Elefant

by Martin Suter

  He nodded, but Ormalinger didn’t react. He probably couldn’t remember Schoch.

  The AlcOven was an institution for cases so hopeless that it had given up stopping them from drinking. Although no alcohol was offered for sale, visitors were permitted to bring their own wine and beer. And the management couldn’t prevent people sharing the drinks they’d brought with others, nor stop money being exchanged under the table for such generosity.

  There were a few who earned a bit of cash selling beer and wine at a slight profit to those who were stranded and couldn’t summon the energy to make it to the nearby CONSU. When the weather was as bad as today, business was good. A lot of passing trade had joined the regulars: homeless people simply escaping from the rain. The dining room was jam-packed and everyone was drinking.

  Everyone except Schoch, who wasn’t consuming anything liquid apart from a bowl of free soup.

  This he managed without a problem.

  Which meant he wasn’t dependent.

  The next time one of the sellers offered him a beer he took it.

  To combat the boredom.

  14

  The same day

  After the AlcOven Schoch had passed by the dog lovers in the hope that Giorgio might be there, as they had the same route home. And by now Schoch was no longer feeling so steady on his legs.

  But Giorgio had already left and at this time of day those who were still there didn’t make much sense. He accepted the beer he was offered out of politeness and set off on his way.

  It wasn’t until he hit the riverside path that Schoch noticed it had stopped raining. The river was brown and churned up, taking twigs and branches in its wake. In the west a slim strip of clear sky brightened up the twilight gloom. Slowly and with the utmost concentration, Schoch put one foot in front of the other.

  There was a man standing a little further along the path. He wasn’t moving and seemed to be waiting for Schoch.

  As Schoch came closer he could see that the man was from the Far East. Short and weedy-looking, but perhaps he had fighting skills.

  Schoch made to go past him, but the man walked beside him and asked something Schoch didn’t understand. He kept going.

  ‘Where is cave?’

  I see, Schoch thought, someone after our caves. ‘There aren’t any caves here,’ he replied.

  But the man wouldn’t give up. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Piss off,’ Schoch snarled. Now the man kept his distance.

  At the whirlpool stood an elderly man that Schoch knew by sight. He had one of the nearby allotments. ‘They pulled one out of here today,’ he said.

  ‘A dog?’ Schoch said.

  ‘A man. With a bag around his neck. Empty.’

  The river tugged at some plastic tape that was tied to the trunk of a willow. It had red and white stripes like the tape the police used to seal off a crime scene.

  ‘I wonder what was in it?’ the elderly man muttered.

  Schoch didn’t reply.

  ‘It’ll turn up at some point. The whirlpool doesn’t keep anything for ever.’

  Schoch was about to mention the two men he’d seen early that morning, prodding around in the eddy with the rescue pole. But he had second thoughts. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the police and, besides, there was nothing anybody could do for the drowned man now. So he continued on his way.

  The gap in the clouds to the west had closed again, and the twilight blurred the contours of the landscape. Schoch had to pay close attention to the cracks and holes in the asphalt.

  After about five hundred metres he’d reached the spot directly above his cave. As ever, he walked on past, in case anybody was watching. And, as ever, he peed up against a nearby poplar and looked around cautiously. When he was sure there were no witnesses he clambered down the steep embankment.

  The ground was slippery. Even for a younger, more sober man it wouldn’t have been easy to come to a stop with the bulky holdall at the right place, then climb back up the two metres to the cave entrance. He slipped and caught a projecting root that had saved him more than once before. The entrance was now three metres above him.

  Cursing, and on all fours, he waited until he’d got his breath back.

  From here the entrance to his cave seemed to have changed. The bushes that partially concealed it in summer looked ragged. A result of the storm, perhaps.

  His pause now over, he started scrambling up the slope on muddy hands and knees. When he got to the bushes he saw that they’d been mangled: leaves and twigs ripped off. That couldn’t have been the wind.

  Schoch pushed the bag past the bushes into his cave and then crept into the dim light.

  There it was again, fluorescent pink and its ears cocked – the phantom from last night!

  Schoch held his breath and didn’t move.

  The mini elephant stood there motionless too. So still that Schoch breathed out. It had to be a toy after all.

  He crept completely into the cave and made a grasp for the elephant. But before he could touch it, it moved. It lowered its head and thrust its trunk into the air with a swing of its head.

  Turning around, the creature moved right to the very back and narrowest part of the hollow. Where Schoch’s hand couldn’t reach it.

  ‘I’m going mad!’ he exclaimed.

  And again: ‘I’m going mad!’

  Then, more softly: ‘Or I am already.’

  In the middle of the cave lay some leaves and stripped branches from the bushes by the entrance. Schoch picked some up and crawled as far back as he possibly could. He held out some leaves to the tiny creature, but it wouldn’t be enticed. It just stood there, occasionally fanning its ears or raising its trunk menacingly.

  Schoch clicked his tongue and spoke softly, ‘Come on … come on … come on … tchick-tchick-tchick.’

  The little animal put its ears back and started feeling the sandy ground with its trunk. Sometimes it curled the end of its trunk and sometimes it gracefully lifted a leg and let the foot hang there loosely. But it wouldn’t come a single step closer.

  15

  Zürich

  14 June 2016

  At some point Schoch woke up, freezing. It took him quite a while to remember why he was lying like this. The elephant was nowhere to be seen and he was just about to put the whole thing down to a hallucination when he discovered the dung. The same crumbly mounds he remembered from the zoo visits of his past life, only much, much smaller, lay in the part of the cave where the ceiling was at its lowest.

  He crawled backwards until he could just about sit up, and looked around. Apart from a few leftover leaves and twigs he didn’t see anything unusual.

  He took the sleeping mat from his bag, rolled it out, laid the sleeping bag on top, removed his shoes and got in. Now he heard a rustling by the entrance to the cave, saw movement in the bushes and finally the pink glow of his hallucination.

  Schoch kept still and waited. And fell asleep.

  He dreamed of a tiny pink elephant glowing in the dark. Someone he didn’t know said, ‘This is no dream, this is real.’ When he looked again the elephant had turned into a little dog. Schoch wanted to stroke it, but the dog ran away. He wanted to follow it, but he couldn’t run.

  Suddenly he was beside the whirlpool of death, where Giorgio and Bolle were fishing with long poles. ‘Has someone drowned?’ he called out.

  ‘You!’ they replied.

  Something warm, damp and soft enveloped his thumb.

  He felt the dream departing, distancing itself rapidly and inexorably, and leaving him alone.

  But the thing enveloping his thumb was still there. It moved, sucking and slurping.

  Schoch opened his eyes. The dawn gave his cave a touch of light. The little elephant was beside his hand. It was standing on its hind legs, kneeling on its front ones and suckling his thumb.

  Carefully Schoch lifted his other hand and brought it down gently. The pink skin felt warm and as soft as pigskin.

  The crea
ture flinched and scurried back to its hiding place. But not as far back as before. Stopping where Schoch could still have reached it, the elephant wiggled its trunk and looked at him expectantly.

  Schoch crept out of his sleeping bag, squatted then knelt, and tried to breathe deeply and in a controlled manner to calm the pounding of his heart. What he could see wasn’t a hallucination. You couldn’t touch hallucinations.

  But what was it?

  A miracle? A sign? Something mystical?

  Schoch had never been a religious man, but before his downfall he’d certainly believed in the existence of something that transcended his powers of perception and imagination. A higher reality, and maybe a higher power too.

  But like everything else, this belief had crumbled with his downfall. And hadn’t made its presence felt in all the years since.

  Until today. For the fact that this fabulous creature from another world, maybe even another dimension, had chosen to reveal itself to him – him! – must have a significance.

  Schoch now did something he hadn’t done since childhood: he crossed himself. But this form of homage seemed inappropriate given the significance of the revelation and the fact that it might be an Asian elephant before him, so he put the palms of his hands together in front of his beard and gave a deep Thai-style bow.

  The animal felt around on the ground with its trunk.

  ‘Hungry?’ Schoch asked. He picked up a few leaves and held them out to the elephant.

  Hesitantly, and with its trunk outstretched, the creature inched closer. It grabbed hold of the leaves, lowered its wedge-shaped jaw and stuffed them in its mouth. Schoch’s hand brushed the tip of the trunk, which felt soft and silky.

  The elephant raised its trunk, indicating that it wanted more.

  Schoch put on his shoes. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll fetch you some more.’ He pushed past the bushes and got to his feet.

  The clouds hung low and the river was still brown and flowing rapidly. But at least it wasn’t raining. Schoch went over to the old willow growing a little way downstream and broke off a few branches. Then he pulled up some clumps of grass and a bunch of buttercups that were growing just above the high water level.

  With this harvest he struggled back up the embankment and crept into his cave.

  His visitor, still standing in the same place, shot out its trunk when it saw the food.

  Schoch fed the little animal with fascination and patience. It was so hungry that he had to go out twice for more. With his penknife he also cut off the lower third of a plastic bottle, filled it with water from the river and watched the elephant sink its trunk in, suck up the water and empty it into its mouth.

  Thus the morning passed without Schoch having eaten or drunk anything.

  His cheap plastic watch showed 2 p.m. when his little guest went for a lie-down. Schoch thought this was a good idea and lay down beside it.

  When he awoke the mini elephant was on its side in a different spot. Its stomach was rising and falling rapidly and its trunk was being thrust out and curled up at irregular intervals. On the ground everywhere were puddles of runny excrement.

  Schoch gently laid a hand on the little body as if it were the forehead of a feverish child. It didn’t react. He carefully took hold of the elephant and placed it upright. It stood there, legs splayed, ears and trunk drooping, and beneath its tail the contents of its bowels gushed out, as thin as water. The little creature lay back down even before it had finished. In fact it was more like falling down than lying down.

  Drink lots of fluids when you’ve got diarrhoea, Schoch thought. He took an empty bottle and went back down the embankment. It was much easier now; after twenty hours without any alcohol he was quite steady on his feet again.

  But he was still panting heavily when he entered his cave with the full bottle. The tiny, pink, magical creature now lay there peacefully, its chest no longer rising and falling and the trunk not twisting any more, but resting limply beside its front legs.

  Schoch panicked. ‘You’re not going to die on me,’ he muttered. ‘You’re not going to die on me.’

  He shook out the contents of his holdall, wrapped the droopy animal in the towel with the Nivea logo and placed it inside the holdall. Then he hung this over his shoulder and left.

  16

  Eastern Switzerland

  6 June 2013

  A director is only ever as important as the business they preside over. And unfortunately Circus Pellegrini wasn’t as important as it once had been.

  That’s why most of the employees and all the artists who worked for Carlo P. Pellegrini just called him Carlo. Only those veterans of the circus who’d been taken on by his father called him ‘Herr Direktor’.

  Back then Pellegrini was still one of the three most important circuses in the country. It played the same venues as the national circus and although its gala premieres may have been rather middle-class events, they were still part of the social calendar.

  Its decline began right after the sudden death of Pellegrini’s father, Paolo, at fifty-two. He was the victim of a lion attack, or rather, the victim of the abrupt end of an affair between the animal trainer de Groot and a Chinese trapeze artist, who on the orders of her father, the head of the troupe, had to submit to family discipline and terminate the relationship.

  De Groot, an alcoholic who’d stayed dry for fifteen years, suffered a relapse and was confronted by Carlo’s father at a training session where he was clearly drunk. The circus director marched into the cage as he’d often done before – he’d worked with lions himself in the past – and gave de Groot a piece of his mind. Pellegrini ordered him to take the lions back to their cages and sleep off his inebriation.

  Tarzan, the star of the lion routine, came to his boss’s aid and attacked Paolo Pellegrini.

  He died on the spot.

  Carlo had just turned thirty and was unprepared for the role of circus director. His dream was to become a musician, but his plans had been thwarted by his sister Melanie. She had been an enthusiastic circus child and they were agreed that when the time came for the handover she’d become the first female circus director in the country. While he, Carlo, would continue the circus lifestyle, but on tour with a rock band.

  Then, however, his sister fell in love with the magician and son of an American circus family, and followed him to the States. Which meant Carlo had no choice but to take over his father’s role.

  He might have enjoyed more success if it hadn’t been for his father’s widow. Following the death of Carlo’s mother, Paolo had got married again to Alena, a Russian circus princess who was as old as his son. Although he’d bequeathed the circus to whichever child was going to continue it, he’d set aside a generous pension for his widow, which placed a major burden on the circus budget. Moreover, because she no longer did her horse routine, for which she’d once won a prize, Carlo had to hire an external artiste as a replacement.

  He’d never got on with her even while his father was alive, but afterwards open hostility broke out between them. She constantly interfered in the management of the circus, undermined the little authority he had and kept causing upheaval in the team by embarking on affairs with the artistes. Carlo was delighted when she stayed on after a holiday to Ibiza and only returned sporadically. Sporadically, but always unexpectedly.

  In his will, Carlo’s father had guaranteed her the right of abode for the rest of her life, which meant that the circus always had to shunt around her luxury caravan.

  Another problem was that Carlo Pellegrini had no affinity with animals. He was a poor rider, he’d never been able to overcome his fear of horses and he had zero understanding of them. Losing Alena’s equestrian skills left him in a fix, and he ended up hiring rather mediocre acts twice in succession.

  After the tragedy with his father he struck large carnivores from the programme, replacing them with pigs, dogs, goats and other pets in acts that were amusing rather than striking and which could have been entertainin
g if he’d had a better feel for the routines. The same was true of his choice of artistes. He lacked sufficient professional knowledge or interest to spot the really exceptional artistes. And he couldn’t afford those with the best reputations in the circus world, a problem that worsened each year.

  Soon this was even the case at the top venues in the country. He had to make do with the second- or sometimes third-best choice.

  The last remaining showpieces of Circus Pellegrini were its Indian elephants. Four cows and an adolescent bull. They’d been the pride of Carlo’s father, who was known as an eminent elephant trainer. After his death Carlo took over the elephant act, even though he didn’t have a clue about these animals either.

  That this was at all possible was down to Kaung, his Burmese oozie. Oozie, or neck rider, was the name given over there to elephant keepers.

  It was Kaung who’d been training and looking after the elephants for years and who led them around the edge of the ring at every performance. Even Paolo Pellegrini’s act with the elephants had been a bit of a sham. He pretended that the grey giants were obeying him, when in fact they only listened to Kaung.

  Keeping the elephants was a costly affair. A fully grown animal ate 200 kilograms of fresh twigs, hay, leaves, fruit and vegetables per day. A year after he’d taken over the circus, Pellegrini was determined to sell them. And he would have done if it hadn’t been for Kaung, who one day came up with the idea of submitting the cows to an international breeding programme. He knew that during the pregnancy a client would pay for feed, veterinary services and care, and then hand over a wad of money after the birth.

  Pellegrini was convinced. He applied to a programme that worked with artificial insemination. Three of his cows had already produced babies using this method and prospects were good that this part of his business, at least, would continue to prosper. The clients were most satisfied. The elephants were healthy and so well trained that they patiently allowed the procedure to be carried out.