The Elephants in My Backyard

by Rajiv Surendra

  “The Martha?” I asked.

  “Yup, this is her place. Martha, this is our friend, Rajiv,” Kathy cooed.

  The following few days and nights played out like a seamless montage set to Mama Maybelle and the Carter Sisters’ vintage recording of “The Waves on the Sea.”

  Steven and Kathy’s place is the back of an old 1830s house in town, very eclectically decorated with cracking walls, tin ceilings, a wood-burning stove, and paneled shutters.

  Kathy shakes her head and looks disapprovingly at my penny loafers. I try on a pair of her boots, Ugg style. They fit perfectly. Kathy glows.

  Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin light up the big screen at a funky movie house in Bar Harbor where Kathy, Steven, and I are seated on a worn-out sofa, laughing as we chow down on a pizza.

  The full moon shines over the Atlantic as we drive along the coast.

  Kathy and I sing hymns at Catholic Mass. We roll our eyes as the priest drones on, and on, and on.

  Steven rummages through his files, and pulls out his original pencil drawings for his boat that sank in the Atlantic, beautifully rendered. I am blown away.

  Snow falls outside the red clapboard antique mall that Kathy takes me to. I spot a captivating old painting of a seascape, surrounded by a beautiful gilded frame. I pull out my credit card.

  A big feast is prepared by them—potato salad, corn on the cob, mussels, kale salad, asparagus with salmon, and huge local lobsters, the stars of the show. I have no idea how to take apart a lobster—but flanked by Steven and Kathy, I learn the ground rules. After dinner, we play darts (I win!). We cozy up by the fire with tea, coffee, and cookies. I look over at Steve and it hits me—life goes on. Life doesn’t stay the same. Ups and downs. Loud and quiet. There he is, sitting by the fire, having his coffee and smiling, when about thirty years ago he had been in the middle of the ocean, all alone.

  Steven drives me back to Jasper’s afterward, my last night in Maine.

  “You may find these interesting. A little bedtime reading,” he says, handing me a couple of booklets, and then wishes me good night as I step out of the car.

  I keep my sweater on and climb into bed, reading through a section from one of the small survival pamphlets which reminded me of the lifeboat manual that Yann describes in Life of Pi. The intro from the pamphlet I held ended with a paragraph titled “The Will to Survive”:

  The tools for survival are furnished by you—your survival equipment, your attitude and by the natural environment—but the tools and training are not enough; none is effective without the “will to survive.” The records prove that will alone has often been the only deciding factor in many survival case histories . . . they show that stubborn, strong willpower can conquer many obstacles.

  The next morning Steven and I walked along the red granite coast that looked out over the Atlantic. I wasn’t used to seeing it in the flesh—the ocean was something that always felt so far away from Toronto. The white-capped waves in the distance were rough, and the frigid winter air was filled with a refreshing briny, sulfury scent. Below us was a perfect example of nature’s astonishing color-coordinating ability; the contrast of the teal water wildly lapping up against the face of soft pink rockery.

  “We’re friends, right?” I asked Steven cheekily.

  “I guess you could say that, yeah. Kathy just loves you to bits, ” he admitted in his serious tone, shaking his head and turning to me. “Did you get everything you needed, though? Did I answer all the questions in your little notebook?”

  “Yeah, you answered all those questions. Thank you.” I hesitated before going on. “But, I had just one more—one that I thought of last night at Jasper’s. It may be asking too much, so if you’re not comfortable with answering, just tell me—”

  “To fuck off?” he teased, finishing my thought. “Yeah, don’t worry, I will.”

  “Well,” I started, “you faced death every day on that life raft. But . . .” my voice trailed off and I struggled to finish my question, but forced myself to continue, “ . . . do you ever think about the day you actually will die? How do you think you’ll face it?”

  The waves crashed onto the rockery below us, spraying up dramatically. I felt the mist on my cheeks and almost stepped away from its advances, unaccustomed to such personal interactions with the ocean.

  “In all the interviews I’ve done over the past thirty years,” Steven began, “I’ve been asked many of the same questions over and over.” He turned to me again and gave me a little smirk. “No one’s ever asked me that one.” He returned to staring straight ahead. “You know,” he continued, “you really are Pi.”

  My heart leaped.

  “I have thought about it,” he admitted, “and the truth is, I really don’t know. I’d like to think that when that time comes, I’ll be able to accept it gracefully, with dignity.”

  I looked up at him but he had his eyes down at the granite below his feet as we continued to make our way along the craggy outcrop. I turned my gaze out over the Atlantic—the sheer massiveness of endless water that wrapped itself around the entire globe never ceased to amaze me. These very waters had brought this man back home to safety, to Kathy . . . to me. I squinted, peering out to the horizon, as far as my eyes could see, the undulating water continuing until it met the bottom of the morning sky.

  Being lost at sea . . .

  Check.

  From: yann_martel1963@yahoo.com

  To: rajivsca@yahoo.ca

  Subject: Mr. Lee

  Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:48:05

  Hi Rajiv,

  Yann is in Peru for the next two weeks, trekking in the Andes, and he has no internet access at all. He’ll be back and attending to email after July 11th.

  Warmest wishes,

  Ali

  15.

  THE SHAPE OF MY BODY had changed in the years since I had begun swimming. My back and shoulders were growing larger and I was developing the V-shaped torso that was characteristic of a swimmer’s build. I still only weighed 118 pounds, which raised no concern about being too big to play Pi.

  I was stronger now than when I had initially set out on this quest, both physically and mentally, and it felt really good. I was once filled with the hope and excitement of someone else changing the fate of my life by making a decision to cast me in their movie, but now I took pride in knowing that I had worked hard to take my fate into my hands. Both body and mind seemed to be solidly ready for what seemed like it was just around the corner. My face was another story.

  The skin that covered my cheeks, jawline, and neck wasn’t the greatest. It was bumpy, inflamed, and darkened to an almost purple color—a problem I had been struggling with as a teenager. Aunts and uncles weren’t shy about pointing out the issue, repeatedly asking, “What happened to your cheeks?” year after year, always forgetting my curt response of, “It’s just a rash, the doctors don’t know how to fix it.” Numerous visits to various dermatologists had resulted in cortisone creams, regimens involving sunscreen, face masks, exfoliants, and even moisturizers containing horse urine, but although there were occasional signs of subtle relief, nothing eradicated the problem entirely.

  “Can you just please tell me what I can do to get rid of this completely, Dr. Curtis?” I asked my dermatologist in frustration one afternoon, wondering whether there was any way I could ever possess the smooth and blemish-free skin that would certainly contribute to helping me look like I was a healthy, fresh-faced sixteen-year-old.

  “Hmmmm . . .” the doctor pondered, squinting as she hunched over, inspecting my skin with her face about one inch away from my cheek. She took her index finger and ran it slowly down my cheek, applying quite a bit of pressure.

  Dr. Curtis’s office was on Bloor Street, in a high-end building in the heart of the city. Although her fashion choices were a bit bewildering (she had long, flowing brown hair down to her bum, and always wore billowing, floor-length, floral-patterned skirts with granny blouses), she came highly recommended by a photogr
apher who had once taken my headshots—a beautiful brunette who was a former model. I was ensured that this dermatologist was one of the best in the city, and if there was anyone who knew how to help me, it was she.

  Dr. Curtis stood upright, put her glasses back on, and took some notes on my medical chart. “The problem’s coming from the hair follicles,” she declared authoritatively. “Have you ever had a beard or mustache?”

  I admitted that I couldn’t really grow one. The hair would grow in patches randomly, but there was always the problem of ingrown hair that made the effort horribly itchy and irritating.

  She nodded rapidly, birdlike. “It’s a common condition known as keratosis pilaris. Can you take off your coat—I’d like to see the backs of your arms.”

  One of the classics courses I had taken at U of T was a language course, Latin and Greek in Scientific Terminology. The professor, a comical Einstein-like, sweater-vest-wearing linguist, proclaimed during that first class that we students might assume that these words would be forgotten once the course had ended, but he assured us that somehow these prefixes, suffixes, and Latin and Greek roots would miraculously etch themselves into our minds and would stay there, to be recalled randomly, for the rest of our lives.

  He was right. Dermatology was an example he had used in class—dermatos, Greek for “skin,” and logia—the Greek suffix for “the study of.” But now I was doing it on my own; keratosis, I thought, sifting through my mental file folder containing ancient vocabulary . . . keratin—Latin for “horn” or “cone-shaped,” osis, the suffix meaning “condition of” . . . and pilaris—pilos, Greek for “hair,” and aris . . . the Greek suffix for “pertaining to.” Hornlike condition pertaining to the hair. It made sense to me, just as Dr. Curtis began to explain further while examining the skin on the back of my arms as she lifted the sleeve of my white T-shirt. “See, it’s here, too, commonly on the back of the arms and legs—the hair’s trying to grow, but the skin is blocking it from breaking through the surface, causing it to become ingrown, and then irritating the surface further, resulting in these small, dark bumps.”

  “What can I do?” I asked with determination in my voice.

  “Well, not much, really. I can prescribe a cream that may lighten the skin a bit.”

  No, thank you. No more creams, I had decided. She didn’t seem too empathetic and even though I knew it wasn’t her job to pat my back and comfort me, it was somewhat upsetting that there might not be a solution to this issue that I had been dealing with for over a decade. I started putting my coat back on and was going to slip off the examining bed, when I reminded myself chidingly that I had waited for four months to get an appointment with this doctor and it was with the goal of leaving her office with a final solution to my problem. Speak up, I told myself, and make it happen.

  “The cream isn’t going to get rid of this entirely, is it?”

  “Probably not. It’ll lighten the appearance of the bumps, but they’ll still be there,” she said, looking down at her clipboard again, and writing quickly.

  “What exactly is the root of the problem here?” I asked, deciding to be a bit more forceful and play detective if she wasn’t going to offer more suggestions from her end.

  “It’s the hair—literally . . . the roots of the hair.”

  “What if the hair was gone, completely?” I asked.

  “Well, I think the skin would calm down if it didn’t have to deal with the hair follicles.”

  “Is that an option?” I asked, pointing to a poster on the wall behind the doctor—an advertisement with a woman sensually caressing her bare legs.

  “Laser hair removal?” She continued scribbling and nodded her head. “Yeah. I think that would get rid of the problem, but you know the hair would be gone forever,” she said, looking up from her clipboard and making eye contact. “You’d never be able to grow a beard or mustache again.”

  “I can’t grow one as it is,” I responded. “Are there any risks?” I asked.

  “No side effects, but the skin can be burned if it’s not done properly. Our nurses are experts, though, so if you want to do it, I’ll make sure that you’re in good hands.”

  I sensed that her concern was more an issue of playing with my manhood than anything else. She seemed to want to make sure I understood that there was no turning back. Once the hair was gone, it was gone for good. I did pause and ask myself if this was going too far. Was I crazy? Was this going overboard, for the sake of this potential movie role? No. No, it was not. My skin would hopefully forever remain more healthy than it was now, so regardless of whether I landed the Pi role or not, this was a valuable investment.

  I almost backed out of it when I saw the price list for laser hair removal. Back, shoulders, legs, arms, bikini, chest, and then . . . ah, there it was, face—$600 per session. And Dr. Curtis had mentioned that I’d require a total of four to six sessions before the hair would be completely gone.

  A couple of weeks later, my nerves were in full panic mode as I tried to put on the space-age-looking metal goggles that the nurse handed me. I lay down on the examining table in the treatment room and she placed two pieces of cotton gauze over my eyes before helping me pull down the goggles, which were like titanium swimming goggles. With my eyes closed and protected, Lori called out, “Okay, ready?”

  “Yup,” I lied.

  I heard a tap, which I assumed was her pressing a button on the touch screen of the large machine that the wand of the laser was attached to and then I heard a chime from the machine, indicating it was ready for shooting—it reminded me of the one-up sound from a video game.

  “I’m going to press some ice to your face first, and then I’ll start the lasering,” Lori explained.

  The ice was uncomfortably cold—I could feel the skin on my face going numb before my jawbone started hurting from the towel-covered icepack pressing onto it—and I wanted so badly to pull away, but I took deep breaths and focused on accepting the situation, instead of trying to fight it. And then the lasering began. With every shot of the laser I heard a tiny blip, blip, blip, blip, simultaneous with a sizzling sound that intensified the searing pain on my face. Ow, ow, ow, my mind would echo. This is pain, I told myself, and you have to endure it. I could feel the roots of the hair under the skin literally frying and then I smelled that horrible smell of burnt hair, as if it had caught fire. More ice and freezing pain. Blip, blip, blip, sizzle, and the stench. There were numerous moments during the session where I had to fight really hard to not shout out and ask her to take a break from the infliction of this torture I was subjecting myself to . . . paying for, in fact.

  An hour later, I removed my goggles and stretched my eyes, my vision blurry for a few seconds, before everything came into focus. My face felt swollen and sunburned.

  “You did really well!” Lori said reassuringly. “I’ve had big, burly body builders run out of here crying that it was too painful for them . . .”

  Whether she was exaggerating or not, it was comforting to hear.

  “Your skin is going to blister over the next few days. Don’t scrub or rub it with anything, especially in the shower. The scabs will fall off on their own and then the hair will start coming out—it’ll seem as though it’s growing, but just leave it alone—it’s the remaining root under the surface of the skin, and it’ll push itself to the surface and fall out naturally in about two weeks. And then it’ll slowly grow back, finer, in patches. So you’ll keep coming back until it stops growing entirely.”

  It ended up taking more than six sessions. It took about ten, in total. Lori and I became fast friends. We would talk as she fired away at my skin—she would tell me about the goings-on in her life, and I would usually update her on my Pi progress. By round three, she was up to date on the story thus far. She was forty, but looked like she was twenty, and when I asked, she shared her opinions about cosmetic procedures—administering them, but even more fascinating to me, going under the knife herself. She’d had a nose job and a boob job. I a
sked her if I could feel for myself (her nose, her nose, okay? . . .) and she obliged without hesitating. I wiggled around the tip of her nose and felt through the skin, guessing and correctly identifying the portion of cartilage that the plastic surgeon had scraped down. I was in awe of her line of work—injecting Botox and Restylane, in addition to laser hair removal. I once asked what her worst body part to laser was—back? I wondered. No, probably armpits. As she zapped my face, she responded without even thinking, “Anus and testicles.”

  Just as Lori said it would, my skin scabbed up after every session, noticeably visible early on, but lessening in its intensity with every subsequent session of lasering. Then I’d go through the phase of feeling somewhat reptilian as my face shed the scabs and hair roots to reveal healthy, smooth, and blemish-free skin underneath.

  I kept my procedure a secret, but it was tricky hiding my scarred face. After one particularly intense session early on, I had scabs all over my cheeks and neck as my sisters and I helped Ma plant the flowerbeds of our new house with perennials. The morning sun was shining on my face as I pushed a wheelbarrow full of compost over to my older sister. Dad used to do all the gardening at the old house—and while he mowed the lawn or pruned the hedges, he always had a glass of whiskey on the go, tucked behind some foliage.

  “What the hell is wrong with your face?” my sister asked, squinting up at me with a small lavender plant in her hand.

  “Oh, it’s just my rash,” I fibbed, “it flares up when I’m hot.”

  The procedure worked. Keratosis no-more-is. I got rid of it, entirely. It was a subtle transformation, but it helped me feel good about looking in the mirror, and truly believing that I was one step closer to playing Pi.

  Ang Lee was now attached to Life of Pi, and I had a strange feeling that it was going to happen this time. When, exactly, I had no idea.

  I focused on Ang Lee and worked on becoming familiar with his style and what he sought from actors. I ordered DVDs of all of his films and watched them with Ma and my sisters while we ate our dinner. His early Chinese films weren’t as elaborate or polished as the movies that later had studio backing, but the stories were solid and entertaining.