Both the children looked away. Bat gnawed stubbornly at his knuckles. Muka fiddled with the end of a plait, rolling it back and forth, back and forth between her fingertips. The wordlessness hung in the room like a veil.
‘Then sleep on it,’ said the old woman.
Rising, she trimmed the wick of a small kerosene lantern and handed it to Muka. ‘We’ll see you in the morning,’ she murmured, laying a hand upon the girl’s head.
Then Bat took his sleeping mat, blanket and the flattened banana stem that he used as a pillow and, leaving his grandmother’s sleeping hut for the first time ever, laid down his bed by the side of the baby elephant.
CHAPTER FIVE
The village of Jambula was named after the tree that stood in its middle. It had been there long before the little round houses with their rough mud walls and their matete thatch roofs had first started to gather. The tree bore high, unreachable fruit. But once a year the fruit would ripen and fall in a thick plum-coloured carpet, turning tongues purple with its bitter-sweet taste.
Life in the village had the same mixed flavour. In the dry season, the sun would bite into your skin like a dog with a quarrel. Colours would fade; leaves wrinkle and drop. The cattle grew thin and the scorpions sidled from crannies. If you accidentally trod on one, the pain made you cry out. Then your neck would swell; your tongue would feel as rough as a piece of old wood. You wouldn’t be able to taste food for weeks.
The rains in their turn could be equally fierce, pelting down with a force that would rip crops to shreds. Huts filled with water and armies of hopping frogs, and though the women, bent double over their palm-frond brooms, would do constant battle, no amount of sweeping could ever ward them off. Mosquitoes arrived in clouds. Drawing back your lips, you had to breathe through your teeth if you didn’t want to choke.
But there were long in-between times when Jambula felt like a good place to live. In one direction the savannah rolled towards a wide-looping river that twice a year over-spilled to make a lush fertile marsh. In the other a track led away to the forest. From there, the trees started to clamber up the foot-slopes of an escarpment. They got almost halfway before they finally gave up, leaving the cliff face, a wall of sheer rock, to glow pink in the light of the sun as it set.
On the grasslands there were sand grouse and spurfowl and plover and, if you were lucky, horned topi to hunt. There were baobab trees for building and wild cane for sweetness, elephant grass for forage and acacias for fuel. From the woodlands came duiker and honey and date palms, medicines and paw-paw and fat little bush pigs. Mangoes and bananas grew thick in the shambas, giving shade to the groundnut and sorghum, the maize and cassava crops. And for anything else, for salt or kerosene or lengths of cloth for a wrap, there was always the market. If you kept a good pace, it was only the first part of a morning away along the track.
This was the village to which the baby elephant had come to live and now, on the second morning, the village chief was planning to make his official visit. Even as the first rays of the sun were filtering down through the thatch, the women were blowing on the ashes of their cook-fires and gossiping about the newcomer that had arrived in their midst. By the time Bat had milked his cows, an impatient crowd was gathering, whispering and grinning around the elephant’s hut. Hordes of little children jumped about in excitement, darting and peeping like swarms of spring hares.
An elephant would bring them good luck, the villagers were saying. This animal was the emblem of their tribe. It was a creature with intelligence, resilience and might. They waited for old Kaaka, the wise woman, to turn up, shuffling along the grassy path with her walking stick. They wanted to hear what she would pronounce. She paused under the mango tree that sheltered Bat’s homestead, casting its hazy shadows over the clean-swept earth. Its leaves trembled despite the lack of wind, and one of them, wafting gently down from the branches, landed at her feet. She bent creakily over. ‘It means we have a visitor who comes from far away and, like this leaf, has no intention of returning,’ she said.
The village chief, who always wore his spectacles even though they had no glass in them, was the next to come forward. He was wearing an old pair of gumboots on his feet but, to show that he was visiting in his official capacity, he was also sporting his ceremonial spear. A pipe poked out of the corner of his mouth. Held in place by his last two remaining teeth, it puffed vigorous clouds of smoke. Now he removed it with a flourish. ‘Unity is strength,’ he declared. ‘That is the motto of our people. And that too is the motto of the elephant herd.’ Pulling his drape up under his armpits, he crossed his arms in front of his chest. He was proud of his standing. ‘Since the days of our furthest ancestors, our people and the elephant have walked together. Now this little baby has been brought to our village as a sign of old friendship. We will call her Meya because it is the name that we give to those we most love.’
Meya soon became part of everyday village life. She would be at Bat’s side from first thing in the morning, when the boy splashed his face in a calabash of water, to last thing at night, when he cleaned his teeth with a strand of matete grass. She came to feel as familiar to him as his brown shorts and green T-shirt and, since like most of the villagers he only ever had one set of clothes at a time, this meant that she felt like a part of him.
Bat ate cassava-flour biscuits for breakfast. They filled the stomach, said his grandmother, so that he wouldn’t feel hungry all day. Then he gave Meya a feed of warm milk before, slinging the gallon can around his shoulders with a length of twisted sisal, the pair followed behind the cattle as they ambled off to graze. At first, Meya stumbled on the hard ruts of the track in the dry season and skidded in the slippery mud of the rains. She had to be helped along. But as she grew older, as the long reddish hairs on her back were replaced by black bristles and her crumpled ears unfolded and fanned out from her head, she got more confident; and as she grew more confident she became also more playful. She dashed at the guinea fowl as they darted across the compound, or butted at the cattle with her broad forehead, and though, in the beginning, Bat worried that they might turn and jab her, they seemed to understand that it was only a game. The young calves frolicked and scampered and kicked up their heels as they ran from her and Bat’s favourite cow Kila allowed her to twine her trunk around her tail.
At first, Meya needed to be fed frequently; she seemed constantly hungry. But as the moons waxed and waned, she learned to suck properly, lifting her trunk and curling it back over her head. She started to lose her crumpled appearance. Her small gourd-like body was soon quilted with fat. ‘Soon you must teach her to find her own food,’ said Bat’s grandmother. ‘We can’t give her all our milk for ever. I haven’t got any spare for the market place.’ It was true. Where normally on her way down the track that led into town the big can on her head would be almost full, now there was nothing left over. She would carry a blanket of baked vanilla cakes or ripe jackfruit instead, and there would be no fresh-caught Nile perch to grill with a handful of red tomatoes when she came home. Dipping his matooke into a gristly stew of goat’s neck, Bat would chew disconsolately. Then, to make matters worse, the lamp would be snuffed out. Without the sale of milk, his grandmother explained, kerosene had to be saved for when it was most needed; there was no longer money to spare to buy more. Yes, Meya would have to learn to forage for herself, Bat thought.
But learning to find her own food meant learning to use her trunk and Meya seemed to treat hers like an unruly rubber toy. It wasn’t that she didn’t try it out constantly. From the very beginning it was always exploring: sniffing and poking and pulling and stroking, prodding and twiddling and twining about. Whatever Bat was doing, it would seem to find a way in: jogging his elbow when he was trying to pour water, nudging his back when he wanted to sleep, sending his piles of cut cattle fodder scattering, knocking his lantern out of his grip. Sometimes Bat grew exasperated. ‘Why did you do that, you clumsy clot?’ he would shout. And the little animal would look sheepish. Sidling over,
she would push herself up against him until he finally relented and scratched her behind the ears. Then she would smile and lift up her head so that he could also reach her chin, where she was sprouting a little whiskery beard. But, however much Meya practised, her trunk remained a source of problems. Sometimes she stepped on it and stumbled and tripped; sometimes it got stuck in a big clumpy knot; and often, snuffling about, she breathed up a great whoosh of dust which would madden her with its tickling and she would writhe it and wave it and slap it violently about.
Once, shambling off to investigate an indignant mongoose, Meya had got her trunk trapped in a tree hollow. Her squeals brought Muka running in from the fields, hotly pursued by a furious puffing aunt who, when she finally caught up, stood legs akimbo, bent almost double as she fought to catch her breath, while Muka, who had only just succeeded in extricating the stuck elephant, backed on her hands and knees, bottom first, from the piece of hollowed-out wood. Scrambling quickly to her feet, she dusted down her wrap. She looked sullen. She suspected she was in for a scolding and indeed she was right.
‘That’s it. I’ve had enough,’ her aunt managed between puffs. ‘Do you hear me? I’ve had enough.’ She glowered meaningfully at the girl. ‘One moment you are working and then the next you have gone. You have dashed off who knows where . . . and I won’t put up with it! Do you hear me: I won’t put up with it!’ And as if repetition weren’t enough to emphasize her point, she slapped hard down on her thigh. ‘You are completely unbiddable,’ she bawled, mopping hopelessly at the sweat that had sprung to her brow. Her lips, fat as bananas, were quivering with fury. Her eyes shone with impotent rage.
For a moment Muka held her gaze and they stood there locked in head-to-head combat. Then the girl let her eyes drop. If she had actually apologized, it would have felt like a rare capitulation; but she didn’t, and the silence that rose between them grew rapidly into its own kind of contest.
The auntie’s hand was just rising to deliver a great slap when Bat’s grandmother appeared. ‘What’s the matter? What brings you here, Mama Brenda?’ she enquired politely. ‘Can I offer you water? You look so very hot.’ She gave a quick wave of her wrist to Muka who, already ducking in readiness to receive the blow, dashed off.
‘What’s the matter?’ replied the woman with a great exasperated sigh. ‘That girl is the matter. As if five aren’t already a handful, I’m expected to make room in my house and my heart for one more. And what can I do with her? She’s like a wild animal. As soon as you aren’t watching her, she’s running away. Who can blame her mother for getting rid of her?’ she wailed. ‘What can be done with a girl like that?’
Muka, returning at that moment with a calabash of water, scooped from the clay pot inside the kitchen hut, approached with the bowl and, eyes respectfully lowered, handed it to her aunt, who merely gave a great huff. The water was cool and clear. It refreshed her. ‘What would you do with her?’ she asked Bat’s grandmother at last when the bowl had been drained.
‘What would I do with her?’ Bat’s grandmother paused and thought for a moment. ‘I would give her a home. Would you like that, Mama Brenda? Would you like it if she came to live with me? You have five girls already and I have none.’ She didn’t so much as glance at Muka. ‘Bat is growing now. He sleeps with the elephant in his own boy’s hut. So your niece Amuka can come to stay with me. I will feed her. I think we can find enough to spare.’
Muka’s face sparkled bright as a bush-full of fireflies. Beyond downcast lashes, her black eyes were aglitter with hope. For a moment the three stood there, the silence electric between them. Muka could feel it like the static of an approaching storm.
‘Well . . . hmmm . . .’ Her aunt hesitated. ‘That is good of you,’ she ventured. She was starting to wonder if there was some hidden catch. ‘Yes. If she could live with you . . . until her mother comes to fetch her . . . just until then . . . then yes . . . if you were able . . . it’s just that I . . .’
‘I have plenty of room,’ Bat’s grandmother reassured her. ‘And I will try to bring her up as well as you have done.’
The aunt nodded and smiled, fatly satisfied by the praise.
‘Well, that’s all fixed then,’ said Bat’s grandmother, taking the calabash. She turned to Muka. The girl’s face was wreathed with smiles. ‘Now go back to the fields,’ she instructed her sternly. ‘Go and work with your cousins. Your auntie needs help with the hoeing. She doesn’t want to see any more slacking today.’ Muka sprinted off as fast as she could, the soles of her feet flashing pink in the dust.
But that evening, she and Bat could barely contain their excitement.
‘How long will it be?’ he kept asking his grandmother. ‘How long will it be before Muka comes to live with us? She could even stay tonight. We have a spare blanket.’
‘The sooner the better,’ grinned the wriggling girl. ‘Then no more of this . . .’ Jumping to her feet, she walked right up to Bat and, planting her hands on her hips, started yakking as loud as she could. She was imitating her aunt when her temper was lost.
‘She always does that,’ cried the giggling Bat. ‘She stands right in front of you and yells. Even though you’re right in front of her . . . she yells right in your face.’
‘Enough!’ scolded his grandmother. ‘Show some respect. Every tree has its own anthill.’ Everyone has their own problems was what she meant. ‘Mama Brenda has to struggle to hold her family together. She and her girls have little enough as it is. And it is not right to mock them. Remember that she took you in, Amuka,’ she admonished. ‘She might have complained, but she never rejected you. And if she works you hard it’s because she has to. Her family can get by, but there is no room for slack.’
Muka hung her head. She felt ashamed. Would Bat’s grandmother not want her now? She sat down meekly again.
‘I will work you hard too,’ said Bat’s grandmother. ‘And I will still want you to go and help your cousins. You still have a lot of learning to do.’
The elephant also had a lot of learning ahead of her. Right now, how to suck water remained the great mystery. Meya preferred to kneel by the river and scoop it up with her mouth, and this worried Bat. The crocodiles listened for the noise of an animal lapping. They sneaked up and launched their surprise attacks. He was relieved when one day she at long last got the knack; suddenly discovering that she had drawn up a nose-full of liquid, she trumpeted joyfully in her amazed delight, spraying it all back out again in a blast of rainbows. She had to make dozens more experiments before she mastered the art. Sometimes she sucked up sand from the riverbed too. Then, mad with the itching, she would writhe her trunk into clots until finally she worked out how best she could scratch it, holding it down with one forefoot and rolling it gently back and forth.
Little by little, she became adept. ‘An elephant’s trunk is an amazing thing,’ Bat’s grandmother said. ‘It can feel the tiniest shapes and the subtlest textures. It can test minute changes in temperature and tell the precise bearing of a scent on the wind. But you have to be careful. It is strong enough also to snap an acacia. It can smash the bones of a lioness with one swipe.’
By the time the short rains came, swathing the savannah in wild flowers and filling the air with fresh scents, Meya was learning to forage. At first, she would twirl her trunk round and round a solitary grass stalk, eventually securing it only, once more, to let it drop; then, having spent twice as long again in her efforts to retrieve it, she would seem to forget why she had originally wanted it and pitch it pointlessly over her head. But soon she worked out how to choose one tussock at a time, how to grasp at it firmly before giving a strong forward kick that would sheer through its fibres as efficiently as a panga swipe. Then she would pop it, free of earth, into her mouth.
Sometimes Bat would sneak her bananas from the shamba. He would bring her sweet potatoes and guava fruits. He would show her acacia pods and give her bunches of sweet dates. Meya guzzled the hard bitter fruit of gardenia bushes and, popping them in, two or
three at a time, she would get the next couple ready with her trunk while she chewed; but she never touched the long yellow pods of the fever trees or the black and red beads of the trichelia bush, and she avoided the dangling beans of the sausage tree if she could.
As Meya grew bigger, she grew bolder. While Bat watched the cattle, she would go off exploring: pushing at termite mounds to see if they would topple, probing the burrows of the bush hyrax, shaking high branches and setting the weaver birds chattering as their nests swung to and fro, scattering leaves and loose twigs. Once she disturbed a porcupine. It rattled its quills and lumbered off with the inquisitive elephant in pursuit. When Meya returned squealing, Bat had to extract several needles from the tender skin of her trunk and afterwards she had stood there sucking at it disconsolately, like a tired human baby sucking at its thumb.
One day she followed a spur fowl that was dragging its wing, pretending to be wounded so as to lure the clumsy intruder away from its nest. When it thought it had gone far enough, it whirred miraculously off. Only then did Meya look round to discover that she didn’t know where she was. That was how Bat learned her distinctive ‘I’m lost’ call: a sound that, beginning with a low throaty rumble, cranked up louder and louder to end in a panicky scream.
Elephants talk all the time, the children found out. Each different trumpet blast, they gradually discovered, each bellow, groan or snort, had its meaning; and slowly they learned them. ‘It’s like learning our letters,’ said Muka who, every evening, sat down at Bat’s side while his grandmother, pulling out the tattered old book which she kept in a tin chest to protect it from termites, ran a long bony finger along the lines of words.
The children learned to distinguish Meya’s deep ‘let’s go’ rumble from the lighter ‘I’m here’; the scream of excitement from the scream of distress, the mock playful trumpet from the urgent ‘come at once’ call. And they discovered that, if they tried, they too could talk. Licking his lips, Bat pressed them together and blew with all his might and the elephant would respond with high-squealing excitement, racing in circles, trunk curled tight under chin, returning back-end first with a funny high-tailed shuffle, the whites of her eyes showing as she watched him from over her flank. But when she was frightened and started squeaking like a dry branch in the wind, Bat would come running to offer her comfort, humming a sound that seemed to rise from the very depths of his heart.
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