The Elephant's Tale

by Lauren St. John

  The minute they were out of sight of the house, the chauffeur’s ingratiating smile slipped from his face, like the moon sliding behind a cloud. He drove in sullen silence. When Tendai asked him a question about the Land Rover, he pretended he didn’t understand.

  They swept across Sawubona’s grassy green-gold plains, and on past the lake and the high escarpment. As they drew nearer to the mountain that hid the Secret Valley, Martine felt a pang. It was months since she’d been to the white giraffe’s special sanctuary. Inside the valley was a cave known only to Martine and Grace and, of course, the San Bushmen ancestors who’d recorded their lives on its walls in mystical paintings.

  For reasons Martine did not even vaguely understand, they seemed to have predicted parts of her destiny there too. She could never decide whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that she had yet to figure out how to interpret the fortune-telling San paintings in the cave they called the Memory Room until it was too late. Until she’d already fallen overboard into shark-filled water, or been trapped in a cave with a wounded leopard.

  “Only time and experience will give you the eyes to see them,” Grace was fond of saying.

  Once, when Martine had complained that it wasn’t fair—that what was the point of having your destiny written on a cave wall if you couldn’t use it to avoid misfortune befalling you, Grace had told her that that was precisely the point. If a person could see their future, they’d only choose the great times. “Then you would never learn and never experience the important things in this world because oftentimes they’s tha hard things.”

  Most days Martine agreed with her. Many of her most painful experiences had led directly or indirectly to some of the most special times of her life. But even Grace would admit that losing Jemmy and every other animal Martine loved at Sawubona was not one of life’s necessary experiences. Nothing good could possibly come of it.

  Martine stole a glance at the twisted tree that disguised the entrance to the white giraffe’s sanctuary as they went by. One night soon she planned to sneak out to the Memory Room to see if the San Bushmen had had anything to say about Reuben James stealing Sawubona. In less than a month she’d be twelve years old. Surely by now she had enough time and experience to read her own future on the cave walls?

  The jeep slowed. Sampson stepped from the trees.

  “Park over there, please Lurk,” instructed Tendai, indicating a place on the edge of the scarred clearing. The chauffeur responded with a grunt.

  “For your own safety you should remain in the vehicle,” the game warden cautioned him. “We have enough problems with your boss without him suing us because some animal has given you a scratch.”

  Lurk gave no indication of having heard. He opened his door and jumped down. Propping himself against the side of the Land Rover, he lit a cigarette.

  Tendai’s eyes met Martine’s. He shrugged, climbed out of the vehicle with his box of emergency veterinary supplies, and began speaking in Zulu to Sampson, a bony, wizened man who Martine was convinced was at least a hundred years old. He paused to say “Be careful” to Martine and Ben as they walked slowly into the grove of trees.

  “We will,” Martine assured him. Buffalo were among the most deadly of Africa’s Big Five, which also included the lion, leopard, elephant, and rhino. Tourists were sometimes fooled into thinking that, because they looked like handsome dark cows with curly horns, all the fuss about how ferociously they could charge had been exaggerated. Not many of those tourists lived to tell the tale.

  This buffalo, however, was no danger to anyone. He was a young bachelor who’d probably been evicted from the main herd for fighting, but there was no fight left in him now. He was lying on his side, his streaming eyes wild and terrified, wracked with fever. As they watched he gave a great gasp, as if the life was slipping from him.

  Martine’s eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t bear to see any animal suffer.

  “Hurry, Tendai,” she called, but Tendai and Sampson were involved in some sort of row with the chauffeur. He was refusing to put out his cigarette. All of a sudden he threw it in the grass. There was a shower of sparks and a dry bush on the edge of the clearing began to smolder. Sampson pulled off his shirt and thrashed at the bush. Tendai sprinted to get water out of the Land Rover, yelling at Lurk over his shoulder.

  Martine eased back the buffalo’s lip. The young bull’s gums were almost white, a sure sign that death was approaching.

  “Martine,” urged Ben, “you have to do something.” He, like Tendai and Gwyn Thomas, knew she had a gift with animals and wasn’t really sure what that meant, but unlike them he was also aware that she had a survival kit full of special medicines and could go into a trance that would help her understand how to use them. “If it helps, I won’t watch.”

  He was going to turn away, but Martine stopped him. “Wait,” she said, “I need you to put your hands over his heart.”

  She took a small bottle from her pouch. When she removed the lid, a revolting smell like frog slime, mildew, and sweaty socks tainted the air, making Ben cough.

  “What is that stuff?” he asked, screwing up his nose. “I wanted you to help the buffalo, not gas it.”

  Martine paid no attention to him. She poured the green liquid into the buffalo’s mouth and he revived sufficiently to sneeze, splutter, and look more dejected than ever. Laying gentle hands on the bull’s head, Martine stroked his wet nose, his rough, sharp horns, and the thick, hard bone and muscle around his jaw and neck. She closed her eyes.

  Time passed. Martine could not have said if it was two seconds or two hours. Her hands heated up. So fiery did they become that she almost expected them to start smoking. She heard the voices of the ancients, buzzing in her head, guiding her. The rhythm of their drums pounded in her chest. She saw great herds of giraffe and men in loincloths holding spears and . . .

  “Martine, look out!”

  The buffalo was surging to his feet and swinging his horns. Martine stared at him dazedly. Tendai was rushing over from the Land Rover with his rifle, and Ben was stepping in front of her protectively, at great risk to himself.

  But in the end neither the rifle nor Ben’s bravery were necessary. The buffalo shook his head a couple of times to clear it, snorted, and trotted away through the trees.

  Tendai came running up and hugged them both in relief. “I told you to be careful. Buffalo are so unpredictable. This one even had Sampson fooled into thinking he was dying and Sampson has about a century of experience. Next time, stay with me.”

  “We will,” said Martine, “but I don’t think he had any intention of hurting us.”

  She avoided looking directly at Ben, but she could see out of the corner of her eye that he was very shaken. She was about to say something to take his mind off what he’d just seen when the chauffeur wandered up.

  “Lurk, I told you to stay in the Land Rover for your own protection,” Tendai said irritably.

  The chauffeur glared at him. “I not take orders from you.”

  Tendai rolled his eyes. “It’s not an order. It’s for your own safety. Although I’m beginning to think it is the animals who need protecting from you. You almost started a bushfire.”

  Lurk didn’t answer. He was staring over Tendai’s shoulder with a peculiar, stricken expression. “Elephant!” he whispered hoarsely. “Mad elephant!”

  “It’s not an elephant,” Tendai said irritably. “It’s a buffalo. And it’s not mad at all. Possibly it’s a little unwell.”

  “Tendai,” Ben said in a low voice. “He’s right.”

  A female elephant, as vast as a baobab tree, was standing in the shadows of the forest, flapping her ears menacingly. She let out a deafening trumpet. It was clear she was about to charge.

  Lurk grabbed Tendai’s rifle.

  “Are you insane?” shouted Tendai, trying to snatch it back. “Do you want to get us killed? That is not a gun for elephants. The bullet will be like a bee sting for her and it will make her very, very angry.”<
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  Lurk cocked the rifle and took aim.

  Tendai grabbed his wrist and crushed it so hard that Lurk winced and dropped the gun. “Don’t even think about it, or I will shoot you myself. Let’s all move very slowly toward the Land Rover. If she starts to charge, we must run, but be careful to run in zigzags in order to confuse her. Ready? Let’s go.”

  They had only gone a few steps when Lurk panicked. He sprinted for the Land Rover. Martine, who’d only ever seen elephants lumbering around the water hole or trotting lazily and a little unsteadily, was stunned to see the elephant shoot from the trees like a racehorse from the stalls and gallop after the chauffeur. She gained on him rapidly. It seemed certain he would be trampled to death before he ever reached the vehicle. He’d totally forgotten about running in zigzags.

  Tendai had his arms around Ben and Martine, and the three of them watched in horror. “Take off your jacket, Lurk,” yelled the game warden. “Take off your jacket and throw it on the ground.”

  The elephant bore down on the chauffeur, her great feet tearing up the earth. In seconds, Lurk would be a bloody pulp.

  “Your jacket,” screamed Tendai. “Take off your jacket.”

  Somehow the words penetrated the chauffeur’s petrified brain. He peeled off his jacket as he ran and flung it to the ground. The elephant halted in confusion. She looked from Lurk to the crumpled red pile on the ground. For an instant it seemed as if she would continue her pursuit, but then Sampson started up the engine of the Land Rover and she decided to attack the jacket instead. It was easier. Dust roiled up as she pounded it into the ground, trampling it, tossing it, crushing it.

  Lurk reached the vehicle and threw himself in, sobbing. Sampson took off almost before he was seated, racing to pick up Tendai, Martine, and Ben. They scrambled in and slammed the doors. As Sampson accelerated away from the crazed elephant, swerving onto the track and gunning the engine for home, Martine heard her trumpet with rage.

  6

  Nobody spoke on the way back to the house. Lurk was too busy sniveling and the others were in shock. They knew they were lucky to be alive.

  Martine knew that too, but it’s not what she was thinking about. She was remembering the elephant’s eyes. During her time at Sawubona she’d been quite close to several adult elephants and very close to a young orphan called Shaka, and the thing that had struck her was how wise and kind their brown eyes were. But the gaze of the elephant who’d attacked Lurk had been anything but. Her eyes had blazed with an unquenchable hatred. There had only been one thought in her head and that was to trample and tear to pieces the chauffeur the way she’d trampled and torn his jacket.

  Lurk pulled himself together as they neared the house, and by the time Sampson drew up outside the gate and handed him the keys to the Land Rover, he was his surly self. He shot Tendai a poisonous look as he climbed into the driver’s seat, but he didn’t say anything. It was obvious he held the game warden responsible for his ordeal.

  Tendai waited until he had driven away to collect his employer before he said, “I think we all need a cup of tea.”

  Ten minutes later they were sitting around the kitchen table drinking steaming rooibos (red bush) tea, eating milk tart, and feeling a lot better.

  “I don’t understand it,” Tendai said. “I’ve seen that elephant almost every day since she came here three years ago, and she is the shyest and most timid of all our animals. Elephants are herd animals. Their family units are very important to them, but Angel—that’s what I call her because she has always been the gentlest of giants—is always alone and quick to move away. She is scared of people. But today she behaved like a bull elephant on the rampage. I’m afraid to think what would have happened if Lurk hadn’t thrown his jacket on the ground.”

  “That was Angel?” said Martine, shocked. In the chaos of the moment, she hadn’t paused to think which elephant was doing the charging.

  There were thirteen elephants at Sawubona. Some had come in a shipment from a Zambian game reserve that had become overpopulated, several were orphans from culls, and some had been bought by her grandparents to ensure that herds were the right balances of males and females. Martine didn’t know all of their histories and she couldn’t really tell one elephant from another, except for two of them: Shaka, the young elephant she’d fed from a milk pail for several months, and Angel. Angel was not a regular African elephant; she was a desert elephant from Namibia, the country that bordered South Africa.

  The reason she was so special to Martine was that, according to local tribesmen, Angel was the elephant who saved the white giraffe when his parents were killed hours after he was born. Somehow Angel had helped Jemmy to escape and had led him to the special sanctuary in the Secret Valley. Her own calf had been stillborn days before, so not only had she had a special affection for the grief-stricken and bewildered young giraffe, she was also able to feed him—a sight that Martine thought must have been a very extraordinary one. The two of them had been a big comfort to each other. In a way, Angel was Jemmy’s adopted mother.

  Riding Jemmy, Martine had been able to get within touching distance of Angel on several occasions. Like the game warden, she’d found the elephant almost painfully shy. She was always alone. She either wasn’t welcome or didn’t want to join the other elephants. Her only friend was Jemmy, and once he was grown she had distanced herself from even him, perhaps so that no one would guess their history. Now this seemingly angelic creature had turned on them for no reason.

  “This is why I am always telling you never to take chances with wild animals,” Tendai was saying. “They can change like the wind. You must never let your guard down.”

  “Animals are a mystery,” agreed Sampson. “I would swear on the life of my nine children that that buffalo was dying of a viral disease. I was sure it was breathing its last breath when I radioed you this morning. And then it jumps up and tears away like a young calf!”

  Tendai laughed. “Your eyes are not what they used to be, old man. I think you have spent so much time on your own in the bush that your imagination is playing tricks.”

  He pushed back his chair and put on his hat with its zebra-skin band. “I must be going. Mr. James’s men might have fixed my jeep.” He cast a sly look at Sampson. “Some of us have work to do.”

  “You call what you do work?” Sampson retorted. “You’re on permanent safari.” The two of them went out into the yard joshing each other and laughing.

  When they’d gone, Ben regarded his friend intently and asked, “What exactly happened in the reserve with the buffalo, Martine? I mean, how did you heal it like that?”

  She met his eyes with a level gaze. “It was Grace’s medicine, not me. That muti works miracles.”

  And Ben accepted that because he understood that some things are better left unsaid.

  “I don’t know about you, but I was scared to death when the elephant charged,” Martine remarked, grateful to him for not prying. “Why would Angel turn on us like that?”

  “Maybe she saw or scented something that made her angry.”

  “You might be right. Tendai says it’s true that elephants never forget. There’ve been studies showing that elephants can identify people from different tribes by the clothes they wear or their smell. But what could she have seen or smelled?”

  “Or who?” Ben said.

  Martine stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, maybe she was angry at one of us.”

  “But why? We’ve only ever been loving to her.” As she said it, Martine was reminded again of the hatred in Angel’s eyes as she mashed Lurk’s jacket into the ground.

  Out in the yard, the game warden’s jeep roared to life. Martine sprang up and rushed to the door. “Hey, Tendai,” she called. “Where did Angel come from? I know she’s a desert elephant, but how did she end up at Sawubona?”

  Tendai put the jeep into gear. He seemed surprised. “I thought you knew,” he said. “She was given to your grandfather by Reuben James.”r />
  7

  “How ’bout offering an old woman a ride?” Martine nearly leaped out of her skin. As anyone would if an extravagantly large medicine woman with a mixed-up Afro-Caribbean accent suddenly loomed out of the darkness at three a.m.

  Martine had not intended to be in the game reserve at such an hour. Her plan had been to go to bed at nine p.m., sleep for two hours, and then go to the Secret Valley at the fairly civilized time of eleven. But she’d overslept. It had taken a considerable effort of will to haul herself out of bed when she did wake, and she’d felt a prick of conscience when she eventually let herself into the game reserve. Not about oversleeping, but about disobeying her grandmother. Under normal circumstances she was banned from riding Jemmy after nightfall. But these, Martine told herself, were not normal circumstances.

  “Grace!” she cried when she’d recovered from her fright. Jemmy had bolted out of range when the sangoma popped up from behind a bush, but he edged closer. The Zulu woman held out her arms and Martine ran into them for a hug.

  “I’m so happy to see you. How was Kwazulu-Natal? Has Tendai told you what’s been going on around here? It’s a total nightmare. Sawubona is going to be taken over by this businessman who claims my granddad never repaid his debt, and we all have to leave on Christmas Eve and Jemmy—”

  “Relax, chile, there’ll be time enough for all that later,” Grace interrupted. “Right now we mus’ be off to the Secret Valley.”

  She put a hand on one massive hip and gazed up at Jemmy’s sloping white back. “Now how is old Grace supposed to get up there?”

  Martine was rendered temporarily speechless. The idea of Grace, a woman who had eaten many of her own desserts, climbing aboard Jemmy, was alarming to say the least. It could do irreparable damage to the white giraffe’s back. And yet she could hardly wound her friend by saying so.

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, the decision was taken out of her hands. Jemmy, who was normally petrified of anyone other than Martine, made his musical fluttering sound and lay down on the ground. At which point, Grace stepped regally onto his back, settled herself as if she were relaxing into a comfortable armchair, and held a hand out to Martine. “Well, chile, are ya comin’?”