Elephant Winter

by Kim Echlin

  One early morning I was out back watching the elephants toss fallen leaves under the bones of a dew-shrouded maple tree. Their great bodies rubbed against each other, ribs expanding with deep breaths, their raised trunks searching the air, seeking scents muted by cold. They examined the sky. Kezia was first to sense my labour and she reached her trunk out to touch my body. The pains seized me and let go like a cross-stitch. She shuffled sideways to support me and when the pains came I bent forward, leaning my hands against her side as if it were a bed or a wall. Dust clung to her rough stiff hairs. I wanted to drop to the ground but she used her trunk to lift me, to urge me to stay on my feet. Kezia, from the land of endless heat, moved us all back through that dispassionate chill along the hard elephant path. They had to be put in the barn, shackled and settled in before my baby could be born.

  There are, for most of us, a few singular moments around which we create the rest of our lives. People get stuck in them in all sorts of ways. Being born is a series of stucks. When Omega was born she moved quite nicely down the birth canal, push-stuck, push-stuck, push-stuck, until the very end when she didn’t move any more. There we were, me and Omega, on the brink of a new life, stuck. Did she not want to be born? Did I not want my sleepy pregnancy to end? I remember pushing in a desultory sort of way and a strange woman’s voice saying, “If you don’t push her out I’m going for my knife!” I didn’t really care what she said, I was too interested in my own pain, but an image of a blue baby began to fill the room.

  In the centre of this cross-stitch of pain and rest, pain and rest, I glimpsed backwards into a time without self-reflection. I was body and mind undivided. The elephants have a sound for this: waohm. But I had to rouse myself out of my meditations and reluctantly push the baby out, sploosh! with a cry and a mighty heave.

  When I held Omega a moment after the cord between us was cut I felt like a sacred hero at the end of a race. I also felt like a used-up tube of toothpaste. How could I feel these two things at the same time? But I did, caught between Omega’s desire and my own. It has occurred to me that this is about ecstasy and garbage—a milky new baby in my arms, a lot of stinky blood on the floor. When she nursed we were skin to skin like throat singers humming and vibrating the sounds of each other against the world’s darkness. Nursing and dripping in days and nights divided not by sun and moon but by seconds and minutes. I could hardly wait to show her to Kezia.

  She had Jo’s eyes.

  With a child it is difficult to meditate. I have learned with Omega the fathomless worlds of meditating on Omega. It’s all for such a short time.

  I brought Omega to the barn when she was three days old. I unwrapped her, took off her diaper and let Kezia touch her all over. Her gentle trunk left a trace, her scent, on the baby. Kezia was chanting, ooo ahahah~whoo aaohh. I’ve never found a good translation of this sound. On that occasion it meant something like, Be it unto me according to thy word.

  And so, I am still at the Safari. With a small baby it is easier to stop moving around so much. My migrations are interior wanderings as I cosy her on my back and take her walking with the elephants each day. I record the elephants chanting their nurturing songs over her and I’ve caught Saba trying to lift her up from her blanket on the barn floor more than once. Her earliest inchoate memories will be of the scent of hay, the soft brush of an elephant’s trunk. I have moved back into my mother’s house and sleep there most nights. I made a nursery for Omega in my old room but she still sleeps with me. I’m going to build a summer aviary outside and soon I’ll open up the studio. I am encouraging all of the elephants to draw and I’m going to sell their pictures instead of taking them to the circus. I suppose I have become one of those zoo people I used to find so eccentric. But when I take my Elephant-English dictionary to the university the zoologists and linguists find me odd too. I wonder, as time passes, if Jo would fit in if he ever came back. And I dream sometimes of Alecto. In the dreams he torments me, mouth agape, silently pulling me down until I awake in a sweat. Perhaps this is part of supplication, hope beyond memory.

  I don’t know how long I’ll stay. When I get crumpled letters with bright yellow stamps from Zimbabwe I can smell the caves and feel the heat on my skin. But today, willing and fain, I ask the elephants to take me captive in their captivity, enthrall me and lead me hand in hand as we wander slowly through the hours watching a small baby grow, learning more and more of each other’s language. There are nights when I chafe at my duties and fall battered into bed after working all day. There are days when I’m exhausted and I wish I had no one to take care of. But my ferocious love for this child and my deep bond with these elephants draw me into life, where old furies are gentled. The Safari will open again and the elephants have to be ready to walk among tourists, to make the trek down to the pond so that on summer afternoons people can marvel at the weightless joy they take in rolling and splashing in the water. I have to clean up the howdahs for the children’s rides and get Saba’s pictures framed. I have to take care of Omega. I want her to know where she will fall asleep and where she’ll wake. Even in this small safari there is much to do. I find things to keep my heart occupied. Omega said her first word today. It was the greeting Saba makes to her, an audible brah with a light caress from her trunk. Omega waved her arms when Saba came up to us and made the sound back. Then they made the sound together and I listened and laughed to hear it. We are all each other’s Word.

  COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Stevie Smith, The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith, Penguin 20th Century Classics, ed. James MacGibbon.

  Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Little Brown and Co., ed.Thomas H.Johnson.

  Every effort has been made to contact or trace all copyright holders. The publishers will be glad to make good any errors or omissions brought to our attention in future editions.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When Elephant Winter was first published I was surprised at how many people asked whether the elephant lore in the novel is true. It is the job of fiction to give meaning to facts, and the job of language to shape the world. This being said, all of the elephant lore in the novel is drawn from extensive research into the history and mythology of elephants, accounts of their ability to communicate with each other and with humans, scientific studies on their physiology and behaviour, particularly their intense desire to learn and to nurture and teach their young.

  I would like to thank Katherine Payne for her extensive work on elephant communication and a generous afternoon she spent with me at Cornell University where she described her research and played me her audio and video tapes. Katherine Payne was the first person to document elephant infrasound which she discovered by noticing a strange pressure change on her ear drums. She has continued her research on elephant communication in Africa as well as studies on their ability to teach each other migration routes. Her fine scientific work, and her admiration and knowledge of these great animals is an inspiration to me. It is important to stress however that while we understand elephants to have a small repetoire of infrasonic utterances with which they communicate, the Elephant–English Dictionary in this novel is a complete invention.

  The work of many elephant researchers was important to me: Joyce H. Poole, Cynthia Moss, Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton, Heathcote Williams, Douglas Chadwick, H.H. Scullard, Ramesh Bedi. The autopsy notes are based on a 1936 report by Francis G. Benedict in Physiology of the Elephant. The ability of elephants to draw is described in David Gucwa and James Ehmann’s To Whom It May Concern: An Investigation of the Art of Elephants. For the chance to see elephants in the wild I am grateful to the guides at Fothergill Island, Lake Kariba, in Zimbabwe. For access to elephants in captivity, I am grateful to Michael Hackenburger at the Bowmanville Zoo. For information on the training of elephants, and their habits in captivity, I consulted with several elephant keepers I met through the Elephant Managers Association. I have also turned to written accounts such as Franklin Edgerton’s The Elephant Lore of th
e Hindus. One of my favourite descriptions of the qualities of an elephant driver comes from his book:

  The supervisor of elephants should be intelligent, kinglike, righteous, devoted to his lord, pure, true to his undertaking, free from vice, controlling his senses, well behaved, vigorous, tried by practice, delighting in kind words, his science learned from a good teacher, clever, firm, . . . fearless, all knowing.

  Many ancient writers were interested in the physical and metaphysical significance of the elephant. I have read their observations avidly. Cassiodorus in Variae wrote, “Its breath is said to be a cure for headaches in man.” Aelian in De Natura Animalium noted “An elephant will not pass by a dead elephant without casting a branch or some dust on the body.” Livy, Oppian, Cassiodorus, Elder Pliny, Plutarch, Cicero all wrote about elephants. But my favourite of the ancients’ observations belongs to Aristotle in De Rerum Natura: “The beast that passeth all others in wit and mind . . . and by its intelligence, it makes as near an approach to man as matter can approach spirit.”

  Finally, I would like to thank the following for their generous encouragement and exchange of ideas: Rex Murphy, Leslie and Alan Nickell, Ann and Adam Winterton, Cynthia Holz, Julie Showalter, Carol Shields and my loyal and unfailingly encouraging writing group. Special thanks to Madeleine Echlin, Ross and Olivia Upshur and my publisher, Cynthia Good.

  A Penguin Readers Guide

  Elephant Winter

  About the Book

  An Interview with Kim Echlin

  Discussion Questions

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Thirty-year-old Sophie Walker is enjoying expatriate life in her adopted home of Zimbabwe, where she teaches art and studies ancient cave drawings, when she is called home to southern Ontario, Canada, to care for her dying mother. Sophie finds herself confined to her mother’s home, which borders a touristy safari-zoo called Ontario Safari on the stark landscape of the old escarpment. Torn between duty and love, Sophie adopts the role of caregiver, sparking an emotional and spiritual journey. Her mother, a wildlife painter, is strong and outspoken and loving; she tells tales of her younger days living in Paris with her lover, Sophie’s father. Once a vibrant and social woman, attending glamorous art openings and keeping a busy house, she has isolated herself from her friends and acquaintances during her illness, keeping company instead with her budgies and a pair of African Grays and listening to the sombre music of Arvo Pärt. In the intense daily domestic life of tending to the dying, Sophie lives moments of despair and joy and deep understanding through the daunting task of “waiting.”

  Sophie watches the safari’s rugged elephant-keeper, Jo Mann, walk his elephant herd each day through the frozen fields behind her mother’s house. Seeing her in the window, Jo beckons her to join him. Sophie is instantly attracted to him. Slipping out of the house, she discovers unexpected life in Jo’s love and in getting to know his elephants. When she becomes pregnant she observes how the elephants form themselves in a matriarchal group whose purpose is to survive, to care for their young, and to keep from boredom in their enforced captivity.

  When she’s not caring for her mother, Sophie works in the barn, and, observing the elephants’ behaviour, she records and analyzes their language. Woven through the book is Echlin’s Elephant–English Dictionary; divided into five sections, it loosely translates everything from simple greetings to layered expressions of love and community. The dictionary gives voice to the complicated relationships of these powerful mammals. Sophie’s connection with the elephants, particularly a pregnant female named Kezia, develops further as her own baby grows.

  Disrupting the calm daily routine of caring for the elephants is scientist Alecto Rikes, who arrives at the safari uninvited. Jo is concerned about Alecto’s presence in the barn, and with due cause. Sophie soon learns of his past: killing wild elephants and performing autopsies to study their anatomy. Nevertheless, she is drawn to his intellect and his wide knowledge of the species, but as she gets closer to him she discovers that he possesses an even darker side. At once charming and disquieting, Alecto also fascinates Sophie’s mother, who accepts his company just as she has accepted eccentrics throughout her life. When the only male elephant at the safari dies, Alecto’s purpose for visiting the safari and his innate evil emerge in myriad ways.

  Winner of a Torgi Award and nominated for a Books in Canada Award, Echlin’s mesmerizing first novel eloquently explores mysteries of life and death, good and evil, community and communication, all within the poignant, personal tale of one woman’s life-altering winter. As described by The Evening Telegram, Elephant Winter is “achingly beautiful, at once sad and uplifting . . . a story for the heart, the mind and the soul.”

  AN INTERVIEW WITH KIM ECHLIN

  Q: The mother–daughter relationship is so pivotal to this story. Did you draw upon your own relationships with your mother and your children? Did you draw upon a personal experience of losing someone close to you when writing the story between Sophie and her mother?

  These are questions that readers often ask. One of the surprising things that happened to me after I published this book was that people who have tended to the dying told me they appreciate how I describe this experience. I always felt grateful when they mentioned this. Of course, a writer draws from observation and from personal experience, but more important is how a writer transforms what he or she sees and feels in life through the imaginative work of storytelling.

  Our relationships with our parents and children, with caring for others, especially the marginalized and dying, demand great creativity. I have witnessed great tenderness toward the dying and from the dying. I have also witnessed people who prefer solitude as they die. All of these are personal experiences, but as a writer I want to be able to write in a way that makes the writer disappear. Our greatest writers create stories and language that go beyond their personal lives and linger in the reader’s mind long after the moment of reading.

  Q: Why did you choose elephants for this story?

  I used to dream frequently about elephants; they were an image that resonated with me. As I researched them I learned why they are such a powerful archetype. Not only do they embody enormous physical strength, but they have capacities of memory and sensitivity and communication that are still a source of wonder in the scientific and lay communities. They are religious symbols in some cultures; they live long lives in the wild, teach each other migration routes and language. I was especially interested in their matriarchal social structure. I wondered what it would be like to imagine a human community that was structured, after survival, on nurturing one another and the young.

  Q: Why did you create the Elephant–English Dictionary?

  It started with imagining an idealized matriarchal culture. Language reflects our preoccupations, our social structures, our creativity. I wondered what kind of language would emerge from a matriarchal culture. Real elephant communication is rumblings in infrasound, which is too low for the human ear to detect and is felt by pressure changes in the air. My dictionary is a fiction. I divided it into sections on greetings, empathy, and nurturing, and then of course I put in the functionals that structure language and the expletives (or expressions of surprise, humour, sorrow, and wit) that are another creative component of living language.

  Writing the dictionary was very pleasurable—imagining a different language, a different culture. In the old days people used to create commonplace books in which they put their favourite quotations. This is the source of our contemporary quote books and books like Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. I think making the dictionary was a little like this, imagining a book of favourite words and ideas and poetry. As Sophie learns more about the elephants, and about her roles as daughter and lover and mother, her language expands. Her ability to hear the creatures around her—human and animal—grows with her capacity to listen. Dictionaries and commonplace books and nurturing are all about deep listening.

  Q: Yes, this is a story about language and communication as much a
s anything else. What is the significance of language in Sophie’s relationships?

  What people say to each other in language is more important to Sophie at the beginning of the book than at the end. By the end, she has learned to hear the silent communication of the elephants, through their infrasound and their gestures. She has learned to listen to the breath of the dying. She has learned to accommodate her lover’s incapacity to express himself through words and to accommodate to her body as her baby grows. The more attuned we are to silence, to the space between words, to the beats between sounds in music, to the many sounds in nature that we don’t perceive on the surface, the more we are able to imagine worlds different from our own. This is empathy.

  Q: Issues of isolation and community are woven through the novel . . .

  The elephants live in captivity. All the characters live in different captivities, whether alone or with others. Sophie’s mother lives within the restrictions imposed on her by her illness, Jo lives with his insecurities, Sophie with having to be a caregiver before she feels ready for it. But living in these various containers helps the characters discover both their unexpected capacities and their limitations. Besides, they have no choice. It is part of being human to confront experience we do not feel ready for, and how we do this determines who we are. I allude to one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, “Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God,” in which the poet describes faith learned in the experience of being broken. Finding the language for this was one of my challenges and I discovered it as often in rhythm as in the words themselves. I like that the silent undertow of the words has so much meaning.