The Child's Elephant

by Rachel Campbell-Johnston

  ‘A lion which roars does not catch an animal,’ said Bat’s grandmother calmly. ‘Don’t make an enemy of him over this either. Just let it blow over. You know it’s not true. And, deep down, all the little ones know that too. They’ll discover it soon enough.’

  Slowly, notch by tiny notch, Bat’s temper subsided. But still he was too agitated to eat properly that night. As he picked at his rice, fresh memories kept flaring. Muka would see them as they swept for a moment across his face. His jaw muscles would bunch as he ground his teeth hard together and he would strike his cupped palm with the knuckles of a curled fist.

  But after a while the whole incident, like most of the boyish feuds in the village, blew over. Life settled down.

  ‘No hard feelings,’ said Lobo, strolling over one morning. Bat was warming himself in the early sun on a log. A clutch of newly hatched chickens dashed about peeping and Meya was pestering impatiently for her first feed. Her little pearly milk tusks had recently dropped out, revealing a new permanent pair sprouting beneath. Bat was trying to wean her but still she expected as much milk as she wished.

  Lobo held out a mango for Meya. ‘No hard feelings!’ he repeated.

  Normally Meya would have popped the fruit straight in her mouth, ground it appreciatively to a juicy pulp; but now she wouldn’t take it. She shook her head and flicked her trunk.

  ‘Aha!’ cried Marula as she adjusted the swathed mass of her calico headcloth. ‘The elephant doesn’t trust you.’

  ‘You don’t trust me?’ cajoled Lobo, looking the animal in the eye. ‘Oh well, you give it then.’ He handed the mango to Bat. If the sun had been up just a tiny bit higher he would have seen that Lobo’s smile was in fact no smile at all.

  Bat held out the rich-smelling globe to his elephant who, reaching out tentatively with her trunk, twirled the fruit round and round for a while before placing it carefully in her mouth. She chewed slowly, as if she was thinking about something, and then suddenly she spat it out. A long, rusty nail lay amid the fibrous orange flesh.

  ‘Aha – the elephant is too smart for you!’ cried the legless Marula, and clapped her hands with delight.

  Bat stepped rapidly forward, his feelings of anger, relief and pride at the animal’s cleverness all confusing his face. The nail was sharp in his hand as he bent to retrieve it. He would have hurled it at Lobo, but Bitek, the fisherman, was passing at that moment, his nets slung over his back. He too had seen what had happened and now he shook his head.

  ‘Don’t mess with an elephant, son,’ he warned, turning to Lobo. ‘They have powers far greater than you can understand.’

  The older boy shrugged. ‘It was only a joke,’ he muttered, pushing out a laugh.

  ‘Joke or no joke, it wasn’t funny,’ the fisherman said. ‘Come here and I’ll tell you a story.’

  The two boys looked at each other sullenly.

  ‘Sit down!’

  Reluctantly, they sat.

  ‘When I was a young man,’ began Bitek, ‘I fell in with a bad gang in town, just like you.’ He fixed Lobo with a stern look. The boy, who until then had been casting his eyes about, ostentatiously bored, stopped fidgeting now and looked down at his feet.

  ‘We used to go out and hunt bush meat,’ Bitek continued. ‘We killed anything . . . wild pigs, monkeys, gazelle if we could . . . and sold them in town. And one day we shot a cow elephant. We didn’t even notice, or much care, whether she was with young. We just killed her. It was a terrible thing.’ It was clear that the memory still pained the teller of this story. Bat looked up and saw that the man’s whole face flinched. ‘Her massive legs buckled, her great body trembled and stiffened, and she crashed to the ground, her calf crushed beneath her,’ said Bitek. ‘And I felt dreadful, as if everything inside me had suddenly been shaken out. I had to go and sit down in the shade of a tree. I told the others I felt sick. I didn’t want them to think that I was a coward. I was a young man then, and strong, and I didn’t want to lose face. And this thing would pass soon and I would forget it. But what I had done was worse . . . far worse . . . than even I thought.’ He twisted and turned his hands as he spoke, as if trying to untangle some net that still trapped him. ‘I began to feel awful. The whole world was turning dark. For two days I did nothing but sit in the hunters’ camp. And I was still there when someone brought me the news. My wife and my children and my brother’s eldest son had all died in an accident. A boat had capsized on the river and rolled over on top of them. And it had happened at the very moment I killed the elephant. And that’s why I know about the strength of these animals,’ said Bitek. ‘They have powers that are greater than we can ever tap into. Never mess with them.’

  He leaned towards Lobo and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘It was a long time ago; and after that I laid down my gun. I came here to live with my brother in Jambula. I taught myself to fish. It’s a better way of earning a living and I am contented. But still I can never go back. And when I see that little elephant’ – he nodded at Meya – ‘I sense that she knows my story. That’s why I never touch her. Elephants never forget, even if they forgive.’

  Lobo was silent. His brow was knitting deep furrows and the fisherman, patting his head gently, eventually moved off. Only then did the boy rise again. He shook his head quickly. ‘It was only a joke,’ he muttered, and straightening his rumpled shirt, he sauntered off.

  But then, a few days later, Meya started to behave in a very strange way. Normally, when night fell, she would go into the hut which she and Bat shared, shambling in hastily as if ready for bed. But this time she refused, standing outside, refusing to budge, however hard the boy pulled her; however determinedly he shoved. He even tried prodding her with a pointed stick.

  ‘Women can be difficult for no reason,’ Bat’s grandmother laughed. ‘Leave her be for a while.’ And she moved to slip past the stubborn elephant. She needed a clay jar that was kept inside. Meya rushed at her with a squeal, knocking her flat with her trunk. Bat stared, appalled. He dashed over to his grandmother.

  ‘I’m quite all right,’ she said, brushing herself down. But she wasn’t. She was shocked. Bat could feel her shaking. Meya just watched. Her rolling eyes showed their whites. Bat’s grandmother set off calmly for the hut again.

  Screaming, Meya rushed towards her. She barged her roughly aside and made a dash for the doorway; then, backing in bottom first, she stood like a guard. Her rumble was low and threatening as thunder. She flared out her ears and flicked her trunk back and forth. She looked dangerous. The fear flooded Bat’s head. What had made her behave like this? Was it all Lobo’s fault? Or did this just happen when an elephant grew up? He had heard about a man in another village who had cared for an orphaned lion cub. For months it had played like a kitten, rolling about in his hut, letting him tickle its butterfly-spotted belly and purring with pleasure as he ruffled its throat. But then, almost from one day to the next, it had changed. ‘It was as if its true spirit had suddenly possessed it,’ he would tell any listeners. ‘Its eyes would turn hard and fierce. And it wouldn’t recognize anyone . . . only the call of its wild instinct.’

  Bat walked cautiously towards his elephant, holding his hand out and humming; but Meya didn’t reach out to touch him like she usually did. She shifted about uncertainly, swaying and shuffling.

  Suddenly, she squealed and backed into the hut. Bat ran to the door. Meya was crashing about wildly inside. He could see her spinning and stamping, rousing clouds of red dust. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust, for him to see the snake thrashing about in the gloom. It was a mamba. He could tell by its gun-metal gleam. Writhing, it lashed out. Its black mouth was agape; but its spine had been smashed by Meya’s foot.

  Bat stared. It felt as if a cold hand was groping at his heart. That snake would have killed his grandmother. He stood frozen, sounds washing around him, giddy as a man who looks over the plummeting drop of a cliff. Slowly, he turned. The old woman was now limping towards him. Her lips were moving but he couldn’t hear the
words. They fell like the first drops of rain that just bounce off the skin. Only after a while did they begin to sink in, seeping gradually down into the very depths of his being.

  ‘Your little elephant knew that snake was there,’ his grandmother was saying. ‘It must have dropped from the roof thatch. It must have been looking for a way out of the hut, just as I was trying to find my way in. And your little elephant knew it. She did her best to protect me. Meya saved my life,’ she said.

  Bat turned and ran to his elephant and flung his arms about her neck. His eyes were running with tears. If he hadn’t been crying so much he might have paused and spotted the two fierce pinpricks that marked her back foot.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Meya was sick the next day. She hung about listlessly, her once gleaming eyes dull. She fiddled absentmindedly with dried leaves in the dust. She couldn’t even be tempted with a sweet banana. Normally the first whiff of one opening would have brought her running; now, even a stick of sugar cane was turned down. When she moved, she walked gingerly on her soft pads. Bat bent down to look. The sole of her hind foot, its criss-cross pattern of fissures as distinctive as a human handprint, was puffed up and swollen. He felt with his fingers around the rims of her nails, and it was only then that he came across the puncture wounds.

  Soon the whole village was gathered. They all understood the danger of snakes; and the mamba was notoriously fierce. When one dropped, as occasionally they would, with a thud from the thatch to land hissing furiously on the floor of a hut, the inhabitants would scatter. No one could sleep until it had been dispatched. Of all the poisonous serpents that slid through the bush, this was the most feared. Every villager knew of someone who’d been bitten, who had felt that first tingling at the ends of their toes and known from then on that they had not long to live. Crowding round the hut, they looked anxiously at Bat.

  Little mute Bim was the first to come forward, his bright eyes brimming with worry. Waving his hands about, he made signs to say that he could take the cattle out to the pastures so that Bat could stay home with his elephant.

  ‘And we’ll cut forage and collect firewood,’ volunteered the spokesman for a shuffling gang of youngsters, and all of them dashed off for their pangas, eager to help.

  Fat Rosa sent two of her girls with palm leaves to use as fans, and later that morning, Bitek the fisherman also passed by, hesitantly approaching with a blanket full of yellow pods. It was the first time he had ever come near the elephant.

  ‘She won’t eat them,’ Bat told him as he unwrapped his bundle. ‘She doesn’t like sausage fruit.’

  ‘She will now,’ said Bitek quietly. ‘She will understand that they are an antidote.’

  He was right. Picking one up with her trunk, Meya placed it tentatively in her mouth and began listlessly to chew.

  Meanwhile, Bat’s grandmother was dispatching Muka to the town to get herbs. ‘The woman who trades with the pygmies will know what to do,’ she said. ‘You will find where she lives if you go to the kapok tree and ask.’

  Muka had never run as hard or as long as she did that day. She was like a panicking creature trying to outpace its own shadow; but she could not escape the relentless pursuit of her thoughts. What if she couldn’t get the medicine in time? What if the woman who sold herbs was away? Would Meya understand why she had suddenly left her? Would Bat manage without her? What if Meya died? She would not even have said goodbye to the little elephant. The unanswered questions rose up like spectres to taunt her. The breath broke from her lungs in hot bursts. Her throat burned. Sweat poured down her dusty skin but she never stopped until she at last saw the shanties, their tin roofs glittering like water in the light.

  Muka returned to the village that afternoon clutching a bottle of oil and a handful of leaves. They were to be boiled up with maize flour and packed into the wound, she told Bat’s grandmother; then a piece of damp sacking had to be made into a tight bandage. That was their only hope, the market seller had said, of drawing the snake poison out.

  The next day Meya moaned continually. Her ears hung slack. The flies crawled through the fluids that leaked from her eyes but she didn’t even bother to blink. A chain of children ran back and forth with clay pots to the river, bringing water to cool her. It poured down her back, sliding in runnels over ears and flanks. Still Meya seemed no better. She was painfully weak. By the evening, her head was hanging and her breathing was stertorous. She went to sleep on her belly. Bat had never before seen her lie and sleep like that.

  He and Muka sat up the whole night beside her: whispering softly and humming and begging her to remember all the good times that together they had shared, pleading and pleading with her to make a struggle, to do all she could to try to get well. ‘Remember the time when you were tiny and first discovered a spurfowl,’ Bat reminded her.

  ‘And the day you first learned to suck water with your trunk,’ Muka said.

  ‘And when you stole Fat Rosa’s flip-flop,’ Bat prompted, almost smiling.

  ‘And how much you love pineapple,’ encouraged Muka.

  The children slept only in brief snatches that night. While the moon sailed like a boat through the infinite blackness and faint winds ruffled the seed heads of the savannah’s dried grass, they crouched in the hut, stroking the creature they loved, talking to her gently so that even when her eyes were closing, still she would know they were always there. ‘We are your family,’ they told her. ‘Don’t leave us now,’ they begged. They brushed the flies from her face like a mother brushes them from her baby. Softly they stroked her rough hide, tracing its wrinkles and furrows with their fingers as a pair of lost wanderers might trace the lines on a map. It was as if they wanted to find a way back to a place they had once known. Muka crooned softly and picked the ticks from the folds of Meya’s skin, and from time to time, Bat rested his head against her heart. It beat like distant thunder from those clouds that gather but won’t bring the rain when you need it most.

  In the morning, Meya was barely moving. The thump of the pestles as they pounded cassava was pulsing through the village. Thud-ah; thud-ah; thud-ah, they sang. Meya, who would normally have been up much earlier, shambling mischievously about the compound, tugging at the roof thatch until Bat’s grandmother came chasing, was now stretched out, flanks heaving, on the floor of her hut. Every now and then she would struggle to stand, putting out her forelegs and pushing, but before she had managed to haul herself even halfway she would topple and fall, panting, her sides rising and sinking, her trunk slack in the dust. She would surely die if she stayed that way too long, thought Bat. Like a cow, she was too heavy an animal to sleep on its flanks. The village men came with thick sisal ropes and, passing them under Meya’s belly, threw the ends over the rafters and hauled her upright. The wood groaned and the whole structure shook, but the makeshift sling held and all day the elephant dangled. Her eyes were fading away into the smoke of her dreams.

  Village life came to a stop. Everyone gathered round her shelter. Even Lobo arrived. Bat watched as one of the little boys showed him the mamba that still lay in mangled grey loops in the grass. Another boy poked at it with a stick. The blowflies had laid their eggs in the caverns of its mouth. But no one dared touch it. Even its grey armour was supposed to be poisonous. Lobo picked it up bravely and brandished it at the watchers. They scattered like chaff when a stray breeze blows. Then he hurled the dead body away into the bush.

  ‘Is the elephant going to die?’ he asked Bat’s grandmother.

  ‘No, she is strong,’ the old woman replied. ‘But suffering is worse for an animal because it can’t understand what is happening. It just knows it’s in pain and that it must endure.’

  ‘Can I see her?’ Lobo asked, starting suddenly forwards.

  Bat’s grandmother put out an arm to prevent him. ‘Leave the beast now,’ she said.

  ‘But I want to—’

  ‘Leave her!’ she interrupted, and this time she sounded fierce.

  Lobo threw up his hands. ‘
I only wanted to help.’

  ‘Right now, you can best help by leaving,’ Bat’s grandmother said. She moved over to her grandson and laid a hand on his head, but he didn’t respond. To him, the whole world had the melting edges of a dream. He was desperate. He could barely hear the sound of Meya’s breath any more.

  As the third night fell, Bat and Muka were still keeping their vigil. They listened to the low mournful call of the owls, the pee-oo-wee of a nightjar as it swept the blackness for insects, the scritch-scratch of squirrels as they scuffled through the thatch; and somewhere far off they could hear a pack of hyenas. There was something horribly intimate about their howling that night. It was as if they could smell death approaching, floating towards them on the breezes of the night.

  In the early hours of the morning, the pair fell at last into a fitful slumber. When Muka awoke, dawn had come. Her stirring roused Bat. For a moment he lay there, eyes closed, contentedly drowsing, until, like a reflection reforming on disturbed water, the memories slowly began to coalesce. Outside he could hear the first cockerels crowing, the stock pigeons cooing from the fringing trees, the clatter of a tin can in somebody’s kitchen, the first thud of a pestle as the cassava-pounding began. But he wouldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t bear to wake up to a world from which Meya was gone. He couldn’t bear to confront that moment when he would have to look loss in the face. He thought of the iguanas that sunned themselves by the river. They shone like a heap of precious gems; but if you killed one, as the boys sometimes did with their slingshots, even in the few steps that it took to reach the dead animal, it had turned to stone. Once the flame was put out, the ancient glittering creatures were no more than drab lumps of chill flesh.