Elephant Winter

by Kim Echlin

  I could barely hear but the words lodged inside anyway. Outside she stood a moment looking at the sky and pointed to Cassiopeia and Sirius as she always did. We started back toward the lights of the house and she complained about the cold and the deep snow and chanted with frozen lips, “Men moil and toil for midnight gold . . . I can’t goddamn breathe!”

  “Well, stop talking then!”

  We laboured across the back, the wind cutting through us, fresh, heavy snow drifted across the kitchen door. She laughed at me as I jerked it open and said, “Don’t let Moore out!”

  I certainly hoped Moore wasn’t lurking around ready to escape because then, on top of everything else, I’d be running through a snowstorm in the dark searching for an insolent, freezing budgie. When you watch someone dying, you get into the habit of stepping outside yourself. You laugh at yourself doing absurd daily things, heave in the fresh outside air when you can. But by the sick-bed you slow down and listen carefully and try to make the little things comfortable. You even enjoy the routines, because you can’t bear too much of the other.

  When Jo wasn’t there, Alecto appeared in the barn and sometimes did the mucking out for me while I sat on a bale of hay, leaned back and put up my feet. I drifted, tired, through days that seemed endless and weeks that disappeared like snowflakes on the palm of my hand. I slept lightly, listening for my mother. The adamantine chains of night pain rattled in the early mornings as the morphine wore off and she’d cry out in her sleep, please do something, and wake up. We nursed mugs of tea together waiting for that moment between night and dawn. Only then she’d say, weak and exhausted, “All right now, Soph, I’ll take my pill and then let’s get a few more hours,” as if I were sick too. With the first streaks of winter sun I fell back into my bed separated by a wall from her and slept the greedy sleep of pregnancy until ten, when it was time to get up and feed the Grays and sit with my mother and get ready for the afternoon nurse and go to the Safari.

  Jo was renting three of the elephants to a Russian circus that performed through southern Ontario and upper New York State for seven weeks. He was back and forth with Lear and Gertrude. He’d given over some of the daily care of the others to me, watching Kezia and training Saba, who he hoped to bring along with Alice to the later shows. I still hadn’t told him I was pregnant although I suppose if he’d wanted to notice he would have. When he was home he came and found me every afternoon. We climbed up into the loft together and made love and lay talking.

  “I don’t like Kezia being out too long in the cold.”

  “Don’t worry, Jo. I won’t keep her out long.”

  “Make sure you work Saba at least once in the day, and that she listens. This is a point where she still thinks she can get away with not listening.”

  “All right.”

  “Remember the enriched grain mix for Kezia.”

  “I can manage.” I pressed against him and smelled his breath.

  “I don’t like Alecto in the barn so much.”

  “You’re jealous!” I laughed and leaned up on one elbow in surprise. His body stiffened and he pulled back angrily.

  “You don’t see. He seems to do nothing. But stirring things up pleases him. I’ve seen it.”

  “C’mon, Jo.”

  “Did he tell you he got tossed by a big male? Did he tell you that? He has no feel for elephants. He broke three ribs and his wrist and if he hadn’t rolled, he would have got stamped on. He shouldn’t be around them. He’s arrogant and afraid and they know it. I don’t like the feeling in the barn when he’s here.”

  “But why does he keep working with them, then?”

  “His nature. He wants and wants, never mind the doing or suffering. He gets others to do the handling and applauds them and makes them feel smart.” Jo took my hand. “You have to be humble to be with an elephant. Alecto doesn’t have it in him. He likes the idea of the elephants more than the humility it takes to be among them.”

  “That’s why so much of his work is from autopsies?”

  “He’s always done that, from the days of his killing sprees in Africa. He showed me his diaries. They’d kill and dissect a few a week. He tells about watching one die slowly while he drinks a cup of tea. He notes in that false professor way of his that it seemed to be crying real tears. He should get out of the business. The elephants sense his fear. They’ll kill him some day, and I don’t want it to be in my barn.”

  I listened and then I told Jo I’d do everything as if he were there. I didn’t believe him. I thought he was being too dramatic. I liked my jealousy theory better.

  During our barn chores, Alecto taught me about elephant physiology. He showed me sketches of the development of Kezia’s fetus. He made diagrams of how their lungs and respiratory systems worked, their digestive systems, their circulation, and how they cooled themselves with their great flapping ears. He showed me how an elephant hears, and made up a theory about the physiology of their infrasound. One day I showed him what I had recorded of their language and played him some samples. He looked at my notes and listened to my tapes with covetous interest. He asked me to replay things and compared my transcriptions with the sounds. Finally he looked up and wrote, “I’m envious!”

  “Why?” I said, flattered.

  “I didn’t know how much language they have.”

  “You don’t spend enough time around them,” I teased.

  He shrugged. Then he wrote, “Have you ever heard an elephant laugh?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes they look as if they’re laughing.”

  “But is there an articulation?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know where their tickle spot is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A tickle spot, on the belly, close to the mammaries.” He erased and wrote upside down, “Get your recorder. Let’s see if they laugh.”

  Intrigued, I went to Jo’s corner, pulled out the recorder and the boom mike. I put it together and took it into the stall area and said to Alecto, “You tickle and I’ll record.”

  Alecto shook his head and gestured that he’d hold the mike.

  “It’s only Alice and Saba,” I said, as Saba fiddled with the tape-recorder. “Saba, back.”

  Alecto held up his board for me to read. “Run your ankus very lightly back and forth over the belly here.” He made a sketch and marked a point just behind her front foreleg.

  “All right, hold the boom as close to her forehead as you can,” I said, handing it to him across the stall wall.

  Lightly I ran my ankus over the spot Alecto had shown me. Alice shifted aside and dropped her trunk to brush it away. I asked her to stand and I kept close to her and tickled her again. I couldn’t hear anything, but her physical reaction to the touch was again to move away. I asked her to stand again and she did. I heard the door open and turned to see Jo coming in from the transport trailers.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Neither of us answered. Jo walked over to Alecto, took the boom from him and ripped down the mike. He switched off the recorder and snarled, “Get out of here.”

  Alecto looked at me, shrugged as if to say, What’s gotten into him? He put on his jacket and left.

  I went over to Jo and said, “We were only trying to record what sounds she’d make if I touched her tickle spot.”

  “Tickle spot!”

  “Alecto showed me.”

  “You believe everything he says? And what the hell were you using your ankus for?”

  “Well is there one?”

  “Why do you think they like to roll around on the tires?”

  I stayed silent. Jo drew himself up straight, the way he did when he was working on a difficult training move, and said, “Sophie, you can only record their normal behaviour. Nothing else.”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “My barn. My elephants.”

  “Why do you hate Alecto so much?”

  “You used the stand
command on Alice to force her into something there was no reason to be doing. She can’t comprehend that. It’s like lying to her. I don’t want you doing things like that. I don’t want any accidents in here and I don’t want you getting hurt. If Alecto has to be in here, I want you to keep him away from them.”

  “He never goes near them if he can help it.”

  “He tries to do it through you.”

  I did play back the recording of Alice’s laugh. It was a variation of the sound she made sometimes when she shimmied a tire into place to roll on. At first there was a little sigh of pleasure, but as I’d continued to touch her and ask her to stand for me there was a strained rumble and a sharp intake of breath and another uncomfortable rumble, the way a child held and tickled begins giggling and ends crying and pleading to be let go.

  ELEPHANT-ENGLISH DICTIONARY PART TWO

  Empathics

  Empathics are a continuous thread running through Elephant; the term refers to what in human discourse we identify as human emotion: happiness, grief, anger, joy, contentment, melancholy.

  Whereas the Platonic tradition elevates reason over the emotions, the Elephant world-view is closer to Wittgenstein’s, with an emphasis on the correlation between reality and language. Possessing a language expands the intellect and extends the will. Thought alone cannot breathe life into the signs of language, what can is the use of these signs in the stream of life.

  A Note on Rhythm

  The wonderfully lyric composition of everyday Elephant is characterized by creative play with rhythm. I suspect that my Safari elephants, taking advantage of their extensive leisure time, have amused themselves by developing a repertoire of complex metrics. Mature elephants breathe about twelve times per minute when not speaking. This is a rate similar to humans and so I have not hesitated to borrow the formal rhythms of English, which were originally borrowed from Latin, and entrenched in the language with the translation of the Book of Common Prayer. H.W. Fowler in his Modern English Usage writes that a passage is rhythmical when “it falls naturally into groups of words each well fitted by its length & intonation for its place in the whole & its relation to its neighbours.” By this definition, most of Elephant is rhythmical.

  I suspect that rhythm and the frequent recurrence of the empathics are the two main organizing principles of the Elephant language, and the backbone of Elephant grammar.

  Most common feet in Elephant prosody

  Anapest

  (short —short — long)

  Dactyl

  (long-short-short)

  lamb

  (short — long)

  Proceleusmatic

  (short — short — short — short)

  Spondee

  (long— long)

  Tribrach

  (short — short — short)

  Trochee

  (long — short)

  There are certain features of rhythm that transcend linguistic differences, and I would venture that repetition is one of them. Repetition in any language creates rhythm and the same is true for Elephant, which uses a good deal of repetition. Again I refer the reader to Fowler and the following passage which he chooses as a masterpiece of rhythm:

  And the king was much moved, & went up to the chamber over the gate & wept: & as he went, thus he said: O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!

  ^oooor: (13 Hz.) A chant to keep the spirits up, a song of general optimism.

  One of the greatest differences between Elephant culture and human culture is Elephant’s understanding that happiness is possible when each elephant in a group seeks to achieve not only her own individual purpose but also the purpose of the group. The two happinesses are as deeply and inextricably intertwined as language and thought.

  I first heard an instance of this chant when Alice had a contagious parasite and I moved her to a barn on the other side of the Safari. As I chained and closed the door, she called out woefully. But when I came back a few hours later, she was chanting ^oooor and industriously pulling clover out of the bales I’d left within her long reach. There seems to be a powerful impulse in Elephant to simply get on with things. Alice’s chant was a variety of “away, melancholy” or “I will praise with my whole heart and show forth all marvelous works.”

  una una na na na: (15 Hz.) An expression of fatigue, usually at the end of a day of duty work.

  I have often heard Gertrude, Alice and Kezia chanting this on the way back to the barns after giving children their elephant rides. It is an expression that seeks meaning in the most mundane, rejects the distractions of mortality and is firmly rooted in the present. I think of Stevie Smith’s “Mother, Among the Dustbins.”

  Mother, among the dustbins and the manure

  I feel the measure of my humanity, an allure

  As of the presence of God. I am sure

  In the dustbins, in the manure, in the cat at play

  Is the presence of God, in a sure way

  He moves there. Mother, what do you say?

  *ooo~erh^: (22 Hz.) A support song, encouraging another (or oneself) in any difficult task.

  When one of our elephants was very young she slipped down the muddy banks of the pond and into the freezing water in early spring. Three females immediately started to help rescue her, tugging and pushing and finally placing large stones under her front feet to help her get some traction. As they grunted, they rumbled this song, each of them urging the others on.

  nrrrarrr: (20-30 Hz.) Low, repeating, forlorn keening after a death.

  This is chanted with a group. The nearest human equivalent would be holding one’s body, rocking, weeping, wailing or keening, depending on the culture one comes from. (See also *onrrrarrr.)

  *onrrrarrr: (20-30 Hz.) Mourning.

  This chant is uttered by one elephant and is commonly combined with a group response (see nrrrarrr). Communal mourning is very important to Elephant harmony, and this rumble functions as a responsive chant, as when a minister says, May peace be with you and the congregation answers, And also with you.

  onr: (35+ Hz.) Comfort.

  This utterance is different from *onrrrarrr because it is uttered audibly. It was one of the first empathics I discovered. Kezia chanted it to me when I was feeling defeated by my mother’s illness. It may be an utterance she created for me; I have never heard her use it with other elephants. I include it because it shows Kezia reaching out to a different species. She accompanied the utterance with a caress of her trunk.

  When the early Christians called the elephant the “Bearer of all Infirmities” they may have been describing this creative ability to communicate in comforting ways that even humans can understand.

  *ma^ohmn: (35+ Hz.) A dream word.

  When I was most preoccupied with the final compiling and writing of this dictionary, I dreamed frequently of Elephant, both audible and inaudible. One night I dreamed this word, *ma^ohmn. In the dream Kezia was standing in the water of a northern lake, paunsing, inviting me to ride inside her. At the risk of offending the logically minded, although I have not been able to find this utterance on any of my tapes I include it here, because, as Blake suggests, the physical senses are only one part of perception.

  The Eye of Man a little narrow orb closd up & dark

  Scarcely beholding the great light conversing with the Void

  The Ear, a little shell in small volutions shutting out

  All melodies & comprehending only Discord and Harmony. . . .

  Can such an Eye judge of the stars? & looking thro its tubes

  Measure the sunny rays that point their spears on Udanadan

  Can such an Ear filld with the vapours of the yawning pit.

  Judge of the pure melodious harp struck by a hand divine?

  *rrr~rrr: (20-37 Hz.) Akin to a cat’s purring, an expression of profound contentment.

  It is difficult to translate the nature of this contentment, which is very infrequent in human discourse. The best I can thi
nk of are the sounds a baby makes when nursing, or the sounds small children make (arum, arum) while sucking, chewing, tasting or mucking in something delicious.

  oo oo oo ooo o o: (4-12 Hz.) A melancholia song.

  This song was collected not from my Ontario Safari elephants but from a much abused elephant who lodged with us for several weeks. She was unpredictable, unruly and destructive. I recorded her several times at night and found her chanting this emotional song all alone. It communicates deep resources of something I can only describe as a life-will in the face of her horrible captivity. It reminds me of the blues chant of an anonymous woman who sings with Big Bill Broonzy, a woman whose song came from gospel choirs, tenant farms and slavery.

  Amusingly, after the elephant was taken away, I recorded young Saba chanting a variation of oo oo oo ooo o o with a common fatigue song (see una). I suppose this might be an example of a kind of world-beat Elephant song emerging and certainly shows the constant and creative transformation of language.

  nnn~praonr~nnn: (10 Hz.) A solitude song.

  Kezia sings this long chant, in the middle of the night, when all the others are asleep. It is the deepest of rumbles, usually spondaic, and often ends with a terminal flourish (see wuh). It expresses the melancholic pleasures and responsibilities of being last awake in a place wrapped in sleep. I think of Louise Bogan’s sleeping furies

  And now I may look upon you

  Having once met your eyes. You lie in sleep and

  forget me.

  Alone and strong in my peace, I look upon you

  in yours.

  wuh: (18-20 Hz.) Rest.