An Elephantasy

by María Elena Walsh

  “No, I thought you knew the way,” said Granddad.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea, Granddad,” I said, upset.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got a compass in my pocket.”

  “What use is a compass if we don’t know if the station is to the north or to the south, to the east or on the coast?” I asked in alarm.

  My brother Roberto overheard the conversation and said:

  “We’re toast.”

  Granddad stopped the retinue and said we would need to send a messenger to Mister Carozo’s house to ask him to explain the way.

  Then my brother Roberto opened his mouth, and instead of saying “We’re toast,” as usual, he said:

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  And he was right—he did.

  “There’s only one person,” he said, “who can find his way in the dark, and that’s Dailan Kifki.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said.

  “Nobody with a trunk that big ever gets lost,” insisted my brother.

  I didn’t think one thing had anything to do with the other, but anyway…

  The two of us went off to look for Dailan Kifki, who had fallen asleep beside a eucalyptus tree.

  “Dailan, sweetie,” I said in his ear. “Which way’s the station?”

  No reply.

  I asked him another sixteen times. Nothing. Not a peep.

  “That’s not the way to ask Dailan Kifki a question,” said Roberto.

  “So how are you supposed to talk to him? In African?”

  “I know how to do it,” said Roberto.

  And he approached Dailan Kifki’s enormous left ear and yelled:

  “Dailan-Kifki-there-are-seventeen-barrels-of-lovely-milky-oats-soup-just-waiting-for-you-at-Ituzaingó-station!”

  And Dailan Kifki raced off like a mad thing! We barely had time to get to our feet and follow him. Some lost their top hats, others a shoe, some bumped into one another, others had their wigs knocked out of place.

  But follow him we did, all of us singing the San Lorenzo March, our eyes set on the future.

  We trotted along for several hours until finally, all the way off in the distance, we saw a small light and heard the whistle of the locomotives.

  Dailan Kifki picked up the pace, unfolding his great ears and stretching his trunk out towards the barrels of soup.

  I felt ever so bad that we’d deceived him so meanly. That kind of behaviour is really not on.

  39

  You’re not going to believe it, but we did finally make it to Ituzaingó station. I took a good look at the signs, because I was very afraid we might have come to some other Ituzaingó station, the one on the Someplaceorother Railway, or in the Republic of Sanantonín.

  But we hadn’t.

  It was written everywhere, quite clearly: The Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Railroad, in the Republic of Argentina.

  So as not to tire you out too much, I’m skipping right over the part where Granddad saw the great man’s name and took off his helmet and tried to make us all sing The Anthem to President Sarmiento.

  It wasn’t that we had anything against the former President. On the contrary, we love him a lot, but we just didn’t have the strength to do any singing.

  So Granddad sang the Anthem all on his own, several times.

  Everyone pounced on the candy stall: they weren’t too tired for that. In seconds they had ransacked it completely.

  And at this point I ought to record a very sweet gesture on the part of the Fireman.

  He went over to the stall, then trotted back to me, took off his lovely golden helmet, bowed low and handed me a packet of orange lozenges.

  My mother, who was standing nearby, whispered to me:

  “Such a gentleman, that Fireman! The moment we arrive home, you’re going to have to marry him.”

  At that exact moment the train arrived.

  Granddad ordered us to form a queue, and I got right to the front, holding on to Dailan Kifki by one ear so he wouldn’t escape again.

  The sleek Japanese train came to a halt, the door opened, and I said to my elephant:

  “Come on, then, sweetheart, up you go, nice and slowly, first one foot, then the other…”

  It was the first time Dailan Kifki had ever got on a train, and naturally he was a bit shy.

  At last we made it on, and fortunately the train was almost empty.

  But one lady, seeing an elephant coming into the compartment, stuck her head out the window and gave a terrible scream:

  “Heeeeeeeeeeelp!”

  “Sssshhh,” we all hissed.

  “Madam,” I said, “have you never seen an adorable little animal like this before?”

  “But travelling on the train with animals is forbidden!” she shouted, even more angrily.

  “Oh, but he’s really affectionate,” I said. “If I’d wanted to get on a train with a raging lion, or a panther without a muzzle, or a crazy mouse, then yes, perhaps…”

  “It’s still forbidden!” she replied. “Haven’t you seen in the newspapers that you’re not allowed to go out with animals, in case they might have rabies?”

  “But please, madam—Dailan Kifki isn’t a dog. How’s he going to have rabies?”

  “Either you get him out of here,” said the lady, “or I shall call the police.”

  The guard arrived.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Nothing, nothing…” I said, trying to hide Dailan Kifki behind me.

  The lady pointed her finger at me and shrieked:

  “This young woman is trying to travel with an animal!”

  Dailan Kifki was hiding behind me, doing his best to look as small as possible.

  “Right, then, let’s have a look,” said the guard.

  I was shaking with terror that he was going to make us all get off, when…

  40

  The guard saw that I was carrying… a cage! Because I forgot to tell you: since our famous disaster with Mister Carozo’s living room had destroyed the crystal house where the football lived, he’d put her into a cage for me so she could sleep and travel more comfortably.

  Naturally, the guard’s attention was caught by the cage and, distracted by the commotion everyone was making, he saw nothing else.

  “Didn’t you know you aren’t allowed to board a train carrying an animal, even if it’s in a cage?” he said.

  “But I’m not carrying an animal in this cage, Mister Guard.”

  “You aren’t going to try and make me believe that you’re travelling with a cage full of nothing, miss?”

  “Not full of nothing, sir, no. This is the cage where the famous Football sleeps.”

  (I said it with a capital letter, to sound more impressive.)

  “Well, you don’t say…” said the guard, very impressed, scratching under his cap. It turned out he was a great football fan.

  So my brother Roberto and I invented a whole heap of stories of famous matches, famous players, famous goals, etc.

  All the football chatter meant the train wasn’t leaving, of course, and the passengers were starting to protest, though actually not all that much since they were all quite used to our trains running about as slow as a tortoise. (With apologies to my tortoise friends who I know are very serious people indeed.)

  And the guard went on nattering away, looking again and again at the ball between the golden bars of her little cage.

  At that moment I could feel that pesky Dailan Kifki slipping and sliding and shifting about very slowly behind me. I tried to hide him, blocking the sight of him with my skirt and chatting to the guard even more animatedly.

  Until a moment later—out the corner of my eye what did I see but the shameless creature sitting in one of the train seats, right in front of the moaning lady!

  You can imagine the state of my nerves.

  So Dailan Kifki settled himself into the seat, all twisted up and with his feet squeezed in towards him. I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to fit pr
etty well, with only a few tons of him spilling out through the window and over into the aisle.

  Fortunately at this point the lady was reading her newspaper so she didn’t notice him.

  I asked the guard if he could please get the train on its way soon, thinking, Well, if Dailan Kifki keeps nice and still, and the lady in front goes on reading her newspaper, we might just make it to Miserere Square safely.

  Nope.

  Dailan Kifki had started peering at the comic strips on the back page of the lady’s newspaper. But as his eyesight wasn’t all that great for reading, he had to lean forward a little, and then a little more, until he had his trunk right up against the paper and was just about to lose his balance…

  I was terrified he’d fall on top of the lady. So I tried to hurry the guide to hurry the engine driver to hurry the signalman to hurry the crossing-keeper to hurry the cow who was crossing the tracks so that the train could get on its way once and for all.

  And just when everyone had finished hurrying everyone else, and the guard was blowing on his whistle and waving his green handkerchief and the train was about to pull out of the station… Ker-BLAM!

  What do you think happened?

  Dailan Kifki fell on the lady!

  She gave a horrible shriek:

  “Help! S.O.S.! Murderers! Earthquake! Disaster!”

  A completely unnecessary fuss, because Dailan hadn’t fallen on her completely, of course, only his head.

  Now, naturally, his head, including his ears and trunk, does weigh a good number of kilos, but still there was no reason for quite so much screaming.

  I tried to lift Dailan Kifki’s head from her lap. I tried really, really hard. Roberto helped me, and the guard helped me, and the Ambassadors helped me, and so did Auntie Clodomira.

  You won’t believe it, but between all of us we still weren’t able to lift Dailan Kifki’s huge head. It was like he was glued to the lady’s knees.

  At this point the ticket inspector arrived, fiddling very seriously with his little ticket-punching machine.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Nothing, nothing, Mister Inspector!” we all said in chorus, blocking his view of the accident with our bodies while my dad put his hand over the lady’s mouth.

  And we all kept struggling to lift Dailan Kifki’s head.

  Nothing.

  Hup! Hup! Hup…

  Still nothing.

  He was glued to the lady’s knees.

  Shaking him made no difference, nor did tickling him, nor did flicking his ears as hard as we could.

  Do you know what the problem was?

  Dailan Kifki had fallen asleep! Now we really were totally, completely, utterly toast.

  “I’m afraid you’re just going to have to be a bit patient, madam,” I said to the noisy passenger. “The poor thing is a very deep sleeper.”

  Then I lifted one of Dailan Kifki’s ears, and said into it:

  “Let’s eat some lovely oats soup…”

  At which point he woke up, yawned a little, and between us we managed to settle him back into his seat.

  My father had managed to gag the lady with his handkerchief and necktie.

  The inspector, who had been in conversation with the guard, came over to me and said:

  “I’m sorry, miss. We’ve given you a special permit to travel with your football, but there is simply no way we can authorise your being on here with an elephant. I’m sorry, but rules are rules.”

  Which was how our entire retinue, who had only just managed to settle ourselves into the compartment and had only just finished arguing over the windows, had to get back off the train, pushing a half-asleep Dailan Kifki off with us.

  There we were again, at midnight, taking up the whole platform of Ituzaingó station.

  41

  Sometimes I just don’t get people. For example: everyone’s perfectly used to being shoved around on buses and trains and subways, shoved and squeezed and getting their hair mussed up and being pulled this way and that. And no one complains. But oh, the second they realise that it’s an elephant shoving them, well then, Ker-BLAM! You wouldn’t believe the noise they make!

  Like that blessed lady who went off on her train very happily, leaving all the rest of us dejected, starving, cold and tired on Ituzaingó station.

  You can’t imagine how sadly Dailan Kifki watched the departing train. Naturally, he immediately started to cry. And naturally, soon enough the Ituzaingó postmaster showed up. He had been working late, and apparently no sooner had he managed to get the stamps back in order than the elephant’s tearful explosion had made the building shake so much that they were all soon flying about again like confetti. The Superintendent pretended to start legal proceedings against us, and the postmaster was a bit happier after that.

  “It’s simply not possible,” I said to them all, “that having successfully completed the most astronautically phantasmagorical bit of the expedition, we’re now going to be stuck at anchor here in this station for ever. We have to find some quick, simple way of getting home.”

  “Why don’t we walk?” asked my mum.

  “It’s too far, we’re tired,” grumbled the others between yawns.

  “What if we put the wings back on Dailan Kifki?” suggested my brother Roberto.

  “Then he’ll escape again,” I said.

  “No,” Roberto went on, “listen. We tie him to a very long piece of twine, so that way we can’t lose him even if he’s flying all over the sky.”

  But the person with the smartest idea was Granddad.

  “Attention!” he said. “What we need to do is wait for a cargo train to come past, and we put Dailan Kifki in with the cows. Nobody will see much difference between a cow and an elephant while it’s still dark.”

  “Yes, that is a very good idea,” I said. “But where will we travel? We can’t go in with the cows, too.”

  “We’ll take a bus!” said Dad.

  “Honestly,” I replied, “do you really think I’m ever likely to let Dailan Kifki travel all on his own?”

  “But he’ll be with the cows,” Dad insisted. “They’ll take care of him. Cows are really affectionate.”

  “No, sir,” I said, “there’s absolutely no way I’m letting him travel alone in a dark railway wagon with some cows we don’t know anything about and who we’ve never met before.”

  And then my Auntie Clodomira said:

  “Why don’t you go with him in the cattle wagon, then?”

  “Because I’m not a cow, Auntie!”

  And on the argument went, for quite some time.

  Fortunately no cargo trains came by.

  After we’d done enough arguing, we decided to try thinking. So we all put our fingers to our foreheads and the whole line of us circled up and down the platform. We had turned into a kind of merry-go-round.

  We went up and down thinking and re-thinking in silence, when suddenly… do you know who showed up?

  Just imagine!

  Can you guess?

  42

  Mister Dwarf Carozo Minujín.

  “But what are you doing here, Mister Carozo? We thought you’d be asleep at this time.”

  “Yes, I was sleeping,” he replied.

  He opened his frock coat, and underneath it he was wearing a fustian nightshirt. He lifted his hat, and underneath that he had another cap, this one knitted and with a pompom at the end. He took off one of his slippers and underneath he was wearing another, made of wool.

  “I was sleeping,” he said, “but suddenly… Waaaa aahhhhh!”

  And he started to cry like a little madman.

  (I don’t want to tire you out, so I’ll skip over the inevitable bit where the postmaster showed up, crimson with rage because of the new tearful explosion that had shaken his office and his philatelical stamps all over again.)

  “What’s happened, Mister Carozo?” I asked.

  “Pick me up and I’ll tell you,” he said, like a spoilt brat.

&nb
sp; So I picked him up, walked him about a bit, waiting for his hiccups to pass, and finally he told me:

  “I was asleep and I had a dream about my football. I missed her so much, I came running here to see whether you all… still… supisichi…”

  And what with all his crying and his hiccuping, he couldn’t say any more.

  I consoled him as best I could, though I could tell he was only sobbing so much because he was trying his luck to see if I’d give him his ball back.

  “Mister Carozo,” I said, “here’s your football in her little cage, but I’m sure you know: Taking back something you’ve given a friend, is a sure-fire way for a friendship to end.”

  He immediately threw his arms around the cage, hugging it tightly—as if I’d never won it fair and square in the first place.

  His crying and his sleepiness disappeared and he became instantly delighted.

  Having stared at his football for a good long while, he finally looked at all of us.

  “And what the supisichi are you all doing here in the station?” he asked at last.

  We told him about all the misfortunes that had befallen us.

  “Ah,” said Mister Carozo. “So what the supisichi are you going to do now?”

  “Well, that was just what we were thinking about when you arrived,” I replied.

  “So that means I’ve got to think now, too?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” I said.

  “Very well then, I will have a think, though I really am rather sleepy.”

  Mister Carozo frowned, put his finger to his forehead and took three little steps around to join the queue of thinking people.

  We spent a long while like that, in silence, going round our merry-go-round of thoughts, when suddenly Mister Carozo stepped away from the line and said:

  “That’s it, I’ve done my thinking.”

  “And what have you thought, what have you thought?” we all asked, dying of curiosity. We crouched down around Mister Carozo, who said:

  “Dailan Kifki cannot travel by train because he’s an elephant, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well then,” the dwarf went on, “it’s very simple. We have to disguise him so nobody realises he’s an elephant.”