Elephant Winter

by Kim Echlin

  “Why is he mute?”

  “Don’t know. I heard he was born that way. He’s not completely mute.”

  “Then why does he use that board?”

  “Don’t know . . . maybe he doesn’t like the sound of his own voice.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He does research on elephants—anatomy. His name’s Rikes. You showed me some of his articles.”

  “F.A. Rikes?”

  I’d read his autopsy reports. He was an eccentric scholar without affiliations. His reports came out of zoos and safaris abroad. About thirty years ago he’d travelled through Kenya on a killing spree, shooting elephants and doing autopsies on the spot, hunting in a way that would now be impossible. His observations were impeccable and many other scientists drew on the detailed physiology he recorded on that trip. Two decades later, he moved to North America where he did several bizarre experiments. He built a “breathing chamber” with a hose for an elephant to stick its trunk in to measure air volume displacement and learned about breath rate and oxygen transfer. He wrote about the sensory points on the skin of an elephant. In that article he published a map of the elephant’s pain centres, marking specific points around the eyes, under the belly, around the shoulders, on the tops of the feet, at the tip of the sensitive trunk. He noted that the research was developed out of the traditional teachings of Indian mahouts. His most recent work was a design for elephant quarters that would eliminate the keeper, a system of hydraulic doors between zoo yards and the barn through which the elephant is enticed with food. He argued that handling elephants is dangerous and that eliminating all human contact is both cheaper and safer in small zoos.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew him.”

  “Didn’t think it mattered. I know most of them one way or another. He’s a university man, he doesn’t have time for people like me,” Jo said contemptuously. “What do I know, I just like being with them. Look, I’m more worried about Lear right now.”

  I watched as Jo tried to feed Lear and give him something to drink. I stroked the elephant’s ears.

  “Dr. Yu must have told you something we could do, Jo. What did you talk about?”

  Jo clamped his jaw down. “He told me the common problems—infections, heart—but nothing we can fix. There was nothing except a strange folk cure from Burma.”

  “What was it?”

  “We’re not in goddamn Burma.”

  I knew how little Jo would be moved by my words, so I waited in fierce silence until he finally relented. “He said the old elephant men got temple candles, one for every year of the elephant’s life, and placed them all around the elephant and burned them until the elephant stood up.”

  “Let’s try it.”

  “Sophie, I’m just trying to figure out a way of getting him out of the barn when he dies. How do you move a dead elephant? What will we do with the others? I’ve never lost one before.”

  “Jo, try, I’ll get the candles.”

  He stopped then because we’d been speaking different languages and he’d finally heard me.

  “Do what you want. You will anyway,” he grumbled. But I was already on my way out the door and across the field.

  When I got to my mother’s, Alecto was sitting in my big chair by her bed, talking to her with his blue board. My mother was laughing and she fell silent when I came in. Moore sat on her left shoulder and Alecto was tossing the two Grays sunflower seeds. They flapped playfully in a dry hill of seed husks littered over the carpet at his feet.

  Alecto smiled at me, nodded and lifted his fingers in a facsimile of a wave.

  “Your friend Dr. Rikes has been keeping me company,” said my mother. “Did you know he used to train birds?”

  “Have you met before?”

  “No,” said my mother.

  “Yes,” nodded Alecto.

  “Well that clears that up.”

  “I know the genus and species if not the individual,” she laughed. Her colour was better than it had been for weeks.

  Alecto’s head flicked back on his shoulders in an exaggerated way with his mouth open in a soundless laugh, like a black mamba snapped up straight, its jaws parted.

  “Sunflower seeds aren’t good for them,” I said, sounding prim even to myself.

  He tossed down another one.

  I caught my mother’s eye and said, “Can I get you a tea?”

  It was a joke we’d used for years to get rid of visitors who stayed too long—she’d started it with me when I was a teenager and my friends wouldn’t leave. But she just smiled and shook her head and said, “That’s fine, Soph. We’re fine. I’ll let Dr. Rikes here know when I’m tired.”

  He held up his board to her and then tipped it toward me. “May I have the pleasure of your company for dinner? I do very good order-in.”

  “Excellent idea,” said my mother as I read. “How about Chinese? I haven’t had it in ages.”

  He wrote at the bottom of his board to me, “You too?”

  “No thanks.” I really wanted to stay. This was the way my mother’s house used to feel, full of odd people and ideas, things to discuss and dissect, jokes and people cooking. “I have to go back to the barn. Lear’s still not up. Are there any candles? I need lots.”

  “In the junk drawer.”

  Alecto looked curiously at me and scribbled, “What for?”

  “It’s just an idea. There’s a phone in the hall when you want to order.”

  He wrote, “I’ll telepath them. First a consult with Eva is necessary!”

  My mother laughed. “I can call. I’m partial to moo shu, how about you?”

  It would have been so much more amusing to stay. I kissed my mother but she was already turned toward Alecto. He brushed my hand with his and let it stay there as he showed me a list of his favourite Chinese dishes.

  When I left the room my mother was up and leading him to the piano. She still played the odd jazz standard though her hands were too stiff for her beloved Beethoven.

  “Come now,” she said. “What key is that harmonica in? Let’s see what you can do.”

  I listened to them picking their way into “Autumn Leaves” as I fed the birds in the aviary, changed their water and dug through the drawer for my candles. Alecto could improvise, a talent both my mother and I admired. She was singing and changing the tempo on him. I left through the back door reluctantly, matches and candles in a plastic bag, a roll of tinfoil tucked under my arm.

  Jo was still sitting by Lear’s head when I slipped into the barn. There were dark blue circles under his eyes and two deep creases across his forehead. He’d slept fitfully all week, rising every few hours to check Lear. He was taking the others out to the yard but not on walks. He’d brought a coffee pot from his trailer to the barn and ate nothing but sandwiches. I quickly shaped nineteen candleholders from squares of foil and placed them in a large circle around the elephant. As I lit the candles, Jo said, “Don’t burn the place down.”

  We sat together, caressing Lear’s head and waiting. I had had no sickness with my pregnancy but from the beginning I was exhausted all the time. I fell asleep leaning on Jo and when I woke up the candles were burned down about half way. I opened my eyes and remembered where I was, smelling Jo and the barn, and I said, “Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Maybe they had herbs, or they rang bells, or sang . . . we have no idea. Can you feel his breathing? It’s so laboured.”

  “Their lungs depend on the muscles surrounding them to force the air in and out. Lying on his side like this is making his problem worse.”

  I knew. Jo kept repeating that over and over. No elephant had ever died in his care. Lear’s breath was shallow and his body lay slack. His eyes had lost their panicked look and the lids drooped down. It seemed to me absurd that we hadn’t even taken his temperature. He had the lethargy of a fever. But Jo refused. “Why poke around when there’s no treatment if he does have a fever,” he said.

  “Jo, do you think he’s
really nineteen?”

  “That’s what it says on his papers . . . I suppose he’d be twenty-one if you counted in gestation.”

  “I want to try twenty-one.”

  Jo’s face softened then, but he shook his head. “Sophie, I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m falling over. I’m afraid we’re going to lose him. Don’t leave the candles lit if you think you might fall asleep. Come and get me and I’ll take over. Who’s taking care of your mother?”

  “Alecto was over there when I left. She’s been a little better these past few days. She’s up and down.”

  “Better watch him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She seems to like him. He’s very sociable.”

  “I bet.”

  “Jo, what’s he doing here?”

  “He wants to do research. They’ve known him here a long time. He was the one who got them to bring me here.”

  Before I could ask what kind of research, Jo walked across the barn, dropped onto his cot and slept immediately, like a pebble dropped into a pond.

  Alone, I arranged the second set of candles around Lear. I knew no Buddhist scripture and no ceremony and I didn’t know what I believed about such things, but I whispered as I lit each candle, “Please, God.”

  Gertrude was the only elephant in the barn still standing. In the final stillness of the night, she let her head drop and dozed. Afraid to sleep, I stood up and swayed a little. I looked across the stalls at Jo, the moonlight falling through the slats on his face, a man who had chosen to make his home among elephants, to sleep with them, to wake to their morning greeting. His long hair was tousled across his forehead and the worried lines on his forehead slackened in repose. He was the father of my baby. How strange to be here with this stranger in a barn. He was a man who slept on straw, who did not talk much. He knew about elephants, he walked with them and trained them and learned their ways. He tried to fulfil his purpose. In the silence of that barn where everything slept, I looked over at Jo sleeping, Jo whose hands had touched me, Jo who was teaching me to take care of elephants on snow-swept fields, Jo, who tonight had given up hope.

  When the candles were half burned down, Lear began to stir. I was standing, leaning on the stall wall, my head dropped and dozing. I snapped awake as Lear raised his head and neck heavily and rumbled out loud, hrhrhrhrhrhrhr. He rolled up stiffly from his back hip and shoulder and heaved his great bulk forward for the first time in five days. I was calling to Jo but he was already on his way over. He stepped inside Lear’s circle of light and reached his hands out as if to support the elephant, caressing him, welcoming him back, talking, half laughing, disbelieving. I moved back and laughed with relief and watched Jo and Lear greeting each other. The elephant weakly put his trunk around Jo’s waist and Jo was already massaging the side Lear had been lying on for so many days. Jo put his forehead to the elephant’s trunk and held it there as if he were hugging a small child. Lear’s eyes were still heavy with fatigue but an alertness had crept back into his pupils, which reflected the candlelight. I gazed at them and then I stooped down and made my way around them in a circle, extinguishing the fire, picking up the candles, silently thanking the flame beads for each year of life and for those old elephant men who knew a thing or two.

  We never talked about the cure. Jo didn’t want to admit that it might have worked. In fact, he never liked to admit that any of his elephants fell ill. He preferred to believe they were all immortal, and so was he. The next morning I saw him through my mother’s kitchen window walking Lear in the yard outside. When I came back in the early afternoon he was hand-feeding him with warmed grain and water.

  Before I could say a word Jo said, “Think you could take Kezia and Gertrude out back by yourself today? I’m going to put Saba and Alice in the yard, and Lear in the big stall. I want to give Lear’s stall a good going over.”

  The day was crisp and bright, the temperatures around freezing. The elephants floated light as milkweed seeds in the sunshine, frisky in the warmth. Jo saw us off.

  “Be sure you keep them moving slowly. Walk at Kezia’s shoulder. Let her know you’re the boss.”

  We followed the elephant path into the back maples. I’d never been alone outside the yard with them. With Jo we usually kept walking, moving around their sides while they explored the tree branches or the edges of the fencing. Sometimes we sat down together. I wondered if I dared stop walking, if they’d come to me if I left my place at Kezia’s shoulder. We walked past my mother’s dark back windows and I waved in case she was looking. And as we moved on, I saw an oak stump big enough to sit inside, smoothed out by animals and wind and water. Its enormous roots spread along the surface of the snow and dipped down under the earth, where they still lived somehow. Weary, I slipped inside.

  We were in a small gully, out of the wind, and the sun reflected off the sides of the exposed rocks. I watched the elephants use their trunks to dig around the bottoms of the trees, contented to stop. We all basked in the sun and, drowsing, I thought about my baby. I talked to her aloud and inside my head, too. I told her I was waiting for her and that I loved her already. I told her to hurry up and grow and let me hold her. I told her that I didn’t know where we were going or how things would be. I told her I hoped she’d like elephants and carved saints and the smell of strange spices and sitting near campfires at night. I wrapped my barn sweater close around me, smelling of straw and elephants, and curled up in my stump, my body warm and my face cool. As I grew rounder with this baby, I felt all my joints begin to loosen. I felt as if I were talking to this new life all the time, even when I was talking to others. I thought briefly about working the elephants, working myself, keeping us all moving. But I didn’t. I watched them dawdling along the fences, using their trunks to move around chunks of ice. Others could do the work today, cleaning barns and dying. Today I had a baby to grow. I dozed and felt the cold on the end of my nose and the warmth in my body where something was beginning, and I thought about seeing an elephant rise and dance with a man in Buddha’s light.

  KYRIE, ELEISON

  (Lord, have mercy)

  By the end of February we were having difficulty controlling my mother’s pain. We came home from our visits to the hospital and I raged against the doctors. My mother’s treatments made her ill. But after the doctors recited the side-effects they didn’t want to see her any more.

  They had asked her to wait for her treatment on a stretcher in a hallway because all the other rooms were busy. I watched people in street clothes and hospital uniforms hurry by without seeing her as she lay, bald head poking out, bony frame covered with a cotton sheet, another fallen leaf. I watched for two hours, wandering back and forth with magazines she couldn’t read. I dragged around her coat and a plastic bag with her boots and her big purse and finally I stuffed them under her stretcher. An orderly hurried over briskly and asked me to move them. Our nights were wakeful now and I was always tired. I turned my back to this officious man and the stretcher in exhaustion and I shouted at the desk with its high counter, “What the hell is going on here? I want a room!”

  My mother pressed her sheet against her chest, sat straight up and snapped loudly at me, “That’s enough, Sophie. They treat us. They don’t teach us to die. You look like a bag lady with all that stuff, go sit down! I’m fine.”

  There she sat, her back naked, high up on the stretcher, eyes imperious as a spoiled three-year-old’s. The minute she shouted “die” the hallway fell silent and people noticed her enough to turn away. A nurse stood up behind the desk and I dropped the boots while I juggled our coats and bags. Just as the nurse came beside us, my mother caught my eye and started to laugh as if it had all been a joke. Her eyes pleaded with me, “Please laugh too. Laugh with me and get me through this hell. We got our way. They’ll move us through now. Please laugh.”

  “I am going to be a bag lady if you keep throwing your clothes off in public,” I said lamely and laughed a little.

  �
�Let me help you with that,” said the nurse. “Let’s see, we should be able to get you in now Mrs. Walker . . .”

  That evening at home, I took out the phone book, looked up “home care” and I hired a nursing agency to send someone to sit with her when I wasn’t there in the afternoons. My mother was lying in bed, grey and weak with the sickness of the treatments.

  She heard me and called out, “Sophie, what are you doing? I won’t have strangers in this house!”

  “I need help!”

  “I hate strangers in the house. I won’t have fussing, pursey-lipped women in my bedroom.”

  “Well, tell them to stay in the kitchen then.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” she spat. “If you weren’t so busy with your elephant man you’d have more time around here.”

  But I couldn’t do this all alone. Alecto was the only one who came by. He had no fear of her baldness, of her yellowing skin and her changing moods, of her oxygen tank and needles. When she forgot things or struggled with details he nodded agreeably and didn’t try to correct her. He made her laugh. He wrote on his board to me when I thanked him for coming so often, “People often desert at the end. They’re afraid. I’m not. I’ve had experience.”

  He was a perfect visitor. He sat for an hour or so, wrote charming stories, bit by bit, filled in with his own pantomime and questions from my mother. He had refined tastes in music and when she was too tired to talk they sat together listening to recordings of the same piece performed by different artists. My mother loved this. Some days Alecto sat in the corner and played his harmonica. After one of his visits my mother said, “If your father had grown old he might have ended up like your Alecto. They’re amusing men to come and go but don’t ever marry one.”

  “How do you know him really?”

  “I don’t. At least I didn’t till he just walked through the door. I thought it was you.”