saw her, Dean. I just dreamt about Muba.”

  He woke up fast. “What do you mean?” He rubbed a hand over his face to wipe the cobwebs of lingering sleep away.

  “I dreamt I was sitting in a restaurant having lunch. I was at a table by the big front window. While eating, I looked up and outside, walking down the street as normal as could be, was an elephant—a red elephant. I knew exactly who it was so I stood up and raced out of there. I caught up to her and said, ‘You’re Muba, aren’t you.’ I said it, I didn’t ask. I knew a hundred percent I was right. I just wanted to say her name out loud to make the words real. Do you know what I mean?”

  Dean nodded but stayed quiet. He wanted to hear every detail before saying anything. If this was true, if his girlfriend really had dreamed about his Muba, then it was astounding. But after a few moments he changed his mind and thought, so what? Anyone can dream about red elephants. Dreams are the mind’s playground, with swings and slides and jungle gyms for every crazy thought in your on-recess-from-reality imagination to spin around on. Vanessa’s dream elephant was not necessarily the same one, the same Muba Dean knew.

  Fully awake now, he realized something: her. Vanessa had referred to the elephant as her. People don’t usually refer to elephants as female, but Vanessa had.

  “What color were her eyes?”

  “You know one of them is blind, Dean. The bad one is totally black and looks burned out. It didn’t seem to bother her though.”

  Propping himself up on his elbows, he stared at Vanessa Savitt as if having just discovered she’d stolen money from his wallet—skepticism mixed equally with shock. It had to be true—if she knew about the one ruined eye then she really must have dreamed about Muba.

  “Did she speak to you? Did she say anything?”

  Vanessa shook her head. “No. She only stood there while I talked and when I was finished she walked away.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her about The Skull Farmers.”

  The Skull Farmers was the band Vanessa sang in at the time.

  Incredulous, Dean blurted out, “You told her about your band? Why not something important? The animal’s an oracle, Vanessa—it knows things.”

  Vanessa slowly pouted, straightened her spine, and tightened her arms across her beautiful chest. When she spoke, her voice had the tone and timbre of a grande dame giving instructions to a gardener. “It was a dream, Dean. Illogical things happen in dreams, remember? Besides, the band is very important to me.”

  “Vanessa, you know what I’m saying—you dreamt something from my dreams! When has that ever happened before?”

  She wasn’t impressed. “Who knows, and besides, how is that relevant?”

  He couldn’t believe she was saying this drivel. “You might have just contacted some other … realm or, I don’t know, cosmic level. It’s important and amazing. If you met God, would you tell Him about your band?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Over the ensuing years to Dean’s even greater dismay, Vanessa had several vivid dreams in which she encountered the half-blind red elephant. Dean had none. In her dreams, Muba said nothing while Vanessa did all the talking. And it sounded like she talked only about herself or whatever banal stuff she was doing at the time, rather than anything significant. It drove Dean to distraction to hear his wife merrily describe these encounters the next morning. All the lost opportunities …

  But today, in this dream or this land or wherever they were at the moment, there was Muba in front of both of them. Dean was going to take full advantage of the opportunity.

  Without hesitating, he walked straight over to the elephant and put his hand on its flank. Muba stood still a few moments, then suddenly swung her trunk full force to one side and slapped Dean in the face, almost knocking him down.

  “Hey!”

  The elephant started to swing her head again. Dean stepped quickly out of the way. “Muba, stop it! What is this?”

  The animal didn’t speak to him but did not move either.

  Up the road in one direction, Jane stood with her arm protectively over the back of the black chair. Down the road, Kaspar Benn and Bill Edmonds watched to see what was going to happen next. Hands on hips, Vanessa shook her head at her husband.

  Seeing the look on her face, he bridled. “What? What’s the matter now?” Dean demanded while cautiously feeling his cheek, which still stung from Muba’s slap.

  “She doesn’t like to be touched.”

  “Really, Vanessa? How do you know?”

  “I remember it from other dreams I had about her. As soon as you touched her I knew there was going to be trouble.”

  Dean was about to say something snide but then saw the skin, or rather what was written on the elephant’s hide. He stopped and frowned. He’d opened his mouth to speak to his wife but instead closed it slowly. Squinting to get a better view, he pointed and asked, “Did you see this?”

  “What?”

  “What’s written on her side. Come and look at this.”

  Vanessa walked closer. Dean glanced quickly down at the hand he’d touched the animal with. Suddenly some things made sense. None of this made sense, but some of it made sense now.

  “It looks like a kind of map, Dean. There—do you see it? It’s a map.”

  An elephant’s skin is rough, very wrinkled, and a mix of varied textures. The animal itself is so huge and imposing you’re not apt to look at any single part in detail, especially when seeing one up close for the first time in your life. But having noticed it now, both Corbins stared at what was plainly a map of some sort contained within the folds of Muba’s skin.

  From her safe distance Jane called out, “What kind of map?”

  Vanessa pointed to it. “T
here, do you see it? It’s got to be a map.”

  “What, with names and arrows pointing where to go?”

  “Well kind of, but … just come look for yourself. It’s a map for sure.”

  Jane glanced at Blackwelder as if for instructions, but the chair remained silent. She walked over to where the Corbins stood.

  “There—right there, do you see?” Vanessa pointed but did not touch the behemoth.

  While the three looked at the elephant, Edmonds and Kaspar Benn walked back up the road and joined them.

  A red elephant stood unmoving in the middle of a country road. Five people stood nearby staring at its side as if it were a movie screen.

  “There is definitely something there,” one of them said unnecessarily.

  The other four nodded their agreement or thought, yes there is.

  Kaspar took a step forward and pointed to the elephant. “What did you call it—‘Muba’? I’ve heard that name before; I just can’t remember where. Are those mountains there?”

  Jane thought he was joking. “Mountains? It’s water—probably the ocean. It’s blue, Kaspar. Mountains aren’t blue. And there are words written on it but I can’t make out what they’re saying.”

  Hands tucked in his armpits, Bill Edmonds said, “This is not what I see. It’s a forest. Those are trees, not the ocean. And they’re definitely not blue.”

  Jane huffed. “No, it is not, Bill—trees are green. That is a big turquoise ocean. And look at all the weird symbols. Does anyone know what those mean?”

  Edmonds shook his head. “The hell they are—they’re trees. I should know a tree when I see one because they were my business for thirty years. I don’t see any blue or symbols. That is a dark green forest of trees, Jane.”

  Irritated, Dean pointed at the same spot and said, “I see a letter from the Greek alphabet. What are you two talking about? Show me where you see trees or symbols there; it’s a Greek letter.”

  After more stubbornness, staring, and double-checking to make sure they all saw what they saw, it began to dawn on them that each person saw something different on the elephant’s side despite the fact they were all looking at the same place. Eventually the four who’d already had their say looked at Vanessa to hear what she saw.

  After a dramatic pause for full effect she said, “Chummie Recel.”

  Dean looked at the elephant again. “What? What does he have to do with this?”

  Vanessa was unperturbed by the hectoring tone of her husband’s question.

  “Who’s Chummie Recel?” Jane asked.

  Vanessa said, “My oldest friend; we grew up together. It looks like a map of the stars he drew when we were kids. We were both going to be astronauts and needed a map to navigate where we wanted to go. So Chummie drew one and it looked just like that, as I remember.”

  Bill Edmonds reached into the back pocket of his eleven-year-old jeans and brought out a small frayed black notebook and ballpoint pen—two things he always carried. Edmonds was an inveterate list maker. He loved everything about lists: making them, reading them, and seeing items lined up carefully one after the other. Lists made life make more sense to him. He’d tried to find his Vedran by listing the objects in his apartment. When he saw things written down on paper in tidy columns it gave him the feeling it was possible to tame some of life’s chaos, which was much better than just letting it buzz crazily around you like house flies. “I’m going to write down what each of us sees there. Tell me again what you see. So far I’ve got: stars, words, ocean, a Greek letter, and a forest.” Edmonds kept talking as he wrote. “Everybody keep looking; see if any of these things are on your map too. Maybe there’s some crossover. If so, it would be a big help.”

  Pulling a pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of his jacket Kaspar said, “Say the words again.”

  Edmonds repeated them.

  The five people looked intently at the elephant, searching for signs of anything. None of them noticed the little girl who lived with Edmonds walking down the road toward them. When she reached Blackwelder she sat down on the chair and asked it in a low voice, “Have they figured anything out yet?”

  “I don’t think so. Not from what I’ve heard.”

  Exasperated, Josephine the mechanic rolled her eyes. “Do they even know about…?”

  Blackwelder jiggled a little from one side to the other to get more comfortable on the lumpy road. “Maybe they’re beginning to understand. They’re certainly paying closer attention now, which is a big plus in itself. Look at their faces.”

  Josephine bent over so her elbows touched her knees and she spoke quietly. “Do you think it’d be okay if I gave them a little hint?”

  Indignant, Blackwelder scolded, “No! Don’t do it, Josephine. You know you’re not supposed to tell them anything. That’s not your job.”

  “I know, but it’s taking so long.”

  The chair stayed a scold. “It doesn’t matter! Just don’t say anything about it. You can talk to them, but don’t reveal anything. The whole point is for them to figure it out themselves. You’ve certainly given them enough hints already.”

  Kaspar Benn said, “Wait a minute!”

  Where do ah-ha! moments come from? Those critical but rare, out-of-nowhere heaven’s-gift synapses in our brains that bang together like freight cars coupling—ka-chunk! Suddenly we frown, look up at the ceiling or down at our feet, our mouth drops open stupidly or closes tight because after the synapse sizzles the mental weld together we instantly finally clearly see how it works, or understand how it happened, the right way to do it, or what was there in front of us all along but we were just too blind or dense to grasp it.

  Staring at the side of the red elephant, Kaspar suddenly thought of Sivan Ehrenpreis, one of the sexiest women he’d ever known. They’d had an affair a decade ago, but on realizing they had little else in common besides a mutual panting for each other’s bodies, they’d split. Afterward he heard about her from different people—she’d gotten married, had children, gotten divorced, remarried.

  The only time he’d ever seen her again was years later standing in front of a toy store window at Christmastime in Brooklyn, holding the hand of a little girl. Sivan looked sensational in a black winter coat and long salmon-colored scarf. Kaspar couldn’t resist going over and saying hello to his old flame.

  Later he wished he hadn’t. She’d just gotten out of the hospital after having had a kidney removed. She described in enthusiastic graphic detail how sick she’d been and the medical procedures she’d undergone. When he first saw her that day, even at a distance, he was struck again by her powerful sensuality. Before approaching, he thought with fond longing about the time they’d been together.

  But as she spoke about the necrotic parts of her guts that had been cut out, what a laparoscopy entailed, and what “friable kidney fragments” meant, she turned into … a hamburger.

  Literally—while listening to her speak, in his mind Kaspar could only see this exquisite-looking woman as a series of specific cuts of meat, like those diagrams mounted behind butchers’ counters showing customers exactly where the meat they were buying came from on a cow’s body. By the time she was finished talking (Sivan had always been a gabber), Kaspar didn’t even want to kiss her cheek good-bye because all he could think about was his mother’s favorite recipe—braised beef cheeks.

  “Wait a minute,” he repeated now, his mind racing fast. “Everybody sees something different there, right?” Kaspar pointed to the elephant’s broad side. The others looked at him but said nothing, waiting to hear his point. “Bill, would you tear four blank pages out of your notebook please? Who has something to write with? A pen or pencil—I have one.” He dug a mechanical pencil out of a pocket as Edmonds carefully tore four pieces of paper from his notebook. Jane and Vanessa had pens. Kaspar took the blank sheets and handed one to each person. “All right, everyone draw as best you can what you see up there.” He pointed to the elephant’s side. “It doesn’t have to be good or detailed. Just
a quick sketch to get down the broad strokes of what you see and think is important on your map.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have an idea; it just came to me when I was thinking about something else. If I’m right it may explain all this.” Glancing down the road, he saw Josephine sitting in the black chair and remembered it was the girl who had called him Muba earlier that day in the store. But he was eager to get this thing going right now with the others so she could wait. He handed his pencil to Dean and waited impatiently for his partner to finish.

  It took a while. It took much more time than Kaspar had imagined because once they began, everyone wanted to make their drawing look right. None of them knew how to draw so the job was harder. How do you do mountains when you have no artistic ability? Lots of craggy squiggles so stupid-looking and inept that you start again immediately, messing up the paper by scratching things out. How do you draw intricate hieroglyphics with a black roller ball pen and no talent? Lots of unsteady lines …

  The only person not making an irritated or frustrated face was Vanessa, who actually hummed as she worked. She was drawing both from what she saw on the elephant’s hide and from her memories of Chummie Recel’s childhood map. Some of her stars had the classic five points while others were just thick black dots. She had fun doing it, but her drawing was awful. When Dean saw it he grinned and gave a scornful snort: leave it to his wife to draw what looked like a third grader’s astronomy project.

  Sheepish about their efforts but curious to see what he was planning to do with them, they handed their drawings to Kaspar when they’d finished. Bill Edmonds again tore his page very precisely out of his pocket notebook.

  Bill’s was the best drawn so after collecting them, Kaspar put it on top. Once he had them all, he stacked the sheets together. Like the different parts of Sivan Ehrenpreis’s body, he thought if he gathered the different sketches together in the proper order they might combine somehow to show something not there in the five separate drawings.