by Martin Suter
After four more weeks the embryo was ‘developing well’ and the hormone values of the urine test were satisfactory.
A further four weeks down the line and it already looked like a little elephant. Dr Horàk’s verdict: ‘Nice development, maybe a bit on the small side.’
In the sixth month he said, ‘Stagnation. At this stage the embryo ought to be twice the size.’
One month later he paid his last visit to Asha. ‘Not viable,’ was his diagnosis. ‘Make sure she expels the foetus if it dies in the uterus. You don’t want to lose the cow too,’ he said as he left.
23
Graufeld
21 June 2014
Dr Reber got caught up in the affair the very next day.
Dr Hansjörg Reber was Circus Pellegrini’s vet. He had a one-man practice in Graufeld, a backwater in the Berner Oberland. Three mornings a week he saw patients in his surgery: dogs, cats, even pigeons and guinea pigs. The rest of the time was spent conducting house visits to farmers and horse-owners.
His passion was for elephants, however. He had undertaken further training in this area, as a volunteer at the zoo and on a six-month internship at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka.
Unfortunately there weren’t too many opportunities to apply this knowledge, which was why he offered his services to Circus Pellegrini for nothing, billing only for the horses and two lamas. Pellegrini, on the other hand, permitted himself to pass on costs for Reber’s treatment of Asha to Dr Roux.
The day after Dr Horàk’s diagnosis Dr Reber arrived for routine ultrasound scans of the two pregnant elephants, Rupashi and Sadaf.
Pellegrini, who’d so far kept knowledge of the embryo implant from Reber, now let him in on the secret and asked him to perform an ultrasound scan on Asha too.
Dr Reber confirmed what Dr Horàk had said: far too small, not viable.
‘But is it still alive?’ Pellegrini asked.
‘The heart is beating.’
‘If it dies how will you get it out?’
‘I assume Asha will miscarry.’
‘If she doesn’t, will you remove it?’
‘I can’t – too dangerous. I couldn’t get to it. And surgery’s out of the question.’
‘So I’d lose her?’
‘I assume that she’ll get rid of the foetus herself. I’ve even heard of cases where elephant cows carry a dead foetus around in the womb for years without any problems.’
Pellegrini wasn’t convinced. ‘I hope you’re right.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be coming every month anyway to check on Rupashi and Sadaf, so I’ll examine Asha too. If things aren’t right with her in the meantime Kaung will notice and call me, won’t you Kaung?’
The oozie, who’d been following the conversation silently and blankly, his arm wrapped around Asha’s trunk, nodded.
24
Austria
June to November 2014
Roux didn’t waste any time. Once it was absolutely certain that the experiment had failed, he started looking around for another surrogate mother and found one at a small Austrian circus, which was less convenient logistically, but far more economical. This was important, because he was contractually obliged to pay for Asha’s care, food and veterinary treatment until she was ready for breeding again. He hoped that Asha would miscarry soon to rid him of the double burden.
He couldn’t wait to examine the foetus either, to see if it was pink and contained luciferins that would have made it glow.
Roux had left it that Pellegrini would contact him as soon as the surrogate mother miscarried.
In Austria the implanting of the blastocysts didn’t go as smoothly as with Asha. The elephant cow was not as stoical and on Dr Horàk’s instructions Roux had to have a metal cage made specially. It almost wasn’t ready on time and they only just caught the ovulation.
The transfer still failed. On both attempts the cow moved suddenly and Horàk lost both the intended blastocysts as well as those he had in reserve.
They had to wait four months until Roux had prepared new blastocysts and the elephant’s cycle allowed for another transfer. Seven more weeks would pass until there was absolute certainty that the embryo had embedded.
From time to time he rang Pellegrini and on each occasion the circus owner assured him that the heart of Asha’s foetus was still beating.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked him, when he heard the same news five months after the vets had declared it to be not viable.
‘That’s what Dr Reber says,’ Pellegrini told him.
Roux suspected that the circus director was drawing the whole thing out so as not to lose the contributions. ‘When’s he next coming?’
‘In around four weeks. We haven’t fixed a specific date yet.’
‘I’d like to be there. Let me know.’
25
Circus Pellegrini
19 December 2014
When it wasn’t on tour, Circus Pellegrini was housed in the industrial and agricultural zone of a village in the canton of Thurgau. Pellegrini’s father had built stables and storage sheds there, put up two container offices and negotiated a twenty-year contract for a farmhouse, where the family lived between tours.
This is where Dr Hansjörg Reber paid his next veterinary visit to the circus. The elephants were billeted in a dividable concrete stall with metal posts and heavy gates that led into a small outdoor area, also secured with heavy posts.
Pellegrini was waiting for him in Asha’s stall with the oozie and a man he didn’t know. Pellegrini introduced him as Paul Roux, the researcher and owner of the embryo.
Reber took an instant dislike to the man. And his first impression was soon confirmed by Roux’s overblown confidence, his authoritarian way of expressing his wishes and the condescension with which he treated the oozie.
‘Let’s take a look,’ he ordered.
The foetus was now almost fifty-eight weeks and could be seen with an ultrasound device. Reber put it on the folding table that stood beside Asha. It looked like a laptop from the time when they were still heavy and chunky.
Kaung rubbed plenty of gel on the surrogate mother’s flank and Reber started moving the sonic head around.
‘I don’t see anything,’ Roux said disdainfully after a few seconds.
‘You’re looking at the mother’s intestines. It can take a long time for the foetus to appear,’ Reber said, before adding spitefully, ‘That’s if we do actually see it.’
Roux shot Pellegrini a look of reproach and turned back to the screen. ‘Are you sure it’s still there?’
‘Where else would it be?’ Reber asked.
‘Miscarried.’
‘Kaung would have noticed.’
The oozie shook his head. ‘Not gone, still there,’ he said.
And all of a sudden it emerged among the fluid grey outlines. A tiny toy elephant, its trunk clearly visible. Just for a moment, before disappearing again.
‘Is it still alive?’ Roux asked.
‘I think so.’ Reber played the film several times over in slow motion.
‘Well?’ Roux asked.
Reber didn’t reply. He played back the sequence another three times, then he was certain. ‘Its heart is beating,’ he declared.
‘Does this mean it might survive the pregnancy?’
‘I can’t rule it out altogether. But whether it’s viable or not with this growth deficiency …’
‘But the foetus is growing?’
‘If so, then incredibly slowly.’
‘So how big would it be at the normal point of birth in – how many months?’
‘Between seven and eight, maybe nine.’ Pellegrini didn’t have to count; the dates of this deal, which might now slip through his fingers, were fixed in his head.
‘It’s impossible to say how big it would be. First we’d have to know whether the embryo was growing at all,’ Reber pointed out.
‘How can you find that out?’ Roux asked, sounding reproachful again.
‘By comparing it with the last recording.’
‘So compare them!’
Reber nodded. ‘I shall. And I’ll pass on the results to Herr Pellegrini.’
‘You’ll pass them on to me!’ Roux ordered. ‘The foetus is mine.’
Reber looked at him calmly with his eyes enlarged by spectacles. ‘Herr Pellegrini is my client.’
‘But I’m his,’ Roux barked.
Hansjörg Reber hadn’t been deceived by his first impression.
26
The same day
The road was lined with apple trees on both sides. The BMW was going a little too quickly; Roux was lost in his thoughts. About the small elephant and the future.
The vet couldn’t rule out the possibility that the animal might be born alive. It was conceivable, therefore, that in nine months he could be the owner of a tiny pink elephant that glowed in the dark!
A slight bend forced him to cut his speed; only now did he realise how fast he’d been driving.
This wouldn’t just be a great scientific breakthrough, but a commercial one too! His silent partner knew how to manage something like that. International patents, PR work, market positioning. Was there a Saudi prince who wouldn’t wish to buy a little glowing pink elephant for his children? Were there genetic researchers who wouldn’t be delighted by the possibility of marking cells in any colour they liked?
His silent partner was a Chinese genetic engineering firm. One of the biggest. One that decoded masses of genetic material on a daily basis. One that experimented with the CRISPR/Cas system, a method of cutting and modifying DNA.
For someone like Roux this was a hard secret to keep. He, the small researcher with his three-man firm, had a foothold in China’s gigantic genetic engineering industry! In the country with the fewest qualms about genetic manipulation. Where a factory already existed that could clone 100,000 cattle per year, with the aim of increasing this to a million. A country that had undertaken the task of decoding the genome of all its 1.4 billion inhabitants and was in the process of developing the largest genetic database in the world!
His Gentecsa was working together with this great power in bioengineering. And nobody was allowed to know. Not yet!
In the distance a barrier came down and once again Roux noticed while braking how his speed had crept up inadvertently.
A locomotive painted white, red, yellow and black went past with a single coach. The few passengers were all absorbed in something he couldn’t see.
The barrier opened again and the warning light stopped flashing. Roux put his foot on the accelerator and his car started moving again.
Towering in front of him was a black bank of cloud, as if the little train had pulled it here.
27
Zürich
9 January 2015
Having measured the stills from the two last sonographs, Reber had come to the conclusion that the foetus had grown. Not much, a centimetre and a half perhaps, but it had grown.
He told Pellegrini this over the phone. He couldn’t tell whether the circus director was pleased or disappointed by the news.
An hour later his mobile rang. To his surprise it was Kaung, the oozie.
To begin with Reber found it hard to understand what Kaung wanted. But soon it became clear that he had to talk to him. ‘Are there problems with the elephant?’ he asked.
‘Yes, problems.’
‘Shall I come over?’
‘No, I come.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Is it so urgent?’
‘Very urgent.’
They arranged to meet in a pub near the old barracks, which Kaung knew because Circus Pellegrini had performed there.
It was three o’clock and Sternen was almost empty. It smelled of the lunch that had just gone and of the dinner that was to come. Reber was punctual, but Kaung was already sitting there, alone at a table next to a window with a tulle curtain from the time before the smoking ban. He looked small and thin as he waited there with a bottle of mineral water, wearing a shirt and tie. When he saw Reber approaching the table he got up and offered him his hand.
Scarcely had they sat down than Kaung blurted out, ‘Little elephant not belong Herr Roux. Belong Asha.’
Reber didn’t know what to reply to this. Eventually he said, ‘It won’t survive anyway.’
‘Will,’ the oozie said defiantly.
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Asha good mother. Baby not sick, just small. Kaung small too.’
The waitress cleared the glasses from a vacated table and came to take Reber’s order.
‘What can I get you?’ She could have been around fifty but had tried in vain to wipe a few years off that with make-up.
Reber ordered a coffee and turned back to Kaung. ‘We can’t do anything except wait. Every time I come I’ll check how she’s getting on and whether the foetus is still alive. And you call me if there’s a problem.’
The waitress brought the coffee in a large cup with brown glaze on a saucer that also carried a biscuit.
‘Do you mind paying straight away?’ She didn’t trust guests she’d never seen before.
Reber wanted to pay for them both, but Kaung had already been made to settle the bill for his water.
When they were alone again Reber asked, ‘What were you hoping to get out of this meeting, Kaung?’
The oozie hesitated. He drank a sip of water, put the glass down, sat up straight and looked Reber in the eye. ‘You protect little elephant. Maybe sacred.’
Reber knew that in Myanmar white elephants were considered sacred. He’d learned too that it was a white elephant who had announced to Maya in a dream that she would give birth to the Buddha. He also knew that in Hinduism they revered the god Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati. The imminent birth of a sacred elephant in the middle of the canton of Thurgau, however, was something he hadn’t reckoned with.
But Kaung was looking at him so seriously and with such expectation that all he could do was nod without irony and say, ‘Maybe.’
Now the oozie smiled for the first time and said, ‘So you help.’ Then his smile faded as he looked past Reber and up. When Reber turned around he saw a bearded, unkempt man standing behind him and looking with one red-ringed eye – the other seemed to be blind.
‘Could you pay for our beers? I’m afraid my wallet was stolen.’ He pointed to a table at the other end of the room, where two men were sitting who also looked as if they were homeless. They waved over at him.
Reber took his wallet from his pocket and looked for a tenner, but could only find a twenty-franc note, so gave this to the bearded man.
‘Wow! You’re a real gent!’ he bellowed, shaking Reber’s hand keenly and returned to his table.
‘Have you done it again, Bolle?’ Reber heard the waitress say.
Kaung had followed the scene with interest and now smiled again. ‘You good man,’ he said. And after a pause, looking serious once more, added, ‘Roux not good man.’
Reber didn’t object.
‘If little elephant live, Roux must not have it,’ he declared. An irreversible decision.
‘How are you going to prevent that?’
‘You help.’
28
Austria
28 January 2015
Every time he had to crawl along the Austrian motorways at 130 kilometres per hour, Roux wished the surrogate mother was in Germany, where he’d be able to push his BMW 218 to its full 200 kph.
The surrogate mother in the Austrian circus was causing problems. The foetus had developed normally until now, but the cow’s hormone values were suddenly ‘a touch borderline’, as Horàk said. Horàk, who got on his nerves more and more each time Roux met him. But what was he to do? Horàk was the only one who could implant an elephant blastocyst with any degree of reliability.
The driver behind was tailgating him and flashing his headlights, even though he was driving at 13
0, just like the Mercedes in front. He didn’t want to cross over into the right-hand lane and get caught among the lorries doing 100.
And now fat drops of rain were splattering on his windscreen too.
Roux maintained his speed, refusing to give in to the jerk hassling him from behind.
Bryan Adams stopped singing and the phone rang. The dashboard computer said, ‘Pellegrini’.
‘I hope you have some good news for me,’ Roux said.
This greeting kept Pellegrini quiet for a moment, then he said, ‘I don’t know if you’ll regard this as good news – the mini foetus didn’t survive.’
Now it was Roux who was lost for words. He indicated right, took his foot off the accelerator and slotted in between two lorries. The tailgater sped past, hooting his horn, and showed him the finger.
‘Miscarriage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just now?’
Pellegrini cleared his throat. ‘Last Thursday.’
‘What? And I’m only finding out about this now?’
‘I’ve been away for a week.’
‘Away? Why away?’
Now Pellegrini started shouting too. ‘Looking at circus acts, for God’s sake! I need to sort out next season’s programme!’
Roux took a deep breath, then asked more calmly, ‘What does it look like? Anything unusual about it?’
Pellegrini had to clear his throat again before answering. ‘Nothing unusual, apart from the fact that it was very, very small.’
‘If you’ve got it in a normal freezer, please turn it down to its lowest temperature. Minus 18 degrees is too risky as far as I’m concerned. Minus 23 would be safer.’
Pellegrini didn’t reply.
The downpour became heavier and the lorry in front of Roux slower. ‘Hello? Did you hear what I said? Minus 23 degrees!’