I Am an Executioner

by Rajesh Parameswaran

  36 It is the “final stillness.” Amuta speaks quietly, coldly.

  AMUTA: Why do you run close to me, Shanti? Hm? (pause) Why do you cling to me as if you were a baby? (Amuta’s quiet rage is unmistakable.) If you were not so attached to me, if you ran freely with the other elephants of your age, you would have been safe now.

  (Shanti shakes her head. Tears stream from her eyes.)

  AMUTA: You are a coward and an infant, and so we will die together.

  37 In the dark, quiet corral of the Silver Brothers Circus, a frequent visitor, enthusiastic volunteer, accused impostor peeks from behind a pile of hay: It is deep night; the circus murmurs only with the occasional snoring hippopotamus, or drunken midget weeping softly over an old loss. In the shadows, the visitor senses the rustle of the greatest of beasts, chained in their sleeping quarters, doubly chained by the fatigue of the day. Slowly, he makes out the quivering silhouette of one particular elephant, not asleep but swaying from side to side, tail twitching from anxious loneliness.

  In the interloper’s backpack is a giant bottle of Gitranquizol (“elephant keeper’s friend”) pilfered from the house veterinarian’s poorly padlocked cabinet. The mysterious fellow mixes half of the powerful tranquilizer into a bottle of orange soda he has brought with him for this purpose. He edges toward the elephant, sits down near to her.

  Shanti extends her trunk to sniff at his strange concoction.

  Would you like some too? he asks. It is a way out.

  But she withdraws her trunk, detecting the drug’s unpleasant odor.

  The man quaffs the bottle, emptying it entirely, and burps. Then he curls up at Shanti’s feet, awaiting the inevitable.

  The man notices his toes and fingers begin to numb (indeed, his left foot will never again recover full feeling). His eyelids quiver. The ground feels cold; his tongue grows stiff; the world is filling with beautiful lights, a side effect of the medicine.

  But just as his vision begins sprouting with impossible patterns, the precursor to death, he feels a nimble trunk opening his mouth, a stiff scrap of hay inserted into the back of his throat, tickling him there, until he is vomiting uncontrollably. And then the gentle press of an elephant’s foot upon his breast, massaging his heart back to action.

  In the clouded midnight of my near death, she bends her face close to mine, pinches me awake with her trunk. I cough and splutter, returning to the world of living animals.

  When I am finally able to speak, I ask her: Why have you done this? Why have you brought me back to life?

  In response, she speaks her first fully formed words of fluent Englaphant: Why should you die alone on the ground, she asks, when you may die through me?

  Then her trunk finds its way into my knapsack and discovers there an extra, untainted bottle of orange soda; tucking it into her mouth, she crushes it until it bursts, then flings the empty broken plastic onto the ground. Orange is my favorite, she adds—pausing to belch in stentorious elephant fashion. The man’s ears quiver, elephant-like, in surprise; his eyes widen in wonder at his understanding, before narrowing again with cunning.

  That moment of mutual recognition puts me in mind of another such instance, again from the memoir of William Blacktusk, the famous (or soon to be) birth scene:

  From the moment I spilled onto the blood sotted ground of this dimly lit world, I wanted only to crawl back inside the endless warmth I had left behind—the loving soft source of infinite benignity, the single memory of which today is all that remains to me of Mother. I tried to stand and fell; tried and fell. (And still do we try and fall.) There on the periphery, two individuals stood distinct even to my newborn’s eyes: one human figure casually stern, granted deferential berth by all those assembled; and on his shoulders a bouncing, excited, and awestruck toddler, whose face would become so familiar to me. These two stared with mute regard at the bloody wonders of nature, but would not touch me: I was wonderful but too grotesque. (Did they believe I had naught to do with them? Or did they recoil because they knew my wrinkled massive lump was flesh of their flesh?) But now comes the gnarled mahout, someone who in his old age had evidently earned my mother’s trust, and was allowed to touch and to bathe me, spilling cold waters into my mucus-clotted ears, my sticky eyes. I coughed and spat and out came the tube of soft white mess glutting my throat, and now I mewed and cried and heard my own voice calling. (The cold shock of that mahout’s brusque efficiencies notwithstanding, the sureness of his human touch was somehow fortifying, and my instinct tells me retrospectively that this was a man whose place of trust was well earned; but after that night, the silent old man disappeared as suddenly and irrevocably as my mother, whom he served.)

  And long will I remember the little looking boy’s final exclamation. He had sat a long time in speechless wonder, straddling the strong shoulders of his father, staring in witness of the moving spectacle of my elephant birth, when finally the powerful emotions building up in him those silent minutes broke forth. His small face screwed up like a knot in a tree, and bursting into sobs, he squealed, “I love him! I do, I do!” Then he buried his face in the neck of the human who held him, his alarmed confession bringing a disquieting smile to the lips of this man, and sending a bristle of unease through all the elephants assembled round me. Back

  ON THE BANKS OF TABLE RIVER (PLANET LUCINA, ANDROMEDA GALAXY, AD 2319)

  THE BODY IN QUESTION WAS IMPALED on the branches of a calthus tree, where uncleared jungle abuts the grassy track of the via. The time was earliest morning, not yet third dawn. The lights of my hovering hearse illuminated the unfortunate scene: torn wings, sprawling feelers, several legs at impossible angles. The body had belonged to Eth, an acquaintance of mine, a janitor at the Heavenly Paradise Resort, whose son had been one year behind my daughter in academy.

  Down below, on the flat track of the via, walked our human constable, Inspector Barhoeven, with his nervous underling Palmena, sullenly striping the vines and thickets edging the roadway with the bright beams of their lamps, bending to retrieve bits of plastic and chips of paint from the hundreds of scraps always caught on the floor of the via. The investigation, I felt sure, was largely a formality. A drunken hit-and-run, casualty one local resort worker, is considered less a crime here than a necessary collateral of life. Sure enough, as I exited my craft and flew down to him, the good inspector immediately began making his case.

  “Sorry to call at such an odd hour, Thoren.”

  “Not at all.”

  Barhoeven swept his five-fingered hand upward, the badges looped to his neck clanking against his bony chest.

  “Isn’t it a crying shame?” Barhoeven’s face had a stricken, pleading look, as if searching for divine explanation, as if he didn’t see such corpses along the via at the rate of one per month. “Oughtn’t she to have known better?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Flying in the middle of the via! I thought Eth was a smarter being than that.”

  A smile came to me, but I stopped it from reaching my lips. Clever Inspector Barhoeven—blaming poor Eth peremptorily, thus saving himself the time and trouble of tracking down witnesses, of embarrassing our planet’s guests, of starting down that long and troublesome road.

  “You see, Thoren, I calculated the speed and distance she was thrown based on the angle and extent of penetration of the bough through her back and abdomen. The craft must have been proceeding at a moderate speed, when she passed directly across its path.”

  Was he sincere? I have never known how to understand humans such as Barhoeven, so earnestly analytical, so confident of themselves at close of day. Perhaps he really was the planet’s most ingenious detective. “She should have bought a craft,” he muttered now, rubbing his tiny eyes. “She’s too old to be flying by her own wings.” In the dim light, I was surprised to see liquid beginning to streak Barhoeven’s cheeks.

  “Eth took the safety of our planet for granted, Inspector.”

  “So it would seem. We live in a city, Thoren. Not the damn country
side.”

  I fluttered back up to give Barhoeven time to gather himself, and to give myself the opportunity to appraise the work ahead. Eth’s head was swollen to the proportions of a misshapen charlie fruit; her skull, a palpation suggested, was shattered into half a dozen pieces; her proboscis was torn; and her incisors were scattered into the grass or lost down her throat. And now it fell to me to take Eth’s battered body, drain it, cake it, plump it, paint it, prepare it for funeral; build it back more beautiful than it was in life. The people of my planet expected nothing less of me than miracles.

  Later that morning, in the basement workshop at my burrow, I began to remove the fragments of wood from the terrible hole in Eth’s abdomen. Palmena and I had had quite a job of removing the body from the tree and transferring her into my craft, as Barhoeven intermittently wept and called directions from the ground. The inspector had been sent here by the Government of Earth nearly fifteen years ago, as an adviser to our nascent police force. He fell in love with a local being—a brave thing to do, at that time—and together they adopted an orphan larva, who entered the Special Learning Academy just this year; a new kind of family, two parents of different species, both of whom live past mating. But Barhoeven’s female died of sugar fungus two years ago, leaving him increasingly strange, unpredictably emotional.

  Through the mud ceiling above my workshop, I heard my child clattering out of her room. How good that she had woken before first noon. I rely on her help very much; she has a gift for the work, her efficiency and craftsmanship far exceeding mine. I crawled up to the kitchen to greet her. She was beginning to take her breakfast. From the glowing sheen of her face, I could see that she had slept—this relieved me. Last night, I’d been woken by her agitated footsteps clomping about at strange hours. She has only recently begun to manifest as female, and the change seems to have disrupted her sleep and darkened her moods.

  “You are just in time, Nippima. We have a job today.”

  Nippima bent down to sip nectar straight from the pot I had cooked and left on the hot plate; then she imbibed from a bowl of aphid porridge that I had masticated for her and placed in a covered dish on the floor. She ate so quickly and thoughtlessly that I wondered: Does she realize that someone has prepared her breakfast and kept it specially; that someone has thought of her, that someone is always thinking of her?

  She looked up at me. “Ka, I don’t have time to help you.”

  “Why? You have big plans for the day?”

  Now she twitched her feelers indifferently—an irritating gesture.

  “Speak up.”

  “I’m going to the river,” she mumbled over her porridge. Her abdomen full, she shoved the dirty dishes into the corner, stood upright, and walked toward the portal.

  Nippima is a beautiful, fine-featured female, considerably taller than I am; her segmented abdomen swirls with the rich reds, oranges, and aquamarines of youth. Her wings are taut, iridescent, and her features remind me so much of my mate’s: her dark, straight proboscis, perfectly round eyes, and long feelers. Moreover, Nippima is a true artisan—unlike myself, whose clumsy feelers would have been better suited to a hundred professions less exacting than the one I was born into. But perhaps all this is parental pride speaking.

  At the portal, she condescended at last to look at me, giving me just a hint of her beguiling smile. “I’ve got clients,” she said.

  Of late, Nippima has begun to neglect her calling, taking it into her head to attempt a side business of her own, serving as a tour guide for the Earthlings. She hangs about the riverside resorts and cafés until she finds some gullible youth who will allow himself to be tied to her abdomen. Then she flies out over the river, into the jungle, down the vast purple gorge, until she and her passenger are both quite breathless. These “clients” pay Nippima with scraps of foil; they buy her a cheap meal and some nectar back at the resort. She talks about all this very seriously, as if she were the planet’s great business tycoon, burrowing away large piles of foil for future investments. But I see that it is all a pretext for consorting with males. I suspect Nippima already has some particular friend she hasn’t told me about—isn’t it inevitable? Yet no prospect worries me more profoundly.

  “I would appreciate your assistance today, Nippima. Poor Eth died this morning, struck by a craft. Do you recall: her son Orlip was behind you in academy?”

  She paused near the portal, remembering.

  “Orlip always used to admire you. You tutored him in English and he invited you to his molting ceremony, but you didn’t attend. You remember, right?”

  She flipped one of her feelers up to indicate, Yes. Of course, yes.

  “You might also recall, then, that the poor boy’s mother was enormous. My back has been giving me trouble, and you are much stronger than I am. Not to mention that the corpse is terrifically mangled; your skills may be required.”

  She seemed to shudder and look away from me, feelers folded, eyes vibrating with disgust. Then she picked up her strapped sunglasses from the floor and slid them into the pocket of her absurd, Earth-style miniskirt, cut wide for her bottom six legs. She was wearing colored anklets above her feet; her right feeler was constricted by a tight, ornamental ring.

  “Sorry, Ka. I said I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. What are you going to do, wasting your time at the resorts?”

  She shrugged her feelers again and began walking away.

  “You lazy being. Stay!” I wrapped my feeler around one of her legs, my frustration getting the better of me, but she easily pulled free of my grip.

  “Jesus, Ka!”

  Jesus?

  Then she stepped out of the portal, kicking it closed behind her with a snap. I heard her wings flapping as she floated off into the green.

  • • •

  I have taken a long time to learn to be a parent to Nippima, and I fear that she has not had the easiest time under my care. When she was young I spoiled her, and now I struggle to find the balance between softness and sternness. We beings don’t like to differentiate between male and female parents, but I sometimes wish for Nippima that my mate had lived, for she might have understood our child in ways that are foreclosed to me. But fate has taken its own route, and we must do our best with what we are given.

  Late that afternoon, Eth’s child Orlip called on me to discuss arrangements. After squeezing his huge body through my portal, he clasped my feelers and awkwardly bowed.

  I have found that some family members treat me with exaggerated respect in times of grief, as if I were a healer or a priest—and perhaps in a manner I am a little of both. I am in any case intimate witness to their last act of care for the loved one, and so they may feel compelled to convince me of their sorrow and rectitude.

  “I am so sorry, Orlip. It was an unfortunate accident.”

  Orlip unburdened his body to the floor and nodded abjectly, his proboscis dripping saline. I outlined to him his options for the arrangements. When he asked me, I explained the costs. When he heard the figures, he didn’t flinch or question me, but instead simply seemed to stop breathing for a moment, his feelers drooping to the ground.

  “I know it seems a lot, Orlip. But unfortunately, in this case a great deal of work will be required if the display is to be a dignified one.” Orlip dabbed his saline from the floor with a feeler, then twined the feeler snugly around the end of his proboscis to stem the flow—a child’s gesture in a grown being’s body. I saw in his anxious countenance that he would like to pay, but was frightened of the expense.

  Orlip works at the Heavenly Paradise, as his parent had. He, too, is a janitor there. It is hard work; I wonder if this is what Eth had hoped for her children when she brought them all those years ago from the jungle’s interior, as my parent once did. In the interior, life also would have been hard, but Orlip at least would have had elders nearby. They would have advised him in such tasks as arranging this funeral, calling on a preparer like myself only for the final touches. Those days are f
ar in the past, for better or for worse, and Orlip is on his own, with only siblings to help him.

  After we finished our discussion, I guided the youth to the portal and unsnapped it. As he made his way out and lofted his broad body into the air, I saw Nippima’s tall form approaching just below the tree line, returning from her day’s activities. The two young beings stopped in midair and hovered near to each other. I could not hear the words that passed between them, these childhood friends grown distant. Nippima has long stopped spending time with her classmates from academy, hardworking, sincere beings like Orlip. She is a willful creature, nothing like I was at her age. These days, Earthlings are the ones who seem to catch her eye.

  After a brief moment, Orlip flapped slowly away, naked to the world. And Nippima, my child, alighted near the portal, shaking the dust and pollen from her wings.

  “Did you offer your condolences to poor Orlip?” I asked.

  Nippima looked at me with a hard glitter in her eyes—to indicate how stupidly condescending my question was? Or to show how little she thought of condolences, how poorly she rated the gravity of a young being’s losing a parent?

  My suspicions regarding Nippima were confirmed, indeed, the very next day. I had flown my craft into town to transact for ice. More and more, I rely on my craft for such small errands. My wings are not what they used to be, or perhaps I have simply grown lazy in late middle age, unwilling to endure the heat of the suns.

  When I first moved here, the commercial center consisted of just a few treetop stalls along the river bend, but the Earthlings relocated these businesses to a cleared area along an inlet, now congested with translucent pods in which are hawked every variety of goods. The pods are thronged with Earthlings during high tourist season. The riverbank, meanwhile, has been reserved for a growing number of resorts, some dug into the soil in grand imitation of our own burrows, others rising up in undulating waves of latticework steel. Meanwhile, farther downstream, away from this picturesque bend in the river, the Earthlings have installed their mineral extraction operations.