All these observations, ponderings and cogitations led the mahout finally to descend from the elephant's back via its trunk and to stride boldly over to the cavalry troop. It was easy enough to find the commanding officer. There was a kind of awning that was doubtless protecting some eminent personage from the punishing august sun, so the conclusion was easy to draw, if there was an awning, there must be a commanding officer beneath it, and if there was a commanding officer, there would have to be an awning to protect him. The mahout had an idea which he didn't quite know how to introduce into the conversation, but the commanding officer unwittingly made his job easy, Where have those oxen got to, he asked, Well, I haven't actually seen them yet, sir, but they should be here any moment, Let's hope so. The mahout took a deep breath and said in a voice hoarse with excitement, If you'll permit me, sir, I've had an idea, If you've already had the idea, you obviously don't need my permission, You're quite right, sir, forgive my imperfect grasp of grammar, Tell me what your idea is then, The main problem is the oxen, Yes, they haven't yet arrived, What I mean, sir, is that the problem will remain the same even once they have arrived, Why, Because oxen are, by nature, very slow creatures, sir, Well, that much I know, and I don't need an indian to tell me, If we had another pair of oxen and yoked them up to the cart we already have, we would be able to travel more quickly and all at the same pace, Sounds like a good idea, but where are we going to find another pair of oxen, There are villages nearby, sir. The commanding officer frowned, he could not deny that there were indeed villages nearby where they could buy a pair of oxen. Although why buy them, he thought, we'll requisition the oxen in the name of the king and, on the way back from valladolid, leave them here, in as good a state as I hope they'll be in now. Just then, a roar went up, the oxen had finally come into view, the men applauded and even the elephant raised his trunk and trumpeted contentedly. His poor sight did not allow him to see the bundles of forage from that distance, but the vast cavern of his stomach echoed with protests that it was high time he had something to eat. This doesn't mean that a healthy elephant has to eat at regular hours like a human being. Amazing though it may seem, an elephant gets through about two hundred liters of water a day and between one hundred and fifty and three hundred kilos of forage. So we shouldn't imagine him with a napkin tied around his neck and sitting down at table to eat his three square meals a day, no, an elephant eats what he can, as much as he can and where he can, and his guiding principle is not to leave anything behind that he might need later on. He still had to wait nearly half an hour before the ox-cart arrived. Meanwhile, the commanding officer gave the order to pitch camp, although they first had to find a place less exposed to the sun if soldiers and civilians were not to be burned to a crisp. About five hundred meters away there was a small copse of poplar trees for which the company duly headed. The shade was fairly sparse, but better that than stay and roast beneath the implacable metal disc of the king of planets. The men who had come with the party in order to work and of whom very little, indeed absolutely nothing, had so far been required, had the usual kind of food in their saddlebags and haversacks, a large piece of bread, some dried sardines, a few dried figs, and a wedge of goat's cheese, of the sort that becomes hard as stone and which, rather than chew, you have to gnaw at patiently, thus allowing you to enjoy the flavor for longer. As for the soldiers, they had their own arrangements. A cavalryman, with sword unsheathed or spear at the ready, whether charging the enemy at a gallop or simply accompanying an elephant to valladolid, has no need to worry about supplies. He's not interested in where the food comes from or who prepares it, what matters is that his plate is full and the stew not entirely inedible. In scattered groups, everyone, apart from solomon, was now busily engaged in masticatory and deglutitory activities. Subhro, the mahout, gave the order for two bundles of forage to be carried to where solomon was waiting his turn, to untie them and leave him be, If necessary, take him another bundle, he said. Many will doubtless disapprove of this deliberate ex cess of detail, but this description serves a useful purpose, that of encouraging subhro's mind to reach an optimistic conclusion regarding the future of this journey, If solomon eats at least three or four bundles of forage a day, he thought, the weight in the cart will gradually be reduced and if we get that extra pair of oxen, then, however many mountains may step into our path, there'll be no holding us. The same thing happens with good ideas, and, on occasions, with bad ones, as happens with democritus's atoms or with cherries in a basket, they come along linked one to the other. When subhro imagined the oxen pulling the cart up a steep hill, he realized that a mistake had been made in the original composition of the convoy, a mistake that had not been corrected during the journey so far, an oversight for which he considered himself responsible. The thirty men who had come as assistants, and whom subhro took the trouble to count one by one, had done nothing since their departure from lisbon, apart from going off for morning walks in the countryside. The two men on the ox-cart would be perfectly capable of untying and dragging the bundles of forage over to solomon, and in case of need, he himself could always lend a hand. What should I do, send them back, and free myself of that weight of responsibility, wondered subhro. That would have been a good idea if there hadn't been a better one. The idea brought a bright smile to the mahout's face. He shouted to the men and gathered them round him, some of them still chewing on their last dried fig, and he said, From now on, you will be divided into two groups, in order to help push or pull the ox-cart, because the load is clearly too much for the animals, who are, besides, slow by nature, so, every two kilometers, the groups will swap over, and that will be your principal work until we reach valladolid. There was a murmur of what sounded very much like discontent, but subhro pretended not to hear it and went on, Each group will have a foreman, who, as well as having to answer to me for the good results of the work, will have to maintain discipline and develop the team spirit essential in any collective task. This language obviously failed to please his audience, because the same murmur was repeated. Fine, said subhro, if anyone is unhappy with the orders I've just given, he can go to the commanding officer, who, as the king's representative, is the supreme authority here. The air seemed suddenly to grow colder, and the murmur was replaced by an embarrassed scuffling of feet. Subhro asked, Right, any volunteers for the post of foreman. Three hesitant hands went up, and the mahout explained, I need two foremen, not three. One of the hands shrank back, disappeared, while the others remained raised. You and you, said subhro, choose your men, but do so in an equitable manner, so that the strength of the two groups is evenly balanced, and now off you go, I need to speak to the commanding officer. Before he did so, however, he was obliged to attend to one of his assistants, who had approached to inform him that they had untied another bundle of forage, but that solomon appeared to have had enough and all the signs were that he wanted to sleep, I'm not surprised, he's eaten well and this is the time he usually takes his nap, The trouble is he's drunk nearly all the water in the trough, Well, that's only natural after eating so much, We could take the oxen down to the river, there must be a path somewhere, He wouldn't drink the water from that part of the river, it's still salty, How do you know, asked one assistant, Because solomon has bathed in the river several times, the last time just near here, and he never once put his trunk in to drink, If the seawater comes up as far as this, that only shows what a short distance we've covered, True enough, but I can assure you that we'll be traveling much faster from now on, my word as a mahout. Leaving behind him this solemn commitment, subhro went in search of the commanding officer. He found him asleep in the shade of one of the more densely leaved poplars, sleeping the light sleep that marks out the good soldier, always ready to pick up his weapons at the slightest suspicious noise. He was guarded by two soldiers who, with an authoritative gesture, ordered subhro to stop. Subhro raised his hand to indicate that he had understood and sat down on the ground to wait. The commanding officer woke up half an hour later, stretched and yawned
, then yawned and stretched again, until he felt that he had properly reawoken to life. Nevertheless, he had to look twice when he saw that the mahout was there again, What do you want now, he asked gruffly, don't tell me you've had another idea, Indeed I have, sir, Out with it then, Well, I've divided the men into two groups and they're going to take turns, every two or so kilometers, in helping the oxen, that will mean fifteen men at a time pushing the cart, you'll definitely notice the difference, Good thinking, no doubt about it, that round thing on your shoulders obviously serves some purpose, and my horses will certainly feel the benefit, being able to break into a trot now and then, rather than trudging along at parade-ground pace, Yes, that occurred to me too, sir, And to judge by the look on your face, something else has occurred to you as well, hasn't it, asked the commanding officer, Yes, sir, it has, What is it then, It seems to me that we should organize our lives in accordance with solomon's needs and habits, right now, for example, he's asleep, and if we woke him up, he'd be really irritable and only cause us trouble, But how can he possibly sleep standing up, asked the commanding officer, incredulous, He does lie down to sleep sometimes, but normally he sleeps on his feet, Hm, I really don't think I'll ever understand elephants, Well, I've been working with them almost since I was born and I still can't understand them, And why is that, Perhaps because an elephant is much more than just an elephant, Right, that's enough talk, But I have another idea to put to you, sir, Another idea, said the officer, laughing, you're clearly no ordinary mahout, you're a veritable mine of ideas, You're too kind, sir, What else has that remarkable mind of yours produced, Well, I thought that since it's the cart that's setting the pace, it might be a better plan if you brought up the rear with your soldiers, with the ox-cart at the front, followed by me and the elephant, the men on foot and the quartermaster's wagon, Now that's what I call an idea, Yes, I thought so too, A stupid idea, I mean, Why, asked subhro, stung, and unaware of the insulting nature of that blunt question asked directly of an officer, Because I and my soldiers would have to eat the dust kicked up by the feet of everyone else in front, Oh, how dreadful, I should have thought of that and I didn't, I beg you, sir, by all the saints in heaven's court, to forgive me, So what we'll do is gallop ahead now and then and wait for the rest of you to catch up, Yes, sir, that seems the perfect solution, may I go now, asked subhro, Wait, I have two further matters to take up with you, the first is this, if you ever again ask me why in the tone of voice you did just now, I will give orders for you to receive a good ration of lashes on your back, Yes, sir, murmured subhro, head bowed, The second has to do with that head on your shoulders and with this journey that has barely begun, I would like to know, always assuming there are still any useful ideas left in that noddle of yours, if you expect us to stay here until the end of time, forever and ever, amen, Solomon is still asleep, sir, So the elephant's in charge here, is he, asked the commanding officer, half-annoyed and half-amused, No, sir, but you will doubtless recall that I mentioned earlier organizing ourselves in accordance with, and I confess I don't know where I got that expression from, solomon's needs and habits, Meaning what, asked the commanding officer, who was beginning to lose patience, Well, solomon, in order to be at his best, and so that we can deliver him in good health to the archduke of austria, needs to rest during the hottest part of the day, Agreed, replied the commanding officer, slightly troubled by this reference to the archduke, but the fact is he has done almost nothing but sleep all day, Today doesn't count, sir, it's the first day and, as everyone knows, nothing ever goes well on the first day, So what should we do, We divide the days into three parts, the first, from early morning on, the third, lasting until sunset, so that we advance as quickly as we can, the second part of the day, where we are now, should be set aside for eating and resting, That seems to me a good plan, said the commanding officer, deciding to opt for a more benevolent attitude. The change of tone encouraged the mahout to express the troubling thought that had been bothering him all day, There's something about this journey, sir, that I don't understand, And what is that, We haven't met a soul all the time we've been traveling and that, in my modest opinion, does not seem normal, You're mistaken, we've met quite a lot of people, coming from both directions, How is it I didn't see them then, asked subhro, his eyes wide with surprise, You were bathing the elephant, Do you mean to say that people passed each time solomon was taking a bath, Don't make me repeat myself, That's a strange coincidence, it's almost as if solomon didn't want to be seen, That's possible, yes, But we've been camped here for a good few hours now and no one has passed, That's for a different reason, people see the elephant in the distance, like a ghost, and immediately turn back or take a different route, perhaps thinking that solomon has been sent by the devil, How extraordinary, why, it had even occurred to me that our king had given orders to clear the roads, You're not that important, No, I'm not, but solomon is. The officer preferred not to respond to what seemed to be the beginning of a whole new discussion and said, Before you go, I'd like to ask you something, Please, I'm all ears, Do you remember, just now, having invoked all the saints in heaven's court, Yes, sir, I do, Does that mean you're a christian, now think carefully before you answer, More or less, sir, more or less.
...
A FULL MOON, august moonlight. Everyone is sleeping, with the exception of the two mounted guards patrolling the camp, the only sound the creaking of leather. The sleepers are enjoying a well-deserved rest, for although, during the first part of the day, the men enlisted to push the ox-cart may have given the impression of being a band of lazy good-for-nothings, they had set to work with great brio and shown themselves to be out-and-out professionals. True, the flat terrain had helped a great deal, but you could safely bet that, in the whole venerable history of that ox-cart, there had never been a day like it. During the three and a half hours they had been traveling, and despite a few short breaks, they had covered more than seventeen kilometers. This was the figure finally decided upon by the commanding officer after a lively exchange of words with the mahout subhro, who thought that the distance had been somewhat shorter and that it was best not to deceive themselves. The commanding officer disagreed, believing that it would help to encourage the men, What dif ference does it make if we did only travel fourteen kilometers, we'll cover the missing three tomorrow and it'll all work out in the end, you'll see. The mahout gave up trying to persuade him, I did my best, he thought, and if the commanding officer's false accounting prevailed, that doesn't alter the reality of the kilometers we really did travel, yes, subhro, you really must learn not to argue with the man in charge.
He had woken with the impression that he had experienced a sharp pain in his stomach while sleeping, and although it seemed to him unlikely that this would recur, his insides felt suspiciously restless, with a few silent gurglings in his intestines, and then suddenly there it was again, that same stabbing pain. He got up as quickly as he could, indicated to the nearest guard that he needed to leave the encampment and then strode toward a dense row of trees at the top of the gentle slope on which they had pitched camp, so gentle that it was as if they were lying in a bed with the bedhead slightly raised. He arrived just in time. Let us avert our gaze while he takes down his breeches, which, miraculously, he has not yet soiled, and wait for him to look up and see what we have seen already, a village bathed in the marvelous august moonlight that molded every contour, softened the very shadows it created and, at the same time, illuminated the places where it fell unimpeded. The words we were waiting for finally appeared, A village, a village. Doubtless because they were tired, no one else had yet thought to climb the hill to see what was on the other side. It's always good to see a village, if not this one then another, but it seems improbable that in the very first one we come across we'll find a powerful pair of oxen capable of righting the leaning tower of pisa with a single tug. Having finished his urgent business, the mahout cleaned himself as best he could with a handful of the greenery growing round about, and it was fortunate indeed
that no nettles, also known as fireweed, were to be found, because they would have made him leap about like a victim of saint vitus dance, so badly would they have burnt and stung his delicate lower mucous membrane. A thick cloud suddenly covered the moon, and the village was plunged in darkness, as if it had vanished like a dream into the surrounding gloom. It didn't matter, the sun would rise at the appropriate hour and show the way to the stable, where the ruminating oxen already had a sixth sense that their lives were about to change. Subhro walked back through the dense trees and returned to his place alongside the other men in the encampment. On the way, it occurred to him that if the commanding officer was awake, this information would give him the greatest satisfaction in the world, to resort to grandiose planetary terminology. And the glory of having discovered the village would be all mine, he murmured. Because there was no point in fostering vain illusions. During what remained of the night, other men might feel the need to empty their bowels, and the only place where they could do so discreetly was in the middle of those trees, but even supposing that this didn't happen, it would only be a matter of waiting for the dawn when we would witness a whole procession of men obeying the calls of intestines and bladder, hardly surprising given that we're all animals under the skin. Feeling mildly disgruntled, the mahout decided to make a detour to the place where the commanding officer was sleeping, you never know, sometimes people suffer from insomnia or wake up distraught because they had a dream that they were dead, or else were being bitten by a bedbug, one of the many that hide in the hems of blankets, come to drink the sleeper's blood. Let it be set down here, by the way, that the bedbug was the unwitting inventor of blood transfusions. Vain hope. The commanding officer was sleeping, and not just sleeping, but snoring. A guard came over to ask the mahout what he was doing there, and subhro replied that he had a message for the commanding officer, but seeing that he was asleep, he would return to his own bed, This is no time to be giving anyone messages, wait until morning, It's important, answered the mahout, but, as elephant philosophy would have it, what cannot be cannot be, If you'd like to give me the message, I'll pass it on to him as soon as he wakes up. The mahout considered the favorable probabilities and decided that it was worth betting on this one card, that the guard would already have informed the commanding officer of the village's existence when, at first light, the cry went up, Village ahoy. Hard experience of life has shown us that, generally speaking, it is inadvisable to trust too much in human nature. From now on, we will also know that we should not trust the cavalry either, at least when it comes to keeping secrets. Thus, even before the mahout had fallen asleep again, the other guard had already learned the news, and shortly after that, all the soldiers sleeping nearby knew as well. There was intense excitement, with one soldier even suggesting a reconnaissance trip to the village in order to collect firsthand information, which, given the authenticity of the source, would help strengthen the strategy to be drawn up in the morning. Fear that the commanding officer might wake, get out of bed and find none of the soldiers there, or worse still, find some and not others, forced them to abandon this promising adventure. The hours passed, a pale glow in the east began to trace the curved outline of the door through which the sun would enter, while, on the opposite side, the moon was slipping gently into the arms of another night. And we were thus engaged, postponing the moment of revelation, still wondering if there wasn't perhaps another more dramatic solution to be found, or, which would be the icing on the cake, one with more symbolic power, when the fateful cry rang out, There's a village over there. Absorbed in our own lucubrations, we had failed to notice that a man had got up and climbed the slope, but now we see him appear among the trees, we hear him repeat the triumphal news, although the words he uses are not, as we had imagined, Village ahoy, but There's a village over there. It was the commanding officer. Destiny, when it chooses, is as good or even better than god at writing straight on crooked lines. Sitting on his blanket, subhro thought, It could be worse, he could always say that he had got up in the middle of the night and been the first to see the village. He'll risk the commanding officer asking him scornfully, as we know he will, And do you have witnesses, to which he will have to reply, metaphorically putting his tail between his legs, No, sir, I was alone, You must have dreamed it then, Not only did I not dream it, I gave the information to one of your guards so that he would tell you when you woke up, None of my soldiers spoke to me about this, But you could speak to him, I'll tell you which one it was. The commanding officer reacted badly to this proposal, If I didn't need you to ride the elephant, I would send you straight back to lisbon, and imagine your position then, it would be your word against mine, and I leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the result, or do you want to be deported to india. Having resolved the question of who, officially, had been the first to discover the village, the commanding officer was about to turn his back on the mahout when the latter said, That isn't what matters, what matters is finding out if the village has a decent pair of oxen, We'll find out soon enough, meanwhile, you take care of your business and leave the rest to me, Don't you want me to go to the village, sir, asked subhro, No, I don't, I'll take the sergeant with me and the ox-driver. For once, subhro agreed with the commanding officer. If anyone had a natural right to be there it was the ox-driver. The commanding officer was already busily issuing orders to the sergeant and to the quartermaster's men, whom he now wanted to provide food both for the soldiers and for the strong men pushing or pulling the cart, for they would lose what strength they had in no time if they had to exist on nothing but dried figs and moldy bread, Whoever planned this journey should be ashamed of themselves, the bigwigs at court must think we live on air, he muttered. The men were already striking camp, rolling up blankets and packing away tools, of which there were many, although most would probably never be used, unless the elephant happened to fall down a ravine and had to be winched up. The commanding officer's plan was to set off, with or without the new pair of oxen, as soon as he returned from the village. The sun had now detached itself from the horizon and day had dawned, with only a few clouds floating in the sky, let's just hope it doesn't get so hot that your muscles melt and you feel as if the sweat on your skin was about to come to the boil. The commanding officer summoned the ox-driver, explained what they were going to do and urged him to take a good look at the oxen, assuming there were any, because on them would depend the speed of the expedition and its prompt return to lisbon. The ox-driver said Yes, sir twice, not that he cared, he didn't even live in lisbon, but in a nearby village called mem martins or something of the sort. Since the ox-driver didn't know how to ride a horse, a flagrant example, as you can see, of the negative consequences of overspecialization, he hoisted himself with some difficulty onto the back of the horse behind the sergeant and off he went, repeating, in a voice that he himself could barely hear, an interminable our father, a prayer of which he was particularly fond because of that bit about forgiving our debts. The problem, and there is always a problem, which sometimes even leaves its tail sticking out just so that we have no illusions about the nature of the beast we're dealing with, comes in the next line, where it says that it is also our duty as christians to forgive our debtors. It just doesn't make sense, it's either one thing or the other, grumbled the ox-driver, if some forgive debts and others don't pay what they owe, where's the profit in that, he wondered. They walked down the first street they came to, although you would need a very vivid imagination to call that path a street, for what it most resembled was a roller coaster, had such things existed then, and the commanding officer asked the first person they met what the name of the village was and where they could find the village's principal landowner. The man, an old peasant carrying his hoe over his shoulder, knew the answers, The principal landowner is the count, but he's not here, The count, repeated the commanding officer, feeling slightly uneasy, Yes, sir, he owns three quarters or more of the land around here, But you say he's not at home, Speak to his steward, sir, he's th
e captain of the ship, Did you once work at sea, Indeed I did, sir, but the mortality rate was so high, what with drownings and scurvy and other misfortunes, that I resolved to come back home and die on land, And where would I find the steward, If he's not in the fields, he'll be up at the palace, There's a palace here, asked the commanding officer, looking around, It's not one of those tall palaces with towers, it's just two floors, ground floor and first, but they say it holds more treasures than all the mansions and palaces in lisbon, Could you show us the way, asked the commanding officer, That's where I'm heading now, And this count is the count of what. The old man told him, and the commanding officer gave a whistle of amazement, I know him, he said, but I had no idea he owned land hereabouts, And they say he owns land elsewhere too.
The Elephant's Journey Page 3